Brother Anthony Joseph came to the St. James Trade School from Syracuse, N.Y., in 1967 to join the Franciscan Brothers in running the school. The Springfield school on the northeast side closed in 1972 following a 42-year run, after which the Brothers opened Brother James Court in 1975 to house and care for developmentally disabled […]
Zach Baliva
Posted inArts & Culture
Reel foreign
Springfield area cinephiles benefit as the Route 66 Film Festival and the Springfield Art Association’s Film Series grow in size and quality. The 2009 Route 66 Fest, held last September, tripled its 2008 attendance while the SAA’s 2010 Film Series features one of its best lineups yet. Seven acclaimed films are en route to local […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Q&A with Goodbye Solo director Ramin Bahrani
2009 was a good year for director Ramin Bahrani. The 34-year-old was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and watched as critics continued to laud Chop Shop (2007) and Goodbye Solo (2008). Not only has Roger Ebert dubbed Bahrani the “new great American director,” but the critic ranked Chop Shop the sixth best film of the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
An independent obsession
Molly Schlich knows movies. She has organized the Springfield Art Association’s annual film festival for the past 18 years. The event, she says, was started not as a fundraiser, but as a way to offer greater variety to Springfield’s movie audiences. “We thought we could add a little more culture and a little more choice,” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
This Life Ain’t Pretty
Statistics are often hard to remember. We might forget that 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV/AIDS or that the global total is more than 30 million. We might not know that 25 percent of them don’t know they have a disease. We might not recall that there are 44,000 new HIV cases each year, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Everybody’s weird at The Rocky Horror Show
I admit that I watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show a few times growing up, mostly to learn the dance steps to the Time Warp to fit in at the high school Halloween Dance… so I turned the movie off after that song. Had I kept watching, I would have learned the rest of the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Muni’s Fiddler another solid production
For fans of live theater in Springfield, attending The Muni’s new production of Fiddler on the Roof is a bit like seeing the James Bond movie Casino Royale — we’ve heard there’s a new guy in the lead role and we’ve seen him in other productions… but we’re not sure how he’ll do as our […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Korean War National Museum comes to downtown Springfield
Springfield resident Larry Benson served in the Korean War, working first as a radarman and then for a chaplain. Last Friday, Benson joined dozens of other veterans from central Illinois and around the nation on the Old State Capitol Plaza to celebrate the grand opening of the Korean War Museum’s exhibit in the old Osco […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Oliver! overcomes slow start
Cast members from the organization’s three upcoming shows cheered wildly as Muni President Flynn Hanners mentioned them in his opening night remarks last Friday. As Hanners spoke, the audience sat before him with balloons and flowers tucked away in preparation for a post-show reception. It was a big crowd full of family and friends — […]
Posted inSpecial Issues
Ride the rails to Alton
Passenger rail may have seen its heyday come and go, but 21,000 miles of train track still crisscross America. Ten of Amtrak’s routes wind through Illinois and can connect those looking for summer fun with several destinations throughout the Midwest. Of all the options in the region, Amtrak’s Texas Eagle provides one of the best […]
Posted inNews
When losing is good
Angie Griffin never considered herself obese, but when her Body Mass Index revealed she fell into that category, she knew something had to change. Together with her husband, Derek, Angie signed up from the YMCA’s first ever Lose Big contest, an event designed to mimic NBC’s popular weight-loss reality show, “The Biggest Loser.” Patty Knepler, […]
Posted inNews
Fun at the drive-in
In the late 1950s, 4,000 drive-in movie theaters dotted America’s landscape. In that decade, 120 theaters, including The 66 Drive-In on Sixth Street and the Springfield Drive-In on Dirksen Parkway, entertained carloads of families and teenagers with their twilight and after-dark movies. The Springfield Twin Drive-In came along in 1973, followed by Green Meadows Drive-In […]
