Eve Ensler, the 49-year-old author and sometime performer of The Vagina Monologues, is on a pay phone at the Denver International Airport. She’s about to board a transpacific flight bound for Melbourne, Australia. “My head is spinning,” she says. In the six years since The Vagina Monologues opened off-Broadway, the play has turned into an […]
Arts & Culture
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Bards of the Sangamo 2-20-03
Under the Dome Down the street from Lincoln TowerUnder the dome in the seat of powerHeavy are the heads that wear the crownsBecause five billion dollars must be found. Bipartisan effort come on let’s thinkAs we face a budget deficit on the brinkNot higher taxes that’s what they are cryin’To clean up this mess left […]
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Bards of the Sangamo 2-27-03
All Hail the Native Sons Of that renowned pair in whose universal fame this copperhead city basks in dubious honor– a poet and a politician– the former drank Lysol and the latter hopped an east-bound train, grew a beard and never came back. —Frank Stokes Local poets were writing about contemporary events in the Sangamo […]
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Movie Review – Spirited Away
Spirited Away Spirited Away not only has brilliant animation and marvelous storytelling, but it’s also head and shoulders above what’s happening in American cartoons. The latest film by revered Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, whose Princess Mononoke was released in the U.S. by Disney in 1999, Spirited Away mostly eschews digital technology in favor of old-fashioned […]
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Bards of the Sangamo 3-6-03
Sonnet for Springfield How we try to rise above the prairie, Minds in constant flux, reach stars from heaven, Pull beautiful dreams from far and airy Realms overruled by good old Orion. Yet we live to flows of rivers, seasons, And the fits and starts of constant commerce In the heartland of the rich in […]
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Movie Reviews – Cradle 2 the Grave, The Life of David Gale
Cradle 2 the Grave If anyone can build an acting career on a glower, it’s DMX. The vowel-deficient rapper started his film career in the underrated Belly and then moved on to Romeo Must Die and Exit Wounds. He sports a steely, narrow glare and tightly drawn mouth whether shooting bad guys, cracking wise, or […]
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Life and Debt
In the early 90s documentary filmmaker Stephanie Black had been vacationing in Jamaica for several years, but every time she stepped off the plane she felt mired in a deepening quandary. She was an American, but the presence of Americans–and their dollars–seemed to be changing the very character of the country. With every return trip, […]
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Movie Reviews – Phone Booth, Basic, The Core and A Man Apart
Phone Booth Who would have guessed that Joel Schumacher–the director of bloated, empty movies such as Batman and Robin and the Anthony Hopkins-Chris Rock spy turkey Bad Company–would be capable of delivering a riveting film that depends on economic, narrative filmmaking. He does just that with the taut thriller Phone Booth, a tight 81-minute claustrophobic […]
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Quiet American irony
Long before it opened nationwide in the United States, The Quiet American premiered in Vietnam to great fanfare. I saw it in Saigon last December, when the Vietnamese government literally rolled out the red carpet for director Phillip Noyce, actor Brendan Fraser, and the press. The reason? As one of the Vietnamese representatives put it […]
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Bards of the Sangamo 4-10-03
“Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight” is Vachel Lindsay’s most famous poem. Written at the beginning of World War I, it portrays Lincoln walking the streets of Springfield sharing Lindsay’s concern at the coming of war. Here is a poem with a less elevated tone that celebrates a Springfield landmark only slightly less well known than […]
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Backstage Pass
Springfield Theatre Centre is presenting Tennessee Williams’ drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof this weekend, March 14 through 16, in a production directed by Ed Smith. If you’re wondering why STC seems determined to revive old Williams plays (it produced A Streetcar Named Desire in 2001), perhaps these 50-year-old war horses are back in […]
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A beautiful day in the neighborhood
Last Saturday was a good day. In the morning I shopped it up at a neighborhood yard sale. I came home with a chinchilla stole ($4) to wear on Halloween, a vintage handmade felt Christmas stocking decorated profusely with sequins ($2), a yellow twig dogwood shrub ($5), and a handful of trinkets. I even found […]
