Confidence There’s no question that screenwriter Doug Jung is a student of film noir. His script for Confidence touches on nearly every convention of the genre and straddles the line between homage and rip-off. We have a doomed protagonist, a sultry femme fatale, a sure-fire heist that’s bound to become complicated, and more double crosses […]
Arts & Culture
Posted inArts & Culture
The Case of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon
For several weeks in September 1944, people in the town of Mattoon, Illinois, showed the symptoms of exposure to poison gas–nausea, vomiting, weakness leading to near paralysis, light headedness, even spitting up blood. All of the victims reported a “sweet cheap perfume odor” permeating their homes prior to the onset of sickness. Scott Maruna, a […]
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Movie Review – View From the Top, Boat Trip
View From the Top That Donna Jensen (Gwyneth Paltrow), you’ve got to admit, she sure knows how to aim high. She longs to see the world and thinks that the only way to do it is to become a stewardess. Of course, anything would be an improvement after growing up in a trailer in Arizona […]
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Bards of the Sangamo 3-27-03
Looking at an Open Closet Door Sitting in her sweater, in a purple crochet coin purse, my grandmother’s rosary rests. Inside the pocket, tiny pearl blessings, counted on, worn by years of faithful fingers. –Nicole Mackey Local poets were writing about contemporary events in the Sangamo Journal as early as the 1830s. People’s Poetry […]
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Paranoid pop
“Chechnya! Afghanistan! Palestine! Southern Lebanon! The Golan Heights! And now Iraq, too? And now Iraq, too? It’s too much for people. Shame on you! Enough, enough, enough!” Are those angry words from a political speech or a TV interview? Are they perhaps from an impassioned op-ed piece criticizing U.S. foreign policy? In fact, they’re the […]
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“Kandahar”
Strange things happen in this world, and the fact that the film Kandahar, by the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, found a substantial international audience after it was released in late 2001 is a small but genuinely strange byproduct of recent history. A few years ago Kandahar would have been a footnote on the movie-release calendar, […]
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Backstage Pass
A touring company of the drama The Miracle Worker makes a stop at UIS’s Sangamon Auditorium for one performance Saturday, April 25 (call 206-6160). The four-month, 40-city national tour comes from the Montana Repertory Theatre in Missoula. William Gibson originally wrote The Miracle Worker as a 1957 television play. It went on to win a […]
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Bards of the Sangamo 4-24-03
New Governor The new Governor seems a stumble. Even his own grumble. Few words are forthcoming Things not exactly humming. What can he do Before there’s a big taa-do? Look South! Look South! Says a local mouth. I do agree. This advice we give for free. Two men, choose one, both very fine Down amongst […]
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Movie Review – Holes, Bulletproof Monk
Holes For adults with children who are either past or awaiting tweenhood, Louis Sacher’s novel Holes is probably unfamiliar. But for tweens it’s revered, a story with irresistible, high-interest hooks (an ancient curse, lost treasure, an intriguing mystery, and a happy ending) and a resonate message (put-upon kids find justice and redemption among cruel adults […]
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Overlooked and underappreciated
In a festival that celebrates recorded moments, the highlight may be a live performance. Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert’s fifth Overlooked Film Festival in Urbana-Champaign will feature a special benshi performance next week to accompany the Japanese silent film, I Was Born, But. . . A benshi, Ebert explains, was a performer who stood […]
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Movie Review- City of God
City of God Although overlooked by the Academy for a Best Foreign Picture nomination, Director Fernando Meirelles’ Brazilian slum epic City of God is a profound, stylistically expansive depiction of three decades of child gang warfare on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro with non-actors playing their poverty-ridden lives for the camera. The only other […]
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Bards of the Sangamo 4-17-03
Opening Day, A.D. 2003 Cold today; Reckon that’s a blessing My numb thumb failed to feel the fish-hook stuck through it; So much blood! Mine–or the trout’s? –John Craig Carpenter Local poets were writing about contemporary events in the Sangamo Journal as early as the 1830s. People’s Poetry wants you to share your thoughts […]
