“Before” not as clever as it needs to be
I’ve often wondered why directors attempt to follow in the steps of Alfred Hitchcock. Having nearly singlehandedly created the paranoid thriller, modern filmmakers unwisely invite comparisons to the master’s work and they usually come out on the losing end, unable to build the sort of suspense or use the kind of intelligence found in such…
Gyllenhaal Continues to Impress in Nightcrawler
Having lost 30 pounds before filming Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal has a reptilian appearance in the film. It suits his character well as Lou Bloom is as coldblooded as they come. A product of the alienating factors that are part-and-parcel of big cities, he’s fallen victim to his own worse qualities, becoming a sociopath,…
Nolan’s Vision Exceeds His Grasp in “Interstellar”
If Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is nothing else, it is ambitious – ambitious with a capital “A” – to the tune of $165 million, a gamble so large that despite the director’s proven success at the international box office, his home studio Warner Brothers brought in Paramount Pictures as a partner to help shoulder the financial…
Remembering well
In my 2012 column “Faith, hope and statuary,” I panned recent attempts to commemorate through public statuary sacrifice by public protectors like firefighters and cops. Such works leave a bad taste to the extent they reinforce the fetishization of the warrior in all his guises; by calling anyone who puts on a uniform a ”hero,”…
Anything goes
On Friday, Oct. 31, don your Halloween finest and join Springfield Sala and host Adam Nicholson in the Club Room at the Hoogland Center for the Arts for an open-format, anything goes open mic event. Guests are encouraged to sing, dance, perform a magic trick, sousaphone solo, poetry, prose – share your talent, whatever it…
Spectacular spookadelic
Live music lovers of all ages will not want to miss Springfield’s biggest Halloween party this Friday, Oct. 31, at Donnie’s Homespun. The five-and-a-half-hour festival kicks off at 7:30 p.m. with your host, one-man-band extraordinaire, Evan Mitchell’s Ukulele Party. Attendees will enjoy live music from local legends NIL8 plus punk rock outfits The Timmys, King…
flu shot poem #1
flu shot poem #1 this is flu shot season my friend annette writes she can’t take one on account of raw egg allergy she adds, “I’ll always remember my grandmother’s recollections of the 1918 Spanish flu. So many people died in Chicago that her parish priest couldn’t keep up with the funeral masses. Instead he…
The demotion of Dave McKinney
Perhaps the worst thing to happen to journalism over the years is its simplistic overreliance on the mere “appearance of impropriety” to justify big, splashy stories. No actual wrongdoing need ever be found, just something that might look a bit fishy to a reporter’s overly suspicious eyes. It’s one of the nation’s most anti-democratic trends…
PICKET LINES
More than 50 picketers showed up on Monday, Oct. 27, during the lunch hour outside the State Journal-Register to demand a contract that includes raises for editorial employees. Two city cops, both amiable sorts, also stopped by to lay out the rules for waving signs and chanting while walking back and forth on the sidewalk.…
Letters to the Editor 10/30/14
A WEEKLY ADVENTURE I left Lincolnland for Lincoln three years ago. Every two weeks or so, I visit your site for a dose of the capital city. Today I reviewed the Chris Britt cartoons going back to August. The cartoon regarding the citizen council, with the woman who was granted the appointment even though she…
Putting parks in their place
The problem in a city that likes to think of itself as forward-looking is that it seldom looks back long enough to learn from its own past. That, anyway, was the conclusion I came to after thinking about the proposed redevelopment of the YWCA block in downtown Springfield. So far, all we know about how…
Hummingbird cake
PHOTO © Aiselin/Dreamstime.com In the pantheon of glorious southern cakes, none is more beloved than hummingbird cake. And probably none has more variations, not so much in the actual cake itself (although the proportions can vary) or in the cream cheese frosting; the variations come in how and with what it is garnished. Hummingbird cake…
Ouija board, movie lack mystery
Douglas Smith, Ana Coto and Olivia Cooke in Ouija. It isn’t that Ouija, the latest property to hit the screen from Hasbro Toys after G.I. Joe and Transformers, is necessarily a bad movie; it’s simply late to the party. After the recent success of Paranormal Activity, Insidious and Sinister, the whole “haunted house combined with…
Blight patrol
The dilapidated house at 1154 N. Third St. in Springfield is scheduled for demolition following legal action by the Enos Park neighborhood group. PHOTO PATRICK YEAGLE A Springfield neighborhood group may have found a little-known way to deal with abandoned properties. Enos Park Development LLC, the real estate arm of the Enos Park Neighborhood Improvement…
Governing is hard work
I have been working in or around government for more than 50 years, and if you asked me to boil down what I’ve learned to one sentence, it is this: Governing is much harder work than most people imagine. This doesn’t excuse its lapses or sluggish rate of progress, but it does help explain them.…
The agony of delete
I just had the humiliating experience of being dumped via email. I’d been seeing the guy for three months. Just days before, we had a romantic date and he kept saying things like “We’re so good together” and was very lovey-dovey. In the email, he said he realized that we aren’t compatible because I’m too…
Dave McKinney: Mensch
I’ve known Dave McKinney, erstwhile Springfield bureau chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, for about three years now. We have lunch now and again. We’ll catch a Cardinals game when I can get free tickets. It was during one of these games that Dave told me about his new love, the woman who would become his…
TIME FLIES
It’s easy to overlook the beauty of the world around you, but Dave Heinzel of Springfield makes it much easier to appreciate. Heinzel, a multi-media artist, recorded a captivating time lapse video of downtown Springfield from January 2013 to January 2014. In just under six minutes of video he captures sunrises, sunsets, storms, blizzards, people,…
Todd Wolfe Band
Todd Wolfe Todd Wolfe befriended Sheryl Crow when she was a struggling backup singer in New York City and he too was “trying to make it” in the music business. Later, he joined her first live band in the wake of her early success and played the world for five years. He’s also associated himself…
Riveting reprisal
This Saturday, Nov. 1, make the short trip up Interstate 55 to Elkhart for The Ultimate Betrayal: The Insanity Trial of Mary Lincoln, a unique presentation of the court proceeding which resulted in Mary Lincoln’s commitment to Bellevue Place, a private, upscale asylum located in the Fox River Valley. Springfield actress Pam Brown, who is…
Missing the point
Curses, foiled again• Leslie Paul Ash, 39, broke into a recycling center in Somerset, England, and stole several scrap items. He remembered to wear a mask at the scene, but he put it on outside, directly in front of a surveillance camera. Investigators easily identified him. After Ash confessed, a magistrate sentenced him to pay…
The wild green yonder
Since 2006, Kent Johnson’s son has cultivated 131 acres at Havana Regional Airport, a grass airstrip in Mason County favored by pilots of ultralight aircraft and small airplanes. Kent Johnson is chairman of the Havana Regional Port District Board that owns the airport. And some folks think the business arrangement that has his son leasing…
Editor’s Note 10/30/14
The billboard towering above Wabash Avenue still proclaims, “The Benedictine PROMISE: affordable and attainable undergraduate education.” It is a promise broken. Last Thursday the Benedictine University board of trustees announced without warning that it is pulling the plug on undergraduate education in Springfield at the end of this school year, leaving 520 students with an…
Former doctor faces drug charge
A former Taylorville physician awaiting sentencing on federal fraud charges has been busted for drugs in Pawnee. Officers were summoned to a Casey’s store in Pawnee at approximately 8:15 p.m. on Oct. 11 by bystanders who said that Dr. Vernon R. Klinefelter was stumbling around the store, disoriented and apparently intoxicated. His 1999 Mercedes automobile…
Hello Halloweeners
KFD plays one, last, final show on Halloween night at Longbridge Golf Course Clubhouse Lounge with guests, the Shunpikers. Welcome ghouls, goblins, guys and gals to the terribly terrifying world of the Springfield bar music scene during Halloween season. I say season, because with the Friday night appearance of the haunted holiday, clubs (beat me…
Best of Springfield 2014
Food & Drink • Bars & Nightlife • Kids StuffMusic & Entertainment • People & Places • Shopping Local FOOD & DRINK BEST BBQ Smokey Bones2660 South Dirksen Parkway, 528-6410There’s no shortage of BBQ joints in town, but this year, our readers have hand-picked Smokey Bones fare as the very best the city has to…
From one bad war to a worse one
In 2004, Stuart Bowen of Texas was asked by a friend to take on a difficult and important job, which he did. Bowen’s friend was George W. Bush, and the job was to investigate corruption and waste in Iraq, where his buddy George had launched a misguided and very costly war, as well as an…
