Readings & Lectures Chris Elliott
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
22 CHICAGO READER | OCTOBER 14, 2005 | SECTION TWO Readings & Lectures or 312-842-5036. $3 plus a $5 food/drink Critic’s Choice purchase. Billy Collins In November 2001, dur- R ing his tenure as U.S. poet laureate, Collins charmed an SRO audience at a Poetry Center event held at the Chicago Historical Society. He’s back to read from his new collection, The Trouble With Poetry and Chris Elliott Other Poems. A Poetry Foundation program. Mon 10/17, 6 PM, Art Institute, Fullerton Hall, Michigan & Adams, 312-575-8000. $15, $10 students. Reservations required. lacker antihero Chris Elliott put himself on the pop-culture map with recurring appearances on Late Night With David Letterman, starring roles in Get a Life and Cabin Boy, and his buddy/vil- “Crinolines, Cannons, and Croquet: S lain turn in There’s Something About Mary. But he’s been a writer from the get-go—for Late Night Clothing, Social Customs, and Leisure and SNL in addition to his own vehicles—which gives his stab at celebrity authorship a little more cred- Activities of the 1860s” Talk by EHS cos- ibility than most. On its surface The Shroud of the Thwacker (Miramax Books) is the unholy spawn of tume curator Janet Messmer. Thu 10/20, 7- Gideon Defoe (The Pirates!) and Bruce Campbell (If Chins Could Kill), hilarious but lacking the focus 9 PM, Evanston Historical Society, 225 of either. But in his ambling parody of historical fiction, Elliott finds the funny that such stay-on-target Greenwood, Evanston, 847-475-3410. $5. writers can miss. Weaving swipes at Caleb Carr, Patricia Cornwall, and Dan Brown into his far-fetched Reservations recommended. tale of “Mayor” Teddy Roosevelt’s hunt for Gilded Age serial killer Jack the Jolly Thwacker, he sends up both the sluggish prose and speculative nostalgia that mark best sellers like The Alienist, delivering “The Cutting Edge: Young Scholars Share sucker punches whenever he’s lulled the reader into a sepia-toned trance. “He had been kept on the Their Work” Purdue scholar Eric Hall pres- gang because his lack of vision had heightened his other senses,” he writes of a blind street urchin, ents “Destroyer Delts, Nuke Legs, and Macho “specifically the senses of irony, outrage, and cruelty to animals.” In the meantime the crazed plot— Men: An Examination of the Contentious involving a complex yet stupid time-travel mechanism, Harry Houdini, Yoko Ono, Boss Tweed, and Relationship Between Bodybuilders and the human sacrifice at Vista Crag in Central Park—piles cheerful anachronism up alongside enthusiastic Gay and Lesbian Community” for this series. inaccuracy. There are lulls aplenty, but—perversely—the deepest of them conceal Elliott’s sharpest bits. Tue 10/18, 7 PM, Gerber/Hart Library, 1127 W. VID NEEDLEMAN a Mon 10/17, 12:30 PM, Borders, 150 N. State, 312-606-0750. —Brian Nemtusak DA Granville, 773-381-8030. Shirley Damsgaard reads from her mys- tery Witch Way to Murder. Tue 10/18, noon, Book Stall at Chestnut Court, 811 Elm, through 10/29; for more call 312-747-1194 or about the economics of equitable coopera- City Club of Chicago British Consulate Esme Raji Codell presents her kids’ books Winnetka, 847-446-8880. see www.chicagopubliclibrary.org. tion.” Tue 10/18, 6-8 PM, Univ. of Chicago consul general Andrew Seaton speaks at a Hanukkah, Shmanukkah! and Diary of a Social Sciences Bldg., room 122, 1126 E. public policy breakfast. Tue 10/18, 8 AM, Fairy Godmother. Tue 10/18, 4 PM, 57th Joseph Delaney signs his YA novel The Chicago Poetry Project Andrew Joron 59th, chicagoparecon.org. Maggiano’s Banquets, 111 W. Grand, 312- Street Books, 1301 E. 57th, 773-684-1300. Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch. ( Fathom) and Patrick Pritchett (Burn) are 565-6500. $20. Reservations requested. Wed 10/19, 4 PM, Barnes & Noble, 55 Old Wed 10/19, 3:30 PM, Book Stall at Chestnut the featured readers. Sat 10/15, 1 PM, Chicago Seminar on Sport and Culture Orchard Center, Skokie, 847-676-2230. Court, 811 Elm, Winnetka, 847-446-8880. Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Historian Carson Cunningham speaks on Brock Clarke reads from his latest story col- Authors Room, 400 S. State, 312-747-4050. “Melbourne Massacre: Russell and Boys lection, Carrying the Torch; he’ll be joined by College of Complexes Joanne R. Reid “Democracy, Development, and the Revolutionize the International Game.” Fri students in Northwestern’s creative writing holds forth on “God, the Bible, and Creation of Regenerative Societies” “The Chicago School of Economics” 10/14, 3:30-5 PM, Newberry Library, 60 W. program. Fri 10/14, 7 PM, DvA Gallery, 2568 Humanism.” Sat 10/15, 8 PM, Lincoln Presentation by authors Hector Sabelli Economist Robin Hahnel offers a “teach-in Walton, 312-255-3524. N. Lincoln, 773-871-4382 or 312-503-2978. Restaurant, 4008 N. Lincoln, 312-326-2120 continued on page 31 The41 Readerst’s GuidChie to the cago International Fı lm Festival 24 CHICAGO READER | OCTOBER 14, 2005 | SECTION TWO Chicago Interna tional Fı lm Festival Entre ses mains We ekTwo Friday, October 14 sitcom veteran who’s been quietly shot of China today. In Mandarin None of the melodramatic expecta- in her excellent How I Killed My building up an impressive body of and Korean with subtitles. 109 min. tions set up in the story are met, but Father, ventures even further into That Man: Peter Berlin work in movies) stars as a world- (SK) a Landmark, 6:30 PM the very dry comedy makes this one shadow with this heartless psycho- With his Tarzan physique, Dutch-boy weary student trying to unravel the of Oliveira’s more accessible works. logical thriller. An attractive insur- haircut, and cucumber crotch, model disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, Mongolian Pingpong In Portuguese with subtitles. 137 ance investigator (Isabelle Carré) and gay erotica legend Peter Berlin and Lukas Haas is his nemesis, a A nine-year-old boy living on the min. The 96-year-old Oliveira is with a husband and child crosses set a standard for masculinity in the ruthless, clubfooted heroin dealer Mongolian steppes finds a Ping-Pong scheduled to attend all three screen- professional paths with a contentious 70s. Jim Tushinski’s video documen- who does business out of a paneled ball floating down a stream. After ings. (JR) a Landmark, 6:45 PM veterinarian (Benoit Poelvoorde), tary reveals how the German-born den in his parents’ basement. It’s a concluding that it isn’t an egg, he who begins to pursue her sexually, Berlin cultivated his iconic image by limited conceit—gone is the noir carries around the “glowing pearl” as The Devil’s Miner showing up at her workplace and photographing himself for magazine sense of being trapped by bad life a talisman, learns that it’s China’s Kief Davidson and Richard winning her over despite her better layouts and directing two Warholian choices—but it’s worth seeing for the “national ball,” and winds up fighting R Ladkani’s documentary is a judgment. He may also be a psychotic porn features before abruptly retiring tightly coiled plot, well-realized char- over it with a friend. This sounds like powerful indictment of the horren- ripper who’s been dispatching from filmmaking. Now in his 60s acters, and novel take on rapacious a slender premise on which to hang a dous treatment of children who toil women left and right, and in the and living in relative seclusion in San teen culture. 119 min. (JJ) feature, but director Ning Hao is in hellish Bolivian silver mines. The finest Hitchcockian fashion, her Francisco, the proudly narcissistic a River East, 6 PM more interested in ethnography and filmmakers are better at fashioning physical fascination with him star of That Boy reflects on his career landscapes than narrative and often haunting images than offering hard- increases with her fear. Fontaine in interviews that are intercut with Grain in Ear holds our interest by concentrating nosed analysis, yet they never senti- and Julien Boivent adapted a novel vintage footage and the reflections A quietly chilling melodrama of on how folklore, technology—motor- mentalize their young protagonists’ by Dominique Barberis. 90 min. of people such as Armistead Maupin R alienation and repressed fury, bikes, cars, trucks, films, TV—and plight. At the center of their story is (JJ) a Landmark, 7 PM and John Waters. Despite Berlin’s Zhang Lu’s second feature merciless- imagination affect a nomadic way of 12-year-old Basilio Vargas, who frankness about his personal love ly exposes the disempowerment and life. In Mongolian with subtitles. 102 endures both a suffocating mine and Low Profile life and his preference for being dispossession that all too frequently min. (JR) a River East, 6:45 PM the taunts of more prosperous class- An aimless high school graduate watched when he’s not having sex, characterize life in today’s ferociously mates at school; his daily struggles (Constantin von Jascheroff) in a the Garbo of gay porn remains elu- capitalist China. Cui Shunji is a poor Magic Mirror are emblematic of the lives of hun- small German town can’t land a job, sive, largely because Tushinski doesn’t Korean roadside kimchi seller, mar- Shot last spring, Manoel de dreds of children with little hope of please his obtuse, nagging parents, or seem to see the ironies and contra- ginalized because of her ethnicity. R Oliveira’s lush feature pre- escaping either an accidental death score with the girl he admires. He’s dictions in his subject’s life. He’s She and her son, who share a small miered in Venice last month, and this or the slower agonies of silicosis.