AWS Website Banner 11/4 – 12/4
The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon
The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon
AWS Website Banner 11/4 – 12/4
The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon
Stories and content by Ethan Stanislawski

Skull satisfies the jones for Jones

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 20, 2008
[img id=”80632″ align=”alignleft”] Don’t make the same mistake I made if you see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this weekend. In my infinite wisdom, I only bought a medium popcorn before the film started. You’re going to need one of those giant tubs, and considering the level of sustained action in...

Goodman reduces Emmett Till to black and white

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 8, 2008
[img id=”80588″ align=”alignleft”] One of the biggest challenges that playwright Ifa Bayeza faced in translating the story of Emmett Till to the stage was balancing Emmett Till, the human being, and Emmett Till, the idea. The story of Till, the young Chicagoan who was brutally murdered while visiting family in Mississippi, became a clarion call...

Shortcuts: Portishead—Third

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 6, 2008
Portishead, one of the better bands to come out of the mid-’90s trip-hop movement, seems to have transformed background music into a legitimate art form. If all elevator music sounded like Portishead, we wouldn’t use the term as a slur. By integrating hip-hop beats with distinctly feminine blues singing and dashes of electronica, Portishead, along...

Hunt melodrama can’t find its heart

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 1, 2008
In 21st-century American movie culture, where anything with fewer than two explosions fails to attract an enormous audience, the label “boring” can be applied to any film that doesn’t increase your heart rate at least 20 beats per second. That makes distinguishing between 20th- and 21st- century standards of boring a particular challenge—think Bad Boys...

Robin’s play psychs out second city

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 28, 2008
Most famous for her work in Six Feet Under, Kate Robin has struggled with her play Intrigue with Faye, rewriting it before and after its New York premiere. Considering that the play got mediocre reviews in that production, which featured the star power of Benjamin Bratt and Julianna Margulies, it took considerable bravery on the...

Stardom may pay Jenkins a visit after latest role

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 28, 2008
Richard Jenkins has been a constant presence in film and television, whether audiences have been aware of it or not. With roles ranging from the deceased father in Six Feet Under to a parody of a conservative Midwesterner in I Heart Huckabees, Jenkins has been a true character actor, someone who makes the rest of...

Lunchtime play serves up existential fare

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 10, 2008
Going out to lunch with mom is a premise perfectly suited for a one-act play, and it’s a credit to playwright Joel Drake Johnson for using this setup accordingly in Four Places. Four Places, which feels long for its 90 minutes, couldn’t be a better selection for the Victory Gardens: It appeals to the blue-haired...

Whimsy gives Ruhl’s Cell Phone good reception

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 7, 2008
[img id=”80445″ align=”alignleft”] Once wholly separate, the theater cultures of Chicago and New York have become increasingly intertwined of late. August: Osage County, a Steppenwolf transfer to Broadway, is well on its way to sweeping the Tonys. Broadway in Chicago is finally starting to show signs of success. And Sarah Ruhl, a Chicago native, had...

Spitzer’s steamroller blues

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 3, 2008
When the Eliot Spitzer scandal broke last month, most Americans seemed to have the same reactions: “How could he be so stupid?” “What was he thinking?” “What an idiot.” The cover of New York Magazine featured a photo of the governor with an arrow labeled “brain” pointing at his crotch. A New York Times editorial...

Dollars and sense

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 7, 2008
[img id=”80432″ align=”alignleft”] One of my lasting impressions from this summer occurred when I attended a sneak preview of Michael Moore’s Sicko in New York City. This was the first time the movie had been screened, and Moore himself was in the audience. (One attendee got him to sign a pill bottle.) The lasting image,...

Primary school: a post-racist poster child…

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 21, 2008
[img id=”80335″ align=”alignleft”] This week, instead of working on my B.A. thesis, I’ve been reading The Race Card by Stanford law professor Richard Thompson Ford. In clear, fierce prose, Ford argues that we’re living in a post-racist society where racial and identity politics have entered a gray area, such that just about anyone, minority or...

Proto-punk legends get dolled up for tour

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 19, 2008
[img id=”80313″ align=”alignleft”] The New York Dolls are one of the few bands to become mainstream rock legends despite an extremely limited time span and a relatively small, cult-like appeal. In spite of their classic eponymous debut and their underappreciated follow-up Too Much Too Soon, the Dolls are more famous for the shockwaves they sent...

McDonagh shoots up the big screen

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 8, 2008
While Martin McDonagh has taken the theater world by storm since the mid ’90s, from the London premiere of The Beauty Queen of Lenane to 2006’s Tony-nominated The Lieutenant of Inishmore (which featured more blood on stage than you thought was possible), McDonagh entered the film world sideways. He won an Oscar in 2006 for...

From Carville to Clayton, media anything but super

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 8, 2008
Very rarely do we get two “super” days, back-to-back. America has only a handful of days in a given year when everyone will be talking about the same thing, whether they want to or not. These are usually Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Oscar night, and, as we experienced earlier this week, elections and the Super Bowl....

Luck of the Irish shines through in play’s best moments

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 25, 2008
For a city with such a strong Irish heritage and thriving theater scene, Chicago has had a frustrating relationship with contemporary Irish playwrights. While the works of Conor MacPherson and Martin McDonagh have taken the New York and London stages by storm for a over a decade now, Chicago has had to deal with disappointing...

Shortcut—Times New Viking’s Rip It Off

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 25, 2008
By the end of 2008, Times New Viking will either start a revolution or be laughed off as a novelty band. Which result we choose will predict a lot about our post-Bush American music scene. TNV makes no secret of their desire to have a Sex Pistols–like effect on indie rock, from stage names like...

A roundhouse kick to the Huck–Chuck alliance

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 25, 2008
The needs of an ironic generation have overridden better judgment before. From forcing people to utter the words “Governor Schwarzenegger” to adding to the fortunes of Anheuser-Busch by “ironically” drinking Budweiser, there have been lots of cases where being ridiculous for the sake of being ridiculous has run counter to sincere political goals. Right now,...

View from the Bridge obscured by movie misstep

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 15, 2008
Introducing video into theater is always a dangerous affair. The potential benefits are easily outweighed by all the possible ways for it to go wrong. If it doesn’t work, you’ll lose the audience no matter how strong the rest of the play is. A textbook example of this dilemma can be found in Grey Zelda’s...

News and noise mesh as media worlds collide

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 11, 2008
If you haven’t heard it from your parents (or your grandparents), you’ve probably heard it from columnists across America: Bloggers are irresponsible, unqualified “journalists” who are wasting their lives blogging. Whether it’s Michael Skube, who called blogs “all the noise that’s fit” in the L.A. Times, or Michael Wilbon and Stephen A. Smith of ESPN,...

Top Five Movies of 2007—Ethan Stanislawski

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 11, 2008
No Country for Old Men Never before have the Coen brothers been this savage, this heart-wrenching, or this good. If Blood Simple or Fargo didn’t harden your soul, watch Javier Bardem pack more evil into one character than the Coens have ever put into an entire film. Bardem’s Anton Chigurth joins Hannibal Lecter and Nurse...

Juno finds the fun in teen pregnancy

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 27, 2007
Very few films came out of the Toronto International Film Festival with quite as much hype as Juno. A quirky indie comedy directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking), the film stars Ellen Page (Hard Candy, X3) as the title character, a free-spirited teenager whose life takes a new direction after she’s knocked up...

Hillary in ’08 anything but inevitable

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 20, 2007
Sometimes the shortsightedness of American politics is baffling. Every four years, the election cycle repeats the same ups and downs, and every time we seem to forget it over the subsequent four years. One election staple that we’d all be better off without is the talk of “inevitability.” Hillary Clinton has dominated the polls for...

A wag of the finger at Colbert Nation

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 6, 2007
I’ve been a fan of Stephen Colbert since his show premiered in 2005. I’ve found him to be one of the most incisive, poignant, and hilarious satirists in America. He’s launched ingenious initiatives out of nowhere—from his Gravitas-Off to his Decemberists showdown to his Wriststrong campaign. That being said, I breathed a sigh of relief...

Final Cut slashes uncertainties

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 5, 2007
Is Deckard a Replicant? The question has become almost as a famous as the movie to which it refers: Blade Runner. Now widely regarded as a classic (and a recent newcomer to the AFI’s revised list of the 100 greatest American films), Blade Runner is now showing at the Music Box as what’s fittingly called...

Future critics will recognize video games as art

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 22, 2007
If you read as many movie reviews as I do, you’ll notice a disturbing trend: to contemporary movie critics, the term “video games” is used as a synonym for trashy, morally depraved, and childish. Look no further than the reviews for the recent movie Shoot ’Em Up. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune dismissively argued:...

Vampires just bloodthirsty enough in 30 Days

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 18, 2007
Somewhere between 28 Days Later and A History of Violence lies 30 Days of Night, a film that masterfully executes its brilliant premise. It is arguably this year’s best horror film. Like what 28 Days Later did to zombie movies, the film breathes new life into vampire movies with a heavy emphasis on scenery and...

Crowd runs away with jittery Spoon

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 15, 2007
The Riviera is an enormous venue, and the fact that it was completely packed on Friday night is a testament to how far Spoon have come. Just five months ago they were performing at Hutchinson Courtyard, asking undergrads for weed at the end of their set. Now, fresh off the success of July’s Ga Ga...

Don’t confuse success with selling out

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 8, 2007
Thirty years after the birth of punk, it’s about time we admit that the concept of selling out is as dead as the Eight Track. Punk, especially its offshoot indie rock, has had strong anti-establishment ties ever since Joey Ramone first said “I don’t wanna.” Indie rock in particular took that sentiment to extremes. It...

Of sequels and Apatow: the movies of summer ’07

By Ethan Stanislawski / September 19, 2007
Summer ’07 was a smash success for Hollywood. Propelled by a perfect storm of franchise trilogies; one giant, robotic blockbuster; and a surprisingly strong August, Hollywood grossed more than $4 billion for the first time in its history. Hollywood also learned from its mistakes in year two of web 2.0; 2006 showed that Internet hype...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—June 1, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / June 1, 2007
Though finals week may be dominating your life, here’s a list of events to help you get out and see the best of Chicago summers before the quarter finally ends. Friday / June 1 The campus’ classical music scene culminates this weekend with The Cathy Heifetz Memorial Concert, a collaboration of USO, University Chorus, and...

We can make a difference—and we should

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 25, 2007
Recently, I had the pleasure of watching Network, one of my all-time favorite movies. When I first saw the movie, I was drawn to its absurdist black humor, but the movie has become less and less funny with each viewing. The main character in the film, Howard Beale, was the television anchor everyone wanted in...

Third time around, Pirates strikes only fool’s gold

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 25, 2007
For all the movies I’ve covered for the Maroon, I’ve never felt uneasier walking into the theater than I was for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. As a critic whose job it is to tell people whether or not they should see a movie, it’s very disheartening to realize that no matter what...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—May 25, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 25, 2007
Friday/ May 25 New campus literary magazines have popped up like flies in recent years (did we mention the new issue of Vita is coming out soon?), and Friday brings the release of two. First, during the day, Hallowed Grounds hosts the release of 1000 Typewriters. Then, in the evening, new zine Sliced Bread has...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—May 18, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 22, 2007
Friday/ May 18 One of the centerpieces of FOTA week is a collaborative UT/FOTA project appropriately titled Heads You Lose. A joint product of the efforts of fourth-years is yet another FOTA puppet show event, featuring the perspective of decapitated puppet heads. It’s one of UT’s more offbeat shows of the year, but also one...

Morrissey mopes to fans’ content

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 18, 2007
Ever since I started acquiring a relatively sizable body of musical knowledge, I have detected very few noticeable patterns in my taste. One pattern that’s fairly consistent, however, is that when a male singer poses for a photo op adjusting his tie and looking ponderously at the camera, I’m generally going to want to punch...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—May 18, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 18, 2007
Friday/ May 18 One of the centerpieces of FOTA week is a collaborative UT/FOTA project appropriately titled Heads You Lose. A joint product of the efforts of fourth-years is yet another FOTA puppet show event, featuring the perspective of decapitated puppet heads. It’s one of UT’s more offbeat shows of the year, but also one...

ORCSA is doing its part to make fun die

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 15, 2007
May 11, 2007 will be remembered as the day fun officially died on this campus. While President Zimmer, Ted O’Neill, and Bill Michel have spent a large amount of energy trying to subdue that stereotype, their efforts were significantly set back last Friday by the very people who are supposed to push it forward. The...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—May 11, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 11, 2007
Friday/ May 11 Restrictions by ORCSA will give this year’s Party on the Quads a different feel, as the party switches from Scav team-organized alcohol distribution to ID-checking, Pub-bought alcohol. However, that won’t stop Scavvers from showing up inebriated or this year’s party themes from being ridiculous—and amazing. (Social Science Quad, 10 p.m., free) If...

Why I Scav, why you should too, and why it’s good for us

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 8, 2007
During the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt became world famous for promoting her theory of the “banality of evil.” Though Eichmann was one of the key facilitators of the Holocaust, Arendt argued that he showed no signs of evil or malicious intentions, but that he was simply another bureaucrat doing his job and not...

Shortcut—Dinosaur Jr.’s Beyond

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 8, 2007
Back in 1987, lead guitar was a touchy subject in the American underground. Previously, most skilled punk guitarists played well in spite of their bands’ overall attitude. J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. played well because of it. After hardcore had exhausted the loud/fast mantra, Mascis infused Neil Young–style hard rock into the D.I.Y. aesthetic. While...

Voices STD (Stuff To Do)—May 4, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 4, 2007
Friday/ May 4 For those looking for a rite of passage into the Chicago intelligentsia, head to the Museum of Contemporary Art for its monthly First Fridays event. It’s not every happy hour that features Wolfgang Puck catering, live DJs, and the latest art from an up-and-coming Chicago artist. In fact, it’s the only place...

Young guns can’t measure up to veteran punk acts

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 1, 2007
Back in the heyday of alternative rock, Nirvana described its music as “the Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath.” That particular approach—jerky, catchy melodies backed by an aggressive, macho attitude—has been the model of alternative rock for the past 20-odd years. Last Friday at the House of...

Want to avoid a media circus? Speak up.

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 27, 2007
Last year, I could not have had a worse introduction to the workings of the American media. At the same time that I was beginning my stint as Voices Editor of the Maroon, one of my best friends from home died after being chased into traffic by a group of muggers. The story became a...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—April 27, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 27, 2007
Friday/ April 27 The Don Imus scandal has inevitably led some to question the portrayal of sexuality and race in hip-hop. The recent controversy adds extra relevance to Hip-Hop: Beats and Rhymes, an hour-long documentary screening at Doc. The special event will feature a panel discussion with professors and authors from the University and Columbia...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—April 20, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 20, 2007
Friday/ April 20 They’re baaaack. If you’ve been longing for campus improv, Off-Off Campus returns triumphantly this weekend, featuring their newest crop of talent. The 21st Generation takes the spotlight for their first stint as the featured act as they perform a revue of some of their best pieces. It’s incredible to think that a...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—April 13, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 13, 2007
Friday/ April 13 In case you didn’t get a taste of the Chicago film fest scene when the International Documentary Festival was at Doc, don’t miss the Chicago Latino Film Festival, which is even bigger and has a longer history. Festivities kick off tonight with a high-priced gala event at the Chicago History Museum, but...

End Hollywood’s gratuitous violence

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 13, 2007
Any release of a new Quentin Tarantino film is a chance to talk about Tarantino’s predominant M.O.-—violence. While I must confess to not having seen Grindhouse yet, there’s really no doubt as to the aesthetic of a movie that features machine-gun prosthetic legs, murderous stunt-car drivers, and bloodied half-naked bombshells in its trailer. The film’s...

Massacre a mixed bag of blood, guts, and glory

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 10, 2007
Teatro Vista has taken on a lot of challenges in Massacre (Sing to Your Children). For one, they’ve asked the relatively upscale Goodman crowd to sit through a play that opens with seven cast members covered in blood and brandishing meat cleavers, ice picks, and pitchforks. That doesn’t even begin to hint at the psychological...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—March 30, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 6, 2007
Friday/ April 6 Play ball! Baseball season is back once again, and tonight is University Night as the South Side’s finest, the Chicago White Sox, battle the Minnesota Twins. You can get discounted tickets from Xperience Chicago, and with the Sox contending for another World Series title, every game matters in baseball’s toughest division. You’ll...

Prejudiced policy worse than racist speech

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 30, 2007
If you’ve been at this school long enough, odds are that you’ve encountered more than a few people who have absolutely no sense of humor when it comes to race. Quote Dave Chappelle or Borat, and that person will not laugh. He or she may even argue that laughing at such jokes is dangerous because...

Ponys gallop toward hometown after SXSW success

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 30, 2007
The Ponys, an alternative rock band based in Chicago, have gained considerable critical attention since their debut record Laced with Romance. While they have not received much commercial hype, their unique brand of garage rock tinged with post-punk has made them a critical sensation. They recently signed with Matador Records, one of the most coveted...

Voices STD (Stuff to Do)—March 30, 2007

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 30, 2007
Friday/ March 30 If you want to live the U of C even outside of Hyde Park, head on over to the Peter Jones Gallery to see Gray City, which closes this weekend. The play takes place at the U of C in the 1980s, and with constant allusions to Jimmy’s, Harper, and the Shoreland...

Shortcuts—The Tossers’ Agony

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 30, 2007
It’s fitting that the Pogues performed in Chicago the same day Agony, the new album by the Tossers, an Irish punk band, was released. The Pogues’ shadow looms over every band that attempts Celtic rock—the Tossers, Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys have all struggled to be labeled anything but novelty knockoffs. Since Celtic rock...

300 creators bang heads for glory

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 6, 2007
With Gladiator, Alexander, and Troy, recent Greco-Roman epic films have risen in prominence. At the same time, comic book movies have become a Hollywood staple. The film 300 is the first work to combine the two concepts, retelling the battle of Thermopylae in the style of Frank Miller’s 1998 graphic novel. I was flown into...

Kal Penn hopes Namesake will remake his reputation

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 6, 2007
Kal Penn entered the film scene with a bang after his heralded performances in Van Wilder andHarold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Since those films, however, he’s struggled to find a satisfying role. After working in bombs like Son of the Mask, Superman Returns, and Epic Movie, Penn is now appearing in his first...

The U of C takes center stage in Huff’s Gray City

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 6, 2007
“Does love stand a chance when living the Life of the Mind?” So says the tag line of Gray City, a lovely new play at the Peter Jones Gallery in Irving Park. Despite signs of a doomed production—opening night was cancelled due to paint fumes, and there were typos in the program—the show was an...

We’re just a lawsuit away from seeing the limits of Web 2.0

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 2, 2007
Congratulations! You have joined the ranks of Mahatma Gandhi, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. as Time magazine’s Person of the Year. That’s because you are reading a publication that is published online and maintains three official blogs. The print version of the Maroon, however, is quickly going the way of the typewriter....

Oscar-nominated shorts show nuttier side of filmmaking

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 23, 2007
Far from being a throwaway category on the way to bigger and better things, the Oscar for Best Short contains some of the year’s most intriguing and unique films. Like a short story, a short film is a tricky concoction, forcing filmmakers to provide a cogent narrative in a limited time frame. Yet they also...

Cruising down the Sunset Strip at an L.A. press junket

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 20, 2007
The following is a transcript taken at 3:27 a.m. PST on February 10, 2007 at the Beverly Hilton. Right now I am drinking a 375ml bottle of Perrier Jouet champagne, priced at $42. I’m watching the Bulls game on ESPN HD on a plasma screen and using precious ethernet at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly...

Face it, the U of C does need reform at times

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 16, 2007
Lately, I’ve heard a lot of 19-year-old U of C students sound like their grandparents. In response to the switch to the Common Application and a January 23 Maroon article citing Zimmer’s comparison of the U of C’s competitiveness with that of other schools, many Chicago students feel that the nerd haven they have come...

Do the Super Bowl and reality connect?

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 6, 2007
One thing that always strikes me about watching the Super Bowl with a group of people is how little they care about football. In fact, most of the time you watch the Super Bowl, there’s at least one person who constantly has to have someone explain the rules. Ninety million people watch the Super Bowl...

Wilson’s last play shoots straight into the bunker

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 26, 2007
Too much of the praise of August Wilson is based on the fact that he wrote a play about the black experience for each decade of the 20th century. Not enough of the praise discusses the uncanny ear for the spoken word, fully realized characters, and flawless ability to weave the real with the spiritual...

Ideology and scientific inquiry are strange bedfellows in advancing policy

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 26, 2007
Last week, Charles Murray published a three-part series of editorials in The Wall Street Journal arguing that education reform can do very little to improve the test scores of below-average students, that more young adults should choose vocational school instead of college, and that education should ultimately serve to make the brightest brighter. While not...

Top 5 Films of 2006—Ethan Stanislawski

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 9, 2007
Half Nelson Half Nelson marks the greatest directorial debut of 2006 by Ryan Fleck. The film features a harrowing story of an idealist middle school teacher struggling with a crack addiction while trying to mentor a student headed in the wrong direction. It captures a crisis in American liberalism and also breaks your heart with...

Top 5 Albums of 2006–Ethan Stanislawski

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 28, 2006
The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls of America Craig Finn destroyed any typecasting with this year’s closest thing to a rock masterpiece, Boys and Girls of America. The Hold Steady pays homage to fellow Twin Cities bands of the past, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü. The Replacements comparisons have existed since their heart-on-a-sleeve debut, but...

“Happy Holidays” divides us more than it unites us

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 28, 2006
There is no day of the year when I am more of a sadist than on Christmas Day. It’s too easy; all I have to do is say “Merry Christmas” to friends who know I’m Jewish, and, like clockwork, they will squirm and eventually come out with a “Happy Holidays.” Sometimes I’ll actively seek out...

Let’s be objective here: Sufjan Stevens sucks.

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 21, 2006
I hate Sufjan Stevens, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I realize that since I go to school in the state of Illinois, saying that could get me trampled by an angry horde of indie kids. Maybe they are members of the Facebook group “I Chose UChicago Because of Sufjan Stevens” or one of...

Linklater changes course with Fast Food Nation

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 17, 2006
Richard Linklater has always been hard to pin down. His early ’90s left-field classics Slacker and Dazed and Confused stand in stark contrast to his more recent Hollywood cash cows School of Rock and Bad News Bears, but he has still maintained his indie sensibilities with films like Waking Life and Before Sunset. 2006 may...

Baron Cohen pushes all the right buttons with Borat

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 14, 2006
Around the middle of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Borat pulls into a bed-and-breakfast, and the man who opens the door is wearing a yarmulke. It was there that the crowd laughed differently than before. Although they had laughed their pants off to the scene where Borat covers...

Nothing rotten in Victory Gardens’s Denmark

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 24, 2006
Perhaps the most exciting thing about the Victory Gardens’s newest play, Denmark, is not the play itself, but the opening of the Victory Gardens’s new Biograph theater, just down the street from their old location on Lincoln Avenue. In an age when simply paying the rent can be too much of a challenge for a...

Evens stay on the level despite indifferent crowd

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 17, 2006
As soon as I got to the Evens concert last Friday night, I recalled the stories of the earliest Fugazi concerts. Instead of caring about Fugazi, a band that would go on to be one of the purest voices of alternative rock in the 1990s, the fans attended because “that dude from Minor Threat” was...

Too much Information in new Beck release

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 13, 2006
One of the hardest things to do in contemporary pop music is to create a unique sound while maintaining a respect for the past. Over the past 10 years, no one has done that better than Beck. In his mid-’90s heyday with albums like Mellow Gold and Odelay, Beck breezed through genres with a swagger...

Gruesome Pillowman shocks Chicago

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 6, 2006
In case you weren’t aware, Martin McDonagh is the best playwright writing in English to have emerged in the past decade. This fact is all the more impressive since all his plays were written in a single creative outburst in 1993 after no formal training. Since The Beauty Queen of Leenane took London by storm...

At the peak of his career, Lewis Black takes his comedy one step further

By Ethan Stanislawski / May 1, 2006
Among the plethora ranting stand-up comedians, no one has refined the rant into a unique style quite like Lewis Black. With elastic facial expressions, flailing arms, and a voice that can switch among surprise, rage and matter-of-factness in mid-sentence, Lewis Black could have been a successful standup even without witty political humor. But his rants,...

Remarkable delivery saves play from first-time jitters

By Ethan Stanislawski / February 3, 2006
In contemporary American society, the word “Rwanda” is not associated as much with the country in East Africa, but instead with the mass murder of over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in April 1994 that shook up the world’s idea of foreign intervention and the U.N.’s role in world peacekeeping. What no one seems to...

Glory Road paves the way for better Disney dramas

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 17, 2006
Over the past 15 years, Disney has made a series of uplifting sports movies that, while always emotionally satisfying, vary little from one movie to another. It’s a type of safe yet praiseworthy filmmaking that displays a pattern that is atrociously generic. At this point I should be honest: When a critic tries to shred...

Green Day bites—the Bullet, that is—on live disc set

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 22, 2005
While listening and watching Bullet in a Bible, Green Day’s first live album and DVD, I immediately became aware of the contradictions inherent in Green Day’s position in American pop music. While they are certainly devoted to punk in all its history and glory, they have taken a specific style of punk, repeated with various...

Sloppy Long Day’s Journey makes an ordeal of O’Neill

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 4, 2005
Walking into the Gunder Mansion at the North Lakeside Cultural Center is like entering the year 1910. The location feels like the summer house of an upper-middle class family from a century ago, which lends itself perfectly to Collage Productions’ performance of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. In fact, it lends itself too...

Stage Left Theatre keeps the love alive with Leapfest

By Ethan Stanislawski / April 12, 2005
The fact that it’s so unassuming makes it so phenomenal. In a small, musky space tucked away in Wrigleyville, the Stage Left Theatre Company is holding its second annual Leapfest, a theater festival dedicated to the development of new sociopolitical plays. And what plays they are. Since these plays are in development, there is no...

Witty Kid-Simple meant for thoughtful adults only

By Ethan Stanislawski / March 4, 2005
It’s hard to write about Kid-Simple, a darkly campy pseudo-epic at the American Theater Company. It’s much easier to listen to it. That’s because the problems the play has in terms of plot, shock value, and humor, it makes up for in the phenomenal exploration of sound—in both its production and intake—that seeps through every...

Shortcut – John Legend’s Get Lifted

By Ethan Stanislawski / January 18, 2005
While in the past it would have been easy not to recognize Kanye West as the producer of a noteworthy album, that isn’t the case anymore. Now West is more established, and probably a more skillful producer than he is a rapper, so his name draws instant recognition for any album he touches. West’s rap...

Unearthed Noel Coward play engages emotions

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 23, 2004
Throw away the brandy glasses and the tuxedos—this is not that type of Noël Coward play. With This Happy Breed, the Timeline Theatre Company has made a bold choice in producing a rare play by a rarely produced playwright. It is even more daring that they chose a play that does not fit Coward’s reputation....

Themes of sex, worship still potent in Equus revoval

By Ethan Stanislawski / November 9, 2004
Upon its 1974 Broadway premiere, Peter Shaffer’s Equus shocked and amazed thousands of theatergoers. With its nudity, provocative content, and portrayal of deeply disturbed individuals, it became one of the most controversial, as well as one of the greatest, plays in the English language of the past fifty years. The play’s main criticism is that...

Student filmmakers bring their edgy idea to life

By Ethan Stanislawski / October 17, 2004
When asked to describe the script of Fire Escape Films’ newest project, And the Pursuit of Happiness, director Will Slocombe simply said “ballsy.” If it’s possible for ballsy to be a euphemism, it may describe a movie about a U.S. Congressman who has sex with bonobo monkeys, urinates on traffic lights, and mutilates himself in...
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