It’s Valentine’s Day, and there’s lots of different places to spend it, whether you’re spending it with loved ones, someone special, on a first date, or treating yourself to a Party of One. Here at the Recorder, we’ve done a quick run-down of the Worst Places to Spend Valentine’s Day, so that you don’t have to experience them for yourself.
Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, but he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on either current pictures or important movies from the past.
The Outlier of the Oscars
The Short Films are the Academy Awards that too easily get overlooked. Casual moviegoers recognize the candidates in almost every major category and can often pick out most of the Animated Feature, Documentary, and Foreign Language Film nominees, but for the ten minutes the Shorts take over the program, 99% of the time movies people have never heard made my equally anonymous filmmakers receive the honor that has proved elusive to so many titans of history.
The big story this past week had been the healthy scratch and “sudden” injury to Winnipeg Jets star Evander Kane. I thought it would make a great jumping-off point to discuss injuries and their effects on short- and long-term planning. Maybe I’d have tongue-in-cheek awards for how teams have handled or been sunk by injuries.
Yesterday, however, the narrative changed. It was no longer about the injury, but about The Big Damn Trade.
“I’m going where?! But they’re going to get that McDavid kid, right?”
So, Bug Selig has retired, and new MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has already started making his mark. But before we bid farewell to the erstwhile Commish, we need to properly and truly put him into context – the debate has already started about whether or not Bud Selig is likely to gain election into the Hall of Fame when the Expansion Era Committee votes again in 2017. (It’s not an open and shut case…but let’s be real – he’s probably going in.)
But where does he rank when compared with the other array of men to have held the position of Commissioner? How does he stack up in the illustrious history of powerful angry white men appointed by the owners to protect and serve the financial, political, and esoteric interests of their business interests*? How does Selig compare?
*protect the interests of the game of baseball. Sorry, I get them confused.
-J. Michael Bestul is a writer for the Addison Recorder. Stephanie Ruehl is an artist who works in a comic book shop. They’re married and have a lot of discussions about comic books and graphic novels. Combine all that into a biweekly feature and you get “J. & Steph Talk About Comics.”
This time around, we find a bevy of #1 issues featuring some serious sci-fi storytelling, seasoned with a hint of the supernatural. We have Counter-Earth and the New Men, we have a mystic symbols carved on asteroids, conscripted criminals fighting aliens who destroy terraforming towers, and cosmonaut who transcends humanity at the edge of the galaxy.
We also have a bunch of Marvel characters engaged in a role-playing game GM’d by Rocket Raccoon, because it was a thing we didn’t know we wanted. But we did.
[Read more…]
If you’re like many people, you watched the Grammy Awards on CBS last Sunday night. If you’re like even more people, you paid attention as the Internets blew up about some media-fueled spontaneous feud that may or may not lead directly to causing World War III.
Long story short: on Sunday, in a huge upset, alternative rock musician Beck’s Morning Phase won the coveted Album of the Year trophy over Beyonce’s self-titled silver lion of death that was widely expected to take home the tiny record player.
(image via)
We’ve all made at least one regrettable decision when it comes to picking a date night movie. This post was inspired by the time I watched Blue Valentine with my then-boyfriend — on Valentines Day. There’s nothing like watching the crippling depression of two people who shouldn’t be together trudging on with their lives to make you really feel the love. For those of you looking for actual suggestions, I’ve included a list of legitimate movie recommendations for your Valentines Day weekend — but we all know the bad ones are more fun to think about, right?
This happened.
One key idea I’ve always stressed in writing about the Grammys for the Recorder is that the awards themselves are nonsensical. Just go back to my Album of the Year reviews and tell me how to compare Ed Sheeran and Beyonce. It’s impossible. We care about these awards not for what gets given (as in the Oscars) but for the performance factor, the chance to see all the biggest names in music on one stage, seeing who rises to the occasion and who…doesn’t.
With that in mind, here’s our official recap of the best and worst moments of last night’s show. And congratulations to Beck for winning Album of the Year for the difficult, but lovely, Morning Phase! And for getting all Simon and Garfunkel with Chris Martin on a lovely “Heart is a Drum!”
Unscripted Moments is a continuing Addison Recorder series highlighting Chicago storefront theatre by Leigh Yenrick. Leigh is an actress who has worked in Toledo and the Twin Cities, and who currently resides in Chicago.
For this installment of Unscripted Moments, I sat down with Tosha Fowler, the Artistic Director of Cor Theater. We talked about their current production, A Map of Virtue, for which Fowler is also wearing the hat of director.
Nicolas Cage. We love him; we hate him; we keep coming back for more. Cage Match is a new monthly column that pits two blindly-picked Nicolas Cage films against each other.
We aren’t here to dissect or review these films in their entirety – only their Cage-acity. Jason and Chris watch two Nic Cage films and are each assigned one to argue that it reigns Cage Supreme. The three categories they assess are: Cage of the Mind, Cage of the Body, and Cage of the Soul.
Two Cages enter; one Cage leaves.
