Happy Holidays from the Addison Recorder! Because we’ve all pretty well versed in the pop culture universe, we decided to take a break and look at our favorite holiday traditions, looking and thinking about our personal favorites cultural experiences that come in the month of December. Party on.
2014’s been a busy year! Because of this, we’re looking back on things we did or didn’t like in the year, as well as looking forward to what has already gotten us excited for 2015. This is the second part of the series, where we talk about the things in 2014 that absolutely drove us up a wall.
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.
In my last column, Alex and I discussed how the biopic is a genre the Academy always favors. It’s also a genre that’s hard to do well. There have been some outstanding examples (Amadeus, Lincoln, 12 Years a Slave) but I’m usually uninterested because I know how the story ends. When I go to movies, I want films that will unfold with drama and unpredictability, not like the connect-the-dots I adored as a child.
One of the greatest creations in television history is ending its run tonight. When the series finale of The Colbert Report airs tonight on Comedy Central it will be the end for Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A. For the nine years that the Report aired and for eight years before that as a correspondent on The Daily Show, this character has been bringing hilarious (and sometimes poignant) life to the poorly-informed and rage-filled Id of the American body politic. Though the character was conceived of as a satire of empty cable news bloviators like Bill O’Reilly, he eventually grew beyond that into a refraction of the overweening pride and self-regard of our entire political sphere in all its inane insanity. [Read more…]
Everything we have ever done or will do, we are going to do over and over and over again. One might say that a puck is like a flat circle…
Okay, technically a puck has height, so it’s not actually flat, but the point is that this week has seen a lot of recurring events in the NHL. Break out the Lone Star beer and let’s talk about eternal recurrence… on the ice.
It was all the same dream. A dream that you had inside a locked box. A dream about being the first star. And like a lot of dreams there’s Pierre McGuire at the end of it.
-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.”
A picture can tell a story in ways that words can’t, which is why the comic book medium can be so inspiring. We decided to spotlight a few of the many artists working today, but this is only a small sample of the talent in the medium. We could go on for days discussing them, but we’ve limited ourselves to a few of our favorite artists who bring these stories to life. [Read more…]
Last year’s Hall of Fame class.
It’s time for that annual holiday tradition wherein I take 34 famous baseball players and analyze their careers and chances at enshrinement them for your observing pleasure. (Down from 36 last year – that’s what happens when players actually get voted in, you see…) Once again, there’s a multitude of interesting discussions, a few near certainties (more on them in Part II), and several candidates who will most likely get their ray of sunshine through simply being on the ballot before falling off and into obscurity/trivia answers. (Did you know that somebody actually voted for Jacque Jones last year?)
Olatunji Oboi Reed (left) and Jamal Julien (right)
Slow Roll is an organization that began in Detroit and has since expanded to Chicago, thanks to Slow Roll Chicago co-founders Olatunji Oboi Reed and Jamal Julien. The pair have brought the Slow Roll mission to the Windy City, getting particularly involved in Southside and Western Chicago neighborhoods to promote cycling as a way of life. They are sponsoring a toy and coat drive this weekend at Golden Crust Pizza in Albany Park and at Heritage Bikes on Lincoln Avenue. Donations can also be brought to any Kozy’s Cyclery location at any time this week until Dec. 21. Check out more information online.
My long-standing love of Lord of the Rings has been covered here multiple times. I’ve written thousands of words on both books and films, devoted countless hours to watching Peter Jackson’s magnum opus trilogy, and read and re-read the original novels at least yearly ever since 1999. You might call me a Tolkien nut.
And yet, my dread is growing greater and greater as the days go by. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies comes out this Wednesday, and that terrifies me beyond measure.
We’re a little freaked out that it’s almost 2015. The decade is half over! To try and make sense of time passing the Recorder staff is going to write about their favorite stuff from the past 5 years in a few installments between now and the end of the year. This month we’ll geek out about the best movies that have been released since 2010.