Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
This is the first time I’ve ever prefaced a film review with this tip: Trim your nails before going to see “Ride For Your Life.” The interactive film is boring to watch but fun to participate in.
Before the Goo Goo Dolls formed in 1986, Rzeznik worked as an assistant plumber. Oh, and about that band name: They got the idea from a doll ad they found in the back of a detective magazine.
By Jae-Ha Kim Chicago Sun-Times April 30, 1995 Crobar, Excalibur, Big Nasty . . . These Chicago clubs are as different as can be from one another. Similarly, the clubs that our favorite TV characters […]
As with many of Steve Dahl’s greatest stunts, his infamous Disco Demolition Night started as a joke. When WDAI-FM (94.7) – now known as WLS-FM – changed format from rock to disco, DJ Dahl was out of a job. “That’s where it really started,” said Dahl, 40. “While I was still on (WDAI), I would be talking about how ridiculous it was to have a 24-hour disco station. Like who’s going to dance to a 20-minute Donna Summer song in the car? Back then, disco was more of a cultural thing than it is today. It seemed like (disco) was trying to take the place of rock ‘n’ roll, which is why I found it kind of irritating.”
Three moles separate Tia Mowry from her identical twin, Tamera. “I have three little moles between my eyes that I say stand for `T-I-A,’ ” said Tia Mowry, who stars with Tamera in the ABC sitcom “Sister, Sister.” “It helps people tell us apart.”
The only thing super about “Super 8 1/2” is in its title. A low-budget flick that the filmmakers describe as a “faux documentary of sorts,” the movie is supposed to be to pornography what “Spinal Tap” was to heavy metal music – a witty sendup.
Russell Wong has been recognized. Best known for his role as the cruel, playboy husband in “The Joy Luck Club,” the 6-foot actor seems oblivious to the gawking female guests at the Four Seasons Hotel. He’s more interested in finishing his fruit salad and peppermint tea. Wong, who stars as Jian-Wa Chang in the syndicated series “Vanishing Son,” took a breather to chat with us during his first trip to Chicago.
“Stedman is very ambitious and driven,” Oprah Winfrey said. “One of the things I admire and love about him is that once he gets something or figures it out, he always wants to give back and share. And he feels very strongly about the sports world and particularly athletes being able to work beyond athletics.”
The fans came early to the Near West Side with some of the most difficult-to-score tickets in town. Most had called in their orders weeks ago, never imagining they’d be watching history take place. After quitting prematurely, a Chicago legend was coming back to form.
A tiny storefront diner that serves only breakfast and lunch, seven days a week, the Cozy Cafe lives up to its intimate name.
On the hit NBC drama “ER,” which takes place at the fictional County Memorial General Hospital in Chicago, there is a slew of secondary roles that flesh out the lives of the primary six (George Clooney, Anthony Edwards, Eriq LaSalle, Julianna Margulies, Sherry Stringfield and Noah Wylie).
Have you ever had one of those weeks when you just had too much to do but not enough time to get everything done? It was for just such times that the owners of Scatchell’s designed their strip mall in Cicero, which includes a pizzeria, car wash and laundromat.
Anyone who’s been through a breakup can identify with the Murmurs’ hit single. But though most assume the single, “You Suck,” is about an ex-boyfriend, vocalist Heather Grody says it’s about a mentor who turned on Grody and Leisha Hailey.
One afternoon, a friend and I were trolling for food after catching a matinee at the Music Box Theatre. Just a couple of blocks away from the cinema, we saw a quaint restaurant called the Banana Leaf Kitchen with a sign promising noodles, fried rice and curry.
The yakuza – the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia – has achieved notoriety of romantic proportions in films such as “Black Rain” and “The Yakuza.” But in his brilliantly clever “Minbo – Or The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion,” director-writer Juzu Itami presents the group as nothing more than a bunch of thugs who take pride in chopping off bits of each other’s pinkies and think nothing of hiding cockroaches in food to blackmail restaurants for hush money.
Sarah Jessica Parker has gone from being a four-eyed Square Peg to one of Hollywood’s sexiest stars. Thanks to genetics, she can shun the Stairmaster and still balance on that unfair line of being reed-thin but shapely.
You gotta wonder about a restaurant named after an illegal drink. So it was with curiosity that I ventured to the oh-so-hip Cafe Absinthe.
Oprah Winfrey may be Chicago’s biggest tourist attraction. Sure there’s the lakefront, the Bulls, the Art Institute, Magnificent Mile, Wrigley Field and Gino’s East. But how many of them can really make you feel better about yourself?
Crispin Glover, a character actor, also is quite the character. He once lived in an apartment painted all black, kept an operating table rumored to have been used for gynecological exams in his living room and gave new meaning to the word “hyper” when he greeted David Letterman with a kick-boxing move that got him booted from the show.
If male directors had made “Erotique,” the film would have been called soft-core porn. But because women were employed to direct the movie’s three vignettes, “Erotique” is being billed as “intelligent erotica.” Whatever. The result is the same – a film where sex is more important than content and where women’s – not men’s – bodies serve as the primary objects of titillation.