Friday 10/29 – Thursday 11/4
Alfred Hitchcock made his first cameo appearance in his third movie, The Lodger (1926), a silent thriller based on the Jack the Ripper story. It’ll be shown tonight with organ accompaniment by Jay Warren, who’ll play his original score. Show time is at 8 at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn (773-702-7300). Tickets are $10, $7 for students and seniors.
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30 SATURDAY Former J. Crew model Matthew Barney–“the most crucial artist of his generation,” according to the New York Times Magazine–named his five-part cycle of independent films after the muscle that suspends the testicles. Cremaster 2, the fourth installment (they’ve been filmed out of order), is loosely based on the story of executed murderer Gary Gilmore, who claimed to be a descendant of Harry Houdini. Norman Mailer, who profiled Gilmore in The Executioner’s Song, plays the magician in the film. It’ll be screened at 8 and 10 Friday night and 6, 8, and 10 tonight in the Museum of Contemporary Art theater, 220 E. Chicago (312-397-4010). Tickets are $8, $7 for students and seniors.
The press release for psychic Sidney Friedman’s latest show promises he’ll “actually accomplish a levitation of the entire audience.” He’ll also read audience members’ minds, playing the songs they’re thinking of on the piano. “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” anyone? He’ll perform Saturday at 8 and 10:30 and tonight at 7 at Davenport’s Piano Bar & Cabaret, 1383 N. Milwaukee (773-278-1830). Admission is $16.
3 WEDNESDAY In the third century BC, Archimedes of Syracuse thought up a series of sophisticated treatises that later formed the basis of modern calculus. A thousand years after his death, they were inscribed on goatskin parchment in Constantinople, only to be scraped off and written over 200 years later. Thanks to the wonders of ultraviolet light and digital enhancement, Archimedes’ theorems are again visible. The parchment is on view at the Field Museum’s new exhibit Eureka! The Archimedes Palimpsest. It opens today at the museum, Roosevelt and Lake Shore Drive, and runs through January 3. It’s open from 9 to 5; admission is $7 for adults, $4 for children. Call 312-922-9410 for more.
