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To: Letters, Chicago Reader Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In reference to the April 21 column “What Killed Killer Joe?” by Lewis Lazare, I feel compelled to address the following: (1.) Mr. Lazare reported that reviews of Killer Joe were mixed to negative, seemingly ignoring the fact that we have appeared in the Tribune’s “Raves” section for the past ten weeks, that WGN’s Dean Richards deemed the play a “Must See,” and that a half dozen other reviewers shared their enthusiasm–please visit killerjoe....

Willie Doherty Doherty wanted to capture how members of the Irish diaspora in Chicago conceive Ireland, from which most are now several generations removed: what does the notion of patria mean to Ireland and the world at large? And it seems that the Ireland that exists in the foggy memories of the descendants of Irish immigrants is both vastly different from the real Ireland, which Doherty also videotaped, and eerily the same....

New French Cinema Film Festival Camille is a bundle of energy, sexual and otherwise, in Catherine Corsini’s effective portrait of an independent woman with a troubled and unstable sense of herself. After a chance meeting with a married political activist Camille begins to pursue him relentlessly, attending party meetings (she helps illegal immigrants, she explains, by sleeping with them) and finally joining him in illicit weekend getaways. But she’s clearly a bit over-the-top, initiating sex in semipublic settings, and she admits that her love is “like an illness....

Five years ago the notion of an Iranian cinema meant nothing to most Americans. Prejudiced by coverage of the Islamic revolution, they may have assumed Iranians were only allowed to produce propaganda. Yet since the release of Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon in 1995, that’s been changing. Now Iranian movies are regarded as vital and exciting–in 1997 Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry shared the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and last year Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven was nominated for an Academy Award....

On September 27, 1994, filmmakers Tod S. Lending and Danny Alpert interviewed Dorothy Jackson at her apartment in the Henry Horner Homes. The pair hoped to use the interview for “No Time to Be a Child,” a three-part PBS series about the effects of a violent environment on children. Two hours after they finished the interview, Jackson’s 14-year-old grandson Terrell Collins was shot to death by a classmate as he walked home from school....

Polyphony–A Play about going, Both Hands Theatre Company, at Center Theater. Parents lamenting the high cost of children’s toys should note what the Both Hands Theatre Company accomplishes with a mere three trunks and 18 suitcases. Luggage implies travel, of course–and a trio of travelers like this one foreshadows disagreement. Sure enough, despite repeated exclamations of “Let’s go!” “I’m leaving!” and “Are we there yet?” these three continue to delay their departures....

The Thirteenth Floor With Armin Mueller-Stahl, Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Vincent D’Onofrio, Dennis Haysbert, and Steven Schub. I have to admit that The Thirteenth Floor kept me hoping for the first half hour or so, before it turned into another virtual-reality boondoggle. The press screening was held the morning after the prizes at the Cannes film festival were announced. Since I didn’t attend I still have months or in some cases years to wait before the movies showing there have a chance to disappoint me....

Chicago Symphony Orchestra First, the hall. If you’re coming in late, the CSO is spending zillions of dollars on a multiyear rehab intended to fix, or at least palliate, the notoriously crappy acoustics. Last season, after the first big round of work was done, the place did sound better than I’d ever heard it, though there were still a lot of unsolved problems, as well as a new crop of freaky side effects....

Skatalites Nowadays musicians tend to take for granted their ability to raise political awareness; for some it’s all in a day’s work. But popular music hasn’t always reflected the politics of the populace, and in the heady atmosphere of postcolonial Jamaica, the practice was still practically unheard of. Though they existed for just 14 months, from 1964 to ’65, the early Jamaican ska band the Skatalites heralded not only future incarnations of reggae but political pop from Curtis Mayfield to the Sex Pistols to Public Enemy....

SNOWPONY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This British trio has been held up mostly for the past affiliations of its members, but not much on its debut full-length, The Slow-Motion World of Snowpony (Radioactive), harks back to either Katharine Gifford’s stint as Stereolab’s keyboardist or Debbie Googe’s tenure as bassist in My Bloody Valentine. Gifford writes and sings all the group’s tunes–she did neither in Stereolab–and the way she, Googe, and drummer Max Corradi (who’s since been replaced by Gifford’s fellow Moonshake alum Kevin Bass) combine rigid, hypnotic, sample-peppered grooves, huge spirals of bass, and subtle, half-chanted, half-spoken melodies has little in common with Stereolab’s stylistic cocktails or MBV’s feedback-sopped elegies....

BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY 4/10, HOUSE OF BLUES If you can get past the racist shtick of the name–though why should you?–you’re rewarded with stale fashion-model swing pop that makes the truckload of new ska bands sound downright innovative. These spats-sporting beach boys from Ventura, last heard on the Swingers sound track, claim to be equally influenced by Count Basie and Black Flag, but their shameless lifestyle hucksterism approaches the integrity of neither....

Keeping Up With the Joffreys Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hubbard Street executive director Gail Kalver says the new home, designed by the architectural firm of Harry Weese & Associates, will be “clean and functional” but not plush. What the company will gain, says Kalver, is more space than the cramped 12,500 square feet available at 218 S. Wabash, where Hubbard Street’s administrative offices and studios have been based since 1981....

Life’s a Dream at the Chopin Theatre The premise is reminiscent of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. A great king of Poland, Basilio, reading in the stars that his son will be a tyrannical monster who may kill his father, locks the boy in a tower, where he’s raised essentially as a beast. But Calderon’s aim is not to write a tragedy but to present an allegory for living. The point of the play is not that the son will kill his father but that the king should not have tried to read his future in the stars....

Annie Sprinkle (nee Ellen Steinberg) has gone from porn star to sexual-healing guru to performance artist. Thousands of audience members (including me) have seen her cervix, and thousands more have had their photographs taken with Sprinkle’s generous breasts on their heads. Her performances are irreverent, intelligent, sensual, clownish, and sweetly brutal, celebrating the power of sexual discovery and advocating orgasmic release from prudish self-censorship; weaving her X-rated personal odyssey into an impressive body of work, she’s become one of the most successful sexual revolutionaries in the avant-garde world....

I read the news today oh boyAbout a lucky man who made the gradeHe blew his mind out in a car… From those bare-all beginnings she went on to achieve a certain cult status with her often scantily clad, sometimes nude appearances in a string of lurid exploitation flicks, among them producer Roger Corman’s raunchy Roller Derby flick Unholy Rollers, Gator Bait, Group Marriage, and Deathsport, Corman’s sequel to Death Race 2000 (“Not as campy or enjoyable as the earlier film, though Claudia unclothed is a visual asset,” smirks the capsule review in Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video Guide)....

Friday 5/14 – Thursday 5/20 The repertoire of the 16-member Ensemble Stop-Time encompasses more than a century of African-American music–or, as the group likes to say, “everything from Jelly Roll Morton to Grandmaster Flash.” Tonight the masters of music history will be joined by R & B vocalist Jerry “the Iceman” Butler and Ensemble Kalinda Chicago at the Stompin’ at the Regal concert. It starts at 7:30 at the New Regal Theater, 1645 E....

A jealous husband’s worst suspicions are realized when he decides to test his wife’s fidelity in Enter the Guardsman, opening this week at Northlight Theatre. Based on a comedy written by Ferenc Molnar for the husband-and-wife team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, this backstage romp set in 1930s Vienna is a musical within a play. Hollis Resnik plays the wife; David New is the fate-tempting husband who sends her a rose from an anonymous admirer and then raises the stakes, using his thespian skills to see if she’ll cheat....

Dear editor, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Psychiatrist Carl Bell and hairstylist Richard Lewis whine about us black men being viewed monolithically as “urban predators,” but be realistic for a minute about why we are frequently viewed that way, even by our own women! I respect WBBM’s Monroe Anderson for admitting in the story that this pervasive fear of black men is not without some cause....

By Michael Miner The bio continued, “In all, he has been in one hundred and thirty-two feature films including Lassie Come Home, The White Cliffs of Dover, The Planet of the Apes and three of its sequels. He directed Ava Gardner in The Ballad of Tam Lin.” An Emmy for Not Without Honor crowned a 49-year television career, while a 1953 production of Misalliance marked his Broadway debut. “Elsewhere in the United States,” the bio concluded, “he has performed in Chicago on the ImprovOlympic house team Faulty Wiring....

FRED LONBERG-HOLM: SITE-SPECIFIC Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Site-Specific, the first release by the local indie label Explain, sports ubiquitous cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm’s name on its sleeve, and sure enough, every cut benefits from his wealth of styles and extended techniques. But the record’s not so much a showcase for him as it is a remarkable collection of improvised guitar music. Lonberg-Holm performed its 12 duets during a 13-day stretch last summer in the homes of a dozen local artists and musicians: Jim O’Rourke, Ben Vida, Kevin Drumm, Todd Rittmann, Michael Krassner, Charles Kim, Jeb Bishop, John Corbett, Helen Mirra, Michael Zerang, Adam Sonderberg, and Jim Baker....