CHICAGO – YIPPIE! It’s back, in the neighborhood of its roots. YippieFest 2023 will be August 4th-6th in the Lakeview/Buena Park venue of PRIDE ARTS, 4139 North Broadway in Chicago. The space is less than a half mile from the former Mary-Arrchie Theatre, whose “Abbie Hoffman Festival” was the template for the three-day performance celebration. YippieFest currently has slots for theater acts, including one-act plays, monologue, sketch, improv, vaudeville and other stage performance arts. Artists get free admission to the rest of the festival, so click YiPPIE FEST 2023 to sign up.
Bradley Whitford
‘The Call of the Wild’ Offers Only Tame Adventure
Submitted by PatrickMcD on February 24, 2020 - 1:28pm Rating: 2.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – “The Call Of The Wild” is an old fashioned story with some expensive and unnecessary technological upgrades. Forgoing man’s best friend in reality, the film replaces the featured dog with an entirely digital creation … which I can’t say was an improvement.
Melodrama Mire in ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on June 1, 2019 - 9:59am Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Everyone’s favorite city-flattening radioactive reptile, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” gets stuck in a mire of third-rate-TV-network domestic melodrama in this disappointing follow up to the thrilling 2014 reboot. But before I roar about the many ways this misbegotten miscreant messes up, let’s throw a few pebbles of praise.
De-Glamorizing Nicole Kidman Can’t Save ‘Destroyer’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on January 11, 2019 - 10:19am Rating: 1.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – If you are in a particular frame of mind you can kinda see why someone thought “Destroyer” would be a good idea. It’s got an Academy Award winner, doing a physical transformation, and has a hard-boiled detective story. All of these elements in the right hands could have added up to awards show adulation.
Discerning the Heroes is Tough in ‘Megan Leavey’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on June 9, 2017 - 7:40amRating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The poster is what gives away “Megan Leavey” the most. The titular soldier, and her bomb-sniffing dog, below a billowing American flag. So which war is it? Why, it’s the Iraq invasion, where the U.S. military and the politicians at home “freed” the Iraqi citizens from a peaceful life. Making a dog story out of that boondoggle doesn’t make it any more palatable, except to “support the troops.”
‘Get Out’ is Funny, Scary & Tells Us About Us
Submitted by PatrickMcD on February 24, 2017 - 11:08am Rating: 4.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – When he got his chance, writer/director Jordan Peele (“Key & Peele”) completely understood what he had to do – combine his skewered hilarity, love of horror movies and true social conscience, and put them all into one great movie. Ladies and germs, “Get Out.”
Take a Trip to Drew Goddard’s Brilliant ‘The Cabin in the Woods’
Submitted by BrianTT on April 12, 2012 - 9:06am Rating: 4.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods” is a brilliant dissection of not just the clichés of the horror film genre but how they have played a role in the darkest corners of our society for centuries. It’s also a damn blast, as fun a time as you’ll have in a movie theater this season (and probably next). It’s one of those rare films that’s just pulsing with energy on so many levels — as genre-loving comedy, as straight-up horror, and as something you’ve simply never seen before. “The Cabin in the Woods” is a great film.
