Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

It’s the phone call we all dread. The one that begins with, “I’m afraid we have a problem. Your father has been found writing in the bathroom with pieces of his own shit.” Yep, it’s all down hill from there.

Yet that’s the message that’s dropped into the laps of Jon and Wendy Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman & Laura Linney) one day and these estranged siblings are forced to not only deal with one another, but come to terms with Lenny (Philip Bosco), their father who abandoned them years earlier.

French painter Edgar Degas often depicted whimsical ballerinas with fluid brush strokes, creating art that depicted movement so gracefully, the paintings seemed almost to move. This Saturday, Champaign Park District presents an homage to the famous painter and sculpture with a real ballet dubbed "An Evening of Dance and Degas."

During an election season, Henry IV should be required viewing for the voting public. Ever the cynic, Shakespeare portrays politics as a complex of interactions; leadership not for the public good but for lineal obligation, the dangers of dynasty, and the pressure of public image.

It’s a story of rulers mired in greed, arrogance, duty, and betrayal. As appropriate to its time, and perhaps disconcertingly relevant today, Henry IV illustrates the uniquely masculine character of government; the struggle between father and son, and the mercurial friendships between soldiers determine the outcome of a war.

This Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, the Krannert Art Museum is hosting Kids @ Krannert, a free art event for children and their guardians, parents, friends, and family. It is held twice a semester with hands-on art activities mainly for kids, but even adults are welcome to explore and create.

It comes as no surprise that Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis has been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Animated Feature category and has won a bevy of other awards as well. Though rendered almost completely in black and white, the images that the film’s animation crew produces are as vibrant and striking in their own way as anything created by the Technicolor masters of a bygone era. More akin to the German expressionistic films from the 1920s than any overproduced Disney affair, the monochromatic palette accurately conveys the emotional turmoil and despair that the film’s protagonist, Satrapi, a young teen, endures while growing up in Iran during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Having had to endure massive social and emotional upheaval due to the violent revolutions and wars that plagued the region during that era, it’s no wonder that the young woman’s life should be recounted in such stark terms.

With places like Forever 21 or Urban Outfitters gobbling up artists' ideas and designs and calling them their own, originality seems hard to find these days. As I was feeding my craving for handmade jewelry online, I came across Bumblesea and instantly fell in love. Not only is the jewelry stylish and modern, it's also local. How delicious is that?

Designer Jennifer Morris pleasantly answered a few questions for Smile Politely:

Name: Jennifer Morris

Age: 20

Hometown: St. Louis, but my heart's in Champaign

Occupation: Jewelry designer

Consumed by: Making everything myself. Right now I'm in the middle of soap, a chair, two lamps and a mannequin. I nearly attempted making my own boots but I decided that I'd gone too far.

For many of us Americans, Africa exists as only a giant multi-colored mass on our world maps. The worst thing about our ignorance of Africa is that people don’t seem too uncomfortable with it — or with our general lack of knowledge about global geography and cultures. In a now-famous video clip, American Idol contestant Kelli Pickler asks (on the TV game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”) if Europe is a country or not, which she trumps by expressing shock at the fact that there exists a place called Hungary; at least the audience laughs. But I wonder if the audience would have laughed at her if she’d never heard of Burkina Faso or Mali or Togo?

Last Saturday, Krukid & The Sugargliders left everyone speechless at Mike 'N Molly's. If you missed this show, check his schedule and make it to the next one. You won't regret it.

Back in July 2005, on an otherwise forgettable Thursday morning, a writer by the name of Oronte Churm sprung onto the national literary scene. That day, he turned up as a new columnist on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the web headquarters of University of Illinois alum Dave Eggers’ indie publishing empire. The title of Mr. Churm’s column was “Dispatches From Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University,” and he introduced himself like this: “I teach in the English Department of what I'll be calling Hinterland University, Inner Station campus. It’s a Big 10 school, with enough very polite (mostly white suburban) kids to form two or three infantry divisions in Iraq, which most will never have to consider.”

The article also included this disclaimer: “Oronte Churm in an obvious pseudonym.”

The Asian Educational Media Service continues its impressive series of screenings with The Blood of the Yingzhou District tonight at 7 p.m. This Oscar-winning documentary chronicles the lives of various orphans in the rural Chinese region of the title, their parents killed by AIDS or other diseases picked up from contaminated blood. That these children have been abandoned by fate is hard enough to bear but the fact that many of them are HIV-positive as well, makes their plight too much to bear.

Tonight, thanks to the designmatters campus-wide initiative to inspire innovation, Mark Frauenfelder, the editor-in-chief of Make Magazine (an O'Reilly Media publication) and co-editor/co-founder of Boing Boing, will be giving a talk entitled, "A Brief History of Making." He will discuss new developments in manufacturing technology that have made significant changes in the way we get involved in making stuff. This talk is also a pre-event for the first annual UIUC Innovation Week to be hosted by the Technology Entrepreneur Center and School of Art + Design, starting on Feb. 22.

Smile Politely caught Mark online at the airport, minutes before he was scheduled to fly to Champaign-Urbana. He was gracious enough to answer just a few questions for us.

Smile Politely: Have you ever been to Champaign-Urbana before? Is there any particular place you'd like to revisit?

Mark Frauenfelder: Yes, I was here a couple of years ago with my friend (and Boing Boing co-editor) David Pescovitz for a five-day residency with the students at Unit One in Allen Hall. One place I'd like to revisit is a fantastic Thai food restaurant in Urbana, Siam Terrace, that Laura Haber took us to.

Sink into the seats at Virginia Theatre to take in what is arguably the greatest movie of all time. This Saturday, the historical downtown theater unspools the film Citizen Kane, the American Film Institute’s number one on the big screen.

On seeing the trailer for the new romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe, my initial reaction was that it was too bad that a film with so many actresses whose work I enjoy would be ruined by the presence of resident screwball Ryan Reynolds. Imagine my surprise when Reynolds proved an engaging presence in this delightful romantic comedy. He easily rises to the challenge presented by writer/director Adam Brooks and co-stars Rachel Weisz, Isla Fisher, and Elizabeth Banks.

OPENSOURCE is encouraging artists to submit relevant work to a new exhibition, "The Audacity of Desperation," coming to the Independent Media Center, located at 202 S. Broadway, in Urbana. The organizers, Jessica Lawless and Sarah Ross, are looking for distributable artworks that touch upon the topic of "desperation" in regards to the elections, the state of our government and politics in general. Asking questions such as, "Do we need to delve fully into an emotional crisis or can we wallow in our desperation and find creative possibilities for effecting social change?" the art exhibition hopes to highlight social change, political action and create an on-going dialogue within the community.

Will Leitch, editor of the sports website Deadspin and former sports editor of the Daily Illini, will be appearing at the Illini Union today, Tuesday Feb. 12 at 4 p.m., to speak and sign copies of his new book, God Save the Fan. He was kind enough to speak with us by phone last Friday before his book tour appearance in Seattle, Wash.

Smile Politely: How was the Super Bowl?

Will Leitch: I had a lot more fun at the tour stop. Phoenix was not too much fun, it’s like you’re at the center of the corporate beast. They’re selling the NFL and a lot of other stuff, it’s so corporate, everyone has something to sell, so it’s like a big accountants’ conference.

Although he often self-deprecatingly describes his occupation as “typing about sports,” Will Leitch has a better sense of perspective than most of his colleagues in American sports journalism. In the introduction to his new book, God Save the Fan, he lays out the uneasy line that the thinking sports fan must walk: collegiate and professional sports serve as an escape from our everyday lives, but the more you see how the machinery of the sports industry operates, the less of an escape it is. It’s a tough quandary he’s found himself in, and he fills almost 300 pages trying to work his way out of it.

Shows at Urbana’s cozy Station Theatre are always a treat. The intimate, theatre-in-the-round setting makes the spectator feel nearly a part of the performance. Certain shows lend themselves better to this atmosphere than others of course — and Deke Weaver’s upcoming play is one such show.

In C-U by way of Minnesota, San Francisco and New York City, Weaver is currently a professor at the University of Illinois’s School of Art + Design. He’s also an award-winning performer, playwright, media-artist and self-proclaimed “emperor/former-goaltender.” Those first and last bits were integral in the writing of his play The Crimes and Confessions of Kip Knutzen: A Hockey Way of Knowledge, starting its run at the Station Theater on Valentine’s Day.

When life gets so busy that you don’t know which way is up, it’s a good idea to stop and appreciate the little things that make life worth living. For me, one of those things is what I believe to be the greatest channel in the history of television, Turner Classic Movies.

TCM was the brainchild of media magnate Ted Turner and while his reputation may have taken a hit for releasing colorized versions of It’s a Wonderful Life and Yankee Doodle Dandy, his heart has always been in the right place where film preservation is concerned.

William Shakespeare’s plays have seen more adaptations, re-imaginings, and contemporary reinterpretations than, perhaps, any other artistic works in literary history. He laid the foundations for so much of what came after, that writers and directors must feel some primal urge to put their own face on that looming specter of exalted artistic achievement.

Add to that list Joe Calarco’s bold entry into the canon of Shakespeare derivatives, Shakespeare’s R & J. At the very least, his version of Romeo and Juliet contains little dancing and even less singing. Rather than modernizing the dialogue, this version relies on the bard’s original words, albeit in an abridged fashion.

Stuck inside and slightly depressed today? Flowers can actually make you happy. How cliché. With the drab weather outdoors, a bright yellow chrysanthemum ($3.50 a stem) could keep you from going stir-crazy. Maybe. Pick one or a couple up from Rick Orr Florist at 122 N. Walnut St. in Champaign.