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

I’m going to be honest. Going in to see this film, I was blissfully unaware of what the title Stop-Loss meant. I thought perhaps it was a strangely-worded political statement on the filmmaker’s position on the Iraq war. “Stop the loss” of our soldiers. “Stop the loss” of life. Looking back on it, the title can take on that connotation if you take away its proper definition. The term “stop-loss” is actually a military term that means a soldier has been called back into active duty after he or she has been scheduled to end their term in the service. This issue is the basis of the film, directed by Kimberly Peirce, and brings the injustice of this policy to light. It's enough to make the film worthwhile and it may just also serve as an anti-recruiting measure for our army.

"In the 21st century, with all of the chaotic things going on around you, you lose sight of the person standing right beside you," Zev Steinberg, senior in Theater at the University of Illinois says.

Sometimes you need a reminder. An important reminder. A musical reminder.

This weekend at Armory Free Theatre, Steinberg directs a cast of 10 other University of Illinois students in the musical A New Brain, a production by William Finn and James Lapine that tells the story of a young man who is facing near-certain death from a brain condition.

One wrong bus ride and there you have it – an awkward culture clash that will surely lead to a widening of the gap between the Egyptians and Israelis. That the Alexandria Police Ceremonial Band has traveled to Israel to play at the opening of a new cultural center seems of little importance once they’ve been cast as fish out of water in the small town of Bet Hatikvah. Their main concern is getting out of the village and back home with as little fuss as possible. As for the citizens of this tiny burg – they could care less what nationality their new visitors are, they’re just happy to have something new in their mundane lives.

DJ Delayney, or Douglas Layne to his friends and family, spins some of the best records in town. Growing up, inspired by his father and brother's penchant for music, Delayney came into his own and rooted himself in turntablism. Delayney gets frank and truthful, in no particular order, for Smile Politely about certain aspects of Champaign-Urbana. And if he comes into enough cash and conjures up "God's scheduling abilities," you will find me at his dream bill. I'll probably be passed out in the corner as well.

Age: 29 years and 12 months.

Occupation: Deejay/Event Producer/Graphic Designer. DJ Event Designer - should be my new DJ name.

Consumed by: Music!

Measure for Measure marked Shakespeare’s final comedy before embarking upon the series of tragedies, which confirmed his legacy. Written after the monstrous Hamlet and succeeded by Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, it seems appropriate that this tale of corruption and immorality stands as the most cynical and disturbingly inconclusive of perhaps any of Shakespeare’s plays, but most certainly of any the comedies.

Measure for Measure opens tonight at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana.

Derek Winstanley’s sculpture entitled, “Prehistoric Dolphin with Modern Technology”, has been chosen as the featured image for the 2008 Boneyard Arts Festival. The panel of local arts professionals, Jenny Southlynn, Joan Stolz, Kim Curtis, and Durango Mendoza, selected Winstanley’s three-dimensional piece after carefully analyzing the qualities of nearly 50 submissions. This is the first time the Boneyard Arts Festival has selected a three-dimensional piece to serve as their unifying visual theme.

Long before the Coen brothers garnered Oscars for their own pseudo-western masterpiece, screenwriter/director John Huston crafted the definitive tale of greed giving birth to violence amidst the barren landscapes of the southwest. That No Country for Old Men took place in Texas, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is famous for it’s brilliant evocation of Mexico, makes little difference.

Each movie posits the wide-open austerity of all that sand, all that sun, and all those cacti as a sort of stand-in for Dante’s multi-tiered hell.

One of the great injustices in modern cinema is that visionary filmmaker George A. Romero lacks a larger forum from which to deliver his vital movies. Of course, the fact that he uses flesh-eating zombies as his messengers makes his work a hard sell to mainstream audiences. Granted, Romero has always been a cult director, having changed the face of the horror film with his 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead, an allegory of the social unrest that was raging across the country at the time. The movie’s message isn’t what initially caused viewers to flock to it, rather it's ground-breaking, in-your-face violence that put butts in seats and the gore that marked a radical change in the way horror would be presented from there on out.

It begins with a decapitated cat.

Today begins the Station Theatre’s presentation of Martin McDonagh’s comedic experiment in absurd ultra-violence, The Lieutenant of Inishmore. McDonagh, best known for the award-winning The Beauty Queen of Lenane, is perhaps one of our most gifted contemporary playwrights, and one of our most exceedingly dark.

He has famously claimed that he culls the majority of his inspiration from cinema, particularly the stylized genre experiments of Quentin Tarantino. Like that director, McDonagh’s work explores the tenuous and shadowy relationship between violence, sex, and humor. But unlike, Tarantino, McDonough, at his best, portrays a far more chilling brand of violence, one bereft of easy answers, perpetrated for motivations as thin and frustrating as boredom, pride, or to avenge a decapitated cat.

House shows are apparently no longer a thing of the past. For those of you looking for a change of scenery from the regular bar venue fare, be sure to check out one of the many house shows that are popping up more and more in the Champaign-Urbana area. Cornbread's CD release show was held this past Saturday night at the Broadway Haus. Along with performances by TEXT and Mohrer Les, all supported by resident musicians, The Sugar Gliders, the show was a nice change of pace.

If you missed the release of Cloverfield at the local cineplex, you have another chance tonight and Thursday at the Virginia Theater. And wouldn't you know it, the lead actor, Michael Stahl-David, and I both went to Lincoln Park High School and graduated the same year. Even better, we were in the drama program together. But you don't see me landing a major motion picture role, do you?

Yes, Michael made it as an actor in New York, and this past weekend, I ran into my old friend at SxSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas. Even though everyone wants a piece of him, he ever-so-lovingly answered some questions for me and my not-so-glamorous job here at Smile Politely. I didn't even have to go through his publicist.

In a past life, you were...: a chimney sweep.

Most ridiculous job you had to take on in order to pay the bills: I was a bike taxi driver in Times Square.

Dilawar was very proud to be able to provide for his family by driving his taxi. Not as adept as his siblings with work on their farm outside of Yakubi, Afghanistan, the young man was eager to contribute to the running of the home and was happy to have found a way to do so, taking people from the country’s rural regions to its major urban centers and back again.

Life was on the upswing for this young man, and his wife and daughter but a convergence of tragic elements would cut his life short, as he was mistakenly arrested for an attack on a United States’ military base and taken to Bagram, a prison occupied by American forces where torturing prisoners is standard operating procedure.

Alex Gibney’s disturbing new film Taxi to the Dark Side won the Oscar for Best Documentary and while the value of such an award is negligible, if that sort of recognition encourages simply one person to see this film, then it could be argued that awards of this sort do serve some worthy purpose.

Taxi to the Dark Side opens tonight at Boardman's Art Theatre.

The Canaan Baptist Church is a fixture in Urbana. Take a leisurely stroll down Main Street on your way to Strawberry Fields or the Farmer’s Market, and you’ll see it on your left: a pleasantly weathered building that has had a home in the neighborhood for over 30 years. Don’t let the unassuming façade fool you, though. This small church is actually a large agent of social change.

The SAFE House (Substance Abuse Free Environment ) residential program has been in existence since 1984. It offers men battling addiction a way out of that vicious cycle and back into healthy, happy lives. A new facet of the program has begun this year with the inception of the SAFE House Writers’ Workshop/Literature Reading Group, which will meet tonight. The evening’s event will include public readings by group members and graduate students in the university’s creative writing program.

If Jason Patterson isn't sleeping, he's probably painting. And if he's not painting, he's most likely at work. And if he's not at work,... well, you get the idea. Patterson is originally from Champaign, but has made his home over in Urbana and is a rabid artist. The ideas surrounding his paintings are bold, sometimes even verbalized through the use of font on the canvas but mainly, through repeated use of people, Patterson reveals humanity.

See for yourself:

Consumed by: Making work. It's all I do and all I spend money on. If I'm not doing the 9 to 5 at Art Coop, I'm probably at home painting.

Inner Voices, a University of Illinois social issues theater group, presents the last of three performances of Endangered Black Girls tonight at Armory Free Theater.

The play was written by Ruth Nicole Brown, assistant professor in Gender and Women's Studies and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois. Brown researches the political socialization of African American girls; her interviews with African American girls form the production's narrative backbone.

The street railways run between Champaign-Urbana and used to connect our two towns. Now many of these trains merely pass through neighboring cities and states transporting goods. Learn more about the history of the trains in Champaign-Urbana at the Illinois Central Historical Society.

Scott Mutter, the creator of many well-known images and surrealistic super-imposed photographs, has died. He was 64.

The Champaign-Urbana and University of Illinois communities have lost a prominent contributor to the visual arts. Mutter earned his bachelor’s degree in history in 1966 and a master’s degree in Chinese in 1968. An esteemed photographer and photomontage artist, he left a strong mark on the medium of photography and became a known figure in the world of modern art. Mutter died in his home last week.

People may recognize his pieces from a college roommate's door, or an avid art lover might have seen it hanging in an art museum. Over the years, many people came to know Mutter's three decades of artwork.

The Real Dirt on Farmer John is a colorful documentary that tells the story of John Peterson and the struggle to keep his family farm alive in rural Illinois over the past thirty years. Peterson's tale is not unique, and parallels the trials and tribulations of thousands of farmers in the American landscape, facing the loss of their land after generations of farming. This film allows you to look into the souls of these farmers through the eyes of John Peterson, and what you see is the sadness and grief that so many farmers experienced in the 1980s when they were forced to auction off their land and their equipment merely to survive.

From a financial point of view, it makes sense that Lionsgate Films is promoting its latest, The Bank Job, as another hyperkinetic, seizure-inducing, Jason Statham actioner. After all, the actor has amassed a loyal fanbase with such B-movie favorites as The Transporter, Crank and The War. So, touting this feature as just more of the same is a no-brainer. Too bad this strategy will only end up disappointing most of Statham’s fans and do a disservice to a fine heist film in the process.

The execution of a vision is the thing that breaks or makes a film. The more vast and imaginative the vision, the harder it is to see realized. But in the case of director Todd Haynes’s latest film, I’m Not There, a courageous vision was well worth the effort thanks to an amazing cast, a well-plotted set of vignettes, and a figure worthy of such an ambitious picture.

Zsolt Bognar is from Urbana and his brilliance at the piano is stunning. This Sunday, Bognar will return to his hometown and perform at the Krannert Center. He ever so graciously answered a handful of questions for us about his time living here, his undying passion for music and the multiple roles he must play as a musician.

His answers below, resemble his performance style: nothing short of eloquent.

Consumed by: A constant desire to make my music-making more natural while finding more and more ways to communicate its ideas. Fixing problems immediately is always an obsession as well.

One thing you can't live without: My audience! Music is meant to be shared with others.