The chuckling style and nostalgic tone may be pure Neil Simon, but the content of this 1992 autobiographical feature by Goran Markovic is something else again–a fascinating, pointed, satirical look at growing up in Yugoslavia in the mid-50s, obviously given more edge by the fact that it couldn’t have been made until fairly recently. The ten-year-old narrating hero–an overweight worshiper of Marshal Tito sharing a cramped Belgrade apartment with his artistic parents as well as his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin–develops a crush on an older girl who’s an orphan....

If adjectives had faces, “irrepressible” would wear the grinning countenance of soul man Alvin Cash. Cash’s “Twine Time” on Chicago’s Mar-V-Lus label launched a major dance craze in the mid-60s, although his contribution to the tune consisted mostly of shouting hoarse imprecations over his backup ensemble’s funky R & B riffing. He never scored that big again, but subsequent efforts–“Barracuda,” “Philly Freeze,” “Alvin’s Boo-Ga-Loo,” “Keep On Dancing”–entrenched his reputation as a major figure in the development of 60s-era black popular dance....

In 1963 radical black poet and scholar Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones, published his landmark music study Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America and the Music That Developed From It. One of the strongest advocates of free jazz in the mainstream press, Baraka has performed his work with some of the greats of that music. His stark poem “Black Dada Nihilismus” on the New York Art Quartet’s eponymous 1965 record for ESP is a harrowing assault on dominant white ideology; his encounter in the same year with free-sax legend Albert Ayler on Sonny Murray’s Sonny’s Time Now (released on Baraka’s own Jihad label) is equally intense....

One of the more charismatic and sought-after young maestros of the past decade, Riccardo Chailly is concluding a two-week Ravinia stint this weekend. The Italian conductor has won accolades for reinvigorating Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and his recording of works by avant-garde composer Luciano Berio reveals a deep understanding of the complexity of contemporary music. In Friday’s concert Chailly will lead the CSO in its first performance of Philip Glass’s 1989 Concerto for Violin....

DAVE ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Ivan Reitman Written by Gary Ross With Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn, Ving Rhames, and Ben Kingsley At first Dave is too awed by his surroundings to question the decisions being made. (While being shown the president’s press-briefing room, he’s preoccupied about whether he can keep a souvenir ballpoint pen.) Eventually, though, Dave sees the light, and after quickly acquainting himself with the country’s major problems and their solutions in one extended work session with a Baltimore chum (Charles Grodin at his funniest), he defies Alexander and takes over the decision making....

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Despite significant opportunities before Meigs’ construction, there was never a park developed on Northerly Island. Neither during the 5 years preceding nor in the 12 years following the 1933-’34 Century of Progress World’s Fair was the land ever deemed accessible enough to make it valuable as park land. This very inaccessibility is exactly why the Park District has already rejected Northerly Island as a permanent festival site....

Roger Norrington, an Oxbridge product with an aptly donnish demeanor, is music’s man for all seasons. Over his astonishingly productive three-decade career he’s prepped as a tenor and a violinist and helped found an opera company and a chamber orchestra. The English maestro’s chief renown, however, is as a guru of the period-instrument movement. Most of the numerous recordings he’s made with the London Classical Players and others demonstrate with eloquence and conviction the importance of reviving “historically accurate” performances....

COURSE OF EMPIRE 3/4, METRO This Dallas unit is surely of the generation that musically came of age viewing Jane’s Addiction: like that band, it brings a whole slate of pretensions to aggressive, guitar-dominated music tinged with that good old gothic tribalism. Why bother with melody when you can concentrate instead on guitar effects (Course of Empire opt for a flat metallic swirl)? Why vary tempos or dynamics when your singer (Vaughn Stevenson) engages in fictional chats with Charles Darwin (on the current single “Infested,” a tune the lyricist claims is about “population control”)?...

“He was so intense,” says Julia Nash, daughter of the late Jim Nash, one of the architects of Wax Trax records. “Even in the hospital that night, he was just–I don’t know, there was this power. I don’t know the word for it, but it was amazing. Me and Dannie were there for his last breath, we were holding his hand, and something crazy came over the whole room.” Nash, a wisecracking entrepreneur, and his partner, Dannie Flesher, founded first a store and then a record label based on a mutual commitment to harsh music and blithe business practices....

Hungry yet? Gourmet chef Robert Burcenski of Tallgrass Restaurant and the Public Landing in Lockport, describing his experience in the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois’ Preservation Brief (June): “Historic restoration, like the pumpkin, sadly has been a long neglected community resource. Here is a recipe for a delicious building–the Norton Building–a building made from Limestone, Virgin Timbers, Bricks, Mortar, Concrete and Steel, and served on Limestone Bedrock. This particularly delicious type of building rarely appears in American cookbooks, yet is far less expensive to make than a shopping center, and infinitely more elegant....

News releases you won’t see from Com Ed anytime soon. From Wisconsin Electric in Milwaukee: “Two large wind turbines specially designed for the Midwest’s lower wind speeds are scheduled to be installed on the bluffs near De Pere in southern Brown County, Wis., this fall.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “State politicians sit on funding that could eliminate household lead hazards in at least one community,” reports Carl Vogel in The Neighborhood Works (April/May)....

The Goodbye Girl Gets Ready for Broadway Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Shortly after the Chicago premiere, Azenberg maintained that he and his cohorts weren’t fazed by a surprisingly sharp slam from Tribune chief critic Richard Christiansen. Even when displeased with a production, the mild-mannered Christiansen often finds a way to put it kindly, but his Goodbye Girl notice was barely mitigated vitriol from start to finish, summing up the show as “a muddle....

Chicago-based writer David Hauptschein is a man obsessed by “nontraditional texts”–both the mundane writings of everyday life and the paranoid ravings of eccentrics and crazy people. And since 1986 it’s been his mission to show other people how daring, insightful, imaginative, and entertaining these writings can be. Some of his past shows have been devoted to the senile ramblings of nursing home residents (The Duplex Planet Project) or the equally unhinged squibs of the mentally ill (Delirious Illuminations)....

The Bears’ playoff victory over the Minnesota Vikings Sunday was nothing less than actual, physical confirmation of a phenomenon we had only recently written off as a mirage. A month ago when we left the Bears they were steaming toward the National Football League playoffs as a solid second-echelon team–maybe not in the class of the San Francisco 49ers or the Dallas Cowboys but every bit as good as anyone else....

When President Kennedy told the nation to start building nuclear fallout shelters in 1961, Russians had a goofy leader who wore ill-fitting suits and waved his shoes at people. What with Boris Yeltsin’s overworked liver and the last spate of Kremlin coup rumors, soon they could have Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a man so goofy he gets thrown out of–not bars–entire countries. “An airburst would be the first thing,” says Moriarty pensively. “That would knock out all your communications....

JOHNNY CASH Cash’s persuasive power helps explain his status as only the second country-and-western artist (Hank Williams was the first) ever to cross over to the pop charts. It also explains why he’s one of my favorite singers even though I don’t usually listen to much country music–and why I can even listen to him sing about Jesus without feeling annoyed. Like Thoreau, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters, Cash is one of those you can turn to when you need to be reminded that there just might, after all, be something about American traditions that’s worth a shit, and that the USA might be more than just a bunch of traveling salespeople, armchair generals, and closet Klansmen....

When pianist Benny Green performs one of his dead-on homages to Wynton Kelly and Tommy Flanagan–who largely defined the progressive jazz piano of the 1950s–it’s enough to snap your head around. (After all, Kelly died in 1971; and while Flanagan remains among jazz’s great keyboard men, at 67 he no longer displays the electrifying exactitude of his first fame.) Then, when Green lets loose a full-flourish descending run, he offers a nod to Bud Powell, subtly reminding us that Powell’s bebop breakthroughs provided the foundation for Flanagan, Kelly, and all the rest....

By Cara Jepsen Last year’s 12 Monkeys was loosely based on Chris Marker’s 1964 black-and-white classic La jetee, which follows a man’s decision to live in the past and consists almost entirely of still photographs. Tonight’s Memory, History, Consciousness: The Video and Television Work of Chris Marker includes Berlin 1990, which looks at daily life in recently reunified Berlin; Tarkovsky, a profile of the Russian director; and Chat ecoutant la musique (“Cat Listening to Music”), starring Marker’s cat....

To the Editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Marsh’s attempt to blame Cobain’s death indirectly on the punk aesthetic (and, by extension, on the situationists for some arcane reason) strikes me as not only disingenuous but incredibly inept: after acting as a cheerleader for overrated artists like Bruce Springsteen for years, Marsh should know better than to blame punk for squelching rock’s liberating spirit....

My mistake was not noticing the young tree when it first sprouted behind the garbage cans. In a couple months it’s grown into a robust young thing, insinuated in the slit between the asphalt of the alley and the foundation of my house. Now, with branches higher than my thighs and roots entwined with the house foundation, the sapling refuses to be yanked. When I tug hard, the upper branches tear away, leaving the stalk and the roots behind....