The Last Good Time With Armin Mueller-Stahl,Olivia d’Abo, Lionel Stander,Maureen Stapleton, Kevin Corrigan, Adrian Pasdar, and Zohra Lampert. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In The Last Good Time the solitary character is a retired immigrant violinist and childless widower named Joseph Kopple (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who’s living in a decrepit and anonymous (if typical) one-room apartment in Brooklyn. This space isn’t expressionistic or stylized in any obvious way, yet it’s amazing how expressive Balaban and his production designer, Wing Lee, make it; indeed, it’s made to say quite different things about Kopple at various times over the course of the film....

By Ben Joravsky The rivalry predates Gallagher and most of her allies, going back to before even World War II, when many Evanstonians disdainfully regarded Chicago as a smelly netherworld of hookers and hoodlums and as a place where young people sneaked away to buy their first beers. In those days Evanston was a predominantly white Republican bastion of North Shore intolerance and provincialism: its leaders wanted nothing to do with Chicago–even major north-south streets like California, Western, and Clark changed names at the border (becoming Dodge, Asbury, and Chicago)....

Body Politic’s Moment of Reckoning Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But Pertalion’s decision prompted the board of directors to meet last Tuesday to begin determining the company’s fate. Over the past several years Body Politic has experienced operating deficits, a declining audience, a poorly focused artistic product, and considerable administrative tumult. Notes Body Politic board president Gregg Rzepczynski: “I want to get a consensus of what the board believes is best right now....

All three solo acts featured in this all-concerto affair led by erstwhile Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra head maestro Zdenek Macal have previously appeared in the Ravinia Festival’s Rising Stars series, which showcases the talents of classical musicians who are expected to be among the best and brightest of the next generation. Chicago native Jennifer Koh is touted for her fiery yet sensitive violin playing, an approach that ought to be appropriate for Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no....

CRYSTAL WATERS NATURAL THING Although the dance-music boom (aka the disco revival) of the late 80s and early 90s is over, dance music is alive and well. Artists with commanding voices are releasing diverse and often superb full-length CDs, and several labels have taken to smartly packaging compilations of current club singles. Finally dance music has taken root, nourished by the fertile ground of cultural and technological change. This is no small feat; for almost two decades dance music survived as a club-based singles music with very little help from its friends....

*** BLUE With Juliette Binoche, Benoit Regent, Florence Pernel, Charlotte Very, Helene Vincent, Emmanuelle Riva, and Philippe Volter. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Veronique had two heroines and two nationalities, Polish and French, mystically “twinned” by the narrative. Blue is the first part of a Kieslowski trilogy called “Three Colors,” which has already been written and shot in its entirety; part two, White, will soon premiere at the Berlin film festival, and Red is supposed to surface later this year....

By Jack Helbig And as adults they’ve often performed together in Chicago’s crowded improv scene. (Both have put in time at the ImprovOlympic.) “For the rest of the trip,” Rosenfeld recalls, “all through Europe, we wrestled with the idea: What is our first step? How do we get others to join in?” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » They decided they’d open their theater, called Boom Chicago, in May 1993, giving themselves one summer to make it happen....

In the beginning was the Word, as invented by members of a primitive nomadic tribe and later set down and polished up by their scribes. The Word was a neat and tidy accounting of things: God made the world and everything in it, all the grasses and trees and flowers, all the birds and beasts and fishes–and Man. Man was made from the dust, in his present slender-limbed, dome-crowned form, and he found himself set to work in the dusty profession of agriculture pretty fast....

Mixed Signals Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cushing studied radio broadcasting at Columbia College for three years and did a blues show at the Triton College station, WRRG, in the late 70s, until he was hired as an operating engineer by WBEZ in 1979. He conceived Blues Before Sunrise shortly thereafter, and by June 1980 WBEZ agreed to air it. He freely admits to modeling the show after Dick Buckley’s Jazz Forum....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One quotation from me is open to misinterpretation by its placement in the story, however. At the time that I first spoke to Ms. Plys in July, I was attempting to explain the problematic nature of the staffing of our program department and the difficulty in getting the board of directors to understand the need to compensate the staff appropriately and to actually put producers, hosts, and other key personnel on staff–with salaries, benefits, and the like....

Hey, Faggot: X lowers your inhibitions, impairs your judgment, and makes you just absolutely fucking love everybody. That’s a dangerous troika. Topping it off, X makes you chatty–very, very chatty. If only X were content to simply let you feel the feelings, but no, X makes you want to–have to–communicate the feelings it’s (a) magnifying, or (b) manufacturing. Careful who you’re with when you take X: promises sworn sky-high are sometimes impossible to extract ourselves from once we land–it’s not a good first-date drug....

Fluid Measure Performance Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I haven’t always loved everything I’ve seen of theirs. In fact, by the mid-80s, after seeing a piece by Pelletier at MoMing, I feared her work had run aground in concept, dialogue, and heavy-handed drama. And I thought Mandel’s work in the mid-80s, though beautifully executed, was just so-so. So what’s happened? It seems to me this sea change must be due in part to the way Fluid Measure members have influenced one another, bringing their considerable talents in dance, contact improvisation, visual art, voice, and writing together....

Do you know anything about the “whole language” approach to reading? It’s used at my daughter’s grade school, and other mothers tell me it’s all the rage. But parts of it strike me as weird. Phonics seems to be out, for one thing. When I told my daughter to “sound out” a word in a book we were reading, she told me, “We don’t do that anymore, mom.” Somehow they’re supposed to grasp the word as a whole or pick it up from the context or something....

To Todd Savage: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I met Quona one night in late 1991 through a mutual friend. Quona was wearing a white shirt and black overalls, and she had extensions. She spoke in a man’s voice at first, but later on that night she used the sexy woman’s voice on me and blew my heterosexual mind. I was 18 at the time–she must have been 17–I can remember thinking how strange she was....

MOUTH Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Choreographer Robin Lakes has a knack for exploring the simple but essential things in life. In Mouth, her new full-length piece, she muses on that strange opening in our face, thoroughly examining the acts of kissing, biting, suckling, talking, and eating. Their nuances are taken into account, and their ramifications toted up. “All my sins pass through my mouth in one direction or another,” she states at one point–proof that there’s more to the mouth than lips, teeth, and tongue....

One of Yo La Tengo’s most likable traits is their unapologetic fandom. The Hoboken, New Jersey-bosed trio plays music–from tender folktinged ballads to hooky indie-pop to droning noisefests–informed by an encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll’s diversity. Their songs frequently have antecedents in the record collections of Ira Kaplan (the group’s guitar player), Georgia Hubley (drums), or James McNew (bass). Their catholic selection of cover tunes runs from the famous (Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”) to the obscure (Information’s “Let’s Compromise”) and from the poignant (Richard and Linda Thompson’s “For Shame of Doing Wrong”) to the ridiculous (Rex Garvin’s “Emulsifled”)....

Lillian’s condo was burglarized the other day. When I got home from work the light on my answering machine was flashing like the Mars light on a squad car. “A neighbor in the next building saw them.” Beep. Right, I thought. And maybe they’ll send out Hercule Poirot. I poked my head in. The ancient air conditioner had been shoved in and lay like a fallen dinosaur on the curtains and rod that came down with it....

Friday 1 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » To celebrate their seventh anniversary the Neo-Futurists are offering a special show of 1995’s greatest hits. Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind sees the comedic ensemble attempting to roar through “30 plays in 60 minutes,” with the lineup of miniplays shifting a bit each week to keep the mix fresh. Beginning tonight and running through next weekend the group’s regular Friday and Saturday shows at 11:30 will be joined by additional ones at 8....

Council Coverage Like any writers of consequence, reporters understand that the essence of their art is the leaving out. Thus primed, Kass began his Tribune account the next morning with this: “A chance for Chicago residents to vote on Mayor Richard Daley’s plans for legalized gambling failed by one vote in Thursday’s City Council meeting, with Daley allies changing votes at the last minute to win.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Dub Syndicate Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It took some cojones for pomo British dub wizard Adrian Sherwood to christen this innovative band–which evolved out of Creation Rebel and New Age Steppers in the early 80s–with a generic name like Dub Syndicate. Except for drummer, songwriter, and de facto leader Style Scott, who’s played on all but the first of the group’s seven albums, Dub Syndicate is made up of a revolving cast of players....