By Steve Rhodes
Programming Note: For those so inclined, you can hear me at 9 a.m. on Mornings With Ray Hanania at WJJG-1530 AM. If you miss it (sorry for the late notice!), Ray makes podcasts available here.
Torture Trap
“Back in Chicago, Burge Pleads Not Guilty.”
So he committed perjury again.
Waiver Wire
“Brian J. McPartlin quit as Illinois Tollway director last week. But he can’t start his new job with a politically connected engineering consulting firm quite yet,” the Sun-Times reported on Monday.
“Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked the Illinois Ethics Commission to delay approving McPartlin’s request to join Chicago’s McDonough Associates, a firm that has done millions of dollars of work with the Tollway.
“McPartlin, 42, had asked for a waiver of the ‘revolving door prohibition,’ which requires state officials to wait a year before taking a job with a company they hired or regulated. An ethics law loophole allows the commission to grant these waivers. Only one request out of 14 has been denied since 2005.”
Name the other 13!
Meanwhile, Rich Miller writes at his Capitol Fax Blog that “Tons of those afore-mentioned revoving door waivers have been approved without a peep from Madigan.”
Paging assignment desks statewide!
UPDATE 10:25 A.M.: A Beachwood reader in a position to know writes:
“There is no procedure to let anyone know, even the AG, who has applied for a waiver. McPartlin made the announcement at the last (September) tollway board meeting, and it got into the press; that’s why the AG even knew to slow down the process. The Executive Ethics Commission does not list applicants for waivers, and is barred by law from making any such list known. So on this point, I wouldn’t blame the AG so much as the provision in the 2003 ethics act. Which needs a tweaking, I’d say.”
Like I said, paging assignments desks statewide!
Home Stretch
Today we offer a playlist with commentary from Slacker.com’s McCain Radio channel, as a companion to our previous Obama Radio entry.
Plus, check out the updated Political Odds – for entertainment purposes only. Including gambling.
Ad Mad
“Titan Worldwide [is] an out-of-home-advertising company. Earlier this month, Titan began testing the first digital ads on buses in both New York and Chicago, bringing external video-enabled ads to public transportation for the first time. Advertisers in the test include Oreo, Dunkin’ Donuts, Sleepy’s mattresses and Sony Pictures, for the James Bond flick Quantum of Solace,” Advertising Age reports.
“Titan is rolling out similar tests in Chicago, with which it has a separate 10-year contract signed in April and expected to generate about $101 million in new revenue, according to Chicago Transit Authority spokeswoman Catherine Hosinki. The extra ad dollars have become crucial for Chicago as well, which by law must cover 50 percent of its annual budget with revenue generated from fares, advertising and investment income.
“Provided the new tests go well, Ms. Hosinki said she expects the CTA to equip 100 city buses and all 144 rail stations with 1,500 digital displays by next summer. An expansion is also being made to the city’s subway platforms to keep riders informed with real-time travel information. ‘In addition to providing a venue for advertising, the digital display boards create a new channel for the CTA to communicate with its customers,’ Ms. Hosinki said in an e-mail.”
Halloween Hoedown
When Pumpkins Drink. (Thanks, Rick)
Atwater
Our very own Marilyn Ferdinand sends along programming information for Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, which we’ve been blurbing here and she’s reviewed in full over at Ferdy on Films:
I don’t see any theatre listings, but WTTW and WTTW-HD will be showing it on “Frontline” as follows:
Frontline: Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
Airs Tuesday, November 11 at 9:00 pm
Encore Airings of this Episode
Sunday, November 16 at 2:00 am
On WTTW Digital (HD)
Encore HD Airings of this Episode
Wednesday, November 12 at 1:00 am
Wednesday, November 12 at 6:30 am
Wednesday, November 12 at 10:30 am
Wednesday, November 12 at 2:30 pm
Ferdy Film Frenzy
Ferdy also has generously supplied us with an exclusive capsule of Good, which premieres in Chicago on Wednesday in advance of a nationwide rollout in January. Details below.
“Good: Based on the hit drama by Scottish playwright C. P. Taylor, who died shortly after its London premiere in 1981, Good examines John Halder, a German professor of literature and author of a novel that ends with compassionate euthanasia, who comes to the attention of officials of the Third Reich. He is flattered into writing an academic argument for euthanasia, little realizing that the Nazis intend to use it to eliminate persons with genetic defects. Steadily, Halder is corrupted by his growing status in the new Germany without seeming to truly see what is happening to him and the world around him.
“Although Good is regularly revived in Britain, it’s hard to know why a 27-year-old play seemed like a good bet for a 2008 film. The growth of Nazism has been more than well documented in feature and documentary films, and corruption and betrayal resonate more strongly in such films as 2007 Oscar winner The Lives of Others, which takes us to a divided Germany nearly 50 years after Hitler. The film’s telescopic look at a myopic John who is bent on saving one friend without seeming to see all the other victims of National Socialism may be a lampoon on academics in their ivory towers, but the entire film seems antiseptic. From what I’ve read, Halder’s tendency to disassociate himself from reality by imagining the people around him are singing – a certain rip-off of British screenwriter Dennis Potter’s musical interludes – might have played well on stage. In the film, it just seems like a distracting afterthought. Changing Halder from a Goethe to a Proust specialist might have been intended as another irony – In Search of Lost Time, Jewish writer, and all that – but weakens his German identity and makes his embrace by and of Nazis nearly incomprehensible. There are a lot of good actors in a film without a lot of good characters. Competent but rather pointless, Good smells like Oscar bait.
“Chicago audiences can attend the U.S. premiere of Good on October 29, before its nationwide rollout in January 2009. Attending the premiere will be director Vicente Amorim and its co-stars Viggo Mortensen and Jason Isaacs. Mortensen will receive a Career Achievement Award from the CIFF at the screening. Good shows at 7 p.m. at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph. Tickets are $35 (main floor) and $40 (balcony) for non-members of Cinema/Chicago.”
The trailer :
–
The Beachwood Tip Line: Good, like Gary Busey.
Posted on October 28, 2008