By Steve Rhodes
1. Replacing the Olympic Village. Funny ideas for a sad situation.
2. Call 911. Reading With Scissors is on fire.
3. “Film history is littered with the carcasses of unfinished films, scraps of film tests, legendary ideas that never got off the ground,” our very own Marilyn Ferdinand writes in her latest installment of the city’s best Chicago International Film Festival coverage.
“Among them, the aborted Inferno, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s attempt at trying to make a film in the style of the Nouvelle Vague, is one of the more notorious. Clouzot, scorned by the auteurs of the French New Wave for his tightly scripted and controlled film style, immersed himself in the pop/op culture of the 1960s. He engaged France’s biggest star at the time, Romy Schneider, to play Odette, the lead character, and Hollywood backers gave him a blank check to create this internalized tale of jealousy. He compiled highly detailed storyboards and started an elaborate series of optical tests in preparation for this half color/half black-and-white film. He began principal shooting in the resort town of Garabit in 1964. The film floundered, and Clouzot abandoned it after he suffered a heart attack during shooting.”
4. Chris Chelios is so old . . .
5. Before Fenger, there was Collins.
“The decision to close Collins and move those students to Little Village guaranteed violence on a number of different levels,” Tracy Jake Siska writes on his Chicago Justice Project blog. “Local officials should have taken this into account before that decision had been made. This is what is meant by institutional violence, decisions being made at the highest levels without taking into account the repercussions of their decisions. Much of this violence would never have taken place had Collins not been closed and forced those students into a situation ripe for gang and racial violence. Foresight is not a mysterious power. It can flow from a process that includes the examination of the long-term effects of their decisions.”
6. Seems like every Illinois pol who runs for office has to also run from ties that got them in a position to . . . run for office.
7. Pay Up, Seniors. There’s no such thing as a free CTA ride.
8. WWJD? Not endorse Stroger, that’s for sure.
9. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are reportedly teaming up to bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics. Yikes, that will be hard to beat.
*
Though rumor has it Barack Obama has already been awarded the 2020 Summer Olympics. Not Chicago, just Obama. He’s that great.
10. Waiver wire hotties and the prospects for Kirk Hinrich. In Fantasy Fix.
11. Mastodon To Film Chicago Show For Live DVD/CD Release.
12. Birds Invade Bridgeport.
13. Mmm, Google . . .
–
The Beachwood Tip Line: Googly.
Posted on October 14, 2009