By Steve Rhodes

As promised:
1. “Gary Sinise fumes,” Robert K. Elder writes in the Tribune.
“As we talk and tour the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in the South Loop, Sinise’s gravel-and-coffee-grounds growl picks up momentum and passion. At one point, he’s hard to interrupt to ask a question as his voice succumbs to infuriated frustration. Especially when talking about director Brian De Palma.
“Listen: He was out to get the troops, to depict them as child rapists. That’s the truth he wanted to tell. That’s one particular, horrible episode that happened by, clearly, some criminals who happen to be in the American military’.”
Okay . . .
“Sinise, who made a documentary for Fox News about his time in Iraq, was particularly infuriated by De Palma’s Redacted, an award-winning but divisive drama about soldiers who raped a young Iraqi girl.
“‘There are 150,000 people serving honorably, but Brian De Palma didn’t care to show those stories,’ Sinise says.
“His venom catches me off guard, not only because De Palma directed Sinise in both Mission to Mars and Snake Eyes, but also because Sinise says he never saw Redacted.”
Every film critic in the nation should pledge right now to rip Sinise’s next movie without seeing it.

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Posted on March 10, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

I’m still a little funky but I think I can string together a few coherent sentences.
First, from an interesting post from Nathan Richardson, the CEO of ContentNext Media, which owns paidContent.org, called “How Silicon Valley Can Help Save Newspapers:”

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Posted on March 9, 2009

By Natasha Julius

We’ll be watching, even if there is an hour less to watch this week.
Market Update
Following President Obama’s lead, we have decided to rename this segment “Change Watch.” By the way, the president might want to check his own portfolio, because Change seems to have been somewhat overvalued and Hope is positively in the shitter.

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Posted on March 7, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

No Papers column again today. The bug has turned lethal. I want Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” played at my funeral.
FRIDAY FERDY FILM FRENZY
Take an immature, completely self-absorbed, wannabe rock musician. Put him with a geeky, self-absorbed, wannabe novelist. Throw in a cute, wannabe performance artist who has just broken up with the rock musician poseur to take up with a self-styled guru journalist, and shake with a lot of jealousy. What do you get? One of the funniest movies about hipster and media culture to hit screens in a long time. is absolutely, absurdly hilarious!
Trailer

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Posted on March 6, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

No Papers column today; I’ve got some sort of bug that has me all mumbletypeg. So I’m going to rest up because I’ll be at the Billy Goat tonight with Michael Miner at the Chicago Headline Club’s Burger Night event. Please note the event runs from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., not 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. as I wrote earlier this week. It’s informal – we’ll take questions for awhile and then, I think, just sort of mill around.
FERDY FILM FRENZY
Over at Ferdy on Films, our very own Marilyn Ferdinand has begun her coverage of the first CIMMfest: The Chicago Movies & Music Festival, which runs today through Sunday. Her prefestival coverage is here, along with her first review, of Martino Unstrung.

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Posted on March 5, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

Part two on the Chicago Journalism Town Hall is in.
The Quigley Factor
How he slipped in. What it means..
Straw Stroger
“Last Wednesday was a typical day in the campaign to fill Rahm Emanuel’s vacant Fifth Congressional seat: I got mailings from three candidates blasting Cook County Board president Todd Stroger,” Ben Joravsky writes.
“From the amount of bile spewed against him, you’d think Stroger was the most powerful and incorrigible figure in local politics.
“He’s not even close. Offhand I can think of more than 30 other local politicians with more clout than Stroger, including three mere aldermen – Ed Burke, Richard Mell, and Fritchey’s uncle-in-law Bill Banks. Stroger’s not even the big man on the county board – that role falls to commissioner John Daley.”

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Posted on March 4, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

I didn’t get a chance to write about the race to replace Rahm Emanuel in the 5th District as much as I would have liked to, nor to really research the primary candidates as much as I would have liked. But I have a pretty decent idea of who I would vote for if I lived in the district: Tom Geoghegan.

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Posted on March 3, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

PROGRAMMING NOTE 10:51 A.M.: I don’t know if I’m going to get a Papers column out today, I’m just swamped. In the meantime, though, here are some other new Beachwood offerings that kick a lot of butt.
* Bin Dive’s Five Favorite Cover Songs. As determined by our very own Scott Buckner.
He sets his piece up this way:
“The 1960s was especially littered with the corpses of gone-nowhere originals like The Olympics’ ‘Good Lovin” or The Top Notes’ ‘Twist and Shout’ being turned into monster chart-toppers by bands like The Young Rascals, The Isley Brothers and The Beatles. Or if you were Carl Perkins, you were waking up pretty much every other weekend to find out someone was scabbing your rockabilly songs like Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Summertime Blues’ into records that would eclipse your own.
“On the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine Tennessee Ernie Ford going to bed every night praying ABBA might figure out some way to turn ‘Sixteen Tons’ into the next ‘Dancing Queen.”

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Posted on March 2, 2009

By Natasha Julius

We sleep all week just to make sure we’ve got fresh eyes come Saturday.
Market Update
Hey, not all the news is bad these days; Losing Shirts posted soaring profits this week and analysts predict a possible boom in the Pot to Piss In sector.

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Posted on February 28, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

A response to Eric Zorn’s recent criticisms of yours truly:
ZORN: Perpetually seething self-styled visionary Steve Rhodes has weighed in again at his nearly ad-free site to crow about how mainstream folks just don’t get it like he does:

Limiting access to your product is madness. Thanks to the Internet, the Tribune now has more readers than it’s ever had in its history. And the ability to know something about those readers to tell advertisers, to tailor editorial content, to create community, to interact, and to sell services and products to is virtually unlimited . . . reporting should never have a price tag put on it – not in a democracy. There are many other revenue streams to tap; just look around. [People should not be] eager to declare Internet advertising dead without having a clue about Internet advertising, which is only in its infancy and slowed only by the recession and stupidity, not because of ineffectiveness or lack of revenue-generation.

REPLY: 1. My business model has nothing to do with monetizing Beachwood Reporter. I rarely try to sell ads. I don’t see a general interest news site that would depend on local ad markets to be sustainable; I never have and from the start that hasn’t been my model. So Zorn’s childish swipe is entirely misplaced.
2. Zorn might have noticed that I’m hardly the only one who doesn’t think mainstream folks get it. Zorn might stroll over to the Tribune’s own digital operation and he’ll find far more people who agree with me than him.

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Posted on February 26, 2009