Working Classical

Andreas Kapsalis and Goran Ivanovic.

A duo specializing in the tradition of guitar performance will grace Southern Illinois this weekend.

A pair of Windy City acoustic instrumental musicians, Andreas Kapsalis and Goran Ivanovic, bring their cocktail of different genres to the Rustle Hill Winery in Cobden on Friday, March 12. The pair is also slated to play Sunday, March 13 at Walker's Bluff near Carterville.

According to the duo's official website, the pair's sets include a combination of modern, classical, worldbeat, and jazz, among others.

Kapsalis plays in a steel-string ten-finger tapping guitar style, while Ivanovic leans more toward the nylon-string classical version of the instrument.

Last year the two released an album, Guitar Duo.

Kapsalis told Modern Guitar magazine that even though he and Ivanovic come from different backgrounds, they are able to jibe harmoniously in their music.

"There's an element, especially in the compositional vibe of the duo, which is very cinematic in nature," Kapsalis told the magazine. "There's a strong element of storytelling to what we do."

Ivanovic agreed, adding: "It's important for us to try and describe the music in the best possible way before the show. When people read that I play Balkan or classical music, they get one mental picture. When they see the saxophone on the cover of the CD, they associate that with jazz, so we try and call ourselves Baltic-classical-acoustic-jazz, and that tends to sum things up."

For more about Kapsalis and Ivanovic, log on to <http://www.AkgiDuo.com>...

There's a Riot Going On

In 1970, SIU was the site of one of the largest Vietnam War riots in the nation. A few months later, a stunning ninety-minute shootout took place between Carbondale police and a local chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Two panel discussions will explore each of these explosive events in detail.

The first, The 1970 Student Rebellion, will take place Wednesday, March 24 at 7 p.m. in SIU's Lawson Hall Room 171. Panelists will include Brian Clardy, Georgeann Hartzog, Ray Lenzi, Robbie Lieberman, and Hugh Muldoon, some of whom were involved in the peaceful protests that quickly exploded into mass violence.

The second discussion, Black Power in Southern Illinois, takes place Thursday, March 25 at 7 p.m. in SIU's Lawson Hall Room 171. SIU professor Angela Aguayo and authors Jeffrey Haas and Jakobi Williams will join the panel-- the latter two have written books about Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Rare historical video and photos from 1970 will augment the discussions.

The definitive versions of these local stories are told in H.B. Koplowitz's classic book, Carbondale After Dark, while another excellent book about those times in Carbondale is Allan H. Keith's Days of Dissent. The Cliffs Notes version:

Large, edgy demonstrations broke out at SIU in May 1970 after the Kent State Massacre, where National Guard troops opened fire on peaceful Vietnam War protesters in Ohio, killing four unarmed persons. When the tense atmosphere in Carbondale ripped open, several days of riots, hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, martial law, beatings, and mass arrests resulted. Koplowitz quotes then State's Attorney Richard Richman describing the situation as "a fascist police state brought on by students who act like a bunch of Hitler youth, and the over-reaction from police officers."

A Black Panther Party chapter was also active in Carbondale, headquartered at 401 North Washington Street. On November 12, police stopped a van; a man in the vehicle shot an officer then ran toward the Northeast side of town. Shortly thereafter, a man wounded a police officer near the Black Panther Community Center. Two men were apprehended running from the Panther headquarters. "Then," Koplowitz writes, "shots were fired from inside the house, and all hell broke loose."

Koplowitz's accounts are riveting. Pick up Carbondale After Dark at all Carbondale bookstores and many other retail establishments, and attend the discussions for additional perspectives about SIU's radical heritage...

Word Up

Award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers has a new book, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (Nation Books, 320 pages, hardcover, $26.95). The Shawnee Group Sierra Club will sponsor a lecture by Biggers Saturday, March 6 at 7 p.m. at the Mississippi Flyway. Biggers's talk is free and open to the public, which is welcome to come early and dine before or during the discussion.

Biggers, who comes from a family of Southern Illinois coal miners, penned an excellent essay in the recent edition of Springhouse, the regional history and literary journal. In it, Biggers assails the violent stereotypes with which Southern Illinoisans are often saddled because of the seemingly neverending string of outlaw tales the region produces (Charlie Birger, the Shelton Brothers gang, Charlie Harris, Herrin's deadly coal-mining strikes, Carbondale's Vietnam War riots).

Biggers sees far more sinister crimes in Little Egypt-- those perpetrated against the entire population, and its environment, by coal-mining operations.

Certainly, it's a complicated knot. Coal-mining jobs-- especially after valiant labor-rights campaigns-- brought the first real economic prosperity to Little Egypt. As writer/photographer Lee Buchsbaum documented in these pages some years ago, due to the living standards directly and indirectly raised by coal, mining became not so much a profession as an identity, a way of life-- to this day, many people aspire to work in the mines. They celebrate mining at the Old King Coal Festival. Miners often go in on their days off just to enjoy the camaraderie and because they love what they do, and out of gratitude for what mining has done for their families. Plus, in an area with few living-wage jobs, mining is among the few professions that afford people the opportunity to live here.

Biggers, however, sees a Faustian bargain. Mining companies have often brutally or at least cynically exploited their workers as well as the environment. Burning coal produces dirty power that poisons the air (causing asthma, among other conditions) and water (mercury from coal exhaust has fallen into lakes and streams, rendering fish dangerous to eat in all but small quantities, especially for children and pregnant women). Today's largely mechanized strip-mining uses explosives and bulldozers in lieu of miners, and leaves the land devastated, including Biggers's ancestral homestead in Eagle Creek, which his family settled in 1805.

The work itself is dangerous, leading to hundreds of thousands of work-related deaths, injuries, and diseases like blacklung. (Biggers tells Nightlife that his own grandfather survived a mine explosion and cave-in, and now suffers from blacklung).

Besides, Biggers notes, the coal is actually owned by outside interests, so the overwhelming majority of Southern Illinois's coal wealth enriches people who live nowhere near this region.

After adding up all the adverse effects of mining, Biggers thinks it's time for the region to transition to something else.

Jeff Biggers.

It's really no longer a matter of choice. "All coal-mining communities know that for the first time in twenty-five years, utilities' coal stockpiles have increased during the summer, absentee coal companies are cutting jobs and idling higher-cost mines to keep their stockholders happy in a period of slumping demand, and recent U.S. Geological Survey estimates place peak coal production as early as 2020," Biggers says.

Biggers's solution is not simply to stop mining-- which he admits isn't realistic-- but to replace it with government-jumpstarted green industries.

"Coal-mining, which provides forty-five percent of our electricity nationally, will not end tomorrow," Biggers says. "Every coal miner deserves a right to a sustainable livelihood; given the legacy of our coal miners, I also believe no coal miner should be displaced from his or her job until we develop clean-energy alternatives. This means that coalfield residents, like all Americans, deserve a road map for a feasible transition to clean-energy jobs--including a Coal Miner's G.I. Bill for retraining and a massive reinvestment in sustainable economic development in coalfield communities-- before we reach a point of no return....

"And today, instead of making false promises of more boom-bust jobs in a heavily mechanized industry... why aren't politicians recognizing the huge boom in the clean-energy market and helping coalfield communities get their fair share of the clean-energy jobs, and the investment funds? Why aren't they advocating for a G.I. Bill for coal miners and former coal miners, to get education and retraining, and help launch the weatherization programs with electricians, plumbers, construction workers, or massive reforestation programs with the same bulldozer drivers? Why aren't we setting up a manufacturing base to build solar panels and wind turbines-- not just use them?.... The time has come for a transition to clean-energy jobs."

Biggers places little stock in possibilities provided by coal-gasification and carbon-sequestration projects like FutureGen. Mechanization means few jobs, peak coal means a dwindling supply, and the mining itself is too bad for the environment.

"And Southern Illinois, instead of being blindsided by so-called clean-coal technology-- a marketing slogan first used in Chicago in the 1890s, and trotted out every decade or so-- should be in the forefront of this just transition," Biggers says.

All that said, people in this region can quickly grow defensive toward any suggestions that might further shrink mining opportunities when they provide in many cases the only option for living-wage work. So how has Biggers's family and local friends received the book?

"Local family support has been wonderful," he says. "I think folks really appreciate my nearly ten years of research in showing the overlooked contributions of rural folks and our woodland culture in Southern Illinois. I feel my book doesn't simply look at the dark side of the coal industry, but the bright side of our wonderful Southern Illinois history and heritage, which I feel has been often overlooked, and the resiliency of our ancestors and present-day citizens."

For more information about Biggers and Reckoning at Eagle Creek, visit <http://www.JeffBiggers.com>.

Back, for a moment, to Springhouse: This time out editor Gary DeNeal published a memorial to Ben Brinkley, as well as several poems (showing the source of sons Hugh and Brian DeNeal's interest in verse, they of the Woodbox Gang). Physician Tom Martin pays tribute to some amazingly rugged old local men who eschew modern medicine and its cleanliness standards as luxuries for the weak. The new issue also features some great soup recipes by Dixie Terry, an essay about the value of time by Rebel Without Applause, and a letter to the editor from the editor of Nightlife.

Read excerpts from Springhouse at <http://www.SpringhouseMagazine.com>.

But that's not all-- winter 2010 has proven a productive time for area authors.

Carl Rexroad, who owns the Bookworm with his wife Kelly, also notes that SIU Press has reissued two local classics by John W. Allen (Legends and Lore of Southern Illinois and It Happened in Southern Illinois), plus a brand-new tome of local interest: Giant City State Park and the Civilian Conservation Corps: A History in Words and Pictures by Kay Rippelmeyer (232 pages; cloth, $34.95; paperback, $19.95). Rippelmeyer used to pen a regular Nightlife column about local nature and history. Look for more information in coming issues.

And purchase all of the above, including Reckoning at Eagle Creek, at the Bookworm in Carbondale...

War

The SIU Student Programming Council will hold a battle of the bands Thursday, April 15 in the Student Center Ballrooms. Applications for musicians who'd like to participate are due Monday, March 22 at 4:30 p.m. in the SPC offices on the third floor of the SIU Student Center. For more information, call SPC at (618) 536-3393 or visit <http://www.SPC4Fun.com>...

A battle of the bands will take place Fourth of July weekend at the A.C. Brase Grandstand at the Arena Park in Cape Girardeau. The entry fee is $100, and the winner takes home a $5,000 prize.

The contest is open only to fifty musical acts, and the registration deadline is March 15.

For more information, email <ZiggyWizard89@yahoo.com>.

TV Eye

Herrin residents and natives who would like to remember the city for reasons other than what Paul Angle documented in his classic Bloody Williamson: A Chapter in American Lawlessness now have a two-DVD video documentary that tells a far more positive story.

In 1957 the Herrin Tigers basketball team won the Illinois state championship. Local filmmaker Richard Kuenneke and historian Gordon Pruett created a two-part documentary, A Magical Season: The 1957 Herrin Tigers. Part I consists of a nineteen-minute piece about the season, while Part II synchronizes Chet Townsend's play-by-play WJPF radio broadcast of the championship game with video. Starting players Richard Box and Ivan Jefferson also provide commentary.

Kuenneke and Pruett are reissuing A History of Herrin, Illinois, originally issued on VHS as part of the Herrin centennial in 2000, as part of A Magical Season.

Buy the disc in local stores or through the Herrin Chamber of Commerce for $24.95 at <http://www.HerrinIllinois.com> or (618) 942-5163...

who: John A. Logan College Humanities Department

what: Great Falls (live theater)

where: John A. Logan College O'Neil Auditorium

when: Friday and Saturday, March 5 and 6

Great Falls

by Jennifer "Jay" Bull

Fans of drama will be delighted with John A. Logan's production of the play Great Falls on Friday, March 5 and Saturday, March 6 at 7 p.m. in O'Neil Auditorium. Great Falls, Tony-nominated playwright Lee Blessing's latest work, premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky in 2008, where John A. Logan professor Mike Seagle saw it for the first time.

"We are privileged every year-- another professor here and I-- to spend our travel money on that new-play festival, which is really the most influential play festival in the United States," Seagle, who will direct the Logan production, told Nightlife. "It's only three-and-a-half hours from here. Anytime we go, we are always on the hunt for something we might be able to do here."

Since its beginning in 1976 the Actors Theatre in Louisville has produced more than four-hundred Humana Festival plays from more than two-hundred playwrights. Three of the Humana Festival plays have won the Pulitzer Prize, including The Gin Game by D.L. Coburn, Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley, and Dinner with Friends by Donald Margulies. Logan has brought a few of these plays to Southern Illinois, including Betty the Yeti and Hazzard County.

"I think it is fun for the local audience if they care at all to find out what's going in other parts of the world, what's sort of cutting edge," Seagle said of bringing Humana plays to the Logan stage in Southern Illinois.

"This is a two-person show, so it really felt like that would provide a unique challenge for our actors here," Seagle said. "What I've ended up with is actually an actor who has ten-plus years in L.A. as experience. He is one of our alumni. Then I have a young actress, who, this is her second show. Pretty broad spectrum there."

This drama follows a man and his stepdaughter on a road trip. The man is trying to keep his connection with his stepdaughter, even though her mother is divorcing him. Throughout the play, darker and darker secrets emerge as they try to salvage something from their relationship.

Seagle mentioned that this play is a dark drama that raises serious issues.

"I think dramatic acting is the most challenging type of acting that there is, and I like to provide those challenges for the actors," Seagle said.

The two leads are played by James Roberts and Rachelle Adams. Roberts, originally from Anna, is a veteran stage and screen actor who recently returned to the area.

"After I graduated from film school at SIU, I moved out to L.A. and worked in the entertainment industry for ten years," Roberts said. "It was an interesting, rewarding experience. I got to work with people like Billy Bob Thornton, Penny Marshall, and Francis Ford Coppola. I still love acting, and since I moved back eight months ago, I've been in three different plays at the Stage Company in Carbondale."

The character of the stepfather really drew Roberts to the play.

"I found my role very interesting," Roberts said. "I'm playing kind of a dark character, and it's the type of part I can really sink my teeth into."

This veteran actor is paired with a relative newcomer. Rachelle Adams, a music student at John A. Logan, has been in one play previous to Great Falls.

"The director asked me to audition, and I really didn't expect to get the part, but I'm glad I did," Adams said. "I really love the script. The play deals with controversial issues and things that need to be talked about. It's pretty dark at times, but there's comedy in it, too. I have some awesome funny lines."

In case the use of the word "dark" didn't tip off audiences, it should be mentioned that this play is not suitable for those younger than seventeen. Tickets are $8 for general admission and $5 for students. For more information or to order advance tickets, call the Office of Student Activities and Cultural Events at Logan at (618) 985-2828 or (618) 457-7676 ext. 8287.

> opening this week in Carbondale (Friday unless otherwise noted).
< leaving Carbondale this Friday.

by Bryan Miller unless otherwise credited.

Avatar (PG-13, ****): Action maestro James Cameron (Terminator I and II, Aliens, True Lies, and, um, Titanic) actually manages to live up to the hype (mostly, anyway) with his $300 million sci-fi extravaganza, which is sufficiently visually stunning to mitigate the clunky dialogue, two-dimensional characters and mediocre story. A paraplegic marine (Sam Worthington) is given the ability to lead a new life in the body of an alien avatar on a fact-finding mission on the lush planet of Pandora. But after living among the native beings, the Na'vi, he comes to believe that the corporate-army overlords funding his journey are up to no good, and so he must fight against his own people to save the magnificent alien planet. Yes, the 3-D is cool, but only because Cameron employs it as simply one more tool in his considerable arsenal; it's not the showpiece, just a means to an end. That end is creating the most fully realized alien world ever put on the big screen, and that endeavor is a complete success. The environmentalist subtexts are alternately intriguing and overwrought, but ultimately pure spectacle wins the day.

< The Book of Eli (R, *1/2): This visually striking, occasionally exciting post-apocalyptic action flick teeters between awful and awfully entertaining for its first hour and a half before giving way to one an astoundingly stupid twist that renders everything that came before it completely preposterous. Writers and directors the Hughes brothers root themselves firmly in neo-Western territory. Denzel Washington stars as the Man With No Name (a plot point rendered kind of silly by the title) who wanders the sun-blasted earth carrying the last surviving copy of the Bible. He stumbles upon a town run by a nefarious saloon owner (Gary Oldman), who just so happens to want nothing more than a copy of the Bible, which he plans to use to further enslave the local citizenry. Fighting ensues. Oldman is appropriately over-the-top, and an aging Washington is still a surprisingly adept action hero. But too much self-seriousness and unintentional silliness turns the whole thing absurd-- not especially hard to watch, but awfully hard to defend. Mila Kunis is woefully out of place as Washington's new sidekick.

> The Boondock Saints (NR, *1/2): Special tenth-anniversary screening of Troy Duffy's wildly overrated cult hit that allows frat boys to wallow in their pretend Irish heritage. A pair of rosary-fondling hitmen (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) spout scripture while blasting their way through an underworld full of thugs with the help of their wild-eyed pop (Billy Connolly). Meanwhile, a gay police detective (Willem Dafoe) follows their every movie, recreating their crimes in his mind to track them down. The movie's trademark stylized flashback action sequences are moderately exciting, and both Connolly and Dafoe bring a lot of charisma to the screen. Otherwise this is nothing more than one of the more overt and juvenile Tarantino imitations, in the same minor league as the similarly lame Suicide Kings. Screening one day only, Thursday, March 11, which nicely simulates the movie's initial theatrical run.

The Crazies (R, ***): Entertaining remake of George Romero's nifty 1973 pseudo-zombie film about a military mishap that leads to a biological-weapons spill in a small town that causes the infected to become homicidal maniacs. But the real trouble starts when the military shows up to initiate "containment procedures." The town sheriff (Deadwood badass Timothy Olyphant) must lead the survivors (including Radha Mitchell as his wife) out of the chaos. The original was an anti-authoritarian polemic in the wake of Kent State and Vietnam, but the remake has an unsettling whiff of tinfoil-hat Teabagger paranoia. Still, director Breck Eisner does a competent job with the early, creeping horror, and the movie achieves its modest goals.

Crazy Heart (R, ****): Jeff Bridges gives one of the best performances of his career-- and for an actor as talented as Bridges, that's saying something-- in this rough-edged but tender meditation on regret and redemption. Bridges stars as Bad Blake, an aging, hard-luck outlaw-country singer inspired to write again when he strikes up an improbable relationship with a working single mother (Maggie Gyllenhaal). First-time writer/director Scott Cooper shows impressive restraint and patience, grounding the story in realism and refusing to either let his characters off the hook or torment them for easy dramatic effect. The music, by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham, is excellent, and performed wonderfully by Bridges, who does an awful lot of the heavy lifting to make Crazy Heart one of the best movies of 2009. Featuring the always-compelling Robert Duvall, and even a nice turn from Colin Farrell, smartly cast as a smug but mostly well-meaning country superstar.

< Edge of Darkness (R, ***): This quasi-political thriller is based on a lengthy BBC miniseries of the same name, so it's not surprising the film feels like too much story shoehorned into too little time. But the story that's there is compelling enough, with a single police detective (Mel Gibson) untangling a corporate conspiracy to find out why his smart, kind-hearted young daughter was killed. Even at two hours the movie seems rushed and truncated, like a Cliffs Notes version of a better movie, but Gibson is a solid lead and the dastardly plot he uncovers is interesting, if a little elaborate and hysterical.

Shutter Island (R, **1/2): Martin Scorsese goes gothic pulp with this enjoyably hysterical mystery about a pair of detectives (Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo) investigating the disappearance of a woman from an experimental mental hospital located, Alcatraz-style, on a forbidding island. Problem is, all the Scorsese verve the cinema wizard can jam into two-and-a-quarter hours of screen time can't save the film from the insipid twist ending from the Dennis Lehane source novel. Some mesmerizing, hallucinatory imagery and a killer supporting cast (Max von Sydow, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Ted Levine, and Elias Koteas) keep the movie interesting right up until the moment it runs infuriatingly off the rails.

The Wolfman (R, 1/2*): God-awful remake of the classic Universal monster movie about wayward son Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro, here utterly failing to live up to Lon Chaney Jr.), who returns to his family's estate just in time to be cursed and transformed into a bloodthirsty beast by the light of the full moon. This iteration of the character owes less to George Waggner's original (or to other werewolf greats) than to the insipid Van Helsing, proving once more that computer-generated horror does not work. The leaden acting and stilted dialogue don't help, either, although it's hard to imagine what lines even the greatest actor could have uttered that would make up for the intense silliness of the final Oedipal werewolf fight between Lawrence and his father (Anthony Hopkins, who should have learned from Instinct).

Also in or Coming to Local Theaters

> Alice in Wonderland (PG): Tim Burton's reimagining of Lewis Carroll's classic fantasy finds a slightly older Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returning down the rabbit hole to do battle with the evil queen (Helena Bonham Carter). With Burton stalwart Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter as well as Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, and Alan Rickman. In 3D and 2D versions.

> Brooklyn's Finest (R): The increasingly disappointing Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, but then Tears of the Sun, King Arthur, and Shooter) helms this three-pronged cop thriller about an aging officer on the verge of retirement (Richard Gere), an undercover cop tasked with one last play (Don Cheadle), and a young policeman contemplating an inside-job heist to pay his bills (Ethan Hawke). Featuring Wesley Snipes.

Cop Out (R): Kevin Smith directs (but did not write) this part sendup, part homage to buddy-cop movies. In this case the mismatched partners are the fast-talking Tracy Morgan and deadpan straight man Bruce Willis, on the hunt for a stolen baseball card.

Dear John (PG-13): Lasse Hallströ m directs this adaptation of weepy-romance writer Nicholas Sparks's novel about a soldier (Channing Tatum) torn between duty and his newfound love (Amanda Seyfried).

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (PG): Teenager Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) discovers that he is descended from Greek gods and must help avert mythological mayhem in this kid's adventure flick that bears no resemblance at all to anything that rhymes with "Schmary Schmotter." Featuring Steve Coogan, Uma Thurman, Rosario Dawson, and Pierce Brosnan.

Valentine's Day (PG): Star-packed ensemble romantic comedy from the not-so-much-masterminds behind last year's woefully similar He's Just Not That into You. Featuring Anne Hathaway, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, two dudes from both That Seventies Show and Gray's Anatomy, a pair of Alias castmembers, and the werewolf from Twilight.

< When in Rome (PG-13): Cutie Kristen Bell plays a New Yorker improbably unlucky in love who takes some coins from a fountain while vacationing in Italy, magically landing her a series of increasingly inappropriate suitors in this romantic comedy from Daredevil director Mark Steven Johnson. Josh Duhamel, Will Arnett, Dax Shepard, and Jon Heder are the boys chasing after her. Also featuring Anjelica Huston.