THE PIANO Given how sexy and volatile it is, it’s no surprise that The Piano is a hit. It’s also no surprise, given the strong-arm tactics of the distributor and the hype of some reviewers, that a certain critical backlash is already setting in, as evidenced by a lucid and considered dissent by Stuart Klawans in the Nation and a rather lazy dismissal by Stanley Kauffmann in the New Republic. People like myself who are passionate fans of Jane Campion’s previous work may be somewhat churlish that many other people are finding their way to her work only after it has become juiced up, simplified, and mainstreamed–like the people who bypassed the dreamy finesse of Eraserhead on their way to the relative crudeness of Blue Velvet....

She remembers the time and the day with utter clarity. It was exactly 7 PM last October 29, a Sunday evening. Julie A. was sitting in the living room of her modest apartment in the Austin neighborhood, staring at the television set and holding $40 worth of lottery tickets in her hand. The drawings had just taken place on Channel Nine, and Julie once again had not won a thing....

It’s one sign of just how good and lively this international assortment is that arguably the weakest item in the bunch, John Lasseter and William Reeves’s Tin Toy, won the last Academy Award for best animation–and that one isn’t too bad either. My own favorites: Tony Collingwood’s metaphysical fantasy from England, Rarg, which plays with conceits worthy of Borges and Calvino; Susan Young and Mike Smith’s tropical extravaganza Umbabarauma, which gives The Three Caballeros a decent run for its money; and a Soviet tribute to the 60th anniversary of Mickey Mouse by Mikhail Tumelya and Alexander Petrov called The Marathon....

Has there ever been a human raised entirely by (other) animals? We are particularly interested in wolves here a la Kipling. –Hanna L. and J.P., New York Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It wouldn’t surprise me. One look at Axl Rose and you know the guy wasn’t raised by Ward and June Cleaver. But nobody knows for sure. The idea definitely stirs the imagination–it’s inspired stories ranging from Romulus and Remus to Tarzan of the Apes....

Whenever Toots Hibbert opens his yap, were instantly reminded that reggae did not just spring full-grown from the damp Jamaican soil, but rather evolved slowly as Jamaican musicians, already full of instinctive Afro-Caribbean rhythmic feel, took additional sustenance from American R & B beamed out at night from high-powered radio stations in New Orleans, Miami, and Memphis during the 50s and 60s. Toots, who surely ranks with Marley as one of the original reggae greats, reveals the influence of Memphis soul (especially Otis Redding) more explicitly than most of his brethren–a debt acknowledged on his most recent LP, Toots in Memphis....

Art Expo’s Mediocre Year: Is the Management to Blame? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Some of the major Chicago dealers at Art Expo, including Lori Kaufman of Hokin-Kaufmann Gallery and Richard Gray of Richard Cray Gallery, declined comment about the success of this year’s Art Expo or their feelings about its management but said they had conveyed their concerns to fair officials. Even the organizers concede that this year’s expo fell short of expectations....

A sweltering Monday night and it’s standing room only at the Women and Children First bookstore on North Clark. Several hundred Naomi Wolf fans–mostly women, mostly (like Wolfe) in their twenties–are wedged in shoulder to shoulder, sweating good-naturedly while they wait to hear from the beauty who has taken on the beauty industry. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But this is her audience. She lifts the microphone off its stand and takes them in hand: “We are in the midst of a backlash which is using a newly rigid and unnatural beauty ideology as a politcal weapon against women’s advancement,” she says....

Friday 17 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Lipizzan stallions were trained at the Spanish Riding School of Vienna as early as the mid-1600s. The school has continued to train Lipizzans ever since, and the horses, once famous for their battle maneuvers, are now known for their precise, highly controlled dressage–moves developed from those maneuvers. The Herrmann Royal Lipizzan Stallions of Vienna are performing four times this weekend as a benefit for the Hooved Animal Humane Society in Woodstock, Illinois....

CHAMBER MUSIC Possibly this absurdist piece just doesn’t appeal to my sensibilities. Absurdist theater generally leaves me pretty cold; I tend to feel that playwrights who create such works spend more energy bandying about clever theatrical non sequiturs than using those non sequiturs to illuminate any end. Certainly that was my response to Chamber Music. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The proceedings, of course, are a complete shambles, as each tends to her own personal mania or they all bicker among themselves....

When a friend told Gregory Turner he looked like Popeye, it wasn’t because he was healthy. Heroin injections had distorted his arms until they looked like a cartoon character’s. Two years ago Turner, now 42, had nothing left. His marriage was among the sacrifices to his habit. “My ex-wife and I are good friends,” Turner said. “I call her all the time, but she is still leery of me because I was the devil....

CLOSER THAN EVER So Closer Than Ever is about relationships for today. Here’s a man who asks his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, “You Want to Be My Friend?” (She does not.) Here’s a single woman venting her sexual repression by satirically considering the mating habits of “The Bear, the Tiger, the Hamster, and the Mole.” Here’s a couple singing “Another Wedding Song” as they reflect on their previous marriages. Here’s “One of the Good Guys” reflecting on a romantic fling he once sacrificed in order to stay faithful to his wife....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In his October 22 “Critic’s Choice” review of the APT production of The Taming of the Shrew, Jack Helbig notes the “patriarchal bias that mars this comedy for modern audiences” as well as the blatant anti-Semitism of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, neither of which APT was able to find “a way around” in their otherwise excellent stagings....

One of the burningest dance bands in town right now, the Uppers International Highlife Band plays highlife, a bright, jazzy Ghanaian style that has established itself as one of the world’s great dance musics. The Uppers, as they’re locally known, really hit the club circuit only last year, after two years of mostly private performances–weddings, etc–for people in Chicago’s Ghanaian community. So although they’re Chicago-based, the Uppers can make quite a strong claim to “authenticity,” if you care–some of the guys, including vocalist Dan Davies, are African-born....

I WANT SOMEONE TO EAT CHEESE WITH Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This is the kind of opening line that makes me groan–usually comedians or monologuists think they’re being clever to point out in such a false, self-deprecating manner that their show is wacky, unconventional, and uncategorizable. But Garlin is disarmingly sincere in this moment, and wholly unimpressed with himself or his status as artist....

The blues of guitarist Albert King shines with a keening, metallic glint. He builds solos like a welder, carefully measuring each phrase for its shading and intensity, then laying another atop or alongside it, often with unexpected drops and variations in tone and timbre, all the while working toward the inevitable climax. He dangles the idea of that climax tantalizingly in front of you as the solo snakes its way through various false starts and side trips, until finally he decides he’s said what he has to say and concludes abruptly, topping everything off with a signature flourish....

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN Pegasus Players Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Valentin, a Marxist rebel fighting an underground war against Argentina’s right-wing military regime, has been confined to a cell occupied by Molina, a gay “pervert” imprisoned for “corruption of minors.” The two men could not seem more opposite (especially in the eyes of the sexually rigid Catholic culture in which the story is set)....

LOVE LETTERS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » An epistolary play, Love Letters celebrates the ritual, the fantasy, the dignity, the intimacy, the sensual pleasure of old-fashioned longhand letter writing, while at the same time recording the lives of a pair of correspondents. It charts the fate of two old-money, eastern-seaboard rich kids–Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner–from a childhood birthday party in 1937, through boarding school and college, to marriage, middle age, and a death 50 years later, tracing their on-again, off-again romance; their process of growing apart and growing together and ultimately becoming themselves....

As the pianist in Johnny Griffin’s quartet, Michael Weiss has never failed to impress, exhibiting a powerful technique, a sure familiarity with music written before he was born, and an ability to interpolate musical quotations that almost matches that of his boss. But last year, Weiss stayed in town to lead a trio on his own; the results were revealing–and spectacular. The different setting and repertoire produced a more expansive player, a more graceful melodist: a more developed musical persona....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Judge Don West found Melissa Thurston in contempt in April when she came to municipal court in Harrison, Arkansas, to answer a charge of failing to return video movies but arrived wearing no bra under her sweater. West later admitted that he could not see skin through the sweater but said that her breasts were “obviously showing....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » T. Milton Street, assistant budget director of the Philadelphia Traffic Court, refused in November to pay the $1,967 in fines for moving vehicle violations he has accumulated. Said Street, “Why should I pay? They [the traffic court] violate people’s rights every day.” Officials for a state food-inspection service in West Germany ruled last July that “edible ladies’ underwear” sold in pornography stores was “unfit for human consumption....