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TINY TOT MYSTIC The evening consists of three monologues, delivered by three unrelated characters. The first, “North Shore Girl Temporary Baffled,” features a woman who has lost her ability to smile. Joni smiled for 32 years and complimented people on this and that because it was the nice thing to do. Then a conjunction of influences–a philosophy class and the funeral of a friend’s mother–robs Joni of her smile. Soon, however, Joni discovers that her friends are trying not to smile so much either....

Friday 6 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Monday 9 When German artist Gunther Forg was in Chicago two years ago to exhibit an installation of photographs at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society, he became enchanted by a small courtyard off the university’s divinity school. It was secluded, dark, and covered with ivy. When he got back to his native country, Forg began working on an installation inspired by the little courtyard....

THE FISHER KING Terry Gilliam’s elephantine yet breezy The Fisher King is a gripping new-age extravaganza, visually splendid and adroitly paced. But some gross conceptual cheating–presumably the fallout of commercial ambitions–makes the film a little hard to swallow. Gilliam’s fifth feature (he also directed Jabberwocky, Time Bandits, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) revels in duality–everything comes in twos–so it’s little wonder it indulges in both duplicity and outright doublethink; the film is also littered with internal “rhymes,” both significant and gratuitous....

JU DOU With Gong Li, Li Baotian, Li Wei, Zhang Yi, and Zheng Jian. The problem with such comparisons is that they obscure considerably more than they clarify, by boiling down a story to what we already know and discarding or minimizing the rest. To give some idea of what is being discarded and minimized, a fairly detailed synopsis of Ju Dou is necessary (readers who’d prefer to see the film before hearing the whole story are invited to take their leave at any point)....

In the world created by Nancy Bardawil and Matthew Owens the word “colostomize” comes up more often than usual. It’s a world of blood, bile, and feces, where cadavers don’t just walk the earth but talk, philosophize, and carry a tune; where death is king, and life is of little consequence. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Homicide, suicide, patricide, spermicide–if it has to do with induced death, it falls within the show’s purview....

Though writer-director Yim Ho (Homecoming) disowned this film after producer Tsui Hark took over the direction, it is still one of the most interesting and original Hong Kong pictures I’ve seen. Adapted from two different novels called King of Chess, by Chung Ah Shing and Cheung Hay Kwok, the story alternates between a rather bitter satire of capitalism centered on the Taipei TV industry and an equally critical look at the Cultural Revolution on the mainland many years earlier....

In the battle against negligent landlords, west-side resident Mary Johnson won a small victory last month when a Cook County judge sent the owner of a building in her neighborhood to jail. “When we moved here from Austin back in 1979 this was a beautiful neighborhood,” says Johnson. “People took care of their property and watched out for their kids. I didn’t have any troubles with moving here. I particularly loved the way the trees hung over the street, keeping things cool in the summertime....

From Channel Five–troubling revelations. From Oak Park–charges of treachery. “NBC and the BGA took a potentially good public service story and made it a farce,” a village publicist writes us. Publicist Karen Kelly declares, “But the sleaziest part was the way the pictures for the segment were acquired.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Lacking a polio epidemic to make its expose truly boffo, Channel Five spoke in dire generalities of “germs” spreading in underchlorinated water and “ruining any swimmer’s summer fun....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As a long-time John Lennon fan, I went to see the Temporary Theater Company’s version of The Lennon Play: In His Own Write and could not see the sense in anything said by ANTHONY ADLER [August 25]. Yes, I agree the cast and crew made it autobiographical, but what else would anyone familiar with Lennon think after he once said many times, “I write about me”?...

Ray Hanania on the Outside Hanania sued the paper for $2 million and filed a union grievance. The suit was thrown out of court, and the grievance ended in one of those secret settlements that each side promises the other to describe as “amicable” until hell freezes over. Hanania turned consultant and launched the Urban Strategies Group, a big name for a one-man shop above Daley Plaza. An overnight celebrity, Santos didn’t look back; in the cruelest send-up of last April’s Gridiron show, the Tribune’s Jessica Seigel warbled, “Don’t cry for me, Hanania....

SAM I AM The question comes from Samuel Beckett’s Molloy, in a savage monologue about the trappings and fears of love and intimacy. It might be a metaphor, but it’s probably not: What is true love? Can we find it where everything is so frail and frightening, where pain is imminent and trust absolutely required? And if it is true love, why is it so dirty? Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Karen Csigas’s room at Lafayette School in Hammond, Indiana, resembles kindergartens everywhere. It contains small wooden desks and tables, cardboard letters hung from the ceiling, a piano, red-and-green blocks, and pictures of triangles and squares. A playhouse with a stove and refrigerator occupies one corner. A honeycomb of cubbyholes holding kids’ gear and drawings and papers occupies one wall. Off to one side is a low-standing sink, and behind that a bathroom....

Frank Capra’s very atypical drama about an American missionary (Barbara Stanwyck) being taken prisoner by a Chinese warlord (Nils Asther) is not only his masterpiece, but one of the great love stories to come out of Hollywood in the 30s–subtle, delicate, moody, mystical, and passionate. Joseph Walker shot it through filters and with textured shadows that suggest Sternberg; Edward Paramore wrote the script, adapted from a story by Grace Zaring Stone....

Enclosed for your enjoyment is a bottle of “Doctor Bronner’s 18-in-1 Pure Castile Soap,” which you can get at any health food store. The soap is great, but you’ll note the label is crammed with weird religious ravings. What’s the poop, Scoop? Is Doctor B. really a “master chemist and Essene rabbi”? What’s the story behind his company, All-One-God-Faith, Inc.? And–this one is urgent, Cece–how about the unusual birth control method Dr....

How come all the bad ozone that shows up during pollution alerts doesn’t float up to replenish the good ozone that’s disappearing from the ozone layer? Where does the bad ozone go? If we sawed off LA and floated it down to the antarctic would we solve all our problems? Conversely, during the next ozone alert, could we break into a warehouse full of old chlorofluorocarbon-laden hairspray and clear the air?...

In the name Timeless All-Stars, the “Timeless” part refers to the Dutch record label that originally brought this sextet together; the “All-Stars” themselves are vibist Bobby Hutcherson, tenor saxist Harold Land, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Buster Williams, and drummer Billy Higgins, and you won’t get me to quibble over their best-of-the-best designation. Any of these guys would be worth hearing on his own–most of them have led their own groups–and their presentation ensures that each owns the spotlight at some point of the night....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Contrary to James Krohe Jr.’s thesis that the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s recent move from the Monadnock Building on South Dearborn Street to the Railway Exchange Building at Michigan and Jackson proves that downtown Chicago west of Michigan is off-limits for tourists (July 3, “Cityscape: Welcome to Chicago?”), we actually moved because we needed larger quarters in which we could consolidate our tour facility, shop, and administrative offices....

Trib Reporter vs. AIDS Researcher: The Feud Goes On As science writer Natalie Angier said in the Times review: “Gallo only sparingly mentions Crewdson by name, referring to him as an ‘obsessive reporter.’ Yet the book is so nearly a point-by-point rebuttal of [Crewdson’s] original Tribune article that it is hard to see how anybody not familiar with all the charges could follow the ins and outs of Gallo’s defenses. ....

When Slavko Nowytski came to America, he says he wanted to be a cowboy. When he learned that wasn’t possible, he decided he wanted to be an actor who played cowboys. He’s settled for a career as a filmmaker. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “He can put Ukrainian culture on a world level,” says Oryna Hrushetsky of Ukrainian Media Services, which is also sponsoring the event....

ORPHEUS AND EURYDIKE Why? Why were some people making frenzied attempts to escape this “feminist-inspired” two-hour reinterpretation of the Orpheus myth using new music, dance, theater, film, and video? The answer lies in the question: too many elements, poorly edited and orchestrated, strung together. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But I hungered not for a man’s interpretation of feminism, but for Birringer’s own true voice as “the gazer....