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Trio Basso, the most intriguing of Europe’s new-music chamber groups, was formed in 1982 by Cologne-based violist Eckart Schloifer, cellist Othello Liesmann, and double bassist Wolfgang Guttler even though, at the time there were not more than a handful of original works designed for their singular instrumental combination. Since then, the number of works written for them has expanded enormously–to the current count of about 60–thanks to their rapport with composers who are challenged by the rich, resonant sonority of their instruments and the group’s deft experimentation with string techniques....

DEMOLITION MAN (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Marco Brambilla Written by Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, and Peter M. Lenkov With Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, and Nigel Hawthorne. Unlike Addams Family Values, Demolition Man can’t be said to derive literally from cartoons, though there are times when its basic premises seem to come straight out of Andrew Dice Clay stand-up routines–and not just because one of its principal screenwriters, Daniel Waters, worked on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane....

WISHFUL THINKING Joe Rezwin’s Wishful Thinking, which features Mary-Arrchie actor Richard Cotovsky in its lead role, had its first commercial showing in 1989, opening for the feature film Drugstore Cowboy at one California theater. The story concerns a shy and colorless young man whose girlfriend gives him a box of underwear and the big good-bye for his birthday, abandoning him in a Chinese restaurant where the staff presents him with a birthday fortune cookie....

For a moment at least, Ed Zwick is no longer 38, a man at the top of his game, the creator and coexecutive producer of the television drama thirtysomething. He is Eddie Zwick, a kid in the late 50s and early 60s at grammar school in Winnetka. “My first memory of Crow Island is of the physical plant. It was an extraordinary setting–the woods, the hills surrounding the playground, and the field out past some of the classrooms....

A Sharp Eye on the Pentagon The tools of the trade of any serious Pentagon correspondent are a devotion to the national defense and an abiding skepticism of the ways in which the nation proposes to guarantee it. “I left the Marine Corps after 20 years,” said Evans, “because I felt there was incredible opportunity for loyalists and rather more limited opportunity for men of character and hard work. I certainly didn’t want to continue to be a part of an organization whose major interest seemed to be budget share....

ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST One doesn’t need to stick to such extreme examples to consider the question. In Dario Fo’s 1970 satire Accidental Death of an Anarchist the attempt by law-enforcement officers to cover up a case of deadly police brutality is the starting point for a consideration of anarchy in less violent contexts; the updated production concocted by New Crime Productions pointedly emphasizes that while specific political conditions may vary from country to country and year to year, the conflict between persons with anarchic tendencies and persons with fascist tendencies–a line that can get blurred–is universal....

“Have you heard about Chuck Ashman?” Who? “The guy who wrote those Waldheim stories for us last year, then disappeared. Very interesting. Very mysterious. Apparently we hired a detective.” Now an international commission of military historians is wrapping up its own investigation of Austria’s president. The great mystery might be dispelled beyond reasonable doubt. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ashman, who writes out of New York, entered the pages of the Sun-Times last September identified as the paper’s UN correspondent....

Audience Development: Will Steppenwolf Take the Lowe Road? Remains Theater, meanwhile, will try a radical new gambit when it moves into its new home, a 350-seat theater at 1800 N. Clybourn, on September 14: the company will introduce a daring $10-at-all-times ticket policy and a rotating repertory of three plays under the title “Changing Nightly”–a gamble meant to compete with the seemingly invincible Goliath of the movies, which have always attracted young audiences with their relatively low prices and ease of admission....

DERIVES (DRIFTINGS) A little man in a trench coat and fedora shoots heavenward like a balloon, gets pulled up short by his string, and is hauled in by another, larger version of himself. A huge gray blob with tentacles like arms gives birth to a naked man. Worms emerge from an undulating moonscape, kiss, and then are stalked by a goose. A giantess cuts off the head of a Popsicle-sized man, then scoops out his insides with a spoon and eats them....

EBENEZA Players Workshop’s Children’s Theatre at the Second City Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Her comment could be regarded as motherly, protective of her children–literally as well as figuratively, since her son Eric Forsberg directed Dr. Stagemaster, and her daughter Linnea Forsberg Kirk directed Ebeneza. Though the title of Dr. Stagemaster contains the word “imagination,” Ebeneza displays more of that commodity. The play is an updated version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, with a female workaholic (Donna Urbanowicz) in the title role....

John Cassavetes’s galvanic drama (1968) about one long night in the lives of an estranged, well-to-do married couple (John Marley and Lynn Carlin) and their temporary lovers (Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel) was the first of his independent features to become a hit, and it’s not hard to see why: it remains one of the only serious American films that takes the middle class seriously, depicting the compulsive, embarrassed laughter of people facing their own sexual longing and some of the emotional devastation brought about by the so called sexual revolution....

So where was the greenhouse effect when we needed it? This year’s statewide spring bird count ran directly into a snowstorm that in some places reduced visibility to near zero. One participant, trying futilely to count birds along the North Shore Channel, reported plaintively: “Because of the snowstorm, there was no bird activity in trees that I could detect.” The four ran into some of the worst weather May can offer....

FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID at Center Theater Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Adapted by Mabou Mines member Linda Hartinian from Dick’s 1974 novel, a Joseph Campbell Award winner, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said compresses several intriguing Chinese boxes into a story of a man who, as one character puts it, is trying “to become a more involved life form.” Flow is set in that favorite sci-fi dystopia, a future fascist state: Amerika is carved into police zones (each with forced-labor camps), rebellious students are restricted to a “subsurface” existence, a superefficient 900-number phone grid translates sexual suggestions into instant satisfaction, the age of consent for gay and straight sex has fallen from 13 to 8 (!...

“Excuse me, sir. You can’t sell those in here.” “I’m staying in the hotel, man,” the hippie argued. “It’s not like I’m not paying to be here.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The rumor was that the police weren’t allowing anyone to camp overnight in the Soldier Field parking lot for the Dead concerts. So the Deadheads had packed up their belongings, grabbed their Birkenstocks, and spurted out onto Michigan Avenue, looking for someplace to stay....

Life in the Laney Lane Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But Laney wasn’t finished with tourism. With what appeared to be Mayor Richard Daley’s blessing, she moved her operation, staff included, to the city’s newly formed office of tourism, where she was to report to Osterman in the special events department. This arrangement made sense, said an administration source, because city officials believed it would help eliminate considerable duplication of effort in regard to tourism and special events....

Walter Dudycz is either the most sincere, earnest, and dedicated man in Chicago politics or the most outstanding actor on this fall’s ballot. Best known for his fulsome ardor–one might say grandstanding–on behalf of the American flag in the celebrated “Dread Scott” Tyler case at the School of the Art Institute, Dudycz talks a lot about “public service.” The people who have known him for a long time seem to reach invariably for the same adjectives: “honest,” “hardworking,” “sincere,” “ethical....

Mwata Bowden tends to get overlooked when the discussion turns to modern masters of the A.A.C.M. (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians); perhaps it’s because of his quiet demeanor and unprepossessing approach to performance. But don’t be fooled: beneath that surface lies one lionhearted woodwinds player. Often concentrating on rhythmic elements in his own playing, Bowden brings an uncluttered directness to a wide variety of saxophones, clarinets, and flutes, on tunes that are distinctly structured but still allow for extended, open-ended soloing....

Lead Story Officials in Moundsville, West Virginia, ordered a $13,000 feasibility study in November to determine whether the 124-year-old state penitentiary (due to close next year) could be turned into an outlet mall. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Evidence produced at the Camden, New Jersey, kidnapping trial of James A. Howard, 39, in November revealed that he had done substantial library research on the crime, calculating the average prison sentence to be seven years and fixing at $500,000 the amount that would justify his risk in taking the teenage son of an Atlantic City businessman....

As we crossed the beach at Tonsina Bay, my concentration turned from the forested shores along the wide blue Gulf of Alaska to the cobblestones at my feet. My rubber boots slid like bald tires on thin ice. I set my notebook down so I could scramble faster behind my guide, a young woman named Julie Noffke from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. She was nearly invisible in her huge orange jumpsuit, rubber boots, and blue baseball cap....

Try using your mouth. From the Chicago Tribune Magazine (November 13): “One of the great disadvantages of growing up on a steady diet of canned fruit, as I did, is that once you become an adult, you may find yourself incapable of looking at–much less eating–cooked fresh fruit in the eye.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Progress Chicago style; as recounted in ONE Reports (Fall 1988), published by the Organization of the Northeast: “Until this past August, elderly Asians could be found growing the finest community garden in Uptown on the corners of Marine Drive and Castlewood [4840 north]....