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BREAKING THE CODE In the 20 or so years following his suicide, Turing was very little known outside a small circle of admirers aware of his important work in the theoretical development of the digital computer, his crucial role in helping the Allies win World War II, and the persecution he suffered in the last two years of his life. Three developments in the 1970s paved the way for Turing’s biographer, Andrew Hodges, to conduct the research that exhumed Turing from ignominy and indifference: official relaxation of the secrecy that surrounded Turing’s wartime intelligence efforts, the computer revolution that fulfilled Turing’s vision of the widespread uses of “electronic brains,” and the gay liberation movement....

A LATE SNOW An almost-middle-aged teacher at a small, conservative college on the eastern seaboard, Ellie is celebrating the first anniversary of her relationship with Quincey, a passionate and boisterous young student. Thinking that Quincey is going to be away, Ellie shows up at their secluded cottage with a new friend–Margo, a well-known, earth-motherly writer who Ellie hopes will come teach at the college. Ellie is strongly attracted to Margo but doesn’t know if her interest is returned....

Perhaps the most striking instance of a suppressed Soviet film thawed out by glasnost, this 1967 first feature by Aleksandr Askoldov was apparently controversial only because it expresses overt sympathy for the Jews who were persecuted during the Russian civil war, and because the lead character is a pregnant woman whose combined characteristics challenged traditional stereotypes. As a first feature, the film is in many respects remarkable, if not an unqualified success....

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman star in old-fashioned hokum on a very high level–the sort of thing Hollywood used to do well and more often–in a Ron Howard blockbuster about Irish immigration to the U.S. in the 1890s. Written by Bob Dolman and Howard and shot with Panavision super-70 camera equipment using 65-millimeter stock, this epic utopian fantasy about love overcoming class barriers (complete with a passing nod to It Happened One Night) is designed like a triptych, beginning in rural Ireland (where tenant farmer Cruise falls in with Kidman, the rebellious daughter of his wealthy landlord, when she decides to flee to the U....

For the last 20 years, the people living on opposite sides of this particular stretch of Howard Street haven’t had much reason to meddle in each other’s affairs. Southwest Evanston and West Rogers Park–nearly identical patchworks of post-World War II brick bungalows–are, after all, in different municipalities. “Our city has become so desperate for tax dollars that they have caved in to the demands of these developers and are shoving this thing down our throats,” says Jim Sheedy, who lives in Evanston, half a block away from the proposed mall....

Why the Indigos? Because after gigging and gigging, they’ve finally got a grip on the trick of rearranging familiar elements into something new. Both David Kay and Dick Smith write quietly mature songs that sound airy and gentle even when played loud. Kay’s tunes in particular betray a kind of coffeehouse-folkie sensibility, so it’s only fitting that he should be blessed with one of those breezy, urgent Phil Ochs-ish voices you seldom hear anymore, even in cofeehouses....

After a long and successful career in day care, Ruby L. Oliver made this, her first feature, in her late 40s. Now receiving its world premiere, it’s a remarkable debut: assured, highly focused, surprisingly upbeat considering the number of problems that it addresses without flinching–and conceivably the best low-budget Chicago independent that I’ve seen. Set in contemporary Chicago, it concerns a 17-year-old girl from the ghetto whose plans for the future are jeopardized when she finds herself pregnant....

NOTHING SACRED The first one, Donald Trump Versus the Spirit of Christmas, aims for some easy targets–Trump, Zsa Zsa Gabor, the pope. They’re spoofed effortlessly, wrapped up in a premise worthy of a Bob Hope Christmas special: grouchy old Donald Trump hates Christmas. “People are tighter than the pope’s butt at Christmas,” he grumbles, oblivious to the fact that people spend more at Christmas, not less. (Obviously, being a real estate tycoon doesn’t always mean you are hip to people’s spending habits....

Slanting Toward Suburbia A Sunday Tribune with a strange front page landed on our north-side doorstep March 18. A dispatch from Moscow and a piece on AIDS research made up the page, along with three stories that we’d ordinarily call local. Zwolle, Louisiana, does not figure in a big way in the Tribune’s circulation plans. Du Page County, however, is pretty much the ball game. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

FOREVER PLAID Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So I suppose one could defend Forever Plaid being produced by a nonprofit, grant-seeking theater like Wisdom Bridge. I’d always thought the point of nonprofit houses was to accommodate shows that might be too risky for a commercial producer; I guess 1950s pop is no more a sure thing than Brecht or Beckett when it comes to dragging audiences away from their TVs and into the theater these days....

I recall reading that if you attach a polygraph machine to a tree and then project harmful thoughts at it, the machine will register “lies” or “stress.” Did I imagine this? Do trees have not only emotions but ESP? –Javier Ramirez, Los Angeles Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You undoubtedly read something about a crackpot classic from the 70s called The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird....

While trying to figure out why our troops are in Saudi Arabia recently, I looked up the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia-Iraq area in my 1966 atlas. I found two large areas along the border called “neutral zones.” What does this term mean? Do Romulans live there? Do the zones have any relevance to the current conflict? –D. Davis, Chicago Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Time to get a new atlas, sport....

The Wrong Man at the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time We chatted with Andres in the WFMT studio while he spun Gershwin, Copland, and a couple of oboe concertos. He juggled news, weather, ad spots, and CD liner notes with an effortless professionalism. Andres swiftly justified their worst fears by turning his back on WFMT’s program guide and playing what he pleased. “People think what I play is what I am....

The regional themes for this part of Wisconsin are cranberries, birds, and bicycles. You can learn everything you could possibly want to know about cranberries at the Cranberry Expo Ltd. on county road E a few miles east of the town of Warrens. (Open 10-4 daily, May through October; 608-378-4878.) Get there by leaving I-94 at exit 135 a few miles north of Tomah and going east on E. County O goes north from County E just east of Warrens....

An efficient little thriller that imparts loads of queasiness and reasonable amounts of suspense while serving as an excellent corrective to the shameless celebrations of LA police power and brutality in Lethal Weapon 3. The LA cop in this case (effectively played by Ray Liotta) is a psycho who falls for an attractive yuppie housewife (Madeleine Stowe) after helping her and her husband (Kurt Russell) install an elaborate security system in their house....

Vowing to push ahead despite recent setbacks in marketing its new cigarette brands, Uptown and Dakota, to blacks and blue-collar women respectively, R.J. Reynolds announced today that it has developed a new brand for yet another target audience: Stanley Milton, a 34-year-old real estate developer living in Skokie. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “After exhaustive demographic studies,” an RJR spokesperson, Lynda Burke, announced, “we have come up with the last person in America who we believe is ‘protest proof’: Stanley Milton is white, male, educated, and affluent....

Books Behind Bars: The Great Break-In They didn’t come. Then tear off the covers, Jackson proposed. Too time-consuming. If the publishers tear off the covers, can I have the books? Jackson asked. No, he was told. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Perhaps it no longered mattered. Jackson feared it was too late for him to change his life by reading. “Both my mental capacity as well as attention span has diminished to such a degree whereas to render it all but ineffective,” he lamented....

Friday 1 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Gyuto monks of Tibet are known for their strange but compelling way of singing. “The Tibetans’ approach to voice production,” wrote the New York Times’s Allan Kozinn, “is very different from that of most other cultures. It involves . . . pushing the voice hard at the very bottom of the range, and oscillating it to give the impression that a chord, rather than a single note, is being sung....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With regard to the bottle-deposit ordinance I read about in Mr. Peter Friederici’s article “Environment: No Deposit, No Return” [March 3, 1989], which ordinance Joseph Phelps, a Chicago parks commissioner, has proposed in order to reduce broken glass in the parks, since I can remember (which is about thirty years ago) this ordinance was in effect on and off in New York City....

The big question is, whither the NRG Ensemble without its founder-leader Hal Russell? The endlessly creative drummer-vibist-trumpeter-saxophonist-singer-composer Russell, who died last month at age 66, was the band’s central source of energy, humor, and wild imagination. But his loyal sidemen were not just supporting players; they were proficient and vivid individuals themselves, so Saturday night’s memorial concert will provide an important first answer to the big question. The grizzled, white-haired captain who led his young crew through the jazz storms of the 80s and 90s–and who blew up quite a few storms of his own just to keep life interesting–left behind a body of several hundred compositions, and that will be the basis of this tribute....