Competing Influences

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 9, 2005 4:10PM

Chicagoist was chatting it up with the clerk in our local video store last Saturday (Netflix is fine if you’re a movie junkie but sometimes you need a certain kind of fix RIGHT NOW) when a customer walked in and said he wanted a story that was similar to The Terminal. We tried to recommend Before Sunrise—Richard Linklater’s dictionary definition of a sleeper hit about two people who meet, fall in love, and talk a lot during a brief encounter on a Vienna-bound train—but after a few moments of listening to us with glazed eyes the customer turned to the clerk and said “yeah something like that only more fun.” Burn! What more could you ask for? You wanted a story of love, funny accents, and chance meetings against a backdrop of mass transit and that’s what we gave you! Go rent Wimbledon next time and see how much fun that isn’t.

For those who are not similarly lacking in the appreciation of talky romances, tonight and tomorrow are your last chances to catch the double bill of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset at The Gene. If you buy tickets to both, you’ll save two dollars on the second flick even if you watch one tonight and the other tomorrow.

If you’re in the mood for something not available at your local flick merchant then perhaps a concert of music’s formerly-best-kept secret is in order. Until her death last year brought renewed interest in her career, the work of Nina Simone was known only to those who made a concerted effort to seek out the music of artists who sang not merely to entertain but to share a piece of their hearts and minds. This was Simone’s greatest gift but it was also her greatest obstacle. In a time when African-American women were to be seen and not heard, she fought against intolerance with songs like “Mississippi Goddam” and “Old Jim Crow.” The Gene will show a 1976 European concert entitled Nina Simone, Love Sorceress on February 13th and 16th that perfectly captures an artist as she defies expectations.