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CHICAGO – YIPPIE! It’s back, in the neighborhood of its roots. YippieFest 2023 will be August 4th-6th in the Lakeview/Buena Park venue of PRIDE ARTS, 4139 North Broadway in Chicago. The space is less than a half mile from the former Mary-Arrchie Theatre, whose “Abbie Hoffman Festival” was the template for the three-day performance celebration. YippieFest currently has slots for theater acts, including one-act plays, monologue, sketch, improv, vaudeville and other stage performance arts. Artists get free admission to the rest of the festival, so click YiPPIE FEST 2023 to sign up.
Film Review: Contemporary Society is Caught Online in ‘Disconnect’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on April 14, 2013 - 12:02pm
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“Disconnect” had a limited release on April 12th. See local listings for theaters and show times. Featuring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Alexander Skarsgard, Paula Patton, Andrea Riseborough, Jonah Bobo, Frank Grillo and Max Thieriot. Written by Andrew Stern. Directed by Henry Alex Rubin. Rated “R”
Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “Disconnect”
Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “Disconnect”
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CHICAGO – “Disconnect” is a punch in the gut, the backlash of our current technology, and a film that could have happened yesterday. It is a trenchant cautionary tale, warning us about the excesses of every blinking screen and “smart” device that supposedly is making our lives easier, but can just as easily become instruments of destructive. It is about how we live now.
 Rating: 4.0/5.0 |
Three intertwining stories about cyber-attacks and online consequences are passionately written and acted. Jason Bateman, for example, takes a break from his smarmy guy character to portray a distant father that learns a harsh lesson about that distance, and creates an empathy that displays surprising dramatic chops. When living within our cyber-selves, the theme of the film becomes about the “disconnect” that is created, in conflict with our real selves. It asks the questions about who we are when hidden behind the digital screens, and what responsibility we actually have to the relationships beyond the screens. And most importantly, what does our identity mean in the age of multiple passwords, anonymous postings and hours spent online?
Rich Boyd (Jason Bateman) is a busy lawyer married to Lydia (Hope Davis), with two children, Ben (Jonah Bobo) and Abby (Haley Ramm). Ben is a withdrawn 15 year old, lost in the angst of his own shyness on the outside, but with an inner passion for music. His geek status riles some school bullies, and they create a fake girl (popularly known as “catfishing”) to try and seduce him. The reserved kid falls for his new “friend” in a big way.
In the meantime, there is an ambitious TV reporter named Nina (Andrea Riseborough), who is getting too close to a story about chat room pornography, gaining trust from a victim of it named Kyle (Max Theiriot). And a married couple (Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton) find their savings wiped out by a cyber thief – and the wife may have exposed them. All three of these stories run concurrently, commonly bonded by how they originated online.
Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “Disconnect” Photo credit: LD Entertainment |
Continue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “Disconnect”
