117 stories by "Monica Reida"
In the past six months I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of watching two colleges in two different states go through a process to eliminate various programs. The two colleges are Colum…
At one point, the Brown Line of the Chicago “L” had numerous ads urging riders to do something to save Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, which used to be…
Previously: Mulan, The Swan Princess, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, The Prince of Egypt, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, Tarzan, The Iron Giant The King and I The final po…
Catharsis is what the Greek tragedians wanted at the end of the play. The word in Greek is κάθαÏσις. It means to purge or clean. In this case it means a purging o…
On April 1, I became eligible to upgrade from my then-current phone, an HTC Evo 4G. I had many problems with the Evo, including its battery life, small hard drive space, tendency to put apps…
After I moved back to Iowa in 2010 I got a job working as a sales associate for Younkers, a department store that anchored the local shopping mall. The department I frequently worked in was …
Previously: Mulan, The Swan Princess, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, The Prince of Egypt, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, Tarzan, The Iron Giant Shall I tell you what I thi…
When I glimpse at the homepage on Facebook, which is currently closed on my browser while I have Reuters, the Tribune and the New York Times open, I tend to see a lot of news-related links t…
For the past two weeks there has been an uproar over Lego’s new line, Lego Friends. The line is targeted towards girls and includes characters that are vetranarians and horse groomers.…
If you aren’t friends with people from Iowa, you may have missed Stephen Bloom’s Atlantic piece on Iowa and the fury it is inciting. The issue is mostly that Bloom, who is a teac…
I realize it might be my ignorance because I stopped seeing four plays a week more than a year-and-a-half ago, but I have no clue what the term “Chicago-style” theater means. I k…
The big Chicago media news today is that the Sun-Times will now be using a “metered method” for views of their articles. Readers will get 20 free views before they will require a…
La Cage Aux Folles, is coming to Chicago at the end of the month for a run from Dec. 20"Jan. 1. I will miss it since I will be in Milwaukee for a much-needed vacation, even though it is one …
There were some awards presented at tonight’s Jeff Awards that felt like someone was robbed, such as Jennifer Lim not winning for her outstanding performance in Chinglish, which was on…
At the beginning of Cars 2, the audience is treated to a spy and espionage opening where Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) comes onto a cargo ship in search of one of his operatives, Leland Tur…
Yesterday I posted a quote on my Tumblr discussing “What Would Be America’s National Theatre?” and then proceeded to say, “The Goodman Theatre is not better than Step…
For now, we are at the end of “The Films of Pixar” until I sit down and watch Cars 2 in November. (At least it will be better than Sucker Punch.) So how does Toy Story 3 hold up …
In 2009, Pixar did something remarkable and released a film that would have almost no merchandising and licensing potential, but would cause numerous adults throughout the country to bawl du…
What if our waste and perpetual need of material goods caused us to leave earth because of how uninhabitable it had become? How would we clean up Earth? Who would be left behind to inhabit o…
John Lasseter’s film Cars is a love letter to the automobile, Route 66, and auto racing, primarily NASCAR racing. However, Cars is not that beautiful of a love letter. Between the drag…
Towards the end of The Incredibles, a little boy on a bike proclaims, “That was totally wicked!” referring to a big battle he’s just witnessed between the villain and the s…
The monster in the closet is a perpetual tormenter of the sleep of little children. What if the monsters were actually real? Pixar’s third film, Monsters, Inc., gives us a world inhabi…
These posts were supposed to be in chronological order after I wrote about Ratatouille, but due to an error with Netflix, I’m writing about Finding Nemo before Monsters, Inc.. Andrew S…
Toy Story created history by becoming the first film completely done with computer generated images and featured a cheerful, heartwarming story with terrific lines. While Toy Story 2 is an i…
Bug is a klutz. Bug screws up and is sent on a perceived suicide mission to find bugs to help colony defend themselves agains evil grasshoppers. Bug finds what he thinks are warriors. Bug re…
