Nine for 2009: The best in art, entertainment and eats
Mark your calendars.
The new year has barely begun, but it's already time to start scheduling new things to see and do in 2009.
Here's what's coming up: A popular restaurant reopens. An aquarium improves its Oceanarium. Harry hype heightens. The Addams family takes center stage. And world music comes to the 'burbs.
So don't say you've got nothing to do. We've come up with nine categories and found things to look forward to.
For foodies
So what if data says people are spending less at restaurants? That's not stopping entreprenuers from Naperville to Libertyville and points in between from taking advantage of low real estate prices and low-interest loans and opening up restaurants.
For Rolling Meadows, it means the return of Chicago Prime steakhouse to the Northwest suburbs with dinner service today.
Owners George and Maggie Kalkounos promise a menu similar to what made Chicago Prime an instant hit in Schaumburg before they sold the business a few years back.
More than 80 varieties of wine, two private rooms, custom lighting and a backlit Chicago skyline mural give the restaurant, 1444 E. Algonquin Road, the feel of a classy, Old World eatery.
- Deborah Pankey
For Potterphiles
A note to Harried parents:
Be prepared to brave a midnight showing of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" when it opens at local theaters on July 17.
There's no official word, yet my tingling Spidey senses tell me the odds are good that the sixth film in the Harry Potter series will probably be shown at midnight the day before its official opening.
But who wants to wait until July for a Harry fix? You don't have to!
On April 30, the world premiere of "Harry Potter: The Exhibition" will open exclusively at Chicago's own Museum of Science and Industry. Tickets are on sale now at msichicago.org.
The 10,000-square-foot exhibition will feature costumes and props from the Harry Potter pictures, as well as re-creations of Hagrid's hut and the Gryffindor common room.
The event runs through Sept. 7. Admission for both the museum and exhibit will be $26 for adults, $25 for seniors, $19 for children (ages 3-11). After the museum closes, admission for the exhibition drops to $18, $15 for children.
- Dann Gire
For gamers
The Sims return in early 2009 with "The Sims 3" from Electronic Arts. In this much-anticipated new PC game, you'll be to create unique Sims and then immerse them in a living, changing neighborhood.
The game gives users the ability to endow their Sims with remarkably complex personalities, from kind and caring to insanely evil. The game also allows your Sims to roam their neighborhood freely, meeting friends, confronting enemies or just running an errand.
The game is scheduled to hit store shelves in February. For more information, go to thesims3.com.
- Matt Arado
For whale watchers
It's not often that a beluga whale gets a chance to soar above the clouds.
But that's just what happened in early September when the Shedd Aquarium's Oceanarium was temporarily closed for reconstruction and enhancement.
Two hundred of the Oceanarium's residents, including four Pacific white-sided dolphins and seven beluga whales, left the Shedd, via truck and FedEx Express airplane, for temporary homes at zoos and aquariums throughout the country.
The creatures will head back to their Windy City home in early summer 2009 when the renovated Oceanarium reopens.
"It was the largest temporary transport that we've ever done," says Melissa Kruth, public relations manager at the Shedd Aquarium.
To help the Shedd's creatures make the transport safely, Shedd trainers were strapped inside carrying containers with each animal on the planes and trucks, Kruth said. And 16 Shedd trainers are now living with and caring for the animals in their temporary locations.
The $50 million 0ceanarium renovation includes maintenance of animal habitats, re-coating of the Oceanarium's five pools, and updates to animal life-support systems and cooling and heating systems.
For Shedd patrons, amenities will include a new elevator and restrooms and enhancements to food service facilities.
Shedd staff are anxiously waiting for their animals to return.
"We miss them, and we are so excited to welcome them back to their newly renovated space," Kruth said.
For information, visit sheddaquarium.org.
- Laura Stewart
For world music fans
The Meadows Club, 2950 W. Golf Road, Rolling Meadows, already contains spaces for banquets and conventions. An international fusion cuisine restaurant is set to open at the facility in the spring, while a performing arts auditorium is planned for late 2009. Best of all, Echoes World Music & Jazz Lounge is expected to open in June.
The 8,000-square-foot venue will boast cozy lounge seating, remarkable acoustics, a video wall and a landscaped outdoor patio. An indoor colored gravel pool, covered by glass and illuminated by an ambient light display, serves as a dance floor.
Sounds swanky, eh? Sure, but since the suburbs already have plenty of "nice" places to guzzle booze and hear live jazz, what really has us excited is the promise of exotic performers. We don't have any venues out here with "world music" in their name, so the more culturally diverse Echoes' bookings prove, the better.
- Jeff Pizek
For modernists
If Grant Park is Chicago's "Front Lawn," then consider The Art Institute of Chicago's new $300 million Modern Wing to be the Windy City's hip new curio cabinet.
Rising up south of Millennium Park's gleaming attractions and just northeast of the Art Institute's original 1893 Beaux-Arts building, the glassy and limestone-clad Modern Wing adds 264,000 square feet to the museum complex. Gallery space to display 20th- and 21st-century art is increased by 35 percent, plus new education and classroom spaces are also a part of the Modern Wing (remember that the Art Institute also functions as a school).
The Modern Wing was designed by Renzo Piano, the Pritzker Prize-winning Italian architect (or "starchitect," if you will). Like so many new buildings nowadays, Piano designed the Modern Wing to be environmentally friendly.
The most notable green aspect is the "flying carpet" sun-screen roof canopy of computer-controlled aluminum cantilevered blades that shift and adjust to allow natural light to flood the upper galleries. Surrounding the Modern Wing is 20,000 square feet of new green space.
The new Modern Wing also extends an arm into Millennium Park's Lurie Garden via the Nicholas Bridgeway, which will allow pedestrians to cross over Monroe Street from one dynamic piece of Chicago architecture to another.
Be on the lookout for the Modern Wing's opening day, May 16.
- Scott Morgan
For channel surfers
The major broadcast TV networks finally seem to be recovering from the writers' strike at midseason 2008-2009. Fox's action drama "24" returns from an almost two-year hiatus Jan. 11, immediately followed by "American Idol" on Jan. 13. And ABC's "Lost" is back Jan. 21. Best of all, PBS brings back "The Electric Company" the week of Jan. 19.
Cable isn't willing to let its momentum lapse. FX's "Damages" returns Jan. 7, and HBO relaunches the Sunday series "Big Love" and "Flight of the Conchords" Jan. 18.
Yet the real hope is for the new shows. Joss Whedon's highly anticipated "Dollhouse" airs on Fridays in February on Fox, and NBC's "Kings," said to be loosely based on the biblical story of David, debuts in March, when ABC will also launch "Castle" and a remake of the canceled "Cupid," with "The Unusuals" to follow in April, when CBS replies with the "mystery event" "Harper's Island."
The biggest move, however, might be Conan O'Brien replacing Jay Leno as host of "The Tonight Show" on NBC in June, although Leno will get his own weeknight prime-time program in the fall.
And don't forget, broadcast TV goes entirely digital on Feb. 17, when any analog TVs not already attached to cable or satellite will have to be equipped with a converter box to receive anything but snow.
- Ted Cox
For indie music lovers
Animal Collective, those multinational experimentalists, prepare to release their latest album, "Merriweather Post Pavilion" (Domino). It debuts in a deluxe vinyl edition (complete with download card) on Tuesday, Jan. 6, with CD and digital copies following on Jan. 20.
"Merriweather" should expand the indie group's fan base even further. Yeah, Animal Collective is probably too weird to ever earn the kind of mainstream dollars Death Cab for Cutie or Modest Mouse do. Still, their kaleidoscopic pop has become more accessible in recent years, as heard on 2007's "Strawberry Jam" and during last summer's headlining set at Chicago's Pitchfork Music Festival.
Speaking of live sets, Animal Collective plays three exclusive American shows around the time the album drops. The only Midwest show is in Chicago, taking place at Metro, 3730 N. Clark St., at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22. Tickets were $25, but, of course, they're sold out.
- Jeff Pizek
For theater buffs
Writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice didn't exactly light up the Goodman Stage last year with their jukebox musical "Turn of the Century." The duo responsible for the Tony Award-winning "Jersey Boys" try again with the premiere of "The Addams Family," their new show inspired by the macabre cast of eccentrics Charles Addams made famous in his cartoons for The New Yorker. The show makes its pre-Broadway, world premiere in November at Chicago's Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre. Andrew Lippa ("The Wild Party") wrote the music and lyrics. Chicago-based Elephant Eye Theatrical produces.
Eugene O'Neill fans can indulge their passion for the playwright renowned for his psychological examinations of dysfunctional families Courtesy of the Goodman Theatre, which salutes the playwright during a festival featuring interpretations of O'Neill's work from Brazil's Companhia Triptal, Amsterdam's Toneelgroep and New York's experimental ensemble The Wooster Group along with Chicago's own Hypocrites and Neo-Futurists. The three-month festival begins Wednesday, Jan. 7, at 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago. The festival also marks the return of Brian Dennehy, who stars in artistic director Robert Falls' revival of O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" with Carla Gugino and Pablo Schreiber.
- Barbara Vitello