Tuesday, November 5, 2013 | TechNeWS

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MATTI SCANNELL

5

Vi'Paino's Italian cuisine complements atmosphere

Shireen Gul
COPY EDITOR

Since winter is here, Chicago won’t
be treating us friendly anymore It can get
angry and start weeping (raining) like a teenage
girlfriend anytime it wishes: So we’d better be
prepared for rain anytime: Last Wednesday
was a fateful day when I was telling everyone
around me to carry an umbrella as it will rain,
but I forgot mine:

I was one happy girl, doing her winter
shopping when all of a sudden rain started to
pour: The nearest place for me to rescue myself
was this Italian and German restaurant Vi’Paino:
I am glad I didn’t bring an umbrella along or else
I would have been never able to come across this
little wonderland in the town:

Retro Review:

I have been around the city and tried
many restaurants, but for me currently this is
the coolest restaurant in town: A hip, interesting
atmosphere with great tasting but inexpensively
priced food: It’s a selfeservice style place, which
means you don’t have to give tips: They make
everything fresh, right in front of you, and then
buzz you on abeeper when it is done: The bar is
also selfeserve and has everything any normal
bar would, it’s nice, but a little troubling how
fast you can get a drink If you don’t drink then
they also have lemon, mint fresh water, which is
also selfeserve: They have it in a big glass cooler,
the only drawback about this complimentary
drink is that there is no ice and a slow pour on
the water:

I was there with a friend: I ordered
Chicken Alfredo Pasta ($995) and my friend
ordered a Chicken Barbeque Pizza ($995) The

Find an honest-to-goodness

August Lysy
STAFF WRITER

The best of movies remind us of
life’s beauty: they not only communicate the
human condition but lift our spirits above the
morass of daily life to show us a glimpse of
hope and love: Richard Linklater’s “Before:::"
trilogyi“Before Midnight" being the latesti
are exceptional examples of just such movies,
and over the next three weeks I will review each
in turn:

“Before Sunset," the first of the
trilogy, premiered in 1995: It follows Jesse
and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy)
over the course of less than a day: from their
ﬁrst meeting on a train in Europe, to the early

Eclectic Theatre'

August Lysy
STAFF WRITER

With a poster exhibiting a grayed,
out, bisected apple and three planes as pits,
even before their impressive performance,
Eclectic Theatre manages to capture the jaded
disillusionment of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons"

The war is over for America, but
for the Kellers the loss of their son Larry still
hovers over their conscious: At least that is
the case for Kate (Julie Partyka), who refuses
to acknowledge her son’s death, choosing
instead to desperately put her faith in both
astrology and God: Meanwhile, Joe (David
Elliott) and Chris (Jeff Kurysz) accommodate
her monomania as they try to move on. Three
years have passed since Larry’s death when
the issue is unavoidably raised by a visit from
his exegirlfriend Ann (Tracey Green) and her
brother George (Charlie Rasmann): Last night
lightning struck down Larry’s memorial tree,
and this signiﬁes a bad omen for all involved

Eclectic Theatre’s rendition of “All My
Sons," to my great surprise and appreciation,

Tech[nology]News:

morning the following day The story itselfi
as “plot"idefies concise synopsis because
the story is not a “happening" or series of
events, but merely an extended encounter
between these two strangers: Ordinarily, this
might raise concerns, on account it leaves
a tremendous burden upon dialogue and
character developmentitwo elements most
Hollywood films notoriously lack serious
concern for

Fortunately, “Before Sunrise" is
not a “Hollywood" movie: Linklater and
Kim Krizanithe screenwritersicraft an
exceptional script that translates beautifully in
Hawke and Delpy’s performances: The movie
is virtually 90 minutes of Hawke and Delpy on
screen talking and walking around Viennai
and, yes, they’re falling in love (more on this
below):

5 ‘All My Sons' a

adheres to the realism of Miller’s text, eschewing
the seemingly alletooepopular trend of
“updating" classic texts in attempt to reach
contemporary audiences: Artistic Director of
Eclectic Theatre and director of the production
David Belew, while addressing this issue in the
playbill, through his staging shows the audience
that the context of a play does not need revision
because it is the universal themes of the play
that carry its relevancy through time: And who
cannot relate to the themes of disillusionment,
cowardice, and family lie’s?

But a play and its themes is nothing
without the players to actualize the conception
on stage: and Eclectic’s cast of “All My Sons"
does just that with great success: The star of the
showiwithout a doubtiis Julie Partyka, who
plays Kate: From the moment she enters the
stage, hounding Joe about her potato bag, we
see her haggard appearance weighed down by
years of grief and hear that same exhaustion in
her weary voice: Her performance is terrifyingly
beautiful to behold:

What comes out most in Partyka’s
performance is just how much control she

pasta bowl was gigantic and cheesy and creamy
and whatnot: It was really tasty, had lots of fresh
ﬂavors especially the taste of garlic and green
chili It was ‘happiness in bowl’: The pizza was
okay, I would rate it 3 out of 5 because there was
very little cheese and the sauce was too sweet
for pizzaeI thought would be a bit spicy They
have only one size for pizza and you can take
your leftovers in a bag:

I will recommend you to go there and
try their pasta and salad, as they are so delicious:
I read many online reviews about it, they said
the taste is bland and uninteresting, but again,
they make your dish the way you ask them to
make it: If you will ask them to put more ﬂavor
in it they will do it without taking extra charges:

For those of you who haven’t been
there yet, this is how it works: upon entering the
front door, the host gives you a card and asks

if you have been to this place before or not: If
you say “no," then the host will explain how it
works: Then you go to different food stations
and tap your card to purchase what you want:
Salad, Pasta, Pizza, Soup, Dessert, etc: Then
you go and sit, and wait for the buzzer to beep
(which hardly takes 678 minutes:) When you
are done eating, someone comes and takes your
dirty dishes with a smiling face: You pay your
bill, which has been charged on your credit card
and you are good to go with free gummy bears
waiting for you next the cashier:

Two things I really enjoyed, the
ﬂavored water and the gummy bears by the
cashier I LOVE gummy bears and fresh water!
The restaurant is located on 2577 N Clark St:
Chicago, IL 60614 and the times are 11:00 am:
to 10:00 pm: on weekdays and 11:00 am: to
midnight on weekends:

romance in ‘Before Sunrise'

What do they talk about?
Everything: life and death, sex and marriage,
gender and identity, the past and future,
family and friendsitheir conversations lack
nothing of substance: The remarkable part
of their conversations is that they are sincere
and heartfeltitotally absent of the typical
superﬁcial Hollywood tropes a.nd cliche’s: And
what this amounts to is absolute committal
on the part of the viewer: you fall in love with
both of these characters because you actually
come to know theminot in a sentimental
schmaltzy way, but in a romantic way and with
a surprising intellectual intimacy

Moreover, what truly captivates you
is the unmistakable chemistry between Hawke
and Delpy Unlike Hollywood “Romances"
where you must abandon reality in a fantasy
world in order to believe the “love" between the

characters, “Before Sunrise" requires no such
sacriﬁce; rather, Hawke a.nd Delpy literally woo
you from the screen, until, at the end, you ﬁnd
yourself piningipiningl iFor their love and
its endurance:

I have never experienced a romantic
love, and for long want of it, I dare say many
(myself included) doubt its very existence:
perhaps it’s all but a fancy, paraded before us
to capitalize (literally) upon our longstanding
fantastic delusions!

Butinol “Before Sunrise" gives
me hope: With its honest dialogue and
unpretentious portrayal of human interaction,
I revive my faith and hold out hope for just
such a romance: “Before Sunrise" is romance
portrayed in actuo:

faithful, impressive performance

wields over the family Reading “All My Sons,"
one is inclined to see the orchestrator as Joe
(Elliott), but Belew’s staging shows him as a
hollowedeout husk of a man from beginning
to end: David Elliott’s lack of dynamic may
perhaps be a stylistic choice, but as Joe Keller is
a man desperate to keep the past in oblivion, his
apparent lack of urgency registers discordance
to the piece as awhole and renders his character
arc rather ﬂat and uninteresting:

Jeff Kurysz and Charlie Rasmann
as Chris and George, respectively, the most
opposing characteretypes in the playithe
alleAmerican golden boy and the emotionally,
beleaguered sonicapture the antithetical
essence of their characters and work well
together to turn the plot in the second act:

The supporting cast ought not
to be overlooked, either: Beautifully subtle
performances abound, especially with Patrick
Iven and Kevin Webb; the former delivering
the most understatedly poignant moment of
the play in his monologue on lost idealism:
Amy Gorelow and Nancy Kolton are no less
impressive, although their presences are quite

New improvements, issues with Wi

Kyle Stanevich 8: Austin Gonzalez
STAFF WRITERS

Windows has recently unveiled their
newest release to the Windows 8 line: 81 is
an update, not an upgrade: Almost all of the
previous features unique to Windows 8, such
as the Metro start screen and app store have
been updated, and now includes Bing Smart
Search: Apps can now be snapped to have up
to 4eway multitasking, compared to the limit
of 2 from Windows 8: Windows 81 introduces
many new customizable features lacking form
the original Windows 8 release:

First off, I have been using Windows
8 since its first developer’s release: It has

certainly come a long way since that first
buggy release, but it is still far from what I
would consider perfected: Microsoft has done
a great job improving the boot time over older
versions of Windows: An added solid state
drive makes it possible to cold boot in a matter
of seconds:

The direction that they are taking
Windows is much more mobile, with touch,
oriented hardware: Unfortunately though, the
shift toward mobile takes away from some of
the features appreciated by the desktop crowd:
One of the features that desktop lovers could
not stand about the old Windows 8 was the
lack of the start button, and even beyond that
the lack of the Windows 7 style start menu:

The 81 update put the start button
back, but it only opens the Metro interface and

is thus merely a cosmetic change: On a desktop,
this screen is hard to navigate with a mouse
alone: The only way to scroll through all the
apps on this screen is to either grab the slider
bar at the bottom and move the screen over or
use the keyboard: For heavy mouse users this
is more of a hassle than it should be:

With this new tiled start screen,
users lose the option to directly open recently
saved documents: Along the same lines,
Windows 81 has many menus activated by
moving a mouse into a corner: However,
for multiple monitor setups, this becomes a
problem: With multiple monitors, if a mouse is
moved toward a corner, then the curser might
jump to the next screen and the corner menu
won’t be activated: For most of these screens,
there are keyboard shortcuts, but to be honest,

ﬂeeting; Gorelow as Lydia and Rasmann as
George share a superb moment in the second
act in which Gorelow’s facial responses are
remarkable in their genuineness: Andione
cannot forget little Bert, played by Connor
B oyle, who, of course, steals the stage whenever
he’s on it:

By the end of the second act, I found
myself more moved by the expectation of
what was to come than by the actual staging,
which might be due to Elliott’s low emotional
arc and how quickly Kate and Chris seem
to recover from the shock of the horrifying
event: Nevertheless, Eclectic Theatre’s “All
My Sons" is ﬁlled with powerful moments of
impressive acting and is well worth seeing:
Highly Recommended:

This review is based upon a Preview
showing: “All My Sons" is playing from October
25th 7 November 17th at the Athenaeum
Theatre, located at 2936 N: Southport, near the
Brown Line Wellington station.

For tickets call the theatre at (773)
93576875, or go to EclecticeTheatre:com:

ndows 8.1

most people can’t recognize shortcuts beyond
cut and paste:

This is not to say that 81 is without
great improvements: The start time is amazing
compared to 7: Plus, it is a bit faster overall: This
is done by optimizing the operating system,
especially because the operating system is also
made for lower powered and slower mobile
systems:

Compared to the initial release of
Windows 8, 81 has many updates that make
it faster and more secure, therefore it is a no,
brainer to upgrade:

In the future, I hope that Microsoft
will consider some of the problems brought up,
even if they are very minuscule, and that might
be enough to get me to make the switch from
Windows 7: