Comic books, video and board games, tournaments, cosplay competitions, and loads of special guests will be on hand when Moline's TaxSlayer Center hosts the June 22 and 23 convention Planet Funk Con: Comic Con 2018, a weekend event housing entertainment and shopping opportunities for connoisseurs and collectors of all ages.
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This feature collects articles published online by Quad Cities-area media outlets and by CapitolFax.com and the state-politics sections of the Des Moines Register and the State Journal-Register.
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Wildlife, history, geology, and more will be explored when River Action hosts presentations in this year's Channel Cat Talks and Riverine Walks – “Explore the River Series” celebrations of the Quad Cities' unique culture and landscape taking place four times weekly from May 29 through September 1.
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One of the most popular and successful children's-book authors of all time – along with many of his beloved animal, bird, and insect friends – will be celebrated in a new Family Museum exhibition opening May 26, as the Bettendorf venue hosts the touring family delight Very Eric Carle: A Very Hungry, Quiet, Lonely, Clumsy, Busy Exhibit.
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Now celebrating its 34th year as a Father's Day institution, River Action's June 17 Ride the River event invites participants to explore the wilds of four Quad Cities islands on a bi-state tour along riverfront bicycle trails, with special events, giveaways, and more taking place at numerous stops along the journey.
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According to a recent Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll, Democrat JB Pritzker leads Republican Governor Bruce Rauner by nine points, 36-27, with 26 percent choosing an unnamed third-party candidate and 11 percent undecided. In other words, slightly more people said they preferred third party and/or were undecided than supported the frontrunner Pritzker.
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Immigration in the U.S. has become one of the most emotionally charged issues of our time, due to precious little factual data informing it, regardless of whether you are sympathetic to illegal immigration or opposed to it.
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If you ask anyone at the Statehouse about House Speaker Michael Madigan’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes, they'll all say he "made the trains run on time.”
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Pointing out the holes in Maryann Loncar’s allegations against Representative Lou Lang (D-Skokie) is like shooting fish in a barrel. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that absolutely everything she said was untrue.
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For weeks now, some Democrats have been wondering if their party intends to run a “coordinated campaign” this year and have asked what it might look like. A coordinated campaign means all the party’s candidates are working together under one umbrella group.
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Every summer, the Quad Cities is blessed with an extensive live-theatre scene, and the months are crowded with show after show. Many of them are epic or extravagant productions such as Mame, The Marriage of Figaro, Beauty & the Beast, The Bridges of Madison Country, The Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ Superstar … and those are just examples from the first half of June.
But then there are the smaller, more intimate ones. Presentations of works that you’ve maybe never heard of. Things that sound interesting but are overshadowed by bigger, more well-known titles. Shows such as the Black Box Theatre’s musical offering Baby – which may well prove to be the sweetest, most heartfelt, and most authentic musical you’ll see all season long.
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At Friday night's final dress rehearsal of Genesius Guild's As You Like It, there were instances in which performers were forced to overcome numerous distractions from around the park. The distant sounds of children on the playground, a flock of birds singing their twilight song, an occasional motorcycle passing by … even the noise of a rushing freight train from the bottom of the hill.
One could make the case that these distractions would lessen the overall enjoyability of this Shakespeare production. But I found the opposite to be the case, for they reminded me that this is public theatre at its finest – an opportunity for all to come and enjoy classical theatre no matter the emptiness of their pockets (though donations are gratefully accepted), and even if performed in the sweltering mid-June heat, by actors with true love for and dedication to the art.
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Life is tricky with Trixie, considering she’s a toddler who communicates only in gestures and gibberish. Such is the premise of the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse’s absolutely delightful children’s show Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical.
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Opening the company's second season with a Broadway hit that won seven Tony Awards and nine Drama Desk Awards, the Mississippi Bend Players bring life on the Mississippi to stage-musical life in the June 22 through July 1 presentation Big River, a Mark Twain adaptation praised by the Hollywood Reporter for its “tuneful score” and “episodic storyline that flows as smoothly as the Mississippi River.”
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The late, great author and humorist Nora Ephron famously shared this piece of advice for women: “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” That message will also be shared in New Ground Theatre's June 22 through 24 presentation of Nora and Delia Ephron's Love, Loss, & What I Wore, a stage serio-comedy that Variety magazine called “a bittersweet meditation on the joys and tribulations of women's lives” and that the Hollywood Reporter deemed “tender and insightful without being sentimental.”
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A 2003 inductee in the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame, acclaimed blues vocalist and Quad Cities native Ernie Peniston reunites his Ernie Peniston Band for a special Redstone Room concert on June 21, an evening that finds the artist sharing the soulful talents that led Blues Blast Magazine to state, “Peniston is a singer with a magnificent voice, capable of handing a wide range of styles with aplomb and always with full-bore emotional commitment.”
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Praised by Whatsup Magazine for music that delivers “the lyrics as spells, the melodies as enchantment, the rhythms as the primal beatings of the heart,” the folk artists of Joseph play a Moeller Nights concert at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn on June 27, sharing what the magazine lauded as “a harmonic alchemical transmutation of word and music into shimmering epiphanies of transcendent meaning.”
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Performing a Moeller Nights concert on June 27, the Heligoats – what NPR called “a strange name for a guy strumming a guitar, but oddly befitting someone who stuffs his songs with so many sideways ideas and observations” – delivers acoustic indie rock courtesy of singer/songwriter Chris Otepka, whom NPR declared “writes songs that are brainy in the best way: clever without straining for cuteness, wry but never smug.”
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Presenting what 24OurMusic.net called “artistic synergy done right, combining all the best elements of rock, funk, and hip-hop into something that is cool and enchanting,” the Miami-based musicians of Magic City Hippies will bring their luaded genre blend to Davenport's Redstone Room on June 28 – the latest stop in a June tour that finds the band visiting nine states over 13 days.
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Praised by JazzPolice.com for her “big, soulful voice,” and with 20-year David Sanborn collaborator Ricky Peterson insisting, “She will knock you out,” Minnesota-based jazz singer Pippi Ardennia performs as a June 17 guest in Polyrhythms' Third Sunday Jazz Workshop & Matinée Series, with her partner for the event Daniel Leahy, the noted jazz pianist who is currently writing and recording new compositions for the artist.
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Listening to the sustained, rolling laughter at my screening of Pixar's Incredibles 2, it became clear, even while it was happening, which individual scene was likely going to be the best-remembered and most-adored of the bunch: the one with the raccoon.
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A movie masterpiece, an Iowa-based photographer, and specialty craft beers will all be on tap when the Figge Art Museum hosts its June 21 Cinema at the Figge presentation, an event sponsored by Ford Photography boasting guest artist Bary Phipps and a screening of Stanley Kubrick's legendary comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb.
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Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Documentaries at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and currently sitting with a “100-percent fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the informative, incisive, and moving How to Die in Oregon will be screened at the East Moline Public Library on June 23, a film the Hollywood Reporter called “an affecting profile of the patient aid-in-dying debate.”
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There's a kind of directorial smoothness, an almost tangible delight in the composition and pacing of the on-screen images, that keeps audiences alert and energized. Though the films themselves were of varying quality, Steven Soderbergh demonstrated this easy, breezy style in Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen – heist comedies that gleamed with their directors' signature polish. But there's also a kind of smoothness, a professional yet rather paint-by-numbers approach, that can lead to your mind wandering even while you're enjoying yourself.
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As the movie's star has recounted, among the many injuries Johnny Knoxville suffered while filming his new comedy Action Point were concussions, broken bones, and the loss of “two-and-a-half teeth.” Did they happen to be his fangs? I ask because director Tim Kirkby's stunt-filled slapstick, despite its expected R rating, is about as close to a family-friendly Jackass as Knoxville has attempted, and I don't mean that admiringly; even before its famously fearless, possibly deranged lead walked on set, this thing was destined to be toothless.
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Paintings and watercolors of richly beautiful nature images – and images found very close to home – will be on local display June 23 through July 26, as the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy houses the recent works of a Fairfield, Iowa, artist in John Preston: Day by Day.
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From April 28 through June 21, the wonders of the great outdoors, and the creatures who make their homes there, will be celebrated in the latest exhibition at Bettendorf's Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy: An Intimate Encounter with Nature, featuring evocative paintings by Mary Kline Misol and expressive photographs by Larry Mendenhall.
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Artworks boasting the strange, the familiar, and the strangely familiar will be on display at Rock Island's Quad City Arts Center May 11 through June 22, with illustrative imagery and bright colors employed to communicate ideas about objects, environments, and concepts in the charming, humorous exhibits Karmageddon, featuring mixed media by David Balluff, and News Anchors with Nabisco, showcasing paintings by Greg Dickinson.
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Highlighting nearly 30 examples of solo pieces, collaborations, and innovations within the art form, the Figge Art Museum's new exhibition Steve Sinner: Master Woodturner will, from February 17 through June 24, showcase the talents of the Omaha native and Bettendorf resident whose beautiful, hand-crafted works can be found in galleries and collections from California to Ohio to New York.
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Two artists from Iowa and one from Illinois will fill the Quad City International Airport Gallery with paintings, stoneware, and photography when Quad City Arts presents May 2 through July 1 exhibitions by Michael Ryan of Cedar Rapids, Brian Roberts of Pella, and Trent Foltz of Geneseo.
