The North Shore Weekend, February 25th, 2023

Artist Lincoln Schatz in his Chicago studio

Photography by James Gustin

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NEWS

12 water city Chicago Children's Museum unveils new water exhibit that celebrates the city

13 master classical North Shore Chamber Music Festival presents virtual “Master’s Guide to Orchestral Auditions"

13 glenview hiring fair

Job seekers are welcome to attend this March 11 event

14 animal magnetism

After decades running the Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, Rob Carmichael says good-bye

LIFESTYLE & ARTS

16 marlowe This film noir rendition of a Raymond Chandler classic stars

Liam Neeson

17 devil's peak

Billy Bob Thornton shines in this otherwise flawed Southern Gothic crime thriller

18 #hashtag

Jenny Rosenstein expresses creativity through fashion and beauty

20 material pursuits

London-based Charge Cars, bespoke furniture, and luxury interiors top this weekend's "must-have" list

21 social life

Lyric Opera of Chicago kicks off 68th season with sold-out gala

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

18 sunday breakfast

Auction house veteran Alyssa Quinlan is going once, going twice, and going nowhere but up—as Hindman's new CEO

Explore this interactive residence, conceived by award-winning designer, Emily Mackie. Stunning spaces are crafted for optimal living in today’s modern world. Discover this immersive home, that will delight you with imagination and meaningful function.

Benefiting The House That She Built, in partnership with the Home Builders Institute, to educate, train and support women and underrepresented communities in the construction trades.

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DESIGN

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PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART

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ILLUSTRATION

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ARTISTIC EVOLUTIONS From PG 1

BY LAURA LAYFER TREITMAN THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND

Nearly every day for the last seven years contemporary artist Lincoln Schatz has taken a photograph of Lake Michigan. The time and locations of the photos, captured while riding his bicycle to his studio, vary from dusk to dawn. “I think it’s about looking at something over and over again, perhaps obsessively. It is a trait that all my projects have in common,” says Schatz. What seems to set Schatz apart in his career, however, is less about the constant and more about the detours. His work has ranged from the movement of the water’s waves in his current Lake Series to documenting and digitizing political leaders through interviews and images in The Network, both the title of a book he authored and an exhibition now included in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG).

“I’m a born and bred Chicagoan,” proclaims Schatz. “There was once a sense of feeling perhaps I had missed out on being an artist trying to make it in New York or Los Angeles, but the Midwest is truly home.” Growing up, his father was a part-owner of the popular Streeterville nightclub Chez Paree. It was a glamorous hotspot for dinner, drinks, and most of all, big-name headliners such as Lena Horne, Jimmy Durante, and Sammy Davis Jr. “Our house was a revolving door of these larger-than-life personalities whom my dad loved to invite over,” recalls Schatz. His mother was creative in her own right, working in painting, drawing, and calligraphy. On Saturdays, Schatz and his siblings went to art class in Old Town. “A friend of the family who was also an artist taught us about all different types of media and aesthetics. I have several of his pieces in my personal collection today that are reminders of that initial influence on me.” Schatz went on to attend Bennington College in Vermont, where he honed skills in sculpture, primarily metal, and

photography. After graduation, he earned a fellowship with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

“I remember the artist Martin Puryear, saying to me ‘you need to find a way to live making art.’” Schatz took the advice and began to channel his passions into a profession. In exchange for an old coal room as studio space, he made a deal with his dad to take on janitorial duties at the Chez Paree building. Schatz immersed himself in the local sculpture community, receiving large-scale commissions, but as he began to experiment with software to build prototypes to scale, he felt pulled back to the camera. “In the virtual realm, I felt the static object didn’t captivate me the same way. But when I added real-world physics, set my conditions and parameters, and focused

on capturing images from the environment, the inevitable moment of lack of control from such subjects created the space where my art emerged.”

Schatz explored video and experimented with computational digital work in the early 2000s, just as the medium was becoming more prevalent in the market. When he heard about Manhattan’s bitforms Gallery and their representation of artists engaged in new technologies, he made a cold call and shortly after hopped on a plane for an in-person meeting that resulted in a decade of collaboration. “I traveled to art fairs around the world with them, showing my work, meeting collectors, curators, other dealers, and had a lot of fun being involved in that scene.”

Opportunities and acquisitions with cor-

porations and museums developed for Schatz throughout this time period. In 2008, the Hearst Corporation, in honor of Esquire magazine’s 75th anniversary, commissioned Schatz to create portraits of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century. Schatz designed what he dubbed Cube Portraits, a 10’ x 10’ translucent box containing 24 cameras and computers that created “generative portraits”—an ever-changing series of video and still images expressing personality and movement. The subjects ranged from George Clooney and LeBron James to Samantha Powers and Jeff Bezos. “When we needed someone to dance with Clooney, my mother filled in!” Schatz fondly

Lake Series Diptych, March 5, 2018

America: Beehive Basin (1)

recalls.

Esquire’s Portrait of the 21st Century was acquired by the NPG for its permanent collection in 2010. During that period, while in Washington, D.C. for an appointment with Smithsonian curatorial staff, Schatz was struck with another idea. “I arrived early, wandered through some of the museums on the National Mall, and was incredibly moved by a show of Richard Avedon’s seminal work The Family on view at The Corcoran Gallery. I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to document historical figures with generative portraiture?” When Schatz met with the Smithsonian staff later that same day, he shared his thoughts to invite political, journalistic, and social thought leaders as participants in this kind of endeavor. This was the genesis of The Network, video portraits of the dynamic people who help shape Americans’ everyday lives. Schatz interviewed powerful players such as Nancy Pelosi, Karl Rove, Cokie Roberts, Vernon Jordan, and even art collector Mera Rubell.

The scope of Schatz’s projects extended far beyond the Beltway. A series developed for the United States State Department’s Art in Embassies program in partnership with the Department of Defense honors members of the foreign service and active military. This video piece is currently in the collection of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Another video project Cure Violence: Portrait of an Epidemic, created in partnership with the University of Illinois, catalogs messages of more

than fifty Chicagoans committed to ending gun violence.

Schatz seems to have always had a finger on the pulse of popular culture, identifying groundbreaking ways to use his art to better display and understand the complexity of American society. His work in the early 2000s was a harbinger for the future montage of personal face-to-face social media interactions currently created on Instagram and TikTok. More recently, Schatz has found himself turning to the outdoors. While water is easily accessible from his neighborhood landscape, redwood forests, aspen-covered mountains, the Great Plains, and even a Vermont dairy farm, also find prominence through Schatz’s lens. “My daughter will talk about the notion of ‘imposter syndrome,’ and I kind of think about that as I’m out there with my tripod. The camera has one set of demands that I prepare for, and then suddenly the trees, the sky, or the lake can reveal a completely different perspective right before my eyes. It can be a very humbling experience.”

He still occupies the same studio of his early days, reads voraciously, listens to lots of podcasts, and tests the science and engineering of new methods and mediums. “I have one assistant in the studio and right now we are exploring ways to alter large-scale photographs of trees into three-dimensional wall reliefs,” shares Schatz. “It’s really about changing our perspective. By creating the artwork as three-dimensional pieces we experience these artist-made fictional tree canopies in entirely new ways. When the work is at this larger scale, it becomes architectural. The

impact is completely different from a framed artwork on paper.”

Schatz credits much of his success to family. His wife, Clare Pinkert, a lawyer, and their three children regularly practice patience when family trips are occasionally interrupted by frequent pauses for the perfect shot. Schatz’s late father, a veteran, would have been immensely proud of his son’s government-related collaborations and was himself adept at shifting between the worlds of

diplomacy and fame. Obviously, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Schatz’s abilities as an artist to move from the studio into plein air and to comfortably interact with celebrities, national leaders, tech titans, and publishers are a rare combination and at the core of what good art intends to do: entertain, educate, and evolve.

Lincoln Schatz Studio is located at 299 East Ontario Street in Chicago, 312-787-8242, lincolnschatz.com.

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Artist Lincoln Schatz. Photography by James Gustin

WATER CITY

Chicago Children’s Museum celebrates the city’s connection to water with its latest exhibit..

Chicago Children’s Museum (CCM) has unveiled its newest exhibit, “Moen Presents Water City,” a cityscape that evokes Chicago. From its rivers and channels that meander between skyscrapers to Lake Michigan that stretches beyond Navy Pier—complete with a lighthouse and the Ferris Wheel in view—the entire cityscape celebrates the wonder of Chicago and its waters for children of all ages to explore.   Visitors are invited to use various tools to funnel, pump, push, and pull water up, down, around, and through the city. Small boats populate the waterways and move with the flow created by the visitor’s actions. Childdirected cars coast over the bridges and along the shoreline.

Additionally, visitors can transport water up into the tower overhead to create sporadic rain showers on the city below. Some of the buildings in the Chicago cityscape are smooth, some are perforated, and some have movable parts which spin or make noise with the impact of water. The water flows down the buildings and back into the branches of the river below.

“Nearly every children’s museum has a water experience,” says Chicago Children’s Museum President and CEO Jennifer Farrington. “We wanted to offer our visitors an experience that maximizes the play potential of water but is also uniquely Chicago and CCM.”

“The use of the Chicago skyline and city setting creates a sense of place, highlighting the ways that water plays a role in the Chicago landscape—through its rivers, channels, and Lake Michigan. Children are invited to find familiar features of the city and explore how water interfaces with the buildings, structures, and vessels, and to create their own stories within the setting,” she adds.

The “MOEN Presents Water City” exhibit

Moen’s generous donation was the match investment to the grant awarded by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (ILDNR) to begin the construction of the exhibit. To complete the project, IFF provided the financing and the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation donated the final gap funds to bring water play and STEM experiences for the next generation of young explorers and their families. Water City includes the following components:

will replace the well-loved Water Ways exhibit, which debuted when Chicago Children’s Museum opened at Navy Pier more than 25 years ago.

City Center

Visitors control water through a variety of methods in this area, interacting with skyscrapers evocative of Chicago’s iconic skyline that

reach high up into the space’s historic tower. Visitors aim sprayers at movable parts on the buildings to experiment with cause-and- effect. They turn a crank to move a water conveyor belt that fills a large container to its tipping point, creating a big splash! Water can be made to fall on the skyline as “rain” from showerheads embedded in “clouds” overhead, with visitors controlling the timing and intensity of the rainfall.

Musical Water

This section of the water table features water-activated musical buildings and invites visitors to explore the variety of sounds that water can make when it interacts with different surfaces, vessels, and objects. Visitors use water to activate cymbals and chimes housed in buildings. Water falling on a variety of surfaces produces a symphony of surprising and familiar sounds.

Early Learning Area

The height of this section of the water table is lower to accommodate younger visitors. The area features a funnel and tube activity where children can direct the flow of water alongside a building. Open water space invites children to splash around and notice the cool qualities of water, to scoop and pour water, or to explore how objects sink or float. A replica of Buckingham Fountain inspires children to experience flowing water and to control it.

Foggy Lake

This area offers visitors the largest volume of standing water in the exhibit (a basin), representing Water City’s “lake.” The lake provides ample opportunities to experiment with both loose parts and the qualities of water, including making waves. Over the lake hangs a layer of fog—a unique opportunity for visitors to explore water in vapor form, enjoying both its sensory qualities as well as the fun possibilities of exploring stories and narratives that involve the moody and mysterious look and feel of the fog. A lighthouse situated at the center of the lake provides further inspiration for storytelling.

River and Dam

This section of the exhibit offers a chance for children to build a dam using loose parts and to control the flow of water. They can create a course for vessels to travel, and watch what happens as the opening or closing of the dam speeds up or slows down the flow of water and its impact on the traveling boats.

Bridges, Ledges, and Loose Parts for Narrative Play

Water City includes a variety of props to support various types of play throughout all sections. Scoops and bowls invite children to experiment with volume and to scoop and pour water into the various components (such as the Musical Water features) to create effects. A variety of small boats can travel about on the river and navigate through passageways. Cars can coast over the bridges and along the shoreline and river’s edge as children guide their path.

Water City Signage

The exhibit includes a series of graphic panels that are intended to inspire conversation between parents/caregivers/educators and their children about the value of water as a natural resource, how water supports life, where our water comes from, and [developmentallyappropriate] ways that children and families can help conserve and protect water.

For more information, visit chicagochildrensmuseum.org.

MASTER CLASSICAL

North Shore Chamber Music Festival opens its 2023 season with a virtual “Master’s Guide to Orchestral Auditions,” featuring renowned violinist Alexander Velinzon.

BY MITCH HURST THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND

Northbrook residents Angela Yoffe and Vadim Gluzman often talked about staging classical music concerts, but it wasn’t until the husband-and-wife team—both well-traveled professional musicians; she’s a violinist and she a pianist—drove by the Village Church of Northbrook one day in 2011 that the proverbial lightbulb was lit.

They decided to pop into the church and the first person they met was its music director at the time. Less than a year later, North Shore Chamber Music Festival organized its first performance. Yoffe serves as Executive Director while Gluzman is Artistic Director.

“We had a dream that was very often mentioned between the two of us and to some of our friends and colleagues about how wonderful it would be to bring all of our wonderful friends to perform,” Gluzman says. “Somehow it never materialized until we went grocery shopping at sunset on Church Street. Angela said, ‘Look at that beautiful church. What if we could present concerts there?’”

Twelve years later, North Shore Chamber Music Festival will launch its 11th season (one season got canceled due to the pandemic) with a “Master’s Guide to Orchestral Auditions” conducted by Alexander Velinzon, a world-renowned violinist and Associate Concertmaster at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Velinzon has played with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Seoul Philharmonic.

During the event, which will be streamed from PianoForte in downtown Chicago, Velinzon will be working with Lalita Svete, a 2018 recipient of the Festival’s Arkady Fomin Scholarship Fund. The fund was established in 2015 in honor of Gluzman’s former teacher and has provided financial and artistic assistance to college and precollege students from around the world.

The masterclass is one of four planned events the festival will present during the upcoming season. Others include a screening of the documentary, Jens Nygaard—Life on Jupiter, an Emmy Award-winning film about the world-renowned conductor who founded the Jupiter Symphony in

New York. The screening will take place March 19 at PianoForte in Chicago. On April 30, the festival will present a performance by three Fomin Scholarship winners at KLAVIERHAUS in New York City. The organization’s flagship event, the annual North Shore Chamber Music Festival, will be held June 7 through 10 at Village Church in Northbrook and will feature the works of French composers. The festival has come a long way over the years.

“We are fortunate that after decades of performing all over the world to have great friends who are extraordinary musicians and so we invited them to come and play,” Gluzman says. “At first we couldn’t provide food and hotel stays because our budget was so incredibly limited, so we invited our friends.”

Little by little, the organization grew, and it now draws a worldwide audience through its online streaming of performances. Gluzman and Yoffe have received notes from Australia to Monte Carlo thanking them for the classical programming the festival provides.

“With the pandemic, we realized we can't just sit idle. We started a series of online and in-person events at PianoForte and we now have thousands from all over the world,” he says. “There was a lot of positive that came through the online experience. Of course, nothing can substitute the inperson experience and the emotional impact and social experience of receiving music together.”

While the North Shore Chamber Music Festival’s audience has grown, so has its base of donors. The organization is funded entirely by individual donors and foundations, but Gluzman pays tribute to strong friendships he and Yoffe developed while performing on the road who helped get it all started.

“The nucleus was our friends who just said they loved the idea. They wanted it to happen, and they contributed,” he says. “Not only that, they welcomed our artists into their homes, they fed them, they healed them when they were sick. They are now friends with our artists, spending vacations together. We’ve seen the community grow in front of your eyes. It’s very beautiful.”

For more information about North Shore Chamber Music Festival’s upcoming season, visit nscmf.org.

Glenview Hiring Fair

Responding to the staffing demands of the local Glenview businesses, Glenview Chamber of Commerce, Glenview Public Library, and Express Employment Professionals have teamed up to organize the Glenview Hiring Fair.

The fair will be held in the Community Room at the Glenview Public Library, 1930 Glenview Road, on Saturday, March 11 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. This event is open to anyone that is seeking full-time, part-time or seasonal employment. There will be 20 businesses that

Job seekers are encouraged to visit the fair on Saturday, March 11.

are waiting to meet the right candidate in person and understand their skills and work experience can align.

“Express Employment Professionals partnered with the Glenview Chamber because of its strong ties to the business community. Express Employment Professionals works with small, medium, and large-sized companies helping them find qualified talent for roles in Office Services, Professional, and Light Industrial work,” says Diana Garcia, owner of Express Employment Professionals. “A job fair

is an excellent way for job seekers to meet our recruiters in person and see the opportunity of great companies in the Glenview and surrounding areas.”

Meghan Kearney, Executive Director of Glenview Chamber, explains that staffing needs and other challenges continue to hurt the local business community.

“We wanted to offer businesses a one-stopshop to meet qualified candidates, hold open interviews, and eventually help them become fully staffed,” she adds. “This event is offered

at no charge and is being promoted through Glenview and the North Shore area.”

A 95+ year old nonprofit, the Glenview Chamber of Commerce is dedicated to ensuring that Glenview is a great place to live, work, and own a business.

The Chamber presents community events, runs business-building programs, offers leadership and other training, and generates several community publications.

For more information, visit glenviewchamber.com.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM

BY MITCH HURST THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND

When Rob Carmichael first started working for the City of Lake Forest, he was running the city’s athletic programs. Coming from a sports background and having played sports in college and a little professionally, it seemed a natural fit. He would often spend time at the city’s Recreation Center helping out with coaching and eventually started running its athletic leagues. But his true dedication was to animals—and conversations with his boss at the time, the Director of Parks and Recreation for the city—put him on a journey that will end in March.

“I had approached my old boss and friend Fred Jackson and told him my real passion was wildlife education. Lake Forest at the time didn’t have a nature center,” Carmichael says. “Fred's an outward thinking guy; he was always looking outside the box, always looking at what we could do to make Lake Forest the most special place on earth. So, he told me a nature center was a great idea.”

Jackson told Carmichael to put together a business plan and a program plan and Jackson would go to bat for him. Jackson ended up giving Carmichael a small space at the city’s Recreation Center in the early ‘90s.

“We utilized the old fitness room, which is now a dance studio, and that was basically our home base for a number of years,” Carmichael says. “Quickly I noticed that there was a real need for wildlife and nature education and people were loving it.

Carmichael started hosting classes and getting phone calls to come out to schools and

other events. At the time, his collection of animals, which included some snakes, a turtle, and a lizard, was limited to the pets he kept at home.

“I got a $500 grant and that allowed me to get some nicer caging and then all of a sudden things just started to snowball,” he says. “Within a fairly short period of time, we went from reptiles to amphibians, we brought in a couple of birds of prey, including a red-tailed hawk and a great-horned owl. Things just started to really explode from there.”

Around 1999, Carmichael

relocated to Elawa Farm. A Farm Commission was established, and a foundation was formed separate from the city to raise money. The Wildlife Discovery Center was born.

“Being a competitive person, I wanted to create the greatest nature center in Illinois, if not the Midwest. I went to a lot of the other nature centers in the area to see what they did,” Carmichael says. “Everyone does things a little bit differently, but all of them have the same sort of feel, which is great. I just wanted to create something a little bit more unique that would celebrate not only native wildlife, but wildlife around the world. That's kind of what our collection today reflects—a global conservation initiative.”

Carmichael says he also wanted to create a facility where the keepers that work with the animals were interacting with the public. He

wanted to establish a connection between the Wildlife Discovery Center and the public and the animals, where everyone felt vested into the process.

“We get a lot of people that come here every weekend; we saw the same families here over and over because they love coming here,” he says. “It's cool to see multiple generations over the years grow up and now their kids are coming out.”

But alas, as Chaucer said, all good things must come to an end.

Carmichael is riding off into retirement and he and the City of Lake Forest have decided to close the Wildlife Discovery Center, which they will do in March. The Elawa Farm Foundation is entertaining ideas and proposals for future use of the space, and Carmichael is busy rehousing the centers 400-strong animal collection.

“The foundation’s got some great ideas on what they can do with the space, even utilizing some of the outdoor trail and possibly having some farm animals that used to live here,” says Carmichael. “It would be a great opportunity for the farm to still provide a connection with animals.”

The closing of the center comes down to the issue of sustainability. While the City of Lake Forest has provided support for its operation, a number of individual donors have provided a majority of the financial support over the years. Carmichael has regularly worked 90-hour,

seven-day work weeks because the center’s budget hasn’t allowed for additional staff.

Put that all together, and the wise move, he says, is to find the animals a new home.

“It's my passion. I felt the level of ownership and so I was basically doing the job of probably three full-time staff. When I realized that I needed to start looking at my future and retirement we just didn't have a real good model for sustainability moving forward,” he says. “It was a tough decision. It was not a decision that was made lightly. It was very, very emotional.”

Carmichael’s biggest challenge has been finding new homes for animals. There are transfer permits involved, and he wanted to make sure their new homes will serve them well.

“A lot of these animals are going to other zoos and nature centers and preserves. I've got a lot of connections,” he says. “One thing I wanted to make sure first and foremost is that all the animals that are being placed are going to be in a situation that is as good or better than what they have now.”

The animals are emotional for Carmichael. He says he feels like he’s raised them over the long-term. But he’s also excited for his next chapter.

“It's been a great run. It's been an amazing experience. I think the public's gotten something that no other community on the North Shore can experience,” he says. “But you know, sometimes things like this just kind of run their course.”

A number of special events to mark Carmichael’s retirement and years of service to the City of Lake Forest are in the planning stages. For more information, visit cityoflakeforest.com.

After decades running the Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, Rob Carmichael will walk into the sunset having put a lot of smiles on the faces of kids—and some animals.

After decades of service, Lake Forest’s Rob Carmichael is retiring as Director of the city’s Wildlife Discovery Center and the park is closing.

RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 50 minutes

RATING: 2 stars

MARLOWE

BY REX REED THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND

I thought Raymond Chandler’s famous, fictional private dick and gimlet-eyed tough guy Philip Marlowe, who prefers nibbling on a pretty girl’s ear to plugging her crooked boyfriend, had packed up his shingle and retired to some condo in Palm Springs.

I guess I underestimated Hollywood’s addiction to sequels, prequels, and recycling old hits into stale, second-rate repros. Marlowe, directed by Ireland’s Neil Jordan, drags him out of mothballs again, wearing the same old hat and the same rumpled suit from the 1930s every Marlowe from the past has worn, from Humphrey Bogart to Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum. The suit has worn out its welcome and so has Philip Marlowe.

In the decades since Bogey played the downbeat investigator in The Big Sleep (l945), no improvements have been noted. Liam Neeson is a fine actor, especially on stage, but he’s too frayed around the edges and long in the chops to be mistaken for a debonair gumshoe, although not as hopelessly baggy as the woefully miscast Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye (1973).

In every incarnation, Marlowe has always been hired by a beautiful, dangerous, and bafflingly mysterious femme fatale who wants him to find a missing person. This time it’s an heiress (Diane Kruger) and the daughter of a hard-boiled film star (Jessica Lange) who enlists his services to find an ex-lover named Nico, one of the kingpins in the Hollywood underworld. Ironies build, narrow escapes accelerate, and familiar fisticuffs multiply, to little avail, in William Monaghan’s yawning screenplay.

Not many filmmakers know how to make a film noir any more. Black and white camera work would help, but I don’t

see any remedy to Liam Neeson’s bland expressions or indifferent line readings. In the clinches with Diane Kruger, there isn’t a shred of the sexy chemistry that turned Bogart and Bacall onto household names in The Big Sleep, and nothing happens you haven’t already seen orchestrated in keener and far superior Marlowe films, such as Edward Dmytryk’s Murder, My Sweet and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown

Random characters appear to revisit early Hollywood locations, including a shady club owner (Danny Huston), a wealthy ambassador (Mitchell Mullen), a collector of rare and priceless antiques (Alan Cumming), and the missing man’s tortured sister (Daniela Melchior). They all waft in and out of incoherent subplots, contributing nothing important or fascinating to the narrative.

Liam Neeson is the dullest denizen of this particularly unctuous Hollywood After Dark. As Marlowe, he uncovers the usual blackmail, grand larceny, homicide and other crimes corrupting the klieg light rays of Southern California, without much energy or wit.

Distilled from the 2014 novel “The Black Eyed Blonde” by John Banville, writing under the pen name Benjamin Black, this movie isn’t even original Raymond Chandler, and a great opportunity has been missed to bathe a film noir in the brittle ambience of old Hollywood, ignoring the glamour and decadence so beautifully captured in colorful films of the same period (Farewell My Lovely, L. A. Confidential, to name just two).

Marlowe is set in 1939, but it was filmed in Barcelona and Dublin, of all places, erasing its most valuable character—Los Angeles—and leaving the viewer under-stimulated by an oversexed pulp fiction hero who shrugs his way through it looking bored.

His sleuthing is reduced to uncover the answers to only three vital questions: “Whose ashes are filling Nico’s urn?” “Why?” And “Does anybody care?”

Illustration by Tom Bachtell

Famed film critic Rex Reed weighs in on Marlowe and Devil's Peak.

Liam Neeson stars in this film noir rendition of a Raymond Chandler classic but the result is little more than a stale, second-rate repro.

RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 37 minutes

RATING: 2 stars

DEVIL’S PEAK

BY REX REED THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND

After a brief hiatus, Billy Bob Thornton returns to the screen in Devil’s Peak, another backwoods Southern Gothic crime thriller, playing the kind of menacing, two-fisted role that made him famous. The movie isn’t much, but his unique whiskey-slogging, snuff-spitting redneck routine is the thing he does better than anyone else, and he does it so well in Devil’s Peak that he makes you overlook a multitude of flaws.

In the Appalachian Mountains of Jackson County, North Carolina, he is Charlie McNeely, a mean and ruthless drug dealer whose son Jacob was initiated into the family business, making money cooking and selling amphetamines the way some kids supplement their weekly allowances mowing lawns.

But now Jacob is old enough to find his conscience and a girlfriend who makes him feel guilty. His long-suffering mother has already surrendered to a wasted existence of meth and alcohol addiction, but no matter how hard he tries to ease her pain, his efforts to save her life are squandered. So, he thinks about escape, but his father is a bald, raunchy covered with tattoos who rules his hick-town country dynasty with brute force. Worse still, he has an arson of weapons he won’t hesitate to use on anyone who crosses him on both sides of the law.

Now the respectable girl of Jacob’s dreams also happens to be the daughter of the town’s most respected citizen and one of Charlie’s chief enemies—running for governor, determined to put an end to the McNeely clan’s source of illegal income, landing the boy’s hopes of running away in double jeopardy, and leading to a round of contrived and pointless violence.

Jacob is played by newcomer Hopper Penn, the son of Sean Penn and Robin Wright, who in a few brief scenes manages to steal the film from everyone else. As the boy’s ravaged mother

Virgie, she’s not aging well (must be the makeup), but what imperfections are visible to the naked eye are only emphasized by the trashy, beat-up characters she loves to play. Torn between loyalty to his father and avenging his mother’s suicide, Penn’s inexperience shows in a performance that is too brooding and lethargic to move the weak narrative along at a faster pace it badly needs. It will be interesting to see him again in a better film than this.

The rest of the cast does a commendable job of trying to give the film some thrust besides the gunfire, but the script by Robert Knott and Ben Young’s splotchy direction seem to have been mangled in the editing room. Emma Booth, as Charlie’s salty, acerbic mistress, and Katelyn Nacon, as the girl who urges Jacob to ditch his villainous father’s control and go straight, are too undeveloped to have much impact, and Brian d’Arcy James, as the girl’s politically ambitious father, hardly registers at all.

This pretty much leaves Billy Bob Thornton to carry the film alone. His folksy way of delivering a multitude of chicken and waffles down-home colloquialisms like he’s spitting buttermilk pays off, even though most of the lines make no sense.

“If this thang goes off for some reason,” he drawls as he hands his son a pistol, “it touches mud’n’water.” Huh? “Didja evah notice how the skin on the outside of yo’ lip is thicka than the skin on the inside of yo’lip?”

You finally give up trying to figure out what he’s talking about and just watch the business he invents to make a vile character interesting between shootouts.

In the end, 90 percent of the cast is dead and what’s left of the movie implodes in a cacophony of noise and chaos. With terrific Appalachian ambience and moments of carefully constructed action, Devil’s Peak is not a terrible movie, but in the bigger picture, it’s not a particularly memorable one, either.

It just lies there on the table, like day-old grits.

Billy Bob Thornton’s performance in this Southern Gothic crime thriller is so good you might be willing to overlook the rest of its flaws.

EDITED BY DUSTIN O'REGAN ILLUSTRATION BY TOM BACHTELL

#ON MY NIGHTSTAND

“Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. This book resonated with me and it is how I like to live my life. Small things that I do every day have evolved into huge changes—I have lost 15 pounds over the last two years. This book taught me how to live with patience, enjoy moments, and create lasting habits that amount to great things.”

JENNY ROSENSTEIN of Winnetka has always expressed her creativity through fashion and beauty. Rather than checking the news every morning, the former boutique owner turns to her favorite sites to discover new trends in fitness, health, wellness, and beauty. After having three children, she started suffering from a debilitating chronic illness. She was so exhausted that the thought of getting dressed seemed oppressive—for a fashionista through and through, this was a red flag that something was wrong. The reality of “take care of yourself before you can take care of others” settled in. After five years of functional medicine, dietary, and lifestyle changes, Rosenstein feels healed. During her journey, she learned that what we put on our skin is just as important as what we put in our bodies. She is currently working as a Consultant with Beautycounter, a clean makeup and skin care line that advocates for a higher standard in the beauty industry. Through Beautycounter, Rosenstein is teaching others how wellness intersects with beauty and fashion.

#ON MY MOBILE

“I use my Oura App to track my sleep. I have learned so much about my body through my sleep cycles. I now know the optimal times for eating, resting, and working out. Everybody is different, which is why it’s so helpful to analyze your data and change your habits based on personal information. Knowledge is power.”

#IN MY EARBUDS

“Vance Joy. My husband and I love going to concerts and are always looking to see who is coming to town so we have something to look forward to. Vance is from Australia, and he tells stories about his songs before he sings them. I love listening to the album after the show and understanding the backstory of his lyrics. I also love listening to The Doctor’s Farmacy with Dr. Mark Hyman. Using food as medicine is a practice that I have learned to live by. Often, what is appearing on the outside of our bodies is actually coming from the inside and what we put into our mouths. My family calls me ‘Shama Mama’ because I constantly scrutinize the food we eat as a source of our ailments.”

Congratulations to our Top Producing Agents!

The GGL Group A Tradition of Trust since 1903

Our Sales Team

Nancy Adelman

Brad W. Andersen

Brady Andersen

Marina Carney & Andy Mrowiec

The GGL Group is proud to recognize the accomplishments of all of our brokers. 2022 was another record year for us with over $222 Million in closed sales volume. We are proud to maintain our position as the highest producing team of brokers in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff.

Karen Chien-Rooney

Marie Colette

Leslie Dhamer

Toni Feldstein

Kathi Hudson

Elizabeth Iantoni

Bill Kashul

BR Koehnemann

Scott Lackie

Patrick Lauer

Elizabeth O’Connor

Heidi Ogden

Vera & Pat Purcell

Kathi Shimp

Linda Smith

Elizabeth Wieneke

Lake Forest Office 280 E Deerpath Road Lake Forest, IL 60045 847-234-0485

Lake Bluff Office 8 E Scranton Avenue Lake Bluff, IL 60044 847-234-0816

Marina Carney & Andy Mrowiec

Brady Andersen

Nancy Adelman

Marie Colette

Elizabeth Wieneke

Vera & Pat Purcell

Kathi Hudson

Heidi Ogden

This weekend’s curated luxury trends MATERIAL PURSUITS

SWEET SEAT

Maribel Weisz of Antique Resources and Stephanie Sarris with Bellehaven Designs have collaborated to breathe new life into antique chairs with the aptly named ENCORE COLLECTION. Luxurious, durable, sustainably sourced fabrics are selected to reupholster 100-to-200-year-old chairs by a talented team of local, woman-owned upholsterers. antiqueresourcesinc.com.

LOOK BOOK

BACK TO THE FUTURE

London-based CHARGE CARS is offering a limited run of the most wicked EV in the world. Only 499 of these beauties will be built, each on a new, licensed, U.S. made body shell based on the 1967 body style. Charge claims acceleration of 0-60 in 3.9 seconds thanks to 536 horsepower electric motor. Almost more beautiful than the exterior is the super-luxe interior, bespoke to each owner. charge.cars

SOCIAL LIFE

No less an interiors authority than Margaret Russell, the longtime editor of Elle Décor, is over the moon for SHINGLE AND STONE: THOMAS KLIGERMAN HOUSES. This monograph covers 20 years of homes. It’s a deep dive into the design process with sketches and renderings alongside stunning photography that captures the beautiful light of the East Coast. Kligerman is a student of American and European domestic architecture and admired by all for his ability to move the needle forward in residential design. monacellipress.com

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE LYRIC

Photography by Jaclyn Simpson and Robert Kusel

Chicago’s most generous philanthropists know There’s No Place Like Lyric, an adage proven yet again when the Lyric Opera of Chicago hosted a sold-out gala by that name to celebrate the opening of its 68th season. For the first time, the gala was held at the breathtaking Lyric Opera House, an appropriate locale to celebrate the company and all it does for the city. Susan Morrison, a member of both Lyric’s Women’s Board and its Board of Directors, provided visionary support and creative direction as the evening’s chair of an event well known for its innovative and modern approach. She was fully supported by the entire Women’s Board, under the leadership of its president Nancy Santi. The event was designed by HMR Designs and a family-style dinner prepared by Calihan Catering was served to guests at intimate tables in the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Grand Foyer. lyricopera.org

ANNA PAGLIA, SANDY MAMLICK PENELOPE STEINER, NICOLE STEINER LAURA AND CRAIG MARTIN

GABRIELLA REYES AND JOHN HOLIDAY

ENRIQUE MAZZOLA, NANCY S. SEARLE, ANTHONY FREUD, LILI GAUBIN

SHEILA AND DAVID ORMESHER

PATRICK AND CATHERINE BAUDHUIN, SUSAN MORRISON, EMILY AND STEVEN KRALL

KIMBERLY TAYLOR-SMITH, NANCY S. SANTI, KAREN FREEMAN-WILSON, SOPRANO GABRIELLA REYES

AUCTION ROCK

BY BILL MCLEAN ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT

A visit to Lucy’s Psychiatric Help booth cost a Peanuts comic strip character five cents.

While growing up with three sisters in Kildeer, Alyssa Quinlan—a budding entrepreneur since Minute 1, “because I was born wearing business attire,” she claims—charged only one cent to help a sibling solve a problem.

Such a bargain-basement fee, collected occasionally from a … basement.

Her mother and father, Kathi and Dean Frelk, provided the overhead—the roof, actually—for their youngster’s venture.

“I’d give advice or help one of my sisters find her socks at home,” recalls Quinlan, the Frelk couple’s second-oldest child.

“On my best day, I think I earned a dime.”

Chicago-based Hindman Auctions generated more than $100 million (too many piggy banks of dimes to count) in total sales in 2022, marking a record revenue for the second year in a row. The 40-year firm also grew significantly across the company to a total of 16 offices and presented major collections for sale.

A certain former highly affordable, in-house advice disseminator served as a gale-force leader behind that resounding success. Quinlan, 47, was Hindman’s chief business development officer at the time.

Today she is Hindman’s CEO.

“My father was a huge influence on who I am today,” Quinlan says of the late Dean Frelk, an industrial engineer before becoming a real estate developer. “It’s difficult for me to imagine taking my children (Caroline, 13, and Patrick, 11) to meetings with me, but I recall dressing up and joining Dad at meetings or appointments and just observing him or listening to conversations.

“I noticed his strong work ethic when I was young, and I’d like to think I adopted that work ethic.”

In her new capacity since early January, Quinlan, a Lincoln Park resident, oversees strategy and day-to-day operations for Hindman, which specializes in providing full-spectrum appraisal and auction services to private collectors, estates, and cultural institutions.

Client-centric Hindman, featuring a talented team of 175 professionals, conducts more than 140 live and online auctions annually in all major fine art and luxury collecting categories, connecting buyers in more than 70 countries with unique collecting opportunities.

Quinlan’s enduring professional mentor, Leslie Hindman, launched Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in 1982; it became Hindman Auctions after merging with Cowan’s Auctions in 2019.

Quinlan first worked for Leslie as an account executive.

“Leslie taught me everything I know about auctions,” says Quinlan, who, before returning to the auction industry four years ago, had spent years in the private banking and wealth management fields. “I’d studied English Literature and Economics (at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana), as opposed to Art History like many others had. After sitting through my first auction and seeing Leslie at the auctioneer podium, I was hooked, intrigued, and grateful for the opportunity to learn a new industry that I’m still passionate about today.

“There is nothing like the adrenaline rush that you get from taking an auction,”

adds the finisher of 10 marathons, including Boston, and former Lake Zurich High School tennis player/track athlete. “I love the excitement of being on stage, and while I still get nervous about the outcome of various events, as soon as the microphone is in my hand and the light shines down, the nerves dissipate quickly and I channel that energy into trying to raise as much money as I can for the organizations I’m representing.”

Charities hosting auctions—The Salvation Army and The Woman’s Board of Rush University Medical Center, to name a couple— have sought the must-have services of Quinlan, the passionate and professional and positiveto-the-bone auctioneer. An item up for auction that doesn’t have a compelling story attached

to it is, well, just a run-of-the-mill item to Quinlan.

Show.

And tell, tell, tell.

Hindman’s mission, more or less.

“Our buyers love hearing stories of collections, and we’re always excited to tell them,” Quinlan says. “A World War II pilot came to us with silverware and ceramics and books not too long ago. How could you not get excited about discovering the stories behind those items and then telling them to others? When I tell people that it feels like I’ve never worked a day in my life at Hindman Auctions, it’s because I love everything about it, especially the storytelling aspect.”

Quinlan has guided auction fans on behindthe-scenes tours and delivered talks, including “Demystifying the Auction Process.”

“I am constantly asked by friends and advisers if they can buy at auction, and I always tell them that everyone is welcome to bid,” she says. “It’s a fabulous way to purchase unique items for your home, stunning jewelry, couture, or any other category we offer.”

Her leadership style starts and ends with empathy. In between?

More empathy.

“Although I never envisioned myself working in sales, many of my positions were in business development or relationship management, and whether I’m working with external clients or I’m engaged with our internal team, I try to put myself in others’ shoes so I can best address whatever opportunity or challenge is presented,” Quinlan says.

Alyssa first met her future husband, Hoffman Estates native and Fremd High School graduate Brian Quinlan, at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Barrington. Both were young’uns during the encounter, probably either running around the undercroft or raising their hands simultaneously to answer a question in Sunday School.

The courtship began years later, post-college, when both were working in New York.

They got married in 2004.

Alyssa Quinlan’s favorite pastime is spending time with Brian and their two children. No. 2 on the list might be spending time with family and friends under the stars and atop a blanket at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park. She’s on Ravinia’s Women’s Board.

Concerts had drawn a young Alyssa—a pianist/violinist—to the iconic North Shore venue back in her Kildeer days.

Back in her “Penny for Your Thoughts” days.

Hindman Auctions, 312-280-1212, is headquartered at 1550 West Carroll Avenue, Suite, 106, in Chicago. Visit hindmanauctions.com for more information.

Hindman Auctions—coming off a highly successful 2022 in total sales—couldn’t be sturdier than it is under the steady, empathic leadership of new CEO Alyssa Quinlan.

When I tell people that it feels like I’ve never worked a day in my life at Hindman Auctions, it’s because I love everything about it, especially the storytelling aspect.

Alyssa Quinlan

20 W OLD MILL ROAD, LAKE FOREST NEW LISTING!

This expansive and stately home defines luxury at its finest. Built in 2002, it is an impressive country estate constructed of the highest quality materials and craftsmanship. It has a brick and limestone exterior, a slate composite roof, copper gutters, and a four-car heated garage. It is serenely poised on a manicured 1.8-acre parcel framed by a remarkable stand of mature trees. It features an in-ground swimming pool, a heated patio, and an outdoor fireplace. The breathtaking interior decor is finished to fulfill any decorator's fancy. Relish in the fresh display of soft and natural color palettes and gorgeous new lighting fixtures. The house is curated in a pleasing, elegant, yet chic way.

The interior features a grand foyer with a double staircase and an exquisite chandelier, 10 ft ceilings, 8 ft doors, hardwood & travertine floors, beautiful archways, tray and barrel ceilings, skylights, extensive moldings, wainscoting, and five fireplaces. Radiant heated floors throughout the main level, primary suite bath, and second-floor guest suite. The finished third floor provides additional living space. The home is listed in the Private Listing Network. Please call us for more details.

5 Bedrooms | 5.2 Baths | Approx 8,000 sq ft | $3,250,000

Hellinga and Hasselbring's client-rst approach offers 46 years of combined experience! We hope to earn your business. Please call for a condential conversation about your real estate needs.