Elgin News Digest: Carpentersville police officers lauded for saving a life with AED; Elgin Summer Theatre to present ‘Wizard of Oz' at Hemmens
According to the post, the officers found the man unconscious and not breathing. They used CPR and an AED defibrillator to help revive him and keep him alive so he could be taken to a local hospital.
Carpentersville Police Chief Todd Shaver said the incident happened in the 1600 block of Seminole Lane. The officers who saved the man's life were Jose Chamorro, Ryan Miles and Nick Valzano.
Each was recognized by the Carpentersville Fire Department with a Life Saving Award at an awards banquet earlier this year.
In 2023, the village received a donation of $23,979 from Firehouse Subs for lifesaving equipment, which allowed the department to purchase AEDs, Shaver said.
Elgin Summer Theatre's production of 'The Wizard of Oz' will be presented by the Up And Coming Theatre Company and the city of Elgin at The Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin.
Shows will be presented at 7:30 p.m. July 11-12 and 18-19 and at 3 p.m. July 13 and 20, according to the city of Elgin's website.
The musical is a stage adaptation of the classic 1939 movie, which is based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.' Songs from the movie, including 'Over the Rainbow' and 'We're Off to See the Wizard,' will be part of the show.
Tickets are $24 and $30 and can be purchased at elginil.gov/1829/Elgin-Summer-Theatre.
To show its appreciation for the community's support, the Food for Greater Elgin food pantry will hold an open house from 3 to 5 p.m. Friday, July 11, at its Elgin warehouse at 1553 Commerce Drive.
The 'Open Doors, Full Hearts' event will feature behind-the-scenes tours of the facility, light refreshments and a chance to meet volunteers and staff, according to the nonprofit's website.
For more information, go to foodforgreaterelgin.org/blog/open-doors-full-hearts or email Emily Tyler at etyler@ffge.org.
The Rotary Club of Carpentersville will host 'Blind Flights,' a picnic-style craft beer tasting, from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 12, in Carpenter Park, 275 Maple Ave., Carpentersville.
Attendees will vote on their favorites in various categories without knowing which brewer produced what beer, according to the club's website. The event will feature beers from 11 breweries as well as food for purchase from No Manches and Duke's Blues-N-BBQ, a social media post said.
Proceeds will help support Rotary programs, including those that provide winter coats for kids in need, fund scholarships and assist local food pantries.
Tickets are $38.10 and can be purchased at www.ticketsignup.io/TicketEvent/BlindFlightsBeerTasting.
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Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
The problem with the Las Vegas Sphere's new take on ‘The Wizard of Oz'
Director Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The 17,600-seat, 366-foot-tall, 516-foot-wide Sphere is the largest spherical structure on Earth and features an Exosphere with a 580,000-square-foot display, the largest LED screen in the So, why is all hell breaking loose in online cinephile circles? Because, as the CBS This Morning feature reported, 'The Wizard of Oz' is being modified by AI to create images and performances that were not present in the original film. Characters who were not originally in the frame now appear onscreen, as does scenery that was originally offscreen. All of this is generated by AI. 'Our standard on this was not to modify the film at all,' says Dolan in the CBS interview, 'but to try and bring you into the film, as if you were in the studio when it was shot.' Then, CBS showed a scene where AI created onscreen actions that one of the actors, who was offscreen in the original film, did not perform. Advertisement Sounds like a modification! This alteration brings to mind that commercial where Actress Margaret Hamilton is shown in character as the infamous Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz." AP Adding to the online fury, the CBS reporting cited here was done by Ben Mankiewicz, the primetime host and the face of Turner Classic Movies. In the interview, Mankiewicz seemed unfazed by a billionaire sanctioning the artistic butchery that changed director Victor Fleming's original vision. For fans of the network, this is akin to the world's most famous vegan interviewing Colonel Sanders and raving about his chicken. The entire interview clearly hit a nerve, especially for folks who remembered how TCM's founder, Ted Turner, originally had This is what Mankiewicz tweeted: '[T]he concerns over AI are real. But it is here. We must accept that. But this is not what our concern should be. The actors are gone. All they're doing now is extending performances to fit a large screen – completing work Fleming and LeRoy would have if it had been possible.' Advertisement Frank Morgan, Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Judy Garland and Bert Lahr in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz." Warner Home Vide How do we know what Fleming or LeRoy (who also directed some scenes) would have done? We can't ask them. And no, we don't have to accept AI chicanery, no matter how hard tech bros and websites are trying to cram that technology down our throats. These assumptions are infuriating. Remember that the excuse for colorizing movies was a billionaire's assumption that contemporary audiences would only watch black and white films if they were in color. This reasoning failed to take into account that Technicolor existed when those films were made, and also ignored that shooting in black-and-white was a stylistic choice that required different lighting and color schemes. Keep in mind that this alteration of 'The Wizard of Oz' is different from George Lucas updating the special effects in the original 'Star Wars' trilogy, or Steven Spielberg replacing guns with walkie-talkies in a re-release of 'E.T.'. For better or worse, those instances were a case of the director modifying his own vision. We can argue that these alterations are also wrong, but at least we know the filmmaker's intent wasn't violated. Regardless of the quality of a film, each shot, scene, and camera movement represents what the filmmaker wanted to convey to the consumer. Without that knowledge, adding or removing something from the frame, or changing angles or aspect ratios, may very likely alter or distort that intention. For example, when Orson Welles's 'The Other Side of the Wind' was finished by others in 2018, 48 years after Welles shot the footage, the editing job didn't always feel Wellesian. Everyone involved did their best to mimic the director, but the 'happy accidents' Welles always said influenced his decisions will never be known. Advertisement Margaret Hamilton as The Wicked Witch, arms extended towards Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz." Turner Entertainment That violation of a filmmaker's original intent is the major issue those cinephiles arguing with Mankiewicz have with the Sphere version of 'The Wizard of Oz.' (Which will cost you between $150 and $350 to see, by the way.) The idea forces the question: 'what next?' Will some billionaire bankroll an immersive 'Gone With the Wind' where Prissy is seen learning something about birthing babies, and audiences can feel the heat of Atlanta burning? A reimagining of the lost footage of 'The Magnificent Ambersons' featuring AI-generated performances? A version of 'Titanic' where the door is big enough for Rose and Jack? 'The Wizard of Oz' is only the beginning. And to think, this nightmare started with Fred Astaire being forced to dance with a vacuum cleaner. Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago pianist ‘grateful' to make music again after life-changing brain surgery
A hospital bed in Florida isn't Mark Burnell's typical performance venue. But this spring, with an electric keyboard in his lap and 14 holes drilled into his skull, the longtime Chicago musician struck up a melody on the old ivories. The tune was a time-honored, and fitting, classic from 'The Wizard of Oz': the Scarecrow's seminal hit, 'If I Only Had a Brain.' Standing bedside, Burnell's wife, Anne, sang along. 'I would not be just a nothin' my head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain,' she crooned. 'And perhaps I'll deserve you, and be even worthy of you, if I only had a brain.' Burnell, a pianist and singer who has gigged, directed and taught across Chicago since 1989, underwent brain surgery in April at a Mayo Clinic campus in Florida, after a year and a half spent managing monthly seizures. The procedure used innovative brain mapping techniques and even mid-surgery performances by Burnell himself to see through. But ultimately, the treatment proved successful at tempering Burnell's epilepsy, he and his surgical team say. Now, a few months into recovery, the Burnells on Thursday night will be staging their first large public concert since Burnell's surgery. Headed into the concert at the Gateway Lounge in Chicago's Copernicus Center in Jefferson Park, Burnell says he's eager to perform, especially with the newfound freedom that surgery has given him. 'I'm on the road to healing,' Burnell said, sitting down for an interview Monday alongside Anne at their Wicker Park home. 'I feel excited about playing music again, not afraid of seizing on the stage.' 'Play this keyboard but don't play anything easy, challenge yourself!' Burnell's case was a complex one, said Dr. William Tatum, an epileptologist with the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Florida who was part of Burnell's surgical team. It was also a long time coming. What brought the musician to Mayo Clinic was a head trauma dating back to the 1970s, an injury that left Burnell epileptic. By the time he came to Mayo Clinic, not only was Burnell drug-resistant to anti-seizure medication, but his seizures also derived from several areas of the brain, making treatment more challenging, Tatum said. The surgical team began with a technique called stereoelectroencephalography, or stereo EEG. The procedure involves placing electrodes deep into a patient's brain through small holes drilled in the skull, said Dr. David Sabsevitz, a clinical neuropsychologist with Mayo Clinic, also part of Burnell's surgical team. With stereo EEG, electrodes 'listen to brain activity,' which allows doctors to localize where exactly a patient's seizures are coming from, Sabsevitz said. In Burnell's case, stereo EEG provided his surgical team with the data they needed to figure out where to direct treatment. That was just the first step. Using the same electrodes they placed in Burnell for stereo EEG, the surgical team electrically stimulated his brain to determine where they could surgically intervene and where they couldn't, Sabsevitz said. That meant probing the areas of Burnell's brain deemed the source of his seizures and assessing — through stimulation — whether intervention would impact Burnell's abilities or functionality in any way. In real time, that entailed Burnell going through a series of tests, all while he was wide awake. For instance, the surgical team had Burnell repeat words or name famous faces while they stimulated different areas of his brain. If they saw any disruption, they knew to avoid or at least be extra careful with any intervention going forward. They also had Burnell play the piano. For about half the treatment, Burnell played different songs on a toy keyboard that he bought ahead of his surgery. (It was the only keyboard that would fit in his luggage, Burnell said.) 'If I Only Had a Brain' was one of a slate of tunes Burnell and Anne brought to Mayo Clinic. And if the electrodes weren't obstacle enough, their hospital setlist wasn't simple either. '(The doctors) said, 'Play this keyboard but don't play anything easy, challenge yourself,'' Burnell said. By having Burnell play piano, his surgical team could view how different aspects of musical processing were organized in his brain as to avoid damaging or disrupting those systems, Sabsevitz said. The surgical team mapped Burnell's cognitive functions using a tool that Sabsevitz developed called NeuroMapper, a tablet-based testing platform. Burnell didn't feel any pain inside his brain through the procedure, but that didn't make it any less scary, he said. The only reason he was willing to go through with the treatment was because he was out of options, he said. Once Burnell's surgical team had adequately mapped his brain, they turned to one last step: eradicating the root of his seizures. Through a process called radiofrequency ablation, Burnell's team heated the electrodes in his brain to ablate and destroy small portions of his brain tissue causing him to seize. Burnell stayed awake for the ablation too. He also reprised his repertoire on his travel keyboard, with Anne accompanying him, as another active test of the treatment's effect on his livelihood. Since April, Burnell has had a few seizures, but not nearly as many as before, he said. Though not necessarily free of seizures, Burnell's treatment signified 'the best possible outcome that we could have,' Tatum said. 'It's really awesome and so satisfying, as an epilepsy doctor, so to see somebody as complex as Mark undergo the entire deal of everything that can be done and yet have a good outcome. … He's one that we will always remember,' Tatum said. To Sabsevitz, Burnell's case highlighted the need to think outside the box, he said. Radiofrequency ablation, especially, is a relatively new and rare procedure in the United States. The procedure has been in use at Mayo Clinic for only about a year. Last summer, a young woman from Georgia became the first pediatric patient in the U.S. to undergo similar treatment, Fox News reported in April. She was also treated at Mayo Clinic Florida. For Burnell, his musicality made his case all the more unique, Sabsevitz said. 'Not only did we map him playing his piano and singing with his wife … we were creating lesions in real time and watching to see what it did to his brain and these functions,' Sabsevitz said. An old friend with connections to Mayo Clinic Burnell, 69, a Pennsylvania native, has played the piano since age 8. He received a bachelor's and master's of fine arts from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh before moving to Chicago 36 years ago. He and Anne first crossed paths in 1993. The duo met performing in different bands on one of those cocktail/dinner cruise ships that park at Navy Pier. She sang. He played the piano. They had their first date that night. 'The first thing I heard (Anne) sing was 'A Sunday Kind of Love,'' Burnell recalled. 'That ended up being our first dance (at our wedding).' The pair not only married, but have made music together and continue to perform, both as a duo and individually. They consider themselves crossover artists, delving into jazz, Broadway, pop and gospel, the Burnells say. To date, they have released several albums together. 'The two loves of my life are music and (Anne),' Burnell said. When Burnell had a seizure for the first time, Anne didn't know he had previously suffered from a traumatic brain injury. In 1974, Burnell took a bad fall while a freshman at Carnegie Mellon. He recalled falling backward into grass, where his head landed on a manhole cover. The fall put Burnell into a coma for a week. He recovered, missing only a couple of weeks of school. As the years went on, Burnell began to forget about the injury until 23 years ago when a seizure sent him to the hospital, he said. While the seizure only had Burnell out of commission for a couple days, he was prescribed anti-seizure medication and went back to performing. Then, four years later, Anne came home to Burnell collapsed on the floor. He again returned to the hospital, where he was placed in a medically induced coma for 11 days to stop him from seizing. Afterward, the seizures again seemed to dissipate. Years passed with no relapse, until a couple years ago, when Burnell began having moments where he would 'check out' for a few seconds, whether that meant he'd stop talking or couldn't remember what he was playing on the piano. For a year and a half, Burnell was having seven to eight seizures a month. In January, that doubled. Concerned, Burnell and Anne confided in a friend they used to perform with in Chicago. To their surprise, that friend turned to the Burnells and replied, 'I got a guy.' It turned out that their friend had a connection to the Mayo Clinic, which offers the highest level of epilepsy diagnosis and care, as rated by the National Association of Epilepsy Centers. One referral later, Burnell was at the health system's Florida campus by February. He spent days getting tested as doctors charted a path forward. By April, he was due for surgery. When Burnell got home from Mayo Clinic, he beelined for his piano. 'We got off the plane and the first thing I wanted to know was do I remember the songs?' he said. He was pleasantly surprised to find most of the music he had committed to memory remained at his fingertips. Thursday's performance at the Copernicus Center will be an homage to 'Baby Boomer Songwriters.' Think James Taylor, Paul Simon, Carole King — but with a jazzed-up flair. Asked how they were feeling just a few days out from the concert, Burnell smiled. 'We've done a lot of homework,' Anne said. 'Yeah, we've practiced,' Burnell added. 'We feel like we're ready.' Above all, Burnell says he just feels 'so grateful' that he can make music again. 'I've never done any other kind of work,' he said. 'If that would have been taken away from me, it would have been like taking my life away from me. But here, now I have music, and I have Anne.' The Burnells' show at the Copernicus Center is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, with doors opening at 6:30. Tickets are available at
Forbes
2 days ago
- Forbes
The AI-Altered ‘Wizard Of Oz' Controversy, Explained
Actors Bert Lahr (1895-1967), Jack Haley (1897-1979), Ray Bolger (1904-1987), Judy Garland (1922-1969) and Margaret Hamilton (1902-1985) in costume during a scene from the film 'The Wizard of Oz', 1939. (Photo by Silver) Getty Images An AI-altered version of The Wizard of Oz created for the Las Vegas Sphere has ignited backlash online, with film fans describing the changes as 'vandalism.' As generative AI slowly creeps its way into the film industry, one tendril at a time, the alteration of an iconic film struck many commentators as incredibly invasive. In April, Warner Bros. announced that an altered version of The Wizard of Oz (1939) would play inside the Las Vegas Sphere, with the help of Google's engineers—alterations to the film are estimated to have cost $80 million dollars. The Las Vegas Sphere is something of an absurd object, even for Vegas, a gargantuan metal dome wrapped in LED screens. Surreal images of the Sphere regularly go viral on social media (the Sphere's transformation into a giant emoji is particularly popular). The interior of the Sphere offers an unusually immersive experience for viewers, featuring a curved 160,000-square-foot screen, towering over a 17,600-seat theater. Usually, the Sphere is limited to showing films shot specifically for its giant screen, but in order to bring The Wizard of Oz to the Sphere, AI was used to expand and alter the original film. Google's engineers worked on expanding the aspect ratio, smoothing out the film grain and even adding new background details. Rather than multiplying the existing pixels on screen, Google's generative AI tools created new pixels to increase the definition and scale of the film. While the AI-altered version of the film exists only to be screened in the Las Vegas Sphere, the sight of the artificially expanded land of Oz made commentators uneasy. AI-Altered 'The Wizard Of Oz' Sparks Backlash Shots from the AI-enhanced Wizard of Oz were shared on social media, and baffled many film fans, as intentionally blurry backgrounds had been sharpened, and an AI-generated doppelganger of Uncle Henry had been generated to fill empty space beyond the frame. On X, one commentator offered sarcastic praise, writing: 'I think this is a wonderful idea. Like everyone, I'd been wondering my entire life what Uncle Henry was doing over by the window while Aunt Em argued with Miss Gulch, and finally we know. He was standing there.' Film critics didn't hold back, with many expressing deep disappointment that the original, carefully considered shots of The Wizard of Oz had been altered. While most of the altered shots have the shimmery, glossy sheen of generative AI, the biggest casualty might be the film's glorious hand-painted backdrops, which add to the otherworldly atmosphere of The Wizard of Oz . The Sphere's AI-expansion has changed these backdrops into sprawling, photo-realistic landscapes, making the magical Land of Oz look like just another place—Dorothy might as well have stayed in Kansas. The controversy parallels a widely mocked trend that briefly arose during the early days of generative AI, in which iconic works of art were 'improved' or enlarged using the technology. This led to strange sights, like the AI-generated expansion of the Mona Lisa, creating a bizarre alien landscape. While the Sphere's version of The Wizard of Oz is far from the first time that a classic film has been tinkered with, the fact that AI was used to not only alter existing shots, but generate new imagery beyond the frame, sparked serious concerns. The word "vandalism" appears in many of the critical comments— The Wizard of Oz is viewed as one of cinema's most sacred objects, and film fans do not like to see it being tampered with. Another classic film, Jurassic Park , contains a quote which has proved prescient in the age of generative AI: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." MORE FROM FORBES Forbes How 'Wicked' Connects To 'The Wizard Of Oz' By Dani Di Placido Forbes Cynthia Erivo's 'Wicked' Poster Controversy, Explained By Dani Di Placido Forbes 'Wicked'—Ariana Grande And Cynthia Erivo's 'Holding Space' Meme, Explained By Dani Di Placido Forbes Fortnite's AI-Generated Darth Vader Controversy, Explained By Dani Di Placido
