Posts

Creepy twin brothers, with two arms between them, in Fish & Cat Shahram Mokri’s Fish & Cat—the revelation of this year’s Festival of Films From Iran—has all the makings of a cult classic. The film has the novel distinction of being the first Iranian slasher movie, and it’s also an astonishing formal achievement. Fish & Cat unfolds in a 130-minute single shot that repeatedly violates the common assumption that continuous takes preserve the flow of real time; it contains numerous flashbacks and flash-forwards, often cycling back to the same events to find that major details have changed....

Chicagoans have the opportunity to see a larger-than-average number of jazz-related films this month. Currently playing in weeklong runs are Francis Ford Coppola’s new director’s cut of The Cotton Club (at the Landmark Century) and the new documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (at the Gene Siskel Film Center), and a week from tonight the Chicago Film Society will screen Robert Altman’s 1997 documentary Jazz ’34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing at the Music Box Theatre as part of its ongoing collaboration with the Jazz Institute of Chicago....

Almost ten years ago, I was offered a free ticket to see New Orleans rapper Curren$y and Chicago duo the Cool Kids at Metro. I remember two details from the show: the harrowing experience of having my wheelchair pushed up two flights of stairs to the theater, then lowered back down in a process that was somehow even more grueling and scary, and the fact that Curren$y gave me a T-shirt....

On the Bandcamp biography for Partner, a Canadian rock group led by guitarists and singers Josée Caron and Lucy Niles, the duo say they’re best friends. From the sound of their debut, September’s In Search of Lost Time (You’ve Changed), that’s easy to believe. The album’s arsenal of muscular guitars, effervescent vocal harmonies, and indestructible, catchy melodies screams “fun”—specifically, the kind of fun that comes from spending time with someone who knows you inside and out....

When I was growing up in central Pennsylvania, there were Amish settlements nearby, so you never had to travel far for some Lebanon bologna (Pennsylvania Dutch-style beef sausage) or a jar of “chow-chow” corn relish. But I never saw those technology-averse folks riding bicycles until I took a recent train-and-bike trip to the Amish country of northern Indiana. I pedaled to Chicago’s Millennium Station early one Saturday morning and rolled my bike onto the South Shore platform, where a conductor cheerfully showed me to the two bike cars....

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news briefing. Have a great weekend! Ten years after the tragic Lane Bryant shooting, Tinley Park police release new image of suspect Five women were shot and killed in a Tinley Park Lane Bryant on February 2, 2008, and the case remains unsolved. Tinley Park police have released a new composite image of the suspect created by the Michigan State Police “[utilizing] the latest in facial identification technology to provide a more life-like representation,” according to a statement....

I quit drinking coffee last year in an unsuccessful attempt to silence the voices in my head. Apart from a few Starbucks-fueled road trips I’d been relatively caffeine free for months. So I was pretty out of shape when I drank—fairly inhaled—the Military Latte at Sawada Coffee. That’s the signature drink of champion latte artist Hiroshi Sawada, the namesake of the newish coffee shop attached to the back of Hogsalt Hospitality’s Green Street Smoked Meats....

It might seem strange to think of the Poetry Foundation as in need of a booster—after all, it was one of two top finalists for the title Best Poetry Organization, running off against Young Chicago Authors. But, one, never underestimate the power of Louder Than a Bomb, YCA’s massively popular annual poetry slam. Two, though well-known and certainly well-endowed, the Poetry Foundation seems to operate a little under the radar. At least I’d bet most people have no idea it’s offering free programming almost daily....

Susan Messing will always remember the opening night of her weekly show Messing With a Friend: that same evening Jack Farrell, a student in an improv class she taught, almost died from a ruptured aorta. As her student was rushed to the hospital, she took to the stage for her two-person, anything-goes improv show. “That’s how the real show opened up that night,” Messing says. “That’s how I remember when we started doing the show, because he almost died....

Full house Between the lines Pilsen’s Maybe Sunday Collective was founded by two School of the Art Institute of Chicago alums, Jason Guo and McKenzie Thompson. In honor of their alma mater’s 150th anniversary last year, they created a line of unisex T-shirts featuring the work of four celebrated SAIC grads: Katherine Bernhardt, Brian Calvin, Zak Prekop, and—coolest of all—Chris Ware, who inspired a tee containing panels from his 2012 graphic novel Building Stories....

Saturday, 4:55 PM Call me Happy Meal®. As sudden late afternoon rains swirl and eddy overhead, we’ve been evacuated from Union Park, and the dozens of us gathered at the McDonald’s on Lake Street have the shivery, put-upon look common to dogs given an unwelcome bath. The plebes are all wet. Like many journalists, I’ve gotten my filthy mitts on VIP passes for music festivals in the past. Sadly, the VIP experience at Pitchfork consists largely of endlessly scanning an enclosed swath of park perhaps 500 feet on a side and feeling a needling sense of disappointment that so many people you respect (and quite a few you don’t) perform similarly unimportant tasks but are obviously far better compensated for it than you....

Brian Hieggelke, publisher of Newcity, has written a long, thoughtful proposal to “keep Chicago a two-newspaper town.” The occasion for Hieggelke’s exercise is last week’s astonishing announcement that Michael Ferro, principal owner of the Sun-Times, would from now on be a silent partner because he’d just become the largest single shareholder of Tribune Publishing. Because of Ferro’s dominant position in both camps, “everyone is assuming this is the end of Chicago as a two-newspaper town,” Hieggelke writes; therefore, the first thing he thinks the Sun-Times needs to do is get Ferro out of the picture completely....

Immediately after the 2016 presidential election, Tim Kinsella and a coterie of collaborators gathered at Chicago’s Minbal studios to work through their feelings about America’s new nightmare. It took them two days to record an album of solemn, fretful indie rock, and then it took them more than three years to release it. HIH NO/ON (Joyful Noise) came out late last month under the name Friend/Enemy, which Kinsella and HIH NO/ON synth player Todd Mattei used for 2002’s Ten Songs....

For the last few days I’ve been sifting through the tea leaves, searching for clues to help me figure whether Chuy or Rahm will win this mayoral election. The Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel came by my job, still can’t stand this muthafucka tho A photo posted by Albert Griffith (@gqthateacha) on Jan 15, 2015 at 8:19am PST A prediction I’d pretend I hadn’t made, if not for the fact that Peter Holderness—the world’s greatest videographer—was on hand to record it....

I’ll never forget the first time I walked into a hot-boxed CTA el car. On a weeknight two summers ago, I was heading home from the Grand Red Line station. As the train doors opened, I stepped into a haze of smoke and breathed in the telltale, love-it-or-hate-it aroma of marijuana. A group of teenagers passing a joint were nearly rolling in the aisle with laughter. Not being a weed aficionado myself, I rolled my eyes and headed to the next carriage....

Americano 2211 | Wicker Park Those familiar with Birchwood Kitchen, which closed its doors last fall, will also remember its picturesque ivy-covered back patio. Americano 2211, which opened in April in the same space, retains much of the relaxed, European feel of the former occupant, with a brief menu comprising breakfast dishes, pastries, sandwiches, and salads. There are plans to add an herb garden to the 30-seat patio and to stay open for dinner, allowing for an evening glass of wine out back (a liquor license is in the works)....

We want to begin by thanking editor in chief Anne Elizabeth Moore for deftly navigating us through these first few months of being an independent entity again. We couldn’t have gotten here without her, and we wish her well. Managing editors Sujay Kumar and Karen Hawkins are co-piloting for now, and we all look forward to continuing to prove that independent local journalism can and will survive. Thank you to everyone for showing so much love for last week’s first-ever Plants Issue....

Al Pacino is so famous for going overboard that you can easily forget how good he is at conveying quiet resignation. In The Godfather Part II, Donnie Brasco, The Insider, and large parts of Carlito’s Way, Pacino beautifully embodies a type of wounded masculinity, playing characters who aren’t happy with how their lives have turned out but whose integrity demands they sleep in the bed they’ve made. The actor can communicate years’ worth of disappointment with a sigh, drawn-out line reading, or downcast expression....

A stranger walks up to you. They know your name, where you’ve been, where you’re headed, what you’ll do there, and how your life will turn out decades in the future. If you’re human, you back away slowly and get the bejesus out of there. If you’re a character in an inadequately vetted play by habitually credulity-challenged Steven Dietz, you ask the stranger for directions, or advice, or sympathy. You even reveal intimate details about your deepest insecurities within a few minutes of meeting....

Boots Riley had been waiting nearly three decades to make a movie. The Chicago-native turned Bay Area resident studied film as an undergrad at San Francisco State but didn’t immediately become the next Spike Lee. He earned a record deal in the early 90s and focused instead on spreading his leftist messages through the medium of hip-hop. Riley released half a dozen raucous party rap/funk-rock albums with the group the Coup starting with 1993’s Kill My Landlord while managing to balance his art with political activism and community organizing—most famously as the public face of the Occupy movement in Oakland....