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In this week’s issue of the Reader, Leah Pickett wrote at length on Long Shot, a new romantic comedy set in the world of American politics. The film certainly reflects a healthy tradition, as filmmakers have mined U.S. politics for comedy for generations. Below are five capsule reviews from the Reader archives of comedies that take place in political milieux. All are by American filmmakers, save for In the Loop, whose director, Armando Iannucci, is British; and save for Duck Soup (my vote for the funniest political comedy in movie history), all take place in American settings....

The phrase “glacial pace” could have been invented solely to describe Low, a trio from Duluth, Minnesota, who specialize in slow-burning minimalism. It’s the kind of aesthetic that would have grown old after a few years for most bands, but after nearly a quarter of a century together Low instead continue to expand their boundaries with songs that mix the fervor of gospel into spectral soundscapes. Any sense of artistic indulgence has not overshadowed the standout beauty of their melodies, as evidenced a few years ago when rock god Robert Plant chose two Low songs (“Monkey” and “Silver Rider”) for his newly launched group Band of Joy....

Thinkstock Mad scientists? More like sad scientists. New research has identified another group of American professionals who feel underappreciated. A study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center indicates that the public respects this profession, but not to the degree its members believe they deserve to be respected, and that the public has more doubts about some of the methods they employ than the experts employing them do. Even though most Americans still believe these people are doing a superior job, they’re not as certain of that as they used to be....

In their 15 years together, Rotterdam postpunk band Rats on Rafts have built a comfortable existence and a decent hometown following, but their new album, Excerpts From Chapter 3: The Mind Runs a Net of Rabbit Paths, is a declaration that they’re no longer satisfied with mere comfort. On their 2008 EP, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and their debut full-length, 2011’s The Moon Is Big, they toed the line between crafting the perfect three-minute punk screed and embracing their more outre influences, especially the example set by fellow Netherlanders the Ex....

When Chicago businesses saw citywide shutdowns as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, Eric Kugelman says that he “went into shock.” Searah Deysach, owner of Early to Bed in Andersonville, remarks that the usual personalized customer service of the store has suffered as a result of social distancing. “We’re still providing education, obviously, but it’s a little different in that we don’t have that group of people who are using us as a place to learn solely, as opposed to just, you know, coming in and buying stuff,” she says....

Horror movies are endlessly popular—why are so few any good? This year has brought only one keeper (Amat Escalante’s Mexican feature The Untamed), and last year was the same (Robert Eggers’s low-budget indie The Witch). Fortunately, Halloween always prompts a few theatrical revivals of essential horror movies. On Friday at Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago Film Studies Center presents Tod Browning’s silent shocker The Unknown (1927), with live accompaniment by local musicians Kent Lambert and Sam Wagster, and on Halloween night at Northeastern Illinois University Auditorium, Chicago Film Society screens The Seventh Victim (1943), the most unnerving of the legendary B movies produced by Val Lewton at RKO Pictures....

Tiffany Hudson is in the DEI business—and right now, business is booming. For the past three and a half years her company Nova Collective has been helping companies improve their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, work that’s quickly gained momentum in recent weeks as a result of national attention being drawn even more to how systemic racism affects every industry. Hudson and her business partners work with all industries—they call themselves “industry agnostic”—and the companies range in size from two people to 40,000 employees....

Two weeks ago, Kartemquin Films confirmed that it had footage of the arrest of Bernie Sanders at a school segregation protest in August 1963. The Chicago Tribune subsequently uncovered from its archives a striking photo of the 21-year-old University of Chicago undergrad being carried by two police officers. Community opposition was swift. Parents pulled their children from the still nameless school, picketing the building with signs that read “This Was and Still Is a Warehouse,” “The Railroad Tracks Will be Your Children’s Playground,” and “This is a Firetrap and Not a School....

Usually I spend a couple sentences in my look back at the year in food mourning the new places that, despite my earnest love for them, didn’t make it past that first critical year or so. It’s by that standard that I’m going to declare 2020 one of the greatest years in Chicago restaurant history. If Powerhouse suffered the curse of being the second restaurant I write about in a year, at least the first, Lao Peng You, is still cranking out its magnificent dumplings, if only for carryout....

In 2019, Theatre Y presented The Camino Project, an engaging five-hour miniature pilgrimage through Bucktown and Humboldt Park featuring experiential pieces intermingling dance, theater, and performance art. The adventure culminated in a group meal with audience members and actors breaking bread. It was a delightful experience and an ambitious endeavor having actors guiding guests through a variety of “happenings” inspired by the ensemble’s 2017 journey along Spain’s Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage route dating back over a thousand years....

The unfolded CD insert from Gravitar’s 1997 album Now the Road of Knives. I don’t have the rest of the packaging—the water damage is from a house fire. I worked in college radio in the early 90s—a fertile period for fucked-up guitar music—and a few weeks ago I tried to put my memories of those years to good use. I compiled a short list of lesser-known 90s noise-rock bands for a dear friend who loves the Jesus Lizard and Rapeman but isn’t quite old enough or obsessive enough to have heard about, say, Phleg Camp, who put out their one proper full-length, Ya’Red Fair Scratch, in 1992 (and who barely exist on the Internet today)....

Kim Foxx has been strangely quiet of late. The Democratic candidate for Cook County state’s attorney ran a high-profile campaign on a reformist platform earlier this year, which featured many media appearances, including a 5,000-word profile in the Reader in March. She was borne to victory amid near-daily street protests against incumbent Anita Alvarez, but has since remained conspicuously silent on a range of hot-button issues pertaining to prosecutors and police....

On a spring afternoon inside the cafeteria of South Loop Elementary School, parents filled the small lunch tables for a local school council meeting. Before official business began, Jason Easterly, a longtime member, stood up and abruptly resigned his post. According to Pauline Lipman, a professor of education policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has followed and written about LSCs since their inception, Chicago’s LSCs collectively represent “the largest elected body of people of color of any elected body in the country....

Life Is Sweet Tomorrow night at the Tivoli in Downers Grove, the After Hours Film Society hosts a screening of Mike Leigh’s latest film, Mr. Turner. In many ways, Leigh’s unique process is just as famous as his work: He and his actors go to prepare extensively in preproduction, working on characters and scenarios even before a script is written, often utilizing improv techniques to give the story a more spontaneous nature....

Alejandro Ayala, 42, is a Chicago event organizer and record collector who DJs as King Hippo. He runs the biweekly show QC on Lumpen Radio, and he’s hosted or cohosted a series for Worldwide FM that focuses on Chicago R&B, jazz, soul, and more, beginning with the 2018 show Chicago Overground. He’s worked in various capacities for Sleeping Village and the Whistler as well as for the label International Anthem....

As the recent Alabama Senate election showed, the strength of black women is both underestimated and impossible to ignore. Hailed as the demographic that “saved democracy and human decency” (CNN), tasked with acting as the “moral force” of an immoral country (the Root), venerated as the “disrespected, unprotected, and neglected” who, nevertheless, persist (the Guardian), black women remain underserved by stereotypes that fail to see the lives of individuals who make up the body politic....

In a sense, all animation is experimental, because an artist can’t really see how his images will move until he throws them up onto a screen. But don’t tell that to the filmmakers featured in the traveling Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, who’ve rejected the corporate world of commercials and children’s entertainment to pursue their own visions. Based in Los Angeles, the festival favors “works made by individual artists, drawing on the lineage of avant -garde cinema as well as the tradition of classic character animation and cartooning,” with two free programs on Saturday at Block Museum of Art....

Cate Le Bon makes pleasant weirdo pop music. It’s not so experimental that you couldn’t imagine it on mainstream radio, and in fact her songs have been used in TV shows, including the award-winning comedy-drama Transparent and the British rich-kid reality show Made in Chelsea. Le Bon’s lyrics come across like they’re borrowed from poems jotted in the journal of a highly sensitive person—if that person had died and come back to haunt their hometown....

Near the border of North Lawndale and West Garfield Park a mountain range of wood chips piled more than five feet high stretches over 1,800 square feet of a once vacant lot. In a few weeks, a Bobcat will come through to level the chips as the lot continues its transformation into a community garden. Across the street another smaller lot is undergoing a similar metamorphosis, although it is in a more advanced state: Tree stumps mark the perimeter, some painted with red, black, and green designs; tires to be turned into flower beds are stacked neatly nearby; a dune of brown, turfy coconut husks waits to be spread across the land to improve the quality of the soil....

In the world of Elaine Kahn’s poetry, the truth is never stable. Lovers perform quotidian acts, married people devour one another, unspeakable things happen, and someone’s own story no longer feels like their own. Narrators are unreliable, assuredly telling their side of the story and theirs alone. One claims not to care what life means while ostensibly writing it all down in order to find some sort of meaning. I have heard it said that love turns people soft but I have never been more brutal...