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In my essay on Jia Zhang-ke’s Ash Is Purest White that appears in the current issue of the Reader, I asserted that “one of the more compelling things about the film [which takes place over 17 years] is how you can never predict when Jia will flash forward in time. It’s one of those movies . . . in which time exists as an autonomous force.” Writing that line made me think about other movies that cover long stretches of time in such an idiosyncratic fashion, movies that subvert the conventions cemented by too many routine biopics....

Elements of vintage soul have long been part of Nashville veteran Jim Lauderdale’s portfolio, dating back to his stunning 1994 album Pretty Close to the Truth (Atlantic)—a knockout hybrid of American music that’s also distinguished by the melodic sensibility that’s made him one of the most successful songwriters in modern country history. They appear once again on his latest record, London Southern (Sky Crunch), which was cut four years ago while Lauderdale was on a UK tour backed by the like-minded working band of roots maverick Nick Lowe....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Trinidad James in Uncut Gems Before I watched the Safdie brothers’ ballyhooed film Uncut Gems, I’d heard about nearly every cameo in it—every cameo, that is, except the one by rapper Trinidad James. So much work went into making this period piece exemplify its era, but to me nothing said “2012” as perfectly as the brief appearance of a rapper who was catapulted into fame that year....

Your appreciation of Spike Lee’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus will likely depend on whether you’re familiar with the movie Lee is remaking, Bill Gunn’s low-budget cult classic Ganja & Hess (1973). If you are, Lee’s remake is a must-see; if not, you should probably skip it. Lee follows the original so closely that Gunn, who died in 1989, gets cowriting credit. Jesus is so faithful to Ganja that Lee even replicates some of the original movie’s more amateurish qualities; the pacing goes slack on occasion, the sets are noticeably underdressed, and the acting is all over the map....

I guess it’s official now: Marie Antoinette is a 21st-century American cultural metaphor in the tragic airhead/poor-little-rich-kid vein. A sort of Danube Valley Girl. A Habsburg Kardashian. Barely literate yet thoroughly steeped in the lore of the Pradas and Louboutins of her era, our Marie has been bred for nothing but display. She’s trapped in a luxurious vacuum—a celebrity without achievements, a personality without self-knowledge, a victim of privilege condemned to play consort to a sexually incompetent recessive called Louis XVI....

A short woman in a plastic Guy Fawkes mask strolled in front of the cherry-red, two-and-a-half-ton truck pulling into the driveway of the Swissôtel on East Wacker. Armed with a megaphone, her head barely above the hood, she chanted at the driver: “Heartland Alliance jails kids for money!” The truck crept forward, making contact with her torso and pushing her back one tiny step at a time. As dozens of protesters in carnival masks, feather boas, and tulle skirts beat empty plastic buckets, and chanted and jeered from the sidewalk, hotel security guards in suits shuffled her out of the truck’s path....

I spend more evenings than most people in the dark with other people, watching yet other people pretend to be . . . well, other people. So seeing Teenage Dick at Theater Wit Monday night, knowing it was the last live performance I’d be at for a while, had a special poignancy to it. (Mixed with pandemic guilt—”Should I even be out here tonight?”) It also draws on the narrative trope of social media as a driver of conflict, à la Dear Evan Hansen, with tweets projected on the walls of Sotirios Livaditis‘s locker-lined set....

August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, the seventh in his ten-play Pittsburgh cycle, is a drama of thwarted hopes and stagnation. It is 1969. Malcolm X is dead. Martin Luther King is dead. And though only Malcolm is mentioned by name, the ghost of King hovers over the proceedings, contributing to the miasma of desperation. Director Chuck Smith re-creates this existential nightmare exceedingly well. The pace of the play replicates the feel of daily life, communicating routine without letting us get bogged down in it....

It’s been several decades since punk first mutated into hardcore, and many of its young acolytes still prefer to let it fester in the world’s dingiest basements and DIY spaces. But since 2010 Baltimore-area five-piece Turnstile has been streamlining hardcore’s abrasive attack into huge, brightly colored anthems that seem to zoom forward without friction, or much concern for friction in either their music or among ortho punks who easily upset at nontraditional hardcore sounds....

It would be worth an outing to the Empty Bottle just to see two of the most compelling bands Chicago has produced in recent years on one bill. Dark postrock trio Lume entered the fray last year with their full-length debut, Wrung Out (Equal Vision), a raw, emotional, and cinematically dreary work that examines loss from every angle with its combination of fuzzed-out guitars and beguiling vocals. Also last year, four-piece Rezn released their second full-length, Calm Black Water, a beautiful heavy monster that adventurously and seamlessly weaves together psychedelia, doom, and electronics....

A press release promoting the app “I’ve Been Violated” arrived in my inbox last week, just as I was about to dig into The History, Uses, and Abuses of Title IX, a new report by the American Association of University Professors. Written by a five-member committee, The History, Uses and Abuses of Title IX traces the evolution of the legislation (signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1972) from its origins as a tool to fight sex discrimination in academic hiring, through its revolutionary impact on school and college athletics, to its current high profile use in addressing complaints of sexual assault and harassment....

Chicago’s millennials are making their voices heard in this election. After the success of Chance the Rapper’s one-day music festival, Magnificent Coloring Day, the nonprofit he cofounded the same month, SocialWorks, is hosting a get-out-the-vote event on Monday afternoon that includes a free rooftop concert atop the Wabash and Lake entrance of the Virgin Hotel (203 N. Wabash). For this event, SocialWorks has partnered with music-and-lifestyle blog Prime Fortune and nonprofit Chicago Votes....

Not to make light of the profound suffering and loss of life during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s been a while since death and despair sounded as much fun as they do on Phantasma, the new third record by Georgia four-piece Vincas. These southern gothic firebrands have spent much of the past decade making maniacal death-punk and postpunk with a stomping garage-rock fury and a devil-may-care attitude straight from a 60s outlaw biker flick....

Logan Square’s Illinois Centennial Monument, the eagle-topped column ringed by a hectic multilane traffic circle, is an icon of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The pillar’s surrounding green space, Logan Square proper, is a popular site for relaxing on benches, sunbathing, and skateboarding. But in a community whose Latino population fell by about 36 percent between 2000 and 2014, according to the U.S. Census, while the number of whites grew by roughly 48 percent, the meaning of the monument depends on who you ask....

Every May, independent chocolatiers, mom-and-pop confectioners, aspiring millennial sweetmakers, grizzled jerky manufacturers, plucky fudge entrepreneurs, industrialized candy companies, and health-conscious snack producers fill two massive halls in McCormick Place for the annual Sweets & Snacks Expo. If you daydream about candy, chips, and small edibles best consumed between meals, this three-day event can be heaven. It’s an opportunity for those in the industry (and a few that report on it) to learn about what trends will dominate the snack world for the next year and who has come up with an ingenious new twist on, say, pretzels....

COVID-19 has already provided the rationale for some previously unimaginable social changes, but here’s a new one: union busting. In a statement released by the 140-member union, FAC chair Angelo Bonadonna says the faculty are facing “disenfranchisement” and “the complete degradation of our mission and values.” That was 2013, but the legal battle that Duquesne was waging at the time to keep its miserably paid adjuncts from unionizing is still making its way through the federal courts....

From Brianna Wellen’s introduction, “Losses and gains: Best of Chicago 2020”: Some business to get out of the way: the reader poll results were determined by you, the readers! If you’re angry about the results, you only have yourselves to blame! Let this be a reminder to keep a close eye on when voting begins next year so you can campaign for your favorites to get the top spot. Or better yet, share your own losses and gains on social media and tag us @Chicago_Reader with the hashtags #bestofchi and #BoC2020....

You may have had a marijuana­-related arrest, charge, or even sentence years ago and feel that your past is behind you. Perhaps you were arrested as a teenager for possession but never got charged. You may not realize that, unless you’ve gone through the process of having your records sealed or expunged, they are still public. While there are laws in effect to prevent employers and landlords from discriminating against those with a criminal record, there are many reasons that one may want to have their records sealed or expunged....

If you drive south out of Chicago through the industrial plumes of Gary, Indiana, then around the southern edge of Lake Michigan, then north beyond the towns of Harbor Country, then off the interstate onto a stretch called Blue Star Highway, then you’ll find dirt fire lanes that end in wide sweeps of dune and beach. Here, in a town called Covert, I’ve been weathering out the pandemic with my family for the past six weeks....

Chandler West/Sun-Times Media Layoffs strike again at both the Trib and the Sun-Times. After years of pain and misery, the dark art of telling employees to clean out their lockers may have located its wiser, kinder side at Chicago newspapers. Photographer Chuck Berman was one of ten editorial employees laid off by the Tribune last week, and instead of keying the first delivery truck he saw, he wrote a statement that wound up on Romenesko....