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This week the Gene Siskel Film Center is presenting new digital restorations of La Chinoise (1967) and Le Gai Savoir (1969), two films from a critical period in the trailblazing career of Jean-Luc Godard. Both are informed by the revolutionary fervor that had energized the French left in the late 1960s—this spirit is so central to the films, in fact, that today they feel like time capsules of a particular moment in political history....

Adoration of the Old Woman As with his mentor Gabriel García Márquez, the best of work José Rivera (see also the Goodman’s Another Word for Beauty) is at once realistic and magical, intensely political and deeply personal. Rivera doesn’t quite achieve this perfect balance in Adoration of the Old Woman; here the political issue at stake, Puerto Rican independence, is considerably more compelling than the various half-developed stories of love and loss that fill out the play....

It’s been a rough few days for race relations in our country—Donald Trump’s still the president, and Michael Flug died. Among other things, he told them to “go back to the countries” they came from. Even though three of the four were born in the U.S. In fact, Congresswomen Ayana Pressley of Massachusetts was born in Cincinnati, was raised right here in Chicago, and graduated from Francis W. Parker School on the north side....

Let’s say things start turning around for the better. Say the president takes a perp walk, and the oft-foretold Chicago restaurant bubble never pops. If things stay on that trajectory, soon you’ll be able to eat at a different Boka Restaurant Group restaurant every day of the month. First, at the very top, there’s a wooden trencher set with burnished Hawaiian rolls, so light and risen they seem to sway, served with a little dish of soft, country-ham-infused cultured butter mixed with tiny, salty bits of fried ham and topped with soft pumpkin stewed in sweet saba, the grape syrup that’s a clever chef’s stand-in for good balsamic vinegar....

David Cerda’s camp parody of Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 film The Bad Seed, about a murderous, extremely narcissistic child, takes drag to a new level, working as both a hilarious send-up of a creaky but beloved old movie (itself adapted from Maxwell Anderson’s 1954 Broadway hit and William March’s award-winning novel) and as an engrossing, entertaining story on its own. Cerda transfers the setting from mid-20th-century America to today, and transforms the dramatis personae from a bunch of stiff upper-middle-class cis squares (plus a few on the fringe) to a panoply of LGTBQ+ characters, some in drag, some not....

When Tracy Morgan hosted Saturday Night Live in October 2015, the former cast member slowly walked onstage with a straight face and started talking with a lisp. It was a jarring sight—this was one of Morgan’s first performances since he’d been hospitalized in critical condition after a six-car crash in June 2014. But with a charming smile he relaxed and eased back into his familiar persona with a lighthearted, “Nah, I’m just playing....

In last year’s race for governor, Bruce Rauner campaigned as a reformer who would run the state as though it were a private business—a fitting theme for someone who became a billionaire by buying and selling companies. Even as he touted his business credentials during the campaign, Rauner blasted predecessor Pat Quinn for not telling voters how key decisions were made. “This is about transparency and accountability,” Rauner declared. In short, Rauner lawyered up....

Jim Watson/Getty The Confederate flag still flew outside the South Carolina Statehouse as state senator Clementa Pinckney’s funeral procession arrived today. During a discussion several years ago over renaming Confederate Memorial Hall at Vanderbilt University, a black professor made a shocking statement that might be correct: “The race problems that wrack America to this day are due largely to the fact that the Confederacy was not thoroughly destroyed, its leaders and soldiers executed and their lands given to the landless free slaves....

Activist and poet e nina jay calls her new book Bricks, Blood & Water a “walk through the valley of my thoughts and feelings.” In the foreword to Bricks, Blood & Water you write, “the world is painful to me these days, inside the skin. my voice feels small. my rage tempers and flares.” What does it mean to exist as a Black lesbian today? How did you find your voice?...

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Veeck, he noted, was, in addition to his ridiculous stunts like sending the midget Eddie Gaedel (who had a correspondingly short strike zone) up to bat and offering free admission to White Sox fans with the last name of Smith as long as they cheered for outfielder Al Smith, responsible for a lot of practical innovations that still exist in major-league ballparks....

Ever since roughly two dozen street artists turned Logan Square’s hulking, beige Discount Megamall into a half-block sized canvas this past Memorial Day weekend, I’ve especially enjoyed my occasional trips to visit it—though until I get there, I’m always a little anxious, because the Megamall has been due for demolition for what feels like months. Every day the building remains standing is a day I’m thankful for the chance to see it resplendent in spray paint....

For most parents, the phrase “children’s music” triggers terrifying flashbacks to annoying sing-alongs—Raffi’s “Baby Beluga,” for instance, or anything by that purple monstrosity, Barney. Fear not, though: Angela James’s Quiet Night isn’t that kind of children’s music. The singer-songwriter developed the album while caring for her infant daughter and struggling with postpartum depression; its songs started out as melodic fragments she’d hum to try to get the baby to sleep. Jason Stein on bass clarinet, Charles Rumback on vibraphone, and Katherine Young on bassoon complement James’s velvety voice on a series of soothing, melancholy tunes that slide between sorrow and hope, sleep and waking....

Anthony Cheung hates facing a blank sheet of staff paper when he sits down at his desk. “I completely dread having to start each piece,” says the 34-year-old composer. “It really is a feeling of—just, like, ‘I’ve never done this before.’ Somehow the notes get on the page.” Lots of creative people have trouble getting new projects off the ground, but Cheung makes his own problem worse. His roving, curious mind constantly latches onto “ideas of things that happen to catch my ear or catch my attention,” and he fills hundreds of notebook pages a year with such material—every one of these myriad conceptual fragments waits to lead him down its own path to a distinctive composition....

Seth Perlman/AP Bruce Rauner waved goodbye to cronyism—or did he? This huge deficit is the result of years of bad decisions, sleight-of-hand budgeting, and giveaways we couldn’t afford. It is not the result of decreasing tax rates. This is cheeky of the governor, as a few days ago he announced he favors right-to-work zones in Illinois—that is, areas where state employees wouldn’t have to pay union dues if they didn’t want to, even though they were benefiting from union representation....

Among the myriad injuries inflicted upon Americans by COVID-19 (though admittedly one of the mildest) is the impossibility of attending your favorite holiday concert. For the past dozen years, Chicago-based saxophonist Mars Williams has hosted a unique variation on that seasonal tradition. Each December he convenes Witches & Devils, his combo devoted to the music of saxophonist Albert Ayler (1936-1970), to play a set or two of ecstatic, free-jazz-style medleys that combine spiritually infused Ayler themes (“Bells,” “Universal Indians,” “Truth Is Marching In”) with holiday favorites (“12 Days of Christmas,” “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Ma’oz Tzur,” aka the Hanukkah hymn sometimes called “Rock of Ages”)....

For almost two years, self-described “pansexual dress-to-sweat party” Soft Leather has used Logan Square bar East Room as its home base. Founded by DJ Zain Curtis (aka Teen Witch), David Beltran of Chicago label and arts collective FeelTrip, and producer and promoter Johnny Love (probably best known these days from #HealthGoth and Deathface), Soft Leather is locally famous for its queer-friendly atmosphere, non-gender-conforming aesthetic, and boundary-pushing fashions, which start with assless chaps and ball gags and get wilder from there....

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine . . . they have nine different types of feta. Yeah. It’s a place called Devon Market.” The tall, white, American man drifted in front of the deli counter. If his euphoric expression and phone conversation hadn’t given him away as a first-timer, his massive, empty cart definitely did. Only a rookie would bother with a full-sized cart at Devon Market. Those familiar with the densely packed, winding aisles of the Rogers Park grocery store know that it’s better to stay nimble with a basket....

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Media Jesus “Chuy” Garcia opposes Mayor Emanuel’s use of social impact bonds. Outside a south-side child care center, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia yesterday blasted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s use of social impact bonds to fund an expansion of prekindergarten in Chicago. The investors only make money if certain targets are met. The targets in the pre-K program are increased readiness for kindergarten, improved third-grade literacy, and reduced need for special education services—all of which would save the city money while earning it for the investors as well....

Cracker Jack officially debuted at the World’s Columbian Exposition, but its founder (if not inventor) Frederick Rueckheim was hawking some form of the caramel corn-peanut snack mix on the streets of Chicago more than 20 years earlier, in 1871. Yes, Garrett Popcorn’s Garrett Mix—formerly known as the Chicago Mix—usually gets more credit, but debuting nearly a century and a half earlier makes Cracker Jack Chicago’s most enduring stoner snack; for stoners, sure, and now those about to be stoned....

Mon 11/13 The Reader‘s Peter Margasak writes of pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, playing Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series at the Harris Theater (205 E. Randolph): “Iyer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith will give the local debut of their stunning duo, performing A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke, the centerpiece of their 2016 album of the same name. This shape-shifting seven-movement suite responds to an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi, who often blends abstraction and architectural precision in line-based drawings....