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Back in 2006, I got my first taste of Irish director Martin McDonagh when his wickedly funny Six Shooter screened at Landmark’s Century Centre along with the other Oscar-nominated live-action shorts. McDonagh took home the award that year, and 12 years later his black comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a strong contender for Best Picture. I wouldn’t be surprised if, a decade from now, we were seeing equally big things from the filmmakers on this year’s program, such as Kevin Wilson Jr....

The long national nightmare of the past four years may not be over, but as the happy pandemonium that erupted this past weekend over the announcement of the Biden/Harris victory clearly demonstrated, a lot of us think there might be a light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t an oncoming train. (No offense to the president-elect and his well-documented love of the choo-choos.) As I was dining on my cuticles awaiting the election results last week, I also saw two different streaming productions that explained a little bit about how we got here....

AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast Mayor Rahm Emanuel was sworn in for his second term and resumed his campaign to be seen as a nice guy. Mayor Emanuel wore a suit to be sworn in for his second term Monday, but he sounded a lot like the V-neck sweater Rahm of his reelection campaign. But he also said the city can’t afford to pay for all of them and neither can any other level of government....

Dark Matter Coffee darkmattercoffee.com Chicago has an impressive community of independent coffee roasters and a growing number of hip coffee shops to support them. Dark Matter’s lovingly crafted caffeinated drinks speak for themselves, and the folks at its Ukrainian Village headquarters don’t need to do much besides work with beans to win our approval. But their collaborations with musicians and labels have made picking up a bag even more appealing. Dark Matter launched this impressive series in 2013 with a blend called Cherry Bomb to go with a limited cassette mixtape from excellent local microlabel Cherries Records, and since then the collaborations have gotten even bigger—and sometimes heavier....

In 2019 Bill Callahan broke a bout of writer’s block that had lasted more than five years with Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, a 20-song concept record about the satisfactions of family life. Gold Record, which arrives just 14 months later, sustains its predecessor’s sparse country-rock sound. And while it wastes no effort on trying to shape its ten songs into a cohesive statement, several tracks elaborate upon Shepherd’s themes. Having embraced fatherhood on Shepherd, Callahan now revels in daddishness by dispensing advice, telling jokes, and laying down rules....

In 2005, Los Angeles percussionist, DJ, arranger, and producer Carlos Niño began collaborating with fellow Angeleno Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music director. That year, Atwood-Ferguson joined Niño’s expansive soul-jazz collective, Build an Ark, and helped record studio albums by two of Niño’s other projects: With Voices, the final full-length from progressive hip-hop production duo AmmonContact, and Living Room, from jazzy downtempo unit the Life Force Trio (both were released in 2006)....

Psychedelic Chicago indie rockers Cafe Racer emerged from a young north-side scene obsessed with garage; in fact, guitarist-vocalist Michael Santana previously played rugged, bratty garage pop in the three-piece Grosse Pointe. When he burned out on that band’s sound in 2015, he started working with guitarist-vocalist Adam Schubert—a prolific musician with a lo-fi solo project called Ruins—on sketches of what would become sprawling, enchanting songs. By the time they made their live debut as Cafe Racer in 2016, they’d expanded into a five-piece, and since then they’ve tinkered with hypnotic combinations of nimble Krautrock rhythms, melodic shoegaze riffs, and effervescent psychedelic melodies....

Jazz and Heritage Pavilion Jay Pritzker Pavilion Young Jazz Lions Stage Von Freeman Pavilion 11:30 AM | Alexis Lombre Quintet 12: 50 PM | Joel Ross’s Good Vibes 2:10 PM | Hanging Hearts 3:30 PM | Foster Meets Brooks Big Band Focus by Kendall Moore Ensemble Noon | Kendall Moore Octet Trombonist Kendall Moore was a key member of many local groups before packing his bags for Boston, including the Chicago Jazz Orchestra and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble....

Chicago rapper Ausar Bradley struck me as a whip-smart lyricist with impressive mike skills when he was still studying at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—he was two years shy of his undergraduate degree when he dropped the excellent 2017 mixtape The 6 Page Letter. This year Ausar, who records and performs under his first name, has released a handful of sharp singles and his first postgraduate EP, the new Flight of the Honeybee....

Ever since Donald Trump’s victory—a phrase I still find hard to write—I’ve been trying to soothe freaked-out millennials by telling them: (1) I can remember a time that may have been worse, and (2) don’t worry, our local leaders, like Mayor Rahm Emanuel, won’t abandon us in this fight. For those who might be thinking, Oh, but Nixon wasn’t as bad as Trump is, I urge you to read Tim Weiner’s book One Man Against the World, which is based largely on transcripts of conversations Nixon secretly recorded in the White House....

It’s safe to say that there are more stories being told by queer filmmakers than ever before, and which are even more diverse in recent years not just in terms of representation, but also in narrative and form. But queer people have existed forever—even in film!—and it’s imperative to immerse ourselves in our own history. Pioneers of Queer Cinema, available through Kino Lorber’s virtual cinema Kino Marquee, highlights classic queer films that paved the way for our current landscape, many of which have been less than accessible to modern audiences—and which explore themes of gender and sexuality that ring just as true now as they did when they were made....

Signature Move is a hybrid indie romantic comedy and coming-of-age story about a Pakistani-Muslim lesbian who falls in love with a Mexican woman (and competitive wrestling) during the course of a Chicago summer. The film is directed by a woman, Jennifer Reeder; written by women, Lisa Donato and lead actor Fawzia Mirza; and focuses on women of color—a relative anomaly in a domestic cinematic landscape largely filtered through the lenses of straight white men....

Julia Strehlow is the director of education, prevention, and policy for Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center, one of the frontline responders to reports of child sexual abuse in the city. The Center also responds to physical abuse, witness to violence, and other serious maltreatment. ChicagoCAC is the city’s only not-for-profit organization that coordinates the efforts of child protection staff, law enforcement professionals, family advocates, medical experts, and mental health clinicians under one roof....

Since 2011, Chicago graffiti artist and hip-hop documentarian Flash ABC has overseen Project Logan, a four-sided permission wall that encircles a 3,300-square-foot plot of land between Fullerton and Medill Avenues just west of Milwaukee Avenue. Over the past five years, Flash has helped hundreds of artists showcase their graffiti skills and provided Logan Square with a flood of public artwork. Project Logan’s walls have paid tribute to fallen hip-hop heroes, from Steff Skills’s mural honoring Tribe Called Quest MC Phife Dawg to Dream and Werm One’s recent homage to local underground rapper Mic One....

The first and with any luck only virtual Lollapalooza is under way. From Thursday through Sunday, the festival’s YouTube channel is presenting a mix of streaming sets and rebroadcasts of performances from Lollas past. But as with most things in 2020, it’s not without controversy. Twitter user @riellayes posted in response to a statement DCASE gave the Tribune following the incident. “DCASE says these showcases are ‘not intended to provide a platform for public discourse and debate’ and asked Sen to ‘remove personal viewpoints from the concert,’” they wrote....

Director Penelope Spheeris began filming The Decline of Western Civilization, a documentary about LA’s raucous punk community, in 1979. That film, released in 1981, spawned a trilogy connected by name, location, and music, but the songs that play in each film don’t exactly mesh. The first follow-up, 1988’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, focuses on the glam-metal scene that turned the Sunset Strip into a magnet for gaudy hairballs; the final chapter, 1998’s The Decline of Western Civilization III, lightly touches upon politically conscious hardcore bands, but mainly focuses on the lives of a gaggle of teenage crust punks as they panhandle and get wasted....

When I need distraction from the madness of our times, I turn to a particular bit by a comedian named Sarah Cooper. Like the recent riff that Cooper satirizes about “the Black people.” It takes place at one of those impromptu press conferences that Trump frequently holds as he’s about to board a helicopter whose engines are running, so it’s like he’s yelling to be heard above a vacuum cleaner. This gives him the opportunity to say what he wants while having an excuse not to take questions from reporters....

The Reader has never undertaken a music poll like this, and we weren’t sure how many critics would want to contribute. We cast a wide net, and ultimately 57 people submitted ballots. Their 570 picks generated a ranked master list of 338 albums—in other words, less than 41 percent of the entries appear on more than one ballot, a testimony to the broad diversity of taste and opinion among those 57 writers....

You won’t find many tighter showcases of Chicago underground metal bands than tonight’s bill, headlined by the reclusive Indian, who’ve emerged from hibernation to blast the Empty Bottle with their raw, nihilistic doom (in advance of two festival dates). Indian play so rarely these days that their presence alone makes this show a can’t-miss occasion, but tonight (and at Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle) they’ll get a run for their money from sludgy, crusty up-and-comers Immortal Bird....

Jada Judkins, 20 I feel like people are taking it more serious than before, but I do honestly invite people to not fall for the phases, like everything is peachy cream and rainbows. Wash your hands and care about your hygiene. It’s fine the state is opening back up, but stay home if you feel sick. It’s like you’re driving, you have to keep yourself safe and other people as well—do the same when you go into the store....