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Chris Rock is an auteur now, plus more new reviews and notable screenings
Top Five, Chris Rock's latest effort as writer-director, gets a wide release this week from Paramount Pictures. On the one hand, that goes to show you how incredibly weak this year's fall crop of...
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Kedzie Avenue gets the Illustrated Press treatment
Since 2011, local collective Illustrated Press has given the comic format more immediacy with its graphic journalism. (The 2013 Reader cover story "How to Survive a Shooting" won the Association of...
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What Pilsen taught Chuy Garcia
"I'm a neighborhoods guy," Jesus Garcia said last week on Ken Davis's show Chicago Newsroom. "I represent the average person in the city of Chicago."…[ Read more ][ Subscribe to the comments on this...
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Did you read about Skinny Puppy, the parting of the Red Sea, and Dan Savage?
Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us.Hey, did you read:• That, hard as it is to imagine, the office of Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios seems to be rife with patronage and...
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Tiaras, a bunch of Bay Area garage-rock dudes, go pop on 'Thought I Could Know'
Tiaras is a band made up of a bunch of dudes who have been kicking around the San Francisco scuzzy garage-rock scene for years (including Adam Finken, who used to be in one of my favorite bands from...
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Behind the making of local art-pop group Brontosaurus' forthcoming LP
It's been almost four years since local art-pop group Brontosaurus put out their first record, but they can hardly say they've been on hiatus. The band never stopped—instead, Nicholas Kelley and...
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The person who should be appointed Illinois comptroller is . . .
Someone needs to be appointed Illinois comptroller to succeed the late Judy Baar Topinka, who died suddenly this week. The situation is perplexing.…[ Read more ][ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
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The Publican's chef makes aioli with 'fish goo'
In his novel Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor describes lutefisk as "a repulsive gelatinous fishlike dish that tasted of soap and gave off an odor that would gag a goat. . . . I always felt the cold...
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3.5.7. Ensemble is Chicago's incredible shrinking (or growing) jazz band
In a city as large as Chicago, where sizable musical communities consist of far more subsets and cliques, it's all but impossible to keep tabs on everyone or to even be aware of all that's going on....
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Governor Quinn gives Mayor Rahm the finger one last time
Champagne corks were popping in my neck of the woods on Monday after Governor Quinn outfoxed Mayor Rahm—once again!With one foot out the door on his way to retirement, the governor—as lame a duck as...
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Les Blank was the filmmaker who liked people who liked to eat and drink
If you're looking for a gift for a foodie for the holidays, skip the restaurant gift certificates and the weird one-use kitchen tools, and go directly to the video section. Late in November, Criterion...
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The final ride of FX's Sons of Anarchy sputters
We knew this was coming: Sons of Anarchy is over. The FX show bowed out on December 9 with more of a whimper than a bang as Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) Thelma & Louise'd into oblivion in "Papa's...
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Cubs win! Red Sox lose!
The way sports are set up, there's got to be a winner and a loser. Back in the golden era of the NHL, a lot of those games ended in ties—a sentimental nod, I thought, by the cluster of six cities...
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Jewish blogger Paul Wieder has a few problems with 'The Dreidel Song'
"Chicagoans"is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford."When I was growing up, my grandmother made latkes every year with a grater and a pan, none of this pre-made stuff....
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Blessed art the five best film adaptions of the Bible
The big new release this week is Ridley Scott's actioner Exodus: Gods and Kings, his take on the ancient tale of the Hebrews and their Moses-led exit from Egypt. In his capsule review, Reader film...
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Boss vs. I May Be Wrong, But I Doubt It: Greatest Chicago Book Tournament,...
This winter, the Reader has set a humble goal for itself: to determine the Greatest Chicago Book Ever Written. We chose 16 books that reflected the wide range of books that have come out of Chicago and...
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Loop building's makeover includes a giant $800,000 mural
The 300 S. Wacker building has never been what anyone would call a sexy skyscraper. Its most conspicuously dull feature has always been the khaki-colored concrete elevator shaft in the center third of...
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Pianist Girma Yifrashewa brings a touch of European classical music to...
When most folks think of Ethiopian music they hear the slithering soul-funk sounds created by artists like Mahmoud Ahmed or Tilahun Gessesse—killer singers who delivered Amharic-language jams with...
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At Oak + Char, former Untitled chef Joseph Heppe steps into the firelight
But this nebulous concept is further obscured by uneven execution. by Mike Sula I'm beginning to suspect that the increasing prevalence of the "+" sign in the restaurant world (over the ampersand) is...
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Did you read about Boston University, D'Angelo, and messy desks?
Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us.Hey, did you read:• About Boston University, Hollywood's secret female training ground?…[ Read more ][ Subscribe to the comments on...
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