Anthony Tournis’s new farce is based on the premise that televangelists are hypocritical crooks who fleece their faithful flock. This once-startling insight might have carried some shock value back in the 1980s, when religious-talk-show host Jim Bakker’s career was undone by revelations of his sexual and financial misconduct. Today, not so much. Set during the Reagan era, when “greed is good” became a national catchphrase, Prophet$ concerns three buddies who establish a TV ministry in a small Texas town....

As an admirer of Michael and Peter Spierig’s previous feature, Predestination, I had high expectations going into their latest, Winchester, which is now playing in general release. Predestination told a tricky, engaging tale that involved time travel and multiple identities; I hoped the Spierigs would create another fun puzzle narrative around the fabled Winchester mansion, a former farmhouse that owner Sarah Winchester transformed, through constant renovations between 1886 and her death in 1922, into a multi-story building with mazes and secret passages....

On Wednesday, October 26, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved an amendment to county tax rules making clear that all musical performances—including most DJ sets—should be considered “art” for the purposes of assessing the county’s amusement tax. Regardless of their relevance to the tax exemption, Richardson’s comments shocked the music community. The county drew harsh criticism in local and national publications for attempting to define art or elevate some genres of music as more worthy of a tax break than others....

As time goes on, it seems more obvious to me that Donald Trump would fit right in with all the regulars of the local Democratic Party. And Alderman Ed Burke—who’s facing federal corruption charges—helped Trump save millions in property taxes by appealing the assessment on Trump Tower to the Cook County assessor’s office, which was then headed by Joe Berrios—another Chicago Democrat. Madigan says he did nothing wrong. Says he doesn’t dictate who ComEd hires....

There was no way that Sick Gazelle weren’t going to be good. This trio of recording engineer and Veloce mastermind Eric Block on guitar, Yakuza and Bloodiest front man Bruce Lamont on saxophone, and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums could’ve ventured down practically any musical path imaginable, and any one of them would’ve been exciting—not least because Shelley has made a career of holding everything in place in the midst of musical chaos....

“Art helps to free people even while incarcerated,” Renaldo Hudson says in the new book Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex. Hudson should know. In September 2020, he was released from Danville Correctional Center, after spending 37 years behind bars. “There’s a tremendous amount of freedom when you can say what you want to say with your art, do what you want to do with it,” Hudson continues....

Jill Stein’s presidential run means nothing but trouble, according to most pundits and politicos. It’s a “fairy tale campaign,” goes the popular media narrative—an annoying speed bump in Hillary’s White House coronation, or perhaps a Ralph Nader-like spoiler that could spell President Trump. Getting slapped with an arrest warrant for tagging an oil company’s equipment is possibly the most punk-rock move for a presidential candidate since Eugene Debs campaigned from prison a century ago—though not likely one to win many votes....

When it comes to depressing music, Adam McIlwee is a jack of all trades. From 2005 to 2013 he was a founding member of influential emo-rock band Tigers Jaw, before moving on to explore equally downbeat rap, trap, and electronica in the loose collective GothBoiClique with collaborators who’ve included the late Lil Peep. Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, which McIlwee launched in 2010, is his one-man conglomeration of mope—an exercise in eclectic evocations of the same sad affect....

How to discuss this giddily inventive Argentinian feature without ruining its many surprises? The chief pleasure of Wild Tales is its sheer unpredictability; throughout the film, writer-director Damián Szifron flips the tone from farce to horror and back again, piles up absurd coincidences, and without warning throws his characters into life-or-death situations. The film presents six stories about revenge and chance, each beginning believably but getting progressively crazier as it goes along....

Melancholy shoots right out of the gate on Willie Nelson’s new full-length, First Rose of Spring. The album opens with its title track, a sweet but ultimately tragic love song by a trio of stalwart Nashville songwriters: Allen Shamblin (Bonnie Raitt), Marc Beeson (LeAnn Rimes, Blake Shelton), and Randy Houser (who hit number two on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 2009 performing his own “Boots On”). Nelson’s no-frills singing and plaintive solo on his trusty acoustic guitar, Trigger, make “First Rose of Spring” an anchor for the wistful, contemplative songs ahead....

“Put down the brownie batter hummus and slowly step away from the culture.” As an avid cultural appropriator herself, the Ariana Grande aesthetic proved an effective way into the issues of misrepresentation and erasure that MENA artists battle with about every project they sign on to. Ishak notes, “Ariana Grande is one of the white women most famous for appropriating Black and Latinx culture for profit and it just felt right to steal something back while making a critique about brownface....

Since the 2016 election cycle shifted into full gear, I’ve had a hard time reading. There aren’t very many books that can compete with all the bizarre plot twists we’ve been living through. In real life, you also don’t have the comfort of being able to flip ahead to the last page to see how it all worked out. There isn’t much fiction about Watergate, but I’m avoiding all that, too....

Saxophonist Dave Rempis and percussionist Tim Daisy have been stalwarts of Chicago’s improvised music scene for more than two decades. During that time they’ve grown, listened, and explored together while collaborating in many contexts and deeply expanding their sound worlds. That’s deftly illustrated on the recent double CD Dodecahedron (Aerophonic), which celebrates their shared history. Though on the duo’s 2005 album, Back to the Circle (Okka Disk), they opted for terse exchanges that tended to investigate specific ideas, the first disc of the new album mirrors a more organic, episodic approach where each participant trusts in his ability to push each encounter forward....

When state rep Juliana Stratton, scarcely a year in office, announced she was joining J.B. Pritzker’s campaign, a scramble ensued to represent the Fifth District in her stead. While it’s a majority-black district, gerrymandering has stretched its boundaries from Goethe Street in the Gold Coast to 80th Street in Avalon Park, running through some of the richest and poorest areas of Chicago with just 25 east-to-west blocks at its widest point....

Q: My son has always liked handcuffs and tying people up as a form of play. He is 12 now, and the delight he finds in cuffing has not faded along with his love of Legos. He lobbied hard to be allowed to buy a hefty pair of handcuffs. We cautioned him strongly about consent—he has a younger brother—and he has been good about it. In the last year, though, I found out that he is cuffing himself while alone in the house—and when discovered, he becomes embarrassed and insists it’s a joke....

Fans of The Golden Girls, the popular 1980s sitcom about four senior citizens—three widows and a divorcee—sharing a home in Miami, will likely enjoy this campy spoof from Hell in a Handbag Productions. Written by Handbag’s artistic director, David Cerda, and directed by Jon Martinez, the show takes the original series’ main strength—the perfectly balanced personalities of its four affectionately quarrelsome leads—and ups the source material’s already plentiful queer-appeal. Housemates Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia—the roles played on TV by Rue McClanahan, Betty White, Bea Arthur, and Estelle Getty, respectively—are performed here by men in drag....

As Chicagoans today are—for very good reasons—keeping their distance from each other, these unguarded moments from the late 19th and early 20th century are a reminder of the simple joys of the city as the weather gets warmer. The photos, taken by the Detroit Publishing Company, one of the largest image publishers in the world at the turn of the century, sometimes show the affectionate side of Chicago. Zooming into high-resolution scans from the Library of Congress, you can sometimes catch couples holding hands, delighted parents watching their children play, and friends sharing a laugh on a crowded beach....

The creative process tends to be a mystery for some consumers of art. At the Process v. Product Festival at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, though, audiences will get the chance to see exactly how choreographers build their work. “One of the biggest features of concert dance work is it’s about the relationships within the ensemble,” says Chenoweth. “It’s about a group of people and how they relate to each other over the course of the creation of the work, and that’s really juicy and interesting and can be sensed on stage when you see the final product....

Lately I’ve been in the habit of powering through the morning with what squishier types like to call a “smoothie.” This always involves bananas and some other kind of frozen fruit, an avocado when I’m nasty, some hemp powder, a pinch of salt, and a lot of full-fat active yogurt, plain, blended to gastroparesis viscosity. One glass and you’re good until second breakfast. Then I discovered yogurt soda, aka doogh, a Persian drink made simply enough from yogurt and water....

Peter Holderness/Sun-Times Media Danny Solis, pictured at his meeting with the Sun-Times editorial board on Monday As chairman of the City Council’s zoning committee, 25th Ward alderman Danny Solis has the power to approve or block new developments in Chicago. So it comes as no surprise that developers and those embedded in real estate are among his most generous campaign supporters. Structure Management Midwest LLC donated $5,000 to Solis. It’s owned by Fred Latsko, who recently became a partner in the development of a $65 million River North apartment tower....