There was a lot going on in Chicago during the first weekend of November, but my old haunts in Philadelphia—where I lived for seven years—were shouting out to me through the magic of the Internet. I do happen to be familiar with the stretch of State Road where Four Seasons Total Landscaping is located, and I could barely believe that I didn’t hear a single commentator point out that the spot where Giuliani threw his hands in the air (like he just didn’t care) is a literal three-minute drive from the Riverside Correctional Facility....

The great Indian director Satyajit Ray once remarked that, in making movies for the entire world, his responsibility was to look at the particulars of his society and find the universal. This sounds like a good formula for storytellers who aspire to international viewership, but it would seem to break down whenever they work outside their native countries. Can a director truly understand the particulars of a society he or she doesn’t know intimately?...

John Kass’s column in Sunday‘s Tribune touched me as greatest hits collections often do—as a reminder of good times past and a melancholy concession that the artist has nothing new to say. My own view is that Dwyer has it wrong. Four years of show trials by rabid Republicans would allow Clinton to demonstrate again what the interminable Benghazi hearings already demonstrated: an inexhaustible capacity to smile pleasantly for hours on end and not give an inch to foaming inquisitors....

“We envisioned a blank slate,” Schor says. “Each artist could come in and take ownership over the space and feel like they’re isolated in their own little world so they can immerse themselves in it.” Silent Funny offers a type of residency experience in which an artist works in the space during the lead-up to his or her show. Each artist is also invited to leave a piece of work behind as a hallmark, Schor says, “so we’ll be crafting a living museum of what’s happened over the period of time we’re here....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday January 27, 2016. The witches of Logan Square Apparently there are witches outside of Salem and Hogwarts, and they want to use their powers to stop the gentrification of Logan Square. Mark your calendars for February 6, because that’s when the public is invited to watch them perform a hex and protective spell near the Logan Square Blue Line. [Chicagoist]

There was a time during the early part of this decade when a thing called “meat butter” started popping up in food writer dispatches from around the country. I’m among those guilty of propagating it. It was the jokey way we referred to nduja, the spicy, scarlet-colored Calabrian spreadable salami that was capturing the imaginations of all those obsessed with cured meats. Chefs are still nuts for it, though the fever has waned a bit....

Courtesy of the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art This breakfast rocks. Every so often we ask you to show us something. This week it’s Sylvia Josefek’s food-shaped rocks. “This exhibit is a great example of the work of a true lapidary,” LMLA director Dorothy Asher says of “The Rock Cafe.” “Lapidary people see things in rocks. They have a creative side that comes out—but instead of painting or something, rocks are their medium....

“It’s been 20 years since Y2K and the world is still going even if it’s burning,” begins the Facebook event page for Distort Midwest, a two-day release party at the end of February for a compilation tape of heartland hardcore. “We’re fucking bored out here in the land of milk and honey with our mundane jobs and weekend benders. Long live this decadence from here until the apocalypse!” During the house’s tenure as a DIY space, around 20 tenants passed through it....

In its mix of essentialist storytelling and blatant artifice, Jungle sometimes recalls the 1940s work of low-budget director Edgar G. Ulmer (Bluebeard, Strange Illusion, Ruthless). Ulmer was shrewd in his use of lighting and offscreen space to cover up his lack of resources—he called on viewers to imagine the world outside the frames, thus making the world of the film as big as anything the viewer can imagine. Ulmer’s minimalist aesthetic also encouraged viewers to focus on more cerebral themes....

At 5 PM Saturday, March 21, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 Executive Order No. 8, aka the Stay at Home order, took effect. Here’s a daily-ish journal of how Reader staff, our friends, family—and our pets—are spending our time. Who has thrown a Zoom 30th birthday party: Maggie Blackburn Sallyann Price Chris Smith Luke Wilusz Sam Charles Mitchell McClellan Vicente Vasquez Alyssa Vitale v

Q: I’m having a problem advising a friend. She’s been through a divorce and now the breaking off of an engagement. To put it simply, both relationships ended because she was cheated on and she has a zero-tolerance policy around infidelity. To complicate matters, in each relationship we—her friends—have witnessed her being very cutting to the point of being downright insulting to her former partners. She has a tendency to tease her partners about their deepest insecurities in public and to express her extreme disdain for their family members openly....

A strong contender for the title of Most Iconic Hollywood Actress, Bette Davis built her reputation on tough, no-nonsense, self-assured, and bitchy characters that held their own against any man. FilmStruck is currently featuring her as its Star of the Week, with a generous selection of her films available, including the well-known and well-loved Jezebel (1938), Dark Victory (1939), The Little Foxes (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942). We’ve selected four deeper cuts to spotlight this week—films that demonstrate a broader range of her talents—along with her late-career triumph, the Joan Crawford-battle-royal film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?...

Boka is known for lush, artful versions of essentially straightforward American dishes, but chef Lee Wolen likes to eat fairly light and simple Asian food. “Everybody at Boka,” he says, setting the record straight, “likes to eat Asian food.” “We eat a lot of tofu. And chicken,” he says of the restaurant’s staff meals. That’s no surprise for a chef lauded for his roast chicken. “Roasted chicken is the quickest. We do the whole roasted chicken here, so we always have the legs and thighs....

At a time when public-sector union advocates are sounding alarm bells due to the Supreme Court’s impending ruling on Governor Bruce Rauner’s pet anti-union lawsuit Janus v. AFSCME, some local unions and their members are quietly fighting back with legal action of their own. The case went to the nation’s highest court this week, with the justices hearing oral arguments on Monday. Perhaps it was the prospect of a Janus victory that made Governor Rauner giddy enough to make his first official visit to Washington, D....

On Sunday afternoon, after Chicago police shot 20-year-old Latrell Allen but before the city would mourn broken windows and looted Best Buys, a block in Englewood was about to erupt. That man was Tyrone Muhammad. The 41-year-old was dressed in a white T-shirt, which he wore under a black bulletproof vest with a matching black mask. Muhammad speaks in a calm voice, like a friend who knows you well. Williams knew the situation was fraught and that he likely couldn’t handle it alone, so he called on other community members for assistance....

The student population at the School of the Art Institute is just 3 percent black. “It’s very frustrating,” says Da’Niro Elle Brown, a senior who studies sculpture, performance, and film. “People put you with the other black people. They assume every black person loves Kara Walker or Basquiat. During critiques, if you’re black, you feel like people are expecting something from you. People assume your work is about you being black and that they can’t ask questions because they can’t identify....

Welcome to the Reader‘s news briefing for Monday, February 12, 2018. Chicago matches snowfall record with nine straight days of measurable snow There have been nine days in a row with “measurable snow” in Chicago as of Sunday, matching a record. It’s only the third time the city has seen nine days in a row of snow since the National Weather Service started keeping records in 1885, according to the Tribune....

Every summer since 2006, the Chicago Dancing Festival has tried to put dance within reach of everyone. The citywide extravaganza, on the cusp of its tenth anniversary, is billed as “the nation’s largest dance fest” and remains entirely free. It’s come a long way from a decade ago, when cofounders Jay Franke and Lar Lubovitch didn’t know if the concept would make it past year one. So what’s in store for the next ten years?...

The centerpiece—soul, even—of every Lars von Trier film is a scene of compelling destruction. Breaking the Waves (1996), a fictional tale, has Emily Watson on a stretcher believing that the love of her life needed her raped and beaten in order to survive himself. In the 2003 documentary The Five Obstructions, von Trier’s real-life mentor Jørgen Leth is served an elaborate meal in the red-light district of Mumbai. The local poverty serves to highlight Leth’s wealth and privilege, of course, but we watch something more complex erode in the relationship between the two Danish filmmakers—respect, maybe, or admiration, and the combination is gutting and awful....

T Glass Pieces rounds out an overlong program with corps dancers walking, bopping, and swaying like time ticking by while sleek principals condescend to appear among them. Oh, America! v Through 2/18: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 312-386-8905, joffrey.org, $34-$159.