In Top Five, Chris Rock plays a stand-up comedian who’s graduated into movies with a moronic franchise in which he wears a bear costume; after three installments, he’s decided to make a sober historical drama about the Haitian slave rebellion of 1791. We’re supposed to read this as autobiographical, I guess, yet in Rock’s own filmmaking ventures, he’s proved himself fully capable of hitting a line drive down the middle, writing movies that are funny but also smart and socially engaged....

Breakfast is in a sorry state. Few of us would eat the same thing for dinner every night. So why do so many people wake up to a tired old bowl of cold cereal every morning? It doesn’t have to be this way–especially in Chicago, where there are breakfasts from all over the world served every day. Here are just a few of the alternatives: Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Earlier this month the Sun-Times Media Group asked its bankruptcy judge for permission to pay 20 employees as much as $1.8 million in bonuses if and when the company’s sold. Last month the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy judge gave it permission to pay some 700 employes more than $13 million in bonuses. Both companies have been laying off employees right and left, but it’s because times are so tough that the bonuses are necessary, they say....

Peira Records, the terrific, low-key label operated by modular synth improviser Brian Labycz, recently released two new titles, including Bascule, a bracing dual effort by drummer Tim Daisy and bass clarinetist Jason Stein. While Daisy is well-known for all-improvised recordings, Stein has generally been represented on recordings improvising on compositions, so this title shares a less documented aspect of his craft—and we should be thankful for it. In fact, on his last recording as a leader, The Story This Time (Delmark)—a 2011 effort billed to his excellent quartet with fellow reedist Keefe Jackson, bassist Joshua Abrams, and drummer Frank Rosaly—he brought his full-blooded jazz chops to the table, blowing hard-swinging lines with a remarkably plush tone that resembled the sound of an alto saxophone....

In this sketch show Teatro Bastardo tries, with middling success, to do what most comedy troupes do: find the humor in life’s difficult moments. The setups often point to predictable punch lines (the Department of Homeland Security is tapping a phone line–and enjoying it!), and sometimes the bits are too cute to be provocative. But as they unfold they reveal form-stretching surprises–shameful confessions, an ugly striptease, verbal sparring with popular movie lines, a rousing group number full of innuendo and hokey singing....

Last week, local metal maniac Carmelo Española debuted his fanzine Distort/Delay—he sent over a copy, and this wolf thinks it’s totally major! The inaugural issue, available via local distributor Diseased Audio, features a bevy of record reviews and interviews with the likes of Chicago doom merchants Bongripper, Phillip “VK” Kusabs of New Zealand black-metal fiends Vassafor, and Dave Kristiansen of Toronto death-metal band Abyss. Primo local cassette label Plustapes has been pretty quiet this year—too quiet....

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 features the most self-reflexive sequence of any Hollywood blockbuster I’ve seen all year. As you probably know, this is the third entry in a franchise adapted from Suzanne Collins’s best-selling young-adult novels, set in a dystopian future where citizens are distracted from government oppression by televised gladiator games in which young people fight to the death. In Mockingjay—Part 1, rebel propagandists have recruited Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), once a victor in the games, to appear in a fictitious newsreel; like the star of a contemporary Hollywood epic, she stands on a bare set, shouting slogans to an imaginary army of insurgents who will be inserted digitally into the shot....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like millions of others, I watched the returns come in Tuesday night with increasing excitement about so many things: the history made and message sent that we will elect a black man president because he strikes us as thoughtful, intelligent, and inspirational at a time we need all of it; the end of the small-minded Bush years; the realization that we may have slept while thieves looted our governments and businesses, but maybe we’re waking up now, and maybe it’s not too late....

omnivorous Schwartz knows his Polish. He calls himself the “official schmoozer” of Vienna’s 1,200-some vendors and, as the bio in his new book Never Put Ketchup on a Hot Dog (out September 2 from Chicago’s Books Press) puts it, he’s “spent the last third of a century developing and enhancing strong emotions for the business and for the people who operate hot dog stands.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Jourdon Gullett’s artwork for Ravaged by Vikings So far my beer reviews have involved me nursing a bottle of something special in my apartment, on account of it’s easier that way to take notes (and serviceable pictures). But on Saturday I decided to go to Acre for lunch and see if they had anything on tap I could review—even though that meant I’d be obligated to bring a notepad and my janky old camera into a bar, since I don’t own a smartphone, a laptop, or anything in between....

Bob Kotalik/AP The troubling news this week that Roger Ebert’s cancer had recurred and he was taking a “leave of presence” from his duties was followed with brutal immediacy by his death. I heard from a friend I ran into Thursday evening on North Avenue; we were standing, we realized at some point, outside the corner joint that had once been O’Rourke’s—Ebert’s nightly haunt back in the 70s when he was young, already a star of stars in Chicago journalism, and an alcoholic....

It was a real surprise to learn last week that Chicago lawyer Kareem Dale would be appointed President Barack Obama’s White House staff adviser on arts and culture. The news came in a New York Times story by Robin Pogrebin, with comment from former National Endowment for the Arts chair and Obama arts transition team leader Bill Ivey, who called the prospective appointment “a big step forward.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

You might think the subtitle of Rinne Groff’s play–“A Trick in Four Acts”–refers to a feat of prestidigitation. After all, the main characters are a magician and his assistants; the plot has to do with an attempt to steal the magician’s secrets; and, yes, magic tricks are performed. But the real trick is literary: Groff attempts to ring changes on a single metaphor for nearly two hours. And a hokey metaphor at that: “love is magic....

Great Performers of Illinois Don’t let the admittedly distracting presence of a 7,000-square-foot “urban corn maze” and demos of chain-saw carving blind you to this festival’s cast of top-shelf local musicians, which includes the Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, Canasta, and the Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra on Saturday and Pretty Good Dance Moves, Plastic Crimewave Sound, and the Giving Tree Band on Sunday. Also on Sunday, violinist Rachel Barton Pine performs with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Trio Settecento, and her metal band, Earthen Grave, from 7-10 PM....

In summer 2009, I was walking through the woods in Indiana with my girlfriend and found some chanterelle mushrooms and roasted them on the side of the trail with some beef jerky. A couple days later we were like, “That was kind of fun, let’s go out and see if we can find more mushrooms.” After about a week or two it was like, “All right, I’m tired of eating mushrooms....

Alexey Izmalkov John Dikeman Over the last seven years or so the ferocious American saxophonist John Dikeman—a native of Kemmerer, Wyoming, a locale not usually considered a hot spot for improvised music—has become a vital part of Amsterdam’s bustling scene, helping to forge a path for a new generation of players trying to develop a sound distinct from the singular approach made famous by players associated with ICP Orchestra. Whereas many of the scene’s veterans—masterfully chronicled in Kevin Whitehead’s essential New Dutch Swing book—dynamically subverted jazz tradition with new improvisational gambits, Dikeman is part of a crew who at times seem intent on tearing it all down....

In late June the Illinois Appellate Court ruled in favor of the Park Grill in its fight against the Cook County assessor, dropping the curtain on the latest act in one of the more sensational scandals of Mayor Daley’s reign. As the Sun-Times reported, the Park District gave the restaurant a sweet deal to boot, agreeing to pick up the cost of their water, gas, and garbage collection, which together may cost taxpayers at least as much as the restaurant pays to use the space....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One was the Pack and the Federation (warning: tons of auto-play files on their MySpace) at the Catchdubs showcase on Friday. Aside from the Pack, I’ve never really liked listening to hyphy music. The description makes it sound like the kind of thing I should be playing all day every day, but in reality I can’t really stand the shit outside of a club....

In the spirit of diplomacy—think Sadat going to Israel, Nixon to China, or Obama to Congress—the Reader recently paid a visit to an UNO charter school. To his credit Rangel hit us right back, posting a link to the piece on his Facebook page with his own snarky wisecrack: “I usually don’t promote the rants of people who despise charter schools, who are knee-jerk UNO haters or who just plain loathe successful Hispanics, but this week’s Chicago Reader made me LMAO…....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’ve come across some really entertaining Rube Goldberg inventions in the last few months—first a page-turning device by computer programmer Joseph Herscher, who’s also come up with several other contraptions (including one that squishes a Cadbury creme egg). More recently, I saw a video of a 2011 demo of Rob Higgs‘s enormous wine opener and pourer. I’m not sure whether the latter really qualifies as a Rube Goldberg machine: while its cogs and gears are incredibly complicated, it doesn’t involve nearly as many steps as, say, Purdue University’s 300-step machine that inflates and pops a balloon....