“Local” and “sustainable” are such marketing shibboleths these days that they sometimes seem meaningless—one recently opened hotel restaurant goes so far as to include Dean Foods and “Einstein Bros. Bagels, Chicago” among the purveyors proudly listed at the bottom of its menu. So it’s heartening to see genuinely local independents continue to open. In January Cleetus Friedman (now at Fountainhead) reluctantly closed his scrupulously sourced Ravenswood deli, City Provisions. But in the last year or so several restaurants have followed in the farm-directed footsteps of spots like Edzo’s Burger Shop, Pleasant House Bakery, and Hoosier Mama Pie Shop, with notable newcomers including Lakeview’s Indie Burger and City Farms Market & Grill; Bridgeport’s Mr....

Detour, a lasting influence on Errol Morris and Guy Maddin, screens from film this Thursday. Riding into town on a wave of controversy, Kathryn Bigelow’s fictionalized account of the CIA’s hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, opens in Chicago this weekend. A number of politicians and political journalists have accused the film of factual inaccuracies, with some going so far as to say the film glorifies torture. While acknowledging the debate, J....

In the first two decades of the 20th century, operetta was a popular musical theater form in Germany and Austria. Audiences in the early years of modernism, nostalgic for the imagined well-ordered world of the 1880s and ’90s, embraced its schmaltzy romantic plots, retro sentimentality, and lyrical, often ravishing music. But as economic and political instability meshed with right-wing nationalism after World War I, many major operetta composers and librettists found their livelihoods—and their lives—threatened by the rise of Nazism....

“Fate is coming for you like a Jehovah’s Witness,” warns Second City’s 99th main-stage revue, South Side of Heaven, “and you just can’t pretend you’re not at home.” One-third standard Chicago references, one-third current events, and one-third appeal to the inevitable, this smart show is as tenacious as destiny itself but a lot less annoying, delivering rapid-fire comedy with the company’s signature finesse. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the first sketch, Holly Laurent encounters Sam Richardson’s Barack Obama in a dream....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Show: Magda “The Polish-born, Berlin-based DJ and producer has been at this for a while—she grew up in Detroit, where she rose through the ranks of the city’s celebrated scene by dint of her own ingenuity and style, eventually catching Richie Hawtin’s ear—but she remains a breath of fresh air,” writes Jessica Hopper. “Her debut for Hawtin’s M-nus label, From the Fallen Page, sidesteps the bouncy sets of minimal techno and electro she’s known for, though not the love of old-school Detroit techno that animates them: dark, eerie space and warbly, synthetic bass lines are everywhere....

Raised in a German orphanage, Voichita has found peace as a novice in a Romanian convent, but her austere life is roiled by a visit from her unstable friend Alina, who has graduated from the same orphanage to a series of foster homes. In many ways this long, layered drama from writer-director Cristian Mungiu seems like a companion piece to his harrowing abortion story 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007); both movies trace the uneasy relationship between a survivor and her weak, dependent pal as they try to navigate a world of patriarchal oppression....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When Fierstein, an actor and playwright then in his mid-20s, began developing Torch Song Trilogy, the hot-button issue in gay society was sexual liberation. Urban gay communities were wrestling with whether gay relationships should aspire to anything like the traditional heterosexual model of marital monogamy. But Fierstein’s hero, the flamboyantly queer professional female impersonator Arnold Beckoff, unabashedly dreams of having a husband and a family....

It’s a pretty busy week for Chicago rap, with loads of locals rolling out mixtapes left and right. Vic Spencer released The Catalog Don on Monday, the same day MMG’s Rockie Fresh tossed The Birthday Tape online, and Drake-cosigned rapper Lil Herb is set to drop a best-of compilation of cuts he made with Lil Bibby called Heir Apparents. But the thing on everyone’s mind yesterday was Acid Rap, the second mixtape from Chicago phenom and recent B Side cover star Chancelor Bennett, aka Chance the Rapper....

Endgame Steppenwolf Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Samuel Beckett’s Endgame premiered in 1957, and so critics and scholars have tended to see it in a cold-war context, as a parable of atomic annihilation. But now that the apocalyptic odds have shifted from nuclear winter to global warming, it’s equally easy to take the play as a vision of an industrially produced Armageddon....

Hollywood veteran Joe Dante got his start directing movies for low-budget legend Roger Corman (Piranha, The Howling), graduated to the big-time in the 80s (Gremlins), and has since created a number of provocative entertainments (Matinee, Small Soldiers). He comes to Chicago on Friday and Saturday to introduce screenings of three films. —J.R. Jones Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Gremlins 2: The New Batch Dante’s 1990 sequel relocates the hero and heroine of Gremlins (Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates) to New York, where they’re both working for a vain tycoon named Daniel Clamp (John Glover)—an obvious conflation of Donald Trump and Ted Turner—in a midtown skyscraper, where the gremlins manage to run loose and cause all sorts of mischief....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » [Revised; the S-T broke the story, so credit’s due.] The Sun-Times reports that former CPD commander Jon Burge was just arrested on charges relating to 2003 written testimony about police torture in Chicago. Update: indictment, press release, and links to info on the prosecutors here. In a later post, I address the question of Mayor Daley’s role in his position as state’s attorney during the scandal....

The third Architecture & Design Film Festival runs Thursday through Monday, April 12 through 16, at Music Box, with 31 films screening in 15 different programs. Tickets are $11, with packages available for $45 (five tickets) and $90 (13 tickets). Following are selected films screening; for a full schedule see adfilmfest.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Detroit Wild City French filmmaker Florent Tillon calls RoboCop one of his favorite movies, but his 2010 documentary owes little to Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 Motor City dystopia....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » To the extent that Obama’s gotten a pass from the media, it’s because he’s a political phenomenon. McCain’s appeal is a lot more personal and durable. He served and suffered in war and his courage can’t be questioned — his bio is catnip to middle-aged, male political writers. Aside from that, he enjoys a glass, tells a good story, blows up when he’s angry, swears like a man — or like a journalist — and he likes our company....

Q I’m a longtime reader who thought I’d never have a reason to write since I’m universally known as the “good girl,” but I’m not sure who else I can turn to. I have a close male friend. Even though I knew he was dating someone else, we became friends with benefits several years ago. Because of his relationship (and the fact that he lives with her!), I let him take the lead in setting up our rendezvous....

THE DNA TRAIL Silk Road Theatre Project Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The DNA Trail isn’t seamless—with seven distinct voices, how could it be? But on the whole it’s a smart and challenging production, directed with clarity by Steve Scott, that focuses far less than one might expect on identity politics. At its best, it’s a poignant meditation on how difficult it is to recognize the impact of our immediate families, much less whatever came down to us through the double helix of history....

Simeon Career Academy’s Terrance Robertson just doesn’t have it. His fastball’s got no zip, his off-speed pitches not enough break. Toeing the rubber against rival Whitney Young in a crucial conference game early this April, the Wolverines’ sophomore hits the leadoff hitter in the back, then throws an errant pickoff attempt past his first baseman’s outstretched glove. It’s not the start he’s hoping for. A ground ball sneaks into the hole on the right side of the infield, scoring the game’s first run....

As they drove north on Homan, Lopata was reminiscing about Dave’s Red Hots, where he ate his first hot dogs as a boy. The shop was located on the southeast corner of Homan and Roosevelt, where the Plaza Court Townhouses now stand. About three years ago Howard Lopata was driving around Lawndale with his son, Rob, and Peter Engler, the noted investigator of south-side culinary oddities such as the double cheeseburger known as the Big Baby and the tamale-chili combo dubbed the mother-in-law....

Rob Christopher, author of Queue Tips: Discovering Your Next Great Movie, tore through: Dead Man Upright There’s bleak, and then there’s Derek Raymond. His crime novels are so dark they’re kind of like black holes. Even as he meticulously describes the most horrible things, I can’t look away. He wrote a series of five novels featuring a narrator known only as Detective Sergeant, an investigator in Scotland Yard’s “Unexplained Deaths” department....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On her first album in three years, dynamic Mexican pop singer Natalia Lafourcade looks to one of her homeland’s most revered singers and songwriters, Agustín Lara, giving his ubiquitous boleros and cabaret-style songs a modern sheen. Mujer Divina (Sony Music, Mexico—like Lafourcade’s previous album, 2009’s Hu Hu Hu, it hasn’t been released in the U.S.) is a series of duets with stars of contemporary Latin pop, including León Larregui (of Zoe), Miguel Bosé, Alex Ferreira, and Brazilian legend Gilberto Gil....

In September of 2005, Paula Bonhomme sat at her computer and poured out her heart to the one person on earth who would understand. Life had become wrenching but vastly more meaningful since Paula got involved with Jesse Jubilee James, her troubled love, and Janna St. James was their mutual friend and matchmaker. But by the time Paula wrote the e-mail to Janna I began quoting above, the sweet beginnings had advanced to soap opera-ish complexities....