Does Steve McQueen have some big thesis? A concept that runs through all his images, moving and otherwise? What, for instance, binds the British artist’s two feature-length films, Hunger and Shame, whose respective protagonists are an imprisoned Irish nationalist and a Manhattan sex addict? Perhaps hunger? Or is it shame? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » McQueen is certainly all over the map in the Art Institute’s new survey show, “Steve McQueen”—not just thematically but geographically....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The White Sox’ Carlos Quentin just got recognized as an All-Star, in addition to receiving a well-done profile from the Tribune‘s usually puffy Melissa Isaacson, who delivered a piece with some fine quotes and details from Quentin’s mother, Queta. Yet through it all what’s been overlooked is his pivotal place in the Cubs-Sox interleague series. (Let’s call it the City Serious, in honor of Ring Lardner‘s Jack Keefe, as opposed to the Crosstown Classic or whatever else....

Though Amanda Bonnen can’t be found on Facebook, the Friends of Amanda Bonnen can—a support group less concerned with the elusive Ms. Bonnen personally than with the constitutional principle they say she now represents. The Friends’ call to arms asserts: Conservatives ridiculed Douglas for this blatant act of “judicial activism,” but when’s the last time you heard anybody maintain that privacy is not our due? The way Douglas saw it, privacy must have been an inalienable right just too darned hard for the founding fathers to define....

The airspace in the open, multilevel faux-Victorian sports bar Old Town Social is so thoroughly and discordantly saturated with flat-screen TV signals I’m convinced the design scheme is intended to simulate the internal torments of a schizophrenic. Some sight lines are so crowded by moving images that it’s almost like being in a fun house hall of mirrors. It’s a painfully annoying environment to have to endure to get a taste of chef Jared Van Camp’s terrific house-made charcuterie....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » First I want to single out a few beers that color inside the lines, so to speak—beers you could see as homages to or re-creations of traditional Belgians. (I tried fewer than half the offerings at the festival, so please take it as a given that this isn’t an attempt to name “the best” but merely “the stuff I got to that I particularly liked....

When we first see Scott Parkinson’s Hamlet, he looks exactly like a Hamlet is expected to look. Leaning against an upstage wall, dressed all in black, his backlit face obscured by moody shadows, he’s the very picture of the melancholy Dane. There’s even an homage to Laurence Olivier’s 1948 film performance suggested by the glow of his Nordic-blond hair. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The divergence from type becomes still more obvious when Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, murdered King Hamlet....

I can’t name a better living practitioner of blues harmonica than Charlie Musselwhite. Born in 1944 in Kosciusko, Mississippi, he moved to Memphis with his family in the late 40s, then came to Chicago in 1962 looking for a job. He got sucked in by the city’s thriving modern blues scene instead, and by the mid-60s he was leading his own band. In 1967 Musselwhite released his first album, Stand Back!...

With his well-crafted new album, Black Radio (Blue Note), pianist Robert Glasper puts a spotlight on the reality of most contemporary jazz musicians: they’re not interested in playing just “jazz.” On most of his records he’s added flourishes of hip-hop and modern R&B, but this one goes all the way, with instrumental solos kept to a minimum and vocals on every cut—including contributions from Erykah Badu, Lupe Fiasco, Ledisi, and Yasin Bey (aka Mos Def)....

In the bag—well, actually on china—are three courses: an asparagus-leek terrine, grilled wild salmon with beet quinoa and English pea relish, and a scoop of chocolate sorbet. And, yes, they really do total less than 500 calories. Chef Kevin Hickey says the inspiration for this limited-time collaboration came with the transformation of Seasons, the Four Seasons’ fine-dining establishment, into Allium, where he’s offering seasonal “anti-hotel dining.” Pastry chef Scott Gerken’s sorbet—just 32 calories or so per serving—was an early hit off the new menu, and guests were clamoring for more healthy fare....

Guitarist Emmett Kelly was recognized as a wunderkind not long after moving to Chicago in 2004, but until recently the best showcase for his talents was his role as crucial creative foil for Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy); his own work, under the Cairo Gang name, often felt malnourished and tentative. That’s all changed. Kelly now has a solid, reliable backing group (bassist Ryan Weinstein, guitarist Sam Wagster, and drummer Ben Babbitt), and the Cairo Gang has emerged as my favorite Chicago rock band....

Everybody’s already said his piece on Rod Blagojevich’s book The Governor, and it’s fair to say the reactions have been largely unfavorable. State rep Jack Franks told USA Today that the book, like Blago himself, was full of fibs. “His legacy is one of corruption, it’s one of scandal, it’s one of shame,” he said. The Trib‘s John Kass mocked Blagojevich for his awkward and sometimes imprecise allusions to Greek myth and Shakespeare and posited that the book was nothing more than a maneuver to improve his prospects in court....

In a double bill closing this weekend, Chicago Opera Theater delivers gripping interpretations of two rarely performed early-20th-century works probing psychoanalytic depths: Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung (“Expectation”). Bass-baritone Samuel Ramey brings dramatic conviction and a formidable growl to the lead role in Bluebeard (1911), the story of an older man with a dark castle and even darker past. As his doomed young bride, soprano Krisztina Szabo is stunning, though her bright lyrical sound doesn’t always have the heft to project over the superb but brass-heavy orchestra....

The 18- to 24-year-old performers of DanceWorks Chicago are in a “magic stage of life,” says artistic director Julie Nakagawa. “They’re finding themselves, believing anything can happen.” Adopting a “grow and go” approach, DWC “graduates” its dancers after a year or two. The troupe incubates not only dancers but, in its upcoming sixth-anniversary benefit, the young choreographer Joshua Manculich, a member of Thodos Dance Chicago. Personally, he says, he prefers slow, lyrical movement—but challenged himself to speed things up for The Rate in Which I Am....

This double bill starts black and ends colorful. Comic relief–mostly in the form of a talking banana–comes sparingly in Sustain, about a struggling actor crippled by post-9/11 anxiety. You’re quickly forced to sympathize or not with the heavyhearted protagonist, writer-performer Brandon J. Sornberger. Cleverly, newspapers blanket the set’s furniture. But the one-man show Despondent Confrontation comes on like a big “just kidding.” Writer-performer Ben Seeder, apparently building his career on awkwardness, finds brilliant comedy in odd, uneasy exchanges, like one between an adolescent girl and her mother’s frustrated boyfriend, who’s urging her to go to sleep....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Former WIND, WGN, and WLUP radio host Ed Schwartz died yesterday at the age of 62 after a long struggle with kidney disease. Noah Isackson wrote an extensive profile of Schwartz in Chicago Magazine, and Eric Zorn has written quite a bit about Schwartz’s health and financial problems. WGN host Dean Edwards did a long interview with Schwartz in 2006 when the local journalism community was rallying around him (the woman who calls in to sing his WGN theme song at about 11 minutes in kills me)....

This wolf was blown away by the looks of the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann‘s take on The Great Gatsby, which includes a cover of Amy Winehouse‘s “Back to Black” by Andre 3000 and Beyonce. It gets better: the song was produced by Chicago rap phenom and Treated Crew member Hollywood Holt! He made it before Winehouse’s death, then sold it to Andre and Bey with no clue about their plans for it—he didn’t learn that they’d used it for Gatsby till the track list came out....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » *Obviously for things like mapping, emergency services, and, I dunno, circumnavigation, GPS is a boon, but normal human beings should probably use maps. It totally doesn’t surprise me that the directions given by GPS systems, particularly for walking, aren’t very good; teaching a computer how to do something using rules that are supposed to be applicable for everywhere at any time leads to certain sacrifices that a person wouldn’t have to make in figuring out one route to one place at one time....

Despite what you may have heard, you’re not going to be able to order a magic brownie with your morning coffee anytime soon. It’s still not a great idea to fire up a joint at the bus stop during rush hour. And to stay supplied, most of your friends will have to continue to rely on their always available but slightly shady pot dealer. But even advocates for the new law call it one of the most restrictive in the nation....

If you ask me, Peter Zelchenko’s outburst at the August 21 Chicago Plan Commission meeting was rather run-of-the-mill as far as City Hall eruptions go. So it’s a happy ending, right? Well, not for Zelchenko and other members of Protect Our Parks, who don’t want any field in this patch of Lincoln Park, no matter who gets to use it. That’s why he and about 20 other north siders went to the City Council chambers for the Plan Commission meeting....

“This may escape Jay, but it’s the question of dignity,” says Cooke. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cooke doesn’t want to get into the details, but he notes that Mariotti, in his 17-year career at the Sun-Times, threatened to quit many times before. The paper always found a way to change his mind, and Cooke supposes it might have been able to find a way once again....