Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Which was pretty much my attitude before I saw the movie. Snakes on a Plane, Black Snake Moan, 1408—is the guy on a roll or what? But the fact is that, compared to Jackson‘s work in these other films (what J.R. Jones once described as “boogety-boogety”—not the most racially sensitive notion in the world, but y’all white folks know what he be sayin’), his character notes in Lakeview almost (if only part of the time) seem like underplaying....

Rebecca Hall, Northwest Chicago Film Society president, is delving into: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Basically, the Chicago projectionist union was having contract-negotiation difficulties with certain theater chains and the inner circle of the union organized—essentially—a campaign of terrorism against the chains who weren’t cooperating with them. They set off smoke bombs in various theaters around Chicago (and as far away as New York City), and did other nasty things like flushing socks full of hydraulic cement down the toilets in the theater at Water Tower Place, even slicing theater screens (a horrifying act for any true projectionist)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Self-described savory guy Dave Ford, chef at the Bluebird, paired strawberries and rhubarb with sturgeon for last week’s Key Ingredient. But his snacks for the Bucktown lounge’s California beer tasting tonight at 7:30 PM include Belgian-style lace cookies with lemon curd and rhubarb, along with artisanal cheeses, pulled rabbit crostini with blueberries, and flatbreads with goat cheese, pork sausage, mushrooms, and house-made giardiniera....

Between Boutique Cafe & Lounge opened in 2007 offering creative Indian fusion small plates by Radhika Desai, who appeared on Top Chef before leaving the restaurant in May. Now, after a short stint by Noah Sandoval, the restaurant is focusing on a different but equally creative fusion: Peruvian-Asian dishes dreamed up by consulting chef Jose Victorio. When we visited, the menu was still in transition, but what we tried showed real promise....

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how top administrators with the Chicago Public Schools, from CEO Ron Huberman on down, had budgeted themselves raises even as they threatened to lay off teachers, asked coaches to work for free, and cut sophomore sports to chip away at a deficit approaching nearly $1 billion. She said she would be happy to explain—if I’d come to the central office at 125 S. Clark to talk about it in the presence of CPS budget officials....

The War Plays Strange Tree Group Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In mounting Emily Schwartz’s sketchy, cliche-ridden The War Plays, the Strange Tree Group goes one better and plays the Blitz incoherent and cute. This may be the biggest programming blunder since the now-defunct Remains Theater lost its shirt with John Guare’s execrable Moon Under Miami back in 1995. The confusion begins when something called the Allied Orchestra assembles in the former bar at the Athenaeum Theatre, their brief musical set introduced as “the show before the show....

Veteran stage producer Michael Cullen, owner of the Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport, has been extraordinarily generous with his space over the years, donating it for benefit performances, theater community meetings, and other events. Now Cullen needs other people’s help. In January he suffered a stroke. He’s currently at Schwab Rehabilitation Institute, undergoing extensive therapy to restore his powers of movement and speech, and he’ll need more care when he returns home....

It takes only five minutes to get from Wrigley Field, all-American domain of hot dogs, beer, and rowdy baseball fans, to a quiet, peaceful, astonishingly smog-free patch of 19th-century London. How’s that? Well, fine, Alta Vista Terrace, which lies in a gap in the street grid between Seminary and Kenmore and extends for a single block between Grace and Byron, isn’t really in London. It’s merely inspired by London. Developer Samuel Eberly Gross visited in the 1890s, became particularly enchanted with the rowhouses in Mayfair, and decided to reproduce them in Lakeview....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Once upon a time, after he moved from a top spot in Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH into Democratic politics, Roland Burris was considered a smart, pragmatic, progressive politician–one who could win with support from African-Americans, Chicago “reformers,” and a handful of downstate voters he’d won over with reminders that he was originally from their part of Illinois. Thirty years ago he broke a barrier as the first African-American to hold statewide office in Illinois, and in 1990 he became just the second in the country to become a state attorney general....

Challenged by Sean Still of Double A with coriander, North Pond bartender Justin Fox really had to get down to basics: he’d never tried it before. So he bought a jar of the spice in seed form and “just kept eating it,” using its taste as a guide. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This led him straight to gin—coriander seed, along with juniper berries and citrus peel, is one of the botanicals used in most varieties of the spirit....

The 14th European Union Film Festival continues Friday, March 18, through Thursday, March 31, at Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $10, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Following are selected films screening through Thursday, March 24; for a full schedule see siskelfilmcenter.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » R The Arbor British playwright Andrea Dunbar was only 18 when The Arbor, her blunt account of life in a squalid council estate, premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 1980; by age 29 she was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving behind three completed works and three children by three different men....

Attack your opponent where he’s strongest. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This is a fairly old idea, but the Republican party, on the national level, has been particularly skilled at this recently–think of the swiftboating of military hero John Kerry. Right now, Obama’s greatest strength is the enthusiasm and excitement about his campaign. As distinguished from actual political support–clearly he’s polling well and has a healthy chance against McCain, but the buzz and hype over his candidacy, fairly or not, far exceeds that of McCain, who seems to be running for dogcatcher this week....

Congratulations to us! Chicago has now published two articles in five months on the unbelievably suppressed issue of cell phone radiation health effects! For seven years I’ve watched news stories proliferate around the world while America sleeps the sweet slumber of ignorance and orders family plans and kiddie phones galore for the latest target of industry marketing. Efforts to rouse Chicagoland media into interest in cell phone and wireless safety have been like spitting in the wind....

There are no people like show people—at least that’s what show people think. Look at all of the musicals they’ve made about themselves: Gypsy, 42nd Street, Singin’ in the Rain, Annie Get Your Gun. And who can blame them? By its nature show business is—well—showy, providing a home for people who are dramatic, provocative, and flamboyant. Or almost nothing. Cy Coleman’s score can feel a bit old-fashioned, but two of the show’s most memorable songs—”There Is a Sucker Born Ev’ry Minute” and “The Prince of Humbug”—perfectly re-create the giddiness of a rousing circus march....

Kevin Warwick, Reader staff writer, is obsessed with. . . Sleigh Bells at Pitchfork Sleigh Bells have a reputation for playing a vacuous, overblown hybrid of hardcore and party-pop that’s more glitter than grit, but their Pitchfork set confirmed what blockbuster movie studios have known all along—big flash and big fun sell. Front woman Alexis Krauss was totally geared—riling a crowd swimming through 95-degree heat with her bounce-dancing and crowd surfing—and guitarists Derek Miller and Jason Boyer re­lived their years in Poison the Well by making tough faces and whipping their guitars in time to the electronic double-bass beats....

Kevin Warwick, Reader staff writer, is obsessed with . . . Fun Fun Fun Fest Not to be overshadowed by SXSW, Austin’s well-oiled Fun Fun Fun Fest is brilliantly curated but manageable, catering to what festivalgoers—old farts and young bucks alike—want to hear, not to some hip agenda that tries to dictate what they should hear. In the two years I’ve gone, I’ve caught Slayer, Araabmuzik, the Damned, Hot Snakes, David Cross, Public Enemy, Napalm Death, Sharon Van Etten, Turbonegro, Big Freedia, the Heartless Bastards, and Kid Dynamite....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fort Worth Gazette, June 28, 1891. Classic exhibitionism is sometimes referred to as the “hands-off” paraphilia, but this Jack was that exceptional weenie wagger who couldn’t keep his mitts to himself. I was bemused to discover this Wikipedia page whose discussion of exhibitionism is almost exclusively devoted to women flashing their breasts. I’m like, huh? But then I got to thinking about the idea of female exhibitionism and I started wondering whether the gender distribution of this ultra-common paraphilia isn’t closer to even than common sense would suggest....

Hoy is a Spanish-language daily newspaper whose staff, former general manager Julian Posada tells me, conducts its meetings in English. That might strike you as ironic, but all it means is that Hoy is created for a market—Chicago’s unacculturated Latinos—its creators don’t happen to be part of. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There’s an argot particular to new publications courting advertisers, and Café publicity indulges in it....

Co-worker and fellow southwestern Virginia native Monica Kendrick reflects not only on Obama supporter Dr. Ralph Stanley, but also on Fightin’ Ninth representative Rick Boucher, which makes me nostalgic (I lived just east in the district of Bob Goodlatte). As Monica mentions, he founded the House Internet Caucus, but it’s also worth mentioning that he’s long been on the side of the angels when it comes to the Internet and copyright (he’s a Larry Lessig fan)....

Some veterans of 60s energy music are banked pretty low these days, the fire in their playing reduced to a warm glow, and others have been snuffed out altogether. But alto saxophonist Noah Howard still blazes like a furnace. He debuted in 1966 with a couple incendiary recordings for New York’s legendary ESP label, then in ’69 joined colleagues like Frank Wright, Alan Silva, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago in Paris....