From Outlaw-Matsu Comes Home Reflecting on the extraordinary documentaries by Shohei Imamura that recently played at the Gene Siskel Film Center, I remembered an old Ethiopian proverb: “A cow gave birth to a fire. She wanted to lick it, but it burned her; she wanted to leave it, but she could not because it was her own child.” These works present Imamura talking to war criminals, former sex slaves, and the dispossessed people of onetime imperial strongholds....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So what does pop in 2013 look like? A lot like Pharrell, it seems. Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” continues to hold the number one spot, while Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” hangs in at number four after 17 weeks on the chart, many of them at the very top. Both songs are heavily indebted to the smooth-edged sounds of 70s soul and disco (some may say a little too indebted), and both have found audiences that span a broad range of tastes and demographics, from hipsters to hip-hop heads to the most mainstream of mainstream listeners, proving that the kind of wide-spectrum consensus many people thought had been destroyed by the splintering effects of the Internet still lives on....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Russell first made her mark in UK neosoul circles, working with acts like Massive Attack and Quantic, but since the release of her recent second solo album, Pot of Gold (Six Degrees), she’s been seen as part of the new school of young English soul belters, along with Adele, Duffy, and, natch, Amy Winehouse. With its fleshed-out arrangements and classic soul-factory models–some Motown here, some Stax there–the record definitely sounds more like Winehouse (who seems down for the count) than those other two....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A browse through the comments at Yelp leads me to believe Filter is one of Chicago’s more polarizing joints. My favorite comment: “Come for the coffee, stay for the Stevie. Leave because of the music.” Having been a barista with alienating taste in music, I sympathize with both parties. Detroit/Chicago producer and DJ Jeff Mills is opening a new Euro clothing boutique in Wicker Park that sets a new standard for terrible boutique names: Gamma Player Shop....

As a category of artist, the singer-­songwriter has earned a really bad reputation in the half century since Dylan made it a fixture in the pop world. And for the most part it’s deserved—the singer-songwriter approach seems custom-made for egotistic mediocrities with pseudoprofound ideas and a keen desire to sponge up every drop of an audience’s admiration all by themselves. Listeners more sensitive to these forms of self-indulgence may roll their eyes at the mere sight of those two words connected by a hyphen, but Angel Olsen makes a compelling case that it’s still a worthwhile path for an artist to take....

There are probably dozens (all right, maybe a dozen total) Mexican restaurants in Chicago that serve a really good Milanesa torta. Once in a blue moon, the breaded pork cutlet won’t be fried to oblivion, the toppings will be fresh, and the bread will be pillowy and warm. For all those restaurants’ best efforts, no Milanesa sandwich can compete with the Milanesa cemita at Cemitas Puebla. Technically, a “cemita” is the sesame seed bun on which the sandwich is served....

It’s only in the last few years that restaurateurs have awakened to the versatility of Korean food and its potential in the mainstream market. But few here have successfully manipulated it without whitewashing its power and pungency or exaggerating its subtleties. (It isn’t all about the chile, garlic, and Lactobacilli.) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At this small Lincoln Park spot with a hip-hop soundtrack, Pete and Irene Jeon make no secret of their debt to the godfather of Korean-Mex street food, Roy Choi of LA’s Kogi BBQ food-truck fleet....

The Mexican art film Aqui y Allà (Here and There) opens this Friday. Since I reviewed it last fall, I’ve often found myself thinking about a shot in the Turkish film Honey. From a stationary position at the top of a hill, the camera looks down at a middle-aged woman picking tea leaves. There are countless rows of plants behind her and presumably even more past the camera’s location. The shot, which lasts for a minute or two, leads us to assume that the woman has been at this for a long time....

THE CLASS Directed by LAURENT CANTET WRITTEN BY CANTET, ROBIN CAMPILLO, AND FRANCOIS BEGAUDEAU Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Cannes award is yet another triumph for Cantet, whose first feature, Human Resources (1999), won the Cesar for best debut film, and whose second, Time Out (2001), won the FIPRESCI international critics’ prize. Both films share with The Class a strong sense of how individuals struggle with and are often crushed by institutions....

QI consider myself one of the lucky ones: happily married for decades, with a long-term girlfriend. GF is at this point part of the family, and while it hasn’t always been an easy arrangement to sort out, it has worked for over a decade. Recently, I’ve been talking with other nonmonogamous folk and find myself wondering whether I have any responsibility to publicly admit details about my multipartner lifestyle. Though it’s probably obvious to those we interact with regularly (GF is routinely part of holiday family functions and picks up kids after school, etc), we have never been directly asked, nor have we told....

These Norwegians usually get classified as jazz, but on their excellent second album, Losing Stones, Collecting Bones (Rune Grammofon), it’s clear they’re not concerned with fitting in to any particular category. Pianist Morten Qvenlid (one half of Susanna and the Magical Orchestra) writes gorgeous poppy melodies, spreading out notes in the style of one of his primary influences, Paul Bley, while bassist Roger Arntzen and drummer Pal Hausken back him up with steady, slow-moving grooves....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tonight at 7:30, filmmakers Gordon Quinn and Gerald Temaner will appear in person at Evanston Public Library, 1703 Orrington, for a screening of their 1966 Kartemquin Films documentary Home for Life. Reece Pendleton describes it as a “study of two seniors trying to adjust to their new and radically different living arrangements at the Drexel Home for the Aged....

The Chef: Thomas Raquel (Acadia)The Challenger: Bobby Schaffer (Grace)The Ingredient: Horned melon Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Native to Africa, horned melon is a vine in the cucumber and melon family that’s also called kiwano, jelly melon, African horned cucumber, and hedged gourd. It’s now grown in Australia (where it’s classified as a weed), New Zealand, Chile, and some parts of the U.S.—though it’s never become very popular in this country....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Silva foreshadows this moment about a half hour earlier with a shot of the middle-aged country woman whose cactus the main characters steal. In this close-up, which occurs just after the kids run off with her plant, the character transforms from a comic dupe to a lonely, vulnerable human being. This minor gesture, which effects a brief-yet-exciting change in tone, reveals great sympathy on the filmmaker’s part....

Our eight picks for theater Terminus A found text of AIDS activism, revived An actor on his role in Pullman Porter Blues Previews 9/12-9/15. Through 10/6: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6875, interrobangtheatreproject.org, $25. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It doesn’t get more straightforward than this: if you want old people, Jews, and jokes, that’s what you’ll get....

Mike Sula The Burmese situation I’ve whinged aplenty in my day about the lack of Burmese food in Chicago, a deficit much smaller nearby cities like Fort Wayne and Indianapolis don’t suffer due to their relatively large and fairly established immigrant populations. There are only about 2,000 Burmese in Chicago, most of them recent arrivals, so it’s difficult if not impossible to satisfy one’s craving for sour mustard tofu or pickled tea leaf salad (unless you want the packaged kind)....

Soul Food BJ’s Market & Bakery8734 S. Stony Island | 773-374-4700 Willetta “Boo” Tatum and her husband, Jackie, serve up chicken and dumplings, smothered pork chops, roasted rib tips, fried catfish, and more soul food staples, plus sides like sweet yams, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, corn and okra, and green beans. Tatum was head cook for the Chicago Board of Education before opening this place a decade ago. “We try to make everybody feel at home,” she says, and in return customers routinely send Miss Boo stuffed animals, artwork, and plants—all of which are on display around the narrow, cozy dining room....

Bananas Foster Cafe Housed in a small corner space by the Granville Red Line stop, Bananas Foster Cafe seems to be filling a much-needed niche in Edgewater, drawing droves that are routinely lined out the door. And I can certainly see why it’s a popular neighborhood spot for brunch: though the place was packed, service was smooth, and our food—eggs Benedict with Irish back bacon and standout ham and eggs with potatoes and baked beans—was well prepared and came out promptly....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Descended from the legendary Hungarian Rom violinist and composer Janos Bihari, Lakatos grew up playing that breakneck music with typical fire and rare exactitude. Tradition is at the root of all his work, but after graduating from the Bela Bartok Conservatory in Budapest he started to expand his range, focusing on the classical tradition in particular, but not at the expense of his Rom foundations....

It’s hard at many festivals apart from the biggest ones to determine whether a film is really “new” or not: “new” in relation to where? I was fortunate enough to attend the world premiere of Jia Zhangke’s Still Life in Venice last year and then resee it in Toronto a week or so later. It’s playing in Rotterdam now, and perhaps it will reach Chicago a year from now, or maybe a little sooner....