Nonetheless, it is striking to consider that a number of current, otherwise disparate narrative films directed by women operate according to their own stubbornly private rules, logic, timing, and spatial organization . . . Where a [Terrence] Malick, for instance, builds a master narrative and theme and then fills it with poetic and intuitive connections and flights, such abstractions form both the actual connective tissue as well as the substance of [The Intruder], Denis’s brooding meditation on spiritual displacement....

The mayor wasn’t the only Daley who bid farewell to the City Council at its May 4 meeting. Forty-third Ward alderman Vi Daley (no relation) was also there for her last meeting, since she too decided not to run for reelection. But before we get to the council’s interesting zoning machinations, a few words about Webster Square. It’s a project of Sandz Development, whose principals are longtime developers Michael Supera and Richard Zisook, and plans call for 152 condominium units, including 120 “affordably-priced luxury condiminiums”; a six-story office building; and a 12,000-square-foot “boutique grocery store” called the Fresh Market, according to the development’s website....

[Editor’s note: Both Nella Pizzeria Napoletana and Kith & Kin closed in 2011.] As I submitted to this scheme, I started to relax. First courses, like a meaty, tender veal cheek with escargot atop salsify puree, are substantial and for the most part technically impeccable. And some, including a pair of seared scallops with smooth parsnip that echoed the texture of popcorn with some freeze-dried corn and a fragrant bloom of cress, pears, fennel, macadamia nuts, peppermint, and grated licorice root—suggest that Levitski and Ngyuen are having lots of fun....

Because mayors of Chicago have been known to die in office, the city has a need for a statutorily designated successor. But because the vice mayor has no duties besides waiting in the wings, his office would seem to have no need for an annual budget of more than $100,000. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That was the effect Devlin’s reporting had on at least two other journalists who read it....

Love Rat, by Banksy The new book Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall, by British journalist Will Ellsworth-Jones, is sure to spark a renewed interest in the artist’s identity and the perennial debate that surrounds his credentials. Banksy catches a lot of shit—for being a child of privilege, for being a sell-out, for trafficking in puerile and simplistic imagery, and for his anonymity—which many regard as a shtick. And while he may, as the book alleges, be the product of a private Catholic school education rather than the blue-collar rebel we’d like him to be (Ellsworth-Jones never interviewed Banksy, whose identity is still unconfirmed), Banksy, for me, remains an iconoclast and an important artist....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Earlier this fall the Brazilian pop star Mallu Magalhães made her quiet entry into the U.S. marketplace with Highly Sensitive (Sony Music Brazil), a lovely collection drawn from the three studio albums the singer has released in her homeland between 2008, when she was just 16, and 2011. Here in the States the media would probably call the singer precocious, but the fact is that she’s ridiculously talented and has apparently known exactly what she wanted to do with her music from a young age....

Donald Evans WHEN Fri 2/16, 7 PM Evans’s debut novel, Good Money After Bad, about a gambler on a losing streak, reflects a world he knew intimately. Set in Chicago during the heat wave of 1995, it’s the story of Chance Skinner, a 26-year-old who lives in Wrigleyville and places sports bets on a daily basis. While Chance resembles Evans at the same age, he ends up donating a kidney to make good on a debt....

This Porchlight Music Theatre production of a 2002 “tour de farce” stars a pair of brothers—Adrian and Alexander Aguilar—whose mother happened to be sitting next to me on opening night. Boy, was she ever proud. It was sweet the way she couldn’t resist applauding, soundlessly, her hands hidden in her lap, when her sons started tap dancing. Appropriate, too, since Double Trouble plays like a family theatrical with unusually strong production values....

The first few times I listened to The Reminder (Cherrytree/Interscope) I couldn’t get over how a record widely heralded as a commercial breakthrough could sound so subtle. The production is lean and unfussy, and there’s a preponderance of relatively introspective ballads, which seemed strange in light of “Mushaboom,” the giddy confection that was Feist’s closest thing to a hit. With time I’ve come to appreciate the singer’s new confidence in her songwriting–half of 2004’s Let It Die was covers but here she had a hand in all but one track (“Sealion,” a gospel-tinged take on the traditional “Sea Lion Woman”)-....

As part of the Flashback Weekend horror convention, which runs Friday through Sunday at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare in Rosemont, the hotel’s west parking lot will be converted into an open-air theater. Patrons are invited to bring blankets and lawn chairs (the “drive-in” part is purely sentimental). Tickets are $10, and all screenings are by DVD projection. For more information call 847-478-0119 or visit www.flashbackweekend.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

I first met Cliff Doerksen in January 2003, when he came to the Reader as an assistant editor and took up residence in the office next to mine. Before too long I realized what wicked laughs were to be had inside that office, with the door firmly sealed and no one on the premises safe from his razor-sharp judgments (except me, I think). Later on, after Cliff had quit the paper and begun writing freelance capsule reviews for the movie section, I got a chance to edit him and realized what a splendid talent he was....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ron Santo’s latest rejection by baseball’s Veterans Committee reminded me of how much I admired Rick Morrissey’s recent column anticipating Santo’s disappointment. “In a strange, very selfish way,” Morrissey wrote in the Tribune on February 21, “we might all be a little better off if Santo doesn’t make the Hall of Fame next week. I know that sounds horrible....

Mike Sula Duck tom yam When I need a nonalcoholic fog cutter, one of my go-to soups is spicy-sour tom yam. I always use the template provided by Leela Punyaratabandhu at SheSimmers, partly because it’s so easy and adaptable to whatever sort of meat stock I have crowding out the freezer. At that point it’s just a matter of thawing it, adding fish sauce, vegetables, meat, chiles, and at the very last minute lime juice and bruised aromatics like lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves—which you should always have stocked in your freezer too (find them at Golden Pacific grocery)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the oddly shaped 32nd Ward, the easy, single-stream recycling service will be offered to “low-density” residences–those with four or fewer units–north of Belmont, according to a newsletter Waguespack’s office sent out a few days ago. It says he’s still trying to bring service as far south as Diversey. Tunney announced earlier this week in his own newsletter that all low-density homes in his ward would be included in the expansion....

An as-told-to interview with a Chicago publishing whiz, for our Spring Books issue. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Why did I start a small press? Initially it was just to publish my first novel, Sophomoric Philosophy. My background isn’t in writing. I’m a CPA. I work for Jim Beam, that’s my real job, and also am a part owner of Beauty Bar on Chicago Avenue....

If T-shirts, then why not bike jerseys? That’s what cyclist Sherry Keating thought upon reading an article about the Chicago-based T-shirt company Threadless, which runs design contests with cash prizes to determine what shirts it prints and sells. “I just thought, crowdsourcing—how awesome is that?” she says. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The crowdsourcing model has been wildly successful for Threadless, which was started in Chicago in 2000 by a pair of college dropouts with about a grand in seed money....

Nothing was normal about this fishing expedition. The water—not a natural pond or stream. The temperature—well below freezing. We weren’t allowed on the fishing boats, our guides told us, because it wasn’t safe today. And the fishermen we watched were hoping not to catch the very fish we had all come here for—fish that, by the way, will neither strike at a worm, no matter how smelly, nor follow a lure, however realistic....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » And today he proclaimed that he would mandate furlough days for nonunion city employees to help close a budget deficit he says stands at “a couple of hundred million dollars.” But no new property taxes. This is a surprising turn of events for the mayor, who hasn’t been reluctant to hike taxes in the past. For instance, to help close last year’s $293 million deficit, Mayor Daley raised roughly $276 million in fees, fines, and taxes, including $83....

Mom and Pops Not to be confused with the adjoining but unrelated Vinh Phat, known for its fantastic barbecued ducks, La Banh Mi Hung Phat serves some of the best banh mi on Argyle—though you may have to work for it. On my first visit a helpful but strict woman named Michelle wouldn’t sell me the three sandwiches arranged on the counter because they’d been sitting there too long. Come back early in the morning, she told me....

On the morning of last January 11, Lacy Banks took a phone call that he believes nearly cost him his life. “Last month, destiny dealt me a triple dose of trauma,” he wrote on May 5, 2008, introducing his subject. “Doctors . . . diagnosed three big problems: Brain cancer, which might require surgery. End-stage congestive heart failure, which definitely requires a heart transplant. Prostate cancer, which also definitely requires surgery....