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The design of Johnnie To’s latest masterpiece resembles a tapestry. Drug War proceeds mainly in short takes, and the editing (supervised by To’s longtime collaborator David Richardson) brings them together in a manner akin to cross-stitching, cutting between radically different perspectives and kinds of movement within the frame. In a typical scene, To will jump from an overhead shot to a low-angle one, from a long-shot to a close-up, or from an objective master shot to the subjective point-of-view of a surveillance camera....

From Kartemquin’s Inquiring Nuns (1969), inspired by Rouch’s Chronicle of a Summer The Gene Siskel Film Center continues its Jean Rouch series this week with his African-shot “ethno-fictions” Moi, un Noir (playing with the short Les Maitres Fous, aka The Mad Masters) and The Lion Hunters. These mid-50s works are some of the most radical experiments ever conducted with the documentary form, and they served as a major influence on the directors of the French New Wave....

Now begins a strange time on the music calendar: most year-end lists have been released, the number of local shows slows down for a few weeks before Tomorrow Never Knows starts up (with the exception of New Year’s Eve, and most of those shows are expensive or sold out), and January is typically a sleepy time for new music releases. It’s a good time to spend indoors listening to old records or stuff you might have missed this year, and 2014 boasted a particularly strong slate of December releases....

I headed north last week to do Savage Love Live—a rapid-fire, slightly tipsy Q&A session—at the University of Alaska Anchorage. It was my third visit to UAA, and it was a blast. All of the questions in this week’s column were submitted to me by UAA students and staffers. A You’re not getting peed on. Science says female ejaculate ≠ urine. But don’t take my word for it, TW: ask your girlfriend to piss on you sometime, and see if you can’t tell the difference....

Marijuana can be used for medicinal purposes under the laws of 14 U.S. states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. New Jersey’s measure became law January 18. In other words, two state departments had to create new policies before medical cannabis could actually be prescribed and provided. To this day neither has. According to Dan Linn, the 27-year-old director of the Illinois chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Human Services is “pretty much waiting for the Illinois State Police to give them rules to implement, and the police say they’re waiting for the Department of Human Services....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This Thursday at 6 PM Columbia College will present three short films by Peter Thompson—the diptych Universal Hotel (1986) and Universal Citizen (1987) and the 2009 featurette Lowlands—at the campus screening room at 1104 S. Wabash, with Thompson in attendance. If you’re a longtime reader of the Reader, you may have learned about him from Jonathan Rosenbaum’s laudatory essays about his work that appeared in our pages over the years....

Craig Taborn and Rob Clearfield are both known as jazz pianists, but their musical interests and projects range far and wide. Minneapolis native Taborn first attracted attention as saxophonist James Carter’s pianist in the early 90s; since then he’s worked with a mind-blowing array of bandleaders including Roscoe Mitchell, Chris Potter, and Dave Douglas. He also was a close collaborator of Detroit techno great Carl Craig in his Innerzone Orchestra. He’s a true ensemble player, improving each project he’s involved with, but that’s come at the expense of his own career as a leader; he’s made only four albums on his own....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Evita was named best production of a musical, Maggie Portman was dubbed best principal actress in a musical for her portrayal of the title role, and Theo Ubique founder Fred Anzevino won best director for the show. Chicago theater newcomer Chris Damiano was honored both as best principal actor in a musical for Evita (in which he played Che) and as best supporting actor in a musical for Jacques Brel’s Lonesome Losers of the Night....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Famous last words — “finish the job in Afghanistan.” American and allied armies invaded soon after 9/11 and overthrew the Taliban in a few weeks, but it turned out the job wasn’t finished. The Taliban leaked back in. Was the problem simply that we were two combat brigades short? “The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan,” Thomas Friedman wrote in the Times on July 30, “is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’ve had my eye on Giftz since he ensnared me last year with a tune he cut with Tree called “Nino“; the east side MC somersaults over Tree’s wobbly, hook-heavy beat like an Olympic racer, doling out lines about selling soap to junkies and chopping bricks with an assured grace and speed. Giftz has an intuitive grasp of language—according to Bradley Troast’s lengthy Fake Shore Drive feature on Giftz from late last year, the rapper began speaking in short sentences at eight months old—and can rhyme at a furious pace, so I knew I’d have to take my time listening to his Position of Power mixtape, which came out yesterday....

I watched it, because VH1 Classic is reliable like Ex-Lax (and if you’re old enough to care about most of the bands in the museum, you know your laxatives). This year a whole generation shuddered as hip-hop goes under glass for the first time. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were pure class and really seemed to appreciate it. But just wait til Flavor Flav has to take time off his reality show for Public Enemy’s big moment....

“That’s what it means,” said the editor. “It means ‘God forbid.’ ‘God prevent.’ Whatever.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Then why don’t we say ‘God forbid?’” said the hombre, waving some clippings under the editor’s nose. He sneered and read aloud. “Tribune editorial page, January 28 — ‘The lawyers swore that Mayor Richard Daley’s regime was abiding by the Shakman decrees against most political hiring....

A few years back, Tina Fey delivered one of the all-time great zingers when she reported on Saturday Night Live that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez might star in a remake of Casablanca and predicted the new release would be “the perfect film for people who liked the original but wished it was terrible.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One can hardly write off the 1951 version, however, because it was directed by Joseph Losey, a gifted filmmaker in his own right and a man smart enough to know what a thankless job he’d taken on....

“There is nothing on earth that God does not do,” the Reverend James Meeks told the thousands of people at Salem Baptist Church’s House of Hope on the last Sunday in October, a week and a half before election day. “But God has to have some people to do it through.” Many politicians and public officials are put off by Meeks’s willingness to use his church as a power base, his vehemence in opposing abortion and gay rights, his reliance on political theater, his fickleness when it comes to alliances....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Cuban guitarist Manuel Galbán died nearly a year ago, on July 7, at age 80. His final album, Blue Cha Cha (Concord Picante), was released in the U.S. last week. Like so many other Cuban musicians of his generation, Galbán was introduced to American listeners through the Buena Vista Social Club—though he didn’t get involved until 1998, after the group’s first albums were on their way to becoming global hits....

Yep, sonny, this is sure enough Tribune summer. Don’t know what that is, I reckon, do you? ’Cuz you only read the RedEye. Well, that’s when all the once-proud Chicago Tribune employees come back to collect their unemployment. You know, a long time ago, long afore potty-mouth’d Sam Zell took things over, there used to be heaps of real journalists ’round here—dozens—some Pulitzer Prize winners, I reckon, sure as Dewey defeat’d Truman....

On the first day Greg Christian served lunch at Louisa May Alcott, a public elementary school in Lincoln Park, a student looked at his options and was appalled. “He said, ‘Ew, the peas are green,’” Christian says. “The teacher had to explain that’s the color they’re supposed to be. And a half hour later, another kid walked in and said the same thing. People who think this is going to be a quick fix are in la-la land....

Alex Fruchter Win this T-shirt I’m a big proponent of the Chicago Independent Movies & Music Festival, the annual four-day extravaganza celebrating music and film that kicks off its fifth year tomorrow night. I’m also a fan of local indie hip-hop imprint Closed Sessions, so I jumped at the opportunity to run a contest for the label’s CIMMfest showcase. We’re giving away a pair of tickets to that showcase, which goes down Friday night at the Double Door; the evening is stacked with performances by Treated Crew, Juice, ShowYouSuck, Alex Wiley, Kembe X, and King Keith, and there will also be screenings of some Closed Sessions documentaries, including the premiere of one focusing on Wyclef Jean and a song he made about Chicago violence....

Producer Harry Fraud got his first big break a few years back with the beat to French Montana’s “New York Minute” and he’s since worked with A-listers like Nicki Minaj and Rick Ross, but he also does plenty of work with edgy underground rappers like Action Bronson and Joey Bada$$. He has his own EP about to drop via the Scion A/V label, and today released its first single. It’s a woozy, druggy, trap-inflected beat featuring verses from increasingly independent-seeming Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt and the eccentric, Diplo-backed rapper Riff Raff, who delivers a typically surreal verse with lines about “Versace lasagna” and similar things....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This Saturday Doc Films will revive The Driller Killer (1979), a low-budget horror film that marked an early breakthrough for director Abel Ferrara. The event arrives just as Ferrara’s latest, 4:44 Last Day on Earth, comes out on DVD (having not been screened at all in Chicago, unfortunately); and the two films are worth seeing in tandem, as they represent two ends of the director’s creative evolution....