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Marvin “Seven” Bedard remembers digging on the massive record collection one of his best friends, producer Edgar Farinas (aka Push Button Objects), inherited from his uncle way back when. The vinyl haul—which included Throbbing Gristle, Detroit techno, Kraftwerk, PIL, and Factory Records releases—provided an early education for both Bedard and Farinas. “He was being influenced by that and mixing it with hip-hop,” Bedard recalls. “We were into all of that stuff together....

Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s commanding biopic about the 16th president, has been scheduled to open three days after the election—probably so that Spielberg, a deep-pocketed Obama backer, can’t be accused of trying to swing the election for the first African-American president. On the other hand, holding up the release may have been good for Obama. Covering the last three months of Lincoln’s life, the movie shows the president and fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives struggling to pass the Thirteenth Amendment over the vociferous opposition of Democrats....

I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Unfortunately, as the opening title might suggest, the filmmakers have punted on the hard cinematic work of making the incredible seem credible; instead they’ve turned Russell’s story into a broad farce with one wocka-wocka gag after another. So many of these involve Russell’s homosexuality that one might mistake them for a perspective of sorts—an implication that Russell’s double life as a gay man drove his chameleonic criminal existence....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Absolut Chicago—”the vodka that captures the unique blend of the past with the cutting edge of right now that makes Chicago a modern classic,” at least according to Absolut—has been getting plenty of press since it was released earlier this month. Which is the idea, obviously: the company has released six other vodkas named after specific cities over the past six years, and I’m sure they’re well aware that it’s a surefire way to make locals pay attention....

The similarities between Robert Smigel’s comic universe and Saturday-morning cartoons exist only in appearance. His “TV Funhouse”—which has featured the crime-fighting X Presidents and the Ambiguously Gay Duo—originally aired on Saturday Night Live and later became a series on Comedy Central. Smigel’s best-known character is probably Triumph the dog, the cigar-chomping insult comic who speaks with a vaguely Hungarian accent and follows his rude remarks with his favorite catchphrase, “I keed....

Cafe Trinidad 557 E. 75th | 773-846-8081 This superfriendly family-run enterprise traffics in the flavors of Trinidad, which have been influenced over the centuries by African, East Indian, Creole, Syrian, Lebanese, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese cooks. “Brown down” stews—begun with a caramelized sugar base—and rich, spicy curries dress slow-cooked meats like jerk chicken, goat, beef, and oxtails and are accompanied by rice and pigeon peas. Alternatively, most of these can be ordered wrapped in a fresh fried roti, a circle of soft flatbread that can withstand a considerable portion bulked up with a mild potato-and-chickpea curry....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thus far I am inclined to agree with J.F. Quackenbush’s thoughtful argument that this contretemps is somewhat overblown; all Facebook has really done is extend rights they have already claimed beyond the point which you delete your account. That’s somewhat unusual compared to other social networking sites, but Facebook’s TOS have always been unusually aggressive. I enjoy any story that brings weird TOSs to light, and if this pushes Facebook to adopt Creative Commons copyright options like Flickr, I’m all for it (Flickr’s use of CC has been a great boon to public understanding of the CC movement, and Facebook adopting such a transparent use of the system would only help)....

As recently as November 2009, Jesse Garza and Amaris Aviles of Killer Moon were living in Miami, under circumstances most bands would envy. “We lived together in our own house and were jamming every day and partying and stuff like that,” says Garza, the talkative member of the local heavy-psych outfit. “That’s all we did for two years. It was awesome.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But Garza and Aviles, who are both 23 and have been a couple for seven years, don’t seem to regret the move....

A devil woman of 666 Last week the Logan Theatre screened the 2007 Nigerian feature 666 in its Wednesday Night Rewind series, a weekly celebration of direct-to-video kitsch. It was the first Nollywood film I’ve seen in its entirety, so I can’t say how it compares with others. But based on the pieces of other movies I’ve seen, it seemed to reflect the norm in its amateurish production values and general enthusiasm....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When I went to impresario Dion Antic’s new hot dog stand Rockstar Dogs on Saturday afternoon I brought along a devotee of recreational pole dancing to help out (all the professionals I know were still in bed). While I have strong, defensible opinions about hot dogs, and pretty firm views on rock ‘n’ roll, I know little about what makes a fine stripper pole....

QWhen I was in my teens to mid-20s, I fought a burgeoning weight problem. My heaviest was 235 pounds on a five-foot-ten frame. Now I watch what I eat and I work out. I have a six-pack. And here’s my problem: I get too much attention from women. When I was out of shape, women paid attention, but not as much. Now, if I wanted to, I could get all the pussy I wanted....

The new third full-length from SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM, In Glorious Times (The End Records), puts this Oakland troupe in the running to be the greatest art-rock band since King Crimson–and because they temper their grandiosity with self-conscious derangement and even outright silliness, in the grand scheme of things they come off a good deal less silly than Fripp and company. They like to call what they do “rock against rock,” but nothing about their maximalist aesthetic is self-cancelling: the new disc comes down on your head like a plummeting elevator full of amplifiers and scrap metal....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Southern Foodways Alliance oral historian Amy Evans was in town this month doing fieldwork in preparation for Camp Chicago: An Up South Expedition, an event to be held May 23-25. It’s an exploration of the connection between the foods of the city and the south, but no dry, academic exercise. It’s going to include a tamale tour with Peter Engler, bourbon drinking with Chuck Cowdery, soul food at Edna’s with the Trib‘s Donna Pierce, a south-side barbecue tour, a show at the Hideout, dinner at West Town Tavern with Edna Stewart, and more....

Magic Mike, a new comedy-drama about male strippers, resembles numerous other films by Steven Soderbergh, but only to a certain extent. The subject matter promises a companion piece to The Girlfriend Experience (2009), which dealt with prostitution, but that movie was cool and detached whereas this one is warm and engaging. The lower-middle-class milieu sometimes recalls Erin Brockovich (2000), with Julia Roberts, but that was an issue drama about community building, whereas most of the characters in Magic Mike are out for themselves....

In 2001 Paul Cotter watched his father stare up into the sky in the German village of Peenemünde, which the elder Cotter had bombed 60 years before as a 19-year-old Royal Air Force pilot during World War II. Cotter, who lives in LA, says his movie’s premiere in Chicago will be a “homecoming of sorts”: from 1998 to 2008, he cut his teeth and developed a career here as a director of short films, commercials, and theater....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The federation—along with several locals of the Service Employees International Union that are CFL members—has vowed for months to get rid of aldermen who, in its view, aren’t looking out for the city’s workers. Opponents of the big-box minimum wage ordinance were named as top targets; even before Mayor Daley vetoed the measure in September, some union leaders announced that they were going to provide labor-friendly challengers with campaign armies and cash....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This is the backdrop for Valentino: The Last Emperor, a documentary about the Italian designer Valentino Garavani that follows him from June 2005 to his retirement some two years later, heralded by a blowout celebration in Rome of his 45th year in business. The festivities–truly a once-in-a-lifetime party even for jaded fashion insiders–included a retrospective at the Ara Pacis Museum and a huge party inside the Temple of Venus, part of the ruins of the Roman Forum just across the Coliseum....

In 2005, a couple years after Lollapalooza’s ill-fated attempt to revive itself as a package tour, like it was the 90s, the festival moved into Grant Park and gave up its roaming ways. Settling down has served it well. For the past two years it’s sold out, bringing in about 75,000 fans per day. The 2010 installment hosts the largest number of acts yet (between 125 and 130, depending on some last-minute schedule shuffling), and the festival’s grounds have expanded west past Columbus to cover about 35 more acres than last year....

Run by the sort of character that the press often guardedly describes as “flamboyant” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Dunno about “often.” The only reference I could find to Rev. Wright as “flamboyant” was here, though I haven’t run it through Lexis/Nexis. I couldn’t find anything in the Tribune or Sun-Times archives. The only “creationist” book I could find among the hundreds in TUCC’s online bookstore is the children’s book God Created....

On a recent Monday evening, the otherwise underpopulated dining room in the Sofitel hotel was inhabited by French speakers at no fewer than five tables. Our extremely capable server, himself a native of Lille, said it was an anomaly—that week for mysterious reasons he’d attended to an unusual number of diners hailing from the Basque regions of France and Spain. Was there a separatist shepherds’ convention in town? Best of Chicago voting is live now....