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Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This above-average children’s drama from Universal manages to hit all the right notes as an inspirational story and provides a savvy, even cynical account of an international media event. In October 1988, as the Bush-Dukakis presidential campaign neared the finish line, three gray whales were discovered trapped beneath rapidly forming ice in the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, and as the national networks converged, the rescue effort pulled in such disparate actors as Greenpeace, Eskimo whalers, an oil company, the U....

When Alex Gabbard turned nine years old in 2003, his mother, Liz, had a trick up her sleeve. For his birthday, she gave him a two-by-four inscribed with the word “treehouse.” Alex was confused by the slab of wood at first, but when Liz brought him out to the silver maple in their side yard and blurted out, “You’re gonna get a tree house!” the dream of every kid would become a reality....

In 2010 a sponsored three-day celebration of Indian culture allowed Chicago’s World Music Festival to expand from seven days to ten, and even without that extra bump, its 13th annual edition is eight days long. Given how diminished many of the city’s other music fests have been by budget cuts, it’s an impressive accomplishment, even considering that the first day’s programming consists of just one show—a free set by Chicago’s Occidental Brothers Dance Band International at Summer­dance....

QI’m a 52-year-old male, divorced for the past eight years. I recently broke off a five-year relationship with a woman two years my senior. About six weeks ago, a new female worker started in our office. We’re really hitting it off and, frankly, I’ve fallen for her—hard! However, she is 36, never married, and I have not asked her out yet, but I definitely want to. In fact, I want to marry her....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Not my thing exactly–given my almost Paleolithic attachment to the full-screen 35-millimeter format–and maybe y’all know about this already (which wouldn’t surprise me in the least), but if you’re having trouble tracking down favorite old movie titles at your friendly neighborhood Blockbuster, why not try this instead: ask Turner Classic Movies (the cable-TV channel) to schedule them for you....

It seems this column has become enamored with chickens of late. Previously we wrote about chickens raised in Chicago’s backyards; this week it’s a ’73 Volkswagen Beetle with an identity crisis. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Chicky” is owned by comedian, painter, and Hideout barback Amy Gard. She got the spray-painted Bug in LA, where she was living in an arty neighborhood up till about a year ago....

If you think the 1 percent are bad now, check out Rome in the fifth century BC. “You common cry of curs!” the aristocratic Coriolanus of the Shakespeare play addresses the people of the city, “whose breath I hate / As reek o’th’rotten fens, whose loves I prize / As the dead carcasses of unburied men / That do corrupt my air.” So much for noblesse oblige. The play takes place around 490 BC, when Rome had become a republic but not yet a true democracy, and elections are controlled by rich patricians who court the approval of the hardworking plebeians....

When Chris Lehman set out to write the story of Soul Train, he didn’t know he’d be writing an obituary. But in April, just as McFarland published his A Critical History of Soul Train on Television, Reuters carried Don Cornelius’s first public acknowledgment that the show he’d created 38 years before had ceased production. Anyone actually watching Soul Train knew Cornelius hadn’t presented a new episode in two years, instead airing popular reruns, and many fans already assumed the curtain had descended....

Check out our photos and video recap of the festival after its third and final day. See our previews and photo/video recaps of bands playing on: Friday · Saturday · Afterparties Lollapalooza main » Palma Violets1:00-1:45Bud Light Stage Their swampy metal beginnings notwithstanding, Baroness continue moving further into psych-influenced hard rock—evidenced by the stoner edge and proggy, delay-treated guitar of 2009’s Blue Record and last year’s supremely melodic Yellow & Green (and by this Lollapalooza slot)....

If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t believe it. In short, they want to offset budget cuts, class-size increases, and teacher firings by taking roughly $250 million a year in property tax dollars out of the TIF program and sending it back to the schools. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » His colleague Tom Allen (38th) says we should use TIF money to expand the blue cart recycling program, which has been offered to fewer than half the 700,000 households served by city garbage crews, a disgrace in a city led by a “green mayor....

Maybe the bad economy inspired the bumper crop of Christmas shows we’re seeing this year: everybody’s looking for either a little sweetness or surefire box office. Here are short reviews of ten newly opened holiday shows; you’ll find plenty more in our listings. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Black Peter Venture Theater of Green Bay, Wisconsin, brings this misanthropic Christmas tale to Chicago, where it’s likely to find an appreciative audience....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Still, despite the alarm sounded by some powerful business interests, there’s little chance that the country’s climate change problems will be addressed primarily through some kind of heavy-handed enforcement system. Unless I’m giving them too much political credit, the Obama administration is moving aggressively in order to prod Congress to do something more feasible and effective. As an initial step, the EPA may soon require fuel and energy companies, manufacturers, and other industries to report exactly how many greenhouse gases they’re emitting....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last week the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, an organization of 272 area mayors put together by Daley, proposed creating a new wing of the state education bureaucracy intended to guarantee “transparency” in educational fundiing. As Fran Spielman has reported in the Sun-Times, under the proposal, “school districts would develop long-term financial plans that include multiyear forecasts of revenue, spending and debt....

silent light s s s Directed by carlos reygadas Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In fact Silent Light’s technique is so breathtaking that I could get through a whole review without touching on the story, and that would be fine with director Carlos Reygadas. “I hate the idea that film is actually telling a story!” he remarked to Bright Lights, and a few years earlier, interviewed by the online journal Close-up Film, he explained, “Narrative for me is just a vehicle that is probably an evil but a necessary evil....

Second Ward alderman Bob Fioretti was driving through the South Loop, admiring the streetlight poles he’d just had painted, when he spotted a woman crouched over in the small park on the corner. She appeared to be collecting her dog’s poop in a plastic bag while the dog waited patiently at the end of its leash. Fioretti came to a stop. For the sake of the ward, he had to see what happened next....

The centerpiece of Jon Steinhagen’s sparkling new musical is a dim-bulb Republican president from Ohio with a penchant for cronyism and corruption–we’re talking Warren G. Harding, of course. Steinhagen’s take on the 29th president is surprisingly compassionate, though his sly satirical revue, receiving its world premiere from Porchlight Music Theatre, shouldn’t be taken as historical gospel; the premise is that, months after Harding’s death, members of his coterie put on a show about his scandal-plagued administration....

This year the Tomorrow Never Knows festival is bigger than it’s ever been. It runs from Wed 1/16 through Sun 1/20, and in addition to 2012’s venues—Lincoln Hall, Schubas, Metro, Smart Bar, and the Hideout—the Vic has come aboard, hosting the Walkmen (who played a tenth-anniversary show at last year’s TNK) and Father John Misty on Fri 1/18. The fest’s hefty lineup includes a diverse assortment of bands and DJs, heavy on the indie rock, plus three nights of comedy at the Hideout, Thu 1/17 through Sat 1/19, featuring stand-up, variety shows, and a live version of the Low Times podcast (with hosts Tom Scharpling, Maggie Serota, and Daniel Ralston and special guests including Steve Albini)....

On April 17, the day of Chicago’s aldermanic runoff election, residents of Oak Park will get an opportunity city voters can only dream about: the chance to take a stand against tax increment financing districts. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When the City Council or a village board creates a TIF district, it actually freezes the amount of money in property taxes that other taxing bodies–the schools, parks, libraries, and county, etc–can raise for up to 23 years....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Happy Vic Mensa day, everyone. His long-awaited Innanetape drops at 3 PM, and the release has all the makings of a capital-M moment. The project’s latest leak, “Lovely Day,” is a stupid-catchy romp full of piano jabs, rolling drums, and orange soda that comes complete with Top Gun, Rugrats, and Moulin Rouge jokes. If it evokes Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap, that’s because executive producer Peter Cottontale has a master plan....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Probably 13 minutes wasn’t long enough to tell a story this complicated. Here’s what Simon boiled down and left out: There weren’t two lawyers who knew Logan was innocent and signed an affidavit saying so — there were four. One of them had no ethical obligation to Wilson — he represented Wilson’s accomplice in the murder. Furthermore, the police and prosecutorial work that convicted Logan was disgraceful....