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Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Both the long and medium-length reviews in this week’s movies section consider crime stories with all-star casts, though the similarities probably end there. Luc Besson’s The Family, which I wrote about, is a broad comedy featuring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Tommy Lee Jones spoofing some of their previous roles and ugly American stereotypes in general. Prisoners, which Andrea Gronvall recommends highly, is a dark, foreboding mystery that marks the Hollywood debut of French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve; it stars Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, and more....

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON sss Written and directed by Alex Gibney Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Alex Gibney’s last two feature documentaries, Taxi to the Dark Side (about the U.S. military’s torture of detainees) and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, are more important works of journalism than anything Thompson could bring himself to write in his later years....

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Stanley Kubrick takes a selfie for Look magazine. The plethora of quality revival screenings in Chicago has made these blog posts easier than I could have imagined. Each week, it seems a film from a major filmmaker is screening somewhere, providing me with opportunities to explore myriad directors, styles, and genres. Now that the Music Box’s 70mm Film Festival is in full swing, there’s even more to see, appreciate, and write about....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » My favorite thing about the slight but steadily accumulating chatter surrounding New York rapper Mykki Blanco isn’t that Blanco happens to be a drag queen, but rather the fact that I read a decent amount about her before seeing it mentioned at all that she’s a drag queen. I don’t want to hold up any one person as a symbol of how rapidly hip-hop is evolving on a social level, but if a rapping drag queen hits the scene and people are more concerned with her skills than the way she dresses, I feel like we’re moving in the right direction....

Part of a 40-week series in which we take a look at a specific year in Chicago history via the pages of the Reader. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On November 18 the Reader published the article that would forever define it. The Essence of Beeing was written by associate editor Mike Lenehan. It began on the cover, continued on page 9, and ran nonstop (aside from ads) through page 38....

One of the buzziest buzzwords in the tech world is “the cloud,” which refers to the practice of storing data remotely on networked servers. The metaphor may be blurry, but the idea’s simple: imagine yourself surrounded by an invisible nebula of data waiting to be accessed anywhere there’s an Internet connection, untethering you from the necessity of accessing your digital stuff via a specific device. Ten years on, the original iPod seems quaint with its five-gigabyte hard drive—and if digital music evolves the way most pundits are predicting, the whole idea of a music player that stores songs will follow suit....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The duo took a huge leap on its second album, Residente o Visitante (Norte, 2007), borrowing from collaborators like Orishas (Cuban trova) and the Bajofondo Tango Club (electro-tango) as well as raising the stakes with bits of bossa nova. And Residente’s Spanish-language lyrics started looking beyond straight-up raunch to deal with immigration and cultural identity. On the album’s first single, “No Hay Nadie Como Tú,” they partnered with excellent Mexican rock band Café Tacuba for a catchy hit that used a two-beat norteño groove and ended up sounding like Manu Chao; on “La Perla” they coaxed Panamanian legend Ruben Blades into singing and rapping a few verses....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Of all the screenings to be excited about this weekend (such as Block Cinema’s invaluable revival of Love Streams), the one I’m anticipating most is the double feature that kicks off Doc Films’s Yilmaz Güney series on Saturday afternoon. One of the key figures in the history of Turkish cinema, Güney was a successful movie star (he acted in over 100 films), one of the first Turkish directors to be celebrated abroad (his penultimate work, Yol—which plays in Doc’s series on February 23—shared the top prize at Cannes in 1982), and his far-left politics made him a polarizing cultural figure....

Turning an iconic movie into a theatrical farce can be dangerous indeed: though it might work brilliantly, it can easily fail embarrassingly. This New Millennium Theatre Company comedy falls in between. Styled as a mockumentary following the cast and crew of a 2003 Chicago production of a musical based on Top Gun, it comes complete with auditions (as funny as the first rounds of American Idol), rehearsals, and talking heads. Writer-director Guy Schingoethe, an indefatigable comic actor, pulls possessed performances from his cast, especially the underused Leslie Kerrigan, playing a choreographer who vents in dance....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Back in 1995 New York’s DJ Spooky (aka Paul D. Miller) made himself the face of the so-called illbient scene, a promising movement that styled DJs as sound sculptors just as likely to make use of the incidental noise of vinyl—pops, crackles, hisses, skips—as the actual music contained on it. But in the years since, just about all of Spooky’s aesthetic comrades have evolved into artists much more compelling than he is, especially DJ Olive and Mutamassik, who’ve become viable, serious improvisers and collaborated with a dazzling range of musicians....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s been a long time since I’ve heard any new work by vocalist and percussionist David Moss. One of the most maniacal and distinctive presences to emerge from the New York experimental-music scene in the early 80s, he dominated records by Eugene Chadbourne, the Golden Palominos, John Zorn, and Tom Cora (among many others) with his wild yowls and mega-exaggerated “singing,” often in languages of his own invention....

The city-sponsored Fashion Focus event returns for its fifth year, and while it’s down to just four days, they’re packed with runway shows, shopping events, seminars for industry hopefuls, and more. Style Stop Each day during Fashion Focus, this space hosts trunk shows, receptions, and displays, offering a chance to meet and talk with designers and check out their work. Also: some discounts. Today it’s Lesley Tempe of Squasht by Les (trendy separates and hats for women, 11 AM-1 PM) and Elda de la Rosa (bridal and evening gowns and special-event dresses, 4-6 PM) Chicago Tourism Center, 72 E....

1 Pondering what to get the booze enthusiast in your life now that Four Loko’s changing its formula? Consider one of Paul McGee’s how-to classes for the budding mixologist. McGee, drinkmaster for hip hang the Whistler (2421 N. Milwaukee, 773-227-3530), is teaching a weekly two-hour Cocktails 101 course starting January 16, covering topics like booze history, bartending basics, and how to make your own signature drink. Participants get three drinks during class and a handbook to take home....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Also, if Obama were to embrace Chicago openly and use it as a model of change, there’s no question that it would invite Americans to place Chicago under the microscope. I live here, but believe me, I don’t want our tax rate, school system and, in early 2008, at least, level of violent crime replicated elsewhere. . . ....

The Reader’s Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Adopt an olive tree from Nudo, a collection of seven groves in central Italy. Not only will you be supporting small-scale farming, but your chosen recipient will receive pretty tins of extra-virgin olive oil in the spring and fall. Each grove grows different varietals, resulting in oil that can be peppery, fruity, or buttery. a$96.85 plus $37 for shipping at nudo-italia....

Here are some goods, places to donate, and more ideas to consider for this Chicago gift giving season. And remember, you can always find items that support the Chicago Reader at our gift shop, store.chicagoreader.com. Adam M. Rhodes, staff writer and co-host of Chicago Queer & Now A donation in any amount to Brave Space […] More than 90 local items handpicked by Reader staff, including records, books, classes, handcrafted clothing, and home goods...

Friday Night Lights Smallville Friday Night Lights breaks new ground in surrealist dread. But you’d never know that from looking at it. In the trendiest mock-documentary style, every single shot is jiggly and out of focus–there’s so much bobbing and weaving you’d swear somebody was trying to wrestle the camera away from the guy operating it. The action is subdued, undramatic, and inconclusive; the big expected TV moments either don’t happen at all or are shrugged away offscreen....

The Sun-Times is teaming up with D.C.-based Homicide Watch to provide “deeper reporting on the city’s rampant murder problem.” Before January ends, the newspaper announced Thursday, it will launch homicides.suntimes.com, a “pairing of Homicide Watch technology and Sun-Times reporting resources [that] will mean that every victim’s story is told with a depth of focus that follows the Homicide Watch promise: Mark every death. Remember every victim. Follow every case.” I wrote about Homicide Watch last September, when it was a highly praised but furiously paddling two-person operation trying to raise $40,000 on Kickstarter so it could stay in business....

Dramesi said he was going to travel through the Middle East — “It’s a place we’re probably going to have some problems.” McCain said he was going to Rio. Why? Dramesi asked. Dickinson, who obviously got the story from Dramesi, continues, “McCain, a married father of three, shrugs. ‘I got a better chance of getting laid.’” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I met John Dramesi 35 years ago when I was writing a series of articles on the returned POWs for the Sun-Times....

In the spirit of peace and reconciliation, I’ve found a way for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to win my everlasting support. This is one of those never-seems-to-die stories that I’ve been following for years. In 1998 Paul Vallas, then the schools CEO, announced it was time to create a school for the burgeoning South Loop community. The move was part of Mayor Daley’s larger plan to create new high schools—college preps like Walter Payton, Northside, and Gwendolyn Brooks—that might keep middle-class parents from leaving the city....