Scott Olson / Getty Images New Jersey governor Chris Christie joined Bruce Rauner, the GOP candidate for Illinois governor, to engage in a little Pat Quinn bashing. Bruce Rauner wanted to talk about how Governor Pat Quinn’s policies have allowed corruption and crime to become “rampant” in some parts of Illinois. It’s also a state that’s hundreds of miles from the bridge where his aides reportedly jammed traffic for days to retaliate against a political foe....

Mr. Hublot (see “The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Animated”) When I was a kid parked in front of the TV set, my father would say things to me like, “Too bad you can’t get a job watching cartoons.” Well, I guess I showed him: in this week’s long review I consider the five animated shorts, screening at Landmark’s Century Centre, that made the cut for the 2014 Academy Awards....

On Monday Chicago rapper Nick Astro kicked off the rollout of his forthcoming EP, Nothing Is Original, with a video for a tune called “Black Interlude.” The MC packs quite a bit of fun into a song that barely crosses the one-minute mark by contorting his affable, easygoing flow with knotty syllables and Kanye-isms while name-dropping Wu-Tang, King Louie, and Lupe Fiasco. Astro’s performance is a bright contrast to producer Dee Lilly’s instrumental, which is anchored by low-rumbling, squelching synths and spastic, sparse percussion; with the rapper’s voice in the mix it makes for a lively joint....

COURTESY THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY The Newberry Library has been holding its annual fair for three decades. Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

By the end of the year SOB X RBE, the great rap hope of Vallejo, California, will have dropped their first two studio albums, February’s Gangin and its new sequel, Gangin II (both out on SOB X RBE/Empire), and possibly broken up—or at the very least, it seems likely they’ll no longer be a foursome. On Wednesday, September 19, rapper Yhung T.O. announced he’d be done with SOB X RBE after Gangin II via a now-deleted Instagram post....

High and Low This week, this Music Box hosts a special screening of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, the Japanese director’s excellent Macbeth adaptation, to coincide with Chicago Opera Theater’s own forthcoming staging of the Shakespeare play. Throne of Blood‘s recent digital restoration was created in 2K resolution from the original 35mm fine-grain master print, and it’s said to be among the better digital prints out there today. This is an exciting opportunity to see the film in a new light while also getting a sneak peak of what COT has in store, as excerpts from its Macbeth are also previewed....

The best emo bands are the ones led by artists who follow the genre tradition of using music as a tool for self-examination in a lifelong quest toward maturity and growth, and capturing specific moments of personal evolution each time time their band cuts an album. On September’s LP5000 (Tiny Engines), Philadelphia fivesome Restorations sound like the same great band that for a decade has been translating blue-collar Springsteenisms into bursts of well-fed emo catharsis....

The Leftovers aired its season-two finale on Sunday, the conclusion to one of the more masterful television seasons of 2015. The finale delivered death, anguish, and a glimmer of hope while maintaining its mysterious twists for just more than an hour. Where season one was underwhelming and often moved slowly, season two was a dark horse filled with misery and nihilistic guile. In an era in which the Internet makes it possible for fans of a show to pick up its clues, the audience still can’t figure out who the boogeyman is....

Wet Hot American Summer Each Friday, we recommend seven Old Movies to Watch Now, all of which come recommended by one of our critics and can currently be screened online. Read the review, watch the movie, feel accomplished. • The Son the Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne drama.

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Each Friday, we recommend seven Old Movies to Watch Now, all of which come recommended by one of our critics and can currently be screened online. Read the review, watch the movie, feel accomplished. • Save the Green Planet!, the South Korean genre bender.

Oopey Mason Brian McCann in the midst of leisure You might not know Brian McCann but you do. You know him as the FedEx Pope and as Eyeballs O’Shaughnessy, and you definitely know him as Preparation H Raymond. Because for 17 years he was a writer for Conan O’Brien, during both the New York and LA iterations of the host’s late-night show. And, according to McCann, he appeared in over a thousand sketches during his reign with Conan—which transformed the lanky, wily comic into a “that guy....

Courtesy Getty Images Pi(e) Day Celebration Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

BRANDI EDISS “I Saw You” Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Released this past March, Spirit was heralded by AllMusic as Depeche Mode’s finest album since 2005’s Playing the Angel. A textbook case of damning with faint praise, but maybe the best we can hope for from Depeche Mode is a pretty good LP, not an actually great one, every decade or so. True, the leaden spirit of Delta Machine (2013) or Sounds of the Universe (2009) doesn’t afflict Spirit, likely due to the absence of longtime producer Ben Hillier....

ARTIST: Bill Connors SHOW: Dim, Laffing Gas, and Tuth at Hideout on Fri 2/10 MORE INFO: billconnors.tumblr.com

Lucinda Childs in one of Andy Warhol’s screen tests As part of the multimedia exhibition “Persistence of Motion,” which took place at the Nightingale on Saturday evening, video artist and ImprovOlympic performer Jared Larson spent about 15 minutes in front of the room, shooting the audience with a camera and projecting his results onto the screen behind him. Larson zoomed in on each spectator and held the shot for several seconds, making everyone the subject of an impromptu screen test....

For months evidence had trickled out suggesting ties between the White House and the botched Watergate burglary, and pollsters found that the public simply didn’t believe President Nixon’s repeated promises to get to the bottom of it. But Ronald Reagan, the aging California governor and former B-movie actor, was so out of step as to be amusing. On May 15, 1973, two days before the Senate Watergate committee began televised hearings, Reagan issued his latest statement dismissing the investigation as a partisan political stunt that was “blown out of proportion....