Some of the greatest experiences with live music came courtesy of the eccentric multiinstrumentalist and bandleader Hal Russell, whose work with his NRG Ensemble brought gonzo wit, fierce improvisation, and boundless energy to performance after performance. During the late 80s and early 90s they were fixtures at great subterranean bar Lower Links, playing madcap sets that generated laughter as much as awe. As an observer of the local free jazz and improvised music scene, I feel Russell’s importance to what came in his wake over the last couple of decades is undiminished....

Richard III 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. • Richard III, Laurence Olivier’s Shakespeare adaptation.

Anthony Tahlier Different seasonal preparation, same delicious grilled cephalopod I would never have expected one of the most enjoyable Italian restaurant experiences I’ve had in Chicago to take place inside Symphony Center. Yet there I sat in Tesori, digging into wood-grilled octopus on a bed of smoky cannellini beans with pancetta, looking around to find not the senior set you might expect, but a diverse crowd of people who all seemed as happy to be there as I was....

Burn: The Nowhere Hotshots vs. the Brain-Plant From Beyond the Moon Writer and director Peter Storey taps into his personal experience fighting forest fires for this experimental sci-fi poetry thriller. An elite squad of first responders dubbed “hotshots” are called to action when a sinister sentient plant wreaks havoc across the world by hooking humans on a smokable drug called Queen. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus among the cast of what the drug does, exactly, and the 15 actors, often blocked to be onstage simultaneously, understandably appear preoccupied with the task of finding space on Gorilla Tango’s cabaret-size stage....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, January 12, 2016. Sasha Obama missed Chicago farewell speech to study for an exam Sasha Obama was conspicuously absent from her father’s farewell speech at McCormick Place Tuesday evening because she had to study for an exam in Washington, D.C. She was the only immediate family member missing from the event; First Lady Michelle Obama and elder daughter Malia Obama attended. [DNAinfo Chicago]

The of Urban Renewal Brewing says he hopes critics “can see the bright side” of the name of his new establishment. maybe they hand out educational literature that explains the problems of urban renewal with every pint….. — Amanda Kass (@Amanda_Kass) July 30, 2018 “There’s the opportunity for the negative side of the term to come out, but people don’t need to look at the bad side of our interpretation of [urban renewal],” says Moriarty....

A taxpayer-subsidized bike-share system that’s mostly used by relatively wealthy and well-educated white folks isn’t equitable. But that’s the situation with Chicago’s Divvy network. A 2015 Chicago Department of Transportation questionnaire found that 79 percent of responding members were non-Hispanic whites, most of them had middle to upper incomes, and 93 percent had college degrees. These lopsided numbers are in line with those from bike-share systems in other cities such as Washington, D....

Several months before Laquan McDonald was shot dead, before a multi-million dollar settlement was paid to his estate, the chief co-sponsor for the “Recall Rahm” bill raised the issue of police accountability with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and then-police superintendent Garry McCarthy. But they stonewalled her efforts. “I never got a one-on-one with the mayor,” Flowers says. “No returned call, no returned letter, and not even a form letter acknowledging the office received my letter....

The 1934 Pittsburgh Crawfords, including Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Oscar Charleston. Were they the greatest team of all time? Part of the romance of baseball is that there’s been so much room for tall tales to develop. Unlike pro basketball or football, which have always been carefully controlled and monitored by their leagues, pro baseball grew up in a time before film or even action photography, and before careful record-keeping, when the only proof that things actually happened was eyewitness accounts....

Throughout a career spanning four decades, pianist Matthew Shipp has made clear that he understands the value of deepening a musical relationship over time. While he’s played and recorded with a wide variety of fellow improvisers, he returns to certain collaborators over and over. “In some ways I got that stance from David Ware,” says Shipp, 57. He was the tenor saxophonist’s principal pianist from 1989 till his death in 2012, providing a crucial artistic foil—and helping the soulful, powerful David S....

Christopher Williams Production Line of Happiness 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.

Matthew Reeves Fernet-Branca Barback Games 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.

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, March 20, 2017. Happy first day of Spring! Judge: Army veteran to be deported to Mexico for drug offense Army veteran Miguel Perez Jr. is being deported to Mexico after spending time in prison for a felony drug offense, according to ABC 7. The 38-year-old army private completed two tours of duty in Afghanistan and legally immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was eight years old....

I’ve never been shy about how much I like local rapper ShowYouSuck. I write about him regularly in the Reader, both online and in print. And last month I celebrated my 30th birthday by going to see Show headline Emporium in Wicker Park. I fought fatigue and an oncoming cold to watch him tear up his underattended late-night set (after midnight on a Wednesday isn’t exactly prime party time), and like he always does, he delivered each line as though he had a packed house hanging on his every word....

Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber in The Butler It’s been roughly a year since Lee Daniels last snuck into the mainstream with The Butler, his overstuffed pageant of modern African-American history. I was surprised by how few mainstream critics acknowledged what a weird and angry movie it is (though I tried in my essay on the film). Indeed, with a year’s distance from The Butler, the details that most stand out in my memory are those that seem to have been created in explicit defiance of good taste....

Last weekend brought the nationwide opening of The Lego Batman Movie, a computer-animated whizbang that uses the Lego brand’s spark-plug characters and interlocking construction bricks to spoof the Batman/Superman/DC Comics universe. Like many children’s animations, the movie is a pinball machine of gags, wisecracks, and knowing pop-culture references, designed to feed the attention deficit disorder of kids and adults alike. Everything is foregrounded, everything is in your face, and your eyes dart around in the darkness of the theater like a caged bird....

Do you realize the University of Illinois might be this close to a national basketball championship? “Amid the blue-and-white pompoms,” wrote Powell, “few are so rude as to mention that [UNC] remains enmeshed in a scandal of spectacular proportions. Put simply, for two decades until 2013, the university provided fake classes for many hundreds of student athletes, most of them basketball and football players.” Imagine if UNC is stripped of all championships tainted by corruption!...

There’s just something about a noise-rock record from Minneapolis, like a bowl of gumbo from Baton Rouge. Forged among the pillars of the almighty Amphetamine Reptile imprint—and no doubt guided by a trail of dismembered Big Muff pedals—Buildings churn through noise rock loyal to their Twin Cities and North Dakota forefathers (Hammerhead, Godheadsilo, etc). The too-underappreciated trio’s newest, You Are Not One of Us (Gilead Media), stays the noise-rock course, anchored by a rhythm section that swoops and strikes down like a wrecking ball and pile driver working in tandem....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Yvette Marie Dostatni, convention photographer. “When you’re at one of these conventions, you’re in a bubble. It’s so surreal that it becomes real, you know? So when you photograph it, it doesn’t seem bizarre anymore; it just seems like you’re cataloging a culture. I went to the Everything to Do With [Sex] show, and there was a porn star there who was selling replicas of her butt....

The Kid 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.