In the category of fake news having nothing to do with Donald Trump, Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently released his list of victors in the city’s downtown development game. OK, so it’s not fake news on the scale of, say, Trump swearing up and down that he’s got proof that Barack Obama was born in another country. At least what the mayor says is true. But don’t be fooled: the booming development deals in and around downtown—including the North Branch of the Chicago River—are a by-product of planning strategies going back to the days of old man Daley....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, January 30, 2016. Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, also slammed Trump’s controversial immigration ban. “The world is watching as we abandon our commitments to American values,” Cupich said in a statement released Sunday. “These actions give aid and comfort to those who would destroy our way of life. They lower our estimation in the eyes of the many peoples who want to know America as a defender of human rights and religious liberty, not a nation that targets religious populations and then shuts its doors on them....

The timing of Vic Mensa’s high-profile response this past weekend to a Chicago police sting operation was more than a little serendipitous. To those unfamiliar with Mensa’s past work and activism, that might sound like an appropriation of the past for the sake of street cred. It could come off as bold bluster coming from the mouth of an artist famous for incendiary songs like “16 Shots,” a track in which the Hyde Park native furiously spits rhymes about his outrage over the shooting death of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer....

Jedi Academy 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.

Kristin Basta Theater Oobleck 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.

Edward and Rebecca were married once, now they’re divorced. He’s seeing a woman named Tina, whom he’s in the process of disenchanting; she’s remarried, to Roger, a foppish English emigre who runs drug tests for pharmaceutical companies and wooed her on a cruise to Nova Scotia. Before they broke up (actually, before they were even married), Edward and Rebecca produced Susannah, aka Sukey, who matured into something of a monster: “She was brutal,” Edward recalls....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

Much of the country’s Americana, roots rock, and alt-country may exist in living homage to what Greil Marcus famously called the “old, weird America” (as if America had somehow ceased to be weird)—but I’ve always got my ear out for the present-day weird America. It’s been exported out and brought back to us for decades; consider that strange, shamanic strain of country-gothic swagger from the likes of Fields of the Nephilim (Brits) and early/mid-period Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (mostly Aussies)....

With Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Bruce Rauner hugging it out like a couple of long-lost frat brothers at an August 31 school-funding-bill ceremony, I suppose we can officially declare their little feud over. The legislation includes a generous tax credit for gazillionaires who donate money to private and parochial schools. A tax handout for wealthy campaign donors? Man, all is well in the Rahm-Rauner universe! I’m surprised those two didn’t break out one of the expensive bottles of wine they used to share back in their good ol’ bromantic days, when they partied together at Rauner’s Montana ranch....

There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts happening this weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend: Through Sun 10/21: City Lit Theater proves that even after a century, Ge0rge Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man can still bring the laughs. Reader critic Max Maller writes, “Raucous, abrupt, and tightly wound, it deserves as many pairs of eyes on it between now and late October as City Lit can squeeze into its Bryn Mawr black box....

Some people seem destined to be filmmakers, even if they didn’t always envision it. Painters, writers, photographers, and other artists who’ve spent years observing and interpreting life can one day make an intuitive leap and refine and extend their skills by taking up a movie camera. That’s what happened to visual sociologist David Schalliol, 41, who more than a decade ago began working as an architectural still photographer before progressing to moving images....

I once casually mentioned my therapist to a friend who flinched, shocked that I was so open about being in—hushed tone—therapy. Listen, I’ve been through some shit in my life, and I’ll shout from the rooftops that my amazing therapist is the only reason I’m not shouting from the rooftops. If you’re new to or returning to therapy, the rule of thumb I’ve heard is to interview at least three providers before you commit to one, and it’s definitely worth a trip to Womencare to see if one of their folks is a good fit for you....

What’s really mysterious about Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love and Sex is her rendering of the word mystery itself, in the title: singular rather than plural, as if there were only one. As if anybody who’s reached the age of interest (i.e., most living humans) can’t easily think of 10,000 riddles, enigmas, conundrums, and secrets relating to love and sex and the interactions thereof. Sure, we all spend our lives asking a single question when it comes to those subjects—a bewildered “Hunh?...

The sign above the century-old building at 1545 W. Rosemont still reads fire department, having once belonged to Engine Company 70. But since 2008, the address has been a media production hub. Without the steady stream of emergency calls and sirens, the firehouse has settled into a tranquil rhythm—except, of course, when someone takes a giddy slide down the fireman’s pole.

Chicago’s bid for a spot on the global biennial circuit is getting its rollout this weekend. At a preview press conference, coartistic directors Sarah Herda and Joseph Grima explained that they didn’t impose a theme on the event. “We asked architects to tell us what is important,” Herda said, but some themes did emerge—among them, the need to take action in the world, the idea that no project is too small to matter, and the concept of “home....

A Girl at My Door, screening as part of the Chicago International Film Festival There’s only one place for cinephiles to be this weekend—the Music Box of Horrors. Wait, did I say that? I meant the Chicago International Film Festival. We’ve got reviews of 20 features screening this week, and we’ll be adding some more today, so check back later as well. Ben Sachs and I review a half century of CIFF on this cool timeline, which I have been told, but refuse to accept, is spelled time line....

The action films of Hong Kong director Ringo Lam are gritty, cynical, and full of moments of brutality more punishing than most anything to come out of Hollywood. No wonder Quentin Tarantino—whose Reservoir Dogs borrows themes and imagery from Lam’s breakthrough film, City on Fire (1987)—is a fan. Lam isn’t as well known as his fellow Hong Kong New Wave directors John Woo (A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head) and Tsui Hark (Peking Opera Blues, Once Upon a Time in China), but he nonetheless directed a couple of major hits that helped redefine the national action cinema: City and its immediate follow-up Prison on Fire (1987)....

T Bone Burnett is the award-winning overseer of the morose and murky soundtrack of HBO’s True Detective, and for season two he brought on Lera Lynn, a relative unknown who plays the weary singer-guitarist serenading Colin Farrell’s hard-drinking Ray Velcoro from the stage of a dive bar. Lynn also wrote many songs that play throughout the show in a collaboration with Burnett and Roseanne Cash. From her home in Nashville, Lynn spoke with me over the phone about her journey from the suburbs of Atlanta to the studios of Los Angeles....

“I like to describe myself as a creative rather than a photographer,” says Christopher “ThoughtPoet” Brown. “Sometimes I feel like the label is limiting. I write, I act, and I try to do more with my photos than just capture moments.” Though his time at Little Black Pearl put him in the shoes of an artist, in high school Brown was more likely to be found interviewing artists than making art....