Gabriel Iglesias is hardly the first stand-up comic to talk openly in his act about traumatic experiences, but a bold aspect of his concert film The Fluffy Movie is that it frames his entire career in terms of personal pain. Fluffy opens with a skit depicting his conception (his mother, fleeing an abusive husband, has a brief fling with a mariachi singer) and early adolescence (in which he escapes his lonely childhood by watching the concert film Eddie Murphy Raw)....

The history of movies began with short films, a format that’s still viable more than 120 years later. Shorts might no longer precede feature-length multiplex attractions (Disney-Pixar’s output being a welcome exception), but they are mainstays of film festivals worldwide, including this weekend’s 15th Annual Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival, presented by Project Chicago at Chicago Filmmakers. Reflecting a notable trend, some shorts among the 45 works screening are original webisodes purposefully designed for smaller screens—such as Subverse (Sat 11/10, 6 PM), a sci-fi series about “the dark side of the Internet....

What a Time to Be Alive—an album two of hip-hop’s current heavyweights, Drake and Future, recorded in six days and released at the end of September through iTunes—has provided the public with a lot of things: an unquantifiable amount of chatter and, more quantifiably, 11 songs, nine of which feature both MCs. And if there’s a standout track on What a Time to Be Alive, it’s the late-night sparkle of “Jumpman....

Michael Gebert Chef Nick Lacasse and owner Scott Worsham at MFK Big restaurant openings have to have PR that starts working from a mile away. That’s fine, but it would be a much duller scene to cover if things didn’t also pop up out of the blue, unannounced, and take the city by charm alone. I first heard of Mfk on Facebook about a week before it opened, and it seemed like only a couple of weeks later it was everyone’s favorite new find—a tiny, sunny place tucked into a half-downstairs space on an otherwise pretty forgettable Diversey strip by the lakefront, serving up mostly Spanish-style simple dishes....

There are, however, some caveats to the report’s findings. Most importantly, MPC examined the correlation between segregation and the other factors, but can’t definitively say that segregation is the singular cause of Chicago’s woes. Low college attainment, lost earnings, and the homicide rate could also be problems driven by general population decline, for example. And not all places with high rates of racial and economic segregation are seeing the same cocktail of problems as Chicagoland....

Atop a low-groaning guitar that lumbers through “My Auntie’s Building,” Hyde Park native Open Mike Eagle raps, “They blew up my auntie’s building / Put out her great-grandchildren / Who else in America deserves to have that feeling? / Where else in America will they blow up that village?” He’s specifically referring to the Robert Taylor Homes, the 28 public housing high-rises that were demolished over nine years starting in 1998....

“You know the saying ‘If these walls could talk’?” Javier Ayala asks. “Well, I think these walls do sort of talk.” He’s climbing the stairs that lead to the stage-left dressing rooms of the Chicago Theatre, where he’s manager of administration and tour operations. Every square inch of this stairwell and its stage-right twin is covered with the signatures of stars who’ve performed on the stage that, on this weekday morning, sits dark and quiet a few feet away....

(Warning: This post contains spoilers) Much of that subtext is expressed through the character of Adrian Toomes—the man behind the metallic mask of Spidey’s nemesis Vulture. No one utters the unholy name of Donald Trump in Homecoming, but Toomes clearly embodies the “white working-class voter” the media has obsessed over ever since the 2016 election—the alienated blue-collar middle-aged white guy we’re told voted for Trump due to economic anxiety, racism, sexism, xenophobia, or some combination of all those attributes....

Chicago jazz | Peter Margasak To me, the essence of the Chicago jazz and improvised-music community is live performance. More than records made in many other jazz cities, records made in Chicago are documents of what a band does onstage—and that’d be a fair description of almost everything on my list. An aesthetic shaped by onstage performance tends to make for an album a bit less splashy or conceptual than many of the picks that dominate year-end lists, but none of these efforts is lacking in artistry and excitement....

As a very young woman in the late 1950s, fresh out of college and looking for an excuse to break an engagement to “a good but wrong man,” Gloria Steinem decided to spend two years living in India. Partway through her time there, she joined one of Gandhi’s disciples in an on-the-ground organizing effort to end a series of caste riots in Ramnad, a city in the southeast. For a week, she and her group traveled through the nearby villages, often on foot, attending nighttime meetings where people gathered to tell their stories....

Even in retrospect, hip-house still seems like the cousin nobody wants to claim as their own. Born in the late 80s out of Fast Eddie’s desire to make hip-hop at DJ International, the historically important house label that knew no other sound, hip-house didn’t find a home among locals in the hip-hop scene—and it still gets written off as a gimmick within house history. But hip-house did allow producer-­rapper Tyree Cooper to kick off his career with a bang....

This week the Music Box is showing the new documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, which details Chilean cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowksy’s failed attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune. The film shows us the production materials designed by Jodorowksy that illustrate his (suitably ridiculous) vision for the film. Film history is duly marked by the form’s major accomplishments, but, really, you could argue that film history has been shaped by the films that didn’t make it to screen too....

For the last few days I’ve been getting calls from north-siders wanting to know if they missed something while they were out of town on summer vacation. Besides, he can’t close Trumbull because he already closed it. And even Mayor Emanuel hasn’t figured out a way to close the same school twice. At a hearing in February 2013, the principal begged the board of education not to send Trumbull’s special-ed kids to the winds....

On March 25, Nonesuch Records will release Abraço, the final album in the remarkable trilogy that Brazilian legend Caetano Veloso cut with a young, guitar-driven trio. That began in 2007 with Cê. On that record and the ones since, Veloso has been fusing his deep, inherent facility in samba and bossa nova with raw-edged indie rock, an unexpected turn that represents merely one of many stylistic detours he’s taken in his five-decade career....

The album art for the deluxe version of Nobody’s Smiling Common wants you to know his brand-new Nobody’s Smiling is all about Chicago. Specifically it’s about the violence that casts a shadow over the city, but it’s also about Chicago’s hip-hop scene and Common’s relationship with the entire town. In the months leading up to the release of his tenth album the MC has addressed the city’s struggle with gun violence in interviews....

It wasn’t too long ago that the core members of midwestern revivalist act Durand Jones & the Indications met at Indiana University through gigs with the IU Soul Revue, the college’s tip-top throwback ensemble that performs black popular music from the 1960s. As the story often goes, front man Jones grew up in a church choir, belting out gospel in rural Louisiana. His music-school-educated bandmates were professional appreciators of southern soul, the subgenre most often associated with Memphis giants like Stax and Hi....

There aren’t many careers where being a statuesque blonde with model-level good looks and an exotic accent could count as a disadvantage, but “rapper” seems to be one of them. For the past few years Australian-born MC Iggy Azalea has been trying to break into the rap game, and despite co-signs from industry heavyweights like T.I. (who signed her to his Grand Hustle label), her technically formidable flow (which was apparent from her electro-tinged 2011 debut single “Pu$$y”), and the generous amount of good press she’s received (she made XXL magazine’s annual Freshman list), she’s had trouble holding onto a label deal and has had trouble establishing the more emphatically hip-hop audience that even rappers with mainstream ambitions need to get off the ground....

Philip Montoro,Reader music editor Godflesh at Metro on April 15 After hearing Godflesh mastermind Justin Broadrick mention “body-destroying beats,” I wanted this set to pound me to jelly, and I left pleasantly tenderized. It’s a metal cliche that the folks who make the most antisocial music are the nicest in person, and Broadrick was friendly and un­assuming—and happy with how his Reader interview had turned out! Jenny Lizak,Metro publicist...

Because competition for gigs in New York is so tight, jazz musicians often need to carve out a very specific niche—to become the best at mainstream postbop or neo-swing or whatever. Under those circumstances, musicians who refuse to box themselves in are special by default—and bassist Eric Revis is a unique case by any measure. Revis came up with brilliant jazz singer Betty Carter and hit his stride in the Branford Marsalis Quartet, but his curiosity has led him in plenty of less obvious directions, such as working with German free-jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann or star guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel....

Mike Sula Lamb and beef koubideh kabob, Kabobi The late and once-great Albany Park Lebanese restaurant Al-Khaymeih shuttered amid a rancorous legal dispute between the two brothers who owned it. It came back briefly in ’12, but was so catastrophically bad I couldn’t bring myself to write about it. Not long ago it died again, quietly this time, remarked upon by no one. Mike Sula Kashkeh bodemjan, Kabobi It’s mostly about the platters at Kabobi, evidenced by the tables full of Toulabi adherents that camp out, languidly working their way through them amid long and animated conversation....