Because we should be required to pay attention to most everything Ba Da Bing! Records releases these days, today’s 12 O’Clock Track is from one of the label’s newest ventures, the Brooklyn-based experimental duo Ora Iso and their recent debut album, Bathcat. The track, “Ora Iso” (like the band, see), is a haunting meditation of industrial noise rife with deep creeks and groans of guitar and slicing whooshes that sound about as comforting as a pillow-topped iron maiden....

There are a lot of things about “festival culture” I don’t care for. These include but are not limited to: crowds, weather, being outside, human beings, shitting in any space other than a luxurious indoor toilet, and music. OK, saying “music” is a joke, mostly, but by and large the local options just don’t book good enough acts to make it worthwhile to endure all the terrible things about festivals. That said, I’ve always found Pitchfork’s annual party in Union Park (which started in 2006—or 2005, if you count the year it curated Intonation) to offer the most comfortable experience and interesting bill of the summer....

Live in any city long enough and you’ll experience a never-ending series of departures—people, whom you know to varying degrees, deciding to move on: roommates, coworkers, the family across the hall, the woman who cut your hair, the guy you went on four dates with, friends near and dear or peripheral. They go to smaller cities, other towns, far-flung countries, and, of course, the coasts. News of loved ones leaving stings the most, even if you understand their decision, but so many goodbyes take a toll....

Steven Spielberg’s first directorial effort since Lincoln is another historical drama about American politics. It recounts the fallout from the “Hollow Nickel Case,” a 1957 incident wherein U.S. authorities uncovered a Soviet spy ring in New York City. Tom Hanks plays James Donovan, an insurance lawyer hired by the U.S. government to defend one of the captured Russian spies; also featured in the cast are Alan Alda, Amy Ryan, and Domenick Lombardozzi of The Wire....

The last time Australian band Cuntz were in town was two years ago, and when I wrote about their shows that weekend I slightly complained about their silly name, but here we are in 2015, and that moniker is getting them into a much deeper trouble now: a promoter canceled their upcoming Seattle gig because he found it offensive. Maybe it is offensive, but not enough to bum out the people who run the Owl, because the noise-rockers are all set to play a free show at the after-hours spot tonight....

QFour years ago, I met a man on a “married but looking” website. We exchanged fantasies, which included wanting to have threesomes and a D/s relationship. He was 19 years my senior. I was 42 at the time. For three years, we met twice a week for drinks or sex. The sex was amazing. We had several threesomes. One year ago, we separated from our spouses. We have lived together now for four months....

My most interesting Christmas present was the 1999 book Dr. Seuss Goes to War, a collection of editorial cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel drew for the New York daily PM in 1941 and ’42. I hadn’t known the creator of Green Eggs and Ham and Yertel the Turtle ever drew editorial cartoons. I also hadn’t known he drew Japanese-Americans as a fifth column serving the cause of Hirohito and Tojo....

Q: Please do a public service announcement about the Ashley Madison hack, and request that no one look up information on anyone other than their own spouse. I’m a former AM user. I’ve been married to my wife for 20 years. We met when we were both 20 years old. Seven years ago, I made a selfish decision to have an affair, and five years ago, my wife found out. She hated me for a while, but we worked things out....

We first meet 24-year-old Tessa on her wedding day, at her parents’ vacation home on the Atlantic seaboard. It’s fall. Her diaphanous off-white bridal gown is hanging from the frame of a porch window, suffused with morning light, and she’s absorbed in the perfection of it all. Her mother keeps reminding her that she doesn’t have to go through with the ceremony if she doesn’t want to. But, oh, Tessa wants to....

Twenty-two miles southwest of the Loop, the world’s first nuclear reactor lies entombed in concrete beneath a tract of Cook County Forest Preserve known as Site A. About 2,000 feet north is Plot M, a dump for 1940s radioactive waste, marked by the Department of Energy with a monument that reads caution—do not dig. Disregarding the warning, Jeremy Bolen buried film there at various times in 2012; after two weeks, he excavated the rolls, printed photos that display ghostly fields of purple—the apparent result of exposure to radioactivity—and sprinkled the prints with dirt and grass from the site before framing....

I say “less than 30 years old” so I won’t have to choose between Dead Rider and Cheer-Accident, but there isn’t the brightest line between the two bands. Guitarist and front man Todd Rittman, who launched Dead Rider in 2009, used to play in Cheer-Accident himself; Thymme Jones and Andrea Faught, who sing backup and play varying combinations of synth, bass, and trumpet, are founding and part-time members of Cheer-Accident, respectively....

Frontwoman Fest returns for a third year this Saturday, April 1, hosted once again by the Burlington. Organizer and cofounder Elaine Davis, who performs as Spaces of Disappearance, says the festival’s work raising up women and femme-identifying artists isn’t done, and it’s hard to argue with that. So many sectors of the music business remain inhospitable to women (or nearly devoid of them) that such work will likely have to continue for the foreseeable future....

Now in its ninth year, the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, curated by artists Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré, remains the best annual survey of the form, one that takes care not to limit itself. Decades-old short films by children’s book creator Lisze Bechtold, abstract painter Maria Lassnig, and animator Faith Hubley will be projected from 35-millimeter prints; this year’s Eyeworks features more films in that gauge than any previous edition....

Anthony Quinn (far left) and Barbara Stanwyck (far right) in Union Pacific, screening Wednesday at 7 PM Summer is always an interesting time at Doc Films, as the venerable student film society forgoes weekly, themed programming for more of a grab bag approach. There’s no rhyme or reason to the summer calendar, though it always delivers in terms of variety. Case in point, the first two weeks of programming this summer bring Cecil B....

Do film directors really walk around peering at the world through the frame of their joined hands? They do it often enough in the movies—but that’s where it counts, because the rectangle of fingers resides inside the larger frame of the film itself, turning the character into a camera and his experience into a movie within the movie. The final shot of Paolo Sorrentino’s commanding philosophical drama Youth shows an elderly filmmaker making a viewfinder with his hands in just this fashion, and it’s appropriate to a film that, while dwelling primarily on the discontents of old age, also considers the creative problems of movie people and, more specifically, the friction between their work and their own sense of self....

The day after the presidential election, the Wednesday morning adult ESL class at Wright College Humboldt Park took a field trip, heading south on California Avenue to the Read/Write Library. The class, consisting largely of women from Mexico and Central America, was working on writing personal stories based on neighborhood photos. Nell Taylor, the Read/Write’s executive director—and also its founder, head librarian, programming director, and chief ambassador—brought out a pile of books of pictures and poetry and personal essays in both English and Spanish for the students to look through....

Seven This week, the first major movie of the fall, David Fincher’s Gone Girl, hit multiplexes to more or less widespread acclaim. (For what it’s worth, my boss J.R. Jones, America’s most reliable film critic, wasn’t a fan.) The release of a new Fincher film feels like a major event at this point, so endeared is he to moviegoers of mainstream and more refined tastes alike. Personally, I have a complicated relationship with his films, which are hardened, meticulously structured gadgets with rigid-to-the-point-of-oppressive narratives and terse visual sensibilities....

You couldn’t be blamed for wandering into Doolin’s in search of a pint of Guinness. The two-story River West building screams “pub” with its emerald-green awning, a clover dotting the I of the business’s Irish family name. For thirsty lads and lasses looking for a drink, owner Chris Doolin has a stock reply: “I can’t sell you a beer, but I could sell you a hat or beads.” She can also hook you up with a champagne fountain, giant ribbon-cutting scissors, and even a snow-cone machine....

Following, in alphabetical order, are reviews of selected films screening through Thursday, October 16 (though repeat screenings after that date are also noted). For reviews of films screening Friday, October 17, through Thursday, October 24, come back next week to read the second part of our festival coverage. Read our reviews of films screening during the festival’s second week. A half century of CIFF milestones, from Scorsese’s debut to Lee Daniels’s achievement award Read our reviews of 15 revival films screening at CIFF....

Having survived 20 Chicago winters since moving here from Florida in the late 90s, writer and musician Brian Costello is decamping for Los Angeles over Memorial Day weekend. Not only has he been a valued contributor to the Reader for more than a decade, he’s also drummed in garage-rock bands such as Outer Minds and the Functional Blackouts, hosted the reliably awesome live game show Shame That Tune (as well as a few live talk shows), and published two hilarious and ribald novels, Losing in Gainesville and The Enchanters vs....