Screenwriters are the great unsung heroes of Hollywood. Without them there would be no story to tell, no movie to make, yet some of the most ardent film buffs would be hard-pressed to connect such masters as Frank S. Nugent, Ernest Lehman, I.A.L. Diamond, or Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett with beloved movies they wrote (respectively: The Searchers, North by Northwest, Some Like It Hot, and It’s a Wonderful Life). If I rattled off the writers who’ve contributed over the years to the Planet of the Apes franchise, you’d probably draw a blank on all of them except Rod Serling—who was, of course, a TV personality, introducing his own and others’ stories on The Twilight Zone....

William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977) I found it odd that much of the anticipatory buzz surrounding the rollout of the new restoration of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer (which I discussed a few weeks back) emphasized that this would be the first time that many viewers would be able to see the film in its original aspect ratio. True, all home video releases of Sorcerer have presented it in the Academy ratio of 1....

Rich Hein/Sun-Times Media Chicagoans may have been hosed in the parking meter deal, but that doesn’t mean it’s illegal, a panel of appellate judges ruled. A panel of Illinois appellate judges won’t dispute that Chicago’s parking meter deal is a big loser for the city. It was the latest development in a lawsuit brought by attorney Clint Krislov on behalf of the IVI-IPO, a public-interest group. The suit was filed in 2009, just weeks after the city transferred control of the meter system to Chicago Parking Meters LLC, a consortium of investors, for 75 years....

At the risk of sounding like a real carbophobic, sometimes an entire doughnut is just too much . . . I don’t know, sugary dough. I’m probably presenting this premise to the wrong audience, because if the proliferation of doughnut joints is any indication, Chicagoans love a damn doughnut. I’m pretty sure everyone will love Beaver’s Donuts—they’ll just have to love more of them. Beaver’s, a food truck that also has a permanent location inside the Chicago French Market, specializes in fresh, hot, two-bite minidoughnuts coated in a variety of toppings, both regular (powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, powdered cocoa) or gourmet (chocolate sauce and coconut, etc)....

What does it mean to “fix” something? If a bond—physical, social, psychological—is broken, can it ever truly be reconnected? If so, how can such a repair be achieved? Internationally acclaimed French-Algerian artist Kader Attia mines historical archives to understand complicated relationships between people: colonizer and colonized, master and slave, residents of the geopolitical north and south. He has pursued these inquiries primarily through the lens of colonial legacies, particularly in Africa, and their influence on European modernism....

With the merger of Ogden and Jenner elementary schools underway, Chicago Public Schools earlier this month removed the well-respected principal of the former from his post of three years. Dr. Michael Beyer, who’s worked for the district since 2003 and has earned accolades as a principal, was accused by the Chicago Board of Education’s inspector general of falsifying attendance records across Ogden’s three K-12 campuses comprising some 1,900 students. Now Beyer is suing the school district claiming he hasn’t been given a fair chance to defend himself....

Lavender Country front man Patrick Haggerty is a true American rebel. Raised on a tenant dairy farm in Washington State, Haggerty grew up knee-deep in 40s and 50s country music—he spent his childhood listening to Canadian country radio, and when he was nine started playing tunes on a guitar his father gave him. When Haggerty began to publicly express his sexuality as a teenager, his father, a tough rural Catholic, taught him another important lesson—to be proud of who you are....

Agnès Varda’s directorial debut, La Pointe Courte (1954), anticipated the French New Wave with its documentary feel, associative editing, and bold, tableaulike imagery. Her later films Le Bonheur (1964) and One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) are considered touchstones of feminist cinema. And with such innovative documentaries as Uncle Yanco (1967) and The Gleaners & I (2000), Varda developed a singular approach to the nonfiction form, delivering essays that proceed like uninterrupted trains of thought....

“Burst Black” Magical Beautiful, the local experiential experimental, electronic-leaning pop act, has just released its first new track since 2011’s Here Come the Wild Waves LP. The band is fronted by Tyson Torstensen—formerly of Ga’an, the prog-rock outfit that birthed other excellent, heady projects such as Fielded, Zath, and Psychic Steel—who uses Magical Beautiful to depart from the intensity of his former band and its offshoots, instead delving into pretty, dreamy, atmospheric, indie pop....

Killer Mike and El-P up the ante on their self-released third album as Run the Jewels, tapping into floor-rumbling old-school Miami bass fundamentals—albeit a strain that pushes the tradition into the present—and laying out classic, rhythmically agile, hectoring flows. Both MCs convey steamroller energy, infusing every track with a ferocity that draws juice from our current political environment even though their words rarely address it directly. Much of the power comes from a sense of triumph, both in that Killer Mike and El-P have achieved supremacy so late in their careers, and that Run the Jewels have refused to play by rules other than their own (this is to say nothing of Mike’s surprising political influence in supporting Bernie Sanders)....

Smino won’t let the world forget he’s from Saint Louis. Sure, he’s lived in Chicago for a few years now, assembling the Zero Fatigue collective with singer Ravyn Lenae and producer Monte Booker. But he spelled out his loyalty to his old hometown in a September interview with hip-hop blog Passion of the Weiss: “I lived 85% of my life in St. Louis, so definitely, I got St. Louis on my back right now....

One feature of the Hyde Park Jazz Fest that has quietly distinguished it over the last few years is the prevalence of dynamic duos, whether the pairings are new or seasoned, improvised or driven by tunes. Notable among this year’s terrific offerings is the first local performance by alto saxophonist Nick Mazzarella and cellist Tomeka Reid since the release of their superb debut album, Signaling (Nessa). The record opens with the soulful, melodic “Blues for Julius and Abdul,” a tender homage to one of improvised music’s most distinctive alto sax and cello duos, Hemphill and Wadud....

Loyola Beach in Rogers Park has one of the city’s few sea benches, a long strip of concrete seating that overlooks Lake Michigan. Spanning 600 feet along the sand, the bench was perpetually covered with graffiti until 1993, when the park started the annual Artists of the Wall Festival. On Father’s Day, four-foot sections of the bench are sold off for $30 to both professional artists and amateurs, who are allowed to paint their portion in line with an annual theme....

What makes a good Stephen King adaptation? The question has no easy answer, though not for lack of a sizable sample. At this point King has more than 250 writing credits on the Internet Movie Database. That number is slightly inflated by his practice of letting aspiring filmmakers license some of his stories for $1 on the condition that their work won’t be sold. But even so, there have been a lot of movies and TV shows inspired by King’s stories over the years, a trend that shows no sign of abating thanks to the recent success of It....

Dances that offer important history lessons are rare, and these four shows, commissioned by Columbia College as part of its new Afro-Latino dance program, are doubly unique for illuminating a largely untold history. Even today in Latin America, the rich and complex roots of Afro-Latino dance, shaped by the massive influence of colonization and the slave trade on indigenous and traditional Latin American folk dances, remain less than fully acknowledged....

For two years now I’ve been giving the producers of the Rhinoceros Theater Festival a hard time over whether they can legitimately call their curated event a fringe fest. Last week I even offered them an alternate term, “tribal convocation,” which I consider more accurate and even kind of sweet. Will they use it? They have my permission. Like the antibeauty character in Footnotes, Eileen Tull obsesses over body image and failed intimacy....

Weyes Blood Guys, the polar vortex is back. The last time it was here, pretty much every event across town got canceled. Hopefully that doesn’t happen again, because the first half of this week has a handful of excellent shows to catch. Weyes Blood has canceled. Ryley Walker, Circuit des Yeux, Mark Trecka, and Field Auxiliary are all still playing. “In recent years experimental music has produced quite a few hauntingly psychedelic chanteuses who deliver mesmerizing, spooky sounds and charged postfolk vocals that range from rustic crooning to borderline avant-garde caterwauling,” says Peter Margasak....

Sicario is the latest film by Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners), and it follows an ambitious FBI agent (Emily Blunt) who joins a government security force led by a pair of mysterious operatives (Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro) as they search the borderland for a Mexican drug lord. Villeneuve emerged as a major filmmaker after the release of his 2009 crime thriller Polytechnique, and with each subsequent film, including the Oscar-nominated Incendies (2010) and the paranoid parable Enemy (2013), he’s matured significantly as an artist, crafting tense, self-contained character dramas that deal with themes of identity, revenge, and obsession....

[content-5] Last Friday after work, CTA vice president for service planning Mike Connelly broke the news to the bus advocates with an e-mail notifying them that the #31 service will be kiboshed as of Monday, September 3. “Despite our efforts to provide and promote the service, the anticipated ridership never occurred and no additional financial support was secured,” Connelly said. (The transit agency had reached out to IIT and Mercy Hospital about sponsoring the service, to no avail....

Dill magazine, which urges its readers to “journey deep into the cuisines of Asia,” is one of the handsomest print publications to arise in Chicago in quite some time. The inaugural issue, devoted to noodles, appeared last month. Its 130 pages contain ten articles and 26 recipes, printed on heavy stock, with an elegant cover shot of nine nests of noodles in different colors and sizes. It looks substantial enough to rate a permanent place on a cookbook shelf—which was what founder Shayne Chammavanijakul had in mind from the start....