A still from The Field Nearly two weeks ago popular video site World Star Hip Hop released a documentary called The Field: Chicago (A Profile of the City’s Hottest Artists, the Violence That Surrounds Them, and the Hope Music Brings to Their Lives). World Star has helped expose rappers such as Chief Keef and Riff Raff to a wider audience, but it’s also gained a lot of infamy for hosting raw, user-submitted footage of real-world violence—a clip posted in late November showing a teen girl from Texas beating up one of her peers has garnered more than 22 million views (I won’t link to it, but this New York Daily News piece on the viral video can explain more about it)....

The recently released self-titled album from Portland’s trippy doom quartet Witch Mountain was one of my most-anticipated albums this year. It’s their fifth album overall, and it’s their first with new singer Kayla Dixon and new bassist Justin Brown (his playing doesn’t change the band’s sound as dramatically). Former front woman Uta Plotkin helped to lift Witch Mountain far above the average heavy schist with her soaring and roaring vocals; when she amicably left the group in 2014, her place by the mic wasn’t going to be easy to fill....

Toy Masters UPDATE: According to Chicago Filmmakers program director Josh Mabe, Lay and Landis are no longer able to attend this screening. The Chicago Cinema Society has been quiet since April, when the programming organization presented the Chicago premiere of the Italian art house horror item Across the River. On Saturday at 8 PM the group returns to Chicago Filmmakers to screen a work-in-progress documentary called Toy Masters. The movie chronicles the rise and fall of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe franchise, which included comic books, multiple animated TV series, one laughably bad live-action feature, and, of course, toys....

Michael Gebert Tremaine Atkinson with a still at CH Distillery It takes a certain temperament to find happiness in a field where things often age for years. Tremaine Atkinson apparently has the temperament for distilling—his first try at a brewing business was in his twenties, and another quarter century (or two batches of 12-year scotch) passed before he cofounded (with his friend Mark Lucas) CH Distillery, just a couple blocks west of the Loop on Randolph....