Film buffs know how incredible it is to see a film in 70mm. The picture is smoother and wider than lower-resolution formats, allowing viewers to see details that would otherwise go unnoticed. With studios and filmmakers switching to digital, however, it is becoming more of a rarity. The Music Box is one of few theaters in the country that has the correct projector to screen the prints. Julian Antos, an organizer of the event, says the festival brings audiences together to experience the beauty of film that tends to be forgotten with digital copies and home video readily available....

Dietrich in The Blue Angel, screening Saturday and Sunday This Saturday and Sunday at 11:30 AM the Music Box will show The Blue Angel, kicking off a retrospective of the seven films made by Marlene Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg between 1930 and 1935. The films screen in chronological order, continuing next week with Morocco and concluding with The Devil Is a Woman (based on the same source material as Luis Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire) on November 22 and 23....

Created in 2007 by Alan Jacobsen, a Floridian known for manufacturing cruise-ship entertainment, this 90-minute musical feels like just that—a contrived cruise-ship show. Packed to the gills with Weird Al-style parody songs, the one-act follows four middle-aged women trying to lose weight and navigate their relationships at Cook’s Women’s Gym. One of those women is played by Martha Wash, the recording artist best known for her vocals in “It’s Raining Men” and “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” and her presence is one of the only exciting parts of this production....

Ken Redeker The Chicago Park District received $120,000 to allow the PNC bank branch to set up in Grant Park. How much is a piece of Grant Park worth? The question looms after officials turned over a slice of the park to a private company for $120,000. “The Chicago Park District seeks creative ways to raise revenue to support its parks and programs in neighborhoods throughout the city,” Jessica Maxey-Faulkner, a spokeswoman for the district, wrote in an e-mail....

Here’s what’s supposed to shock us about Edward Albee’s much-acclaimed The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?: Martin, a successful, privileged, happily married family man, has fallen in love with a goat and fucks it regularly. But here’s what shocks me: that Albee imagines we should care about this jerk. It’s not Martin’s hircine proclivities that render him wholly unsympathetic. In this heightened upper-middle-class world, which veers inconsistently in and out of absurdity, bestiality is merely emblematic of taboo sexual practices and identities, writ so large the point can’t be missed....

Chicago hasn’t had a working vinyl-pressing plant for at least 20 years. The last one was allegedly shut down by the FBI in the 90s for making bootleg 78 RPM records to sell in India. The presses from that facility, acquired in 2003 by Chicagoan Joell Hays, sat dormant in a local warehouse after Hays failed to find investors to get his own plant up and running. By the time Quality Record Pressings, run by Chad Kassem in Salina, Kansas, bought them in 2015, the machines were in wretched shape—rusted, clogged, and missing parts....

With a light roster of 36 arrestees and a courtroom full of reporters, legal observers, and advocates (as well a sprinkling of defendants’ loved ones), Cook County’s central bond court yesterday eased into its first day of operation under a new directive: By order of Chief Judge Timothy Evans, judges are to consider a defendant’s financial circumstances when setting bail. In addition to rolling out the new procedure, Evans also created a new division of judges to handle bond court proceedings....

Denise LaSalle’s specialty is still telling it like it is. The veteran blues singer usually aims her earthy lyrics and sassy onstage patter straight at the women in the audience—and when it comes to talking about the kind of romantic entanglements she knows those women deal with, she doesn’t pull any punches. LaSalle burned up the 70s R&B charts with steamy southern soul, then shifted to blues in 1982 after signing with Malaco Records from Jackson, Mississippi....

Xiu Xiu have never and are not going to make a pop album. Despite developing a four-on-the-floor rhythmic backbone for their recent Forget (Polyvinyl), these monarchs of bloodletting through experimental music leave no reason to believe they’ll pivot into the warm embrace of synthpop. Rather, Forget is another genre exercise in a career that’s seen many: “What would Jamie Stewart’s self-flagellation scan like if you could also bob your head to it?...

courtesy The Art of Dr. Seuss Gallery Green Cat With Lights by Stroogo Von M: Is this, or is this not, obviously the work of Dr. Seuss? One of the sad things about writing for print is that there’s a limited amount of space and you have to cut bits that are fun and surprising, but extraneous to the main story. This happened last week when I was reporting and writing about the Art of Dr....

Julia Thiel The makings for four different cocktails Earlier this week a coworker was nice enough to pass along a bottle of Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur that she’d been sent. Compared with some of the promotional items I’ve gotten, it ranks way up there—better than the box of dirt with six carrot tops I once received, for example. Or the Coors Light samples I recently got in the mail (which I gave to a different coworker, who was actually excited to try them)....

Ever heard off Terry Pratchett? Me neither, until a few days ago. But it turns out he’s an awfully big deal: a knighted English author who’s written books by the dozens and sold them by the tens of millions since his first was published back in 1971. Pratchett’s great project is the Discworld series of comic fantasy novels. Comprising 41 titles so far, the series chronicles doings on a flat planet supported by four elephants standing atop a giant turtle who swims through space going no one knows where....

In the liner notes to the new My Foolish Heart (ECM), Ralph Towner recalls how hearing pianist Bill Evans’s 1961 recording of Victor Young’s ballad launched him on a quest to achieve something similarly reverent. As a sideman with the Paul Winter Consort, a member of the jazz and world-fusion ensemble Oregon, and a recording artist for the ECM label for 45 years, Towner has found many ways to evoke dimensions of introspection, yearning, and mystery....

Growing up in the Chicago suburbs during the 1950s and ’60s, photographer Patty Carroll lived in a homogeneous, harmonious bubble. By way of cookie-cutter houses, rigid gender norms, and midcentury notions of perfectionism and civility, Carroll came to know the suburbs as “fabricated places of solace,” as she writes in her artist’s statement for “Anonymous Women,” currently on display at Schneider Gallery. The exhibit is the culmination of a photo project that Carroll has been working on since the mid-90s....

Brian Jackson/Sun-Times Media Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy: It’s time to lock up more gun offenders. Garry McCarthy has identified the enemy, and it is all the politicians who won’t pass tougher gun laws. But his boss, Mayor Emanuel, had already announced his intention to continue the city’s long-running policy of pushing for tougher firearm laws, which had offered mayors and aldermen a political shield even when it didn’t stop the flow or use of guns....

Back in 2001, when Laura Weathered was struggling through construction on the Acme Artists’ Community housing development, there was a lot of talk about protecting artists from the gentrification that dogged them. The city contributed $200,000 to the $3.2 million rehab project, and buyers were able to get additional subsidies of up to $30,000 (in the form of loans that would be forgiven across a ten-year period) for each unit. Artists with as little as $3,000 for a down payment were able to purchase the condominiums, which were priced from $90,000 to $130,000....

This week we review four films from the Polish Film Festival in America, which opens this Friday and runs through Sunday, November 22, at Facets Cinematheque, Society for Arts, and Rosemont 18 out in the ‘burbs. And check out our new reviews of: Barista, a documentary about coffee and the overcaffeinated young people who prepare it; Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, the annual three-day blowout of abstract and experimental work; I Smile Back, starring Sarah Silverman as a suburban wife and mother who can’t get enough booze and drugs; Love, an erotic epic (in 3-D, no less) by French bad boy Gaspar Noe (I Stand Alone); Radical Grace, a locally produced documentary about progressive nuns clashing with the Vatican; Spectre, the latest James Bond adventure; and Victoria, a suspense movie shot in one extended take....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, February 22, 2017. City Council to vote on proposed downtown street performance crackdown Wednesday The City Council will vote on a proposed crackdown on street performers downtown Wednesday. The proposal from 42nd Ward alderman Brendan Reilly would ban any outside performances that can be heard from more than 20 feet away. The regulation would only apply to downtown areas from “Michigan Avenue between Cedar Street and Balbo Avenue, and on State Street between Huron Street and Jackson Boulevard,” according to WBEZ, and would take aim at performances from tourist magnet groups like the Bucket Boys, which can sometimes be an annoyance to downtown residents and office workers....

You may be wondering: What’s my ward? What’s my precinct? WHAT’S A PRECINCT? Chicago’s 50 wards are gerrymandered into completely illogical geographies, and there’s nothing wrong with not knowing. Each ward is subdivided into precincts. To vote early after October 21, or to vote on Election Day, figure out your ward and precinct with this handy tool from the Chicago Board of Elections. Almost every judicial candidate and sitting judge is rated by one of the local bar associations, and you can find more information about those evaluations here....

Netflix Wyatt Cenac lives and stands up in Brooklyn. The Netflix special Wyatt Cenac: Brooklyn is all about the comedian’s Brooklyn, from its intimate venues (including Union Hall, where the show was filmed) to its gentrified enclaves. The borough is also the backdrop for musings on Cenac’s personal shortcomings. He combines biting bits about past and present Brooklynites with “why I’m still single” lines and delivers a performance that’s more observational than political, and hilarious overall....