Your #StaytheFHome Chicago Curated Weekend: 7/23 and Beyond
Chicago has been letting businesses reopen their doors for quite a while now. So if you’re going to a drive-in (like Chicago Drive In, Drive-in at Lincoln Yards Lot, ChiTown […]
Comic-Con@Home Comes to Chicago (And Everywhere Else) Starting Today!
One of summer’s most obvious absences are festivals, big and small. There’s no sprawling parks full of concert stages, no small towns bedecked with smiling strawberries leading you towards the […]
Review: Superhot: Mind Control Delete Delivers Tension and Thrilling Gameplay
How do you innovate on a game that described itself as one of the most innovative shooters in years? That’s the task developer Team Superhot faced when following up their […]
Review: Deadly Days Is a Strategic Rogue-Lite to Sink Your Teeth Into
There is a certain irony to playing Deadly Days, standing against wave after wave of zombie hordes, only to mindlessly consume hours of your own day with the proverbial, “One […]
Dialogs: Two Screenwriters Talk About Their New Novels—Utopia Avenue and Antkind
It was just serendipity that the Chicago Humanities Festival scheduled two screenwriters with hot new novels two weeks in a row for their livestream show. Well, serendipity and the fact […]
Review: A Pre-Pandemic Fever Dream at the Local Dive Bar in Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
Something weird happens at the beginning of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, but it’s so subtle, so smoothly incorporated that it’s nearly imperceptible. Following the opening credits (displayed in a throwback fashion […]
Review: Foreboding Melancholy and a Hint of Danger in Reimagined Carmilla
Last October during the Chicago International Film Festival (remember film festivals?), I saw two films within days of each other, and it struck me that they had similar haunting vibes […]
Review: Colonialism, Torture and Oppression in a Thought-Provoking Waiting for the Barbarians
Written by J.M. Coetzee (based on his novel) and directed by Ciro Guerra (Embrace of the Serpent), Waiting for the Barbarians is set in a rundown but peaceful North African […]
Review: Flannery Explores the Life, Work and Controversies of the Southern Gothic Writer
There has rarely been a time in literary history where the writings of Flannery O’Connor were not problematic to some. That being said, there also hasn’t been a time when […]
Review: An Exercise in Endurance, The Painted Bird Chronicles a Brutal Loss of Innocence
Who among us hasn’t wanted to watch the great Udo Kier pluck out another man’s eyeballs with a spoon in a jealous rage, shot in glorious black-and-white 35mm? I’m guessing […]
Chicago’s Physical Theater Festival Goes Virtual July 17-19
Plans for the 7th annual Physical Theater Festival were full steam ahead when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic in March and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker […]
Book Review: Peace Talks, the Latest Installment of Dresden Files Holds Up, Even for Latecomers
Peace Talks By Jim Butcher Ace In the 16th installment of Chicago-based urban fantasy series The Dresden Files, wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden is tapped to work security for a treaty negotiation […]