Too seldom seen, this 170-minute musical by the terrific trio of composer Cy Coleman, book writer Larry Gelbart, and lyricist David Zippel–a dazzlingly witty parody of hard-boiled Raymond Chandler with a stylized score–brilliantly lampoons Hollywood stereotypes and censorship. It contrasts a young writer and his film noir screenplay with the real-life 40s producer-director who threatens his vision. Despite an impressive revolving art deco set by Rick and Jackie Penrod, the staging in One Theatre Company’s revival doesn’t distinguish the black-and-white screenplay from the Technicolor reality, the jumpy pacing complicates the already dense plot, and the singing, accompanied by an often overwhelming 21-piece jazz band, sometimes sounds strained....

Muckraking journalist Greg Palast specializes in stories that get disturbingly little play in the U.S. media. In 2001, for example, he was the first to reveal how Florida Republicans used outside contractors to disenfranchise thousands of minority voters in that state, tilting the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Since then he has doggedly pursued connections between the Bush administration, the Saudi royal family, terrorist organizations, the energy and arms industries, election officials, international finance, and the religious right–explorations documented in Armed Madhouse (Dutton Adult), a follow-up to his 2004 salvo The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and in reports available at gregpalast....

A WWII soldier’s engagement is complicated by his decision to marry his best friend’s lover to give her U.S. citizenship. Like the movies for which Norman Krasna is better known–he wrote White Christmas–his well-structured 1947 farce is still funny and has considerable nostalgic appeal. Unfortunately, most of the wit is buried here under awkward, ill-timed performances. As John, Jason Rude is movie-star gorgeous, but he and Joanna Peot as Mary fail to deliver any real romantic zip: their kisses and tumbles look clumsily choreographed....

I honestly don’t know exactly where I ended up last Saturday night. All’s I know is my friend Hilary and I felt like staying out late, so while getting gas at the newly remodeled Dunkin’ Donuts/Citgo at Ashland and Grand, we texted a bright young art-student friend and asked him where the party was. In the meantime we hung out in the parking lot, listening to disco hissing out of speakers on the space-age gas pumps, doing some primo people watching....

This Texas quartet–which features three members of Rip Off Records vets the Reds–still flies under most radar systems, but so far everyone who’s picked up their signal has been borderline mad at how good it sounds. As Mike Wiebe of the Riverboat Gamblers puts it, “The Marked Men don’t have fans, they have followers. I count myself as one of the cult. Be prepared for the jealousy that arises from their greatness....

A few years ago Jeremy Bushnell and Chris Miller, who perform together as the drone-noise duo Number None, started putting out CD-Rs of their music on their own Rebis label. But in 2005 they decided to go legit and release proper CDs by other bands–in large part to document a scene they saw emerging around them. “The tag we started using as an organizing principle was the New Electronic Sublime,” says Bushnell....

Though he stopped recording for nearly four decades, PETER WALKER picks up exactly where he left off with four new pieces on this year’s A Raga for Peter Walker (Tompkins Square). Following the release of his 1968 record, Second Poem to Karmela or Gypsies Are Important, Walker decided to raise a family and work straight jobs, but during the preceding decade he’d played in Greenwich Village’s folk scene, studied Indian classical music with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, and provided accompaniment for Timothy Leary’s group acid experiments....

I generally don’t agree with the advice you give, but I need help and I can’t talk to my friends. About two months ago I broke off a relationship with a guy I had been seeing for about seven years. I’m only 24 years old, and I needed to explore other fish in the sea. I immediately hooked up with this Russian guy I had been crushing on for some time....

Dennis Molawa, 54, is a stagehand and lighting technician at the House of Blues. DM: I had so many of ’em, I said, man, that would be cool to have a suit made of all these bags instead of them going to waste. I didn’t know any seamstresses or anything–nobody in my family does that kind of stuff. I just got talking to Deb Pastor. She’s one of our greeting-room girls, she feeds the bands....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Eli’s Cheesecake Festival, Saturday and Sunday at Eli’s Cheesecake World, boasts culinary demonstrations, free samples, cheesecake eating contests, cheesecake dancers, and even cheesecake hula hoop (they don’t say how those last two are going to involve cheesecake, but it doesn’t sound pretty). There’s also a classic car show, an artists’ market, music–including one act that’s part of the World Music Festival–and rides for kids....

Shojo Manga! Girl Power! Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Unlike in the ice-cube-tray images of American comics, the panels in “Shojo Manga!” merge the elegant, startling shapes and juxtapositions of Russian constructivism with the flat Eurotrash fashion illustrations of Patrick Nagel, the enormous sparkling eyes of soulful orphans in thrift-store paintings, and the occasional unexplained floral blizzard. The same giddy sense of boundlessness also informs the storytelling....

Three years ago my friend and I almost got crushed to death trying to catch a glimpse of Kattassery Joseph Yesudas at a concert he gave in the south Indian city of Mysore. But it was worth it. Despite being Catholic–“yesudas” is Sanskrit for “servant of Jesus”–the versatile 65-year-old tenor is one of the country’s most revered singers of classical south Indian Carnatic music and the Hindi devotional songs called bhajans....

Altar Boyz | Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Altar Boyz, now playing at Drury Lane Water Tower Place, provides a refreshing alternative to this divisiveness and discord. The show takes the form of a concert, a premise also employed by Forever Plaid (about a doo-wop group) and Nunsense (about stagestruck convent sisters). But underneath the witty song parodies, slangy dialogue, and comically sexy dances, Altar Boyz offers an intricately constructed narrative about five young friends whose emotional and moral journeys bring them to a personal and professional crossroads....

Russian journeyman Alexei Borisov began playing music in the early 80s as the front man of the Centre, one of the Soviet Union’s first new wave bands, before founding the pioneering industrial dance outfit Notchnoi Prospekt. Since the 90s, however, he’s gravitated toward electronic music of various stripes, particularly techno and abstract experimentalism; this performance, his U.S. debut, should reflect those inspirations. According to the show’s organizer, Lampo, Borisov’s live set will sound a lot like his 2004 album Polished Surface of a Table (Electroshock), a dizzying melange of splattery digitalia, analog squelch, chopped beats, abrasive noise, found sound, and droll bits of spoken word–some of them electronically processed–in which he delivers purposely mundane descriptions of everyday life....

The Sirens of Titan Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Who could help but laugh at the postmodern Christian sect he invents in 1959’s The Sirens of Titan, the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent? And the way he pokes fun at post-World War II notions of capitalism, optimism, freedom, and the very middle-American (and Calvinist) idea that good luck reveals the hand of God?...

Last June telly viewers in the UK saw this message on their screens: “Some images in this film have been obscured by the BBC. These images were broadcast unobscured by Al-Jazeera.” What followed was an insightful, dispassionate report–part of the BBC’s “Correspondent” series–documenting three weeks in the life of the Qatar newsroom of the Arabic-language satellite station. Al-Jazeera Exclusive, shot in March and April 2003 and directed by Ben Anthony, includes footage of Iraqis pulling blankets aside so Al Jazeera’s cameras can record the faces of casualties....

Tipsycake Stepanek, a 33-year-old native of Sydney, is something of an ambassador for Aussie and English sweets in her new hood. One of several unusual specialties she offers are lamingtons, jam-filled rectangles of sponge cake soaked in chocolate and dredged in dried coconut. They’re about the size of a doughnut and “just as common” in Sydney pastry shops, she says. She also offers pavlova, a meringue shell filled with fruit and whipped cream and claimed by both New Zealanders and Australians as a national dish; a Hungarian pancake pie, which is a nod to her mom, who left Hungary for Australia during World War II; and her personal favorite, banoffi pies and cakes, a traditional English recipe featuring a rich banana-caramel custard made with condensed milk and brown sugar....

When wife-husband duo Eiko & Koma went to the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2004, their monthlong visit to teach “delicious movement” workshops developed into a collaboration with young visual arts students, ages 14 to 20. Asking their workshop participants to dance with paintings they’d done resulted in a 75-minute piece, Cambodian Stories: An Offering of Paint and Dance, featuring fiftysomething Eiko and Koma and 11 students, who both dance and complete two paintings onstage....

Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger have never been afraid to lay it on thick, whether they’re cramming multiple melodic conceits into a single song, spinning fantastical narratives within fantastical narratives, or recruiting their 82-year-old grandmother as lead vocalist for a concept album about her life. But on the recent Bitter Tea (Fat Possum) the duo’s daring has finally gotten them into trouble. Recorded at the same time as Rehearsing My Choir (the aforementioned concept record) it’s a terrific collection: gorgeous melodies twist and detour, rarely lingering for long, and the circuitous lyrics, packed with details that situate the songs in time and place, are sung with elegance and style....

On Loose, their 2000 debut as the M.O.B. Trio, drummer Matt Wilson, tenor saxophonist Ohad Talmor, and bassist Bob Bowen played liberally with simple groove-oriented themes, drawing on a tenor-trio tradition pioneered by Sonny Rollins in the 50s. Without a chordal instrument sketching out progressions, the musicians had plenty of leeway to toy with structure and harmony, but they could have used a safety net. Talmor stumbled occasionally, too often quoting Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman when his own ideas failed him, and Bowen sometimes seemed hesitant to pull away from his deep ostinato lines and go exploring....