Arguably Louis Malle’s best work (1960). Based on Raymond Queneau’s farcical novel about a little girl (Catherine Demongeot) left in Paris for a weekend with her decadent uncle (Philippe Noiret), this wild spree goes overboard reproducing Mack Sennett-style slapstick, parodying various films of the 1950s, and playing with editing and color effects (Henri Decae’s cinematography is especially impressive), though gradually it becomes a rather disturbing nightmare about fascism. Forget the preposterous claim by a few critics that the movie’s editing influenced Alain Resnais, but there’s no doubt that Malle affected Richard Lester–and was clearly influenced himself by William Klein, whom he credited on the film as a visual consultant....

Amy Rigby writes great songs. You might think that’s a basic requirement for any singer-songwriter, but plenty of pro acoustic strummers skate by on pretty vocals or a talent for sustaining an enticing, relaxed mood. Rigby can’t afford such luxuries: she sings in a thin warble, and the mix of humor and pathos in her lyrics is deliberately discomforting. Like most critics’ darlings, she’s got a shtick–she’s the middle-aged single woman who persists in the face of diminishing romantic returns–and on “Rasputin,” the opening track of her fifth album, Little Fugitive (Signature Sounds), she works it as imaginatively as ever, linking her invulnerability with that of the mad monk....

Lord of War Winter Soldier Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I always thought this was the most important film we had about this country’s tragic involvement in Vietnam, and I still do. It’s almost as potent today as it was when it was released, and I suspect it’s rarely screened because what it reveals about wartime atrocities and government policies is very hard to face....

It was only a few months ago that housing activists dared to imagine the unimaginable: getting the City Council to make law in the face of Mayor Daley’s opposition. Like most of her allies in the coalition, Watkins figured they had a good chance of winning. They’ve been at it for two years. They had the strong support of Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle, who drafted the ordinance that year, as well as 15 community groups from various neighborhoods....

Hip-hop antiheroes have pillaged the tropes of the comic-book heavy with a vengeance–maybe because both MC and archfiend traffic in outlaw charisma, eloquent scorn, and menacing aliases. Rap’s foremost evil genius remains the leering Dr. Octagon–Kool Keith’s splice of doctors Benway and Octopus–but if he’s got a rival, it’s MF Doom, aka Daniel Dumile, whose backstory reads like something from an EC thriller. In the early 90s, as Zev Love X of KMD, he saw a promising career scuttled by the death of his brother and bandmate, DJ Subroc....

It started here as a girls’ night out. The four of us got so wasted we had to leave, and we all headed over to my friend Marie’s. I made drinks, and the next thing I knew Marie and Bridget were naked and making out on the couch. Then Natalie joined in. They were desperately trying to get me involved, but I was like, “No, I can’t.” I was a total square–something like this had happened to me in the past, and afterward the girlfriend and I never talked again because she was so freaked-out....

The 18th edition of the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival continues through Sunday, June 18, at Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark. Tickets are $8, $7 for students, $4 for CF members. For more information call 773-293-1447 or check www.chicagofilmmakers.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The remaining eight programs of this festival are excellent. In “Program 2: Looking Outside, Looking Inside” (72 min....

What kind of burlesque show might appeal to a jaded generation raised on scantily clad video babes? Why, one that features . . . scantily clad video babes! The New Millennium Theatre Company’s late-night extravaganza pits old-timey bawdy dames (including Amanda Krupman as an adorable Kewpie-doll moll) against the babes with big hair (and other, er, assets) beloved by Motley Crue, Poison, and other staples of VH-1’s Behind the Music. It’s a great concept, but somehow it doesn’t quite jell....

The Magic Bridge Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » No one knows more about all things visual than the Art Institute, so I must be mistaken in thinking that this attenuated ramp, which rises in a straight shot at a five-degree angle from the midsection of the park to the third floor of the new wing, will be a blight on the eastern horizon. (I’m also probably getting the wrong signals from the extruded aluminum sunscreen over the east pavilion’s glass roof....

Some of the peace activists who went to the Loop on March 19 to protest the war in Iraq were surprised that the police response was inconsistent–tough on one corner, tolerant on the next. “It was a day of contrasts,” says Rachel Webster. But it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that the cops in Millennium Park, Mayor Daley’s pet project, took the tough approach. Webster says the police then followed them out of the park....

Chicago doesn’t lack for great bars, from world-renowned jazz venues like the Green Mill (4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552) to ancient neighborhood watering holes like Hyde Park’s Woodlawn Tap (1172 E. 55th St., 773-643-5516), which has catered to U. of C. students since 1948. Some places, however, hang beneath the radar, an Old Style or Schlitz sign their only calling card. These, too, are neighborhood treasures, serving up booze and bonhomie to a clientele that, from day to day, might only vary by a face or two....

It was in the eleventh hour of last week’s special Cook County Board meeting, called to pass a $2.9 billion budget that’s months overdue, that a few board members began singing “Kumbaya.” “I don’t put all these amendments in here to cause fights,” Quigley said. “I mean, if all you wanna do with these things is to hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya,’ I mean, we’re wasting a lot of folks’ time here....

It was a dark and stormy night. Everyone felt like getting a little tribal. Around 10 PM we all headed to Lincoln Park. The musicians were covered head to toe in mud–instead of hair they all had slimy brown tendrils. Chunks of mud plopped off them as they walked into the bar, where a muscular door guy in a tight T-shirt stopped them immediately. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked....

South of Jalisco on the Pacific coast, Michoacan is the traditional home of the Tarascans, an indigenous people who flourished in this region before Europe came a-knocking. Millions of monarch butterflies migrate to the northeastern tip of the state each year, coming from as far away as Canada to spend mating season in the warmth of the Mexican sun. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When cruising for la cocina Michoacana, I keep my eyes peeled for signs with names like Michoacan (obviously), Uruapan (second-largest city in the state), or Morelia (the state capital)....

For his debut feature Rian Johnson meticulously re-creates Dashiell Hammett’s brand of gumshoe noir but transplants the blind-alley mystery and rat-a-tat dialogue to a modern SoCal suburban high school. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (a sitcom veteran who’s been quietly building up an impressive body of work in movies) stars as a world-weary student trying to unravel the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, and Lukas Haas is his nemesis, a ruthless, clubfooted heroin dealer who does business out of a paneled den in his parents’ basement....

The works of the CSO’s composer in residence, Augusta Read Thomas, usually have vaguely new age titles–Ritual Incantations, Orbital Beacons, In My Sky at Twilight. The title of her latest, premiering this week, is a little more concrete: Tangle. Thomas composes jangly, energizing music whose fragments veer off in unexpected directions. She writes lots of fizz into her scores–much of which comes from clever instrumental combinations–and isn’t afraid to let people enjoy themselves....

It’s scary to watch a great writer lie about love. The trials of Wilde, which resulted in penal servitude for “gross indecency” (homosexual acts), are meticulously recreated by Moises Kaufman (of Laramie Project fame). A riveting assemblage of heartbreaking and contradictory testimony, this 1895 media circus delivered the goods–Wilde’s own martyrdom (which he could easily have avoided), the family quarrels that instigated the first trial, and the witch hunt that showed how little the Victorians differed from the Puritans....

Few contemporary filmmakers can tell a story as well as Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose gripping features all take place among marginal people in a nondescript French-Belgian industrial city. In La Promesse (1996), Rosetta (1999), The Son (2002), and now this volatile 2005 drama, the camera sticks close to the protagonists but neither the plot nor the characterization is ever simpleminded. Jeremie Renier (La Promesse) plays a petty thief who sells his newborn son, then struggles to buy him back after the mother recoils from the deed....

Everyone at “the compound,” the headquarters of Skydive Chicago, agrees with Todd Fey that Saturday, June 7, 2003, was a nice day for hurling yourself out of an airplane. “Winds were very light,” recalls the 42-year-old marine parachutist and skydiving instructor, who has more than 2,200 jumps under his belt. To this day Fey isn’t sure how or why, in the course of a routine jump under ideal conditions, he got caught up in the chain of events that led to the death of Skydive Chicago’s founder and leader, Roger Nelson....

Dear editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Yes, Loyola is a religiously oriented institution. But they are also one of the top ten employers in the Chicago area and an institution of a quality that stands as a bulwark against neighborhood decline. Loyola’s Maywood medical center is one of the few remaining trauma centers in the Chicago area, because Loyola has a fundamental commitment to community–something you won’t find from purely commercial enterprises....