Anti-Folk, Meet Post-Rock Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The two acts had talked casually about working together in the past, Greynolds says, but their schedules and priorities never quite meshed. The collaboration was originally planned as a four-song session last October at Soma Studios (owned by Tortoise drummer John McEntire), but everyone was pleased enough with the results to meet for two more sessions–one in December and another in March....

Nadine Nakanishi, who grew up in Graubunden, Switzerland, is a production artist at the Reader. She’s wearing one of a series of sweaters she’s been embroidering. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This is the “bi bim bop is the cousin of hip-hop.” You know how there’s like dairy, vegetables, fruit? Well, this is like there’s coats, horchata sweaters, pants, shoes. It’s like its own clothes group....

The festival of work by black artists from around the world continues Friday, August 12, through Wednesday, August 31, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $9, $5 for Film Center members; for more information call 312-846-2800. Following are the programs scheduled for August 12 through 18th; a complete festival schedule is available online at www.chicagoreader.com. After a few hundred Somali refugees settle in economically troubled Lewiston, Maine, the locals complain that their new neighbors are poorly educated and rely on government aid, claims that are neatly refuted by director Ziad Hamzeh in a point-by-point montage....

Mainstream Nashville country is so helplessly in thrall to songwriting convention that it’s hard to tell decent singers from generic one-hat wonders. Brad Paisley tends to sidle up to a tune, and that relaxed delivery keeps his love songs from becoming unduly sentimental and his funny stuff from elbowing you in the ribs. The title track of his 2003 disc, Mud on the Tires (Arista), for instance, is an invitation to an off-road romp that’s sung so casually it takes several listens to hook you....

On their superb full-length debut, Today Is Tonight (Drama Club), these local rising stars find a hundred different ways to jangle, bounce, and glide. Picking up where they left off with their two previous EPs, 2003’s First of May and 2004’s self-titled release, the Changes continue to experiment with shades of the 80s proto-alt rock–Marshall Crenshaw, Squeeze, Aztec Camera–that most American groups have long since brushed aside. A few of the EP tunes turn up again–a stormy remake of “Such a Scene,” a reprise of the jazzy guitar-pop fugue “Her, You and I”–alongside newer standouts like “In the Dark,” with its squirrelly Steely Dan-ish faux-electric-sitar solo, and the breezy “Twilight,” with hand claps and electric piano that hint at 70s dance-floor glimmer....

Jonathan Rosenbaum At a time when detailed truth about the war in Iraq continues to be scarce, these are the two best documentaries on the subject I’ve seen so far: The War Tapes, directed by Deborah Scranton and produced and edited by Chicagoan Steve James, addresses the American experience of the war with all its terrifying contradictions; and James Longley’s poetic and informative Iraq in Fragments addresses the more neglected Iraqi experience....

Rarely shown in the U.S. these days, this 1941 film of the wildly deconstructive stage farce with Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson is still regarded as a classic in Europe, and it lives up to its reputation. The credit sequence establishes the wartime mood with its vision of hell as a munitions factory (where demons preside over the packaging of Canned Guy and Canned Gal), which is shortly revealed as a movie soundstage, the first of many metafictional gags....

When I came to Chicago 11 years ago, a vegetarian from Pittsburgh, I was pale, underweight, and awestruck by how much there was to eat here. I’d had a few revelatory eating experiences back home–Thai, Indian–but I had no idea how poorly those meals would compare to so many in my future. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Between giant metal Puerto Rican flag arches in Humboldt Park, Division Street becomes the Paseo Boricua, the epicenter of the venerable Puerto Rican community....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “A once-faint comet has made a sudden leap from obscurity to center stage. Comet 17P Holmes, now visible to northern hemisphere residents, increased its brightness by a factor of one million this week, going from magnitude 17 to 2. This makes it visible to the unaided eye as well as binoculars and telescopes, offering a unique viewing opportunity for sky watchers....

Spamalot The story is set in medieval England–a nasty, brutish world of mud and filth, plague and war, beheadings and burnings at the stake. King Arthur is traveling round the countryside–“riding” without a horse to the accompaniment of clip-clop coconuts–and recruiting knights to join him in seeking the Holy Grail. (“That’s a king,” one character says of Arthur. “How can you tell?” responds another. “He hasn’t got shit all over ‘im,” the first fellow replies....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Wednesday Journal, a weekly newspaper covering Oak Park and River Forest, devoted what seems like half of last week’s issue to apologizing. “Reckless and unsubstantiated charge. . . . Extraordinarily serious lapse in editorial judgment,” says editor and publisher Dan Haley in a page-one statement posted online December 7 and in print December 13. “Gigantic error. . ....

Anna DiRenzo Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » AD: Animals needed these genes to deal with toxic chemicals in plants and the environment and to metabolize hormones. These genes also produce an enzyme involved in metabolizing cortisol, which plays a role in maintaining the salt and water balance in the body. HH: Many people have a “broken” or nonfunctional variant of the gene known as CYP3A5 [which acts to retain salt in the kidney]....