Chicagoist had a nice chuckle last week over this wire piece that was picked up by The Star Online, a Malaysian news site. It seems—-make sure you’re sitting down for this one—-that some American movies are not filmed in the cities in which they are set. The hell you say, Chris Hewitt! He notes two particularly egregious instances of this uh…commonplace occurrence that just so happen to be films bearing Chicagoist names: more ›

If you read Chicagoist with any regularity – in which case, we love you – you know that we're always reporting about Hollywood coming to Chi-town (or just pretending to come here). Most prominently, we've bitched about Josh Hartnett posing as a Bucktown hipster and fawned over the caped crusader chilling on Lower Wacker. (We always knew Wacker Drive felt like another world and now we know it is: Gotham City.) This week's New... more ›

Chicagoist thinks it's interesting that our city seems to specialize in certain art forms - namely comics, improv comedy, and music. And the cover story of this week's New City offers a peek into that latter group, the great local music scene. In an article listing "Ten Bands on the Verge" – Chicagoist wonders on the verge of what, exactly? – music critic Dave Chamberlain calls out his favorite up-and-coming hometown acts. While sorting through the fray, he makes a few pithy, dead-on remarks about Chicago music, like "The rest of the world lumps Chicago's indie-rock bands together – and that's not necessarily a good thing" and "Chicago is strewn with with the corpses of bands that burned out and fractured before their star rose." more ›

Indie-rock haven Pitchfork is good for something besides their cynical reviews: they also break pertinent music information. And today, they revealed the most pertinent tidbit of them all – the track listing to the Wicker Park soundtrack. (How's that for sarcasm, Pitchforkers?) As dreamy as star Josh Hartnett is, Chicagoist isn't really looking forward to this film, which, as we pointed out a while back, sounded better when it was called Vertigo and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The trailer hasn't given us much more faith: it understandably played to laughs and jeers when Chicagoist saw it with a local audience before Anchorman. We just can't in good faith support any movie that misuses Chicago locations, let alone such Chicago locations. more ›

In Wicker Park, Josh Hartnett stars as an investment banker who moves back to the titular Chicago neighborhood to recover from heartbreak. This plan is foiled when he becomes infatuated with a woman he believes to be his love. Hmm, I think I liked this movie better when it was called Vertigo. You'll have to wait until September to play "Spot the hipster" on the big screen, but you can catch the trailer now at Yahoo! Movies. more ›