Ah, the storied halls of America's finest institutions, the bastions of educational excellence, and the homes of our country's future leaders. Columbia, Boston, Penn, Duke, Vanderbilt, and yes, the University of Chicago — these are just a few of the schools that have long ranked as the best of the best. more ›

While hardly an undiscovered treasure, Facets Multimedia is the ultimate under-the-radar art house theater. It doesn't have the flash of the Landmark or the old Chicago feel of the Music Box. But it makes up for all that with challenging foreign films, lauded independent features and a deep catalog of hard-to-find movies for rental and purchase (we could have saved a lot of time tracking down Out of the Loop, a documentary on the late 80s/early 90s Chicago music scene, if we had made Facets our first stop instead of our last. more ›

In the spirit of last night’s Oscars, we present this montage of thoughts: * Forget pimps: it was hard out there for Jon Stewart. Stewart is and was frequently hilarious, but what works on the Daily Show doesn't work for the Oscars. Like most unconventional hosts (Letterman, Chris Rock), Stewart was done in because he was expected to bring his sharp, cutting wit to a venue that doesn't appreciate it. An organization that rolls three... more ›