MeTV has been a not-so-guilty pleasure of ours for awhile. Its non-stop parade of vintage TV is a balm to our soul. In fact, we have a Sunday evening routine of sorts. If we're at home, at ten minutes before 5 we fix ourselves a dry martini, with two bleu-cheese stuffed olives, and settle down for back-to-back episodes of Night Gallery (occasionally continuing on for some Twilight Zone if we're feeling especially couch potatoey). more ›

We like the large version even better. We know, we know, that's what she said. more ›

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked... more ›

If a wine shop has its own in-house chef — a Charlie Trotter-trained one at that — odds are it’s going to offer quite a different experience than those warehouse-sized ones you’re used to. And that’s just fine with the people behind Knightsbridge Wine Shoppe & Epicurean Centre. Open since 1986, this cozy Northbrook store takes buying a bottle of wine up a couple notches (the British spellings of its name and the fact that Knightsbridge, an area in London, is home to many of the world’s richest people are definite tip offs). more ›

Last year when Chicagoist spoke with the ladies from Girls Rock! Chicago, the camp was in its first year and had been mildly successful, even though they were finding the camp difficult to publicize. This year they are in full force months ahead of the week-long workshop in August, and they'll be holding their second fundraiser of the year at The Empty Bottle on Saturday. The bill is full of bands that include strong female... more ›

Five Second City theaters around the country, including Chicago, will now serve as a comedy testing ground for NBC/Universal TV as part of a two-year deal. NBC writers will be allowed to visit any Second City theater to see performances of scripts they have in development or watch as characters they’ve created get workshopped for the best way to deliver a funny catchphrase that everyone will be sick of in six months. NBC will also... more ›

We remember our first “real kiss”. It was a bajillion years ago, on a hot, sticky, summer night. We were at Great America, exhilarated after one last, wet ride on Logger's Run. We remember an unmemorable boy sticking a dry and bumpy tongue into our virgin mouth. We were disappointingly shocked, wondering out loud to our tittering friends, “wait, this is supposed to feel good?” more ›

One of our guilty pleasures a year or two ago was the pop-rock combo, fronted by then-teenage singer Noelle, Damone. We knew that the songs were all written by guitarist Dave Pino, who seemed twice the age of the mouthpiece, but we didn’t care. Maybe if Weezer had put out a solid album in the last few years we wouldn’t have been so susceptible to Damone’s charms, but there we were, bopping along with their... more ›

The Empty Bottle is sure going to be stinky tonight. That’s because local sleaze-rockers The Last Vegas are rolling back into town after being on tour for the last few weeks and we really doubt they’ve showered much. It’s just the way of the road. Even without the stench-o-van clinging to their tattered jeans we suspect that the joint would be pretty ripe anyway, since The Last Vegas specializes in the type of raunch-and-roll that... more ›

Nominees for the 2005 Joseph Jefferson Awards for Equity Theaters, or Jeff Equities for short, have been announced. The nominees are selected from a pool of shows that impressed members of the Jeff Nominating Committee (a.k.a. “Jeff Recommended” productions). You can peruse the full list here. The Jeff Committee loves the big splashy musicals. Beauty and the Beast, a classic fairy tale, and Sweeney Todd, a classic cannibal tale, received 7 and 6 nominations, respectively,... more ›

Independent film festivals are often a hit-and-miss affair. For every film that combines humor, insight, or drama with the visual excitement that is the medium of film, there are usually two or three works that sap your will to live just by watching them. Moreover, August is usually the month when major film studios start dumping the lesser lights in their summer release schedule. Oh save us, Chicago Underground Film Festival! This is CUFF’s 12th... more ›

Chicagoist’s Arts and Entertainment department has a confession: the 4th of July kinda stresses us out. When the 4th falls on a weekend, we feel like it becomes one of those occasions—much like New Year’s Eve—where we feel we must make some grand plans so as not to be labeled a loser. Said plans must usually involve one or more of the following: more ›

Chicagoist was chatting it up with the clerk in our local video store last Saturday (Netflix is fine if you’re a movie junkie but sometimes you need a certain kind of fix RIGHT NOW) when a customer walked in and said he wanted a story that was similar to The Terminal. We tried to recommend Before Sunrise—Richard Linklater’s dictionary definition of a sleeper hit about two people who meet, fall in love, and talk a lot during a brief encounter on a Vienna-bound train—but after a few moments of listening to us with glazed eyes the customer turned to the clerk and said “yeah something like that only more fun.” Burn! What more could you ask for? You wanted a story of love, funny accents, and chance meetings against a backdrop of mass transit and that’s what we gave you! Go rent Wimbledon next time and see how much fun that isn’t. more ›

We're always in favor of more places to see movies, especially if those places are in close proximity to alcohol. So the news that Smartbar is now hosting a FREE Tuesday night movie night (via DVD projection) called "The Reel Deal" was welcome indeed. Bad news: you have to be 21+. Good news: they're showing two (tenuously thematically connected) classic cult films per night (plus an entire showing of the BBC's The Office on March... more ›

� You need to be watching Degrassi more ›

With all the attention surrounding Fahrenheit 9/11 and Spiderman 2 (released today and yes, we really want to see it, too) a sure-to-be-great small movie may get lost in the fold. That movie is Before Sunset, the aptly titled sequel to Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, one of the best romantic films (or films period, really) of the last ten years. So simple and so beautiful, the original follows two people (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, neither of them better before or since) as they stroll around nighttime Vienna until having to depart the next morning. Like an American Eric Rohmer movie, it's full of smart, witty dialogue and, like a Richard Linklater movie (see: Waking Life), it's full of rambling, confused and confusing post-graduate monologues. But unlike the director's Slacker � which will be released on an incredible Criterion DVD this August � the movie isn't one big conversation spread amongst a hundred people, but one focused discussion centered around two complete characters. We watch them first get to know each other, then slowly fall in love � all just through the magic of talking. more ›