Follow Mickey Mouse-obsessed Travis Bickle as he looks for love in a rapidly transforming New York City. more ›

Though fresh from a painstaking digital face-lift, Martin Scorsese's breakthrough 1970s Masterpiece Taxi Driver is not your typical summer escapist fare. The dark antipode of feel-good Spielbergian kinderfantasie like 8mm, the film is a gorgeous yet repellent head-on confrontation with the violent and sexual energies that crash through films like Transformers stripped of the CGI sheen and sublimation of mechanized bodies to absorb the supposedly cathartic violence. Its anti-hero Travis Bickle is a very different sort of Captain America, as if Steve Rogers had been injected with the bloody muck of My Lai instead of "super soldier serum." more ›

• The taxi driver charged with aiding Al-Qaeda must remain in jail but was granted a hearing at which the feds must reveal some of the evidence against him.
• The state is moving forward on an effort to privatize the lottery.
• Downtown's IBM Building and the Andersonville Commercial Historic District neighborhood were added to the National Register of Historic Places.

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. Still, if someone says something mean to you, don't shoot them 16 times in the legs and back.* more ›

Not too long ago, we told you that Chicago cab drivers were working on forming a union to help try and work on some of the ongoing problems they feel they are up against ... super high gas bills and not enough money to take home, being a primary concern. They have tried to get a per-mile surcharge put through City Council, but so far that idea hasn't come through for them. Now, the cab... more ›

Early Saturday morning a woman was crossing the street at 1227 N. Ashland and was hit by a cab. Chicago police are searching for the taxi driver, who witnesses say was speeding through a red light when the woman was hit and critically injured. The 26-year old is currently at the Stroger Hospital of Cook County. Police are still looking for any information regarding the cab driver, who was last seen speeding North on Ashland.... more ›

Halloween is Tuesday, which means this weekend is really the time for all of the –ists to celebrate. And whether they're designing super-spooky costumes or talking about the super-spooky upcoming elections, we'd say that they're doing a fine job of it. Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you... more ›

) more ›

Next week kicks off The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Friday Night at the Movies series. Sadly, this does not mean the CSO will be projecting movies onto its back wall and serving brie and wine like some upper-crust Brew and View. Instead, they’ll perform musical scores from some well-known films. A logical starting point for this series would be the silent film era so Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” will kick things off on October 15th. The series will continue through the winter with The Golden Age of Film Music on November 19th featuring music from Gone With The Wind and Lawrence of Arabia and A Night On The Red Carpet, an Oscar-themed show on February 25th with selections from The Godfather and Doctor Zhivago. Tickets for these events are pricey but if you’re a student you can get in for only ten bucks. more ›