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Printers Row Lit Fest printersrowlitfest.org Runner-Up: BookCon

I’ve seen only two films by Chinese documentary maker Wang Bing, but on the basis of ‘Til Madness Do Us Part (which played at Facets in 2016) and Bitter Money (which opens there today for a weeklong run), I’d aver that he’s one of the most exciting nonfiction filmmakers working today. Both movies deliver powerful lessons about injustice in contemporary China; they’re also immersive, formally challenging works that employ extended running times to make viewers think long and hard about what it’s like to live as the onscreen subjects do....

Fauvely front woman Sophie Brochu has built a creative life working with the warm, distorted tones of shoegaze; for much of the 2010s, she explored the style’s indie-pop possibilities in Chicago five-piece Videotape, and she’s helped push amps to their breaking points as part of the live lineup for Scott Cortez’s wall-of-sound project Astrobrite. Brochu launched Fauvely as a solo outlet in 2017, but she’s since turned it into a full-fledged band with the addition of guitarist-keyboardist Dale Price, drummer Dave Piscotti, and bassist Phil Conklin....

Made in Chicago Market vendor applications are now available! Show Chicago what your business is all about at the Made in Chicago Market on December 18, 2016. Applications due the week of 10/24. Download a vendor application (PDF).

Jam ‘N Honey 958 W. Webster 773-327-5266 jamnhoney.com Runner-Up: Davanti Enoteca

Sheena Laird @Sheenacular Runner-Up: Gloria Mwez

5 Loaves Eatery 5loaveschicago.com The kind of place every neighborhood wants, 5 Loaves Eatery is a brightly painted, friendly breakfast spot making delicious soul-food staples like chicken and waffles and shrimp and grits. And food with soul it is: the name comes from the five loaves that Jesus multiplied in Matthew, and the owners give away at least one free meal each day to someone in need. It’s a fitting replacement on 75th Street for Army & Lou’s, one of Chicago’s sorely missed soul-food spots....

Spex OPtical various locations, spexoptical.com Runner-Up: Warby Parker

Bumbac Joe bumbacjoe.com Runner-Up: Future Rootz

Frontera Grill Mi Tocaya Antojería Finalists: Garcia’s Restaurant, Mas Alla del Sol, Su Casa

Stefanie Johnsen David Goodman-Edberg Finalists: Dan Sonenberg, Joshua Allard, Dylan Reyno

You can’t talk about Canadian indie rock in the 2000s without Broken Social Scene, in part because the group is a community unto itself. This small musical army’s ranks include members of Metric, Stars, KC Accidental, Do Make Say Think, Apostle of Hustle, and an indomitable face of indie-pop crossover success, Feist. But as much as their grand, driven, and sometimes intimate style is representative of indie rock in the aughties, Broken Social Scene aren’t anchored by the past....

Ever since this year’s presidential campaign kicked into high gear, everybody’s become a fact-checker, from tweeters watching the party conventions at home right on up to Tim Kaine, who used the vice-presidential debate as a forum for grilling Mike Pence about the veracity of various statements made by Donald Trump. So it seems like a particularly apt time for the University of Chicago Press to release the latest in its series of publishing guides, The Chicago Guide to Fact-Checking....

It’s been almost 25 years since I first met Andrew Kitchen, but when we recently got together for not-drinks (“Sorry,” he apologized, “I only drink martinis and daiquiris”), the perpetually aspiring media mogul looked exactly the same as he had in the mid-90s. A long-running joke about Dick Clark—who kicked off the TV dance craze in 1957 when the Philadelphia show he hosted, Bandstand, went national and became American Bandstand—imagined that he never aged....

Eric Zorn noted the other day that Monday marks the 30th anniversary of his arrival in the pages of the Tribune as a columnist. Zorn counted his blessings. But Zorn dug in. He mastered the case file and sicced logic and common sense on prosecutor Jim Ryan’s case for executing Cruz. The case fell apart. “This case is not about technicalities; it’s about a massive miscarriage of justice, blatant misrepresentations to the jury,” Zorn told us then....

I prefer collecting music on physical media—I like holding a vinyl record or cassette tape in my hands, and I enjoy the way the sound disintegrates when tapes get worn or LPs get scratchy. But sometimes it’s nice to have access to more music than I can afford to fit in my home, so I’ll use streaming services for specific genres or eras of music underrepresented in my stacks. A big drawback to most of these apps and websites (besides the fact that they don’t like to pay artists) is their use of algorithms to feed you music you “might like....

I’ve been a fan of Bay Area bassist Lisa Mezzacappa for years now, especially her work in several strong collectives—including Cylinder with reedist Aram Shelton (a former Chicagoan) and a nameless quartet with trumpeter Darren Johnston, saxophonist Aaron Bennett, and drummer Frank Rosaly (another former Chicagoan). But she came up big in 2017 with two impressive and very different albums, each of which reveals talents as a bandleader and conceptual composer that I hadn’t known she had....

“Vision Quest: A Kashink Solo Show” 1741 W. Chicago 773-420-9764 chicagotruborn.com Runner-Up: “Lucid Dreamscapes: David Welker and Brin Levinson”

Alice’s Lincoln Karaoke Finalists: Hidden Cove, Edelweiss Tavern