Wwen avant-garde filmmakers burst on the scene in the 60s, they were full of grand ambitions, arguing for alternative ways of seeing and living. Young filmmakers today produce challenging work but offer their art as tentative, provisional, incomplete–many prefer the appellation “experimental.” The films in this program combine diverse imagery without purporting to reach conclusions. In Detached Americans, Gregg Biermann pans a San Francisco landscape with the camera tilted sideways and adds the voice of a boy who witnessed the LA riots to create a displaced feeling–leaving issues unresolved....

The only thing more American than apple pie is apple pie served at a fast-food restaurant, and as Western commercial culture spreads across the globe, even the Arabs are learning to have it our way. About ten years ago the Fakieh family of Saudi Arabia, whose poultry business is the largest in the Middle East, wanted to expand into fast food, so they turned to Chicagoan Joel Steinwold. A graduate of the MBA program at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Steinworld managed a local Burger King before opening Muskie’s, the hamburger and hot dog stand that’s become a fixture in Lakeview....

CHicago Symphony Orchestra Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Two of this century’s most durable concertos are Scandinavian, each intended as a dauntingly virtuosic vehicle for the violin by a master symphonist combining traditional and modern sensibilities. The Sibelius concerto, first performed in 1903, shares an angular tone, spare texture, and muted ecstasy with Carl Nielsen’s sole entry in the genre, composed eight years later....

Only Alderman John Buchanan stopped the predictable steamrolling of the dwindling anti-Daley forces last week. The council was debating an ordinance that would let the mayor appoint 37 of 39 members to a board overseeing Chicago’s economic empowerment zone. Oh, the anti-Daleyites still got steamrolled, of course. Buchanan just made it less predictable. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Buchanan, whose southeast-side 10th Ward isn’t included in the zone, scoffed good-naturedly at other nonzone aldermen who complained about being left out of its $100 million in federal funds....

This rarely shown French-Mexican coproduction of 1956 offers a haunting view of characters pushed to their limits. The action begins when a Latin American dictator attempts to nationalize a diamond mine and the workers there rebel. There are baroque plot twists, as befits a story of corruption that includes characters as diverse as a priest (Michel Piccoli) and a prostitute (Simone Signoret). But the film’s first half is relatively pedestrian; director Luis Bunuel even said of the film, “My basic problem was the screenplay, which I somehow just couldn’t get right....

Dear Reader: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Case in point: the August 25 cover story about architects Loebl Schlossman & Hackl. In it one of their major works, Water Tower Place, is cited as a great and groundbreaking success, superior even to recent imitators like 900 North Michigan because of its interior design. Credit is given specifically to the “dazzling atrium” with its planting, cascades, and anti-perspective escalators, which lures customers past its ground-floor-hogging anchor tenants up into the mall itself....

Hype vs. Reality at the Independent Label Fest Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Lastre lacks McFadden’s flair for invective but responded doggedly, noting that reps from many of those labels had indeed been part of the fest’s first year. In response, McFadden brought out the big guns, crafting long lists of the ILF’s perceived failings and trashing Lastre personally. It’s probable that the exchange turned the perceptions of many to disdain toward the fest in general and Lastre in particular....

Every singer has to pay attention to myriad details–from vocal technique and band arrangements to between-song chitchat, from gesture and deportment to costumes and cosmetics. These concerns are of special importance to Jim Bailey, who for some 25 years has made a career of impersonating the likes of Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and Peggy Lee. Forget any notions of drag-queen mimicry or mockery: Bailey’s an extraordinary musical actor whose convincing illusions depend as much on his phenomenal singing as on his uncannily accurate re-creation of his subjects’ stage presence....

By Linda Lutton At the end of the counter in the back corner of the store, Gutierrez and his people have squeezed a card table between stacks of Sunny Delight juice drink and a warm display of pork rinds. Staff members surround Gutierrez, who’s casually dressed for a congressman, though he’s probably the only guy in the store with a tie. He appears to be having a good time. “We’ve gotta negotiate better,” he jokes....

Pearl Jam Writes Its Own Ticket Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Third, note that ETM’s $2.45 includes a 40-cent mailing fee; Ticketmaster tacks on at least another $2 per order for mailing. Fourth, ETM will print the service charges on the ticket, which Ticketmaster claims to do but actually doesn’t; and ETM isn’t picking up bucks on the side by putting advertising on the ticket....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This review makes the Reader look terrible. Paglia makes a good, all-out attack on your core views (views you never expose to scrutiny in editorials, but which you work in between the lines in half your first section articles). This is a good chance for you to defend yourself, and you have nothing to offer but personal attacks on her character....

By Ted Cox Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The most curious thing about Sacred Hoops was the difficulty a reader had in recognizing any of the Bulls’ three championship teams in its pages. “Compassion is where Zen and Christianity intersect,” Jackson wrote, then quoted B.J. Armstrong’s line that the untold story of those teams was “the respect each individual has for everybody else.” He also discussed how the team had to learn to control its anger and its hatred of the Detroit Pistons before it could defeat them....

“Logic and history say that the frontier was, in fact, a place where violence served the causes of racial subordination, but a more powerful emotional understanding says that the frontier is where people of courage have gone to take a stand for the right and the good,” writes historian Patricia Nelson Limerick in Harper’s (October), quoted from her contribution to a book published in conjunction with the Newberry Library’s exhibit on the frontier....

The Preservation of Richard Nickel “The expression a great architect achieves has continuing value, just like any work of art. Because architecture is three-dimensional and functional it can be saved, logically, by saving the whole building.” –Richard Nickel “He wanted to convince people,” says Cahan, “that tearing down a great building is like going into the Art Institute and spray painting the art. That was his goal, of taking beautiful pictures and telling people to wake up....

I would like to add two footnotes to the brilliant two-part history of Big Table [“Naked Censorship,” September 29 and October 6]. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » First, Daily News columnist Jack Mabley never considered his audience to be the university but rather Charlie Six-Packs. His attempt to impune “beat writing” was a hack columnist’s attempt at narcissistic overreaching. In terms of journalism, he was just about on a par with that right-wing drunk Paul Malloy, who was the TV critic for the Sun-Times....

On the surface, there’s not a whole lot to the Spinanes–no feedback, no flailing hair, not even a full-fledged band. A slender duo who combined would be barely the size of Meat Loaf, the Spinanes are Rebecca Gates (vocals, guitar) and Scott Plouf (drums). Like many bands today united under the banner Less Is More, the Spinanes strip rock to the bare, white bones: a beat, some chords, and a melody....

You are the only person that can clear this up once and for all. What exactly is the Bilderberg Group? There have been accusations on the Larry King show that it is some kind of secret organization that has a lot of influence in shaping world events today and in the past. According to one caller, Bill Clinton was at one of their meetings a few years ago. Is any of this true?...

In any other neighborhood Bill Smith’s 23-unit town house complex, having won the local alderman’s support, would be under construction by now whether neighbors wanted it or not. But this being Lincoln Park, things are a little different. These neighbors have a lawyer living on their block who argued their case before the Zoning Board of Appeals, where, to their pleasant surprise, they won. “To get a variance you need the alderman’s support, and you won’t get the alderman’s support if the residents aren’t behind you,” says Mellis, Wrightwood’s planning chairman....

*** RED ROCK WEST Like poor relations, films noirs have never gotten much respect. Eyed with suspicion by the studios that produced them and dismissed as a guilty pleasure by the public that viewed them, the films were only identified as a genre in the 50s by the French critics of Cahiers du Cinema who loved them. Given this mark of approval, films by American directors like Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray became venerated abroad as they never had been on these shores....

A quarter century has flown since the Royal Shakespeare Company’s acrobatic, dazzling white A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Peter Brook, illuminated the comedy’s youth and rejuvenated the Auditorium Theatre. A generation later, the RSC burnishes its reputation with Adrian Noble’s incandescent, rainbow-laden staging. With its swarms of amber, tear-shaped hanging bulbs and its Magritte-like fairy bower, this Dream is just that, a three-hour triumph of stage illusion. And this is a script that must have the power to deceive: the fairy spell cast over the impetuous lovers and clowns must also be cast over the audience....