An ode to fanatical French cinephilia in 1948–the generation immediately preceding the New Wave, to which writer-director Jean-Charles Tacchella (Cousin, cousine) belonged–this is a must-see charmer not only for crazed film buffs and Francophiles, but also for anyone wanting to follow the adventures of a passionate romantic trio of scruffy bohemians in their early 20s in a Paris that no longer exists. Like the New Wave figures who followed them, the young men in this milieu write about movies and aspire to be directors; as critic David Overbey put it, they live through film references: “They even take girls to bed talking about Howard Hawks’s women and wake up feeling like Bogart....

MICKEY PALLAS Though I immediately interpret such pictures as critiques, they were in fact taken as a commercial assignment, intended for use in Buick ads. Their nonjudgmental gaze forces me to realize it is I, with my particular attitude toward modern technology and culture, who sees horror in this configuration of mass-manufactured cars, cookie-cutter houses, and gridlike streets. While at first glance I saw the Buick family as 50s automatons, with no more personality than the tail fins or the home, closer examination of the image shows the humanity of each face....

The trails are quiet now, their trees covered with snow, but away from the forests in the towns and city where the people live a storm is raging. On the other side are the mountain bikers, a group growing in numbers and influence. “Studies have shown that mountain bikes do less damage to the trails than people walking,” says Bruce Glaser, a promoter of mountain bike races and owner of the Wheel Thing, a bike store in La Grange....

FRIDAY 9 SATURDAY 10 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Not all of Wicker Park’s numerous venues are participating in this weekend’s Around the Coyote arts fest, but many that aren’t on the official map are holding events all the same. Among the contemporaneous but not connected is an exhibit of the work of local designers at HotHouse. Millinery, clothing, jewelry, and jewelry boxes from the likes of Monica Brown, Jalil Iah, Kathleen Nagel, Makeba Kedem Dubose, and others will be on view and available for sale from 11 to 5 today and tomorrow at the club, 1565 N....

RICHARD THOMPSON Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The juxtaposition of two songs near the end of Thompson’s recent two-hour, 23-song set at the Riviera highlighted the difference between his merely entertaining material and the frighteningly intense emotions he can extract from his ancient sources. “Shoot Out the Lights”–perhaps his most acclaimed song–is a gripping account of an urban killer on the prowl; it’s constructed like a medieval dirge, each line framed with modal chords crashing against each other like tolling cathedral bells....

As I glanced through Section One on my way to work Monday morning, something caught my eye. It was page 41, a page that was dedicated, in prose as well as photograph, to the many charms of the ubiquitous Let’s Pet (“Doggies in the Window,” January 26). Ubiquitous? Yes, indeed. You see, Friday morning I was on my way to the large animal shelter where I work, and damn if I don’t see evidence of Let’s Pet every day....

By Michael Miner “We are in receipt of the calendar you sent our staff member Terry Brown on behalf of the Chicago Reader. All editorial employees are governed by an ethics policy that precludes them from accepting any gifts. Therefore, we have donated the calendar to a charitable organization. “The intention of the policy is good. The execution is a little silly at times, don’t you think?” said Brown, the Tribune’s bureau chief for the western suburbs....

Balustrade Theatre Company, at Le Cafe. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Balustrade’s cast begin their double bill of one-act farces by Shaw and Chekhov with poor posture. The first half of Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband, about an 18-year-old geyser of romantic poetry pleading his case to “a very ordinary South Kensington female of about thirty-seven,” slouches so much that it feels more like a Dynasty spoof than a carefully crafted drama (this may have been due in part to opening-night jitters, especially since Balustrade offered no previews for this debut production)....

Steve Darnall is flipping through Girls’ Love Stories, a romance comic book from the mid-60s. “Look at this!” he says, pointing to a scene in which a young woman is being interviewed by a potential employer who sternly tells her that women usually fail in business because they quit to get married. Convincing him that her career comes first, she gets the job and then, of course, ends up falling in love....

COMING BACK Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In an unnamed hospital a wounded soldier lies hooked up to machines that keep him alive. His arms and legs already amputated, he lies in limbo, clutching feebly at his memories. When the faith and determination of a noble doctor allow him to rise from his coma into semiconsciousness, his sole request is to return to what remains of his family–a request he can make only by banging his head against the table in a crude rendition of Morse code....

At once nostalgic and satirical, Late Nite Catechism walks a fine line between the saccharine, soporific Nunsense and Christopher Durang’s bitter Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You. At least Vicki Quade and Maripat Donovan’s mildly barbed look at Catholic education appeals both to lapsed and practicing Catholics. Which is why, I suppose, this affectionate, witty play is still running after all these years. And because it’s essentially a one-woman show, it depends entirely on its lead actress for warmth and comic range, for embodying all our ambivalent attitudes toward the foibles and follies of the American Catholic Church....

If the people here achieve immortality, it will be as answers to trivia questions. Yet they deserve better journalistic burials than they received. So before they slip into the past, let’s celebrate the Almost Famous who crossed the bar in 1997, carrying to the other side some small yet luminous distinctions. savings of $3 into his pocket and roller-skated from Charleston, South Carolina, to the University of Pittsburgh, where he pursued graduate studies....

Luther “Guitar Jr.” Johnson put in nearly a decade as the lead guitarist in Muddy Waters’s band in the 1970s. That gig gave him some valuable name recognition, but it also tended to leave listeners with impossibly high expectations. Unlike his old boss, Johnson is no trailblazer; nor is he a direct product of the rich Delta-to-Chicago tradition. He’s a fiery exponent of the post-1960 Chicago style pioneered by west-siders like Magic Sam; his attack is aggressive and layered, with scurrying arpeggios laid cleanly between declamatory chording....

In the late 20s and early 30s Berthold Goldschmidt was a young composer on the verge of a brilliant career. A student of the influential teacher Franz Schreker and later an artistic adviser for the Berlin State Opera, he favored an extravagant expressionism over the then-fashionable serialism. His first string quartet won praise from Schoenberg; his vocal music exuded the pungent sarcasm of his friend Kurt Weill; and his opera The Magnificent Cuckold revealed an ambitious talent....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Wayward principals: In September the principal of Sylvia Elementary School in Beckley, West Virginia, George S. Meadows, 55, was suspended after being arrested for prostitution. (He was wearing a wig and dressed as a woman at the time.) Also in September, the principal of Charles Brush High School in Lyndhurst, Ohio, Walter Conte, 50, was arrested for allegedly secretly videotaping 16 cheerleaders as they changed into swimsuits during a party at his home....

Other festivals run one weekend, maybe two or three; but this one, hosted by the Pilsen area’s Blue Rider Theatre, runs three months–September 10 through December 17, with shows Fridays-Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 7 PM, as well as children’s matinees on selected Saturdays and Sundays at 3 PM. Most evenings feature two or more artists, with intermissions between each act. Aiming to mix theater, performance art, dance, poetry, and music, the fest has scheduled 80 artists in 40 nights, by such groups and individuals as Theater Oobleck, Redmoon Theater, Donna Blue Lachman, Carmela Rago, Jeff Abell, MASS, Bob Eisen, the Chicago Moving Company, and many more....

Bill Brown’s Roswell, being screened in the Friday program of the Onion City Film Festival, takes a fanciful, humorous look at the supposed crash of a flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, an “event” UFO types cite to this day as evidence of a massive government cover-up. Brown, a recent Harvard graduate who appears in the film and whose voice is heard on the sound track, seems to take the event seriously....

It’s a little scary when a terrific new place opens up in what’s consistently been a restaurant burial ground. In the case of the Marc, one can only hope that it will break the jinx on its address. It certainly deserves to. Andrew Marc Rothschild toiled in Gordon’s kitchen during late 1991 and part of last year, after stints at New York’s esteemed River Cafe, London’s even more celebrated La Gavroche, and several spots in Strasbourg, France....

Forget these two words: Las and Vegas. The riverboat casinos docked in a dozen dumpy little towns around the Midwest are not the new Las Vegas. They have no Siegfried and Roy, no fabulous show girls, no artificial volcanoes or pirate ships, no all-night-buffet-till-you-puke, and saddest of all, no Wayne Newton. New riverboat casinos pop up almost as often these days as new Gap stores did a few years ago. Riverboats dock in nine locations in Illinois now, and a tenth will open later this year; nationally, there are 22 riverboat casinos and 30 more scheduled to shove off by December....

Untitled Flesh I went to Untitled Flesh at the Randolph Street Gallery on “women’s night.” The show’s content wasn’t any different than on the other two nights of performance, according to a cast member, but she said that the audience energy does change. And from my own experiences in women-only spaces, I think I know what she means: mixed audiences are more openly sexual in their responses, while all-women audiences generally offer a broader spectrum of emotions....