With the arrival of bebop and its emphasis on the darker, meatier timbre of paired trumpet and sax, the clarinet–the instrument that had ruled the swing era–suddenly seemed out of place. Then Buddy DeFranco got hold of it. After working with some of the most famous swing bandleaders in the early 40s, DeFranco was still young enough to appreciate the radical new music of Parker and Gillespie and adapt it to his instrument....

By Kari Lydersen Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At 12:47 AM on December 31, the old Nabisco factory went up in a “hot orange wall of flame,” in the words of nearby resident Tyner White. Fire brigades arriving on the scene shortly before 1 AM called repeatedly for reinforcements, eventually bringing out 125 firefighters to battle the blaze. Some stayed late into the following afternoon to douse the final embers in the rubble of the long-abandoned building....

Is your boss doing it? Employer-assisted housing “is rapidly gaining momentum,” reports Samantha DeKoven of the Metropolitan Planning Council in “Ideas@Work” (October), published by the Campaign for Sensible Growth. “Lake Forest College, Loyola University, University of Chicago and Wheaton College have encouraged employees to live in nearby communities through a variety of programs. The City of Chicago, City of Evanston and other municipalities offer down payment assistance or reduced interest loans to police officers buying homes in the communities they serve....

American filmmaker James Longley traveled to Gaza in January 2001, hoping to make a documentary about the second Palestinian intifada four months earlier, but after he was denied access to the PLO he decided to make this film about the precarious existence of ordinary Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In the press package Longley is careful not to take sides, but the constant barrage of artillery shells, the civilians’ complaints, and the images of children convulsing from exposure to an unidentified gas offer a ringing indictment of the Sharon government....

Stone Reader Filmed theater, opera, ballet, and musical performance omit the existential and communal links between performer and audience that their live equivalents rely on. Paintings can be filmed, but films that allow us even some of the freedom viewers have in galleries, museums, and other public and private spaces are rare enough to seem like aberrations. Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet’s 1989 Cezanne–which has the nerve to give us extended views of Cezanne canvases from fixed camera positions–has never been screened publicly in this country because the filmmakers refuse to let it be subtitled, knowing that subtitles would impede our view of the paintings....

Jim Shrosbree Bold forms and unusual colors seem to declare “look at me!” suggesting the uniqueness of a painting or sculpture. “Buy me!” is the not-so-hidden subtext. But Jim Shrosbree’s eight sculptures at I Space (there are also seven drawings) implicitly critique such art. Small and initially modest, these lyrically hermetic works reward repeated viewing. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » (EPD), mounted parallel to the wall, offers a wavy surface with small hills and valleys....

Jean Cocteau’s 1948 French feature, adapted from a play produced a decade earlier, is both a lesson in mise en scene and an illustration of the paradox that accentuating the theatrical aspects of theater on-screen can make them quintessentially cinematic. (To my knowledge the only other film that does this to the same degree is Kon Ichikawa’s An Actor’s Revenge.) The accomplishment becomes all the more impressive if one considers Cocteau’s mannered and affected story: the sheltered son of a middle-aged couple who live with the wife’s unmarried sister falls for a young woman without realizing that she is his father’s mistress, and the mother’s terror at the prospect of losing her son is matched by the mistress’s terror of being exposed....

Music Guide For its music guide, Zagat hired photographer, writer, and veteran tastemaker Pat Blashill to draw up a list of 2,050 records, including classical, jazz, show tunes, sound tracks and scores, and of course pop (with a surprisingly rich selection of hip-hop and electronica), and invited reviews through its Web site. The company claims 10,656 people submitted ballots, 59 percent of whom were men; the average age of respondents was 38....

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), a dystopian science fiction film about corporate robots with identity crises, ends (in the director’s cut) with an origami unicorn falling to the floor as a couple enter an elevator. One is a replicant, and the other may be as well; their future is left deliberately ambiguous. Shu Lea Cheang begins I.K.U., her “Japanese sci-fi porn feature,” with her own take on that scene. Reiko, a replicant, and Dizzy, a technician with the Genom Corporation, step into an elevator whose doors then open to reveal floor after floor of a wonderland of sex in the year 2030....

STEREO TOTAL 11/2, EMPTY BOTTLE On their new fifth album, Musique Automatique (Bobsled), this multinational Berlin-based entity–now just the duo of Francoise Cactus and Brezel Goring–have started using more real instruments in an attempt to sound more electronic. (Yeah, I had to read that twice too.) Their attempts at Kraftwerkian bubblegum are a bit less busy and hyper than previous material, but no less catchy. Whether they’re singing in English, French, German, or Turkish, these guys are almost offensively irresistible....

LOVE LIFE 10/4, EMPTY BOTTLE The city of Baltimore lays claim to Edgar Allan Poe, though he lived much of his life elsewhere. Perhaps they’ll be equally proud of their genuinely local genius John Waters after he’s dead too. Rattling and creaking like the prematurely buried, yet chest beating and toe sucking like the gloriously trashy, this Charm City quartet proudly stuffs both heritages into their gothic grab bag, with Katrina Ford wailing like a drag-queen banshee....

The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Bailiwick Repertory. Playwright Paul Rudnick, the king of gay quips, is devastatingly funny in this 1999 play, now premiering in Chicago. But as in Jeffrey, Rudnick also attempts something more weighty, exploring the existence of God, the basis for moral behavior, and whether love endures. The first act reimagines Genesis: what if the first couples were Adam and Steve (David Divita and Stephen Radar) and Jane and Mabel (Jennifer Wilson and Kelli Strickland)?...

Japanese Inspirations: Frank Connet and Jiro Yonezawa Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Connet says his grandmother–“an incredible quilter” who saved fabric scraps for decades before using them–has been an important influence. His works consist of pieces of dyed wool stitched to a linen backing and hung. Rectangular shapes are usually blue, black, or some other dark shade while curved shapes a bit like seedpods, feathers, or leaves are filled with curvy lines of red or orange resembling the contours of the brain’s surface....

Calo Pizzeria Restaurant Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For 40 years CALO PIZZERIA RESTAURANT was a comfortable Italian place beloved for its total lack of chic. But the neighborhood–Andersonville–has been changing, and Calo’s making an effort to fit in with slick new neighbors like Jin Ju, La Tache, and Hama Matsu. A recent extreme makeover includes wood floors instead of the old wall-to-wall floral carpeting, black-and-gray upholstery on the booths instead of red vinyl, and some new windows....

We’re Watching You “But don’t mention my children or my home. Ever. I thought that was against the rules.” And some other people need to know it. “Right up until the last second I was working on the edition,” says Adee. He’d worked out his deal early in the week, but Thursday came and his wife hadn’t wrapped up hers. The Tribune’s managing editor, James O’Shea, had met her in Boston Blackie’s late one night a week or so earlier and passed her his offer, but the next morning he’d left for Iran....

Yerba Buena’s debut album, President Alien (Razor & Tie), is a dense, thrilling exploration of the ways Yoruban culture has evolved and flourished in New York’s melting pot. Neither showy nor forced in its eclecticism, the band draws its power from a blend of countless overlapping street sounds, from Nigerian Afrobeat to Afro-Cuban jams to Spanglish hip-hop. Leader and producer Andres Levin is a big name in cutting-edge Latino pop and rock–he’s produced records by Aterciopelados, Moreno Veloso, Carlinhos Brown, El Gran Silencio, and Ely Guerra, among others–and his fingerprints are all over this mighty dance band’s work....

Action Theatre III: “HMS Barnacle” and “Catalan Grand,” R&D Choreography’s Fight Shop Stage Combat Studio, at Chase Park, and Dirk and Guido: The Swordsmen!, Noble Fool Theater Company. War is in the air–and on the boards. Richard Gilbert and David Bareford, the gurus behind R&D Choreography, have created a 75-minute sign-interpreted showcase of their “violence design”; original one-acts provide narration and context. Easily the more playful and entertaining, “HMS Barnacle” is a tongue-in-cheek action-packed romance as full of puns as punches....

All Lit Up and Nothing to Show Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Michael Leavitt, president of the Cadillac Palace Theatre, claims that city officials have neither pressured him to keep his marquee lit nor picked up the tab. “We felt it was appropriate because this is basically a new theater,” he says, “and we wanted people to know it is here.” He also thinks a lit marquee creates a more inviting atmosphere for patrons approaching the box office to buy tickets for upcoming productions of The Civil War and Jekyll & Hyde....

At first Animal Collective’s Here Comes the Indian (the first release from their own Paw-Tracks label, a sister to Carpark) sounds kind of dinky: anxious little snarls of noise, the pitter-patter of a hi-hat, gently warped strings, intermittent electronic sighs, muted twinkles, insect buzzing. But when you take the time to sit down and actually listen to the output of these four Brooklynites–Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist, and Deaken, all of them respected knob twiddlers–it becomes clear they have little concern for the rules governing quiet, tasteful music....

“Hello, this is Paul,” said the man who answered the phone. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pam got back to us with the news that we could have about 15 minutes at the former senator’s home on Sunday between 1 and 1:30. She sent a map. Even with the map we had some trouble finding his road in rural Makanda, and we didn’t pull into his driveway till after 1:15....