As usual this year’s Country Music Fest, the only consistently themed block of music programming during the Taste of Chicago, offers a mixed bag of mainstream stars, alt-country talents, and local cover bands. Saturday’s “Afternoon of Musical Couples” on the Taste Stage (Balbo and Columbus) looks the most promising; the Petrillo Music Shell (Columbus and Jackson) is dominated by Nashville pap. This Nashville couple, regulars on A Prairie Home Companion, made their first record and their first appearance on the radio show in 1975....

James E. Grote’s adaptation of Richard Peck’s Newbery-winning children’s novel gets bogged down in narrative sometimes, which is unfortunate given Peck’s imaginative prose. Still, Grote does well at creating a consistent tone in these tales of the yearly pilgrimages that Joey and Mary Alice make to visit their no-nonsense grandma during the Depression. As the brother and narrator, Kevin Kingston gives the family’s modest adventures–fishing from a stolen boat, baking pies for the county fair–a deadpan sincerity; warmth and modesty permeate this homespun production....

Animal of the Year, Bailiwick Repertory. From the start of this competition–a televised pageant for animals, testing their personality, brains, and survival skills–it looks as if the crown will be going to a good-natured but timid moose named Harry. Sure, he lacks the confidence of fellow contestants Lightning the Racehorse, Brenda the Police Dog, and Jojo the Space Monkey, but that’s part of his charm. But when everything begins to go wrong for Harry, it becomes obvious that someone is sabotaging him....

Hospital Bill Literacy 101. “A frequent error of hospitals occurs with respect to intravenous solutions that are administered on the day of admission,” according to the Hospital Accountability Project of the Service Employees International Union (“Bitter Bills to Swallow: A consumer guide to the 20 most common ways hospitals overcharge patients”). “The hospital computer will bill you for a full day’s worth of IV solutions–for example, $189 for an IV ampicillin antibiotic solution....

More than half of Chicago high schoolers attend schools outside their neighborhoods, reports Elizabeth Duffrin in Catalyst (December), and those who stay behind are paying a price. The city’s 12 least popular high schools–Austin, Manley, and Orr high schools on the west side, and Calumet, Bowen, Englewood, Fenger, Harlan, Robeson, South Shore, Tilden, and Phillips on the south side–lost 62 to 77 percent of the students in their attendance areas last year....

Most classical crossover music demeans both the popular and classical genres. Contempo–formerly the Contemporary Chamber Players–is trying to do crossover right, including smart music and musicians from both genres on the same bill. On this one, jazz pianist Brad Mehldau will improvise solo, and judging from his recent live album, he’ll be aiming for something along the lines of Keith Jarrett’s loose-limbed improvised concerts. The program also includes works in the avant-garde tradition CCP has long been known for....

Landscapes of the Soul: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko All of Dovzhenko’s major films include events—in the wild montage flurries of Arsenal they’re virtually nonstop—and some of them are explosive, sometimes literally. Events can’t be consumed the way narratives can be, because their very nature tends to confuse and confound us: they are splintered experiences that generally become coherent only through the continuity and logical progression of storytelling. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

It’s the art deco fair, not the White City, that’s the focus of this weekend’s World’s Fair Memorabilia Show in Elk Grove Village, organized by fair fanatics Rick Rann and Bob Conidi. There’ll be collectibles from the 1893 Columbian Exposition and world’s fairs held in other American cities (like Saint Louis in 1904 and Seattle in 1962) but Chicago’s 1933-’34 event, in all its streamlined glory, will be the main attraction....

Tokyo-born harpist Emi Maeda has spent much of her life studying the classical repertoire for her instrument, but you probably wouldn’t guess it from listening to her own “Batgirl in Vienna.” On that piece Maeda–who’s currently studying at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki–uses her harp as the interface for an elaborate network of electronics; the sound places her somewhere between the laptop set and the wild, highly physical noiseniks that seem to pop up in Japan like dandelions....

The idea behind this festival, curated by choreographer Sheldon B. Smith and composer Dave Pavkovic, is to give music and dance equal weight. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the two are well coordinated–and serendipity is part of these pieces’ charm. Kay Wendt LaSota’s duet I Might Be Sinking was being rehearsed to Jonathan Chen’s experimental music for the first time when I saw it, but the sounds this classically trained violinist produced from PVC piping, an old speaker, and a corrugated tube went remarkably well with LaSota’s matter-of-fact, athletic choreography and enigmatic script....

Todd Haynes’s best feature to date–a provocative companion piece to his underrated Safe (1995), which also starred Julianne Moore as a lost suburban housewife but is otherwise quite different. This brilliantly and comprehensively captures the look, feel, and sound of glamorous 50s tearjerkers like All That Heaven Allows, not to mock or feel superior to them but to say new things with their vocabulary. The story, set in 1957 and accompanied by a classic Elmer Bernstein score, concerns a traditional if well-to-do “homemaker” who falls in love with her black gardener (a superb performance by Dennis Haysbert) around the time that she discovers her husband (Dennis Quaid) is a closeted homosexual....

Joe Goode tells stories. Blending text, movement, and live music, he looks at the way we live now and wonders if it could be better. His Gender Heroes (the first of two parts in the evening-length piece his San Francisco company will perform here) begins with questions: What if nothing is the way it seems? What if the stories we hear don’t match the stories we live? First we listen to a man who recalls that as a boy he coveted his sister’s fringed cowgirl skirt–why can’t he wear it?...

It began–well, who knows when the conflict began? That’s part of the problem. The religious might say it began with Abraham and his sons Isaac and Ishmael. Flash forward some thousands of years to September 28, 2000, and Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount plaza, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock sit. This was followed by (spontaneous? orchestrated?) rioting by Palestinians, followed by Israeli self-defense? brutality?...

There were people doing interesting things with electro long before music critics and their plus-ones discovered and discarded the peacocks of the genre, and they haven’t let up since. I’m talking specifically about the Dutch hard-asses who run Bunker, a label initially funded in part by selling acid; they spout bizarre, bitter missives thrashing the flimsiness of fashion-magazine electro and back up the finger wagging with their dark melodies and murderous beats....

MOUSE ON MARS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Most of the tunes on Mouse on Mars’s terrific new Idiology (Thrill Jockey) would more likely precipitate a sit-down strike than a dance-floor clamor at the local disco. But Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma haven’t obscured their techno roots even as they’ve moved beyond them. As on last year’s Niun Niggung, they use real instruments, but these don’t advertise themselves–rather they’re tightly woven through the meticulously programmed electronic grooves and distinctive squelchy tones....

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Read the Hot Type column on northwest Indiana [June 7] with interest. Back in 1973, I moved from California to Gary to work on the paper Compass, which grew out of the printers’ strike at then-Hammond Times. It lasted for three years and it remains the single most important, fun, and educational experience I’ve had in journalism (our normal workweek was about 60-70 hours, so we were allowed to drink beer in the newsroom as a perk)....

In this time of high gasoline prices, the Teeming Millions need your guidance (well, at least I do). What is the difference between premium and regular gas, and is this difference worth the extra money? I normally put premium gas into my car because I don’t mind paying two or three extra dollars at the pump. Am I being scammed by the gas stations, or is the benefit to my car worth it?...

Long local cabaret favorites both together and separately, vocalist Tom Michael and singer-pianist Beckie Menzie made a very strong impression at last week’s Chicago Cabaret Convention. Completely lacking the arch pseudosophistication some people associate with the genre, they touched both casual listeners and aficionados with their directness and intelligence as well as their musical skills. They’re reteaming for a one-nighter that will be their last formal appearance in town for a while; Menzie soon heads off to the world of summer stock, while Michael is curtailing live gigs to concentrate on wrapping up a new CD....

Matching wine to cuisines it isn’t traditionally drunk with–Caribbean, Latin American, Asian–is the focus of this new periodic feature, in which we pick a BYO restaurant, sample a few dishes, and recommend some wines. Shrimp Pil Pil 3 $6.95 Brewate 7 $1.50 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mediterranean ingredients like olives and tomatoes bring a wonderful acidity to many dishes at this Moroccan eatery, where owner Hadji Mohamed makes a point of greeting each table personally....

There’s an undercurrent of anger in The Pinata Strikes Back, a new sketch revue directed by Keith Privett. This Latina-themed show by ÁSalsation! targets societal structures that frustrate individual needs, from families to community bureaucracies to the federal government. Unfortunately the anger doesn’t always meld with the show’s wackiness–in one sketch a pinata talks to the audience before attempting an escape–partly because the anger is downplayed. And most sketches have a wandering, unfinished quality....