An uncertain moviegoing age – Chicago Tribune newstrendslive

Good morning, Chicago.

The new Alamo Drafthouse Cinema opened softly last weekend in Wrigleyville.

It doesn’t have a lobby. Or anything like a concession stand. Or ticket takers waiting by theater doors. But it does contain a video store that rents 11,000 VHS tapes and DVDs for free.

Some of the Alamo experience will seem familiar to Chicagoans as the Music Box experience. That venerable local landmark is just a 10-minute walk from the Alamo, and its stew of first-run films, cinephile culture and genre classics echoes the Alamo recipe.

Or rather, vice versa.

Read the full story from the Tribune’s Michael Phillips.

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As temperatures hovered in the single digits this week with wind chills below zero, officials urged Chicagoans to be cautious when going outside. But for thousands of people experiencing homelessness, sometimes being outside is the only option.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is hoping to reduce the number of people living on the streets with a $60 million grant announced for Chicago, part of $315 million in federal funding to 46 communities across the U.S. to fight homelessness.

A 69-year-old woman who left her dead mother’s body in a freezer for nearly two years on Chicago’s Northwest Side documented the death on a household calendar but didn’t tell anyone, prosecutors said in court Thursday.

Eva Bratcher appeared before Cook County Judge David Kelly, who set her bond at $200,000 during a hearing livestreamed on YouTube. Bratcher must pay $20,000 to be released from custody until her next court date.

Commercially successful theater usually promises audiences immortality, writes theater critic Chris Jones. The message likely will be hidden by metaphor, but the idea of passing on yourself, and what you stand for, to future generations, of death merely being a change in form, is inextricable from the genre. It doesn’t matter if the show is set on the Serengeti, in revolution-strewn Paris or in Anatevka. That’s why people go to musicals; they just think it’s for the tunes.

“Big Fish,” the Andrew Lippa-scored musical that had a pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago back in 2013, is a show that understands that truth.

At least seven NFL teams have a clear and pressing need for a quarterback. Which ones could be a match for a trade with the Chicago Bears?

Brad Biggs shares his thoughts.

In the mood for music? The great Mavis Staples is playing Symphony Center for one night only. In need of a laugh? Adam Sandler will be at the United Center this weekend.

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