ST. CHARLES | The Illinois International Film Festival was held in the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, Ill. over the weekend, showing 48 films in three days. I saw everything from a six-minute music video that played in reverse to a 90-minute-long documentary...

SAN FRANCISCO | Warner Music Group Corp. has agreed to distribute and license its copyrighted songs and other material through online video trendsetter YouTube Inc., marking another significant step in the entertainment industry's migration to the Internet....

"The Covenant" surrounds the Sons of Ipswich ­— the descendants of the families that founded the Ipswich colony in the 1600s. At the age of 13, the four men were given a taste of the untold power they would achieve on their 18th birthday. Now, Caleb...

DeKALB | Singer-songwriter Michael McDermott will come the House Cafe, 263 E. Lincoln Highway, Thursday. The Chicago native recently moved back to the Windy City after spending a year in Los Angeles. Northern Star: Since you woke up this morning, what...

Paris has a quality about it that brings residents to their windows and deserts them there. It beckons you with the sounds, lights and laughter, but what you end up doing is hanging your head limply over the window sill, staring and trying to make sense...

DeKALB | The Vermeer Quartet awaits it's final year of performance. This year will mark the group's 33rd season at NIU. The quartet — first violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi, second violinist Mathias Tacke, violist Richard Young and cellist Marc Johnson —...

The Roots continue to be grounded in politically experimental hip-hop. The Philadelphia sextet of rhyme-spilling, instrument-banging activists has a new label in which to dig their namesake. A combination of minimal-to-major successes allowed The Roots...

DeKALB | Monday night saw perhaps the nerdiest show that the House Cafe, 263 E. Lincoln Highway, will host all year. Diminutive rapper MC Chris hit DeKalb, bringing his nerd-based brand of hip hop to a capacity crowd. "I'm a giant diaper-wearing spider...

While Bob Dylan's latest effort is indeed titled "Modern Times," very little of the album can be considered "modern." In fact, it does an incredible job recalling Dylan's fantastic late-60s/early-70s work. Rather than attempt a take on the current scene,...

DeKALB | The Convocation Center will be cha-chinging with this year's Homecoming concert. But it won't be the echoing of cash registers that makes the noise, instead it will be St. Louis-based rapper Chingy. The 26-year-old will headline the show Friday,...

"Crossover" is a street basketball movie that pretends to have a plot. Although it sometimes succeeds, the terrible acting makes that null and void. One of the most surprising things is that Wayne Brady manages to be a seedy nightclub owner, as well as...

The most difficult aspect of making a film about a magician is finding the right actor to play the magician. The lead is required to play another actor in a way. A magician is an actor after all, but not just an actor. When we watch a magic show, we know...