IKEA Monkey

Entering into a robust fraternity of cinematic triumphs that includes such highlights as Gotti and Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s new comedy Holmes & Watson has joined the storied pantheon of movies rocking a 0 percent “rotten” score on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. For…

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Every dog at St. Charles City Animal Control was adopted over the weekend, clearing the shelter just in time for Christmas.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that parts of the federal government will stay closed until Democrats agree to put up more walls along the U.S.-Mexico border to deter criminal elements. He said he's open to calling the wall something else as long as he ends up with an actual wall.

In a Christmas...

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday marked Christmas with a renewed attack on the central bank over plunging stocks, as he aired a catalogue of grievances in a downbeat gathering at the Oval Office. High on the laundry list was the Democrats, whom he blamed for a partial government shutdown which dragged into its fourth day -- paralyzing key federal services such as national parks -- with no end in sight. With the stock market on track for its worst December since the Great Depression, Trump berated the Federal Reserve for its stewardship of the economy, a regular recent complaint.

President Donald Trump says he wants the border wall between Mexico and the United States finished by election day 2020.

Over the next week, The Atlantic’s “And, Scene” series will delve into some of the most interesting films of the year by examining a single, noteworthy cinematic moment from 2018. Next up is Alex Garland’s Annihilation. (Read our previous entries here.)

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The denouement of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation is Lovecraftian in its sci-fi inscrutability. The main character, an unnamed biologist, descends the staircase of a mysterious underground structure she calls the “tower” and encounters a creature called the “Crawler,” a being that is all but indescribable. H. P. Lovecraft enjoyed writing about monsters that were too terrible to behold, that would reduce anyone who looked at them to a gibbering mess. The Crawler is perhaps slightly less malevolent, but nonetheless difficult to explain: a fungal hodgepodge of people, animal, plants, and things at the center of Annihilation’s surreal “Area X.”

Garland, in his telling, read a galley of VanderMeer’s novel, absorbed it, and said to the author, “I don’t know how to do a faithful adaptation of your book.” The director wasn’t lying—his take on Annihilation is similar in plot setup (a biologist investigates a mysterious zone with an all-female team of scientists), but quite different in many other ways. The movie’s conclusion sees the protagonist, Lena (played by Natalie Portman), encountering some very curious things, including a copy of herself and a glowing, undulating Mandelbulb that was once her fellow explorer Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

It’s weird. It’s different. But most importantly, the ending doesn’t lend itself to easy interpretations, which was exactly the experience that I sought from Garland’s film (as a big fan of VanderMeer’s writing). Though it was released in February and for the most part wasn’t even seen in theaters outside of America, Annihilation is the kind of studio oddity that seems destined to stand the test of time, partly because of how bold and unusual its ending is. It’s rare for a film this aggressively challenging to make it through the studio net these days, but Annihilation did, and Garland (who had final-cut rights and withstood studio efforts to change the ending) made the most of it.

[Read: A longer deconstruction of the ending of ‘Annihilation’]

The film’s final scene can be broken into two sections: one taking place above ground and the other below, both beautifully scored by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow’s thrumming score. After Lena treks through the “Shimmer,” an alien environment that was generated on Earth by a meteor strike, she comes upon a lighthouse surrounded by human bones. Inside lies the burned-up corpse of her husband (Oscar Isaac), who journeyed into the Shimmer before her. Down beneath the surface is a chamber that resembles a colossal carapace; there, Ventress suddenly appears and vomits glowing energy into the air before transforming into a giant, phosphorescent object.

Eventually the object morphs, and Lena is challenged by a shiny metallic humanoid that imitates her every move. If she fights it, it fights back. When she lies down, so does it. The sequence is like a plaintive sort of waltz, one that was choreographed by Bobbi Jene Smith and performed by Garland’s frequent collaborator Sonoya Mizuno. It’s frightening, but it’s also sort of funny, a little sad, and, of course, highly metaphorical.

Every member of Lena’s team entered the Shimmer shouldering some sort of trauma. Ventress was dying from cancer, and her demise—a brilliant but terrifyingly rapid deterioration—reflects that. Lena, meanwhile, is wrestling with the loss of her husband (who disappeared on his own mission) and with crippling depression. Portman plays her like a walking ghost, echoing back questions in a monotone; when Lena sleeps with a colleague after her husband vanishes, she seems surprised at herself in the aftermath. In doing battle with her duplicate (the shiny alien eventually adopts a Portman-esque outer layer), her internal conflicts are made literal. The unknowable world of the Shimmer is certainly extraterrestrial, but Garland knows that the most interesting thing about the place is what it reflects about trespassers like Lena. Weaponizing her fears against her is the smartest, and scariest, adaptation decision Garland made.

Eventually, Lena finds a way around the alien: She coaxes it into taking a grenade, destroying her own mimic in order to survive. But the end of the film suggests that she’s been fundamentally altered by the experience (her eyes glow as she returns to the real world). How? Garland doesn’t care much for simple explanations. The final trial of Annihilation is a spiritual and emotional one, beautifully rendered as a dark battle for one’s soul. As the alien double burns to death, it staggers over to the skeleton of Lena’s husband and touches it gently, consuming him in the flames. In letting go of that painful loss, Lena participates in a moment of destruction that is both necessary and strangely moving.

Previously: Black Panther

Next Up: Hereditary

An 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died in government custody in New Mexico early Tuesday, U.S. immigration authorities said, marking the second death of an immigrant child in detention this month.

The death came during an ongoing dispute over border security and with a partial government shutdown...

We’re just going to come right out and say it: This may be one of the weirdest fucking things we’ve seen while covering the news here. This morning, The Boston Globe announced that Kevin Spacey has been charged with felony sexual assault over allegations that he assaulted the teenage son of a Boston-area news anchor…

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It’s here! It’s finally here! Every year it seems like the big day will never come, but it’s here. It’s the day to gather with your family and friends ‘round the hearth, warm beverages and sweet treats at the ready, and have a hearty chortle over the things America stuck inside itself and couldn’t remove without the…

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It's impossible to be in business for the better part of two centuries without doing a lot of things right, including keeping up with the times.

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There’s a lot to say!

In a shocking upset, Rutgers did not make this year’s College Football Playoff.

That means the Orange Bowl, Cotton, and national title game in Santa Clara projected to be dangerously short of anything related to Rutgers. A football nation cried out for a solution.

Thankfully, the Rutgers athletic department found a way to make sure that we wouldn’t forget that Rutgers football is a thing while watching Alabama, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Clemson.

They decided to put billboards in Dallas, Miami, and Santa Clara.

Why? Is it because Rutgers wants to recruit in those areas? Apparently, not exactly.

According to this interview with NJ.com, the school added the billboards to make a “brand statement” ahead of next year’s 150th anniversary of the first “college football game” (c’mon, you can call that game a lot of things, but it wasn’t really football) with Princeton.

The school knows what you’re about to tweet, apparently. From the interview:

“The way we’re going to measure it is did we get any media attention out of it? If we do, we’re aware that some of it might come with a little tone of snark,” Rutgers assistant athletic director of marketing Robert Roselli told NJ Advance Media. “But at the end of the day, if they’re talking about Rutgers football, it’s a win for us.”

He added:

“We wanted to generate conversation...those are outlets and channels that wouldn’t be talking about Rutgers football at this time of year without something like this.”

So now, we have an article written about a media interview with a football program doing a stunt to try and get national media members to talk about them.

Okay, since they asked, we can talk about Rutgers football here for a second.

We could mention that the 2018 season was historically awful, even in the context of historically awful Rutgers football. We could talk about how they finished 116th in S&P+ this season, behind Coastal Carolina, UMass, and South Alabama. We could talk about how they produced one of the worst passing box scores EVER. We could talk about how the team inspired us to produce this headline. We could talk about how their 2019 recruiting class is currently 12th in the Big Ten, dead last in per-prospect ranking. We could talk about the fact that despite being in a major conference, 149 years later, Rutgers is actually worse at football than Princeton. We could talk about getting destroyed by Kansas.

I’m all for being creative with branding. I did just write about a Chicago suburb sponsoring a bowl game in the Bahamas, after all, and heaven knows Rutgers needs to be creative, because the conventional isn’t working out for them.

If Rutgers threw up random billboards in important recruiting territories, hey, maybe that isn’t the worst idea in the world, but this wasn’t about that. Again, from the interview:

“We know we’re not promoting Rutgers football to residents of Dallas or Miami or Santa Clara. We’re trying to put something in front of the eyes of the national college football media and where they’ll be.”

There’s nothing really good the national college football media can say about Rutgers football right now, if they’re being honest, beyond “Rutgers played an important football-like game against Princeton 149 years ago,” so I’m not sure if trying to force more of that conversation is a wise decision.

But hey, kudos on finding a unique way to get Rutgers and the College Football Playoff in the same story!

Christmas is now just days away. People are scrambling to buy last-minute gifts and rushing to wrap everything to get it under the Christmas tree. Maybe you're one of those down-to-the-wire shoppers or maybe you have had everything purchased before November even was underway. No matter how you shop, buying little things the days leading up to Christmas always seems to happen.

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Elon Musk’s vision for the future of mass transit has arrived, and it’s amazing.

The ancient Greeks had a great story about the dangers of overconfidence. Remember Icarus from eighth-grade Greek mythology? He flew too close to the sun, fell from the sky, and drowned. The moral of the story: Don't get too cocky.

Every winter in Korea, families gather to make the next year's worth of kimchi, then celebrate with a bossam feast: platters of tender pork, flavorful condiments, and leaves of cabbage for wrapping it all up into one delicious bite. Read More

A Southwest flight was forced to turn around after a human heart meant for donation was accidentally left on board, the airline said.

OPP, Ala. (AP) — A rural Alabama police department that used social media to scold community members for rejecting God came under fire from a group that opposes mixing government and religious faith.

Who else could outshine style icon Sarah Jessica Parker in her home city? Only the woman whose book outsold every other book published this year, in the first 15 days of its release.

On Wednesday night, Michelle Obama stepped on stage at Brooklyn's Barclays Center wearing $4,000 sparkling gold thigh-high Balenciaga heels and a bright yellow, high slit dress by the same designer, giving the audience and the internet full view of the boots. The optics of looking fresh to death are clearly not lost on Obama, whose memoir Becoming uses the lens of fashion to comment on the racial and gendered expectations that constricted her self-expression during her time in the White House. Her bold fashion choice on Wednesday made sense in a book tour that's largely about the politics of expressing yourself.

Obama kicked off her tour chatting with Oprah in Chicago while wearing a white sequined off-the-shoulder top. In her December cover of Elle she dons a flowing white Dior dress with a leather corset and black lace heels, casually promoting another interview with Oprah. And when she does throw on a pant suit, she rocks one that's all denim, or all red, or all white, just to remind us she has it like that.

Obama is living her best uninhibited life right now. When Jimmy Fallon asked her what her thoughts were as she left Trump's inauguration on Air Force One, she said "Bye Felicia." She even hit up the 2 Dope Queens podcast to come on their show, which is essentially an ode to young black women letting their hair down.

She was a boundary-pushing style icon as First Lady too, famously insisting on her sleeveless dresses and inspiring workout routines named after her arms. But, as she writes in Becoming, her self-expression was still largely constricted under the pressure of her former life as the first black First Lady. Despite these constrictions, she still found a way to use her platform to make a statement and highlight young designers.

"I did know that my clothes were making a statement, I knew that was the case," she told the AP, at Barclays. "So we decided why don't we use this platform to uplift some young new designers who normally wouldn't get this kind of attention, because you can change their lives, which is one of the reasons why we chose Jason Wu for my inaugural gown."

From the sounds of it, it was a heavy load to bear, only making her pop out looks all the more becoming.

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Follow Taylor Hosking on Twitter.

Those who use the Lakefront Trail will now be able to avoid some downtown traffic

The first section of the Navy Pier Flyover project opened just before 2019 and later on Thursday the 41st Street will open as well.

The long awaited pathway, which began construction in 2014, gives bikers and pedestrians using the Lakefront Trail an easy way to cross Grand and Illinois streets.

Rather than crossing busy, highly-trafficked downtown streets, people on the trail will eventually be able to avoid vehicles all together once the 2,160-foot span from Jane Addams Park and the Ohio Street beach to the south side of the Chicago River is complete.

“The Lakefront Trail is one of Chicago’s jewels, and this investment will create a seamless connection between the north and south sides of the Trail. It will make it safer and easier for everyone to get through the popular area near Navy Pier, whether they are walking, running or biking,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement.

The city also recently completed a project to separate the entire lakefront trail into pedestrian and bike paths. The improvements over the last few years, which have made the lakefront more accessible, are part of the mayor’s Building on Burnham plan. The initiative lays out ideas for the city’s parkland and infrastructure.

The completed section includes a stretch from Ontario Street to Illinois Street with a temporary wooden bridge down to Lower Lakeshore Drive path. The finished path is a 16-foot wide multi-use trail that ascends to ground level to cross over Grand and Illinois streets. It’s fully ADA accessible.

Work on the rest of the project will continue through 2019. The second phase of the Flyover includes the path over the Ogden Slip and DuSable Park that will connect to Lower Lake Shore Drive which will be complete by late spring 2019. The final, third phase will begin in early 2019.

The Lakefront Trail part of the project will wrap up at the end of 2019 but the structural and mechanical work on the Lake Shore Drive Bridge will continue into 2020. Stay up to date on the project by checking in for news on the Flyover project’s website.

During the Flyover announcement, the mayor also said he would head to the South Side to to open the 41st Street bike and pedestrian bridge. The city broke ground on that project last summer. After the 35th Street Bridge, which opened in 2016, this project will be the second of five bridge projects aimed at improving accessibility to the lakefront for South Side residents.

• Cyclists and pedestrians now have separate paths on 18-mile Lakefront Trail [Curbed Chicago]
• Next phase of mayor’s park plan features big ideas for Chicago River [Curbed Chicago]
• Work to begin on new 41st Street bike and pedestrian bridge [Curbed Chicago]

Our board game Co-Op was the most active reader poll since we asked you to name the best album. And unlike that Co-Op, when Hot Fuss was inexplicably not nominated, your choices were great this time around!

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The most recent section took 200 hours of work

The Auditorium Theatre is an immense architectural achievement—thick, rough-cut stone blocks on the exterior protect the ornate, golden hall inside. In 1889, Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler completed the theater, which was one of the tallest, largest, and heaviest buildings at the time.

Throughout its 129 years, some of the original details were lost. But through multiple conservation and restoration efforts, that’s changing. One of the most recent projects, which began in 2014 with The Elissa Lobby, focuses on Sullivan’s original stencil work.

On Wednesday evening the theater debuted a newly completed section of stenciling in the north inglenook with an event featuring the city’s cultural historian Tim Samuelson and Anthony Kartsonas of Historic Surfaces, who was responsible for the restoration work.

The inglenook centers around a grand fireplace mantel and features beautiful mosaic floors, built-in benches, ornate gilded and bas-relief details, and millwork. Now with the stenciling complete in this area, it looks very close to the 1889 version. In January, there are plans to continue the restoration on the second inglenook and other archways on the floor.

Bringing the theater back to the way it was in 1889 highlights the incredible detail that isn’t seen in many buildings today. For example, within the theater there are two murals on the north and south ends that depict winter and spring. After analyzing original paint chips from both ends, it was discovered that Adler and Sullivan had chosen slightly darker shades for the winter side and lighter shades for the spring side, according Samuelson.

This exemplifies exactly why many people love the Auditorium Theatre, subtle details that come together to create an experience. “Sullivan’s work is memorable because of what you can’t see,” said Samuelson.

It has impact because of the way it makes visitors feel. Sullivan and Adler played with layering elements and shifting from small enclosures to expansive areas which wasn’t common at the time.

The archival photographs from the Art Institute show 24-karat gold-leafed ceiling arches and hundreds of Sullivan’s intricate patterns, but unfortunately many coats of paint cover the artwork now. One reason it disappeared was because some ladies attending performances thought the detailed patterns clashed too much with their outfits, according to Samuelson. And perhaps, the change indicates how quickly the ornate style fell out of popular favor.

For Samuelson and other preservationists, the stencil work is crucial. Without those details, “it’s like having the finest Stradivarius, but just a little out of tune,” he said.

Photo courtesy of the Auditorium Theatre

Sara Freund

The archival photographs were helpful, but still hard to decipher so Kartsonas had his work cut out for him. The combination of giant flash bulbs and the highly reflective nature of the gold leaf meant the stencils were an element that was easily blown out, and therefore lost, in photographs. It also wasn’t possible to remove the added layers of paint because the original stenciling was so old and gold leaf so delicate. It would have just been wiped away, according to Samuelson.

In addition to the archives, Kartsonas examined paint underneath a microscope in order to match the historic colors. After the work of recreating the patterns and matching colors, the stenciling process began which was done entirely by hand. Four artists spent about 200 hours carefully drawing, cutting, and painting the patterns onto the arches and ceilings of the inglenook.

Back in 2001, Kartsonas and his company did some stencil work for the theater but were able to use gold leaf. He placed the largest order for gold leaf the wholesaler had seen in years. Today it would have cost eight times as much for the same amount, Kartsonas said, so it makes sense that this time around the theater used a more cost effective matching metallic paint.

True gold stenciling reflects light, and actually makes a room around 60 percent brighter, Kartsonas said. And while that’s not what’s being used now, the metallic gold paint will certainly bring a new feeling into the theater. The beauty of the stencil’s intricate patterns is that it calls attention to the architecture’s dazzling layers.

Standing at the entrance of the inglenook, visitors can admire the stenciling there and beyond the cut-out arch to the patterns on the back wall of the staircase. The shimmery quality of the gold stencils against the matte paint changes depending on where you stand, so with each new stencil it’s almost like the building is coming back alive.

Sara Freund

According to the National Survey of Family Growth conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, nearly two-thirds of American women use contraception. In lay terms: A lot of people don’t wanna get pregnant.

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Of course, we're all for breaking design rules when it works for you (which could very well be all the time), however, sometimes having a few guidelines to follow can give you the freedom to hone your creativity in other areas. Here's to measuring twice, cutting once, and doing you with confidence! Here are five interior design rules to consider if you want to do things right the first time around.

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There's a scene in the Peter Pan musical, right towards the end, when Peter's fairy sidekick, Tinkerbell, drinks some poison and almost dies. The only way for Peter to bring her back to life is by breaking the fourth wall and rallying the audience to clap for her. It's unclear how, exactly, clapping helps mitigate the the effects of toxins in her fairy bloodstream, but whatever. Somehow, the sound of applause gives Tinkerbell the strength to fight another day.

Apparently, Trump's 2020 campaign manager feels like the president works the same way.

The first ad for Trump's reelection campaign dropped Monday, and the whole thing is an urgent plea for supporters to call up Trump and shower him with love and praise—namely, to tell him "thank you, President Trump!"

“President Trump has achieved more during his time in office than any president in history," Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale says in the batshit ad, which journalist Yashar Ali filmed when it reportedly aired on CNN Monday night.

"We need to let President Trump know that we appreciate what he’s doing for America," Parscale begs viewers in the clip. "I need you to call the number on your screen and deliver a thank you to President Trump."

According to the Washington Post, callers who actually dial the number are given a chance to leave Trump a brief message, which he will presumably listen to when he isn't spending hours in front of the TV obsessively watching coverage of the Mueller investigation. After they're done, a recording of Parscale comes on to pester callers for campaign donations. "President Trump is under vicious, daily attacks from the fake news media and far-left Democrats who want to implement the radical socialist agenda," Parscale says. "They will stop at nothing to overturn the election and remove your president from office."

The number, for everyone who's wondering, is 1-800-684-3043, in case you want to pull a Peter Pan and shower the Donald with some kind words—or you could, you know, leave him a different sort of message. The choice is yours.

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Jimmy Fallon reunited with his Saturday Night Live co-stars Tracy Morgan, Chris Kattan, and Horatio Sanz on Tuesday to recreate their 2000 SNL sketch “I Wish It Was Christmas Today,” with a little help from pop star Ariana Grande. It’s nearly a shot-for-shot remake, which is made a little easier by the fact that the original only has seven shots:

Every year brings at least one hugely budgeted movie that doesn't just sink at the box office, but positively plunges like a flightless turkey. It's the kind of epic miscalculation that makes a studio re-evaluate its entire year.

For 2018, Universal/Media Rights Capital's "Mortal Engines" has just...

U.S. stocks closed down Monday as another day of big losses took the S&P 500 Index to its lowest level in more than a year. Retailers and technology stocks sank, and health insurers and hospitals fell after a federal judge in Texas ruled that the 2010 Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.

The...

A 552-carat yellow diamond was unearthed in Canada -- the largest ever found in North America.

Longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone settled a defamation lawsuit on Monday, admitting and apologizing for making false statements about a Chinese businessman on the right-wing conspiracy website Infowars.