Collaboration's annual Sketchbook Festival programs conform to the same axiom that defines Chicago weather. In other words, if you don't particularly like a play in one of the two lineups of short works -- each featuring about seven 10-minute pieces -- you can just wait a few minutes and something more to your liking is bound to turn up.

The world of the role-playing game might not end with Square-Enix's "The World Ends With You," but it certainly has been changed for the better.

Matthew Kerstein has taken a musical journey from Scotland to Massachusetts without ever leaving the Windy City.

The Spertus Museum is getting a fresh start in more ways than one. The museum seems to have been inspired by its sleek new digs -- at the literally and symbolically transparent Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies on Michigan Avenue, notable for its multifaceted glass facade -- to re-energize, if not radicalize, its programming in ways that may not be what many visitors expect from a Jewish institution.

'This could be the night when it all comes together,'' singer/songwriter Paddy Casey wails in ''City,'' a thumper off his new album ''Addicted to Company."

The last year has been a blur for Sones de Mexico, as fast-paced and exciting as a zapateado (a traditional tap-style dance).

Movies based on books should always tell their stories without the presumption all audience members have read the book that inspired it. That's one of the few problems with "Prince Caspian," the second "Narnia" film from director Andrew Adamson -- a worthy follow-up to his hugely successful and artful "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," released in 2005. Especially in the beginning of "Prince Caspian," there is a bit of sloughing over the details of C.S. Lewis' story, which may confuse those who have never read the original material or seen "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

It's a summer filled with sexual awakenings and reawakenings for three generations of Chicanas in Georgina Garcia Riedel's warm, insightful film "How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer." Set in a sun-baked Arizona border town, this independent film about love, cars, men and relationships has been kicking around film festivals for the last two years and is finally reaching a wider audience.

The rainy spring weather is making London housewife Lotty Wilton do strange things. She's obsessing over an Italian castle, talking to strangers and hiding things from her husband. She is on a mission, and these are simply the steps to making her dream come true.

Tenor saxophonist David Sanchez has a passion that's contagious, whether he's talking about his time in Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra, or flavoring his jazz with African, Afro-Cuban and Caribbean influences. He adds the Danilo Perez Trio to the mix with a show at 8 tonight at Symphony Center. We caught up with Sanchez by phone while he was packing his suitcase.

When he started ''America's Most Wanted,'' John Walsh could point to at least one thing in its favor: Society's swampland of bad people doing bad things would never run dry. On that basis, the show seems a cinch to run forever.

Though it might sound fairly mainstream these days, there was little familiar or comfortable about Shelagh Delaney's play "A Taste of Honey" when it debuted in London in 1958. Sure, two years earlier, John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" had struck the first blow against a largely genteel English theater. But Delaney, just 19 herself when her first play was produced, gave us a story that dealt frankly with sex, race, class and family dysfunction.

Cape Cod Room, Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton; (312) 787-2200. This venerable seafood restaurant is celebrating its 75th birthday. The nautical atmosphere has been toned down in a recent remodeling, but the character of the room is still very much intact. And the food is as good as it's ever been, keeping it anchored in my Top 5 seafood restaurants around town. Try the Bookbinder's soup, smoked salmon, Dover sole, Alaskan king crab legs and Nantucket Island dessert. (Reviewed May 9)

Griffin Theatre co-artistic director William Massolia is always on the lookout for interesting young adult novels that can be adapted for the stage. So when he heard author Judy Blume was a big fan of Ned Vizzini's novel Be More Chill, he checked it out and found just what he was looking for.

The renowned Russian chamber orchestra Moscow Virtuosi stops in Chicago for a performance Sunday at Symphony Center in the South Loop.

Assessments from a parent's perspective of some recently released films:

Six documentaries, which will receive local screenings over the next week, present details of life as lived. Intimate testimony comes from a Chicago woman scrutinizing her DNA, Ohio vice cops secretly filming sex acts and a San Francisco artist playing to his camera.

Opening this weekend on the local art-house circuit:

When the artist John Sloan moved to New York from Philadelphia in 1904, writers were making waves depicting the sometimes gritty lives of working-class people, but visual artists generally were not. Even decades later, Sloan and some like-minded artists were tagged with the derogatory label "The Ashcan School" because they showed the streets of New York City as they found them.

Big-screen action hero Indiana Jones is back on another rocky road to adventure in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," opening Thursday. Makers of toys and games are getting in on the action, too.

The Chicago Chorale will end its 2007/2008 season with a special performance and peace vigil on Saturday at the Monastery of the Holy Cross on the Near Southwest Side.

The landscapes of Ireland that have inspired Irish painters for centuries are the subject of a spring exhibit, A Different Land: Irish Boglands, opening today at the Irish American heritage Center on the Far Northwest Side.

Billy Masters, a comedian and syndicated gossip columnist for Gay Chicago Magazine, will showcase his humor beginning Wednesday at the Bailiwick Studio on the North Side.

The Joffrey Ballet has always had one foot planted firmly in the classical past, while at the same time using the other to take some giant steps into the world of contemporary dance. This is, after all, the company that pioneered the whole arsenal of multimedia tricks (in Robert Joffrey's 1967 "Astarte") and danced a ballet set to a rock 'n' roll beat (Twyla Tharp's 1973 "Deuce Coupe").

'Go outside!" Who hasn't heard that command from their mom?

Ah, al fresco, when Chicago dining takes on a European flair. Here are a few suggestions for you to "Go forth and dine out!"

Fans of the Chicago Sinfonietta have come to expect artistic adventures from the 21-year-old orchestra -- indeed, musical innovation is part of its mission. The last offering of the season, "Portraits of the Blues/Back into Space," which will be played Sunday at Dominican University in River Forest and Monday at Orchestra Hall, is not likely to disappoint.

Director Matt Reeves delivered one heck of a terror-inducing thriller in January with "Cloverfield," his unique handheld video-camera account (think "Blair Witch Project") of a monster's invasion of New York City.

Killings in the workplace take a toll on witnesses. Shootings in offices, factories, malls and schools have necessitated a new work force: counselors to handle the shock, grief and guilt felt by survivors.

'Dirt the skirt. Dirt the skirt," I screamed as I flicked the plastic racing wheel holding the Wii-mote forward as I tried to make Princess Peach pull off an "X Games" type stunt on her motor bike and make my decision to play as her character, well, less girlie. It was futile for a number of reasons. The first being that Peach wasn't wearing a skirt, but rather a form-fitted racing suit (and it's still pink). Second, I just haven't managed to master the timing with her character. She landed uncharacteristically ungraceful (at least in my mind). Rats. No speed boost. Foiled again.

It's not often that art openings in Chicago turn into sprawling celebrations of sheer joy. But last week's opening-night party for "The Wonder -- Portraits of a Remembered City," the beautiful new show of drawing-collages by Tony Fitzpatrick, was one of those special nights when art-world caution and decorum seemed to fall away. There was no stinkin' wine and cheese at this shindig. People scarfed down juicy Italian beef sandwiches and nearly injured each other with bone-crushing handshakes and bear hugs. Twin rivers of cold beer and good will flowed, tributaries to an ocean of feeling for one of Chicago's finest, most authentic and least pretentious artists on one of the greatest nights of his working life.

An exhibit and sale of cloth-and-thread artwork depicting jazz instruments and musicians has opened at the Vale Craft Gallery in River North.

The scandals, killings and betrayals surrounding the death of a Chicago reporter in the 1930s are examined in the drama Hurrah for the Next Who Dies, opening today at the Athenaeum Theatre Studio Three.

An ambitious young company is about to embark on a tutorial of a different kind.

Chicago native and keyboard comic Craig Robinson plays Darryl on the wildly successful sitcom "The Office" and was the emotionally insecure bouncer in the film "Knocked Up."

How is this for ballet mythology? Her father was a chief of the Osage Nation, her mother was Scots-Irish, and she was born on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief would go on to become Maria Tallchief, one of the great American ballerinas -- renowned for her performances in Fokine's "The Firebird," as well as in such other feathery classics as "Swan Lake" and "The Black Swan."

Steppenwolf Theatre's Traffic series presents one-night-only performances -- but they pack a punch you won't soon forget. The May lineup continues the theme of what it means to be an American with a fittingly diverse group of Chicago artists.

A multimedia exhibit inspired by antique maps of the Holy Land is open at the Spertus Museum.

A theatrical adaptation of Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson is being presented at the City Lit Theater on the North Side.

Mark Nadler has brought his one-man show of comedy and music to the Royal George Theatre in Old Town.

1 MATTHEW FOX: The star of "Speed Racer" is not lost on a racetrack. Fox, who plays the mysterious Racer X, says, "I always thought driving was fun, but the suit was incredibly uncomfortable for this movie. It was so hot and there was all this sweat. But once I dropped into the helmet and started pouring out sweat, the character really fell into place." Fox muses that although his son thinks the whole film "is just about the coolest thing," there is one bit of being in a Speed Racer film that has caused him to pause. "My son says, "I know Racer X is great, Dad, but I'm going to be Speed Racer for Halloween and not you.' I'm like, 'Hey, wait just a minute.' "

Opening this weekend on the local art-house circuit:

Assessments from a parent's perspective of films opening today:

Radney Foster is the rare artist who is equally revered by mainstream country executives in Nashville and by alt-country hipsters in Austin.

The big-screen version of "Speed Racer" zooms into theaters today with a fully loaded Mach 6 and special effects that are as much the stars of the fast-paced movie vehicle as Emile Hirsch as Speed, Christina Ricci as Trixie and Matthew Fox as Racer X. Off the screen, the movie is on the fast track to marketing success in the toy industry.

A one-woman play that portrays the lives of a diverse range of Iraqi women is onstage now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the Mag Mile area.

There's nothing extraordinary about friends getting together for a game of poker following a round of golf. How about a game of poker during a round of golf?