Cinespace Chicago Film Studio will add 19 soundstages to its location in the 1500 block of South Rockwell Street. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Cinespace Chicago Film Studios is the home Showtime’s “The Chi,” Comedy Central’s “South Side,” and NBC’s ‘One Chicago’ franchise.
Cinespace Chicago Film Studios, the home to several locally filmed hit TV series and movies, says it’s aiming to expand its imprint by 50% by the end of year.
The announcement, made by Cinespace this week, says it plans to add 19 soundstages to a space acquired in the 1900 block of South Rockwell Street in addition to the 42 it operates at two Little Village locations, at 2621 W. 15th Pl. and in the 3100 block of South Kedzie Avenue.
Cinespace is home to TV series and films including NBC’s “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago P.D.,” and “Chicago Med,” Showtime’s “The Chi” and Comedy Central’s “South Side.”
Adrian S. Burrows Sr./NBC“Chicago Fire,” NBC’s hit TV series, is filmed at Cinespace Chicago Film Studios.
The expansion, first reported by Crain’s Chicago Business, was prompted by the popularity of the studio site. Cinespace president Alexander S. Pissios told Crain’s he’s had to turn away projects, and aims to make the film studio one of the largest in the country east of Hollywood.
“Typically, productions need anywhere from four to six stages for each show, and each production brings about 300 new jobs with it. This means we could potentially add between 1,200–1,800 new jobs at our studios because of this expansion,” Pissios said in a written statement. “If we have more productions, we can have more interns from the area learning the business and working on shows.”
This month, Cinespace added Starz’s “Power Book IV: Force,” Amazon Prime’s “Paper Girls” and “Lightyears,” the latter featuring Sissy Spacek and Ed O’Neill (“Married With Children” and “Modern Family”), along with AMC’s “61st Street,” a series for which actor Michael B. Jordan (“Black Panther,” “Creed,” and “The Wire”) is an executive producer.
“During this pandemic, I think we all had a chance to experience how essential quality shows are to our culture and even to our mental health,” Pissios said. “Having Chicago as a critical link to providing not only quality entertainment, but also good-paying jobs in our community makes all the extra effort to help production companies keep filming worth it.”
In recent years, Cinespace was home to FX’s “Fargo,” Fox’s “The Big Leap,” HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” and the 2018 film “Widows.”
Pat and Nick talk with Jordan Lazowski from Sox on 35th and recap Cleveland and preview Texas! They also talk Madrigal’s defensive miscues is Abreu back and is this the real Rodon?
A few weeks after COVID-19 shut down the country, Chicago engineer and producer Ayo “AyoChillMannn” Makinde lost his full-time job as a youth national teams director for U.S. Soccer. In an effort to stave off depression, he dedicated all his energy to making music, and within a year it became his career.…Read More
President Joe Biden speaks to the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, from the East Room of the White House, Friday, April 23, 2021, in Washington. | AP
President Joe Biden’s closing message echoed the sentiments of Kenyan President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, who told the summit: “We cannot win this fight against climate change unless we go globally to fight it together.”
WASHINGTON — World leaders joined President Joe Biden Friday to close his virtual climate summit with stories of their own national drives to break free of climate-wrecking fossil fuels — Kenyans leapfrogging from kerosene stoves to geothermal power and Israeli start-ups scrambling to improve battery storage.
“We’re gonna do this together,” Biden exhorted, speaking live to a Zoom-style screen of leaders of national governments, unions and business executives around the world.
Biden’s closing message echoed the sentiments of Kenyan President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, who told the summit: “We cannot win this fight against climate change unless we go globally to fight it together.”
The second and final day of Biden’s summit of 40 world leaders made the case for massive investment now — in the U.S. and around the world — for prosperous as well as cleaner economies in the long run.
Compared with the United States and other wealthy but carbon-dependent nations, Kenya stands out as a poorer nation closing the technology gap despite limited financial resources. It has moved in decades from dirty-burning coal, kerosene and wood fires to become a leading user and producer of geothermal energy, wind and solar power, all aided by mobile-phone banking.
The summit’s opening on Thursday saw a half-dozen nations, including the United States, pledge specific, significant new efforts to cut emissions. Other summit speakers, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country is the world’s top climate polluter, held out the possibility of deepening their commitments, in China’s case by easing back on building of coal-fired plants.
Biden’s own pledge, nearly doubling the U.S. target for cutting emissions from coal and petroleum this decade, depends on his keeping political support from voters and securing more than $2 trillion for a nationwide infrastructure overhaul.
“The commitments we’ve made must become real,” Biden said Friday, speaking to the home audience as much as the international one. “Commitment without doing anything is a lot of hot air, no pun intended.”
He wondered aloud if there was “anything else you can think of that could create as many good jobs going into the 21st century.”
The coronavirus pandemic forced the summit into its virtual format, with a TV talk show-style set created in the White House East Room. Cabinet secretaries stepped in as emcees to keep the livestreamed action moving.
It was all in service of an argument officials say will make or break Biden’s climate vision: Pouring trillions of dollars into clean-energy technology, research and infrastructure will speed a competitive U.S. economy into the future and create jobs while saving the planet.
While technological development and wider use has helped make wind and solar power strongly competitive against coal and natural gas in the U.S., Biden said investment also would bring forward thriving, clean-energy fields “in things we haven’t even thought of so far.”
Republicans are sticking to the arguments that then-President Donald Trump made in pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate accord. They point to China as the world’s worst climate polluter — the U.S. is No. 2 — and say any transition to clean energy hurts American oil, natural gas and coal workers.
It means “putting good-paying American jobs into the shredder,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor Thursday in a speech in which he dismissed the administration’s plans as costly and ineffective.
Much of the proposed spending to address climate change is included in Biden’s infrastructure bill, which would pay for new roads, safe bridges and reliable public transit, while boosting electric vehicles, clean drinking water and investments in clean energy such as solar and wind power.
Biden’s plan faces a steep road in the closely divided Senate, where Republicans led by McConnell have objected strongly to the idea of paying for much of it with tax increases on corporations.
The White House says administration officials will continue to reach out to Republicans and will remind them that the proposal’s ideas are widely popular with Americans of all political persuasions.
Friday also featured billionaires Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg, steelworker and electrical union leaders and executives for solar and other renewable energy.
“We can’t beat climate change without a historic amount of new investment,” said Bloomberg, who has spent heavily to promote replacing dirty-burning coal-fired power plants with increasingly cheaper renewable energy.
Biden envoy John Kerry stressed the political selling point that the president’s call for retrofitting creaky U.S. infrastructure to run more cleanly would put the U.S. on a better economic footing long-term. “No one is being asked for a sacrifice,” Kerry said. “This is an opportunity.”
Global leaders described their own investments and commitments to break away from reliance on climate-damaging petroleum and coal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described scientists at hundreds of Israeli start-ups working to improve crucial battery storage for solar, wind and other renewable energy. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark renewed her country’s pledge to end oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, switching from offshore oil and gas rigs to wind farms.
On the summit’s opening day Thursday, Biden pledged the U.S. will cut fossil fuel emissions as much as 52% by 2030. South Korea, Japan, Canada and South Africa also joined in specific new emissions efforts timed to the summit.
Biden’s new goal puts the United States among the most ambitious nations in curbing climate change, the Rhodium Group, an independent research organization, announced overnight.
Different nations use different base years for their emission cuts so comparisons are difficult and can look different based on baseline years. The Rhodium Group said using the U.S.-preferred 2005 baseline, America is behind the United Kingdom but right with the European Union. It’s ahead of a second tier of countries including Canada, Japan, Iceland and Norway.
___
Seth Borenstein contributed from Washington. Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City.
In this image taken from video, Quentin Jackson, regional director for the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, addresses protesters blocking Business U.S. 17 in Elizabeth City, N.C., on Thursday, April 22, 2021. The crowd was demanding that authorities release body camera footage showing the fatal officer-involved shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. the day before. | AP
The calls for transparency come amid signs, included emergency scanner traffic, that Andrew Brown Jr. was shot in the back and killed as he was trying to drive away.
ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Leaders of a North Carolina city where a Black man was shot and killed by deputies serving search and drug-related warrants planned Friday to vote on a resolution urging a court to release body camera video of the shooting.
The calls for transparency come amid signs, included emergency scanner traffic, that Andrew Brown Jr. was shot in the back and killed as he was trying to drive away.
Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten II has said that at least one of the deputies serving the warrants on the day of Wednesday’s shooting was wearing a body camera and that it was activated. A notice posted by the City Council in Elizabeth City said it intended to have the city attorney petition a local court to make the video public.
The council’s measure wouldn’t be binding on the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office, which is a separate entity from city government. In North Carolina, a judge must generally sign off on release of body camera footage, but the law says anyone can file a petition in court seeking its release.
The sheriff has given no timetable for release of the video, which has also been urged by protesters who have taken to the streets each night since Brown was shot.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that President Joe Biden is aware of Brown’s death, but that Biden would likely leave decisions over the timetable for releasing body camera footage to local authorities.
“Obviously, the loss of life is a tragedy and obviously we’re thinking of the family members and the community,” Psaki said at her daily briefing.
Wooten has said deputies from his department including a tactical team were attempting to serve search and drug-related warrants when he was shot, but offered few other details. Nearby Dare County had issued two arrest warrants for Brown on drug-related charges including possession with intent to sell cocaine. Brown, 42, had a criminal history dating back to the 1990s, including past drug convictions.
Recordings of scanner traffic compiled by broadcastify.com from the morning of the shooting include emergency personnel indicating that Brown was shot in the back. An eyewitness has said that deputies fired shots at Brown as he tried to drive away, and a car authorities removed from the scene appeared to have multiple bullet holes and its back windshield shattered.
“We are responding. Law enforcement on scene advises shots fired, need EMS,” says one woman, who refers to the address where the warrant was served.
“EMS has got one male 42 years of age, gunshot to the back. We do have viable pulse at this time,” said a male voice. Someone then said that first responders were performing resuscitation efforts.
The sheriff, district attorney and state medical examiner didn’t immediately respond to emails Friday asking for comment on the scanner traffic. The SBI declined to comment.
Wooten said multiple deputies involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave pending a probe by the State Bureau of Investigation. He didn’t specify how many deputies were involved.
During demonstrations Thursday night, protesters questioned why deputies opened fire in a residential area down the street from an elementary school. Brown’s car came to rest in front of a house near yellow road signs marking the approach to the school.
“That means they fired a shot in a school zone,” Quentin Jackson, regional director for the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, said while addressing a group of fellow demonstrators.
People in the crowd nodded and shouted, “Yeah.” One man yelled, “And they fired into a moving vehicle.”
“When does this stop?” Jackson asked. “When does it stop?”
On Wednesday night, hours after the shooting, Mike Gordon, who lives in the house where Brown’s car hit a tree and came to a stop, showed a reporter a bullet hole next to his front door that went through an antique wall clock and all the way into his kitchen.
“I’m happy and thankful to the Lord that my wife and I wasn’t home,” he said.
Still, Gordon, a former military police officer, said he he’s thankful for the work law enforcement does, and he hoped people would reserve judgment until the facts come out.
“You never know what had happened or what went wrong,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter now. The young man is gone.”
Loyola announced Lucas Williamson will return for another season. | Mark Humphrey/AP
The school announced Friday that Williamson will be back for another year of eligibility under relaxed NCAA rules prompted by the pandemic.
Lucas Williamson, who helped Loyola reach a Final Four as a freshman and return to the Sweet 16 as a senior this year, is returning for one more season.
Williamson and Krutwig led Loyola to 99 victories the past four seasons, the most wins over a four-year period in school history. A Chicago native, Williamson averaged 8.8 points last season and was Missouri Valley Conference Defensive Player of the Year.
Loyola returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since a surprising Final Four run in 2018 and finished with a 26-5 record. The Ramblers were ranked 17th in the final AP poll.
Loyola also announced seniors Keith Clemons, Tate Hall and Aher Uguak will be back. All three started their careers at other schools.
Two teens were shot, one fatally, April 22, 2021, in Maine Township. | Adobe Stock Photo
The teens were shot about 3:45 p.m. in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the 9600 block of Greenwood Avenue, according to the Cook County sheriff’s office.
Two teens were shot, one fatally, Thursday in unincorporated Maine Township in the northwest suburbs.
The teens were shot about 3:45 p.m. in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the 9600 block of Greenwood Avenue, according to the Cook County sheriff’s office.
Officials say the teens, an 18-year-old man and woman, were getting into a vehicle when someone dressed in black walked up and opened fire.
The man, Erik Esquivel, was struck in the head and pronounced dead at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, officials said. The woman was in serious condition at the same hospital with a gunshot wound to her arm.
The suspected gunman was wearing a black hoodie with orange script, black pants, a black knit cap and a black gaiter mask, the sheriff’s office said. He fled in a tan Jeep Cherokee.
A documentary about the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain is coming to theaters this summer.
Directed by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville, Focus Features said Friday that “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” will hit theaters on July 16.
Bourdain shot to fame after the publication of his frank, behind-the-scenes account of restaurant life in “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” in 2000 and became a beloved culinary travel guide with his CNN series “Parts Unknown.” He died in June 2018 at age 61.
Neville is best known for his Oscar-winning film “20 Feet from Stardom,” about the lives of backup singers, and the Mr. Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.”
After its theatrical run, “Roadrunner” will be available on CNN and HBO Max. It’ll have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in June.
Chef Art Smith, who was Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef and is co-owner of several Chicago restaurants, said of Bourdain upon learning of his death: “One thing that Anthony taught us all is that you may be a chef, but you’re more than that. We all have a message. Anthony, with his work, had this wonderful story line and really captured the essence of humanity.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465167/Screen_Shot_2021_04_23_at_11.49.22_AM.png)
