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INQUIRER: A teenage boy was shot four times – twice in the head, once in the chest and once in the back – this afternoon outside one of the city’s disciplinary schools in Feltonville. Initial information was sketchy, but this much was known: The victim, described only as a 16-year-old male, was shot a by another male teenager – wearing a black hoodie – who escaped running through a nearby cemetery. The victim is described as being in “extremely critical condition,” by a police spokesperson. MORE

Do you like to read books? Do you have an opinion of those books you read? Can you speak English? Do you secretly long to be a pompous-and-opiniated-but-always articulate-witty-and-absolutely-correct-about-everything book reviewer for the metroblog of record in the sixth largest metropolis in the United States of America? If so, drop us a line at feed@phawker.com. Because in these hard times, you need free books — and Phawker needs book reviews that taste great don’t suck.

RELATED: The Sun-Times Media Group, owner of the Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of suburban newspapers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday, making it the fifth newspaper publisher to seek protection from creditors in recent months. The step, brought on by a precipitous decline in advertising revenue, means both of Chicago’s major daily newspapers are operating under bankruptcy protection. Tribune Co., the parent company of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, filed for Chapter 11 in December. The Sun-Times Media Group, which filed in a Delaware court, said it will continue to operate its print and online properties. The company listed $479 million in assets and $801 million in debt. The largest unsecured creditors are newsprint vendors. Three are owed more than $1 million each. MORE

PHANTOM PUNCH (2008, directed by Robert Townsend, 112 minutes, U.S.)

Tonight is your only chance to catch up with the latest film from Robert Townsend, who broke into the business in a big way twenty-two years ago with the black comic satire Hollywood Shuffle.  Townsend has never recaptured that early success, although he has continued to direct, helming TV biopics of both Natalie Cole and Little Richard.  In Phantom Punch Townsend tackles the biography of former Heavyweight Champ Sonny Liston, the hard-punching fighter who back in the sixties struck fear into fighters like few others. The always reliable Ving Rhames (of Pulp Fiction) brings a dignity to this sullen boxer, distracting us from the fact that he isn’t a particularly interesting character.  What has maintained historians interest in the man was whether Liston took mob money to throw his rematch to the soon legendary Cassius Clay.  Phantom Punch  concentrates on this element of the story, walking NYPD Blue‘s Nicholas Turturro through a number of Sopranos-inspired scenes.  The film is crying out for a scale that the budget won’t allow yet on its small stage Phantom Punch is not without its effective moments.  Major complaint though: why would you make the Sonny Liston story and reduce the Cassius Clay character to a mere walk-on? – DAN BUSKIRK

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DOW JONES NEWSWIRE: Security experts have sounded the alarm – and many others are just as loudly trying to quell the furor – over fears the Conficker computer worm could trigger Internet havoc on April 1. Some security researchers have warned that Conficker could unleash the equivalent of a “digital Pearl Harbor,” while others have suggested it could be world’s biggest April Fool’s joke. No one knows for sure what will happen on Wednesday when as many as 10 million computers infected by Conficker start “phoning home” for new instructions from the worm’s creators.

Multiple versions of the worm, which first appeared late last year, have spread in a variety of ways and take advantage of several weaknesses in Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Windows operating system. The software giant fixed those weaknesses in October, but many people didn’t download the patch or they run bootleg copies of Windows that don’t get the updates. Once Conficker infiltrates a machine, it tries to crack administrators’ passwords, hijack security software, disable commercial antivirus software, and opens the PCs to further infections. Internet security experts were so struck by the authors’ skills that they formed the “Conficker Cabal” to fight back against the worm.

Their challenge is apt to get a whole lot bigger on Wednesday when Conficker is set to generate 50,000 new Internet domain names, any of which could be used to take control of the millions of infected PCs. The vast number of potential control centers will make it extremely difficult to preemptively cut off communication between the infected computers and Conficker’s authors. Some researchers – and many media outlets, including CBS’ “60 Minutes” – have speculated that the worm’s authors could then trigger the program to send spam, spread more infections, or start an all-out attack on Web sites run by major Internet companies such as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. or Amazon.com Inc.

But others who have been following the worm say the date will probably come and go without event. Luis Corron, a director at Panda Security, played down the threat Friday in a blog post entitled “Don’t get taken in by the Conficker Panic.” Corron noted that criminals and hackers typically unleash Internet worms to surreptitiously build huge networks of “zombie” computers that can then be harnessed to send spam, or increasingly to steal vast amounts of personal and financial data available online. That would augur against at crippling Internet attack. MORE

VANITY FAIR: The dirty little secret of conservative talk radio is that the average age of listeners is 67 and rising, according to Sinton—the Fox News audience, likewise, is in its mid-60s: “What sort of continuing power do you have as your audience strokes out?” You can begin to make plausibly large statements about the end of—or at least a crisis in—conservative media. “There are fewer advertisers, fewer listeners, shrinking networks, shallower penetration,” says Sinton. “A lowering tide lowers all ships.” What’s more, it’s the Internet that is the fast-growing and arguably more powerful political medium—and it is the province of the young and liberal. The only sensible market view of conservative talk is that it will contract and be reduced, in the coming years, to a much more rarefied format. MORE

[Illustration by JCooke via MAMMALMAG]

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DETROIT FREE PRESS: President Barack Obama took charge of Detroit’s auto industry Monday, vowing to transform it into a world leader in fuel-efficient vehicles — but demanding a plan of action within two months. Obama compared the decline of Detroit to a natural disaster, saying it deserved the same kind of emergency attention. But he warned that, within 60 days, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC would either be on a path to independence or on their way out. MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: President Obama struck an acceptable compromise on Monday between two unappealing options: letting General Motors and Chrysler go bankrupt right away or giving them tens of billions of dollars more while hoping for the best. Instead, he decided to finance their operations for just a matter of weeks while forcing them to come up with a better plan to overhaul their businesses.Now that the government is in control of the process, it must stick to its stated objectives and deadlines. If Chrysler can’t reach an acceptable merger deal with Italy’s Fiat in a month, the government must let go, even if this means certain liquidation. MORE

CONSUMER REPORTS: Clearly, $56.1 billion is a lot of money. That’s what General Motors and Chrysler say they will need to stay afloat through 2012. They say getting government loans to see them through their restructuring will cost less than if the government had to finance bankruptcies for the companies. So we decided to see what taxpayers would have to contribute to keep the companies solvent.Citizens for Tax Justice, a taxpayer watchdog group, says there are 117 million taxpayers in the United States—a figure the IRS struggled to provide. Using that number, GM’s $22.5 billion bailout proposal would “cost” each of those taxpayers $192.31, or that is effectively their contribution to the aid. The company said it might need an extra $8 billion, by 2014, which would bring the tab to $260.68 per. So much for that new iPod Touch. Adding in the cost to bail out GMAC, GM’s former finance company would bring the total to $303.42. No songs for the iPod for a while, either. And that’s before we get to Chrysler. Chrysler has asked for $9 billion, and its finance arm, Chrysler Financial, received another $1.5 billion in December. (In its plan, Chrysler says Chrysler Financial needs more money, but didn’t specify how much, so we’ll just count the $1.5 billion.) That amounts to another $89.74, or a total of $393.16 counting GM’s bigger potential need. Counting the $18.1 billion auto parts suppliers have asked for brings the total to $547.86. MORE

LOS ANGELES TIMES: President Obama’s plan to save failing U.S. automakers — and make them the instruments for creating a cleaner, greener transportation system — marked a major step across the line that traditionally separates government from private industry. His announcement Monday of a new position on bailing out Detroit went beyond a desire to be sure tax dollars were not wasted in bailing out struggling companies. It put the Obama administration squarely in the position of adopting a so-called industrial policy, in which government officials, not business executives or the free market, decided what kinds of products a company would make and how it would chart its future. His automotive task force concluded, for example, that the Chevy Volt, the electric car being developed by General Motors Corp., would be too expensive to survive in the marketplace. It declared that GM was still relying too much on high-margin trucks and SUVs, and that Chrysler’s best hope was to merge with a foreign automaker, Fiat. Judgments like those are usually rendered in corporate boardrooms or announced in quarterly reports. But this time they were coming directly from the White House. MORE

KILLER WALES: Los Campesinos, TLA, Last Night

BY MICHAEL DONOVAN You’ve got to hand it to Los Campesinos! — the little Welsh band that could—they sure know how to cater to an American audience. Fast songs with infectious hooks that anyone can dance too? Check. Attractive-yet-prickly bass player who rejects Joe Fraternity’s professions of love from the back of the venue? Check. References to robots? Check. Los Campesinos! have discovered the formula for across-the-pond success, and it doesn’t hurt that they’ve pumped out two stellar albums in the past year, either. After solid opening sets by Sky Larkin and Ponytail, the LC! seven took the stage, bursting right into “Ways To Make It Through The Wall,” the first track off their most recent record, We are Beautiful, We are Doomed. Any fear of the twee-pop glee of their records being lost in translation disappeared—these peasants were in full control from the explosive opening chords of their first song, and they knew it. They spent the next hour and change giving a complete ear-pummeling to the TLA, blazing through the majority of both WAB, WAD and their debut Hold On Now, Youngster, as well as a little cocktease of Pavement’s “Box Elder.” The standouts of the night were “My Year In Lists” and “Death To Los Campesinos!,” both from the band’s debut, as well any of the thickly-accented meanderings of singer Gareth Campesinos!. “This is DIY happening right here, right now,” laughed Gareth as him and a roadie struggled to fix an uncooperative keyboard, followed by a quick toss of the only A-key the band had to share between two glockenspiels. The set felt a bit short, but such is the case with a band whose two albums barely clock in at over an hour in the first place. The night ended with some of the bands most anthemic moments. “We kid ourselves there’s future in the fucking//but there is no fucking future,” belted LC! in one of their last songs, “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.” That may or may not be true for the future of society (fingers crossed for the O-man), but it couldn’t be more false for the Welsh septet. With another album slated for July release and a calendar full of dates, it doesn’t look like things are slowing down any time soon.

[Photo by MICHAEL DONOVAN]

THE WRAP: Universal’s ”Bruno,” the widely anticipated Sacha Baron Cohen docu-comedy opening in July, has been slapped with an NC-17 rating on its first submission to the Motion Picture Association of America because of numerous sexual scenes that the ratings board considers over the line, according to the studio releasing the film. Among the objectionable scenes is one in which Bruno — a gay Austrian fashionista played by Baron Cohen — appears to have anal sex with a man on camera. In another, the actor goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor. [...] Baron Cohen is accustomed to pushing boundaries. In his last hit film, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the writer and actor orchestrated outrageous real-life situations that challenged anti-Semitic and other stereotypes. With “Bruno,” Baron Cohen apparently goes even further, drawing a cutting comic edge that challenges homophobia and racism by embracing both. His method is a kind of cinema verite, drawing unsuspecting bystanders into outrageous situations, or provoking them to say outrageous things, and orchestrating NC-17 rated situations. Individuals close to the film say that Baron Cohen, Bruno’s writer and star, is “experimenting” and still “finding the film,” and tested two different versions with audiences in the past week. Both screenings, they said, were very successful. But Cohen needs to deliver an R-rated film to Universal, which will not consider releasing an NC-17 “Bruno,” according to an executive there. MORE

PLAGUE TOWN (2008, directed by David Gregory, 88 minutes, U.S.)

Upstate Connecticut stands in for Ireland as a bickering American family playing tourist in a creepy rural town comes to wish they’d enjoyed their Guinness at home.  The game cast starts out well but it soon becomes apparent that they’re stuck screaming and running through a predictable zombie film.  The mute bride-to-be with doll eyes is a nicely spooky touch but if you’re rolling out a zombie movie at this late date you best be spinning some novel approach.  Instead Plague Town is a meal of repackaged scares even the undead would have trouble stomaching.–DAN BUSKIRK

Monday March 30, Ritz East 1
Friday April 3, 4:45, I-House
THE CHASER (2008, directed by Na Hong-Jin, 125 minutes, South Korea)

I’d consider the festival a bust if it did not have at least one mind-blowing Asian action film, so I’m glad to report The Chaser fits that bill nicely.  A guilt-wracked former cop turned pimp named Jung-ho (Kim Yun-Suk) is searching against time to find one of his girls, who is stuck in the home of a serial killer.  The Chaser should have you climbing the walls in its first half-hour as the film sets it plot into motion but in its second half the mystery takes a number of turns, allowing various oddball characters and situations to develop (the police are distracted through most of the story, they’re busy dragging in a protester who threw excrement on the Mayor of Seoul).  Director Na Hong-Jin directs the action like he is remaking Dirty Harry (The Chaser shares that film’s pro-vigilante message) and delivers an ass-kicking climax that again makes you wonder why Hollywood has such trouble generating comparable excitement of their own (hence the already announced U.S. remake). –DAN BUSKIRK

Monday March 30 9:15, Ritz East 2
Wednesday April 1, 4:45, Ritz 5

DIOSES (2008, directed by Josue Mendez, 93 minutes, Peru)

The youthfully naive Diego’s eyes are opened to the privileged life he leads among Peruvian high society.  Diego is appalled by the hypocrisy he sees among the rich but he is disgusted with himself as well, for he harbors barely disguised lust for his hard-partying sister.  Director Josue Mendezs seems just as shocked at the realities of class as Diego, yet while this subject matter makes for a bold statement in Peru, there is little here that hasn’t been hashed-over in world cinema for decades.  The incestuous angle has a much stronger punch but Dioses is too busy being shocked at the rich screwing the poor that it doesn’t do justice to the more disturbing side of this story.–DAN BUSKIRK

Monday March 30, 12:15, Ritz East 1
Thursday April 2, 4:45, The Bridge

And there is one last screening of my favorite horror film of the Festival, the Belgium-made thriller Left Bank tonight at 6:15 at The Prince.  Not only does it have one of the most audacious endings in recent history (yikes, medical footage!) but it also has the steamiest sex I’ve seen at the Festival so far this year.  All your baser instincts will be satiated.–DAN BUSKIRK

ATLANTIC: In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay. This is precisely what drove Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy on September 15, causing all sources of funding to the U.S. financial sector to dry up overnight. Just as in emerging-market crises, the weakness in the banking system has quickly rippled out into the rest of the economy, causing a severe economic contraction and hardship for millions of people.

But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Top investment bankers and government officials like to lay the blame for the current crisis on the lowering of U.S. interest rates after the dotcom bust or, even better—in a “buck stops somewhere else” sort of way—on the flow of savings out of China. Some on the right like to complain about Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or even about longer-standing efforts to promote broader homeownership. And, of course, it is axiomatic to everyone that the regulators responsible for “safety and soundness” were fast asleep at the wheel.

But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sector’s profits—such as Brooksley Born’s now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998—were ignored or swept aside. The financial industry has not always enjoyed such favored treatment. But for the past 25 years or so, finance has boomed, becoming ever more powerful. MORE

BBC: French composer Maurice Jarre, best known for his music for Hollywood films, has died in Los Angeles at 84, after suffering from cancer. Jarre, father of the composer Jean-Michel Jarre, rose to prominence relatively late in life. His breakthrough came in 1962 when he wrote the score for Lawrence of Arabia, for which he was awarded an Oscar. He won two further Oscars for Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India, and composed music for more than 150 films. MORE

LOOMER: Asobi Seksu, Johnny Brendas, Last Night

1. Studio magic be damned. Let it be known now that Asobi Seksu know how to create that beautiful wall of noisy fuzz live, and do we ever love them for it.  You can tell we love them for it when the crowd will wait around for an encore even when James Hanna puts a guitar face down on an amp before leaving and let the fans cheer at the face-melting feedback solo.

2. I was wondering about this for quite some time, and yes, Asobi Seksu does have a rhythm section.

3. James Hanna isn’t the world’s most exciting guitarist to watch. After checking him a few times to make sure he was still playing, I understand it’s a bit hard to play guitar that actually stands out over all the fuzz. That being said, he excelled at creating that unmistakable background that helps define their sound.

4. For a shoegaze band, Asobi Seksu are a pretty animated bunch of musicians. Between James thrusting the entire upper half of his body into much of his strokes and Yuki swaying and bobbing to the rhythm, they were giving the photojournalists in the front something of a workout.

5. Let’s talk about Yuki Chikudate [pictured, above] for a quick second. Man is she tiny! Now that I got that out of the way, she is a musical force to be reckoned with, having almost superhuman control over her falsetto. Never missed a beat, and her voice still manages to strike the perfect balance between being overly forceful or delicate. She also threw down some feisty drumming at the end of the show. Always entertaining.

PHOTO & TEXT BY ADAM BONANNI

WASHINGTON POST: When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him. The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Moreover, within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu  Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as “al-Qaeda’s chief of operations,” and other top officials called him a “trusted associate” of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.

Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda, according to a portrait of the man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement and military sources. Rather, he was a “fixer” for radical Muslim ideologues, and he ended up working directly with al-Qaeda only after Sept. 11 — and that was because the United States stood ready to invade Afghanistan.

Abu Zubaida’s case presents the Obama administration with one of its most difficult decisions as it reviews the files of the 241 detainees still held in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Abu Zubaida — a nom de guerre for the man born Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein — was never charged in a military commission in Guantanamo Bay, but some U.S. officials are pushing to have him charged now with conspiracy. MORE

RELATED: A Spanish court has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer in the case said Saturday. Human rights lawyers brought the case before leading anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon, who agreed to send it on to prosecutors to decide whether it had merit, Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers who brought the charges, told The Associated Press. The ex-Bush officials are Gonzales; former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith; former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington; Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee; and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes. MORE