Denis Leary

CHICAGO – My year in capturing 2017 celebrity portraits is best summed up with a bit of poetry: My subjects skewed older and politically bolder/In a year that demanded change/My list is longer with work hopefully stronger/In capturing these faces not strange.

CHICAGO – Leave it to acerbic comedian Denis Leary to cut through our times with a new book, “Why We Don’t Suck,” which is subtitled “And How All of Us Need to Stop Being Such Partisan Little Bitches.” Whether he is the man to stop it all remains to be seen, but he was in Chicagoland in early November to promote the book through Anderson’s Bookshop.

CHICAGO – Kevin Costner has defined a career in sports themed movies. From the Iowa farmer building a baseball diamond in “Field of Dreams,” to “Bull Durham,” to “For the Love of the Game,” he exemplified game day heroics. Yet being an NFL executive in “Draft Day” isn’t quite as exciting.

CHICAGO – See it free more than 2 months early! In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 75 pairs of advance-screening passes up for grabs to the new sports drama “Draft Day” starring Kevin Costner!

CHICAGO – The families who get suckered into the truly horrendous “Ice Age: Continental Drift” should be angry. Not only does it fail when compared to the best animation of the year (“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” “The Pirates! A Band of Misfits,” “The Secret World of Arrietty,” “Brave”) but it’s less entertaining than most children’s television.

CHICAGO – They could have called it “The Meh Spider-man.” While Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Denis Leary, Sally Field, and Martin Sheen do their absolute best to elevate one of the most generic and uninspired superhero screenplays since men first put on spandex in front of the camera, they can’t save this wasted opportunity to reboot a franchise in a way that doesn’t feel generated by a committee of Marvel producers.

CHICAGO – Spidey is back! In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 25 admit-two 3D IMAX movie passes up for grabs to the advance screening of the massively anticipated new Spidey film “The Amazing Spider-Man” starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone!

CHICAGO – I’ll miss Tommy Gavin. FX officially said goodbye this month to the final survivor of their breakthrough slate of dramas as “Rescue Me” joined “The Shield” and “Nip/Tuck” in the great cable show graveyard in the sky. The network has ably moved forward with phase two of their legacy but there was something comforting and reliable about Tommy and the boys on “Rescue Me” still being around. The sixth and final season DVD release serves as a fitting fourth quarter for this talented team.

CHICAGO – It’s hard to believe that we’ve been through six seasons of FX’s beloved “Rescue Me,” a show that never really took off with a very wide audience but has loyal, ardent followers. Being a fan of star Denis Leary for years, I think I can safely say that he’d rather have the small, dedicated following, then one larger but filled with a-holes.

CHICAGO – When the first four episodes of the new season of “Rescue Me” allows the actors to merely live in the shoes of these characters they know so well after five seasons on the air then the show finds some of the magic that it produced more consistently in its superior early seasons. Sadly, the writers know they can’t just shoot a drama about guys hanging out in a firehouse and the scripted drama often doesn’t click.