John Carter of Mars? He's from Chicago

Disney’s new blockbuster has its origins at an office at Monroe and Wacker, where failed businessman and pencil-sharpener-agent Edgar Rice Burroughs churned out the serialized tale A Princess From Mars in order to put food on the table.

Chicago Gang-Violence Documentaries Online

The Interrupters hits the Web courtesy of PBS’s Frontline. Plus: The Heart Broken In Half, an old doc by Taggart Siegel and the late Dwight Conquergood; and the eerie, low-budget Great American Youth, a quasi-encomium to the Gaylords.

Five Things to Do This Week

On your agenda: Gorilla-masked feminist avengers swoop into Columbia College … Béla Fleck gets the band back together … A Tennessee Williams classic takes a strange road at Goodman … plus, what the Columbia College associate professor and indie publisher Zach Dodson is doing this weekend.