ARCADE FIRE

Arcade Fire headline two sold-out Garden shows this week, one of which you can watch for free on YouTube
Madison Square Garden
31st to 33rd Sts. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Wednesday, August 4, and Thursday, August 5, $49.50, 8:00
www.myspace.com/arcadefireofficial
www.thegarden.com
The average music fan often wonders how you can officially say when a band has reached the big time. For Arcade Fire, on Wednesday and Thursday their “big time” is two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. But it seems like Arcade Fire has always been inching to become an MSG band. After their first full-length album, FUNERAL (2005), received massive critical acclaim, with such stellar songs as “Neighborhood #2 (Laika),” the beautiful, melodic “Haiti,” and the tear-jerking, fist-pumping, spine-tingling super-single “Wake Up,” their music seemed to scream arena worthy. Following FUNERAL, the group released the highly regarded NEON BIBLE (2007), a subtle, strong, sound-expanding sophomore album containing wonderfully bombastic lyrics like “The lions and the lambs ain’t sleepin’ yet” and “There’s a great black wave in the middle of the sea.” Now, with their third release due on Tuesday, THE SUBURBS (Merge, August 3, 2010), Win Butler & co. have plenty of new music to play (including “Ready to Start,” “Empty Room,” and “Wasted Hours”) as they begin their triumphant two-day run at the grandest arena in North America. Although there are no tickets available as of right now (blocks are often released a day or two before the show date, so keep checking), you can catch a live broadcast of the August 5 concert, directed by the great Terry Gilliam, on YouTube at 10:00. Spoon (a large band in their own right) and Owen Pallet open things up.
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

Things are not necessarily quite as happy as they might seem for this very different kind of dysfunctional family
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)
www.filminfocus.com
When half-siblings Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson) decide to track down their anonymous sperm-donor father, their two moms, Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening), are justifiably concerned with how that might affect their close-knit family. And when the donor ends up being a motorcycle-riding, free-spirited hottie (Mark Ruffalo) who would like to become part of the kids' lives, it doesn't take long for some major dysfunction to set in. The third feature-length narrative written or cowritten and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, following 1998's HIGH ART and 2002's LAUREL CANYON (she directed 2004's CAVEDWELLER but did not write it), THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT is another intimate drama that explores deeply personal relationships with grace and intelligence — along with a little lesbianism. Bening is strong as the man of the house, overly determined to control and protect her family; Moore is beguiling as the other mother, wanting to develop her own business as a landscape architect; and Wasikowka, who was so outstanding in the HBO series IN TREATMENT, impresses again as the prodigal daughter preparing to go to college. Ruffalo, however, is too flat, and the film takes several missteps, including a final scene that is sadly predictable, detracting from an otherwise fresh and original story.
THE BLACK KEYS
Tuesday, July 27, and Wednesday, July 28, SummerStage, Rumsey Playfield, Central Park, $35, 6:30
Wednesday, July 28, Terminal 5, 610 West 56th St., $35, 10:00
There’s Dan, and he plays guitar. There’s Patrick, and he plays drums. And they’re the Black Keys, the super-hot back-to-basics blues rock band out of Akron, Ohio. After shuffling through many releases in which their sound was deemed too-close-for-comfort to the White Stripes, they put out RUBBER FACTORY (Fat Possum, September 2004), a powerful, garage-stomping record full of tight blues songs. Whether it was Dan Auerbach’s desperate wail on “Grown So Ugly” (“I got up this morning/put on my shoes/tied my shoes/ went to the mirror/but I combed my hair”) or Patrick Carney’s militaristic drumming on the hit single “10 A.M. Automatic,” the duo revealed a knack for writing damn good songs. Following RUBBER FACTORY, they released the Danger Mouse-produced ATTACK & RELEASE (Nonesuch, 2008), further exploring their R&B impulses, and now their latest disc, BROTHERS (Nonesuch, May 2010), which effectively combines the qualities of the past two albums. It will be interesting to see which sound is more prominent as they play a pair of SummerStage benefit shows at Central Park this Tuesday and Wednesday with the Morning Benders, followed by a late-night show Wednesday at Terminal 5 with Lee Fields & the Expressions and the Whigs. Even though all three concerts are sold out, fans can still gather round Rumsey Playfield to hear the SummerStage shows; be sure to get there early to check out San Fran quartet the Morning Benders, who are on the road in support of BIG ECHO (Rough Trade, March 2010) and won’t be back in the city until November 18 for a date at Webster Hall.
THE KILLER INSIDE ME
THE KILLER INSIDE ME (Michael Winterbottom, 2010)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, June 18
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.killerinsideme.com
In a small Texas town, Deputy Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) has been charged with kicking out local prostitute Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba), but something happens to him when he meets her, leading to a violent sexual affair. The soft-spoken, easygoing cop suddenly goes bad, jeopardizing his relationship with girlfriend Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson), his job, and just about everything and everyone he comes into contact with. Based on Jim Thompson’s 1952 pulp noir classic that Stanley Kubrick called “probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered” (Thompson worked with Kubrick on the scripts for THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY), Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of THE KILLER INSIDE is cold and heartless, a lurid, exploitative film that captures little of what made the book so special. Despite staying close to Thompson’s narrative and including voice-overs taken straight from the book, Winterbottom (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, WELCOME TO SARAJEVO) concentrates too much on making the characters realistic and believable, inserting his impressive documentary skills and taking the book far too literally. It’s one thing to have Ford describe a brutal beating in the novel; it’s quite another to show him pulverizing a woman’s face into a bloody pulp. Also, whereas in the book Ford talks about “the sickness” inside him developed from childhood abuse, the film tries to hide that, burying it in a handful of brief flashbacks that add nothing but confusion. This new version of THE KILLER INSIDE ME, which was previously filmed in 1976 by Burt Kennedy with Stacy Keach, Susan Tyrrell, Tisha Sterling, and Keenan Wynn, is a major disappointment.
NEW YORK CITY ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE

St. Patrick’s Day Parade will be last one that is not cut short by Mayor Bloomberg (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Fifth Ave. from 44th to 86th Sts.
Wednesday, March 17, free, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
www.saintpatricksdayparade.com
While there should be all sorts of pomp and circumstance for next year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which will be celebrating its 250th anniversary, don’t sell this year’s party short. Hundreds of marching bands, pipers, step dancers, and police and fire departments from all over the city and the country will be descending on Midtown Manhattan for this annual rite of passage, so loathed by many New Yorkers for the drunken craziness and green puke that often comes with it. Well, with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly as this year’s grand marshal, the NYPD has promised to clamp down on public drinking, so hide those forties well. The parade will also be the last major one to be able to run all afternoon, through about 5:00, as Mayor Bloomberg’s shortening of parades begins next month.
Of course, New York City will be bustling with special St. Patrick’s Day events in addition to fife and drum bands making their way through Irish pubs across the city. The official After Parade Pub Crawl will begin at the Yard, Black 47 will be at B. B. King’s, the Chieftains are playing Town Hall, Rory Sullivan is at Googie’s Lounge, an 1855 St. Patrick’s Day Celebration will take place at the Merchant’s House Museum, and Sean Donnelly will host “Irish Eyes Are Laughing” at Comix with Patrice Oneal, Andrew Maxwell, and other comedians, among other green partying.






