Charetta is one of seven local hard-rocking bands celebrating the third anniversary of Gotham Rocks at Irving Plaza Thursday night
Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza
17 Irving Pl. at East 15th St.
Thursday, July 21, $27 (with fees), 7:00
www.gothamrocks.net
www.irvingplaza.com
In May 2008, indie metal heads Cary Tamura and Mike Sankari formed Tech-9 Music, staging Gotham Rocks and No Mercy Metal showcases in New York City, Jersey, Long Island, and other locations. Focused on building a modern hard rock community of fans and musicians, the duo, both of whom have their own bands, put together shows featuring local groups at small clubs as well as Six Flags Great Adventure. They will be celebrating the third anniversary of Gotham Rocks on July 21 with a gala event at Irving Plaza. Staten Island hard rockers Woods of Arden kicks things off at 7:00, followed at 7:45 by New York glam rockers Sweet Fix. At 8:30, Queens foursome Bound by Substance is hoping to have recovered from their blowout show at the Gramercy back in December. At 9:15, New York City’s Charetta, led by vocalist Angelina DelCarmen, will be playing songs from their new EP, A Nation Distracted; if you buy a ticket to Gotham Rocks through their website, you get a free digital download of the album. At 10:00, Brooklyn’s the August Infinity, who discovered their singer, Joshua Hawksley, in the subway, will be partying with tracks from their new CD, To Whom It May Concern. Southern metal rockers Killcode take the stage at 10:45, highlighting songs from their upcoming follow-up to 2008’s Truce. The evening concludes at 11:30 with the bass-guitar-drums trio Crush of Empires. “I just might make you crazy,” Hawksley sings on the August Infinity’s new album. Indeed, this should be one crazy night at Irving Plaza.
It’s hard to believe that the Hays Code, a set of standards initiated by two religious figures and named after chief censor Will H. Hays, was enacted and enforced, to varying degrees, in Hollywood from 1934 all the way up to 1968. Film Forum is looking back at some of the racier movies made right before the code took effect in the series “Essential Pre-Code,” consisting of fifty films made between 1931 and 1934, all being shown in 35mm prints. One of the best examples of pre-code films is William A. Wellman’s rarely screened 1931 doozy, Night Nurse. The first of five collaborations between Wellman and Barbara Stanwyck, Night Nurse, based on Dora Macy’s 1930 novel, stars Stanwyck as Lora Hart, a young woman determined to become a nurse. She gets a probationary job at a city hospital, where she is taken under the wing of Maloney (Joan Blondell), who likes to break the rules and torture the head nurse, the stodgy Miss Dillon (Vera Lewis). Shortly after treating a bootlegger (Ben Lyon) for a gunshot wound and agreeing not to report it to the police, Lora starts working for a shady doctor (Ralf Harolde) taking care of two sick children (Marcia Mae Jones and Betty Jane Graham) whose proudly dipsomaniac mother (Charlotte Merriam) is being manipulated by her suspicious chauffeur (Clark Gable). Wellman pulls out all the stops, hinting at or simply depicting murder, child endangerment, rape, alcoholism, lesbianism, physical brutality, and Blondell and Stanwyck regularly frolicking around in their undergarments. It’s as if Wellman is thumbing his nose directly at the Hays Code in scene after scene. Although far from his best film — Wellman directed such classics as Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1931), A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), Beau Geste (1939), and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) — Night Nurse is an overly melodramatic, dated, but entertaining little tale with quite a surprise ending. Night Nurse is screening at Film Forum on July 19 as part of a triple feature with Howard Bretherton and William Keighley’s Ladies They Talk About, starring Stanwyck in one of the earliest women-in-prison movies, and William Dieterle’s Lawyer Man, which pairs Blondell with the always charming William Powell. The series continues through August 11 with such films as Rouben Moumalian’s Love Me Tonight, Frank Tuttle’s Roman Scandals, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross, Josef von Sternberg’s Blonde Venus, Howard Hawks’s Scarface, Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise, and Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s King Kong (bestiality!), nearly all of which are part of double or triple features.
Sidney Lumet spins an intriguing web of mystery and severe family dysfunction in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) are very different brothers who are both in desperate financial straits. Andy, a real estate exec, has a serious drug problem and a fading marriage to his sexy but bored young wife (Marisa Tomei), while ne’er-do-well Hank can’t afford the monthly child-support payments to his ex-wife (Aleksa Palladino) and daughter (Amy Ryan). Andy convinces Hank to knock off their parents’ (Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris) jewelry store, but when things go horribly wrong, everyone involved is forced to face some very difficult situations, leading to a harrowing climax. Seymour and Hawke are both excellent, the former cool, calm, and collected, the latter scattershot and impulsive. Tomei gives one of her finest performances as the woman sleeping with both brothers. Lumet tells the story through a series of flashbacks from various characters’ point of view, with fascinating overlaps — although a bit overused — that offer different perspectives on critical scenes. Adapted from a script by playwright Kelly Masterson — whom Lumet had never met or even spoken with — Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (the title comes from an Irish toast that begins, “May you be in heaven half and hour…”) is a thrilling modern noir from one of the masters of melodrama.
