“All I want to do is just play some more,” JC Brooks declares on Want More, the 2011 sophomore album from JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound. “All I want to do is just dance some more.” The Chicago indie postpunk soulsters never leaves ’em wanting more, getting their groove on in raucous live shows that feature lead singer Brooks, a dynamic front man who has also appeared in such musicals as Passing Strange and Ragtime, along with guitarist Billy Bungeroth, bassist Ben Taylor, drummer Kevin Marks, and Chris Neal and Andrew Zelm on horns. The follow-up to 2009’s Beat of Our Own Drum, the group’s second disc includes such soul-stirring tracks as “Everything Will Be Fine,” “I Got High,” “Baaadnews,” “Sister Ray Charles,” and a celebrated cover of Wilco’s “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” which got the seal of approval from Jeff Tweedy himself, who has joined JC onstage to perform the song together. “Missing things is all I ever do,” Brooks sings on the new album. It would be a shame to miss them when they play Friday night at Brooklyn Bowl on a bill with Mingo Fishtrap, DJ Jack Dutone, and the Revelations featuring Tre Williams.
Yearly Archives: 2012
AMERICAN GAGSTERS — GREAT COMEDY TEAMS: SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS
Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake try to get serious in Preston Sturges’s socially conscious comedy
SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS (Preston Sturges, 1941)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, August 17, 6:50
Series runs through September 17
212-415-5500
www.bam.org
When a successful Hollywood director decides to make a socially conscious film instead of his usual fluff comedies, he gets more than he bargained for in this classic Preston Sturges film starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. McCrea gives one of his finest performances as John L. Sullivan, a filmmaker who has made a string of shallow comedies but is ready to take on far more serious subjects, despite what the studio wants. So he heads out on the road, pretending to be a tramp to learn about the real world as he is followed by a crew ready to bail him out of any trouble, but he is soon thrust into actual distress when he winds up on his own, with no money and no memory, a railroad hobo desperately trying to survive against seemingly impenetrable odds. In the wake of the financial mortgage crisis and the country’s continuing economic woes, Sullivan’s Travels feels as fresh and relevant as ever; just as McCrea’s Sullivan does in the film, writer-director Sturges is letting everyone know that it’s okay to enjoy life even in troubled times. To that end, the film opens with a special dedication that reads, “To the memory of those who made us laugh: the motley mountebanks, the clowns, the buffoons, in all times and in all nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little.” Sullivan’s Travels is screening August 17 in the BAMcinématek series “American Gagsters: Great Comedy Teams,” which runs through September 17 and consists of fifty films (all but one in 35mm) featuring fabulous comedic pairings; Sturges’s The Palm Beach Story, a madcap romp with McCrea and Claudette Colbert, is also being shown on Friday.
AMERICAN GAGSTERS — GREAT COMEDY TEAMS: THE PALM BEACH STORY
Joel McCrea, Claudette Colbert, and Rudy Vallée are caught up in a romantic triangle in Preston Sturges’s THE PALM BEACH STORY
THE PALM BEACH STORY (Preston Sturges, 1942)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, August 17, 4:30 & 9:15
Series runs through September 17
212-415-5500
www.bam.org
Writer-director Preston Sturges was on quite a roll in the early 1940s, making a string of memorable pictures that included The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero. In the midst of that amazing run is The Palm Beach Story, one of the craziest of the classic screwball comedies. Running out of money, married couple Tom (Joel McCrea) and Geraldine (Claudette Colbert) Jeffers are preparing to leave their ritzy Park Ave. apartment until a straight-talking, shriveled old wienie king (Robert Dudley) hands Gerry a wad of cash so she doesn’t have to move out. She pays off their many bills, but Tom is suspicious of how she got the money, demanding to know if any sex was involved, a rather risqué question for a 1942 Hays Code-era romantic comedy. Gerry decides that she is no good for Tom and insists on getting a divorce even though they still love each other. So she grabs a train to Florida, meeting the wacky Ale & Quail Club and John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallée), a kind, soft-spoken gentleman who takes a liking to her and helps her out of a jam. Things reach a manic pace as Tom heads to Palm Beach as well, trying to save the marriage while fending off the advances of the the Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor). McCrea and Colbert make a great comic duo in, displaying a fiery sex appeal that is still hot all these years later. What’s not hot is the film’s use of black characters, who are horribly stereotyped and are even referred to as “colored” in the credits. It might have been a different time, but there aren’t a whole lot of quality movies that were that blatant about it. In addition, the shooting scene with the Ale & Quail Club goes way over the top. But when the film focuses on Tom and Gerry, caught up in their own endlessly charming game of cat and mouse, The Palm Beach Story shines. The Palm Beach Story is screening August 17 in the BAMcinématek series “American Gagsters: Great Comedy Teams,” which runs through September 17 and consists of fifty films (all but one in 35mm) featuring fabulous comedic pairings; Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels, the socially conscious comedy starring McCrea and Veronica Lake, is also being shown on Friday.
RAQUEL CION: GILDING THE LONELY
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
Saturday, August 18, $15, 9:30
212-967-7555
www.joespub.com
There’s no reason sexy chanteuse Raquel Cion should be lonely any longer. Her Gilding the Lonely is an intimate portrait of longing that deserves to be seen by many. In June, it was standing-room only for two shows at the Lounge at Dixon Place, where the native New Yorker triumphed with her engaging mix of music and tragicomic tales of looking for love in the big city. On Saturday, August 18, she’s moving slightly uptown to Joe’s Pub, where she’ll be wearing a glittering gown, performing songs by David Bowie, Prince, the Rolling Stones, Dwight Yoakam, Tom Waits, and others, accompanied by Zecca Esquibel (Get Wet) on piano and Bill Gerstel (3 Teens Kill 4) on drums. “Being lonely in NYC is different,” Cion (Cou-Cou Bijoux: Pour Vous) told us in a June twi-ny talk. “Though loneliness is universal, no one is immune. But there is something about feeling lonely in New York that has its own particular flavor. Sometimes it feels like an everlasting gobstopper in how it can change flavor and how you gotta just suck it (up).”
FILMS IN TOMPKINS: POLTERGEIST
Life is about to get a whole lot creepier for the Freeling family in POLTERGEIST
POLTERGEIST (Tobe Hooper, 1982)
Tompkins Square Park
500 East Ninth St. between Aves. A & B
Thursday, August 16, free, sundown
www.filmsintompkins2012.com
When psychic Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein) says “Don’t go into the light,” she means it in more ways than one, so be sure to take heed when Tobe Hooper’s classic modern ghost story screens for free in tree-lined Tompkins Square Park on August 16. Inspired by the 1962 Twilight Zone episode “Little Girl Lost,” Poltergeist, which also features the significant involvement of cowriter and producer Steven Spielberg, has all the elements in all the right places to just plain scare the hell out of you. Shortly after Steven (Craig T. Nelson) and Diane (JoBeth Williams) Freeling move into their new home in the planned California community of Cuesta Verde, things start getting very creepy, especially when youngest daughter Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) announces, “They’re here,” then disappears into the television. Meanwhile, older sister Dana (Dominique Dunne) freaks out, and brother Robbie (Oliver Robins) has a bit of a problem with a clown doll and a tree branch. Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Lifeforce) lets the tension build slowly until it eventually explodes in a no-holds-barred ending that will have you digging into the cuticles of whoever is sitting next to you. And yes, those skeletons are real human bones, not replicas. The success of Poltergeist led to two sequels, a television series, and, unfortunately, a possible remake, but there’s nothing quite like the original, a deviously delicious frightfest that continues to send shivers down the spine no matter how often one sees it. And yes, Steven’s boss is indeed played by the Pathmark man (James Karen). Sadly — some say the result of a curse — O’Rourke died in 1988 at the age of twelve, and Dunne, the daughter of writer Dominick Dunne, was murdered by a former boyfriend in 1982 when she was just twenty-two. The Tompkins Square Park screening will be preceded by live music from East Village African rock group Timbila.
LIVE IN THE CLUBHOUSE: “GIL HODGES” WITH AUTHOR DANNY PEARY
Bergino Baseball Clubhouse
Cast Iron Building
67 East 11th St.
Thursday, August 16, free with RSVP, 7:00
212-226-7150
www.bergino.com
us.penguingroup.com
“Gil Hodges smiled, which was a big deal.” So begins Tom Clavin and Danny Peary’s latest baseball biography, Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend (Penguin, August 7, 2012, $26.95), the follow-up to their 2010 tome, Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero. Clavin and Peary delve into the life and times of the Indiana-born Hodges, the beloved eight-time All-Star who played first base on the Brooklyn Dodgers’ championship Boys of Summer team and later went on to manage the Amazin’ Mets in 1969. In more recent years, the late Hodges, who died in 1972 just short of his forty-eighth birthday, has been the subject of heated debate over whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame. Peary will discuss that and more when he talks about the book on August 16 at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in the Cast Iron Building on East Eleventh St. For our interview with Peary about his Maris book, go here.
OUTDOOR CINEMA 2012: CERTIFIED COPY
William Shimell and Juliette Binoche both play annoying characters you will not want to hang out with in CERTIFIED COPY
CERTIFIED COPY (COPIE CONFORME) (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
Socrates Sculpture Park
Broadway at Vernon Blvd.
Wednesday, August 15, free, 7:00
718-956-1819
www.socratessculpturepark.org/programs/outdoorcinema.php
www.ifcfilms.com
Writer, director, poet, photographer, editor, graphic designer, and painter Abbas Kiarostami has been one of Iran’s leading filmmakers for nearly forty years, compiling a resume that includes such important international films as Under the Olive Trees (1994), Taste of Cherry (1997), and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). Certified Copy is his first feature made outside of his home country, a dreadfully boring and annoying art-infused romantic comedy set in Italy. Juliette Binoche was named Best Actress at Cannes this year for her starring role as an unnamed single mother and antiques dealer who is obsessed with English author James Miller’s (British opera star William Shimell) book on the history and meaning of art replicas, Certified Copy. Inexplicably, the two strangers are soon on a bizarre sort-of date, driving through Tuscany and becoming involved in a series of vignettes about love and marriage, literature and art, and other topics. Both characters are seriously flawed and emotionally unstable in ways that make them unattractive to watch, especially in obvious set-ups that either go nowhere or exactly where you think they’re going. While Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke made the somewhat similar Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004), in which two strangers from different countries spend a day together (but mostly by themselves), the sexual tension and excitement always building, Certified Copy is more reminiscent of Hans Canova’s ridiculous Conversations with Other Women (2005), in which Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter star as wedding guests with a past whom viewers can’t wait to just shut up and get off the screen. Don’t let the supposed adult dialogue of Certified Copy fool you into thinking it’s an intelligent, mature look at believable relationships; instead, it feels like a staid copy of other, better films you think you’ve seen but can’t remember — and won’t care. Certified Copy is screening on August 15 as part of Socrates Sculpture Park’s fourteenth annual free Outdoor Cinema summer series, with that night’s focus on France and Italy; in addition to the film, there will be live music and/or dance and local regional cuisine.