The Suffolk
107 Suffolk St. between Delancey & Rivington Sts.
Saturday, February 26, $3, 11:00 pm
www.builtbyanimals.com
Don’t get confused about what Discover said about Built by Animals: “It is to the eternal credit and pride of humanity that scientists like Mike Hansell strive with insight and ingenuity to catalogue the wonders of the natural world and to convey their findings in such enthusiastic fashion to the rest of us blinkered anthropocentrics.” The science magazine was talking about the 2007 book Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture. Brooklyn music trio Built by Animals, on the other hand, catalogue the wonders of the savage corporate world with insight and ingenuity for the rest of us blinkered anthropocentrics. Lead singer and bass player Nick Crane, guitarist Morgan von Ancken, and drummer Matt Graff have been compared to a wide array of indie darlings — Weezer, Guster, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Vampire Weekend, Radiohead, Phoenix, the Pixies, the Strokes, Bishop Allen, and Jeff Tweedy, and we’d throw in early Hold Steady as well — but their debut EP, Corporate Syndrome (Shmiz, June 2010), is not the derivative mélange those comparisons might imply for the CMJ vets. From the opening cough on “Return to the Power Kingdom” to the killer guitar riff on “Teenage Rampage,” from the ticking time bomb of “Spreadsheets” to the twisting melodies of “Ducks,” BBA documents the natural but depressing progression from high school to college to a corporate life of cubicles and Excel reports. “Listen to them today before you give up entirely,” they explain about themselves in their mission statement. You can listen today to the streaming EP on their website, but you can also hear and see them Saturday night at the Suffolk on the Lower East Side, where they’re holding the launch party for their brand-new music video, “Ellen Page.” (They’ve previously paid homage to the late singer-songwriter “Elliott Smith.”). I Love Monsters kicks things off at 11:00, followed by Quiet Loudly at midnight and the premiere of the video and a set by BBA at 1:00, with two-buck PBRs all night long.
Filmed on location in and around Tehran’s Azadi Stadium and featuring a talented cast of nonprofessional actors, Jafar Panahi’s Offside is a brilliant look at gender disparity in modern-day Iran. Although it is illegal for girls to go to soccer games in Iran — because, among other reasons, the government does not think it’s appropriate for females to be in the company of screaming men who might be cursing and saying other nasty things — many try to get in, facing arrest if they get caught. Offside is set during an actual match between Iran and Bahrain; a win will put Iran in the 2006 World Cup. High up in the stadium, a small group of girls, dressed in various types of disguises, have been captured and are cordoned off, guarded closely by some soldiers who would rather be watching the match themselves or back home tending to their sheep. The girls, who can hear the crowd noise, beg for one of the men to narrate the game for them. Meanwhile, an old man is desperately trying to find his daughter to save her from some very real punishment that her brothers would dish out to her for shaming them by trying to get into the stadium. Despite its timely and poignant subject matter, Offside is a very funny film, with fine performances by Sima Mobarak Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ida Sadeghi, Golnaz Farmani, Mahnaz Zabihi, and Nazanin Sedighzadeh as the girls and M. Kheymeh Kabood as one of the soldiers.
One of the craziest movies ever made, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 cult classic, HOUSE (HAUSU), is finally getting its first-ever U.S. theatrical release, in a new 35mm print at the IFC Center. Truly one of those things that has to be seen to be believed, HOUSE is a psychedelic black horror comedy musical about Gorgeous (Kimiko Ikegami) and six of her high school friends who choose to spend part of their summer vacation at Gorgeous’s aunt’s (Yoko Minamida) very strange house. Gorgeous, whose mother died when she was little and whose father (Saho Sasazawa) is about to get married to Ryoko (Haruko Wanibuchi), brings along her playful friends Melody (Eriko Ikegami), Fantasy (Kumiko Oba), Prof (Ai Matsubara), Sweet (Masayo Miyako), Kung Fu (Miki Jinbo), and Mac (Mieko Sato), who quickly start disappearing like ten little Indians. HOUSE is a ceaselessly entertaining head trip of a movie, a tongue-in-chic celebration of genre with spectacular set designs by Kazuo Satsuya, beautiful cinematography by Yoshitaka Sakamoto, and a fab score by Asei Kobayashi and Mickie Yoshino. The original story actually came from the mind of Obayashi’s eleven-year-old daughter, Chigumi, who clearly has one heck of an imagination. Oh, and we can’t forget about the evil cat, a demonic feline to end all demonic felines. The film was released last year prior to its appearance on DVD from Janus, the same company that puts out such classic fare as Federico Fellini’s AMARCORD, Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON, Jacques Tati’s M. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, François Truffaut’s SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER, Jean Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME, and Jean-Luc Godard’s VIVRE SA VIE, so HOUSE has joined some very prestigious company. And who are we to say it doesn’t deserve it?