Nitzer Ebb will get bodies moving at the Gramercy on November 16 (photo by Emma Cohan)
Gramercy Theatre
127 East 23rd St. at Lexington Ave.
Tuesday, November 16, $33.25, 7:00
www.myspace.com/nitzerebbmusic
While we weren’t part of the initial Nitzer Ebb revolution that began in the mid-1980s with such albums as BASIC PAIN PROCEDURE (1983), THAT TOTAL AGE (1987), SO BRIGHT SO STRONG (1988), and BELIEF (1989), we have quickly fallen under the British band’s powerful techo spell with INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (Artists Addiction, November 2010), their first new record in fifteen years. When they declare “Get down on your knees” on the disc, we can’t help but get down on our knees, and you’ll be hard-pressed not to as well. And when they proclaim, “Left right left / left right left / move that body / move that body,” with the help of Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore, we get right in line. Essex duo Douglas McCarthy and Vaughn “Bon” Harris fill INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, which inexplicably took a while to get released here in the States, with big-sounding electro-pop and thrilling techno beats, although they do slow things down on the beautiful Chili Peppers-esque “Going Away from Me.” “Again and again, I come back,” they sing on “I Am Undone,” and indeed they are back, playing a small club gig that is a far cry from their European arena tour in early 2010 supporting Depeche Mode. Joined by drummer Jason Payne, who first played with NE on the 1995 BIG HIT tour, Nitzer Ebb will be at the Gramercy Theatre on November 16, with Tense and Twitch the Ripper opening up.
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who have teamed up for such documentaries as THE BOYS OF BARAKA (2005), the Oscar-nominated JESUS CAMP (2006), and one segment of FREAKONOMICS (2010), spent a year on the rather indistinct corner of 12th St. & Delaware Ave. in the small community of Fort Pierce, Florida, where an intense battle is waging. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic, while on the other side is the prolife Pregnancy Care Center. Ewing and Grady are able to get the primarily young, poor pregnant women considering abortion to open up and share their stories as they face one of the most difficult decisions anybody will ever have to make. The women are met by a constant handful of protesters outside the abortion clinic, who try to get them to change their mind and go across the street. Several of the women go to the Pregnancy Care Center by accident, believing it to be the abortion clinic — which is precisely why the center set up shop there — where they are not told of their mistake and are offered money and clothing to not go through with the termination of their pregnancies. They become pawns in a religious and moral battle that Ewing and Grady show can be as infuriating as it is heartbreaking, although the filmmakers do an excellent job of remaining neutral, not casting judgment. Interestingly, while the workers at the prolife center have a lot to say on the issue, the people at the abortion clinic are far more cautious and reserved, with the owner-doctor never being seen on camera but only pulling up in his car (perhaps at least partly for safety reasons, as Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered during the time the film was being made). This special screening of 12th & DELAWARE, which will be followed by a Q&A with Ewing and Grady, is part of the fourteenth season of IFC’s Stranger than Fiction series, which continues November 23 with Maximilian Schell’s MARLENE (1984) and November 30 with John-Keith Wasson’s SURVIVING HITLER: A LOVE STORY (2010).
In Akira Kurosawa’s sort-of sequel to YOJIMBO based on Shūgorō Yamamoto’s short story “Peaceful Days,” Toshirō Mifune returns as Tsubaki Sanjuro, a rogue samurai who shows up in a small town looking for food and fast money and takes up with a rag-tag group of wimps who don’t trust him when he says he will help them against the powerful ruling gang. Also back is Tatsuya Nakadai, this time as his accomplice Hanbei. Funnier than most Kurosawa samurai epics, the film is unfortunately brought down a notch by a bizarre soundtrack that ranges from melodramatic claptrap to a jazzy big-city score. The film is being screened at BAMcinématek as part of the series Kurosawa’s Samurai, which concludes November 21 with the King Lear epic RAN.
