Married Greenwich Village duo Allison Moorer and Steve Earle will be joined by special guests during four-week summer residency at City Winery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
City Winery
155 Varick St.
July 8, 15, 29 & August 5, $45-$65, 9:00
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
Husband-and-wife singer-songwriters Steve Earle and Allison Moorer begin a four-week summer residency at City Winery on July 8 with a sold-out show featuring Rosanne Cash, who just played a terrific set with her band on Governors Island on July 4. Earle, a fierce political activist and engaging live performer, mixes country, folk, blues, and rock on such records as GUITAR TOWN (1986), COPPERHEAD ROAD (1988), I FEEL ALRIGHT (1996), and THE REVOLUTION STARTS NOW (2004); his wife, meanwhile, is a more traditional country artist who has released such discs as CROWS (2010), MOCKINGBIRD (2008), and THE DUEL (2004). On July 15 the Greenwich Village couple will be joined by Earle’s son, Justin Townes Earle, a fine singer-songwriter in his own right, as evidenced by his excellent first two albums, THE GOOD LIFE (2008) and MIDNIGHT AT THE MOVIES (2009); his third, HARLEM RIVER BLUES, is due September 4. On July 29, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band comes up from New Orleans to take the stage with Earle and Moorer; the guest for August 5 has yet to be announced. If you’ve never seen Steve Earle live, this is a great opportunity at an intimate venue to catch one of the most underrated, controversial, and talented performers of the last twenty-five years.
Japanese writer-director Yuki Tanada made quite a cinematic debut in 2004 with ELECTRIC BUTTON (MOON & CHERRY), a romantic sex comedy that was part of the Love Collection Project. Shortly after shy virgin Tadokoro (Tasuka Nagaoka) joins the university erotic literature club, he finds himself being used over and over again as sexual fodder by the small club’s lone female, Mayama (Noriko Eguchi), who is doing a rather unique kind of research for her latest novel. Meanwhile, Tadokoro meets the sweetly innocent Akane (Misato Hirata) at the bookstore where they both work and wonders if he can have a real relationship with her. What follows is a funny, heated battle between Tadokoro’s heart, mind, and nether regions as he delves into his own writing and sense of self-worth. Recalling Pinku Eiga films, ELECTRIC BUTTON is playfully sexual and insightfully honest, a work that earned the female director well-deserved accolades. (She has gone on to make such films as 2006’s HAVE A NICE DAY and 2008’s AINT’ NO TOMORROWS.) Although the titillating ELECTRIC BUTTON was made back in 2004, the July 7 screening at the Japan Society, in the “Best of the Unreleased Naughties” section of the Japan Cuts festival, is its U.S. premiere. (Look for Akira Emoto as elder statesman Sakamoto, erstwhile leader of the club of oddballs; Emoto also appears in the festival’s MEMORIES OF MATSUKO and GOLDEN SLUMBER and was the irrepressible title character of Shohei Imamura’s DR. AKAGI.)
A precursor to such emotional, intense examinations of the contemporary Japanese family as Hirokazu Kore-eda’s STILL WALKING and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s TOKYO SONATA, Toshiaki Toyoda’s HANGING GARDEN is a smart, surreal look at the dark underbelly building beneath a seemingly happy family. Eriko Kyobashi (Kyôko Koizumi) has one rule for her husband, Takashi (Itsuji Itao), son, Ko (Masahiro Hirota), and daughter, Mana Kyobashi (Anne Suzuki): that there are no secrets. The family that shares together, stays together. But there are secrets galore, with Dad sleeping with the younger Mina (Sonim), soon to become Ko’s tutor; Mana frequenting the love hotel where she was conceived; and Eriko harboring thoughts of bloody murder. Based on the novel by Mitsuyo Kakuta, HANGING GARDEN is a superb character study, a cynical, funny, and at times horrific look at a dysfunctional family ready to implode at any moment. After making HANGING GARDEN, Toyoda was arrested on drug charges and reemerged four years later with 