You’d be wrong wrong wrong not to catch Eleanor Friedberger at this year’s CMJ festival, as she continues her Fiery Furnaces hiatus with her second solo album, the wonderful Personal Record (Merge, June 2013). Friedberger will be at Judson Church on Thursday at 12 noon as part of the KEXP Live Broadcast (free and open to the public, no CMJ badge required), followed by an 11:00 show at Bowery Ballroom. Below are more recommendations for a wide-open Friday night, including some of our other local favorites, Heliotropes and Tall Tall Trees.
HMG PR & Ear Candy Present: Arms, 12 noon; Jacob Snider, 12:45; Charlene Kaye, 1:30; Lapland, 2:15; the Donnies the Amys, 3:00; the Spring Standard, 3:45; Pearl and the Beard, 4:45, Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2, 196 Allen St.
Monarch Artists: Mainland, 12 noon; the Adversary, 12:50; Dynasty Electric, 1:40; Maya Vik, 2:35; My Midnight Heart, 3:25; White Prism, 4:20; Bright Light Bright Light, 5:15, Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery
Planetary and the Great Escape Present: Wildlife, 1:20; Tigertown, 2:00; Hermitude, 2:40; Tops, 3:20; Blind Boys of Alabama, 4:00; the Preatures, 4:45; Sheppard, 5:25, Pianos, 158 Ludlow St.
Fuck Buttons with Mystery Skulls and Lichens, 6:00, (le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St.
Distiller Promo: DJ Neal Sugarman, 6:00; Sunwolf, 7:00; Cub Sport, 7:40; Diane Coffee, 8:30; Heliotropes, 9:20; Bad Cop, 10:00; the Can’t Tells, 10:50, Union Pool, 484 Union Ave.
Big Picture Media: NGHBRS, 7:00; Sol Cat, 7:45; Maria Taylor, 8:30; Sheppard, 9:15; Quiet Company, 10:00, Sullivan Hall, 214 Sullivan St.
Baeblemusic Presents the Launch Pad: Flagship, 7:00; Duologue, 8:00; the Darcys, 9:00; Misun, 10:00; Claire, 11:00; the Ceremonies, 12 midnight, Spike Hill, 186 Bedford Ave.
Champion: Promised Land Sound, 7:30; Okta Logue, 8:00; Kan Wakan, 9:00; Reuben and the Dark, 10:00; Eleanor Friedberger, 11:00; the Long Winters, 12 midnight, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St
Craft Services: Weaves, 8:00; Victory, 8:50; HSY, 9:40; Rey Pila, 10:30; Odonis Odonis, 11:20; Saul Williams & the Dragons of Zynth, 12:15, Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette St.
Tall Tall Trees, 11:00 pm, Rockwood Music Hall Stage 1, 196 Allen St.
About six years ago, Jonathan Demme was driving in his car toward the George Washington Bridge when he heard a song on the radio that changed his life. It was by a Neapolitan musician he had never heard of before, Enzo Avitable. A few years later, producer Davide Azzolini invited Demme to be a special guest at the Naples Film Festival, and Demme agreed to attend, as long as he got to meet Avitable. Not only did Azzolini arrange the meeting, but they all decided to work together as well. The result is the charming documentary Enzo Avitable Music Life, in which Demme captures the always smiling and positive Avitable playing in a beautiful Baroque church with a stellar group of musicians from around the world, showing off his cluttered apartment (along with photos of him with James Brown, Tina Turner, and other superstars he has performed with), and visiting his childhood town of Marianella. As with such previous Demme documentaries as Stop Making Sense, Storefront Hitchcock, and 
In a 1966 interview with Pierre Daix about Masculin féminin, director Jean-Luc Godard said, “When I made this film, I didn’t have the least idea of what I wanted.” Initially to be based on the Guy de Maupassant short stories “The Signal” and “Paul’s Mistress,” the film ended up being a revolutionary examination of the emerging youth culture in France, which Godard identifies as “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” Godard threw away the script and worked on the fly to make the film, which stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul, a peculiar young man who quickly becomes obsessed with budding pop star Madeleine, played by real-life Yé-yé singer Chantal Goya. (Godard discovered her on a television variety show.) Paul chases Madeleine, getting a job at the same company, going to the movies and nightclubs with her and her friends, and meeting her in cafés, where he wants to talk about the troubles of contemporary society and she just wants to have a good time. “Man’s conscience doesn’t determine his existence. His social being determines his conscience,” Paul proclaims. He continually argues that there is nothing going on even as strange events occur around him to which he is completely oblivious, including a lover’s spat in which a woman guns down a man in broad daylight. (Sounds of rapid-fire bullets can be heard over the intertitles for each of the film’s fifteen faits précis, evoking a sense of impending doom.) Paul has bizarre conversations with his best friend, Robert (Michel Debord), a radical who asks him to help put up anarchist posters. Posing as a journalist, Paul brutally interviews Miss 19 (Elsa Leroy), a young model with a very different view of society and politics. Godard has also included a playful battle of the sexes in the center of it all: Paul wants Madeleine, much to the consternation of Madeleine’s roommate, Elisabeth (Marlène Jobert), who also has designs on her; meanwhile, Robert goes out with another of Madeleine’s friends, the more grounded Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport), who is interested in Paul.
When a pair of disaffected Parisians, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), meet an adorable young woman, Odile (Anna Karina), in English class, they decide to team up and steal a ton of money from a man living in Odile’s aunt’s house. As they meander through the streets of cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s black-and-white Paris, they talk about English and wealth, dance in a cafe while director Jean-Luc Godard breaks in with voice-over narration about their character, run through the Louvre in record time, and pause for a near-moment of pure silence. Godard throws in plenty of commentary on politics, the cinema, and the bourgeoisie in the midst of some genuinely funny scenes. Band of Outsiders is no ordinary heist movie; based on Dolores Hitchens’s novel Fool’s Gold, it is the story of three offbeat individuals who just happen to decide to attempt a robbery while living their strange existence, as if they were outside from the rest of the world. The trio of ne’er-do-wells might remind Jim Jarmusch fans of the main threesome from Stranger Than Paradise (1984), except Godard’s characters are more aggressively persistent. One of Godard’s most accessible films, Band of Outsiders is screening October 18 at the Francesca Beale Theater as part of the expansive Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Jean-Luc Godard — The Spirit of the Forms,” which continues through October 31 with such other Godard works as Les Carabiniers, La Chinoise, Contempt, Film Socialisme, King Lear, Nôtre musique, and many more.