The Detroit Cobras get ready to rock in the new year at the Mercury Lounge
You can say goodbye to the decade with a cornucopia of live concerts in New York City on December 31, starting with Chuck Berry’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve at B.B. King’s Blues Club and Grill ($98, 8:00 show; $120, 11:00 show). The very hot Detroit Cobras will be at the Mercury Lounge, welcoming in 2010 with the Underthings and the A-Bones ($25-$30). The intriguing trio of John Medeski, Robert Randolph, and the North Mississippi Allstars bring the Word to Terminal 5 ($40-$50). Revelers can get their freak on for free at Radegast Hall & Biergarten in Williamsburg, where the Coney Island Circus Sideshow will set up their portable tent, featuring Scott Baker, Serpentina, Kryssy Kocktail, Adam “the First Real Man” Rinn, the Executioner, Dick Zigun, Bad Buka, and more starting at 10:00. Los Lobos will threaten to tear down the house at City Winery with shows at 7:30 ($45-$150) and 11:00 ($75-$225). Roky Erickson won’t need any elevators at Maxwell’s, where he’s on a bill with Muck & the Mires ($35). Former Luna residents Dean & Britta will be playing an early show at Southpaw with Undersea Poem ($20-$25).
MSTRKRFT will mix things up at Webster Hall on December 31
The Living Room on Ludlow hosts a night of bluegrass, Auld Twang Syne, with Fresh Baked, Whistlin’ Wolves, Michael Daves, the Birdhive Boys, and others ($10-$15). Necromantic presents a Blue Moon New Year’s Eve party at the Bowery Poetry Club, featuring goth, synth, wave, dancing, revelry, and more ($10-$15). SOB’s, the Home of Universal Music, will get your booty shaking to a Taste of Latin Paradise with Kazua Band, La Excelencia, Stil, and DJ Spike ($25-$150). The Lovin’ Cup in Brooklyn will be throwing a ‘50s Beach Party, with Lemonade, Surfer Blood, Frankie and the Outs, Beach Fossils, We Are Country Mice, booze and food packages, and more ($15-$99). The Bell House will be providing a free can of Champagne along with Obits, the Subway Soul Club, and Eli Paperboy Reed & the True Loves at the Rock ‘N’ Soul 2010 New Year’s Eve Party ($30-$40). The Club Night New Year’s Eve Ball at Webster Hall is sure to be crazy, with MSTRKRFT, four floors, six adventure rooms, aerial performances, and what is billed as the Largest Balloon Drop in the World ($60-$150). And party planners extraordinaire Gemini & Scorpio promise that plenty of contraband will be on hand at the Bootleggers’ Ball in a vacant Carroll Gardens warehouse space, along with the Mad Jazz Hatters, the Stumblebum Brass Band, the Main Squeeze Orchestra, Alchemy Dance Theater, burlesque performers Mme Renee Rosebud and Jenny C’est Quoi, tarot reader and numerologist Marcy Currier, aerialist Nikki Borodi, mayhem master Dan Glass, host Bastard Keith, a live auction, games of chance, the Den of Sin, Dub Pies, and lots of surprises ($30-$40).
Audrey Hepburn brings class and style to Film Forum for NYE
For a milder New Year’s Eve, the Concert for Peace at St. John the Divine features Harry Smith, Judy Collins, Glen Cortese, Lauren Flanigan, and a thousand points of candlelight ($60), while Music at St. Bartholomew’s will include works by Bach, Böhm, and Langlais in addition to Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” at midnight (free). If music of any sort isn’t quite your beat on New Year’s Eve, you can head over to Central Park for the annual Midnight Run, with a fireworks and laser light show, costume contest, dancing, and a four-mile run. Prospect Park will also host free fireworks, right over Grand Army Plaza. Jivamukti Yoga School will be holding its twenty-first annual New Year’s Eve celebration with more than eight hours of special classes, a vegan dinner, a free kirtan dance party, and three hours of silence leading up to a midnight message (free – $75). Carolines on Broadway celebrates with Bobby Lee headlining at 8:00 ($38.25), while Greg Giraldo leads two shows at Comix (7:30 & 10:30, $45-$149). Sandra Bernhard continues her string of shows at Joes Pub (9:00, $100; 11:00, $150), followed by various members of the cast of HAIR letting the sun shine with DJ Theocracy in 2010: AN EQUALITY ODYSSEY! (1:00, $20). Film Forum is throwing in a free glass of Champagne after the 9:50 screening of THE APARTMENT (Billy Wilder, 1960), followed by BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (Blake Edwards, 1961). And for a little something very different, New Lost City begins at 195 Morgan Ave. at 9:00 pm and continues through 7:00 am with promised fire and ice, art and laughter, love and nudity, and prophetic visions and brief moments of the sublime as well as performances by the Hungry March Band, Baja + the Dry Eye Crew, the Lady Circus, and lots more ($29).
Carol Reed’s thriller is quite simply the most entertaining film we have ever seen, twi-ny’s absolute all-time fave. Set in divided post-WWII Vienna amid a thriving black market, THE THIRD MAN is heavy in atmosphere, untrustworthy characters, and sly humor, with a marvelous zither score by Anton Karas. Joseph Cotten stars as Holly Martins, an American writer of Western paperbacks who has come to Vienna to see his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), but he seems to have shown up a little late. While trying to find out what happened to Harry, Martins falls for Harry’s lover, Anna (Alida Valli); is told to get out of town by Major Calloway (Trevor Howard); meets a stream of Harry’s more interesting, mysterious friends, including Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch) and Popescu (Siegfried Breuer); and is talked into giving a lecture to a literary club by old Mr. Crabbin (Wilfrid Hyde-White). SPOILER: The shot in which Lime is first revealed, standing in a doorway, a cat brushing by his feet, his tongue firmly in cheek as he lets go a miraculous, knowing smile, is one of the greatest single shots in the history of cinema. Film Forum is screening a new 35mm print of THE THIRD MAN in honor of the film’s sixtieth anniversary.
François Ozon, a daring director who regularly challenges his audiences – usually with thrilling results – has pulled it off again with the very strange but utterly captivating RICKY. Ozon has made sexy mysteries (SWIMMING POOL), moving melodramas (UNDER THE SAND, TIME TO LEAVE), a bedroom farce (WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS), and even a star-studded, misguided musical (8 WOMEN), but he turns to an offbeat modern-day fairy tale with his latest, a favorite at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival. Alexandra Lamy stars as Katie, a single mother who has an on-the-job bathroom quickie with Paco (Sergi Lopez) that results in a pregnancy. But when little Ricky (Arthur Peyret) is born, he soon proves to be a boy like no other, as he develops a – well, it’s better if you find out for yourself how he is different from everyone else. RICKY, based on the short story “Moth” by Rose Tremain, could have been a cheesy gimmick, but Ozon settles for making a charming film instead of a morality play. RICKY is a pure delight, even as it has its head in the clouds.
