Hard Nips will turn on the crowd at December 7 EP release party at Cake Shop
Cake Shop
152 Ludlow St.
Tuesday, December 7, $8, 9:30
www.cake-shop.com
www.myspace.com/hardhardnips
The Brooklyn-based quartet Hard Nips are not exactly making it easy for themselves. First off is their name, which is actually short for Hard Nippon Girls, as vocalist Yoko Sawai, bassist Gooch, guitarist Mariko, and drummer Emi all come from Japan. (Well, it could also be short for the cocktail called the hard nipple, or it might refer to the Nips hard sucking candy, or, well, maybe it’s just exactly what it appears to be.) Then they named their 2010 album I SHIT U NOT and included the song “Children of Satan,” ensuring that many people would be too nervous to Google them or listen to their music at work for fear that the IT department (or a suspicious spouse at home) would send out a devil-worshiping pornography alert. Or at the very least, they could be seen as just another gimmicky group using shock tactics to get noticed. Fortunately, however, it’s their exciting sound and groovy live performances that have had them playing everywhere from SXSW and CMJ to the beaches of the Miami Music Festival and the hallowed confines of the Great Hall at the Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln gave one of his most historic speeches. The cheeseburger-eating, beer-swizzling, hard-partying Hard Nips will be celebrating their new eponymously titled Mixpak ten-inch on Pearl Harbor Day (like we said, they don’t make it easy on themselves) with a release party at Cake Shop. The EP contains four tracks that show off their fun brand of postpunk heavy metal psychedelic power pop, kicking off with the anthemic “Release It,” followed by “SunStroke,” which features strong group harmonies. Bass and drums build to a hot guitar riff in the hard-rock haiku “Picture,” with Yoko confessing, “I broke a window / Broke into your house / I stole a picture / of you and me in love on the sand // I climbed a mountain / And I see your house / You look unhappy / I take a picture.” The disc concludes with the more experimental “Alligator.” You can also expect to hear such fine tunage as “Black Hole Rainbow,” “State of the Art,” and “Island Radio” at Cake Shop, where Juiceboxxx, Greatest Hits, and Jubilee are also on the bill. Let the double and triple entendres proceed….
Japanese novelist Kôbô Abe and director Hiroshi Teshigahara collaborated on five films together, including the marvelously existential WOMAN OF THE DUNES in 1964 and THE FACE OF ANOTHER two years later. In THE FACE OF ANOTHER, Tatsuya Nakadai (THE HUMAN CONDITION, KILL!) stars as Okuyama, a man whose face has virtually disintegrated in a laboratory accident. He spends the first part of the film with his head wrapped in bandages, a la the Invisible Man, as he talks about identity, self-worth, and monsters with his wife (Machiko Kyo), who seems to be growing more and more disinterested in him. Then Okuyama visits a psychiatrist (Mikijirô Hira) who is able to create a new face for him, one that would allow him to go out in public and just become part of the madding crowd again. But his doctor begins to wonder, as does Okuyama, whether the mask has actually taken control of his life, making him as helpless as he was before. Abe’s remarkable novel is one long letter from Okuyama to his wife, filled with utterly brilliant, spectacularly detailed examinations of what defines a person and his or her value in society. Abe wrote the film’s screenplay, which tinkers with the time line and creates more situations in which Okuyama interacts with people; although that makes sense cinematically, much of Okuyama’s interior narrative, the building turmoil inside him, gets lost. Teshigahara once again uses black and white, incorporating odd cuts, zooms, and freeze frames, amid some truly groovy sets, particularly the doctor’s trippy office, and Tōru Takemitsu’s score is ominously groovy as well. As a counterpart to Okuyama, the film also follows a young woman (Miki Irie) with one side of her face severely scarred; she covers it with her hair and is not afraid to be seen in public, while Okuyama must hide behind a mask. But as Abe points out in both the book and the film, everyone hides behind a mask of one kind or another. 
Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Sisyphean tale, based on Kobo Abe’s marvelous novel, tells the story of an entomologist (Eiji Okada) out in the desert looking for insects when he comes upon a village of people living in the sand dunes — and he is unknowingly sucked into their world. Kyōko Kishida stars as the title character. See the movie — just wait till you get to the psychedelic head trip scene — but be sure to read the book as well; the scenes of the man trying to escape by climbing up the sand will feel oddly familiar to anyone who has ever been trapped in a seemingly inescapable situation. Teshigahara, who died in April 2001, adds surreal visual elements that make the film an unusually compelling though basically simple story. Abe also collaborated with Teshigahara on PITFALL (OTOSHIANA), THE FACE OF ANOTHER (TANIN NO KAO), and THE MAN WITHOUT A MAP (MOETSUKITA CHIZU).
Salma Hayek is terrific as Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in this uniquely creative biopic from Julie Taymor. Kahlo’s tumultuous twenty-five-year relationship with muralist and communist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) is the centerpiece of the film, which comes alive with bright colors, Elliot Goldenthal’s Oscar-winning score, splendidly bizarre animation from the Brothers Quay, and a fun group of supporting actors that includes Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd, Valeria Golino, Edward Norton, and Geoffrey Rush as Leon Trotsky. Kahlo documented her difficult life on canvas, and Taymor uses those paintings in engaging and dramatic ways. 
