1) Donny Vomit emcees an evening of burlesque, carnival-themed films and music at the Five Spot.
2) The Plaza Theatre celebrates the 25th anniversary of Purple Rain.
3) George Dawes Green discusses Ravens at Margaret Mitchell House & Museum.
4) Walter Trout plays Smith’s Olde Bar.
5) Italian classic Pinocchio continues at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
(Photo courtesy www.coneyisland.com)
1) The Modern Dunce Series opens at Sandler Hudson Gallery.
2) DMC and Friends perform at Hard Rock Cafe.
3) The Plaza Theatre hosts Sing-A-Long Grease.
4) Pete Yorn plays Center Stage.
5) Eddie Ifft performs at Laughing Skull Lounge.
(Photo by Jade McCully)
1) Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performs Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
2) Atlanta Film Festival celebrates the 20th anniversary of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing at the Fox Theatre.
3) Calu leads top-notch burlesquepades at Smith’s Olde Bar.
4) Talbot Tagora and Abe Vigoda play 529.
5) R. Land presents Zaat at Plaza Theatre.
(Photo © MGM)
1) The Wooden Birds play the Earl.
2) Charles Martin discusses his book, Where the River Ends, at Decatur Library.
3) Safe Word plays 529.
4) Big Man Japan continues at the Plaza Theatre.
5) Soul Shakers play Blind Willie’s.
(Photo by Aubrey Edwards)
1) Isis plays the Earl.
2) A Cappella Books and Euclid Avenue Yacht Club team up for the Goodness of Guinness.
3) Screen on the Green kicks off in Centennial Olympic Park with Back to the Future.
4) Out on Film begins at Plaza Theatre.
5) The Hawks play 529.
(Photo Ipecac Recordings)
1) Kirkwood hosts its seventh annual Spring Fling and Tour of Homes.
2) Plaza Theatre screens Repo! The Genetic Opera.
3) Atlanta Rollergirls play at Yaarab Shrine Center.
4) Mattress Factory Studios hosts Spring Open Studios.
5) Bobby Ray, aka B.o.B., performs at Apache Cafe.
(Photo courtesy Kirkwood Neighborhood Association)
1) The Atlanta Film Festival holds its opening night gala at the Rialto Center, with a screening of The People Speak.
2) SCAD Style continues with fashion gurus Lela Rose and Miles Redd.
3) Thomas Glave reads from The Torturer’s Wife at Outwrite.
4) The Found Footage Festival returns to the Plaza Theatre.
5) The World Barista Championship comes to Atlanta.
(Photo courtesy Atlanta Film Festival)
The monthly burlesque-and-B-movie festival The Silver Scream Spookshow at the Plaza Theatre presents She Demons at 1 and 10 p.m. Sat., Feb. 28. The 1958 schlock fest features a remote island, dancing jungle girls, snaggle-toothed monster chicks and guys in Nazi uniforms, so it looks sort of like Werewolf Women of the SS, only in black and white and not fake. The trailer calls it “A FRIGHT-Mare of Blood-Chilling HORROR,” so you know it’s serious, because a frightmare is a lot worse than a regular nightmare:
1) Modern to Contemporary Masters: Works on Paper continues at the Michael C. Carlos Museum.
2) The Plaza screens Spaceballs for this month’s Flicks & Giggles.
3) Atlanta Cajun Zydeco Association hosts a Mardi Gras dance party.
4) … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead plays the Earl.
5) Mary Kay Andrews signs and discusses Deep Dish at Outwrite.
(Photo by Paul Strand)
1) The Plaza Theatre screens awesomely bad film The Room.
2) Aaron Glantz discusses his book, The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans, at the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum.
3) Local bands and artists unite at the Earl for John John’s Gravy Boat Lovefest, a benefit for John Henderson.
4) Kodac Harrison and Chris Chandler perform spoken word at Smith’s Olde Bar.
5) Fred Eaglesmith plays Eddie’s Attic.
(Photo © Wiseau Films)
1) John Legend and Raphael Saadiq perform at the Fox Theatre.
2) High John the Conqueror and African Folktales opens at Theatre in the Square’s Alley Stage.
3) The Plaza Theatre hosts a screening of Sid and Nancy, alongside an art exhibit of ’80s-era punk fliers.
4) Dixie Purvis: New Paintings continues at Sandler Hudson Gallery.
5) Don Quixote opens at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
(Photo © Sony Music Entertainment)
I know the Coen Brothers have won Oscars for Fargo and No Country For Old Men, while The Big Lebowski has emerged as one of the definitive cult movies of our time, but my heart will probably always belong to their second film, the Southwestern screwball comedy Raising Arizona from 1987. Two future Oscar-winners, Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter, play a desperate childless couple who resort to kidnapping one of the infant “Arizona Quints,” reasoning that the parents “have more than they can handle.” When The Plaza Theatre screens Raising Arizona at 9:30 p.m. Fri., Jan. 30, look out for some of the Coens’ favorite actors as well as references to other movies. For bonus points, consider the similarities between No Country for Old Men’s implacable hit man, Anton Chiguhr, and Raising Arizona’s Lone Biker of the Apocalypse:
1) STOMP opens at the Fox Theatre.
2) Ansel Adams + Bob Kolbrener: 90 Years in the American West continues at Fay Gold Gallery.
3) Colourmusic plays the Earl.
4) Charis Circle hosts a workshop on sustainability in an urban setting, hosted by Scott Kellogg, the author of Toolbox for Sustainable City Living.
5) This month’s edition of Flicks and Giggles includes comedians and a screening of Raising Arizona at the Plaza Theatre.
(Photo by Takahashi)
I think there’s a method to the Silver Scream Spook Show’s madness in programming Mad Monster Party? for the weekend after Christmas. The 1969 kiddie flick features stop-motion animation from Rankin/Bass, producers of holiday classics like “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “The Year Without a Santa Claus.” Parents looking for things to do with the kids will have fresh memories of that trademark “Animagic” animation style. Co-written by Mad Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzmann, the story features a gathering of classic movie monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein and includes voice work from Boris Karloff and Phyllis Dinner. Screening at 1 and 10 p.m. Sat., Dec. 27 at the Plaza Theatre, Mad Monster Party? was a huge influence on Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas:
Tonight at 9:30 p.m. The Plaza Theatre’s monthly Splatter Cinema screening decks the halls with gouts of blood. (Fa la la la la, la la la la.) The moviehouse presents the notorious Yuletide-themed slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night from 1984, which features a crazed killer who dresses up like Santa Claus and uses such murder weapons as Christmas tree lights and reindeer antlers (as well as the less seasonal fire-axe). It’s one of the most controversial and thoroughly condemned horror films of the 1980s, but it spite of that (or more likely, because of it), Silent Night, Deadly Night has a devoted cult following. Here’s a quickie trailer:
The Plaza Theatre screens The Big Lebowski at 9:30 p.m. this evening as part of its monthly “Flicks & Giggles” series, which features a warm-up act of live comedy, followed by a big-screen laughfest. Directed by Oscar winners Joel and Ethan Coen, The Big Lebowski celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and has been enshrined as one of the most beloved cult comedies of the past 10 years.
The Big Lebowski works as a kind of gonzo combination of Raymond Chandler private eye story and Cheech-and-Chong pot comedy, and features famously profane dialogue. My favorite story about The Big Lebowski concerns Comedy Central’s attempt to clean up the film for broadcast. The language is not work safe, so I’ll put it after the jump, and the clip of the “Gutterballs” dream scene:
By accident, coincidence or the hand of occult forces beyond human understanding, the Plaza Theatre is presenting two films this week based on the works of pioneering American horror author H.P. Lovecraft. Tonight, Sep. 9, the monthly gorefest Splatter Cinema presents director Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, a frequently hilarious adaptation of Lovecraft’s story, “Herbert West: Re-Animator.” Replete with dark comedy, grisly make-up effects and a soundtrack reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Re-Animator is also worth seeing just for the transcendently twitchy performance by Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Herbert West, an obnoxious young scientist who discovers the means to return the spark of life to the recently deceased. Here’s the trailer from 1985:
Any of the 2,500 or so people who head out to the Starlight Six Drive-In this weekend will feel like they’re attending a family reunion.
Drive-Invasion, the annual harmonic convergence of Atlanta’s lowbrow-culture scene, brings together punk-inspired rockabilly, garage and surf rock, hot-rod and custom-car contests, and a slew of old horror and science-fiction movies, shown from dusk practically till dawn.
It’s the signature event in a scene that over the past decade has flourished by celebrating fading cultural landmarks and old pop trends. With the help of a creative cadre of musicians, performance artists, promoters and tinkerers, ancient theaters such as the Starlight and the Plaza, and converted industrial spaces such as the Alcove Gallery, are taking the past and bringing it alive with a new, uniquely Atlantan energy. Lowbrow culture has taken root in Atlanta.
The word “lowbrow” has come to describe the embrace of a whole range of 20th-century pop-culture trends with a decidedly DIY spirit – from the hot-rod scene of the Roaring ’20s and the post-World War II tiki-bar craze to pop-surrealist, cartoon and comic-book art. The West Coast hipsters seem to celebrate all things lowbrow with a sense of irony that hints at trendiness.
But in Atlanta – where highways and power centers sometimes overshadow a more homegrown personality – a tightly knit group of creative spirits seems to have left irony behind in favor of an authentic lowbrow aesthetic with its own Southern accent.
Read the rest of this article here.
(Photo by David Lee Simmons)
On Sat., Aug. 23, the Silver Scream Spook Show, the Plaza Theatre’s monthly presentation of vintage horror film and burlesque entertainment, presents Curse of the Demon, a supernatural classic from 1957. Alternately known as Night of the Demon, the film features one of horror films’ most famous monster mug shots. Ironically, Curse’s now-iconic demon was almost not part of the final cut, but a late addition at the studio’s insistence that appears only at the beginning and ending of the film. Here’s a short clip:
Curse’s occult story features a scholarly skeptic (Laura’s square-jawed Dana Andrews) who exposes frauds, only to discover that a coven leader (Niall MacGinnis) may actually known how to summon dark forces. It may be the masterpiece of director Jacques Tourneur, who established himself as an expert in building mood and ratcheting up our fears of the unseen and unknown (especially in his collaborations with producer Val Lewton, including the original Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie). If the X-Files sequel and M. Night Shyamalan’s recent efforts left suspense-seekers disappointed, Curse of the Demon will show you how it’s done.
Curse of the Demon screens at 1 and 10 p.m., Aug. 23.
“A tidal wave of terror engulfs the screen!” On Saturday the Silver Scream Spook Show, the Plaza Theatre’s raucous monthly screening of classic — or at least memorable –horror movies, presents It Came From Beneath the Sea from 1955. The legendary Ray Harryhausen provided the special effects for this tale of a giant octopus that wreaks havoc, memorably putting the squeeze on the Golden Gate Bridge. Fun fact: to save time, Harryhausen only animated six of the model’s tentacles and nicknamed it a “hextapus.” Incidentally, It seems to have inspired the neat-o giant “kraken” scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest. It Came From Beneath the Sea plays at 1 and 10 p.m. on Saturday, July 26. Here’s the vintage trailer:
There are Twinkies with more depth. There were probably better ways for Gene Kelly to finish off a big-screen career. There was never an opportunity for Olivia Newton-John to show off leg warmers.
But there’s no denying the musical power of the soundtrack to 1980’s Xanadu, which screens tonight at 9:30 p.m. as part of the Plaza Theatre’s Summer Camp series. Directed by (believe it or not) Robert Greenwald — more recently known for his politically charged documentaries such as Outfoxed and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price — Xanadu sluggishly tells the story of a frustrated artist, Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) who inadvertently summons a roller-skating muse, Kira (Newton-John), just as his befriending an aging Hollywood hoofer (Kelly) leads to a partnership in a nightclub.
Yup, you read it right. Everybody’s favorite Hellion, Crispin Glover (pictured, in Epic Movie), will host a two-night stand at the Plaza Theatre in which the sometimes brilliant actor, director and author will show off his stuff.
This, according to a press release from the Plaza’s Jonathan Rej:
The evening begins with Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show, an hour-long dramatic presentation in which the actor narrates images from eight of his illustrated story books. The feature film It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. screens next, followed by a question & answer period moderated by Crispin himself, who will then sign books (for sale in the lobby) after the Q&A session.
It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. goes into uncharted cinematic territory with screenwriter Steven C. Stewart starring in this semi-autobiographical, psycho-sexual, tale about a man with severe cerebral palsy and a fetish for girls with long hair. Part horror film, part exploitation picture and part documentary of a man who cannot express his sexuality in the way he desires, (due to his physical condition), this fantastical and often humorous tale is told completely from Stewarts actual point of view as that of someone who has lived for years watching people do things he will never be able to do. Here, Stewarts character is something of a lady-killer, seducing a troubled, recently divorced mother (Margit Carstensen), her teenage daughter and any number of other ladies he encounters along the way. According to Crispin Glover, Stewart “wanted to show that handicapped people are human, sexual and can be horrible. He also states that It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. will probably be the best film he has anything to do with in his entire career. Crispin Glover and his co-director David Brothers wanted to bring Stewart’s story to the screen.
(Photo courtesy 20th Century Fox)
Contrary to a blog rumor we read earlier today, the Plaza Theatre is not on the brink of closure.
“We are definitely not closing,” says Jonathan Rej, owner of the 69-year-old art deco movie house on Ponce De Leon Avenue. “We’ve had a couple of slow months, but it’s gonna take more than that for us to close up shop.”
Rej says he suspects the closure rumor might have been started by a disgruntled former employee. He also says the bloggers who’ve repeated the rumor have neither telephoned nor e-mailed him. Rej’s e-mail address is on theater’s website.
(Photo by Jim Stawniak)
