Posted
by Mike Conklin
on Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 7:27 AM
By now you've likely heard all about what went down at Santos Party House on Thursday night, but just in case: A few hours before Ninja Tune's scheduled 20th anniversary celebration was set to start, cops raided the club and eventually shut it down, citing "criminal sale of possession of controlled substances." Early Friday evening, the venue released an official statement.
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by Nicolas Rapold
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 6:10 PM
Screening tomorrow, one of the highlights in the Walter Reade weekend of Scary Movies is the unreleased-in-the-U.S. Triangle (a U.K. Film Council funds recipient...). Brit horror maven Christopher Smith once again puts fresh settings to unnerving use: distrait daisy-duked mom Melissa George and her yacht-going friends hit dead calm and then wind up on a ghost cruise-liner. That’s when the premature mind loss, literalized split identity, and sloppy gunshots begin, in an absorbing WTF story of recursive reality. It takes a sure hand to guide such a disorienting film, and Smith has it (making one curious what he’s done with the bubonic menace in Black Death, screening right afterward).
And already passed but noteworthy is the 1980s pick in this year’s edition, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser—which every single person I talked to remembers almost solely from its VHS cover. That talismanic recall befits a movie that, like some of the best horror, makes little initial attempt to explain its unleashing of demonic nightmares, willed and otherwise, and fleshly grotesquerie worthy of Dante’s Inferno. Pinhead in fact conserves his appearances, like any sensible undead star, and wears high-collared jacket and pins-in-head by Jane Wildgoose. Gone now, but followed this weekend by other Scary revivals including Messiah of Evil (1973), Dead of Night (1945), and a rare Freddie Francis doublefeature.
Posted
by Mike Conklin
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 5:31 PM
Word has been making its way around the internet that the legendary Technics SL-1200 turntable has been discontinued by parent company Panasonic. It's the most widely-used turntable among professional DJs, and every venue/club worth its salt has a pair of 'em on hand. With sales reportedly down 95% over the past ten years, Panasonic had no choice but to pull the plug. We reached out to Bret Winans of Brooklyn-based DJ equipment source Turntable Lab, who was kind enough to answer some questions about the whole thing.
Whoa, you guys, what is wrong with this pretty, nutty owl? He must be practicing his scary trick for when he goes trick-or-treating. Either that or he had a little too much pre-Halloween candy, if you know what I mean... This owl is on drugs. Happy Halloween! (Videosift)
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by Justin Stewart
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 4:18 PM
As the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 4th annual Scary Movies series reaches its frenzied climax this weekend, do check out Willard Huyck's beloved 1973 curio Messiah of Evil, on Sunday at 2. It's also set to play tonight (at last check) at midnight at Williamsburg's new, tiny Spectacle Theater (more on which soon).
Slapdash and silly, but also moodily shot and chillingly barren, this cult favorite explores the terrors of Lovecraftian madness, reawakened Donner Party cannibalism, and bad Pop Art wallpaper. The plot concerns strange zombie/vampire cult activities in a Californian seaside town. The great Jack Fisk was an art designer, and there are two stunning, barbarous set pieces, one in a grocery store, the other in a blood-red movie theater. Lazy shots of bugs and salamanders in drains, and ad nauseam repetitions of blood streaming from characters’ orifices do wear, but the overall effect is satisfyingly disconcerting. Elisha Cook Jr., of course, appears as a wise drunk.
Posted
by Lauren Beck
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 3:35 PM
It was announced this week that those endlessly hip hipsters in Animal Collective will curate and headline a forthcoming installment of All Tomorrow's Parties, set to take place May 13-15, 2011 in Minehead, England. As of now, they've enlisted an array of AnCo-friendly bands to appear — Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Gang Gang Dance, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Broadcast, Black Dice, Meat Puppets, the Frogs, IUD, Prince Rama, Spectrum, Dent May (?!), Deradoorian and Zomby, among others — with the promise of more acts to be announced. Here's a list of who those should be:
Posted
by Jonny Diamond
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 2:40 PM
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes announced yesterday the formation of a special borough task force called Project Reach Out, an LGBT-friendly police unit created to foster more comfortable interaction between cops and the LGBT community. Of course, the task force's chief goal will be reducing the number of bias crimes in Brooklyn, providing a special hotline for victims who might have otherwise hesitated in reporting crimes to the regular police force. Said Hynes to NY1, of the hotline:
[Victims of bias crime are sometimes] afraid to reveal their sexuality. They feel they could be further victimized by their employer. Often if you've got investigators who are not sensitive to the problems of this community, it's going to be communicated. So it's both and that's why believe it's so very important that people access this phone number immediately.
The hotline for Project Reach Out is 1-718-250-2759.
This morning both the Times and Post reported that the Broadway blockbuster Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has hit another snag, making this officially the most cursed stage spectacle since the Scottish play: Kevin Aubin, a dancer who is one of several performing the part of Spider-Man in the Julie Taymor-directed, Bono and The Edge-songwritten musical, broke both his wrists performing one of the $60 million show's stunts. If you know anything about the science behind Spider-Man, you'll know that most of his power, notably his ability to sling webs, is in his wrists. Despite the loss of a major cast-member, the show is still slated to begin previews on November 14 ahead of a December 21 opening. We wish Mr. Aubin a spidey recovery.
Posted
by Mark Asch
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 1:10 PM
Tomorrow, Bushwick's Vaudeville Park teams with Cinebeasts and curator Tom Stathes to present Halloweenie!, a program of vintage Halloween cartoons projected in 16mm (there's a costume matinee for kids at 2pm, and one for grown-ups at 7).
Among the Fleischer and Ub Iwerks cartoons screening is the very early Tom and Jerry entry "Wot a Night," which Stathes calls "a classic 'scary' entry from 1931, when Depression-era cartoons boasted new sound technology yet depicted situations and home interiors ravished by the economic situation at the time." Here:
Posted
by Mike Conklin
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 12:26 PM
Here's something about this weekend that not a lot of people will tell you: It's totally fine if you don't want to dress up for Halloween—if you find the whole thing silly and juvenile, or, hell, even if you're just too self-conscious to go out in public wearing a costume. So, what you should do on Saturday night when everyone else is out doing whatever it is they do on Halloween? Well, you should go to the Mercury Lounge to see Philadelphia-based orchestral noise-rock band A Sunny Day in Glasgow, who just released Autumn, Again, the excellent counter-part to last year's equally excellent Ashes Grammar. Fortunately, we've got a pair of tickets we're looking to give away, and in order to be eligible, all you'll have to do is follow LMagMusic on Twitter, then tweet at us letting us know you're interested. If you'd like to take the opportunity to tell us why you hate Halloween and would rather go to an indie rock show, that would also be fine.
Posted
by Amy Elmgren
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 11:41 AM
Stewart-Colbert 2012
Most of you are probably aware of Jon Stewart’s generation-defining Rally to Restore Sanity at the National Mall in DC tomorrow, and hopefully some of you are going. But for those who, in Stewart’s words, “have shit to do,” the L Magazine will be heading down to the capital to cover it for you; so it's like you'll actually be there yourself, only better, because you won't be in D.C.
To tide you over till tomorrow (we have to go get ready for the HuffPo bus) here’s what folks have been saying about the rally in the press and on the street (and in some of the nicer unisex bathrooms):
Last night at around 7:45 about thirty of us, mostly young and middle-aged artists, made our way up to the tenth floor of the massive loft building at 475 Kent Avenue on the corner of South 11th Street. We were there for the second performance of Wallabout Oyster Theatre's first production, Beckett's 1958 short Krapp's Last Tape and a reading of his final novella Worstward Ho (1983). The space, an unconventional theater even by Williamsburg standards, took up almost all of Simon Lee's home and studio, with its spectacular views out over the Navy Yard towards Lower Manhattan. In the performance space, seats of various provenance—folding chairs, old leather theater seats, straw bottom kitchen chairs—were arrayed in four rows on risers, a tight but quite comfortable fit.
Saw 3-D: Though its grimy torture-porn aesthetic will always be rooted in the peculiarities of the mid-aughts, the Saw series is nonetheless the most retro horror franchise going at the moment: low-budget exploitation movies cranked out once a year, with unapologetically cheesy Roman numerals affixed to each successive sequel; no Curse of the Black Pearl- or The Last Stand-style subtitles for Jigsaw, the serial killer who actually died way back in Saw III but lives on through flashbacks and an endless archive of blueprints for horrible traps. Like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, this series has started to peter out as it approaches double digits; Saw VI was by far the lowest-grossing so far, although still probably a decent profit stream for Lionsgate. So the Saw folks have doubled down on a time-tested 80s-style gimmick used by both Jason (in Part III) and Freddy (in Part VI), now in the midst of a high-tech resurgence (or, as we'd like to pretend, backlash): 3-D, savior of the moribund franchise! Although they've rocketed past the point of being able to have Saw 3-D be the actual third movie in the franchise, it's nonetheless the next logical step in goosing those declining grosses. Pun possibly intended!
Posted
by Mike Conklin
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 9:41 AM
For today's installment of The People in Your Neighborhood, we hear from Ashok Kondabolu, aka Dap, hypeman for Brooklyn's highly entertaining rap group Das Racist. He wasn't in the mood to play along, clearly, but we do get a few indispensable nuggets of wisdom: restaurants are bullshit, all outdoor spots are fine, and the best date spot is, uh, sex. For all that and so, so much more, please, by all means, click through!
Posted
by Jonny Diamond
on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 8:29 AM
The vile and awful morons from the Westboro Baptist Church recently came to Brooklyn with their "do the exact opposite of what Jesus would do" schtick and enraged Assemblyman Dov Hikind so much he tried to punch their lights out (go Dov!). And while we have no problem with punching the shit out of the other cheek, there are perhaps more useful methods to combat hate. Enter the youth:
Posted
by Lauren Beck
on Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 5:29 PM
As Consequence of Sound reported earlier today, Arcade Fire are confirmed as the musical guest on the November 13 episode of Saturday Night Live (ScarJo will host). Now comes the part where I speculate about them playing a secret, or not-so-secret show somewhere in the city around that time. Maybe Bowery? Oh, god, please let it be Bowery. All I'm saying is that their next scheduled appearance isn't until five days later in Portugal, and they don't seem like the types to just hang out in the Lower East Side and shop for new jean jackets in their downtime. One can hope, anyway.
The L Magazine and New York City Opera have joined forces and livers to bring you Act 4, a fourth ring cocktail bar and lounge serving signature libations at a discount and featuring special guest performances for free (with the price of opera admission, which is pretty cheap as it is). Each event of the series will reflect the themes and sounds of the opera that precedes it, keeping the night going for opera-goers who want to keep the party going after the fat lady sings.
Posted
by Jonny Diamond
on Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 4:23 PM
Well, shit. On October 17th, Hector Tejada's Conuco Farm, in New Paltz, was devastated by a hay fire—almost everything that makes a farm an actual farm was destroyed. What does this have to do with Brooklyn? Well, Tejada is the man behind the Bed-Stuy Farm Share, which is important. Please check out the details at this Bed-Stuy Blog post, and if you can help (money via Paypal, donations, good will) please do so. Because this is what matters, folks.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 3:49 PM
Ewww, a congressman!!
It's not so much funny as simple evidence of an asshole: Mike McMahon, a Democrat who represents Staten Island and a sliver of Brooklyn in the House of Representatives, debated his 2010 challenger Mike Grimm on Tuesday night and brought along a secret weapon. A plan to salvage the economy? Create jobs? End the wars? Nah, he brought Grimm's ex, Susan Kim, as well as her father and two brothers, and sat them right in front of Grimm's podium. (Aides had saved the seats.)
"She looked as beautiful as the day I met her," Grimm told the Staten Island Advance. "It was a pleasure to see them."
Whoops, looks like McMahon's plan was a dud—just like his whole fucking incumbency.
After consecutive months in which twenty-somethings have been killed as a result of being "doored" when motorists opened the door of a parked car without looking, sending them into the paths of large vehicles like buses and trucks (one in Clinton Hill, the other in East Harlem), City Room takes a closer look at the actual laws on the books about proper door-opening. Turns out there is a Vehicle and Traffic Law that pertains specifically to the opening and closing of vehicle doors. It gets phrased differently—in the case of Krystal Francis, whose door sent 23-year-old Jasmine Herron under the wheels of a bus on Atlantic Avenue, the charge was “opening and closing vehicle doors,” but for the driver whose door sent 27-year-old Marcus Ewing into the path of a truck on East 120th Street on Friday morning, the summons called it “unsafely exiting a vehicle.” Confusingly, those mean the same thing...
