Jazzbo and keyboardist extraordinaire Mike Lawton returns to Nighthawk Books tonight for his new schedule, in which he and his colleagues will play the first and third Thursday of each month while the popular folk music Circle of Song takes over every second and fourth Thursday.
Fellow jazzbo Jim Jasion will continue to hold down the Wednesday night slot with his group at Nighthawk Books. Whenever weather permits, performances will be in the lovely Nighthawk Books courtyard out back.
Two comedies of culture-clash and Jewish humor will be on view this Saturday and Sunday at Nighthawk Books.
First up is the Coen Brothers film A SERIOUS MAN (2009), a retelling of the story of Job, with physics professor Larry Gopnik in the role of Job. The setting is Minnesota in 1967: Gopnik, on the verge of getting tenure, is beset with career and family worries, including a wife who wants to divorce him and marry his best friend. The Coen Brothers are probably best known for blackly funny crime stories like Fargo and Blood Simple, but A Serious Man is closer to their skewed comedies, like The Big Lebowski and The Hudsucker Proxy. The film draws love-it-or-hate-it reactions from viewers, but one thing is certain: It may well be the only film in history that opens with a dybbuk and ends with a tornado.
Fans of A Serious Man will appreciate the second film, THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY, Michael Roemer’s 1970 comedy about Harry Plotnick, a small-time Jewish-American racketeer who has served a short stretch in prison and now wants to resume his numbers-running business in New York. The film works through character observation, with much of the humor based in the fact that the self-absorbed Harry (played to deadpan perfection by Martin Priest) is oblivious to the changes around him, and expects to go on being a big cheese even though his Jewish neighborhood is now mostly Hispanic and African-American, Roemer’s film was completed in 1970 but shelved when test audiences failed to get its heavily Jewish sense of humor. Two decades later, Roemer took the movie to a lab to have it transferred onto videotape, and was startled to hear the technician laughing as he watched the film. Roemer began circulating the movie on the film-festival circuit, and in 1990 The Plot Against Harry received its long overdue release, and well deserved critical praise. Roger Ebert said “this time capsule from 1970 feels, in 1990, like a jolt of fresh air.”
The films will be screened Saturday, August 28, and Sunday, August 29, at Nighthawk Books, 2112 Raritan Avenue, in the heart of downtown Highland Park. The first film starts at 7 p.m.
Three top-notch local bands are coming to the Nighthawk Books courtyard this Friday evening for another “Rock the Courtyard” music bash.
The August 27 concert begins at 7 p.m. in the courtyard at 212 Raritan Avenue, next door to the municipal parking lot between Second and Third avenues. Cover charge is $5, BYOB.
The Stuntcocks will once again top the bill with an acoustic set. The roster also features The Loyal We (Kate Sikora & Lindsay Lueders), and Bern Blackburn of the Nymph-O-Matics.
After months 0f stonewalling by right-wing pressure groups, the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove is finally being shown in Japan. Since we think this is a big deal, we’ll be screening the movie twice this week: Friday, August 20, and Sunday, August 22, at 8 p.m. each night.
The Cove is a superb documentary about the annual slaughter of tens of thousands of dolphins at a remote fishing village in Japan. The main spokesman is Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer who worked on the popular TV series Flipper and is now an activist trying to stop the commercial exploitation of these amazing creatures by seafood companies and marine parks.
Director Louie Psihoyos was so moved by the situation that he took a three-day course in moviemaking, then assembled a team of specialists to infiltrate the heavily guarded cove. The result is something like an alternate Ocean’s 11, only instead of a robbery, the team is carrying out a mission in truth. The village itself is a surrealistic place, with signs proclaiming “We Love Dolphins,” but the reality is hidden away in a location barred to the public. The mission to expose that grim reality makes The Cove thrilling, infuriating, and ultimately, very moving.
Here is a link to a recent Democracy Now! broadcast that will fill you in on some details, but The Cove itself is a must-see.
Two films starring screen legend Clint Eastwood will be on view Saturday, August 21, at Nighthawk Books, 212 Raritan Avenue, in the heart of downtown Highland Park.
Escape From Alcatraz (1979) Clint Eastwood plays Frank Morris, a hardened convict who, together with John and Clarence Anglin, staged what may have been the only successful escape from the notorious federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Richard Tuggle’s script, adapted from a nonfiction book by J. Campbell Bruce, lays out the ingenious planning and preparations for the breakout, and director Don Siegel (who directed many of Eastwood’s best-known movies, including Dirty Harry) keeps the tone hard-boiled, lean and mean. Patrick McGoohan co-stars as the suspicious, vindictive warden.
Million Dollar Baby (2004) This boxing drama, based on stories by F.X. Toole, earned Clint Eastwood his second Academy Award for Best Director. Eastwood stars as Frank Dunn, a trainer who takes on an underdog female fighter (Hillary Swank, in an Oscar-winning turn). Though Eastwood had to struggle to find backing for the film, Million Dollar Baby went on to become one of his biggest hits.
The movies start at 7 p.m.
Get swept away tonight, August 14, as Nighthawk Books screens two epic romances directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford.
The first film is The Way We Were, co-starring Barbra Streisand, about the stormy attraction between a golden-boy college jock and a political activist. Next up will be Out of Africa, based on Isak Dinesen’s classic memoir, and co-starring Meryl Streep.
Nighthawk Movie Night starts at 7 p.m. Nighthawk Books is located at 212 Raritan Avenue, in the heart of downtown Highland Park.
The folk music “Circle of Song” returns to Nighthawk Books on Thursday, August 12, at 7:30 p.m. The session is open to musicians and non-musicians alike. Anyone who wants to share a song is welcome.
Some of the new and/or recently acquired titles at the Nighthawk Books Awe-Inspiring DVD Collection.
LOUIE BLUIE: Before he put himself on the map with Crumb and Ghost World, filmmaker Terry Zwigoff made this captivating 1985 documentary about country blues musician Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, violin virtuoso and leader of one of the first traditional black string bands. Zwigoff’s movie is loose and somewhat disorganized; knowing he had a great subject, he simply let the cameras roll as Armstrong — raconteur, painter, poet, and epic womanizer — told his stories and played his music. We think it’s a hugely entertaining flick, but don’t take our word for it — let Roger Ebert fill you in on why you should see this movie.
KICK-ASS: This tongue-in-cheek adventure about comic-book geeks who decide to become superheroes, even if they lack super powers, rattled a lot of viewers earlier this year with its blend of gory violence and nerdy humor (Nicolas Cage does a pretty lethal Adam West impersonation whenever he dons his costume). Opinion among Nighthawk customers has been strongly divided so far, but all agree the standout character is Hit Girl, a half-pint tweener who cusses a blue streak and inflicts some of the splatteriest mayhem in the film. Don’t let the comic book trappings fool you — this movie earned its R rating.. Based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.
I, CLAUDIUS: A freshly remastered and buffed up edition of the celebrated 1976 BBC mini-series about the first six Roman emperors, as told by Claudius, the stammering black sheep who survived to gain unwanted power chiefly because none of his relatives thought he was worth killing. The cast is astonishing: Derek Jacobi as Claudius; pre-Star Trek Patrick Stewart as a scheming centurion; John Hurt as Caligula, ridiculous one moment and terrifying the next; Brian Blessed as the first emperor, Augustus; and Sian Phillips as Livia, whose murderous schemes prove disastrous for the future of Rome. Adapted from Robert Graves’ novels. This set includes the documentary The Epic That Never Was, which chronicles Alexander Korda’s doomed attempt to mount a 1937 film version of I, Claudius starring Charles Laughton.
Two films directed by renowned playwright David Mamet will be on view tonight, Saturday, August 7, at Nighthawk Books.
First up will be House of Games, Mamet’s 1987 debut as a director. The film stars Mamet’s then-wife Lindsay Crouse as Margaret Ford, a psychologist who has a book on the bestseller list, a comfortable practice, and complete control over her life. When one of her patients, a compulsive gambler, confesses that he’s deeply in debt to a local gambler, Ford goes to bat for him and is drawn into a circle of skilled con-men. At first Ford sees the con-men as material for her next book, but as her involvement deepens, Mamet’s wheels-within-wheels script starts springing surprises on Ford — and the viewers, Mamet’s longtime fascination with confidence schemes was never displayed to better advantage than in House of Games.
Next up will be Homicide, Mamet’s third film as a director, Joe Mantegna stars as Bobby Gold, an inner-city homicide detective who gets pulled off a high-profile drug case in order to investigate the murder of an elderly Jewish shopkeeper. Though Jewish himself, Gold is not particularly religious, and he resents the implication that his ethnicity will make him a better investigator. As he works the case, however, Gold realizes there was more to the victim than met the eye, and he stumbles across a Zionist group that is part of a much larger conspiracy.
The movies start 7 p.m. at Nighthawk Books, located at 212 Raritan Avenue in the heart of downtown Highland Park.
Attention Philip K. Dick fans! Nighthawk Books (“The cheapest date in town!”) will screen a pair of mind-altering films this Saturday, July 31, drawn from the life and work of the science-fiction master.
PKD, as his fans know him, spent most of his life unknown outside science fiction fan circles. Since his death in 1982, his core novels — A Scanner Darkly, The Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, VALIS, and Ubik — have become critically celebrated as overlooked masterpieces. His posthumous standing soared with the recent publication of three Library of America volumes devoted to his work.
The double-feature starts at 7 p.m. with Philip K. Dick: The Penultimate Truth, a documentary focusing on PKD’s troubled life. Though marred by a silly framing device in which private detectives listen to tape recordings as they “investigate” PKD’s background, the documentary is brimming with solid information, as well as interviews with PKD’s friends and ex-wives.
The second half of the double bill is Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 film adaptation of PKD’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Though it retains the characters and basic storyline of the novel, in which a bounty hunter tracks down and kills android “replicants” that have killed their human masters, Blade Runner makes some significant departures from PKD’s vision. It remains an exciting science-fiction adventure in its own right, and Scott’s vision of a nightmarish, overcrowded future was a stylistic bombshell. Nighthawk Books will show the director’s cut, which omits the Raymond Chandlerish narration that undercut the original theatrical release.
Nighthawk Books is located at 212 Raritan Avenue in the heart of downtown Highland Park.
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