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Performance Picks: Wallace Shawn, Heavy Metal Comedy, and More

THURSDAY

(image via The Sinner’s Kit Kat Cabaret / Facebook)

The Sinner’s Kit Kat Cabaret
Thursday, July 19 at Bizarre Bushwick, 10 pm: $10 suggested donation

Even though your parents probably told you otherwise, it can be fun to sin. Someone who knows that well is Vic Sin, a dance, drag, and burlesque performer who produces The Sinner’s Kit Kat Cabaret every month at Bizarre, which is hosted by drag performer (and leader of the inimitable queer drag and burlesque collective Beefsquad) Lee VaLone. It also happens to be Lee’s birthday, so you know the show will be extra special. Helping celebrate (and sin) will be the stacked lineup of C’Etait BonTemps, Angelica Sundae, Devo Monique, Dynasty, Laé D. Boi, Mini Horrorwitz, Nyx Nocturne, and Theydy Bedbug. More →

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Four Films: Nordic Noir Marathon, Iggy Live, and RZA Screens Kung-Fu Selects


Three Sisters
Tuesday, June 21 (7 pm) and Sunday June 26 (7:30 pm) at Spectacle Theater: $5
For six months, documentary filmmaker Wang Bing embedded himself in a tiny rural village, Xiyangtang, in China’s Yunnan province, following the lives of three sisters all under the age of 10, orphaned, and living under crushing poverty. Their mother has died and their father, who occasionally pops into their lives, but never long enough to see if they’re even meeting their basic nutritional needs, has gone to the city to work. The family represents some of the major problems for China’s rural residents– an extreme lack of resources that is leveled unevenly by women, and therefore children as well, when men leave to find work in urban areas (China is one of the few places in the world where the suicide rate for women surpasses that of men, and many of the suicides are related to death by fertilizer poisoning).
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Your Week in Film: Cronenberg’s Overdose Twins and Leaving Britney Alone

Grrrl Germs: a Visual History of Riot Grrrl 1990-1997
Various screenings, now through Saturday May 28 at Spectacle: $5.
It’s been nearly 30 years since the Riot Grrrl movement challenged punks everywhere to reexamine their subculture, demanded “girls to the front” at shows, and delineated punk’s physical and intellectual spaces as welcoming to women, but also as zones that were for and by a diversity of voices. Riot Grrrl may have become the victim of sensationalism due to a desperately out-of-touch media trying to figure out what the hell was going on with these tattooed, pierced, and sex-crazed Gen Xers.

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Four Films for the Freakin Weekend


Dog Star Man
Saturday, March 5, 7:30 pm at Anthology Film Archives: $9 
Stan Brakhage’s series of several short films shot and released sequentially during the first half of the 1960s are what make up the 78 extremely dense minutes of Dog Star Man, screening as part of Anthology’s Essential Cinema program. In spite of its brevity, the film is often described as epic, grueling, and intense. And, you know, trippy. You know what to do before going to the theater. (Just please don’t do it in the bathroom of Biang noodles down the street, it wasn’t at all pleasant explaining to the servers that no, I wasn’t smoking jazz grass in the bathroom, actually I had a vaporizer back at the table.) And, I know it’s easy to mix them up, but go for the chiller strains– trust, you’ll need to keep your cool after your brain melts into you popcorn bucket.
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Week in Film: Big Al, Reverend Badass and a Cameroonian Vampire Satire

Big Al: a Week in the Life of the Reverend Al Sharpton
Wednesday February 17, 7 pm at the Wythe Hotel: $11.50

Hey, it’s Black History Month which means we should be celebrating all kinds of incredible achievements from major badasses throughout American history. And, hey nothing against penis peanuts, but why don’t we give someone other than George Washington Carver a go for once? I’ll never, ever forget the look on my middle school teacher’s face when I told her, after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, I was considering converting to Islam– but what about some black icons who are part of our living history?

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Week in Film: Count Dracula in 35 mm and a Very 80’s Suburban Desert Noir


Moonwalkers
Friday January 15 through Thursday January 21 at Village East Cinema

It’s about time we got a moon-landing conspiracy theory comedy– I mean, it’s all right there in front of us: everyone’s super loving the ’70s right now (don’t pretend you haven’t seen betches in bellbottoms recently, it’s happening whether we like it or not), cynicism regarding the government and Hollywood is at an all time high, and people are finally realizing there’s a high probability that lizard people rule the world.

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Spectacle Theater Reopens, Shows Off Its New Digs

Spectacle Theater gets a makeover (Photo by Nicole Disser)

Spectacle Theater gets a makeover (Photo by Nicole Disser)

Our favorite lil’ indie theater reopens tonight as a renovation project that choked up the reels for a whole month nears completion. For a brief time last year, the future of Spectacle at South 3rd Street, where it has occupied the ground floor for the last five years, looked like it was in jeopardy. Thankfully, the volunteer-run movie theater successfully raised more than $40,000 through a Kickstarter campaign to fund an overhaul that saved it from being forced out. I popped by this morning to get a peek at what’s new, fingers crossed that the theater had stayed true to its roots.

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Week in Film: Kathleen Hanna on 16mm and Bomb Shelter Children of Botulism Turn Out Totally Normal

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Film still from “In Search of Margo-Go”

This week, cash in your change jar because you’re gonna need it for the screening of this lost Riot Grrrl film starring Kathleen Hanna. Also, pick from a bazillion or so documentaries this year at Doc NYC 2015, and more. Read on, friends.

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Week in Film: An Iggy Pop Cameo and the Artist Who Wowed Los Angelinos With 100 Mules

Let it be known this is your last week to get in anything besides horror films y’all, so listen up. We’ve got an anthropology-themed film fest, a drug-fueled road trip romance, mule-inspired capitalist critique, and ha woops– a horror marathon. Enjoy!

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Queer Film Happenings Galore, From Eisenstein’s Outing to Out-There ’70s Porn

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By the looks of things, October’s becoming something of a de facto Queer Film Month in New York City. Which is way cool, we’re always happy to see queer goings-on about town beyond Pride Month. And whether you’re a connoisseur of all things old and aging well, or live solely to soak up ever-refreshing nowness, we’ve got a couple of events that offer a slew of opportunities to attend LGBT movie happenings.

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