Northside Film presents ABBY SINGER/SONGWRITER as part of its 2015 festival.
Director Onur Tukel will be in attendance for a Q&A
In Abby Singer/Songwriter, Jamie Block – a divorced stockbroker has-been who was once an indie-rock star signed to Capitol Records – meets Onur Tukel, a hapless middle-aged filmmaker who has just moved to Brooklyn. In this coming-of-middle-age story, Onur persuades Block to sink his money into a series of increasingly absurd music videos to promote his comeback as a musician. Desperate to impress his two beautiful, nonchalant teenaged daughters, Block casts them in the videos, which then play on multiple screens throughout this hallucinatory film. As tension mounts between director and musician Block’s bank account and grip on reality dwindle.
Jeff Goldblum is a hapless insomniac caught up in a jewel-heist involving a beautiful woman, the Shah of Iran and David Bowie. A 35mm presentation.
In John Landis’ tinsel-town caper INTO THE NIGHT, Jeff Goldblum plays a baggy-eyed depressive who just found out that his wife is cheating on him. With little else to do, he ventures off aimlessly into the Los Angeles twilight and has a run in with a beautiful jewel smuggler who snags him in her plot make off with the Shah of Iran’s emeralds.
Mostly known for its B.B. King soundtrack (RIP!), Into the Night also boasts a murderer’s row of Hollywood cameos, keep an eye out for the likes of: David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, Amy Heckerling, Lawrence Kasdan, Don Siegel, Jim Henson and more.
Who will survive the attack of the giant, radioactive ants in THEM!?
Fear of nuclear winter wasn’t the only modern anxiety ushered in by the atomic age, there was also fear of radiation and what these glowing mystery particles might do to poor, innocent mother Earth. Like… say, transform a colony of ants into eight-foot-long killing machines. Bursting from the nuclear testing grounds of New Mexico, the giant ants of Them! go on the war path against the United States of America, terrorizing our women and killing our best and brightest gas station attendants. When the ants establish a colony right below Los Angeles, only our boys in uniform can save us from the terror, horror, excitement and mystery of Them!
Part of Nitehawk’s July ANIMAL ATTACKS! midnite and brunch series.
Starring: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy, Veronica Cartwright, Ethel Griffies
Killer animal movies can be pretty easy: tons of people are already afraid of sharks, loads of people can’t stand spiders, Indiana Jones hates snakes… but birds? Hitchcock manages to take some of natures most innocuous creatures and turn them into objects of relentless horror, setting an angry murder of them loose on a quiet California town. Hitch thrusts his stranded characters into the thick of mother nature’s wrath without pausing to explain the reason behind this bird-led insurrection. Besides, we all know why. (It’s because people are terrible).
Who will survive the attack of SNAKES ON A PLANE?
An early example of crass corporate meme-building, it’s a film reverse-engineered from one deliciously silly title: Snakes on a Plane. Like something built in a B-Movie laboratory, Snakes on a Plane has the good taste to not bother with plot — something about a Hawaiian gangster trying to kill a witness — and wastes no time getting to what the audience really wants: Samuel L. Jackson fighting snakes on an airplane. Almost a decade on, with the heaping froth of internet hype finally gone, Snakes on a Plane still holds up as a fun delivery-method for every possible snake gag you can imagine: snakes in the toilet, snakes biting breasts, snakes on the end of your nose. Snakes. Snakes everywhere. And Sam Jackson is tired of them.
Part of Nitehawk’s July ANIMAL ATTACKS! midnite and brunch series.
Starring: Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Stellan Skarsgård, LL Cool J
What’s the old adage? Never genetically modify something that might want to eat you? Obviously, the researchers on board the sea bound laboratory Aquatica never heard that bit of advice. On the hunt for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers mine the brain fluid of three genetically modified sharks whose brains grow larger and craftier by the day. When the largest of sharks manages to break free, it heads off on a crusade to free the other imprisoned sharks while eating just about everything that gets in its way. Run, LL Cool J!
Who will survive the attack of the ancient aztec god Q: THE WINGED SERPENT? A 35mm presentation.
It’s a bad summer to be a cop in New York City. First there’s a killer on the loose who’s leaving behind a trail of brutally mutilated bodies, then there’s a massive diamond heist across town, and on top of all of that, an ancient snake-bird starts snacking on the city’s finest rooftop sunbathers and underpaid window washers. The monster is Quetzalcoatl, an ancient Aztec god who’s taken roost inside the grungy, broken peak of the Chrysler Building. With the creature plucking up New Yorkers left and right, it’s up to the cops to storm the art-deco landmark and take the monster out before it can strike again.
Directed by sleaze-horror master Larry Cohen, Q: The Winged Serpent is chock full of unforgettable images: David Carradine waving a machine gun from the top of the Chrysler Building, cops spraying a dinosaur egg full of bullets, and a great deal of majestic cityscapes made complete by a silly looking claymation dragon flying into frame.
Part of Nitehawk’s July ANIMAL ATTACKS! midnite and brunch series.
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson
Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Owen Wilson play a group of National Geographic filmmakers out to discover a long-lost Indian tribe on the Amazon River, but their journey downriver quickly becomes a boat ride to Hell when they save a stranded snake hunter (Jon Voight, looking like a piece of poached alligator meat), who hijacks their boat and forces them to help him hunt down a legendary anaconda. Bogged down by bad weather and a busted boat, the team must find a way to wrest control of their ship away from the crazed hunter and avoid becoming snake food.
Who will survive the attack of the killer FROGS? A 35mm presentation.
Snapping photos in the swamps of an isolated Florida island, nature photographer Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott) winds up at the home of the wealthy (and attractive) Crockett family. The Crocketts rule over the island’s ecosystem, planting crops where they don’t belong, dumping pollutants into water supply, and spraying down the marsh with pesticides to take care of the glut of frogs coming onto the island. In short, mother nature ain’t happy; and all the critters of the swamp – snakes, spiders, frogs, and even butterflies – have revenge on the mind. What happens next… you’ll just have to see for yourself. RIBBET!
Part of Nitehawk’s ANIMALS ATTACK! midnite and brunch series.
ART SEEN presents THE FUTURE IS WHATEVER, a selection of short film and video curated by artist Andrea McGinty. From narrative to experimental, relatable to weird, The Future is Whatever takes a humorous look at what it means to be present.
Featuring works by:
James Bayard
Al Bedell
BFFA3AE
Allison Brainard
Sean J Patrick Carney
Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw
Sam Cooke
Petra Cortright
Leah Dixon
Ben Dowell
Fake Injury Party
Nandi Loaf
Emily McMaster
Dominique Palladino
Birgit Rathsmann
Siebren Versteeg
May Waver
Proceeds from the screening will be donated to benefit the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, New York City’s freest art school, a learning experiment where artists work together to manifest creative, productive, resistant, useless, and demanding interactions between art and the world. The Future is Whatever is part of a full day of Williamsburg community events hosted by BHQFU, beginning with a picnic in the park and ending with an after party following the screening. Details will be posted here shortly!
ART SEEN is in partnership with frieze.
