Nitehawk and Noisey present a special one night Music Driven screening of HATED: GG ALLIN AND THE MURDER JUNKIES. Q&A with director Todd Phillips following the screening.
Todd Phillips’ (Old School, Starsky & Hutch, The Hangover) debut film is a documentary about the notorious punk musician G.G. Allin. Allin, who died during post-production from a heroin overdose, was famous for his excessive and confrontational manner especially during his shows where he’d perform naked, defecate onstage, yell obscenity, and get physically assaultive/assaulted. You know, all the good stuff. Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies includes interviews with Allin, band members, fans and haters. It goes through his childhood, includes amazing footage of his legendary shows, insane party moments alongside quieter moments, and scenes from his funeral.
Music Driven is presented in partnership with Noisey. Featuring Absolut Vodka cocktails.
Nitehawk presents a special screening of ROCKY with director John G. Avildsen in person for a Q&A!
Life’s not about how hard of a hit you can give… it’s about how many you can take, and still keep moving forward.
Rocky Balboa is an American icon of the underdog who works hard to achieve his goals and get the girl! Written and starring Sylvester Stallone, Rocky is about a slightly dimwitted boxer who, after working sleazy jobs as a loan shark and club fighter, gets picked at random to fight Apollo Creed for the heavyweight championship. With the rare chance to prove his worth, Rocky trains to win the title and everyone’s respect.
Starring: James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird
The surface story is a quixotic cross country road race between dapper sociopath playboy Warren Oates driving a showroom GTO and ultra-laconic proto-grunge hippie gearheads James Taylor and Dennis Wilson behind the wheel of their primer gray souped-up ’55 Chevy. In director Monte Hellman’s hands, however, the raw materials of an AIP hot rod flick take on dark mythic overtones while becoming a quintessential document of end-of the ’60s millennialism.
Mad Max is back in THE ROAD WARRIOR!
The Road Warrior was an instant hit upon initial release with its spare dialogue, skimpy leather outfits, violently impressive car sequences and sweepingly large landscape shots. In the follow up to Mad Max, the battle over limited supplies of gasoline rage on in this sequel set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Australian. Where motor vehicles and gas are highly coveted, everyone’s favorite gruff grifter Max helps a small, gasoline rich community against the attack of bandits. In a Western-genre format, this former sheriff reclaims his humanity as he assists these roaming settlers in finding a little bit of peace in this new land.
Part of Nitehawk’s BURN N’ RUBBER July series.
Watch Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Unicron battle it out in the 1986 animated movie TRANSFORMERS. A 35mm presentation!
Beyond good. Beyond evil. Beyond your wildest imagination. Years before Michael Bay entered into the transforming robot arena, this animated film based on the animated television program delighted (and maybe even scared) a generation of kids. And, set to a synth and metal based soundtrack, Transformers: The Movie has a decidedly dark tone. It’s the year 2005 and there’s a battle raging between the two warring factions of the planet Cybertron: heroic Autobots (led by Optimus Prime) and the evil Decepticons (led by Megatron). While the Autobots try to save their planet from an evil entity that consumes planets hole, Unicron, they’re also defending themselves again the Decepticon’s attack.
Part of Nitehawk’s April MIDNITE MARAUDERS midnite series.
Starring: Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern, Isabelle Adjani, Ronee Blakley
Director Walter Hill’s The Driver is no frills filmmaking at its best with amazing car chase sequences and a main character who doesn’t speak. Ryan O’Neal stars as the illusive and silent man dubbed “The Driver” who is being heavily tracked by a tough and conceited detective (Bruce Dern). Obsessed with catching The Driver and willing to risk his career in order to do so, he goes to extensive lengths to bring him down including staging a faux bank heist. Naturally, there’s a woman in the middle who’s on board to thwart the Detective at every turn.
Starring: David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone, Simone Griffeth, Mary Woronov, Roberta Collins, Martin Kove, Louisa Moritz, Don Steele, Joyce Jameson
In the dystopic future of 2000 there’s a cross-country car race where points are earned by brutally killing pedestrians and you either finish first or not at all! Featuring characters like “Frankenstein,” “Machine Gun,” “Nero the Hero,” and “Matilda the Hun,” the Transcontinental Road Race began after the Democratic and Republican parties collapsed and a new authoritarian dictatorship run by “Mr. President” started it to keep his North American territory satisfied. All is well until a resistance group led by Thomasina Paine rebels against the dictatorship by sabotaging the race.
Part of Nitehawk’s SUMMER OF SURREALISM, LIVE SOUND CINEMA presents a program of traditional surrealist shorts with a live score by ALYSE LAMB (EULA and Parlor Walls).
Nitehawk presents a screening of short films that come from the original surrealist cannon to accompany the Summer of Surrealism program featuring contemporary surrealist cinema. Screening iconic silent films – Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (1928), Man Ray’s L’Etoile de Mer (1928), Germaine Dulac’s La coquille et le clergyman (1928) and Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) – we cover the beginning of surrealism in cinema up to the beginnings of its influence in other styles of filmmaking.
Providing the live score to our Surrealist Shorts program is Alyse Lamb (EULA and Parlor Walls). You can usually hear Alyse Lamb’s voice cutting through waves of feedback as front lady for the noise trio EULA. You can also find Alyse warping her guitar into a bass computer in experimental duo Parlor Walls. With a degree in classical composition she enjoys making her own leotards.
Part of Nitehawk’s upcoming SUMMER OF SURREALISM program. Featuring Absolut Vodka Cocktails.
Starring: Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakley
Wes Craven taps into our worst Freudian nightmare in A Nightmare on Elm Street by presenting a spectral murderer; a child molester killed by a lynch mob of parents who has re-entered reality by stalking their children’s unconsciousness. It’s a very visceral depiction of the most terrifying invasion attack on someone at their most vulnerable: sleeping. By becoming the high school students nightmares, Freddy symbolizes the significance of dreams and of memory as well as the thin line between reality and unreality, consequence and power. Long before Freddy’s humor become a joke in subsequent sequels, his iconic sweater, burnt face, and knives for fingers have become emblematic of a figure we would only want to encounter in the cinema, never in our dreams.
Starring: Laura Dern, Justiun Theroux, Grace Zabriskie, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, William H. Macy, Karolina Gruszka
NEWLY REMASTERED PICTURE AND SOUNDTRACK FOR INLAND EMPIRE SUPERVISED BY DAVID LYNCH
David Lynch’s modern surrealist opus INLAND EMPIRE unfolds when an actress loses her grasp on reality as her personality begins to conflate with that of her character.
Time collapses, moves forwards and backwards in David Lynch’s Inland Empire as an actress (Nikki, played by Laura Dern) navigates the fragmentation of her existence that occurs when she delves deeper into the filming of a Polish gypsy folktale. Shot on a handheld Sony PD150 digital video recorder, Lynch’s follow up to Mulholland Drive was shot over the course of two and a half years without a formalized script and is, perhaps, the culmination of the profound lure the master of modern surrealist film has on audiences: unconventional and disorientating storytelling expressed through tantalizingly abstract imagery and bizarre symbolism. Inland Empire is an impossible film to write about or to summarize, it is only to be experienced.
