HAUTE HIGHLIGHTS
Event of the Week: The Psychedelic Furs at The Music Box Saturday. 6 p.m.
Whether you’re a connoisseur of forgotten rock or you simply waited too long to buy tickets to Explosions in the Sky’s sold-out cemetery gig, the good folks at The Music Box have you covered. English legends The Psychedelic Furs will roll through town Saturday night to play a show at the age-old venue.
With the likes of “India” and “Sister Europe,” the Furs were among the most prominent players on both the English and American punk rock scenes from the late ’70s through the ’80s. After a 10-year hiatus, the band reformed in 2000 and has been touring since, reminding both veterans and newcomers where The Jesus and Mary Chain and Nirvana might have found their sound.
Most of the Furs are well beyond middle-aged, so if you want to dance away to “Heaven” one more time, catch them now.
News of the Week: The Knife recording new album for 2012
After much radio silence and a quixotic stab at opera with Tomorrow In A Year, brother-and-sister electronica duo The Knife has announced it is hard at work on its fourth studio album.
Shacked up somewhere in their native Sweden, Karin Dreijer Andersson (also known as Fever Ray) and Olof Andersson recently released the news through their official website. Since their 2006 enrapturing Silent Shout, The Knife has all but disappeared from the music scene, leading many to question their continued existence. Thankfully, the haunted-synth duo plans to finish the new album in time for a 2012 release. The Knife also used the announcement to declare its support for the Romani people, who have long suffered discrimination and forced evictions throughout Europe.
Movie of the Week: 13 Assassins
Takashi Miike is not a nice guy. After years of subjecting international audiences to showers of blood, brain matter, semen and worse with Audition, Gozu and Ichi the Killer, the Japanese shock cinema denizen is back with one of his most ambitious — and unlikely — works to date: a period epic called 13 Assassins.
Opening in Los Angeles this Friday, Miike’s latest sounds more Kurosawan in nature than one might be inclined to believe.
Set in medieval Japan, the film concerns a band of 13 legendary warriors united by the common goal of killing a murderous dictator. Still, despite its traditional premise, we can expect Miike to subvert the familiar period elements with his own brand of depraved flourishes. (Test screening survivors have reported at least one fetus being eaten.) Call it Seven Samurai for the splat-pack generation.
13 Assassins will be screening at the Nuart Theater upon opening. The film is also available on on demand through Time Warner Cable.
Comic Relief of the Week:
The Governator to return as The Terminator
He said he’d be back. Realizing the collective fantasies of every humor columnist and ex-cabinet member in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has agreed to reprise his iconic killing machine role in an upcoming Terminator picture.
The Governator broke into mainstream acting in 1984 through his villainous turn in James Cameron’s The Terminator. This was followed by a return in the explosive Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the rather wilted Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Since then, Schwarzenegger has been involved with more diplomatic affairs, one of them governing our fair state. Now, with Gov. Jerry Brown in office, Schwarzenegger has announced his commitment to the latest entry in the Terminator franchise, currently in the early stages of development.
Even if Schwarzenegger’s return to film turns out to be a disappointing one, it couldn’t be much worse than McG’s recent, Arnold-less Terminator: Salvation. Keep your fingers crossed and watch the streets of Los Angeles for shotgun and motorcycle action in the coming months.