WEDNESDAY
AUGUST 20
Books
LOST TRIBE
Need a new selection for your book club? This anthology of “Jewish Fiction From the Edge” features b.c. mainstays Myla G-o-l-d-b-e-r-g, debutante-delineator Gary Shteyngart, and the illuminating Jonathan Safran Foer, cheek by jowl with some interesting unknowns. Contributors Jon Papernick, Nelly Reifler, and Ellen Umansky read from their work. DE KRAP
At 6, Eldridge Street Synagogue, 12 Eldridge Street, 212.219.0903
Dance
PHILLY FEET
Maybe it’s the relatively low rents, or the slightly calmer scene: Experimental dance thrives in Philadelphia. See edgy work by Phrenic New Ballet (many of whose members are or were associated with the Pennsylvania Ballet), the theatrical Moxie Dance Collective, and the compelling Myra Bazell, all for free, outside, and with plenty of time to catch dinner and a movie after. ZIMMER
At 5:30, Lincoln Center, 63rd Street between
Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, 212.875.5766.
Film
EAST VILLAGE FILM FESTIVAL
Less a traditional festival than an appropriately anarchic collection of autonomous events, the fledgling Howl festival has a film component that achieves continuity through its celebration of the hood’s rough-and-tumble past. Highlights include Richard Hell’s Scowl series of punk classics introduced by classic punks; the Avant-Garde(n), six screenings of experimental film in public gardens; and a tribute to Jack Smith. HALTER
Through Tuesday, various venues, howlfestival.com
NINE FILMS BY ROBERT BRESSON
From radiant literary adaptations (Les Dames du Bois du Boulogne) through pre-nouvelle- vague cornerstones (A Man Escaped, Pickpocket) to scalding latter-day damnations (The Devil Probably, L’Argent), Bresson’s is a unique body of work—astonishing in its rigor and congruence, at once ascetic and overpowering. The first local showcase since his death in 1999 (and since fistfights nearly broke out at MOMA’s hot-ticket retro that same year), this Anthology series is reasonably thorough (he made only 13 films over four decades) and an essential pilgrimage for acolytes and neophytes alike. If you’ve only seen these films on video, you haven’t really seen them. LIM
Through September 4, at Anthology Film Archives,
32 Second Avenue, 212.505.5181
Music
BIRD & DIZ
It’s a bebop week, and its alternating heartbeats are saluted by a quintet that includes altoist Charles McPherson, one of Charlie Parker’s savviest disciples, and Tom Harrell, who doesn’t usually make one think of Gillespie. The collaboration marries them and a book of roller coaster classics that still seem fresh. GIDDINS
Through Sunday at 8:30 and 10:30, Friday and Saturday
also at midnight, Iridium, 1650 Broadway, 212.582.2121
HANDSOME FAMILY
Rennie Sparks is a genius, a deceptively mellow American urban gothic noir poet with an alt-country heart and a husband with a baritone to deliver her most twisted missives like desperate love songs. Garnering sympathy for the devils they give voice to, her songs reveal the stumbling, innocent id as surely as they further the mythic promise of Hopper-esque darkest hours. If the latest recordings can be samey, live they never disappoint. SINAGRA
At 9:30, Time Café, Fez, 380 Lafayette Street, 212.533.2680
THURSDAY
AUGUST 21
Books
PETER KUPER
The Metamorphosis, Kuper’s second comic-book take on Kafka, captures the short classic’s creeping claustrophobia and waking-nightmare wooziness. This multimedia presentation will let the audience see Kuper’s varied, even violent illustration taking an ax to the frozen sea within, or at least scratching up the mental furniture of a salaryman’s damnation. “Please don’t make things harder than they are,” Gregor cries out to the clerk from his company who flees in terror, the letters rendered as horrid-pathetic wriggles. “Do remember my past accomplishments.” DE KRAP
At 7, Barnes & Noble, 33 East 17th Street, 212.253.0810
Music
SEX PISTOLS
Twenty-five years after their historic breakup and seven years after their first reunion, cynicism is justified all over again. Expect no anarchy in the U.S.A., although perhaps a few inspiriting references to same. But expect proof once again that the Sex Pistols weren’t just an idea—they were music, music they can play like no one else. CHRISTGAU
At 7:30, Jones Beach Theater, 1000 Ocean Parkway, Wantagh, New York, 516.221.1000
FRIDAY
AUGUST 22
Film
DOG DAYS
It’s getting hot in hier: Shock-doc specialist Ulrich Seidl’s fiction debut is an abject—and pointedly Austrian—contribution to the heat-wave mini-genre, a startling anti-summer movie that observes the sunstroked dysfunctions in a Viennese suburb with a cold mortician’s eye. Seidl goes to great lengths to prove the film’s final line: “People are so cruel.” Karmic payback is enforced with sadistic zeal. The sleazebag who dunks his girlfriend’s head in the toilet is eventually sodomized with a candle at gunpoint and made to sing the Austrian national anthem. LIM
Opens today, Angelika, Houston and Mercer, 212.777.FILM
Music
TORI AMOS+BEN FOLDS
Ben Folds (né Ben Folds Five) and Tori Amos have combined their piano-playing powers for an evening of wacky behavior, eccentric storytelling, piano thumping, and song-singing in the Lottapianos Tour. Perhaps Amos, the quintessential chronicler of female experience, and Folds, the kid who got beat up after class, are the yin to each other’s yang, and vice versa? HAVRANEK
At 7, PNC Bank Arts Center, Exit 116, Garden State Parkway, New Jersey, 732.335.0400; Saturday at 7, Jones Beach Theater, 1000 Ocean Parkway, Wantagh, New York, 516.221.1000
BJÖRK
Our ethereal elvish sugar cube has come a long way since her sidecar-shimmy days. She’s a motorcycle mama, a movie star, a mash-up dance diva, and a sexier cyborg than that plastic T3 vixen any day. Always thinking and acting globally, of late she’s rocking an asymmetrical Japan-tastic robo-geisha hairdo—a sign perhaps, that the world is in a shaky state of flux. Her weird vespers, creepy and sweeping, seem the right tone for the times. With Sigur Rós and Bonnie Prince Billy. SINAGRA
Friday and Saturday at 7, KeySpan Park, Brooklyn
SATURDAY
AUGUST 23
Music
CHARLIE PARKER JAZZ FESTIVAL 2003
Two weekend afternoons of bebop splendor with the great drummer and Parker alum Roy Haynes, singer Carla Cook, saxophonist Wessell Anderson, and the 3 Altos—a trio de résistance with Gary Bartz, Sonny Fortune, and Vincent Herring that should rock the park—on Saturday at 3; and two more great altoists, Charles McPherson and the ardent, revived Arthur Blythe, plus drummer Jeff Watts’s band, on Sunday at 3. GIDDINS
At 3, Marcus Garvey Park, 124th Street between Madison and Park avenues, 718.622.7035; Sunday at 3, Tompkins Square Park, East 7th Street through East 10th Street, between Avenues A and B, 212.387.7685
R. KELLY
What’s the logical career move for a man facing child pornography charges? Write a song for the American Idol, of course—that guy is popular! And so it goes for the besieged R. Kelly, a man who never met an innuendo he couldn’t milk. The music is, as always, seductive (in the good way!), but try listening closely to the words without cringing. With Ashanti. CARAMANICA
At 8, Madison Square Garden, 31st Street and Seventh Avenue, 212.465.MSG1
SUNDAY
AUGUST 24
Dance
SWING CRASH COURSE
Is it just me, or is everyone going to lots of weddings these days? Here’s a chance to bone up on your Lindy Hop, at a four-and-a-half-hour session team-taught by three professional dancers. It happens monthly. See the website for discount coupons and lots of other class options. ZIMMER
At noon, Dance Manhattan, 39 West 19th Street, 212.807.0802, dancemanhattan.com
Music
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND+DICKEY BETTS & GREAT SOUTHERN
Baffling as it may seem, crossover jam potentate-turned-pop star Matthews continues his inexorable rise, despite the latent bwana vibe and the fact that his best work results from collaboration with legends (like the Waters sisters). DM remains but a tadpole compared to the ax-slinging High King of modern improvisational music Dickey Betts, a rock star so cool Billy Crudup played him as a celluloid antihero in Almost Famous. CRAZY HORSE
Sunday and Monday at 7, Continental Airlines Arena, Route 120, Rutherford, New Jersey, 201.935.3900
MONDAY
AUGUST 25
Music
THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
There aren’t many studio obsessives whose live shows are served up as raw and funny as this hookmonger cavalry’s. In person, you also get Neko Case’s hell-raising holler, Dan Bejar’s brainiac glam redistributed among touring Pornographers, and crate-digging covers (Sweet and the Donner Party last time). With Young and Sexy. WOLK
At 9, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, 212.533.2111
Photo
DREAMING IN PICTURES: THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF LEWIS CARROLL
When it comes to Carroll’s meticulously staged, late-19th-century photos of little girls, prurience is in the eye of the beholder. Many of these children—dressed up as beggar maids, exotic waifs, and Cinderellas—have a solemn, wise-beyond-their-years aura, but their sulky pouts and challenging stares are far more Alice than Lolita. Like Julia Margaret Carmeron’s, Carroll’s fantasies of innocence and experience are very much of their time, but shouldn’t be missed in ours. ALETTI
Through August 31, International Center of Photography, 1133 Sixth Avenue, 212.857.0000
TUESDAY
AUGUST 26
Photo
CMYK: CONTEMPORARY COLOR PART II
The second installment of this gallery’s survey showcases two established talents, Martin Parr and Massimo Vitali, and two newcomers, Karine Laval and Zachary Zavislak. The first two are predictably punchy and engaging, but their professional gloss is smartly matched in Zavislak’s trio of classically stylized tabletop still lifes and Laval’s handsomely bleached-out, neo-constructivist studies of people intersecting with architecture at public swimming pools. ALETTI
Through September 6, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, 52 East 76th Street, 212.517.3766