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Weekend arts forecast: Classic films on the big screen
Round up the usual suspects … and take them to the movies.
It’s a good weekend for classic films on large screens, with blessed air-conditioned comfort, popcorn and snacks available, and ticket prices far below the norm at today’s Barbenheimer multiplex.
Saturday night at Green Light Cinema in St. Pete, it’s the 1990 comic thriller Tremors, director Ron Underwood’s yarn about giant, man-eating subterranean worms in a bone-dry desert town.
There were a number of sequels to Tremors, and they all sucked. That’s because the original film was lightning in a bottle, and its combination of humor, horror and a near-perfect cast could never be duplicated.
The leads, Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, work off each other incredibly well; who can forget the well-armed nutjob survivalist marrieds Michael Gross and Reba McEntire, playing it delightfully straight?
Tickets are here.
Sunday’s 3 p.m. screening at the Tampa Theatre (hello, AC!) needs no introduction. It’s the 1942 classic Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson and Sydney Greenstreet.
Directed by Michael Curtiz, Casablanca is so ingrained in the American pop culture consciousness that anyone watching it for the first time might get the feeling they’ve already seen it somewhere, sometime … it has been parodied forever, and many of its most famous lines (“Here’s looking at you, kid”) are part of the vernacular.
In a theater, on a big screen? Yes please.
Tickets are here.
Theater
Dynamic duo Nathan Daugherty and Taryn Holzhauer have collaborated on an original, interactive musical that’s onstage for two performances this weekend at Aspirations Winery, 22041 US in Clearwater. Murder at the Jazz Club is exactly as the title suggests – there’s lots of cool music (written by Daugherty), a plotted murder mystery (written by Holzhauer) and the audience get to be directly involved in sleuthing out the perpetrator. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Find more info and tickets here.
Onstage at freeFall Theater, Broadway veteran Chester Gregory’s A Motown Celebration is in its first weekend, replacing the previously-announced At Home With Ethel Waters. Gregory is a singer and actor known for his appearances in Motown The Musical, The Jackie Wilson Story and Hairspray. Tickets are here.
Actress, comedian and storyteller Francine Wolf is onstage Saturday at Stageworks, with the solo show Please Don’t Tell My Kids! Wolf performed this collection of “regrettably true tales in an autobiographical jaunt” in May at the Tampa International Fringe Festival. Tickets here.
Andresia Moseley is performing the searing documentary-style drama Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 at Jobsite Theatre through Aug. 20. In Anna Deveare Smith’s one-woman play, Moseley plays 27 different characters – real words from real people – talking about police brutality and the violent Los Angeles riots of ’92. Tickets.
Local playwright Joe Zarobinski’s one-act drama On the Rocks debuted Wednesday at thestudio@620, and continues tonight (Thursday, Aug. 17) with a performance at 7 p.m. Tickets are here.
“Murder at the Jazz Club” premieres this weekend. Photo provided.
Concerts
For many years, the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, N.Y. held the record for the largest-ever gathering at a pop music festival (it has since been surpassed). The 50th anniversary of Watkins Glen, as it’s come to be known, came and went on July 28 of this year, but it will be celebrated this week (Saturday, Aug. 19) at the Palladium Theater. Florida bands Have Gun Will Travel, Uncle John’s Band and Steeln Peaches will re-produce the sets from ’73 headliners The Band, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band, respectively. The Palladium show is officially sold out; should any extra tickets appear, they’ll be found here.
Hot stuff: The Mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheater, outdoors on the Florida State Fairgrounds in east Hillsborough, continues cranking out those late-summer steamers: Rapper 50 Cent is onstage Saturday, with the Smashing Pumpkins taking over Sunday. All tickets here.
Museum creatures
Menagerie at the Museum, Saturday at the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, is a family event bringing together live animals (and human representatives) from numerous local rescue and rehab centers. The guests will include alligators, owls, seabirds, skunks and more. It’s 11 a.m.-3 p.m., and admission is $5 (that also includes access to the entire museum. Here’s more info.
The Weekend arts forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst.
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