There’s so much going on this week
‘Wet Ink’ at NOVA
Have you ever been to a play at the NOVA Center for the Performing Arts and wished you could hop on stage? Well this weekend you can! Sort of. On Friday and Saturday NOVA is hosting “Wet Ink,” a 24-hour play festival. But we don’t yet know which plays will be featured. Nobody does. They don’t exist yet.
At 7:30 p.m. Friday any interested parties should swing by NOVA for an improv game led by Projectile Comedy and a sort of open audition process. Writers are chosen, paired with directors and the pairs will work together to write brand new one-act plays overnight.
On Saturday morning actors, directors and writers will reconvene to hammer out the new plays, which will then be performed that night at 7:30 p.m.
All in, they’re looking for five writers, five directors and at least 20 actors. Get more info at novabillings.org.
Billings Symphony ‘Diamond Celebrations’
The calendar flips to October this week, which means two things: you’ve got to pay your rent and summer is officially over. But the dawn of autumn also means the Billings Symphony is back, and after a few smaller scale events over the last month, they’re doing their first proper show at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 27 at the Alberta Bair Theater. “Diamond Celebrations” kicks off the Billings Symphony’s 75th season, and they’re celebrating in style with guest violinist Gil Shaham, who’s performed with the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris and lots more. Shaham and the rest of the symphony will be performing Claude Debussy’s “Fêtes from Nocturnes,” Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto” and Igor Stravinsky suite from “The Firebird.” Tickets are $54-$86 ($29-$48 for students) at billingssymphony.org. But if you’re looking to save a few bucks, you can get into the dress rehearsal at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday for $26 at albertabairtheater.org.
Kirks’ Grocery 24 Hour Party
Sometimes you go to Kirks’ Grocery and get to see a show. But if you go this weekend, you get to see all the shows. Kirks’ is hosting their annual 24 Hour Party on Saturday and Sunday, giving Minnesota Avenue’s finest music venue/art gallery/event space/pop-up restaurant/whatever-you’d-like-it-to-be a chance to be all those things and more. The shindig starts at 4 p.m. Saturday and you could just hang out all day if you’d like, but if you’re not into that here are some highlights: There’s an amazing run of music on Saturday night, with Gallatin Ghost Train playing at 8 p.m., Brontops at 9 p.m. and Bull Market at 10 p.m. If you’re a real night owl there are two big noise sets taking up most of the wee small hours, with DJ Ned Ryerson at 1 a.m. and Agnar at 4 a.m. KLove at 7 a.m. on Sunday is perfect sunrise music, and then there’s a run of poets — Anne Holub, Sean Myers, Matt Lopez and Molly Ouellette — up from noon to 2:30 p.m. And Alex Nauman and Parker Brown will close things down starting at 3:30 p.m. $30 for a day pass, or get a full two-day pass for $50.
The best acting you’ll ever see in your whole life at Art House
We did it, everybody. It’s been a long year, and a hot summer, and sometimes it felt like the wheels of time have hit an impassable road. But we made it at last. “One Battle After Another,” the new film by Paul Thomas Anderson, premieres this Friday at Art House. Our long national nightmare is finally over.
In case you just woke up from a decades-long coma, Anderson (we call him PTA around here) is probably the most beloved American filmmaker of his generation, the mind behind “There Will Be Blood” and “Boogie Nights” and “The Master” and like three other masterpieces. Last time out PTA made the small, intimate “Licorice Pizza,” but with “One Battle” he’s all maximalist — big budget (at least $130 million), big movie stars (Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor) and big literary adaptation (Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”). It’s the buzziest movie released since “Oppenheimer,” and there’s no better place to see it than downtown Billings’ finest movie theater.
Speaking of, it’s all new at Art House this week, with “One Battle” alongside Scarlett Johanssen’s directorial debut “Eleanor the Great,” which stars June Squibb (Oscar nominated for the Billings-shot “Nebraska”) and Paul Greengrass’ (“Bloody Sunday,” “United 93”) latest inspired-by-true-events thriller “The Lost Bus,” which stars Matthew McConaughey as a bus driver navigating the 2018 Camp Fire in California.
Oh and there’s also a packed slate of special screenings, too. The “10 Years of Art House” series hits its climax with a showing of “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” at 6 p.m. on Sunday. Quintin Tarantino’s latest is one of the great films of the 21st century, at once a perfect hangout flick starring some of the best actors in the world at the peak of their powers and an oddly endearing tribute to the movie industry. When this whole thing goes belly up sometime soon, “Hollywood” will be thought of as the last real movie, the last gasp. And the dog is really funny.
If you want to see moviemaking at the other end of that spectrum, check out “The Gold Rush.” Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 classic is one of the first great movies, and since it was shot half a decade before the era of talkies it has no dialogue. But thankfully Parker Brown, Alex Nauman and Clay Green will be there to play the jazz score live. It’s a movie and a show!
MSUB’s language department are sponsoring some free showings of Spanish language movies over the next couple months, and that starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday with Ciro Guerra’s “Embrace of the Serpent.”
Finally at 8 p.m. Thursday you can see “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” Todd Solondz Sundance-sweeping coming of age movie. It’s an under the radar pick, but this is Art House Creative Director Brian Oestreich’s birthday movie, and other than his bad take on “Highest 2 Lowest,” that dude has reliably great taste.
‘Representations of Masculinity in the West’ at the YAM
If you’re going to have a gallery talk, the subjects might as well be really good talkers. And you won’t find better talkers in this city than author Russell Rowland and artist Gordon McConnell. The pair are collaborating on “Representations of Masculinity in the West,” a gallery talk at the Yellowstone Art Museum at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2. If you’ve ever read Rowland’s recent memoir “Be A Man: Raised in the Shadow of Cowboys” or seen any of McConnell’s art (or talked to him about movies or the history of the West or really anything at all) you know these guys are an authority on the subject.
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Jake Iverson
City editor
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