Editor’s Note: Welcome to V3 Weekend, a new Vanyaland series where we help you sort out your weekend entertainment with curated selections and recommendations across our three pillars of Music, Comedy, and Film/TV. It’s what you should know about, where you need to be, and where you’ll be going, with us riding shotgun along the way.
Music: House of Harm at Brighton Music Hall
Releasing an album and throwing a release party that same night is just so pre-pandemic. These days, the smart play is to drop an LP, let it marinate, rack up a million-plus plays on Spotify, and then celebrate with a must-attend party approximately 554 days later. That’s the look from House of Harm, the celebrated Boston post-punk trio who this Saturday (March 12) at Allston’s Brighton Music Hall give September ’20 debut album Vicious Pastimes the celebration it deserves. Since the record’s drop, House of Harm have built up a global following, but tonight Boston shines across its grayscale neon for its hometown lot, headlining a stacked Redefined Presents bill that features fellow Vanyaland faves The True Faith, as well as The Spearmint Sea, The Infinity Ring, and the return of DJ Brian L.’s beloved goth and industrial party Corrosion. That’s quite the bill.
“Vicious Pastimes was intended to be an outlet for this immense pressure and unrest built up and stowed into this short collection of songs,” House of Harm’s Michael Rocheford said at the time of the album release. “When time comes for the weight to finally lift from your shoulders, it can prove far heavier than you ever realized.”
That same sentiment can apply to the past two years, this show in front of us, and pretty much everything else happening right now. Our gloomy optimism is always best served surrounded by friends, enemies, and like-minded creatives, and on Saturday we’ll all close our eyes and exhale a mental fantasy where the last 554 days, the most vicious of time past, never happened.
Comedy: Lewis Black at Emerson Colonial Theatre
There are three things to count on in this life: Death, taxes, and Lewis Black telling it like it is. The legendary comedian and satirist makes his way back to Boston tonight (March 11), holding court in the Theatre District for the latest stop on his Off The Rails tour. This lil’ ol’ V3 Weekend blurb won’t do the man justice, so we direct you to Vanyaland Comedy Editor Jason Greenough’s extended chat with Black from earlier in the week. And sure enough, Black has been experiencing all the same dumb shit we’ve been experiencing since the last time he was in town.
“Where this show picks up is me talking about how I dealt with the pandemic. It’s basically about watching me unravel,” Black tells us. “I do talk a little bit about what’s going on in the world, but it’s really about all of [the other stuff], and there may be other stuff coming, but it bookends well with the last one. Then I’m going to move on to the next one, which will be about what the hell I think is going on in the world with things like healthcare, and all the other nonsense that these idiots [talk about].”
He adds: “It doesn’t feel different, really, because I’m someone who writes while in front of an audience, because that’s how I find things out [about the jokes]. That return has been really great, but in terms of performing, sometimes it’s thinking ‘how do I do this or that?’ or ‘how do I play the rhythms of the act?’ and we’re getting there. I’m feeling better and better about it. The bottom line is that it’s just great to be back up there [on stage.] One of the more major relationships in my life over the last few years has been with my audience.”
Film/TV: Dunkirk
How long has it been since Dunkirk hit theaters? Well, it shares its July 21, 2017 release date with Girls Trip. Now, a whopping 1,697 long, cold, and miserable days later, Christopher Nolan’s epic WWII drama finally hits Netflix, showing up on the streaming service Saturday (March 12) at 3:01 a.m. EST after runs on HBO Max and Amazon Prime.
Dunkirk ambitiously tells the story of the real-life Battle of Dunkirk, where in 1940, allied troops were forced to evacuate by the hundreds of thousands after being surrounded on a French beach by Nazi Germany. Its all-star cast includes Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, and pop star Harry Styles, who did as good a job as you could expect from a guy who was previously in One Direction (“Sign of the Times” still rules, though).
Vanyaland Film Editor Nick Johnston raved about the film when it hit theaters, where it raked in $527 million at the box office, calling it a “masterpiece” and writing: “All in all, Dunkirk is a towering achievement. …In an era in which we’re miserably divided by the most random of things, from the big and important issues to the most insignificant things in the world, it’s nice to be reminded of the fundamental courage and decency of the common man, and their continued survival in open defiance of a powerful evil. See Dunkirk as soon as you can.” Well, here you go.