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BITES: Eating out in the Hub just got cheaper, at least for the week of August 19 through 23, which has been designated Boston’s second annual Restaurant Week. Fifty-five area joints will be offering a prix fixe two-course lunch menu for $20.02; 33 of them will also have a three-course dinner for $30.03. The line-up includes eight new foodie hotspots: Chestnut Hill’s Aquitaine Bis; the LA Sports Club’s blu; Todd English’s Bonfire; the Ritz-Carlton’s Jer-ne; the Ladder District’s Mantra; the Nine Zero hotel’s Spire; and Via Matta, the new venture from Radius dudes Christopher Myers and Michael Schlow. Participating establishments will begin accepting Restaurant Week reservations this Saturday, August 3; call (888) SEE-BOSTON or visit bostonusa.com for details.

GLOBAL TUNES: The fall 2002 season of World Music and its performance offshoot, CrashArts, kicks off September 22 with the Spanish folk-music ensemble Radio Tarifa and closes on December 8 with a 25th-anniversary Hanukkah performance by the Judaeo-Iberian group Voice of the Turtle (both at the Somerville Theatre). In between, we get treats ranging from a new Laurie Anderson performance-art piece (Happiness, September 28 at Sanders Theatre) and an encore presentation by Philip Glass of his score for the film Koyaanisqatsi (November 2 at the Orpheum Theatre) to area debuts by the Master Dancers of Bali (October 4 at Sanders Theatre) and the Grammy-winning flamenco guitarist Vicente Amigo (November 23 at Berklee Performance Center). Also look for Afropop star Salif Keita (October 19 at Sanders Theatre), who in addition will take part in the three-day African-music conference titled "Rhythm & Ritual: Ancestors and Memory" (October 18-20 at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education); former Del Fuegos dude Dan Zanes with his acclaimed folk-informed children’s-music repertoire (November 17 at the Somerville Theatre); a "Masters of Persian Music" spectacular (October 6 at Sanders Theatre); the Portuguese fado singer Mísia (November 1 at Berklee Performance Center); the Malian guitarist Djelimady Tounkara (November 15 at the Somerville Theatre); and many more. For tickets and a full schedule, call (617) 876-4275 or visit www.worldmusic.org.

NEXT WEEKEND:

The Red Right Hand

In his position as program director at WFNX in 1991, Kurt St. Thomas was, he has long maintained, the first person to play Nirvana’s "Smells like Teen Spirit" on the radio. Charles Cross, in his superb Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain, attributes that honor to a California college DJ, but "he’s wrong, and I know it for a fact," says St. Thomas, an early and influential champion of the band who has his own Nirvana book coming out next spring. "There’s people at Geffen who will back me up on this." Oh well, whatever, nevermind. St. Thomas left the music biz years ago and has lately been engaged not so much with independent rock as with his own career as an independent filmmaker. In some ways, the two worlds aren’t that far apart; the name of St. Thomas’s production company, Corporate Sucker, would feel right at home on one of those ironic Sub Pop T-shirts from the early ’90s.

So it’s no surprise that Corporate Sucker’s second film, The Red Right Hand, which premieres next weekend at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, comes with a bit of rock and roll attached. Its title, of course, alludes to the Nick Cave song, and one of its stars is X’s John Doe, who also provides a cover of "Seasons in the Sun" (on which he’s joined by Boston rockers Kay Hanley, Rich Gilbert, and Nate Albert) for the film’s soundtrack. It’s a horror movie. "It’s kind of like The Big Chill meets Carrie," says St. Thomas. "[Co-producer/director and former FNX DJ] Mike Gioscia and I started talking about films we loved from the ’70s, like Carrie and Rosemary’s Baby, even though it came out in ’68, The Exorcist, The Shining, the first Halloween, psychologically bizarre films. Nobody makes movies like that anymore."

The plot involves a group of high-school friends who reconvene at their 15th reunion, in 1978, and rehash a dark secret from their past — they might’ve called it I Know What You Did Last Decade. In his first major film role, John Kuntz (who’s currently getting raves as Fluellen in the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Henry V on Boston Common) plays a gay volcanologist. "In the theater I tend to get a lot of comedic roles," Kuntz explains, "and in film I get these great troubled disturbed people that end up killing someone. In Red Right Hand, I smash this girl over the head with a shovel. It was very purging."

Corporate Sucker’s first film, Captive Audience, which is about a graveyard-shift DJ who finds the courage to loosen up on-air when he’s held hostage in the studio by a mysterious gun-toting stranger, was shot in 16mm black-and-white over the course of several years, whenever the filmmakers could scrape up enough money to proceed. It has exceeded even their own best expectations by getting accepted at some 20 festivals, pulling down a bouquet of awards, and airing on WGBH. Red Right Hand was shot in a month, in color on 35mm stock, commandeering as a makeshift soundstage the same abandoned Waltham mental institution that was used for Session 9. "Also, David Mamet filmed Oleanna there," says St. Thomas. "We actually used one of the same rooms they used. They used it for a headmaster’s office, and we made it a funeral home’s living room. The great thing about being out there is that it’s on this huge plot, it just goes on for acres and acres, so it was like having our own Hollywood back lot. There was nobody there, so we could do more or less whatever we wanted to do."

By necessity, St. Thomas is a hands-on guy: he has a small on-screen role and is credited as executive producer, co-producer, co-director, and art director. He also took on the labor of building the sets. In one scene, a character is run over by an automobile; St. Thomas drove the car. "We had more money this time, and it’s a bigger-budget picture, but we’re still pretty much punk-rock indie filmmakers."

The Red Right Hand premieres as part of the Rhode Island International Film Festival next Friday, August 9, at 9:30 p.m. at the Columbus Theatre, 270 Broadway in Providence. For festival info, call (401) 861-4445. For more on the film, visit ww.corporatesucker.com.

BY CARLY CARIOLI

Issue Date: August 1 - 8, 2002
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