Concentrate

Next week we'll point you toward some of the Ann Arbor Film Festival's best selections but for now let me drawn your attention to their opening night festivities. If the past two years are any indication, this indie cinema shindig is probably the best ticket for entertainment this week.

The evening kicks off with a two hour food-filled, beer & wine-laden reception where you get to rub elbows with everyone who's anyone in local moviedom. It's an excuse to get dressed up in your movie premiere finery and act like you've seen everything Kenneth Anger has every put to celluloid. Don't worry about being found out. Most of the other attendees don't know his work either. Heck, I'm a film critic and I can count what I've seen on two fingers.

At 8:15PM the silver screen comes alive with a cornucopia of short films carefully selected for the party-goers. Think of it as a cinematic sample platter. There will be plenty of tasty movie morsels mixed in with the more challenging experimental selections. You'll partake in a dozen films in all, and executive fest director Donald Harrison says the program will be enjoyable to "anyone with a pulse."

A bold assertion to be sure.

Personally, I can only vouch for three of the selections, but together they make for an entertaining combination of content and style. There's the deadpan camp trippiness of Chema Garcia Ibarra's El Ataque De Los Robots De Nebulosa, Laurie Hill's delightfully animated Photograph Of Jesus, where we learn of the ridiculous requests fielded footage researchers at the Getty Image Archive, and my friend Taylor Mali's slam poem-turned-animated-film Missed Aches, which warns of the treacherous errors that await writers who rely on spellcheck.

Tickets are $30 for the whole kit and caboodle ($20 if you're a member). Or, if you're anti-social, you can just hit the screenings for $9.

No matter how you slice it, AAFF offers up film experiences you won't find anywhere else and movies you're unlikely to encounter again. In other words: Don't miss it!

For nearly 20 years I've been a fan of Grant Lee Phillips. I saw him with his original band Grant Lee Buffalo ("Mockingbirds" still sends shivers down my spine), watched him duo with Robyn Hitchcock in the '90s, even enjoyed his cameo appearances on The Gilmore Girls (he was the town troubadour). Not only is his original work riddled with pop gem masterpieces, his cover interpretations can be equally luminous. Check out Eighteen, his CD of '80s pop covers. The guy's got vocal chords to stretch and talent to burn.

From fizzy pop to catchy neo-folk, Phillips has for too long been under the radar. His music has always been lovely, sardonic, and passionate but never easy to categorize. There's a touch of psychedelic-era Bowie, a spoonful of T-Rex bravado, plenty of Paul Weller soul pop, and a surprising pinch of ragtime-era musicianship. The distinctly upbeat eerieness is...well, that one's a bit harder to pinpoint.

Phillips is that rare artist who understands how to pen a meaty pop tune, fill it out with meaningfully poetic lyrics, then attend to it with pristine and impeccable production values. Swirling melodies, precise guitar work, soaring vocals, the results are subversively slick, a brilliant con job of glistening pop virtuosity and ideological daring.

When I tried to list his musical peers all I could come up with was Ryan Adams, the aforementioned Paul Weller and Beck. Pretty damn good company if you ask me. Simply stated: Grant Lee Phillips is one of the finest songwriters of the past two decades.

Tickets are $15 and cheap at twice the price.

The underlying concept is everything in A Town Called Panic. To try to ascribe motives any deeper than child-like glee to Belgian animators Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar would be an exercise in folly.

Inspired by Chuck Jones and channeling the logic and perspective of kids noisily playing with their toys, the duo has crafted 75 minutes of pure cinematic whimsy, using stop-action animation to give life to inflexible plastic toys. And far from Pixar’s slick and meticulously plotted Toy Story flicks, A Town Called Panic presents itself as if it were scripted and directed by an 8-year-old child. You get the feeling this is the kind of movie Michel Gondry would have made in fourth grade.

To recount the plot would be a waste of time since there really isn’t one. Suffice to say it concerns the endless (and increasingly outlandish) this-then-that mishaps of three housemates: Cowboy, Indian, and Horse. They live in the countryside and are neighbors with a hot-tempered farmer, his long-suffering wife, and a menagerie of animals. There’s also Policeman, Postman, and Horse’s fondest desire, the orange-maned piano teacher Madam Longree. Everyone and everything the trio does, says or encounters is informed by how kids play with their toys. There are ridiculous plot twists, exaggerated "adult" behaviors, and even comically absurd voices.

The deadpan, idiotic humor isn’t smart enough to qualify as witty, doesn’t make enough of a point to be called satire but embraces absurd slapstick and imaginative energy with such merry abandon that you can’t help but be amused. And if it comes across as hysterically illogical and emotionally over-excited, well that’s the point. Anyone who has spent anytime around kids will know exactly what Aubier and Patar are trying to achieve.

It's never too late to have a second childhood.

Familiar but different.

To say The Clientele are a live mash-up of The Smiths and The Beatles with a beat you can dance to wouldn't be far from the target. But it would be selling this surprisingly hearty British indie pop quartet short.

What seemed like an uptempo album or two worth of personality has turned into a durable discography of fuzzy-edged, heart-sick audio bubblegum. Their music is wispy without taking itself too seriously and has, over the last few albums, grown cinematically dense. The music is as danceable as ever but the band's reverb-drenched, symphonic tunefulness is even smoother and catchier, simultaneously invoking nostalgia and up-to-the-minute precociousness. The Clientele find just the right mix of peppy and lonely to resonate past the last infectious beat.

Fellow UK rock popsters Field Music and Detroit's Zoos of Berlin open.

Tickets are $12 adv / $14 on the day of

Love him or hate him, there's no escaping the fact that Michael Moore has both transformed and popularized the art of documentary filmmaking.

Say what you will of his approach, Moore's up-front personality-driven big screen editorials openly acknowledge cinema's dirty little secret: That there's no such thing as a subjective documentary.

Let's face it, the minute a director chooses where to point her camera or makes an edit all pretense of unbiased filmmaking flies out the window.

And thankfully, the irreverent director injected some much-needed humor into a genre that was in danger of being swallowed by its self-seriousness.

Thursday night the doc auteur conservatives love to hate will celebrate the 20th anniversary of his break-thru film, Roger And Me, a fiery, hilarious and often poignant chronicle of the effects of GM's ruthless practice of corporate downsizing and outsourcing.

Not only do audiences get to relive Moore's fruitless and funny quest to get an interview CEO Roger Smith, but the populist filmmaker will be on hand to answer questions afterward.

I have no doubt someone will ask why he thinks his scattered but brilliant Capitalism: A Love Story wasn't nominated for an Oscar this year. I'd love to hear his answer.

Doors open at 6:45PM. Get there early.

Okay, call me a sucker for pop music... a poptimist, if you will... but catchy melodic hooks, gutsy vocals and smart compositions get me every time.

L.A.'s husband-wife duo Sweet Talk Radio know a thing or two about penning hummable songs that roll around your brainpan. Together and individually Kathrin Shorr and Tim Burlingame have been part of the TV/commercial songmill, earning a living as musicians-for-hire.

As Sweet Talk Radio, however, they get to flex their songwriting muscles and the result is slick folkpop that spotlights Shorr's bluesy vocals and Burlingame's dexterous musicianship (though to be fair, they easily swap duties). Bouncing from acoustic guitar to mandolin to the infinite sustain of the e-bow the duo create quirky, atmospheric tunes that accent their obvious talents.

"My Hallelujah" is their obvious bid for hitdom but there are other delights to be had. The piano ballad "Better At You" puts Shorr's husky, sexy crooning front and center, "I've Got It All" and "Breaking My Own Heart" are hauntingly lovely, "Labor Of Love" evokes shades of Natalie Merchant while a trippy version of Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back" is everything a make-it-your-own cover tune should be.

Watch the video below to get a good idea of what you're in for...

The two will be performing at The Ark as part of their Take A Chance Tuesdays, an admission-free show. Please bring a non-perishable donation for Food Gatherers

Austin-ite Carrie Elkin opens and she ain't no singer-songwriter slouch either. Check out her growling, gospel-flecked, country-tinged tunes here. (Think: Iris Dement or Nanci Griffith)