MOVIES
Gorefest: The 13th A lot of psych bands are focused on panoramic atmosphere, with lyrics seeming to matter relatively little, but Austin’s Bright Light Social Hour adds an element of social commentary. Their sound is expansive and trippy, but wakeful and energetic — chalk it up to that Texas hot sauce. Their latest record, “Space is Still the Place” (presumably a Sun Ra reference) dropped this year. Kool Keith Every day is Halloween for Kool Keith, who claims, however debatably, to have invented horrorcore. He’s performed his surreal raps under a variety of alter egos, the most famous of which is the lecherous mad scientist from space, Dr. Octagon. Among underground hip-hop eccentrics, he’s rivaled only by MF Doom, who emerged with a similar shtick not long after Keith. Nikki Lane Nashville’s Nikki Lane is a solidly country singer-songwriter, but if you’re imagining sentimental balladry, you’re way off—her lineage is the edgy, black-clad “outlaw country” style of Johnny Cash, with a girlish voice belying lyrical tales of adult desperation. Motown and alt rock are also significant influences on Lane. The ubiquitous Dan Auerbach produced her last album, 2014’s “All or Nothing.” VARIETY
Thursday, 7:30 p.m.
Berklee Performance Center
136 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
$8-$12, 617-747-2261
www.berklee.edu/bpc
Through November 6
Museum of Fine Arts
465 Huntington Ave., Boston
$11, 800-440-6975
www.mfa.org
Saturday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Taza Chocolate
561 Windsor St., Somerville
Free, 617-623-0804
www.tazachocolate.com
Through Saturday
ImprovBoston
40 Prospect St., Cambridge
$25, 617-576-1253
www.improvboston.com
Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard St., Brookline
$11, 617-566-6660
www.brooklinebooksmith.com
Through Jan. 25
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
25 Evans Way, Boston
$12-$15, 617-566-1401
www.gardnermuseum.org
Friday through Nov. 30
Chandler Gallery
20 Sacramento St., Cambridge
Free, 617-349-6287
www.maudmorganarts.org
Through Saturday
Multicultural Arts Center
41 2nd St., Cambridge
$20-$25, 617-477-4494
www.luminariumdance.org
Friday, 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall
301 Mass. Ave., Boston
$37-$47, 888-266-1200
www.bso.org
Thursday, 9:30 p.m.
Great Scott
1222 Comm. Ave., Allston
$12-$15, 18+, 800-745-3000
www.ticketmaster.com
Thursday, 8 p.m.
Middle East Downstairs
480 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
$16, 866-777-8932
www.ticketweb.com
Sunday, 8:15 p.m.
The Sinclair
52 Church St., Cambridge
$13-$16, 18+, 800-745-3000
www.ticketmaster.com
Through Friday
Oberon
2 Arrow St., Cambridge
$25-$45, 617-547-8300
www.americanrepertorytheater.org
Through Nov. 21
Lyric Stage
140 Clarendon St., Boston
$31-$65, 617-585-5678
www.lyricstage.com
Through Nov. 15
Calderwood Pavilion
527 Tremont St., Boston
$63-$85, 617-266-0800
www.huntingtheatre.org
What to do in Boston this weekend: Oct. 29 – Nov. 1, 2015
Glenn Perry
Internet Cat Video Festival
Roger Ebert has passed away, but he lived long enough to declare Will Braden’s “Henri 2: Paw De Deux” the greatest ever Internet cat video. Braden curated this program of cat masterworks, designed for those whose cat video needs are not satisfied enough by the average Facebook feed. No, you can’t bring your cats, but there will be one in attendance.
A Small Good Thing
Gurus of all stripes will tell you the first step to happiness is to disconnect from consumer culture and its fleeting, empty material pleasures, but it’s a lot harder to do that than it always sounds. This documentary by local filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll interviews folks in Western Massachusetts who’ve accomplished that goal. Let it inspire you.
FOOD
Dia de Los Muertos at Taza Chocolate
There are lots of Dia de Los Muertos celebrations this weekend, but we picked this one because chocolate — and not just any chocolate, but Somerville’s Taza, a company that makes Mexican style stone-ground chocolate. In addition, there’s cider, tacos, sugar skull face painting, live music (including Harvard’s Mariachi Veritas) and more. Oh yeah, and admission’s free… nice.
COMEDY
Given that this is the 13th installment of ImprovBoston’s annual Halloween show, it was natural to take inspiration from “Friday, the 13th.” Since Gorefest is always a musical, they’ve turned the movie’s summer camp into a theater camp. Each year has a different theme, but there is one glorious constant: gobs of fake blood. Seriously, bring a poncho…
BOOKS
B.A. Shapiro
This local novelist reads from her latest, “The Muralist,” which, though a work of fiction, deals with a very real historical scandal: the United States’ turning away of thousands of Holocaust refugees in the years leading up to World War II. Shapiro weaves this dark chapter of our history into the story of a promising young American artist who goes mysteriously missing.
ART
Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice
This is the first-ever U.S. solo exhibition of the work of Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli, whose “St. George and the Dragon” has long been a jewel of the Gardner Museum’s collection. Though known as a master in his day, Crivelli has become sort of an unsung hero of Venetian painting; hopefully this show, gathering 24 of his works, will do something to remedy that.
Michele Fandel Bonner: Piecework
Clothing tags—they tell you who made the clothes, how to wash the clothes, they’re a place you write your kid’s name so they don’t lose it, they itch so you have to cut them off—and Michele Fandel Bonner uses them in her art, as well as other funny little items she calls “the castoffs of daily life.”
DANCE
Spektrel
Luminarium Dance, a local dance company known for its unique use of light in its choreography, performs four new works by directors Merli V. Guerra and Kimberleigh A. Holman. One piece, “Rabbit Hole Cycles,” is designed so that it could theoretically be performed endlessly — you’ll just see it once this time, but try to imagine it going on forever somewhere.
MUSIC
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
A Halloween screening of 1922’s “Nosferatu” with live accompaniment is practically a given somewhere around town this time of year, but this one’s special, because it features an original soundtrack created by eight Berklee College of Music film music students. Not only do they get to try their hand at an undisputed masterpiece, but the Boston Pops will perform it — sweet deal, no?
Bright Light Social Hour
Cirque of the Dead
This annual performance spectacle returns to Oberon for Halloween, with the Boston Circus Guild’s jugglers, aerialists and acrobats, a little burlesque and live music from Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band. We’re promised that it’s filled with as much humor as gore, as it should be, but then again, you expect a circus guild to know how to balance things.
THEATER
“Saturday Night/Sunday Morning”
This play by Katori hall takes us back to the World War II era, zooming in on a beauty parlor/boarding house whose seven denizens face the approaching end of the war. Are their men finally coming home? The threat of a change in their relations prompts them to get realer with each other, which brings out both colorful insults and something more ambiguous — the truth.
“Choice”
In this comedy by Winnie Holzman (creator of the cult 90’s teen drama “My So Called Life,” as well as the book for the musical “Wicked”), a journalist with the improbable name of Zipporah Zunder takes on a new story, related to a woman’s right to choose, that forces her to turn her questioning onto herself — always an awkward interview.
