ATLRetro

by Melanie Crew
Managing Editor

Hey all you Kool Kats and Kittens! It’s Geeks ‘n’ Glory this week as the 32nd Annual Dragon Con invades Atlanta! We’ve got all the sci-fi geekery your hearts could desire! And you won’t want to miss all the blues, punk and rock ‘n’ roll mischief! So, get out and get Retro!

Monday, August 27

Get intergalactic and catch a screening of the 2018 IMAX Re-Release of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) at theatres across Atlanta [AMC Dine-In North Point Mall 12 (Alpharetta); Regal Atlantic Station Stadium 18; and Regal Mall of Georgia Stadium (Buford)], through Aug. 29! Get your vinyl fix during Little 5 Points Corner Tavern’s Records of Mass Destruction! event, every Monday! The Plaza Theater screens Lee Aronsohn’s 40 YEARS IN THE MAKING: THE MAGIC MUSIC MOVIE (2017), documenting the ‘70s Colorado jam band, Magic Music, through Aug. 30! Or get adventurous at the Studio Movie Grill (Alpharetta) with a screening of Rob Reiner’s THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987) at 7:30pm! Spend the night with Nikka Costa at City Winery! Get down with Matt Pendrick at Blind Willies! Get funky and groove on down to Café 290 every second and fourth Monday of the month for a taste of Bumpin the Mango, ‘The groove that makes you want to move!” Boogie on down to the Northside Tavern and spend an evening with Lola at her famous Monday Night Northside Jam! And blues on down to Fat Matt’s Rib Shack for a side of Dry White Toast and a plate full ‘o finger lickin’ BBQ!

Tuesday, August 28

The Landmark Midtown Art Cinema continues their Film in Films Classics Series with a screening of Gene Kelly’s classic SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952) at 7pm, featuring a pre-show intro and post-show Q&A session! Or celebrate 25 years of David Anspaugh’s RUDY (1993) at theatres across Atlanta at 2pm/7pm [AMC Barrett Commons 24 (Kennesaw); Regal Atlantic Station Stadium 18; Hollywood Stadium 24 (Chamblee); Avalon Stadium 12 (Alpharetta); Perimeter Pointe 10; Regal McDonough Stadium 16 (McDonough); Georgian Stadium 14 (Newnan); AMC Avenue Forsyth (Cumming); Cinemark Tinseltown 17 (Fayetteville); AMC Sugarloaf Mills 18 (Lawrenceville); and AMC Southlake Pavilion 24 (Morrow)]! Fiddle on down to Eddie’s Attic for a night with Sylvia Rose Novak and The Rogue Tones! Get old-timey with Ol’ GoForth at Darwin’s Burgers & Blues! Get old-school with Funky Bluester at Blind Willies! Jam it up with Joe Gransden and his jazz jam session at Venkman’s every Tuesday! The Star Bar delivers a night of retro shenanigans with DJ Quasi Mandisco’s Little 5 Points Dance Party featuring retro-soul, funk, ‘80s, ‘90s and more! Blues it up with the Crosstown Allstars at Fat Matt’s Rib Shack! And as always, groove on down with Swami Gone Bananas at the Northside Tavern!

Wednesday, August 29

Raise a rockin’ ruckus in The Basement with Reverend Beat-Man & Izobel Garcia (Blues Trash Duo), Dusty Booze & The Baby Haters, the Midnight Larks and Kool Kat Rod Hamdallah! TCM Big Screen Classics presents a 60th Anniversary screening of Joshua Logan’s SOUTH PACIFIC (1958) at theatres across Atlanta at 2pm/7pm [AMC Barrett Commons 24 (Kennesaw); Regal Atlantic Station Stadium 18; Hollywood Stadium 24 (Chamblee); Avalon Stadium 12 (Alpharetta); Cinemark Tinseltown 17 (Fayetteville); Perimeter Pointe 10; Regal McDonough Stadium 16 (McDonough); Georgian Stadium 14 (Newnan); Studio Movie Grill (Alpharetta/Duluth/Marietta); AMC Southlake Pavilion 24 (Morrow); and AMC Avenue Forsyth (Cumming)]! Make your way to the Northlake Festival Movie Tavern’s Flashback Cinema series screening of David M. Evans’ THE SANDLOT (1993) at 2:30pm/7:30pm! Folk rock it up with The Great Peacock and Kevn Kinney at The Earl! Rock on down to The Highlander for their Punk/Metal/New Wave Karaoke Night, every Wednesday! Mike Ledbetter gets down with an Otis Rush Tribute at Blind Willie’s! Funk it up with the Mike Veal Band at Tin Roof Cantina! Catch a screening of Bruce Lee’s ENTER THE DRAGON (1973) at Studio Movie Grill (Alpharetta/Duluth/Marietta) at 7:15pm! Get jazzy at the Red Light Café with The Gordon Vernick Quartet! Or make your way to the Northside Tavern as Danny ‘Mudcat’ Dudeck fires up a night of acoustic blues! St. James Live! delivers their Hump Days Blues night, getting classic blues-style every Wednesday! And as always, it’s Ladies Night at Johnny’s Hideaway which plays hits from Sinatra to Madonna for a generally mature crowd.

Thursday, August 30

DragonCon 2018 kicks off with a second-line New Orleans-style parade featuring the Black Sheep Ensemble at 5pm! Have a magical night during the Center for Puppetry Arts’s The Dark Crystal Ball at 7pm, celebrating their new exhibit “Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: World of Myth and Magic,” opening Friday, Aug. 31, (keep your eyes peeled for our Retro Review coming soon) and featuring special guests from the Jim Henson Company, a costume contest and more! DragonCon wouldn’t be the same without the tried and true Tiki night rocking out with the retro-tastic Soldado at Trader Vic’s! Geek it up and live long and prosper while experiencing The Greatest Generation, a podcast dedicated to Star Trek: The Next Generation at The Earl! Garage rock it up with Kool Kat Rod Hamdallah, The Minks and Forbidden Waves at The Star Bar! The Hot Hearts put on their farewell show at Eddie’s Attic! Get some soul with Loose Ends featuring Jane Eugene at City Winery! Catch a 50th Anniversary screening of The Beatles’ YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968) at the Buckhead Theatre at 7pm! Venkman’s dishes out a rock fight between Led Zeppelin and The Who! Cody Matlock & the Mothership get down at Darwin’s Burgers & Blues! Stomp on down to Blind Willie’s for a night with Heather Luttrell! The Northside Tavern gets rockin’ with a little Chicago/Delta blues of The Breeze Kings! Get your boogie on at Fat Matt’s Rib Shack, as Chickenshack featuring Eddie Tigner, delivers some honky-tonk blues! And as always, boogie down at Mary’s, as the East Atlanta venue gets funky with their weekly Disco in the Village.

Friday, August 31

Get your uber geek on as the 32nd Annual premier sci-fi convention, DragonCon 2018, kicks off its first full day, running through Sept. 3! It’ll be an event chock full of rockin’ retro shenanigans, including a comic/pop artist alley, sci-fi classics, alternative history, comics, pop-art, fantasy, horror, paranormal, sci-fi literature, Star Wars, Tolkien, Star Trek, and more! Tonight, you won’t want to miss the Alternate History Temporal Ball, Who’s Line Is It Comic Book Improv, Pin-Ups by the Pool Party, a screening of Eduardo Miyar’s noir/sci-fi hybrid PAGE-JUMPER (2018), featuring Kool Kat Mike Malloy during the DragonCon Independent Film Festival, and so many more sci-fi ‘n’ geeky shenanigans!

Kool Kat Shane Morton a.k.a. one helluva Viking vixen with Valkyrie rock out with The Scragglers, The Crush and Twin Trances during The Star Bar’s Virgo Party! You won’t want to miss southern roots royalty Michelle Malone and Webb Wilder at The Vista Room! Bookworm it up at the 2018 AJC Decatur Book Festival, through Sept. 2! Get the rockin’ blues with Jackwagon, The Dround Hounds  and Skunkweed Juju at Avondale Towne Cinema! Catch a superhero double feature at SCADShow’s screenings of Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN THE MOVIE (1978) and SUPERMAN II: THE RICHARD DONNER CUT (1980) at 6pm! Get the blues with Bobby Rush at City Winery! Jam out with Bird Dog Jubilee and Lady Love at Aisle 5! Funk it up at Venkman’s with Homecooking: Excursions in Afro-Beat Funk featuring Mausiki Scales & The Common Ground Collective! It’s a blues showdown at the Northside Tavern with Cool John Ferguson, Melvin Zachery and Terrance Prather! Get the blues with House Rocker Johnson & The Shadows at Blind Willie’s! Time-Warp it up at The Plaza Theater as they continue their tradition of screening THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) every Friday night, featuring the live cast of Lips Down on Dixie at midnight!

Saturday, September 1

It’s day 2 of DragonCon 2018! So, sci-fi it up with a whole lotta retro goodies! You won’t want to miss the Dragon*Con Parade at 10 am; Ballyhoo Motion Pictures and Kool Kat Daniel Griffith’s MST3K THEY DO STUPID THINGS event, Lips Down on Dixie’s largest ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW event Kool Kat Talloolah Love’s Glamour Geek Revue and so much more!

Get some soul with The Brian McKnight 4 with special guest Lyfe Jennings at the Mable House Barnes Amphitheatre! The Plaza Theater screens ELAINE STRITCH AT LIBERTY (2002), through Sept. 2! Rock out and folk on with Wovenhand, Blood on the Harp and US Prisms at The Earl! Get rootsy with Cody Marlowe followed by outlaw shenanigans with Sarah Shook & The Disarmers at Eddie’s Attic! Rock on down to The Star Bar for a night with Santoros, Fun Isn’t Fair, Post Hunk and Sex Farm! Funk it up with Funk You at Terminal West! Bluegrass it up with Battlefield Collective at Venkman’s! The Chi-Town Transit Authority Pays tribute to Chicago at The Vista Room! Get down with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hank Williams, Jr. at Lakewood Amphitheatre! Get the blues with John Nemeth at Blind Willie’s! Get some soul with Grant Green, Jr. at the Northside Tavern! St. James Live! delivers their Tribute to the Legends night every Saturday night! And as always, DJ Romeo Cologne and DJ Kwasi Mandisco transforms the sensationally seedy Clermont Lounge into a ’70s disco/funk inferno late into the wee hours of the night.

Sunday, September 2

It’s day 3 of DragonCon 2018, so sci-fi it up and get geek-filled with a whole lotta shenanigans, including The Art of the Tiki panel featuring Kool Kat Derek Yaniger, Horror in Clay’s Jonathan Chaffin (see our Shop Around feature here), the Mechanical Masquerade and more! Hula on down to the Victory Sandwich Bar as they and The SOS Tiki Bar bring you a rockin’ LUAU featuring The Flame Throwers and Exotica Tiki Punk DJs! Or spend the night with Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne at the Mable House Barnes Amphitheatre! Stomp on down to The Earl for a night with The Goddamn Gallows and Birdcloud! Celebrate 25 years of David Anspaugh’s RUDY (1993) at theatres across Atlanta at 2pm/7pm [AMC Barrett Commons 24 (Kennesaw); Regal Atlantic Station Stadium 18; Hollywood Stadium 24 (Chamblee); Avalon Stadium 12 (Alpharetta); Perimeter Pointe 10; Regal McDonough Stadium 16 (McDonough); Georgian Stadium 14 (Newnan); AMC Avenue Forsyth (Cumming); Cinemark Tinseltown 17 (Fayetteville); AMC Sugarloaf Mills 18 (Lawrenceville); and AMC Southlake Pavilion 24 (Morrow)]! Stomp on down to Eddie’s Attic for a night with Willie Sugarcapps! Get your Americana fix with Taylor Chaffin at Kavarna! Make your way to the Northlake Festival Movie Tavern’s Flashback Cinema series screening of George Lucas’ AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) at 2:30pm/7:30pm! Get sweet and low down blues-style at the Northside Tavern with Uncle Sugar with Eddie Tigner!

Ongoing

The Marietta Theatre Company presents NUNSENSE through Sept. 1! (LAST CHANCE!)

The Aurora Theatre in Lawrence presents Disney’s NEWSIES, through Sept. 2! (LAST CHANCE!)

ATL CRAFT presents a magical occult Movie Night every second Friday of every month!

My Parents’ Basement goes old-school with their monthly Pinball Tournament, every first Wednesday of the month!

Geek it up and get to bowlin’ at The Comet Pub & Lanes’ Comet Cosplay, getting nerdy the first Monday of every month!

Dad’s Garage’s Big Boozy Nerdy Game Night brings out the kid in you, every first Monday of the month at 7pm! 

Union EAV rocks out with their Punk Rock Karaoke ATL, and every last Tuesday of the month!

The Highlander rocks out with their Punk/Metal/New Wave Karaoke Night, every Wednesday!

Get your vinyl fix during Little 5 Points Corner Tavern’s Records of Mass Destruction! event, every Monday!

Geek it up at My Parents’ Basement with their weekly Tuesday night Nerd Trivia at 8pm!

Nerd Film Mafia screenings at the Diesel Filling Station following NerdCore Trivia, every last Tuesday of the month!

The Plaza Theater Time-Warps it up as they screen, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) every Friday night, featuring the live cast of Lips Down on Dixie at midnight!

Get your reggae fix with Rub-A-Dub gettin’ down at WildPitch Music Hall, every second Sunday of the month!

Every first and third Mondays are Big Band Nights at Café 290, featuring Joe Gransden and his amazing 16-piece orchestra playing jazz and swing standards in the tradition of The Glen Miller Orchestra and other legendary groups.  Second and fourth Mondays are Bumpin the Mango, ‘The groove that makes you want to move!’

Every first Wednesday is the Graveyard Tavern’s Graveyard Swing Night, featuring the swingin’ jazz and boogie-woogie sounds of the Savoy Kings!

If you have a suggestion for a future event that should be included in This Week in Retro Atlanta or see something we missed, please email us at atlretro@gmail.com.