Here's what's going on this week:
Thursday, September 18

• This evening from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in Kate Gleason Auditorium of the Bausch and Lomb Library Building is a Public Workshop for the Bus Stop Optimization Study. "The purpose of the Bus Stop Optimization Study is to analyze current RTS bus stop locations and make recommendations to improve transit operations." [source: Facebook, 2014-Sep-15]
• From 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. starting at the Democrat and Chronicle building (55 Exchange Blvd.) is a Roc360 Walking Tour.
  

  Take a tour of downtown Rochester – the buildings in transition and a look at its new beginning – during ROC360, a guided walking tour sponsored by IT services company CloudSmartz Inc., the Democrat and Chronicle's RocNext section and The Landmark Society's Young Urban Preservationists, and the RDDC. Guided tours begin at 5:15 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18 at the Democrat and Chronicle, 55 Exchange Blvd., will loop around various sections of the city's center, highlight some of the buildings under redevelopment and local history, and will end on the 21st floor of the First Federal Building, the home of CloudSmartz for a reception, networking and cocktails. The final tour will leave from the Democrat and Chronicle at 6 p.m. Visitors will be encouraged to bring their smartphones, take pictures along various routes in the city and post to Instagram and Twitter using the #ROC360 hashtag. These photos may be used for an online gallery at the Democrat and Chronicle.

  [source: Landmark Society website, 2014-Sep-15]

• The Djangoners perform at Star Alley Park (662 South Ave.) tonight starting around 8:30 p.m. [source: City Newspaper events calendar, 2014-Sep-15]
• The Dryden will screen Alceste à bicyclette (Bicycling with Molière, Philippe Le Guay, France 2013, 104 min., French and Italian w/ subtitles, DCP) tonight at 8 p.m.
  

  Actor's Life/Rochester Premiere! What does it take to lure a great actor out of retirement? Successful and ambitious actor Gauthier (Lambert Wilson) is attempting, by any means possible, to do just that. Serge (Fabrice Luchini), like Molière's misanthrope, has forsaken the world and shut himself off from its falseness. The Alexandrines of Molière's The Misanthrope and its great leading role of Alceste are the bait Gauthier dangles at the reluctant and curmudgeonly Serge. Using shameless flattery, jovial camaraderie, and the promise of acclaim, Gauthier may end up overplaying his hand. Two great French actors, Luchini and Wilson reveal these desperate characters through their enormous and always available egos.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Sep-15]

• The Teressa Wilcox Duo performs at Dinosaur tonight starting around 10 p.m. [source: Dinosaur Barbeque website, 2014-Sep-15]
• Over at the Bug Jar starting around 8 p.m. is Sleepy Haha's, Zealot, Cult Classic, and Black Ribbon. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Sep-15]

Friday, September 19

• In Buffalo at The Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (341 Delaware Ave.,), Professor Jonathan Katz will speak on Art, Sex, and the Sixties starting at 4 p.m. [source: University of Buffalo Department of Art website, 2014-Sep-16]
• Updated: Today at 5 p.m., The Younger Gang plays at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park at Manhattan Square. [source: Facebook, 2014-Sep-19]
• Dave Merulla and Sally Bittner-Bonn will perform Are You Able? at Writers and Books tonight at 6 p.m. and tomorrow at 10 p.m. "The multi-media piece will reflect on parenting our bright-eyed boy who happens to have a disability." [source: performer e-mail, 2014-Aug-4]
• This week's 7 p.m. movie at the Cinema is the very good film A Most Wanted Man (Anton Corbijn, U.K. / U.S. / Germany 2014, 122 min.) "A Chechen Muslim illegally immigrates to Hamburg, where he gets caught in the international war on terror." The 9:05 p.m. film is Calvary (John Michael McDonagh, Ireland / U.K. 2014, 100 min.) "After he is threatened during a confession, a good-natured priest must battle the dark forces closing in around him." [source: Cinema coming soon page, 2014-Sep-17]
• Over at the Lovin' Cup starting around 8 p.m. is Freeman, Arc Iris, and a great stage show and excellent surf-based rock from The Isotopes. [source: Lovin' Cup website, 2014-Sep-15]
• Staring around 8 p.m. at the Bug Jar is the Carbon 20 Year Anniversary Show (Part 1) featuring r.nuuja, Sean Leahy, Colonel Parmisan, Nod, luscious, poetic acoustic rock from Autumn In Halifax, Drippers, Licker, Sulk, the thick, bass-driven noise of Tuurd, and DJ Chad Oliveiri. [source: Facebook, 2014-Sep-15]
• The Dryden will screen Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee, Taiwan/Hong Kong/Us/China 2000, 120 min., Mandarin w/ subtitles, 35mm)—which a friend of mine referred to as "Flying People, Hidden Wires"—starting at 8 p.m.
  

  Nominated for ten Academy Awards (and winner of four), Ang Lee's exhilarating, lyrical, and rousing film is an action picture with a huge heart and endless spirit. Zen warriors are brought together by a stolen sword and one young woman's fierce battle to determine her own destiny. Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Chang, and Cheng Pei-Pei bring depth and resonance to their characters, and each performs breathtaking martial arts moves. The two battles between Yeoh and Zhang, choreographed by martial arts master Woo-ping Yuen, are standouts.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Sep-15]

• Nuts and Bolts Comedy Improv will perform at Rochester Association of Performing Arts (RAPA, 727 E. Main St.) from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. [source: City Newspaper events calendar, 2014-Sep-15]
• Over at the Bop Shop is the Matthew Shipp-Michael Bisio Duo starting at 9 p.m.
  

  "These are two at the top of the era and they behave like it on this wonderful disk. It's beyond category. Avant, sure. But essential no matter what you call it. Piano-bass duets? Call it that. This is our music today and they are making some of the best!" — Grego Applegate Edwards

  [source: Bop Shop website, 2014-Sep-15]

• 5head performs at Sticky Lips BBQ Juke Joint tonight starting around 9:30 p.m. [source: Sticky Lips website, 2014-Sep-15]

Saturday, September 20

• Flower City Vaudeville performs at The Rochester Association of Performing Arts (RAPA, 727 E. Main St.) today at 10:30 a.m. [source: flyer, 2014-Aug-18]
• Today from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. in Rand Lodge at Powdermill Park is Ian's Benefit Show (IBS) Picnic featuring awesome electronic rock from Ahura Mazda, good hard rock from Blizaro, Ed Downey, Foot and Mouth Disease, Fox 45, Guntrouble, complex, multi-faceted, musician's rock-band Ian Downey is Famous, Meddlesome Meddlesome Meddlesome Bells, and Nod. "All day park show […] killer line-up in support of Ian Downey, funds to replace his stolen batch of musical equipment." [source: Facebook, 2014-Sep-15]
• Today from 12:15 p.m. to 1 p.m. in the Curtis Theatre at George Eastman House is a Focus 45 Lecture with Dr. John Schott discussing Connections to Rochester and Beyond.
  

  Changes to the photographic industry introduced by digital technology are reflected in the evolution of imaging science in Rochester. Dr. John Schott of RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science will trace this evolution and the connections between Rochester and the imaging community at large.

  [source: Eastman House calendar, 2014-Sep-15]

• From 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Gandhi Institute is a Discussion about Kingian Nonviolence with Shirley Thompson, and Erin Thompson. [source: Gandhi Inistitute website, 2014-Sep-15]
• Starting at 7 p.m. is A Rarity of True Deaf Stand-Up Comedy featuring Branton Stewart at The Rochester School for the Deaf (1545 St. Paul St.) [source: Facebook, 2014-Sep-15]
• Tonight at 7 p.m., 9:15 p.m., and 11:30 p.m., the UofR Cinema Group will screen 22 Jump Street (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, U.S. 2014, 112 min.) in Hoyt Auditorium on the University of Rochester Campus. "After making their way through high school (twice), big changes are in store for officers Schmidt and Jenko when they go deep undercover at a local college." [source: University of Rochester Cinema Group website, 2014-Sep-15]
• John Hiatt, and Rick Brantley perform at Water Street Music Hall tonight starting around 8 p.m. [source: Water Street Music Hall website, 2014-Sep-15]
• The Dryden will screen Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, Austria/Us 2012, 107 min., German w/ subtitles and English, DCP) tonight at 8 p.m. with director Jem Cohen in person to discuss the film.
  

  Museum Hours brings together two strangers who meet and find a world of common bonds in Vienna's grand Kunsthistorisches Museum. Johann (Bobby Sommer), a museum guard, has ample time to observe both the art and the visitors. By chance, he meets Anne (Mary Margaret O'hara), a Canadian on a compassionate visit to Vienna. Through art—and the city itself hauntingly photographed by Jem Cohen and Peter Roehsler—museum Hours examines the delicate threads of common interests that weave themselves into friendship.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Sep-15]

• Starting around 8:30 p.m. at the Vineyard Community Space is a Choral Show featuring members of Auld Lang Syne. [source: Facebook, 2014-Sep-16]
• Over at the Bug Jar is Black Cobra, Low-Pan, Sulaco, and Kings Destroy starting around 10:30 p.m. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Sep-15]

Sunday, September 21

• From 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Public Market is another Community Garage Sale and Super Fleas. [source: City of Rochester website, 2014-Sep-17]
• Today from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. in the Dryden Theatre is Vintage Hitchcock—A Live Radio Play.
  

  Screen Plays presents Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play, Joe Landry's delightful 1947 radio drama based on two early films by the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. The Lodger is a tenant with foreboding dragging footsteps, while Sabotage features a gang of saboteurs operating out of London. The characters capture varying states of fear, anxiety, panic, and murder.

  [source: Eastman House calendar, 2014-Sep-15]

• From 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Wilmot Recital Hall at Nazareth College is Paul Smoker, and Ken Filiano performing Music of 1924 and 2014. [source: Bop Shop website, 2014-Sep-15]
• At 3 p.m. in the Dryden Theatre is Cello Fury.
  

  A cello rock powerhouse featuring three cellists and a drummer, Cello Fury's original music combines the emotive and symphonic sounds of the cello with driving rock beats to create a cinematic, progressive rock sound. Cello Fury performs over a hundred high-energy shows per year in rock clubs, concert halls, and music festivals, and on radio and TV.

  [source: Eastman House calendar, 2014-Sep-15]

• At 3 p.m. in the Living Room at George Eastman House is a Live Music Performance of the Carillon Tuba Quartet. [source: Eastman House calendar, 2014-Sep-15]
• At 3:15 p.m. today and 9:10 p.m. tonight, the Little will screen The Zero Theorem (Terry Gilliam, U.K. / Romania / France / U.S. 2014, 107 min.)
  

  Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)'s madcap science fiction epic The Zero Theorem stars two-time Academy Award-winner Christoph Waltz as Qohen Leth, an eccentric and reclusive computer genius plagued with existential angst. Living in isolation in a burnt-out church, Qohen is obsessively working on a mysterious project personally delegated to him by Management (Matt Damon) aimed at discovering the meaning of life — or the complete lack of one — once and for all. Increasingly disturbed by unwanted visits from people he doesn't fully trust, including flirtatious Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry), Management's wunderkind son Bob (Lucas Hedges), his unpredictable colleague Job (David Thewlis), and would-be digital therapist Dr. Shrink-Rom (Tilda Swinton), it's only when he experiences the power of love and desire that he's able to understand his own reason for being.

  [source: Little Theatre website, 2014-Sep-15]

• The Steel Double Trio performs at Bernunzio Uptown Music staring at 5 p.m. [source: Jazz@Rochester website, 2014-Sep-15]
• The Rochester Area Vegan Society presents The History of Veganism with Gary Francione at Brighton Town Park (777 Westfall Rd.) today at 5:30 p.m. "Gary Francione is Professor of Law at Rutgers University and the author of many well-known works on animal rights, including, most recently, The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation?" [source: City Newspaper events calendar, 2014-Sep-15]
• Excellent, deceptively mellow, complex rock-and-roll from Hinkley, Mike Brown, and Nick Walter perform at Flour City Station (170 East Ave.) today starting around 8 p.m. [source: Facebook, 2014-Sep-15]
• Starting at 8 p.m. at the Dryden is Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, U.S. 1936, 87 min., 35mm).
  

  Chaplin directed, starred in, and scored this nearly silent classic indictment of industrialization and modernization. Costarring Paulette Goddard, Modern Times views the increasing dehumanization of the workplace through Chaplin's everyman hero, the Little Tramp—a figure increasingly recognizable in Depression-era images of breadlines and vagrants. The scenes of Chaplin enmeshed in the cogs of an assembly line will forever remain a metaphor for our modern condition. The perfectly crafted physical humor has delighted audiences for decades, while Chaplin's vision of the common man adjusting to a newly industrialized and urbanized world makes this one of the most thought-provoking motion pictures of the depression era.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Sep-15]

• Over at the Bug Jar starting around 9 p.m. is Liana Gabel, Ohs, and The Metaphysics. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Sep-15]

Monday, September 22

• Tonight from 7 p.m. ot 8:30 p.m. at the Asbury First United Methodist Church (1050 East Ave.) is a form titled The Proposed Farm Workers Fair Labor Practices Act: Impact on the Farmer, the Worker, and the Consumer. [source: City Newspaper events calendar, 2014-Sep-15]
• From 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Flying Squirrel is a Green Party Meeting. [source: Flying Squirrel website, 2014-Sep-15]
• The Eastman Wind Orchestra, and Eastman Wind Ensemble perform in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre starting at 8 p.m. [source: Eastman School of Music calendar, 2014-Sep-15]

Tuesday, September 23

• Today from 12:12 p.m. to 12:52 p.m. in Kate Gleason Auditorium of the Bausch and Lomb Library Building is another Books Sandwiched-In with G. Peter Jemison reviewing The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic by John Demos. [source: Monroe County Library website, 2014-Sep-15]
• Today at 5:30 p.m. at Smugtown Mushrooms is Radical Mycology: Spawning Mycelial Networks and Radical Mushroom Cultivation.
  

  This 2-hour presentation covers the uses of fungi for personal, societal, and ecological healing. Fungal ecology and mushroom cultivation are tied with the means for creating resilient lifestyles and communities to present a novel worldview based on the cooperative relationships found throughout the fungal kingdom.

  [source: Facebook, 2014-Sep-15]

• Tonight at 7 p.m. at East High School is a Moot Court Trial titled The Common Core: Is it Good for Public Schools? [source: City Newspaper events calendar, 2014-Sep-15]
• Tonight from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Evans Branch Library, Mason Winfield will discuss Ghosts of the Genesee: Thirteen Ghosts.
  

  Join Western New York's supernatural historian, author Mason Winfield, in Irondequoit for the last stop on his 2014 Halloween season series of talks in the Rochester-region. Mason Winfield doesn't hunt ghosts like people on TV and he doesn't talk to them like people on TV. He studies the two components of the bottom line: the ghosts people say they see and the places people say they see them. His Irondequoit presentation surveys the most famous legendary ghosts of Rochester and the lower Genesee Valley. This sweeping discussion covers a lot of history, both mainstream and alternative, and crosses cultures and periods of time. The Genesee Valley will never look quite the same to you!

  [source: Monroe County Library website, 2014-Sep-15]

• The Little will screen David Bowie Is Happening Now (Hamish Hamilton, Katy Mullan, U.K. 2013) at 7 p.m.
  

  A documentary film of the groundbreaking David Bowie Is exhibition created by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A). The film takes the audience on an extraordinary journey through the David Bowie Is exhibition with special guests including legendary Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto, Pulp front-man Jarvis Cocker, and other collaborators, to explore the stories behind some of the key objects that document Bowie's artistic career. The exhibition curators, Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, provide fascinating insight into the most memorable music videos and original costumes, as well as more personal items such as never-before-seen handwritten lyrics, album cover artwork, set designs and diary entries, which reveal the creativity and evolution of Bowie's ideas.

  [source: Little Theatre website, 2014-Sep-15]

• The Dryden will screen Hamlet (Svend Gade and Heinz Schall, Germany 1921, 104 min., English intertitles, 35mm) tonight at 8 p.m.
  

  Many silent filmmakers turned to Shakespeare for source material, transforming the Bard's verbal poetry and drama into visual equivalents, but none more unusually than this project personally spearheaded by the legendary Danish actress Asta Nielsen, who takes the title role in this production. Nielsen brings more than one kind of ambiguity into her transgender portrayal of the "melancholy Dane," which also gains weight from being shot at some of the actual settings (such as Elsinore Castle) called for in the play.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Sep-15]

Wednesday, September 24

• In case you want to go for a 2-hour drive, today from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Jenn Libby will present a Wet-Plate Collodion Demonstration in Room 216 Allen Hall at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania (71 S Academy St., Mansfield, PA). From 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., she will discuss her installation Record from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Loomis Gallery. [source: Mansifled University Loomis Gallery website, 2014-Sep-11]
• Tonight at 8 p.m., the Dryden will screen Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, U.S. 2008, 124 min., 35mm).
  

  Idiosyncratic screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) directorial debut is a mind-bending meta-drama marked by ingenious visual puns, linguistic tropes, and a general delight in language, both cinematic and spoken. It is, in other words, a Charlie Kaufman film. His tale of a regional theater director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) whose latest production entails re-creating a scale model of Manhattan in a huge Nyc warehouse baffled many audiences and critics alike. Not Roger Ebert, however: After repeat viewings, he named it the best film of the decade.

  [source: Dryden website, 2014-Sep-15]

• Starting around 9 p.m. at the Bug Jar is The Branch Davidians, Blue Falcon, Sparx and Yarms, and Freek Week. [source: Bug Jar calendar, 2014-Sep-15]