Live music is a Halloween treat
What's not to love about Halloween week? Normally understated women vamp it up in Elvira costumes, there are buckets of mini candy bars, and even mild-mannered men can play dress-up at parties (Pirate of the Caribbean, meet Borat).
Another big plus is all the spooky movies accompanied by equally spooky live music, and there's a terrific selection to choose from this week. On Devil's Night it's Jacques Tourneur's 1942 "Cat People" with pianist Ran Blake and students from the New England Conservatory, while on the day itself you can choose between John S. Robertson's 1920 "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" with Devil Music Ensemble or F.W. Murnau's 1926 "Faust" with the band Cul de Sac.
The NEC event, which takes place Monday at 8 p.m. at Jordan Hall and is free, will include readings of Robert Louis Stevenson poetry and clips from Tourneur's "The Leopard Man" and "I Walked With a Zombie" along with "Cat People." Blake and his improv students will, they say, draw from a range of music from old standards to Shostakovich. Details are at 617-585-1122 and newenglandconservatory.edu/concerts.
The Boston group Devil Music Ensemble has performed to "Nosferatu" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" for years, and this fall added "Dr. Jekyll" -- the one with John Barrymore -- to its repertoire. The performance takes place on Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (617-734-2500 and coolidge.org).
"Faust" is a real terror: the Internet Movie Database ranks it the sixth top horror movie of all time (right behind "Aliens" and just ahead of "Jaws"). The show on Tuesday is at 8 p.m., at the Regent Theatre in Arlington (781-646-4849 and regenttheatre.com).
CONVERSATIONS WITH: Alice Dungan Bouvrie, who got one master's degree in film production from Boston University and another in intercultural relations from Lesley University, will discuss her new "Prison Pups" at the Museum of Fine Arts Saturday at 2:40 p.m. The film follows inmates at the minimum-security Northeastern Correctional Center in West Concord who train service dogs for the disabled (617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film).
Also on Saturday, at 7 p.m., the Rev. Carlton Smith will discuss "The Gay Marriage Thing" at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington. Smith is in the film, which looks at the politics and people affected by the 2004 debate in Massachusetts. Director Stephanie Higgins , whose SassyMedia production company is based in Belmont, and executive producer Lorre Fritchy will also be in attendance (781-648-3799 and firstparish.info).
Director Sergei Dvortsevoy is at the Harvard Film Archive on Saturday at 7 p.m. with his "Paradise" and "Highway" and next Sunday at 7:30 p.m. with "Bread Day" and "In the Dark." His films look at today's Kazakhstan and Russia and the people who move through quiet, everyday events (617-495-4700 and hcl.harvard.edu/hfa).
COLLEGE NEWS: Boston University is offering a new class on "the esthetics and production methods for making films specifically for distribution on mobile phones and handheld devices." The class is led by professor and film director Jan Egleson. . . . The Berklee College of Music has appointed Eric Reasoner interim chair of its Film Scoring Department -- what the school says is the only four-year undergrad film scoring program in the world. Reasoner worked on the scores for "Robin Hood," "Lethal Weapon 4," and "Last Action Hero," among other films.
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: "Walkabout" plays on Monday at 8 and 10 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre as part of the Janus Films series (617 876-6837 and brattlefilm.org) . . . Emerson College professor and Fulbright Scholar Claire Andrade-Watkins will present her "Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican" on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the MIT Stata Center. The film looks at the Cape Verdean immigrants who were displaced from the Fox Point section of Providence during the urban renewal of the 1970s, including her own family and friends (781-788-6607 and womeninfilmvideo.org).
Before director Alfonso Cuarón directed "Y tu mamá también" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," his first feature was "Solo; Love in the Time of Hysteria." It's a Don Juan tale with a sardonic side, and the MFA says it has never been released theatrically in the United States. It comes to the MFA for five shows including three this week: Wednesday at 5:30 p.m., Thursday at 8:40 p.m., and Saturday at 4:15 p.m.
And last, a political film. Sometimes elections come down to which flavor of hubris leaves less of a bad taste in your mouth: the hubris of political dynasty, where a candidate waltzes in with the pedigree of a last name; or the hubris of ego, where a candidate says hey, I'm trying really hard, that's enough for your money and your vote, right?
The title of Frank Popper's new documentary "Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?" is a play on the 1939 Frank Capra film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The new movie follows a young buck named Jeff Smith who, in 2004, ran for the House of Representatives to replace the outgoing Richard Gephardt. Smith was 29 at the time, and the film shows him barreling into his campaign despite the skepticism he faces even from his own mother, who thought the whole idea "just seemed like an off-the-wall notion."
Smith seems to be a decent guy -- he cofounded the Confluence Academy, a St. Louis charter school that serves primarily minority students -- even if he never is fazed by his complete lack of previous public service.
He looks and sounds like Al Franken doing his Stuart Smalley bit, and one of his own campaign staffers concedes that Smith is "short, looks like he's 12, and sounds like he's castrated." That makes it all the more entertaining to see Smith go from zero name recognition to serious contender in a primary field that includes Russ Carnahan, the Missouri equivalent of a Kennedy.
He loses the race, but it's clear he'll be sticking around. And in fact Smith is currently running for the Missouri Senate with the endorsement of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
"Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?" opens on Friday at the Kendall Square Cinema. Consider it a segue from the scary season of Halloween week to the scary season of election week.
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 
