Thursday: Sci-Fi Blockbuster Previews at Banko

Tonight the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinema at SteelStacks previews a movie that may have all the elements of the next big sci-fi blockbuster.

In this thriller set in space, a medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after an accident leaves them adrift in Earth’s orbit.

The trailer is pretty intense. And did we mention it features two of the biggest stars in Hollywood—George Clooney and Sandra Bullock?

“Gravity,” shows at the Banko at 10:15—a day earlier than its national opening. Tickets are $10, less for students, seniors and ArtsQuest members.

Here’s what else is happening in Bethlehem:

• Get your low-cost flu shots from the Bethlehem Health Bureau at the Bethlehem YMCA, 430 E. Broad St., from 5 to 7 p.m. for city residents only. Shots cost $10.

• Could the next John Gorka be walking among us? Find out at Godfrey Daniels when the coffee house hosts its first-ever showcase for students from the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts. The series will run on Thursdays all through the school year, beginning with a Songwriter Café at 7 p.m. Admission is $10.50, $5.50 for students.

• Talented English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist Billy Bragg performs at 7:30 at the Musikfest Café. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes. He might be best known for the "Mermaid Avenue" records, in which he and collaborators Wilco and Natalie Merchant took unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics and set them to music in three critically acclaimed CDs.

• The Associated Mess, the Lehigh Valley’s premier improvisational comedy troupe, appears at the Banko at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8, less for students, seniors and ArtsQuest members.

• Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist who uncovered the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and Abu Ghraib prison abuse in Iraq, will deliver this year’s Tresolini Lecture at Lehigh University: “A Report from Washington on the Obama/Bush-Cheney Foreign Policy” at 8 p.m. in Baker Hall in the Zoellner Arts Center. Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author. The event is free and open to the public.