Arizona

Undocumented immigrant activists block deportation bus

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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109
Undocumented immigrant activists block deportation bus

A group of young, undocumented immigrant activists temporarily halted a deportation bus from leaving downtown San Francisco on Oct. 17. The bus was parked outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices at 630 Sansome Street, where detainees are held during the day while they await court hearings.

They said they were inspired by recent actions in Arizona, and were putting themselves at risk to send a message to President Barack Obama that all deportations should be halted until federal immigration reform is in place.

Even though federal immigration police threatened them with felony charges if they did not allow the bus to pass, activists decided after an intense discussion to stay seated on the street where they were and continue their protest. 

“We will do whatever is necessary for our community,” protester Alex Aldana said into a megaphone after the group huddled to discuss how to respond to the threat, adding that they would risk arrest.

They chanted “undocumented, unafraid,” and at one point even taped a hot pink sign to the front of the bus that read, “Shut Down ICE.” Supporters circled the bus in a procession, waving signs and chanting, until authorities set up a police line and told them that they would risk arrest if they did not move to the sidewalk. There were federal immigration officials as well as San Francisco police officers on the scene. 

At one point, ICE officials told the activists that the protesters could be charged with felony false imprisonment if they did not get up and move. But in the end, federal officers merely escorted them away from the bus and released them on the sidewalk around the corner.

Organizations involved included the California Immigrant Policy Center, POWER, Causa Justa / Just Cause, the Asian Law Caucus, ASPIRE and others who are part of a coalition that has been focused on immigration reform.

“When they talked to me, they said they were going to arrest me,” said Emmanuel Valenciano, one of the activists who blocked the bus, after being released. He added that he had expected the San Francisco Police Department to take them into custody.

The passengers on the bus were not visible to protesters and bystanders, but Asian Law Caucus Staff Attorney Anoop Prasad had met with some of them earlier that day. They were from Russia, El Salvador, Ethiopia and other countries. Many had been swept into ICE custody after being identified via Secure Communities (S-Comm), an information-sharing program that links local law enforcement information with federal databases.

Some of the bus passengers were bound for the airport, where they would begin long deportation journeys. Others were headed back to ICE detention facilities throughout California, where they would remain while fighting their cases.  All of the detainees had their hands and waists in shackles, Prasad said.

Once the protesters were escorted off the scene and released, the bus backed up and continued on its way.

Community not criminalization

Michael Redmond
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8

 

By María Poblet

OPINION San Francisco is poised to break ground in defense of immigrants, an important step towards turning the tide against the criminalization of communities of color.

In a unanimous vote on September 24, the Board of Supervisors supported a due process ordinance that, after final approval, will reduce deportations by setting strict limits on collaboration between federal immigration enforcement and local authorities. Our city will make history by refusing to implement the federal Secure Communities program, which allows US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to request an immigration hold detention without cause, regardless of immigration status, at local expense.

This victory didn’t trickle down like fog from the “progressive Bay Area bubble.” It was hard fought, from the bottom up. Immigrant and undocumented people most impacted by the problems led the fight, and they built a movement too strong to ignore. Causa Justa::Just Cause helped organize the groundswell, as part of the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee, a broad grassroots collaboration. We had support from progressive champions John Avalos, Eric Mar, David Campos, and five additional co-sponsors on the board.

This movement builds on the fights in the 1980s to make San Francisco a Sanctuary City, welcoming survivors of the wars in Central America. We build on the fights in the ’90s to re-commit to those values in the face of a new wave of migration, when economic refugees arrived, fleeing the hunger caused by US-imposed Free Trade Agreements. We build on the very personal fights of everyday people, like a woman we’ll call Silvia, a domestic violence survivor who met with the District Attorney repeatedly, demanded that he lead those meetings in Spanish so she could participate fully, advocated for herself and her community, and ultimately won his commitment of support for this ordinance. This victory belongs to the hundreds of community leaders who, like Silvia, overcame intimidation, organized their families and neighbors, and showed our elected officials the way forward.

In a national context, where states like Georgia, Alabama and Arizona hunt down immigrants, we in California, a majority immigrant, majority people of color state, have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to follow Silvia’s leadership. It’s time to reject criminalization, and build community.

Every time there’s a new way to label someone a “criminal,” more families and communities are torn apart. Millions of black and Latino people are behind bars already, thanks to criminalization policies like the war on drugs, structural unemployment, decades of divestment from working class communities, and racial discrimination. Creating new immigration violations only makes that problem worse, trapping whole new sectors of our society in the prison dragnet. This advance in San Francisco should inspire our state as a whole not only to reject S-Comm, but also to take bold action to address the profoundly problematic prison system, and challenge the racism and poverty it depends on.

But, for our state to stand up like that is going to take a serious transformation. Gov. Jerry Brown recently announced plans to expand the prison system with revenues from Prop. 30 — the grassroots progressive tax passed last year to support public schools and social services. Causa Justa::Just Cause, as part of California Calls, through SF Rising and Oakland Rising, was one of hundreds of community groups that helped pass this progressive tax. We are outraged to see the governor literally betting on the criminalization of the next generation, with money that was supposed to support their success.

Policies like S-Comm manufacture the need for more detention facilities, ultimately benefitting corporate interests like the GEO private prison group. Its lucrative business depends on criminalization, and a culture of fear. If politicians aren’t brave enough to survive the accusation that they are “soft on crime” in order to champion real change, then we the people will have to take it into our own hands. Immigrant communities, black communities, communities of color, and poor communities need to keep building the solidarity and the movement that will allow us to win, from San Francisco to Sacramento to DC. There is much more to be done, and we can only do it together.  

María Poblet is executive director of Causa Justa::Just Cause.

Extra! Extra! Calling all Nebraska Cornhuskers!

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Extra! Extra! Calling all Nebraska Cornhuskers!

How to watch the Nebraska vs. Wyoming game at 5 p.m today on 403 cable and at the Final Final bar  in SF (Saturday, Aug. 31, 2013). Plus: Some inside Nebraska football.

Well, today, first game day at the University of Nebraska/Lincoln, I got out my red Nebraska cap and my white sweat socks with a red trim and the former Jean Dibble got out her red Nebraska sweater.   

Today is the opening game of the season for the Nebraska Cornhuskers and we planned to watch the game. We faithfully watched every game last year and we planned to do so again this year. Jean and I are both graduates of the University of Nebraska. I was editor for a semester in the spring of 1956  of the Daily Nebraskan (known affectionately in my day as the Rag) and we plan to return in October for a grand reunion of the Rag staffs through the years.  Our grandson Nicholas Perez of Santa Barbara is a sophomore mechanical engineering student and has season tickets. And so we became even more faithful fans.

Normally, the opening game is a breeze for the Cornhuskers, but the opening game of the 1955 season, when I was the sports editor of the Rag, was a classic Nebraska loss in a state where NU football losses aren’t tolerated. Nebraska played terribly and lost, 6-0, to the University of Hawaii at Memorial Stadium in a game so humiliating that the Cornhuskers never got closer than Hawaii’s 13-yard line.

Immediately, the Nebraska press and the sports writers across the state  erupted virtually in unison and started pounding on  Bill Glassford, the coach, and kept piling  on with increasing ferocity  for the rest of the season.  

The most virulent were the local sports editors, Dick Becker of the Lincoln Journal and Don Bryant of the Lincoln Star, operating with the power and safety of a joint operating agreement (JOA). (The JOA monopoly  was soon to be declared illegal with President Kennedy’s famous federal antitrust case against the JOA papers in Tucson, Arizona. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled  that the JOA was a  prima facie violation of antitrust law because it pooled profits, fixed prices, and shared markets. The JOA publishers, including the Lee chain that owned the morning  Star and the Seacrest family that then owned the afternoon Journal, lobbied Congress and President Nixon to legalize retroactively  JOAs with special interest legislation.)

I called Becker and Bryant  the Bobbsey Twins of the Journal-Star, countered them whack for whack and defended Glassford with facts and gusto .After all, he was a solid coach with a decent  5-5 season, won second place in the tough Big Seven conference and went on to play in the Orange Bowl.  I was surprised to find that I was about the only sports writer in the state to support Glassford.

Sadly, this was Glassford’s last season and  the end of his coaching career. However, a couple of coaches later, along came Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne and national champsionships and five decades of sold out crowds in Memorial Stadium. Later, I felt that I had been the precursor to Wes “Scoop” Nisker, a Nebraska native from Norfolk, and his famous motto he laid out as a newsman on KSAN radio in San Francsico during the during the dark days of Nixon and Vietnam. “If you don’t like the news,” Scoop would say, “go out and make some of your own.” Perhaps, I later mused,  this unlikely game in this unlikely place was the unlikely start of my career in fighting for the underdog and promoting  alternative journalism.with the Bay Guardian.

But I digress. Updating my research from last year, this is how to watch today’s game.

Nebraska is now a member of the Big Ten conference and so its games are shown on the Big Ten Network (BTN, cable station 403 in San Francisco.) Today’s game will be broadcast at 7 p.m. Nebraska time, 5 p.m. California time.

And then there’s the Nebraska bar in San Francisco, aptly called Final Final, the lively neighborhood sports bar at 2990 Baker Street, across from the Presidio. The bar is real Nebraska. It is owned by Arnie Prien, who comes from Lyons, Nebraska, and graduated from the university in 1964.  He has been running Final Final for the past 36 years and loyally broadcasts Nebraska football games every Saturday on his premier giant screen.

The NU faithful, he told me,  come from all over the Bay Area to see the games and enjoy Husker camaraderie.   (I have always been leery of the alleged Herb Caen rule: never check the item, you might lose it.) So I called Final Final this morning to check. The game, I am happy to report, is on the big screen today at 5 p.m and the suggestion is to come an hour or so early for a seat and first shot at the free pop corn and inexpensive beer.  

Final Final got its name from the days when the soldiers got their final drink before heading back to their barracks at the Presidio after a night on the town. This is most ironic, since the Lincolnites of my era suffered under strict drinking laws,  which meant that one could not get a hard drink nor cocktail in a public bar but only in the sanctuary of the private University Club in the Stuart Building. And then only if one kept a bottle in a private locker.

There is no place like Nebraska. Especially in San Francisco. Go Big Red. b3

Final Final. 2990 Baker St.  San Francisco 94123. 415-931-7800. Nebraska vs. Wyoming, 5 p.m.

P.S. The NU alumni site lists three other “watch sites” in the Bay Area.  Jack’s Brewing Company in Fremont. Legends and Heroes in Concord. And Knuckles Sports Bar in Monterey.

(Bruce B. Brugmann, who signs his blogs and emails b3,  writes and edits the bruce blog on the Bay Guardian website at sfbg.com. He is the editor at large of the Bay Guardian and the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher with his wife Jean Dibble, l966-2013. He can be reached at bruce@sfbg.com.)

California’s refusal to reduce its prison population is a sign of deeper problems

Sasha Cuttler
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40
California’s refusal to reduce its prison population is a sign of deeper problems

California just doesn’t get it when it comes to criminal justice. We have among the highest incarceration rates in the world (just below Russia’s, and about four times the European average); our prisons eat up far too much of our state budget; they are shamefully overcrowded, secretive, and inhumane; yet politicians from Gov. Jerry Brown on down refuse to show the courage or leadership to try a different approach.

When the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court — which on Friday upheld the lower court requirement that California reduce its prison population by 10,000 by the end of the year — is more progressive and enlightened than California’s leaders, you know there’s something seriously wrong here.

Rather than finally doing the right thing and complying with court orders to reduce a population that is still more than 43 percent over design capacity — despite reducing the population by 46,000 since 2006 because of court orders related to woefully inadequate health care in prisons — Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard yesterday responded to last week’s news by saying he will send more inmates to prisons in other states, at a high cost to California taxpayers.

What’s wrong with these people?!?! California prisons already lock up 124,363 people as of July 31, with another 8,959 inmates locked up in Arizona, Mississippi, and Oklahoma prisons at our expense. Tens of thousands more have been sent back to county jails under the state’s Realignment policies (which San Francisco, to the credit of its progressive approach to criminal justice, has managed to absorb and still reduce our jail population, thanks to smart alternatives to incarceration). And yet state officials still can’t get our prisons back to anywhere close to their design capacity?!?!

Of course, doing so would require rethinking decades of mindless “tough-on-crime” legislation that swelled our prison population. They’d probably also need to address the gutting of reentry and rehabilitation programs in the state, as well as conditions in some prisons that drive inmates mad (the subject of an onoing prison hunger strike). And they might even need to reform an economic system that is squeezing those on the bottom — sowing widespread economic insecurity that drives even law-abiding citizens to contemplate desperate measures —  just to maintain the wasteful churn of modern capitalism and the obscenely inequitable concentration of wealth at the top.

Hmm, I do believe that I’m starting to understand the motivations of our elected officials after all, those guardians of status quo power and privilege from both major parties. But if we’re ever going to move toward justice and sustainability, California’s prison system is probably a good place to start. 

The ascendants

Michael Redmond
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0
The ascendants

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Though only in its fourth season, Robert Dekkers’ Post:Ballet has already gained an enthusiastic, impressively large following that has allowed the company to move from the Cowell to the Herbst to this year’s Lam Research Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. It’s easy to see the reason for Dekkers’ success.

While his dance making is clearly ballet-based, his works have an expansive sense of freedom that makes them welcoming and easy on the eye. By choosing to perform in the summer when other companies are on break, he can also work with highly trained professionals otherwise unavailable to a small (ten-person) ensemble like his. This year they came from Houston Ballet and Ballet Arizona, as well as the local Smuin Ballet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and Company C Contemporary Ballet.

Perhaps most intriguing is the ease with which Dekkers’ choreography embraces the ground and the air as one liquid continuum. His dancers crawl, slither, and slide along the floor like billowing smoke — and then rise into space as if born to it.

The world premiere for seven dancers, field the present shifts, is probably Dekkers’ most ambitious piece yet. It is a problematic work. A collaboration with architects Robert Gilson and Catherine Caldwell and a commissioned score, performed live by Matthew Pierce, it also features gorgeous magenta body-hugging costumes by Christine Darch, and a richly varied lighting design by David Robertson.

According to the program notes, field examines complex relationships. Within a given set of parameters, the piece also allows for individual decision-making by everyone involved. It added up to a lot of in-the-moment choices by a lot of people, and the results did not convince.

Visually, however, field was a feast for the senses. The dancers flew at each other like arrows, bunched up into swaying unisons as if buffeted by some gale force wind. They gathered on individual squares of light, responded to each other across the stage, and seemed to walk on water. They rolled into somersaults and carefully explored and yanked at each other. What I missed was an encompassing frame that held these individual units together. Also, a sense of uncertainty marred some the canons and unisons.

The two designers came up with what looked like huge sheaves of wheat hung upside down; at one point, they were lowered, presumably for the dancers to interact with. Few of them did. So what was the point? The distinct character of each of the ten or so sections of Pierce’s score for five violins, however, was a pleasure to hear.

The evening opened with the reworked Colouring II from 2011, danced with great authority by Ashley Flaner and Domenico Luciano. The piece traced the making of a pas de deux, developing at the same time as Enrico Quintero’s creation of a large, calligraphy-inspired painting. The dancers, approaching each other from opposite sides, added another gesture with each encounter, suggesting an almost filmic sense of accumulation. Daniel Berkman’s score, performed live, contributed his own voice to this intriguing process. This was watching visual and kinetic art in the making, and it was a delight. However, Dekkers standing on the sidelines, cueing the process, seemed intrusive. He should have trusted his artists.

Sixes and Seven, also from 2011, is a solo, here danced delicately yet firmly by Jessica Collado. This was richly varied choreography in which the dancer made full use of her body, including an excellent use of gestural language. At times, Collado appeared to withdraw into herself, but she also reacted to invisible external forces that impinged on her. You got a sense that she was living in a rich world. If the use of an excerpt from Philip Glass’s Einstein at the Beach meant to suggest some kind of cosmic existence, the choice was perfect.

Last year’s When in Doubt ended awkwardly in a wobbly pyramid, and used a distracting word-and-sound score by Jacob Wolkenhauer. But Dekkers showed considerable choreographic chops in the way he used his septet of dancers both in unisons and in smaller units. With the women on pointe walking in plié, and Robertson’s stark lighting that pulled the dancers across the stage with a quasi magnetic force, When began to feel ominous. This was even true for the two very different duets for Raychel Weiner and Christian Squire, and Collado and Jane Hope Rehm.

Dressing the women in black leotards and the topless men in black tights was inspired because the dancers could almost disappear into each other. The women were dark from the waist up, the men from the waist down. The color scheme abstracted personal interactions and sequences into two-dimensional patterns — thus foregoing overly eager tendencies to read narrative intentions into Dekkers’ choreography. *

 

Three! Out!

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IN THE GAME Home runs are called fuoricampi, which translates literally to outfields, in the sense of “out of the park.” Hits are valide, or “valids.” And a strike out is a strike out. It’s pretty adorable, when the field announcer at Stadio Nuevo Europeo in Parma exclaims, “Strike! Three! Out!”

At one point last Saturday, Parma’s starter Jose Sanchez struck out seven in a row. Over six shutout innings, he struck out 12, so we got to hear it a lot:

“Strike! Three! Out!”

I’m 50.

How it happened was like this: I was born, and it was 50 years ago. And now it’s now. So: yeah . . . fuckin’ 50.

Many years ago I had a sweatshirt with Chief Wahoo (the Cleveland Indians’ politically insensitive logo) on it, only instead of saying Cleveland it said Nettuno. The Nettuno Indians.

Then, when anyone said they were offended by my shirt I would say, but it’s not Cleveland; it’s Nettuno. Which admittedly didn’t solve the problem. At best it diverted attention away from it long enough for me to sneak out a side door — you know, while my assailant’s pot-addled brain was flipping through his rolodex of planets, from the sun outward, looking for Nettuno.

Is “rolodex” still a word?

In either case, we couldn’t believe we missed the World Baseball Classic at AT&T Park earlier this spring, so, so long as we were in Europe for my birthday we thought we’d go see us some world baseball. Which is to say, Italian baseball. Which is to say, Parma vs. Grosseto. Which is to say, Enegan Toshiba Grosseto. Which is also to say, the Grosetto Mastiffs.

The names of the teams are very confusing over there. And they tend to change a lot, sometimes even between innings. In fact, sadly, I don’t think the Nettuno Indians are the Nettuno Indians anymore. Probably Cleveland sued them. Or someone pointed out that Native Americans were inherently American and, by extension, from Earth.

Anyway, we had hoped to make it to Nettuno, to find out, but they were away that Saturday, playing a doubleheader against Saturno. Italian baseball only happens on weekends, see. There just isn’t enough interest in it, when Hedgehog and I aren’t around, to support more games than that. Even with us, attendance for the game in Parma was 139. I know because I counted.

I also used my passport as a straight-edge to line some squares into a piece of paper and I kept score. All so I could tell my loyal and baffled readership back here at home in San Francisco that Parma beat Grosseto on Saturday 9-3.

Leftfielder Massimo Pesci, hitting in the nine hole, crushed a two-run homer off Grosseto starter Rafael Garcia in the second. Parma added two in the fifth, chasing Garcia, then blasted Coronado Angel Marquez in the sixth with five straight hits, capped by a Luca Scalera two-run shot.

With the game securely out of reach, Parma reliever Alexander Tabata Velasquez came on in the 7th and earned a three-inning save.

Grosseto got all three of their runs in the eighth. Francesco Di Mattia led off with a pinch single, Rafael Lora walked, and Bernardo Encarnacion singled to load the bases. Cleanup hitter Nelwin Sforza came through with a sharp single to center, scoring two, and Vincenzo D’Addio followed with a sac fly to right, plating Encarnacion.

There. I just wanted to say all that. Because I’m 50, so I can.

Winning pitcher: Jose Sanchez. Losing pitcher: Rafael Garcia. And if you’re wondering why all the Italian league pitchers have Spanish sounding names, it’s because they import them from Latin America. I think because Italians in Italy don’t play enough baseball, growing up, to develop into pitchers. This is just a guess.

But it could explain why Italy tends to surprise then fizzle in international competitions like the World Baseball Classic. This year, for example, they upset Mexico and Canada in the first round, then lost out in the second. Their starting pitching holds, and then all hell breaks loose when you get into their bullpen.

Such is the state of soccer-dominant Europe, when it comes to trying to use their hands and arms at something. There’s a promising Italian national in the Seattle farm system (Alex Liddi), and one of my favorite current major leaguers is Netherlands-born shortstop Didi Gregorious, of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Oh, and the Bundesliga in Germany has a team called the Dohren Wild Farmers. That’s who I want to play for.

When I grow up.

Three! Out!

Andrew Lam
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2

By L.E. Leone

IN THE GAME Home runs are called fuoricampi, which translates literally to outfields, in the sense of “out of the park.” Hits are valide, or “valids.” And a strike out is a strike out. It’s pretty adorable, when the field announcer at Stadio Nuevo Europeo in Parma exclaims, “Strike! Three! Out!”

At one point last Saturday, Parma’s starter Jose Sanchez struck out seven in a row. Over six shutout innings, he struck out 12, so we got to hear it a lot:

“Strike! Three! Out!”

I’m 50.

How it happened was like this: I was born, and it was 50 years ago. And now it’s now. So: yeah . . . fuckin’ 50.

Many years ago I had a sweatshirt with Chief Wahoo (the Cleveland Indians’ politically insensitive logo) on it, only instead of saying Cleveland it said Nettuno. The Nettuno Indians.

Then, when anyone said they were offended by my shirt I would say, but it’s not Cleveland; it’s Nettuno. Which admittedly didn’t solve the problem. At best it diverted attention away from it long enough for me to sneak out a side door — you know, while my assailant’s pot-addled brain was flipping through his Rolodex of planets, from the sun outward, looking for Nettuno.

Is “Rolodex” still a word?

In either case, we couldn’t believe we missed the World Baseball Classic at AT&T Park earlier this spring, so, so long as we were in Europe for my birthday we thought we’d go see us some world baseball. Which is to say, Italian baseball. Which is to say, Parma vs. Grosseto. Which is to say, Enegan Toshiba Grosseto. Which is also to say, the Grosetto Mastiffs.

The names of the teams are very confusing over there. And they tend to change a lot, sometimes even between innings. In fact, sadly, I don’t think the Nettuno Indians are the Nettuno Indians anymore. Probably Cleveland sued them. Or someone pointed out that Native Americans were inherently American and, by extension, from Earth.

Anyway, we had hoped to make it to Nettuno, to find out, but they were away that Saturday, playing a doubleheader against Saturno. Italian baseball only happens on weekends, see. There just isn’t enough interest in it, when Hedgehog and I aren’t around, to support more games than that. Even with us, attendance for the game in Parma was 139. I know because I counted.

I also used my passport as a straight-edge to line some squares into a piece of paper and I kept score. All so I could tell my loyal and baffled readership back here at home in San Francisco that Parma beat Grosseto on Saturday 9-3.

Leftfielder Massimo Pesci, hitting in the nine hole, crushed a two-run homer off Grosseto starter Rafael Garcia in the second. Parma added two in the fifth, chasing Garcia, then blasted Coronado Angel Marquez in the sixth with five straight hits, capped by a Luca Scalera two-run shot.

With the game securely out of reach, Parma reliever Alexander Tabata Velasquez came on in the 7th and earned a three-inning save.

Grosseto got all three of their runs in the eighth. Francesco Di Mattia led off with a pinch single, Rafael Lora walked, and Bernardo Encarnacion singled to load the bases. Cleanup hitter Nelwin Sforza came through with a sharp single to center, scoring two, and Vincenzo D’Addio followed with a sac fly to right, plating Encarnacion.

There. I just wanted to say all that. Because I’m 50, so I can.

Winning pitcher: Jose Sanchez. Losing pitcher: Rafael Garcia. And if you’re wondering why all the Italian league pitchers have Spanish sounding names, it’s because they import them from Latin America. I think because Italians in Italy don’t play enough baseball, growing up, to develop into pitchers. This is just a guess.

But it could explain why Italy tends to surprise then fizzle in international competitions like the World Baseball Classic. This year, for example, they upset Mexico and Canada in the first round, then lost out in the second. Their starting pitching holds, and then all hell breaks loose when you get into their bullpen.

Such is the state of soccer-dominant Europe, when it comes to trying to use their hands and arms at something. There’s a promising Italian national in the Seattle farm system (Alex Liddi), and one of my favorite current major leaguers is Netherlands-born shortstop Didi Gregorious, of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Oh, and the Bundesliga in Germany has a team called the Dohren Wild Farmers. That’s who I want to play for.

When I grow up.

Because facts mean nothing

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This hasn’t been a good time to be Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America” lately. Federal courts have slapped down his “saturation sweeps” through Latino neighborhoods as unconstitutional. The Maricopa Cty lawman’s casting a wide net of picking up anyone that “fit the profile of an illegal immigrant” was said to violate citizen’s rights.

He is appealling the decision, as you’d expect he would, for two reasons. Firstly, the sweeps are easy (and lazy) policing. Secondly, it puts him back in the news, which is his natural home. Sheriff Arpaio loves the limelight as it gives him a chance to indulge in his favorite fantasy, the living embodiment of the the thin blue line between lawless chaos and civilization as he sees it.

In reality, he is as far from his self-generated hype as the most desperate out of work actor in Hollywood is. Crime in Arizona has dropped everywhere BUT Maricopa County. Sheriff Hardass claims to be the mega-tough guy, making his prisoners wear pink uniforms by way of degradation and then has them collapse from dehydration in the sun or denying medical care (and costing taxpayers a fortune). In fact, his negligence led to the county dropping the ball on over 400 cases of sexual abuse. He is not what he seems.

Which doesn’t mean shit to a tree, as Grace Slick used to say. When it comes to demagoging politicians, effectiveness is irrelevant. That he has been sued and lost over and over on the county’s dime is irrelevant. Or that Arizona’s chesters are free to operate in Phoenix–irrelevant. Or wastes resources targeting citizens going about their daily business–irrelevant.

What matters is, his followers hate brown skinned people and they perceive that he does as well. Arizona is a very strange place. Its population swollen by Illinois and Michigan “snowbirds” are generally of the retired stripe and generally not used to being among Spanish-speaking people. That said Spanish speaking people tend their lawns, clean their pools, groom their golf courses–also irrelevant. They are “a threat to our way of life” (ie not white). Arpaio, albeit in typical code, is their ally and protector–because he’s an old white dude from up north like them.   

You see, facts don’t matter. Arpaio is an ineffective buffoonish attention hog that has run up an enormous tab at the expense of the same people that love him. (And whose campaings are paid for by out of state cash) But because they sense or believe that he hates what they hate, he can do no wrong. And won’t leave office until he either dies or AZ’s demographics force him out. 

It murders the souls of thinking men and women that reality is trumped by fantasy, myth beats truth, perception and prejudice slaughter justice. That people can’t be moved because, once again, facts don’t fucking matter.

Memorial Day: Remembering the good old days in Rock Rapids, Iowa, circa 1940s to 1950s

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 Bruce B. Brugmann

(Reprinted and updated by popular demand)

When I was growing up in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, a farming community of 2,800 in the northwest corner of the state, Memorial Day was the official start of summer.

We headed off to YMCA camp at Camp Foster on West Okiboji Lake and Boy Scout camp at Lake Shetek in southwestern Minnesota. The less fortunate were trundled off to Bible School at the Methodist Church.

As I remember it, Memorial Day always seemed to be a glorious sunny day and full of action for Rock Rapids. The high school band in black and white uniform would march down Main Street under the baton of the local high school band teacher (in my day, Jim White.) A parade would feature floats carrying our town’s veterans of the First and Second World wars, young men I knew who suddenly were wearing their old uniforms. And there was for many years a veteran of the Spanish American War named Jess Callahan prominently displayed in a convertible. Lots of flags would be flying and the Rex Strait American Legion Post and Veterans of Foreign Wars would be out in force. We never really knew who Rex Strait was, except that he was said to be the first Rock Rapids boy to die in World War I and the post was named after him.

After the parade, we would make our way to our picture post card cemetery, atop a knoll just south of town overlooking the lush green of the trees and the fields along the lazy Rock River.A local dignitary would give a blazing patriotic speech. A color guard of veterans would move the flags into position and then at the command fire their rifles off toward the river. I remember this was the first time I ever saw a color guard in action, with a sergeant who moved his men with rifles into position with strange “hut, hut, hut” commands.

After the ceremony, everyone would go to the graves of their family and friends and people they knew and look at the flowers that would be sitting in bouquets and little pots by the headstones. The cemetery was and is a beautiful spot and many of us who are natives have parents, friends, and relatives buried here. It is one of the wonderful things that connects us to the town, no matter where we end up.

And so this year I got my annual telephone call from Dorothy Bosch, at the Flower Village florist in Rock Rapids, reminding me about the flowers I always place on Memorial Day  on the graves of my relatives in the Brugmann plot. I always get a kick out of doing business with Flower Village because it once was in the Brugmann Drugstore building on Main Street that had housed our family drug store. (“C.C. Brugmann and Son, where drugs and gold are fairly sold, since 1902.”)  Flower Village  later moved across the street to the building that once housed the Bernstein Department store and is now known as Home-ology.  Dorothy always fills me in on the latest Rock Rapids news, which is particularly important this year because I will be back in Rock Rapids on June 14th for my 60th high school class  reunion of the dream class of 1953.

I always ask Dorothy to get the most colorful flowers of the season and she then sees that they are displayed near the headstones in the Brugmann plot a couple of days ahead of Memorial Day. This year, I called Pauline Knobloch to pick up the flowers and put them in her garden.  Pauline and I go back to 1947, when she was a young clerk, just in from Lester, in the store.  I started clerking at age 12  that year, selling stamps and peanuts in the front of the store.  Pauline and I worked together all my school years and she continued on until my dad sold the store in the late 1970s. Pauline is still going strong, as they say in Rock Rapids.

Ours is an unusual plot, because it holds the graves of my four grandparents, my parents, my aunt and uncle and someday my wife and I. My grandfather C.C.Brugmann and my father C.B.Brugmann spent their entire working lives in Brugmann’s drugstore, which my grandfather started in l902. My father (and my mother Bonnie) came into the store shortly after the depression.
My grandfather A. R. Rice (and his wife Allie) was an eloquent Congregational minister who had parishes throughout Iowa in Waverly, Eldora, Parkersburg,  and Rowan. He retired in Clarion. My aunt Mary was my father’s sister and her husband was her Rock Rapids high school classmate, Clarence Schmidt. He was a veterinarian and a reserve army officer who was called up immediately after Pearl Harbor and ordered to report to Camp Dodge in Des Moines within 48 hours. He did and served in Calcutta, India, as an inspector of meat that was flown over the hump to supply the Chinese forces under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek.

Through the years, Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger, the police chief when I was in school, would say to me, “Well, Bruce, you and I have to get along. We’ll be spending lots of time together someday.” I never knew what he meant until one day, visiting the Brugmann plot, I noticed that the Sheneberger family plot was next to the Brugmann plot. Every Memorial Day, Shinny took pictures in color of the flowers on the Brugmann and Sheneberger family graves and would send them to me in San Francisco.  I would them on to my sister Brenda in Sun City, Arizona, and the families of the three Schmidt boys John in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Conrad and Robert in Worthington, Minnesota. Well, Shinny died two years ago and alas I no longer get his annual batch of pictures. But he was right. We will be together for a long, long time.

Every year the rep from our American Legion Post puts a small American flag on the grave of every person buried in the cemetery who served in the Armed Forces. Chip Berg, who was three years ahead of me in school, performed this chore every year. My uncle gets one. And, Chip assured me, I will get one someday. I earned it, I am happy to report, as an unhappy ROTC soldier for two years at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (1953-55), as a cold war veteran (1958-60), as an advanced infantryman at Ft. Carson, Colorado, as a survivor of two weeks of miserable winter bivouac in the foothills of the Rockies, and as bureau chief of the Korea Bureau of Stars and Stripes (carrying my favorite byline: SP5 Bruce B. Brugmann,  S and S Korea bureau, Yongdongpo, Korea.) I am proud of the flag already. B3, who never forgets how lucky he is to come from the best small town in the country.

P.S. As the years went by, I became more curious about how my uncle Schmitty, as he was known, could leave his three young boys and his veterinary practice in nearby Worthington, Minnesota,  and get to Camp  Dodge so fast and serve throughout the entire war. I asked him lots of questions. How, for example, did he handle his veterinary practice? Simple, he said, “my partner just said let’s split our salaries. You give me half of what you make in the Army and I’ll give you half of what I make in veterinary practice.” And that’s what they did and that’s how the veterinary practice kept going throughout the war. Schmitty returned to a healthy practice, retired in the 1960s, and turned it over to his second son Conrad.

P.S. 1: Confession: I was not drafted. I enlisted in the federal reserve in the summer of 1958, which amounted to the same thing. Two years of active duty, two years of active reserve, and two years of inactive reserve. I did this maneuver so that I could formally say that I beat Elmer Wohlers. Elmer was the local draft board chief who had spent a little time in World War I, “the big one,” as he would say. The word around town was that he never got out of Camp Dodge in Des Moinesm but you would never know it by his rhetoric. He had a bit of black humor about his job and we had a running skirmish for years.

Whenever he would see me on the street in Rock Rapids, he would say, ” Bruce, I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you.” And I would reply, “No, no, Elmer, you’ll never get me.”  I think he was particularly annoyed when I escaped his grasp and went off for a year to graduate school at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. I would send him cards through the years, from an ATO  fraternity party at the University of Nebraska, or from my hangout bar in New York City (the West End Bar, across from the Columbia Journalism building.) I would write in effect, but with elegant variations, “Elmer, having a wonderful time. Keep up the good work. Wish you were here.” When I was in town and we would spar on the street,  I would invite Elmer over to the Sportsmen’s Club for a martini, but he always refused, most testily. 

And so I joined the federal reserve and ended up with the initials FR instead of  US on my dog tags that hung around my neck for two years. I was officially FR17507818 and rose from lowly  recruit in the 60th infantry at Ft Carson, Colorado, to the lofty position of  E-5 and bureau chief of the Korea edition of Stars and Stripes bureau. But my big accomplishment was that Elmer didn’t get me. I still feel good about beating Elmer at his own game.

P.S. 2: Here’s how things work in Rock Rapids.  One year, in sending my annual Memorial Day drill in an email note to Rock Rapids alumni of my era,  I recounted the Shinny anecdote and placed the Brugmann and Sheneberger plots in the southeastern corner of the cemetery. I promptly got an email note back from Joanne Schubert Vogel (class of ’49). She wrote that she had sent my note to her brother Dale Schubert in Rock Rapids (class of ’55, who was a halfback when I was a quarterback on the celebrated Rock Rapids Lions football team. Dale called her and said that I had made an error and that the Brugmann and Sheneberger plots were in the southwestern corner of the cemetery, not in the southeast corner. Amazing. He was right and I was wrong. Joanne softened the blow by saying she was sure that this was the first error I had ever made.


(Bruce B. Brugmann, or B3 as he signs his emails and blogs, writes and edits the Bruce Blog on the Guardian website at SFBG.com   He is the editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012, now retired. He can be contacted at Bruce@sfbg.com.)

The “Do Nothing” Solution to “Illegal Immigration”

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Both sides of the political aisle have made a major issue out of the problem of the 11 million people inside the US illegally or presently undocumented. The president has said this is a priority and Florida senator Marco Rubio has agreed. They are theoretically opposed to each other, yet Rubio’s proposals entailed in the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 don’t differ a great deal from Obama’s. In a nutshell, Rubio has suggested that the wholesale eviction of 11 million people is impossible and that the bill offers them an opportunity for legalization and permanent residence and citizenship. Naturally, the “jump through hoops” process begins here: Fines and background checks and no federal bennies.

Sounds completely reasonable, but you’d think Rubio had suggested that the government was handing out lollipops and bon-bons, making Spanish the new “official language” and changing the “Star Spangled Banner” to “Guantanmera” by the reaction of his “conservative” peers. A cursory Google reveals an enraged base represented by such intellectual heavweights as Townhall.com and Ann “To Hell With Palin, I Was Here First” Coulter. Any concessions to the teeming masses of south of the border is treasonous amnesty and in their hardly humble opinions, this will lead to “de-Europeanization” (ie less white).

As far as what the generally pitiful Democrats are offering, it is only marginally different than Rubio’s idea. Which is also reasonable, but overlooks the crux of the issue, because no one anywhere has to unmitigated gall (until now) to say it: “Illegal Immigration reform” is a solution in search of a problem, because in reality, it isn’t a problem at all!

The way I see it, a problem means an aggrieved party and in this instance, there isn’t one. People want to hire help for whatever the task is, other people agree to do it for a price, end of story. The idea that “illegal immigrants are stealing American workers jobs” sounds fairly solid on its face unless you happen to live in the American Southwest and notice that wherever day laborers congregate, there aren’t a whole hell of a lot of white folks. As far as “taking away jobs that union carpenters/plumbers/electricians do”, isn’t it the union’s job to protect their own for one and for two, a skyscraper isn’t built and wired with dudes from the Lowe’s parking lot. It is not worth a major contractor’s license to screw with E-Verify (I passed an E-Verify check myself a few months ago for my radio show!).

Assuming you “legalized” every man, woman in child in the US tomorrow, what happens? The working person’s price rises. Which means that they will be replaced by new people from Central America or Asia that will remain invisible. See, we are a free country with open borders–people can come and go as they please, this isn’t a gulag (yet) (The irony of the most virulent anti-USSR voices being the loudest for a border fence is astounding). Not only is there no way to stop it, there isn’t even a real reason to stop it–as China and Japan might tell you, an aging and shrinking worker base is starting to hurt them and hard.

Fact is, both major political parties support and oppose it for a pair of reasons of their own. Democrats love this, as it accelerates the “Bluing” of the Southwest with millions of new voters beholding and grateful to them, making a Republican national electoral victory mathematically impossible. The other reason they love it is because it replenishes their most loyal and organized base, labor. Republicans hate it for two reasons as well–newly legal workers will have more rights, bargaining power and higher pay, which means that a new cheap labor era is gonna take a while. The other reason is the one they vehemently deny but is as obvious as the honkers on their maps–their base’s great unifier isn’t economics or even social issues, but race. That the Dixiecrats of the last century are now almost entirely Republican. The glue that holds them intact, whether they’d care to admit it or not, is white supremacy. And a sea of legal Americans that are a deeper shade of soul galls them to the cores of their rancid selves. Were they serious about “sending all of these people back to where they came from”, they’d boycott every and any business that employs them, which means they’d pretty much have to stop eating. I’ve seen what the average reactionary looks like--that ain’t happening.

In fact, when the “illegals” are white, they say nothing.

Obama and Rubio both cry out that the system is “broken” but it isn’t. Undocumenteds pour billions into the coffers of state and federal and don’t get it back and whatever their costs are to health or schools, they’re balanced off by what the public saves in lower food and service costs. They’re a wash. Which means that any changes to the laissez-faire system only make everyone’s life harder and more complex. If there is a solution, the easiest one would be a “seven year rule”–you prove you’ve actually been here 7 years, no criminal record, you take a citizenship test, that’s it. 

We have undocumented people in this very neighborhood. They want the same things we do. That’s good enough for me.

 

JAW

 

 

 

 

 


Silent sting

Andrew Lam
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Silent sting

rebecca@sfbg.com

If the FBI is trying to track down a suspect in your neighborhood, investigators could sweep up information from your mobile device just because you happen to be nearby.

It’s been going on for years with little public notice or attention.

Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act request shed new light on a surveillance device known as a Stingray that allows law enforcement to automatically collect cell phone data from potentially hundreds of subscribers in a given area — even when the vast majority of those affected have nothing to do with the criminal investigation at hand.

The documents came in response to an FOIA request from the Bay Guardian and the Northern California Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Stingray is a brand name; the devices might also be known as a Triggerfish, a digital analyzer, a cell site emulator, or an IMSI catcher, the latter being a technical term describing the gadget’s ability to detect International Mobile Subscriber Identities. It essentially behaves like cell phone tower, putting out a strong signal that tricks mobile devices into connecting automatically.

If there are 200 cell phone customers in an area where it’s being deployed, all of their phones will automatically connect to the device.

Once cell phones are talking to the Stingray, the device scoops up digital information and uses it to help agents ferret out their target. Some Stingrays have the capability to capture actual content — texts or telephone conversations — while others act like eyes and ears that can guide police to the precise geographic location of a targeted suspect, even within a couple meters.

And it doesn’t even require a warrant.

“You can operate it without having to involve the cell phone providers at all,” Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, told us. His organization helped a journalist obtain records about the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of Stingrays.

“The service providers, while they don’t stand as a major barrier, tend to insist on police having some kind of judicial authorization,” Scheer said. “It has been an important check on police use of these technologies.”

MANY AGENTS USING IT

The FBI initially refused to provide the documents, but after the ACLU filed suit, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California finally released some information, including a particularly juicy set of internal emails documenting federal agents’ use of these devices.

In one of the emails, Criminal Division Chief Miranda Kane wrote: “Our office has been working closely with the magistrate judges in an effort to address their collective concerns regarding whether a pen register is sufficient to authorize the use of law enforcement’s WIT technology … to locate an individual.”

(“WIT technology” is described as a box that simulates a cell tower and can be placed inside a van to help pinpoint an individual’s location with some specificity.”)

Kane added: “Many agents are still using [this] technology in the field although the pen register application does not make that explicit.” In a clarifying email sent later on the same thread, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Waldinger noted: “Just to be super clear, the agents may not use the term ‘WIT’ but rather may be using the term … ‘Stingray.'”

Kane’s reference to a “pen register application” describes a request for court approval to use an investigative tactic that can trace the outgoing numbers dialed from a particular phone. While Stingrays can potentially sweep in hundreds of cell phone customers’ information, pen-register wiretaps focus narrowly on the digits being punched in by one individual.

The US Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that the use of a pen register is “not a search under the Fourth Amendment,” Susan Freiwald, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, told us. That means law-enforcement agents don’t need a full-scale search warrant. And court orders permitting pen-register wiretaps are “really easy to get,” Friewald explained.

To secure a judge’s blessing, law enforcement agents need only to submit complete applications and show that the phone numbers dialed are “relevant” to an investigation.

Kane’s email, dated in 2011, is significant because it suggests that “many agents” were using Stingrays for investigations after clearing only the low hurdle of court approval for a pen register. “The federal government was routinely using Stingray technology in the field, but failing to make that explicit in its applications to the court to engage in electronic surveillance,” ACLU Staff Attorney Linda Lye wrote in a recent blog post. “When the magistrate judges in the Northern District of California finally found out what was happening, they expressed ‘collective concerns,’ according to the emails.”

The revelation is closely tied to an electronic surveillance case that’s currently making its way through court, most recently prompting the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to file an amicus brief challenging the constitutionality of a Stingray use.

TRACKING A HACKER

It all began back in 2008, when FBI agents used the technology to track down a hacker and alleged fraudster named Daniel David Rigmaiden — a guy who sometimes goes by an alias, represented himself in court, and seems to possess enough technical savvy and disposable income to challenge his prosecutors at every turn.

Through discovery proceedings, Rigmaiden “managed to get the government to admit that it has used this location tracking technology to find him,” Lye noted. “That is quite extraordinary, because there have been suspicions that that this device has been around and in use for quite a long time, but there are really very few cases where we talk about it, and this is the only criminal case where the government has plainly admitted to using it to locate a suspect.”

Because FBI agents used a Stingray to locate Rigmaiden, they not only figured out that he was inside a Santa Clara apartment building, but successfully sniffed down to the level of his exact unit.

But the request for court orders that authorized this investigation made only a fleeting mention of a mobile tracking device, without conveying just how powerful the surveillance tool actually is. “When we read the orders, we were very, very surprised and troubled,” Lye said. “Because the government was arguing in the criminal proceeding in Rigmaiden, yes, we acknowledge that we’ve used this cell site emulator, and we’re even … acknowledging that the device is intrusive enough in the way it operates to constitute a search — which is a significant concession.”

In this case, the FBI agents obtained a court order to use a pen register, and separately obtained court approval to solicit Verizon’s help in locating Rigmaiden, which the government claims constituted a warrant (though this is a point of contention). But nowhere did agents make it clear to the judge that in order to work, this surveillance device vacuums up vast amounts of third-party data. The search potentially affected hundreds of subscribers in Rigmaiden’s apartment complex, none of whom were suspected of any involvement in wrongdoing. The government noted in court filings that it purged the third-party data after the fact, presumably as a way to deflect privacy concerns.

“It did not explain that the device broadcasts signals to all devices in the area, receives information about other devices in the possession of third parties, potentially disrupts the connections of third-party devices, and penetrates the walls of every private residence in the vicinity, not solely that of the target,” the ACLU-EFF brief argues.

At the end of March, Lye argued in an Arizona federal court hearing that evidence gathered using a Stingray should be suppressed in the Rigmaiden case, because the government used the tracking tool but failed to tell the federal magistrate judge that it was doing so. But in the course of that hearing, “the government stated … that ‘use of these devices is a very common practice,'” Lye note in an update following the hearing. “It also stated that there were many parts of the country in which the FBI successfully obtains authorization to use this device through a trap and trace [pen register] order.”

Nor is it just federal agencies that use these surveillance tools. The results of a FOIA request filed by a Los Angeles journalist with the assistance of the First Amendment Coalition revealed that LAPD used this technology in 21 out of 155 cell phone investigation cases — from June to September of last year alone. The devices were used to investigate five homicide cases and a roster of other offenses, including a burglary, a narcotics investigation, two suicides, a robbery and three kidnappings.

For civil liberties advocates, the aim is to require stronger judicial oversight and a warrant before this kind of surveillance practice can be used. “The argument here is about, well this technology is so powerful and so intrusive — it really needs to be under extensive oversight by members of the judiciary,” notes Friewald, the law professor. “And in order for that to happen, the judge needs to have that technology described to them.”

Reality rap: Q&A with Saafir, the Saucee Nomad

Tony Robles
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Reality rap: Q&A with Saafir, the Saucee Nomad

Ed. note – this week’s music feature is all about emcee-producer Saafir, the Saucee Nomad. The wheelchair-bound associate of Hobo Junction and Digital Underground (and actor in ‘Menace II Society’) opened up to Guardian music writer Garrett Caples about his recent health struggles, making music, and what’s keeping him in check. Here’s the extended interview we couldn’t fit in the print edition:

San Francisco Bay Guardian Did you have any idea [Digital Underground leader] Shock-G was going to post about you on Davey-D’s blog?

Saafir Actually I had no idea that he was going to put that out. Shock had came and saw me one time and I didn’t really tell nobody that I was in a wheelchair as far as the DU crew. I wasn’t really in contact with anybody. Nobody really stayed in contact with me. If you ain’t really hollerin’ at me, I’m not just gonna call you and be like, “Hey bruh, what’s up? I’m in a wheelchair.”

But I had ran into Money B and he told Shock, and Shock came by and saw me in that wheelchair and it kinda hurt him. He was like, “We really need to do something for you, man. We gotta try to bust a move and do something to make this shit right.” I told him I was down for whatever.

As far as [Shock’s] article is concerned, I’m not really gonna go into it. [Laughs] I’m just gonna say that. The focus is to try to get some awareness up with my condition and my situation. My situation is that I’ll have to have surgery to get my shit corrected. So I’m trying to raise awareness and get as much assistance with it as possible just to make it happen. But shout out to Shock-G for his effort in getting the word out and letting people know about my condition. His way of doing it is unconventional but it’s appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dc8I23sCeI

SFBG But is your condition the result of back injuries or the tumor you had to have removed?

Saafir My back wasn’t really the problem, it was moreso internal. I had a cancerous tumor in my spinal cord and they had to get it out as soon as possible. That was around ’05. The timeline was based off of Shock’s own memories and some of the details got mixed up. I had to have the surgery to get the tumor out. The doctor told me that if I didn’t take it out, by the time I was in my later 40s I would probably be paralyzed. And it’s ironic because I did the surgery and I’m still kinda in that situation. I’m not a paraplegic; my legs are still active and whatnot, it’s just getting the right kind of treatment to spark what needs to be sparked in order to get my legs to work.

I have insurance but insurance only covers so much so I’m trying to make sure I’m able to fully meet the criteria so I can step back into the position I need to be in.

But moreso than that, you have to have a stable environment to even complete the things you need to do with the doctor as far as transportation and living situation. I’ve been out here doing this on my own, but I’m trying to get reestablished into a stable enough situation where I can do the things that need to be done in succession. You have to have a foundation in order to do that so that’s what I’m really focusing on right now, trying to establish that foundation, so that I can complete that.

SFBG Why did you wait so long to reach out to anyone about your condition?

Saafir I didn’t really go into telling people I was in a wheelchair or disabled because a lot of people don’t want to be bothered with it. They pretend like they do but in reality they don’t really want to deal with that shit. And I understand that. I don’t take it personally. So to avoid any harsh feelings or bitterness towards either party, I just keep it to myself and just deal with it. I don’t have a problem with asking anybody for help or allowing people to help me or whatnot but people have their own agenda, people have their own lives. And I need a bit of assistance just to do the basic things, getting into the bathtub, that’s like a marathon for me. And alone it’s damn near impossible. There’s not a lot of people there so I just try to stay concrete and just try to tread through it.

SFBG Why couldn’t they help you at the laser surgery clinic in Arizona that Shock had taken you to?

Saafir At the time I felt that what may have been stopping me from being able to walk was scar tissue surrounding the spinal cord and creating pressure to where my legs wasn’t responding. I had saw that on TV one night on a commercial so I called them. The guy I initially talked to led me to believe that I had action, that it could be done.

My first surgery was like, seven or eight or hours. They split me open. I had to heal for like, 10 months. I was like, “I can’t go through that again.” If I have to I will, but if I don’t have to, I really don’t want to. So I thought the laser surgery would be a good alternative.

Shock helped me get the money together to do the surgery because it’s a private practice. So we get out there and they do a checkup on me and they basically say they didn’t have the facility to do the kind of surgery I needed. I thought that was bullshit. I guess it was more of a situation where they didn’t want to take a chance on messing up something more than what it was, so they just decided, “We don’t really know what was there prior so we don’t want to go in and mess anything up.” And I’m like, man, if you’re afraid to do the surgery, say that. Don’t tell me you don’t have the facility; you just afraid to do the surgery. You know how it is, a lot of them practices are just there to take your money. So we had to come home.

SFBG What’s your prognosis now?

Saafir I got back in touch with the doctor who did the initial surgery. He asked me, “Why you didn’t tell me your legs were going out?” And I was like, “I left messages for you, man, to let you know what was going on with my condition.” I never got a call back so I figured that he couldn’t really do anything for me. And I left multiple messages. But we got past it.

He said, “I think I can get you back walking, we just have to figure out what is the ’cause of the decline.” So that’s what we’re trying to do now. I gotta take a few more MRIs. And from the MRIs they should be able to spot exactly what the decline is and they should be able to work back from there. But again, that shit costs money so I’m trying to raise funds to be able to get that all done.

I keep missing my appointments because I don’t have a car. I try to take the bus to BART but I need assistance getting on the bus. I need to raise funds so I can get back and forth to these appointments and just to help with the basic shit I need every day.

I can’t really move at the capacity I was moving at before. I’m a hustler. I go out and get it on my own, you feel me? But you really don’t understand the blessing you have to be healthy and have access to all your limbs and all your faculties. Don’t take it for granted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9v7cgA3xIM

SFBG Have you still been making music at this time?

Saafir I’m trying to get a place where I can complete an album but right now I’m just writing songs and doing little stuff. But I’m definitely writing about my experience, how I’m dealing with it and going through it. A lot of people look at my shit from the ’90s and think I’m going to do the exact same shit now and that’s just not reality. I’ve evolved as a person.

At that time I was a young man and mentally I was in a young frame of mind. Now I’m a grown ass man and I done been through a lot. Life has shown me a lot more shit than it had at the time when I was doing what I was doing. I tried to be innovative and poetic about what I was doing and at the time that was the flavor.

Now, I don’t even feel like that level of dedication or creativity would even be appreciated. That’s not saying that I’m not going to try to do it. It wouldn’t be a situation where it’s a street record or a hip-hop record. I just call it reality rap. I don’t particularly rap like I did in the ’90s anymore. I’m more focused on substance and content as opposed to how I swing a rhyme. But I’m always going to swing a rhyme with flavor. My rhythm has never been a problem. I understand the rhythm and the beat so it’s nothing for me to do it.

For the full story, see: Injured Player in the Game.

Dick Meister: Honor a legendary organizer

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Dick Meister, former labor editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, is co-author of A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America’s Farm Workers (Macmillan)

There’s still time, if you hurry, to join a nationwide campaign  to posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to legendary organizer Fred Ross. For more than a half-century he was among the most influential, skilled, dedicated and successful of the community organizers who have done so much for the underdogs of American society.

Most people have never heard of Fred Ross, which is exactly how he wanted it. He saw his job as training others to assume leadership and the public recognition that accompanies it.  And train them he did, hundreds of them, including farm worker leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, who were previously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Chavez and Huerta were typical Ross trainees ­­ poor, inexperienced members of an oppressed minority who were inspired to mobilize others like them to stand up to their oppressors.

“Fred did such a good job of explaining how poor people could build power I could taste it,” Chavez recalled.


Chavez was among the Mexican Americans living in California’s barrios in the 1950s that Ross, then with Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, was helping form political blocs to demand improvements in the woefully inadequate community services provided them.

Ross’ approach was, as always, to get people to organize themselves, and he sensed correctly that young Chavez was “potentially the best-grass-roots leader I’d ever run into.”

Within just a few years, the small organizations formed by the residents of the particular barrios joined into a potent statewide group, the Community Services Organization, headed by Chavez.

A few years later, Chavez and Huerta founded what became the United Farm Workers Union. It was the country’s first effective organization of farm workers precisely because it was built in accord with Ross’ principles ­­ from the ground up by farm workers relying heavily on such non-violent tactics as the boycott.

Ross had started out to be a classroom teacher after working is way through the University of Southern California in 1936. But he could find no teaching jobs in that dark year of the Great Depression. He took other public work, eventually managing the federal migratory labor camp near Bakersfield, California, that novelist John Steinbeck used as a model for the camp that had a central role in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Fiction though it was, Steinbeck’s account was accurate. Conditions in the camp were deplorable. So were the conditions imposed on the migrants by the local growers for whom they worked.

But the migrants organized themselves to win better living and working conditions, thanks to young Fred Ross. He went from cabin to cabin and tent to tent every morning after daybreak, encouraging camp residents to form the organizations that helped improve their conditions,

Ross had found his life’s work. He would become a full-time organizer, a task he described as being “a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” Never was Ross paid more than a marginal salary, sometimes no more than room, board and expenses, but never would he falter.

His goal was “to help people do away with fear­­ fear to speak up and demand their rights ­ ­ to push people to get out in front so they could prove to themselves they could do it.”

Ross left the migrant group to work with the Japanese Americans on the West Coast who were herded into internment camps during World War II. Ross, then with the American Friends Service Committee, helped internees win release by finding them jobs in the manpower-short steel plants and other factories in the Midwest that produced vital war materials.

After the war, he returned to southern California, to help African Americans and Mexican Americans fight against housing and school segregation.  They fought effectively, too, against police brutality and helped elect Los Angeles’ first Hispanic city councilman.

Ross also worked in Arizona, helping Yaqui Indians get sewers, paved streets, medical facilities and other basic needs that had been denied their communities.

Ross’ most ambitious and probably most satisfying work came during his 15 years of training hundreds of organizers and negotiators for the United Farm Workers from the UFW’s inexperienced and long-oppressed rank-and-file members.

Ross kept at it for virtually the rest of his life, joining his son, Fred Jr., a highly regarded organizer himself, in grass-roots campaigns for liberal politicians and progressive causes. He actively supported a wide variety of international as well as domestic issues, much of the time working with anti-nuclear and peace groups.

It was not until four years before his death in 1992, when Alzheimer’s Disease struck, that he finally stopped.

Fred Ross was an organizer’s organizer, a trailblazer, a pioneer. He was ­­and he remains ­­ a vitally important model for those seeking to empower the powerless and to truly reform, if not perfect, this imperfect society.

“Fred fought more fights  and trained more organizers and planted more seeds of righteous indignation against social injustice than anyone we’re ever likely to see again,” noted Jerry Cohen, formerly the UFW’s general counsel.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi noted  that Ross “left a legacy of good works that have given many the courage of their convictions, the powers of their ideals, and the strength to do heroic deeds on behalf of the common person.”

Honoring Ross, said his son, would be recognizing “the foot soldiers in all struggles that do the day to day work but rarely get acknowledged for their labors. It’s about honoring the farm workers, low- wage urban workers, and all those fighting for social justice against what many see as insurmountable odds.”

To add your voice to those urging President Obama to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Fred Ross, send an email before Feb. 28 to presidential aide Julie Chavez Rodriquez at Julie_C_Rodriguez@who.eop.gov. Please send a blind copy to Fred Ross Jr. at fredross47@gmail.com. You might also ask your House and Senate representatives to join others in Congress who have signed a letter urging the President to act.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, is co-author of A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America’s Farm Workers (Macmillan)

 

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

INDIEFEST

The 15th San Francisco Independent Film Festival runs Feb 7-21 at the Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; the Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF; and the Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF. For complete schedule and tickets (most shows $12), visit www.sfindie.com. For commentary, see "Muppets, Manholes, and Mayhem" and "Short Takes."

OPENING

Identity Thief When Melissa McCarthy steals Jason Bateman’s identity, this movie happens. (1:25) Four Star, Marina.

John Dies at the End See "Weird Tales." (1:40) California, Embarcadero.

Shanghai Calling Hotshot lawyer Sam Chao (Daniel Henney) is his NYC firm’s top choice to be their man in Shanghai — much to his chagrin, since he puts the American in Chinese American. But off to the bustling, rapidly-expanding city he goes, knowing exactly only one word of Chinese ("fart"), and a classic fish-out-of-water comedy follows. His first day on the job, he bungles a billion-dollar deal, and spends the rest of the movie trying to set things right for his prickly client (Alan Ruck) — with the help of his ambitious assistant (Zhu Zhu), a perky relocation expert (Eliza Coupe), a fried-chicken mogul who runs an American-style bar (Bill Paxton), and a reporter who goes by the improbable moniker of "Awesome Wang" (Geng Le). Along the way, of course, he does some personal soul-searching, realizing there’s more to life than fancy-restaurant reservations and a high-stakes career. Writer-director Daniel Hsia’s Shanghai Calling doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s an undeniably entertaining tale of culture clash, backed up by an appealing cast to boot. (1:40) Presidio. (Eddy)

Side Effects Though on the surface Channing Tatum appears to be his current muse, Steven Soderbergh seems to have gotten his smart, topical groove back, the one that spurred him to kick off his feature filmmaking career with the on-point Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) and went missing with the fun, featherweight Ocean’s franchise. (Alas, he’s been making claims that Side Effects will be his last feature film.) Here, trendy designer antidepressants are the draw — mixed with the heady intoxicants of a murder mystery with a nice hard twist that would have intrigued either Hitchcock or Chabrol. As Side Effects opens, the waifish Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), whose inside-trading hubby (Tatum) has just been released from prison, looks like a big-eyed little basket of nerves ready to combust — internally, it seems, when she drives her car into a wall. Therapist Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), who begins to treat her after her hospital stay, seems to care about her, but nevertheless reflexively prescribes the latest anti-anxiety med of the day, on the advice of her former doctor (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Where does his responsibility for Emily’s subsequent actions begin and end? Soderbergh and his very able cast fill out the issues admirably, with the urgency that was missing from the more clinical Contagion (2011) and the, ahem, meaty intelligence that was lacking in all but the more ingenious strip scenes of Magic Mike. (1:30) California, Presidio. (Chun)

Top Gun 3D MAVERICK! (1:50)

West of Memphis See "West Memphis Blues." (2:26) Embarcadero.

ONGOING

Amour Arriving in local theaters atop a tidal wave of critical hosannas, Amour now seeks to tempt popular acclaim — though actually liking this perfectly crafted, intensely depressing film (from Austrian director Michael Haneke) may be nigh impossible for most audience members. Eightysomething former music teachers Georges and Anne (the flawless Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) are living out their days in their spacious Paris apartment, going to classical concerts and enjoying the comfort of their relationship. Early in the film, someone tries to break into their flat — and the rest of Amour unfolds with a series of invasions, with Anne’s declining health the most distressing, though there are also unwanted visits from the couple’s only daughter (an appropriately self-involved Isabelle Huppert), an inept nurse who disrespects Anne and curses out Georges, and even a rogue pigeon that wanders in more than once. As Anne fades into a hollow, twisted, babbling version of her former self, Georges also becomes hollow and twisted, taking care of her while grimly awaiting the inevitable. Of course, the movie’s called Amour, so there’s some tenderness involved. But if you seek heartwarming hope and last-act uplift, look anywhere but here. (2:07) Albany, Embarcadero, Clay, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Argo If you didn’t know the particulars of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, you won’t be an expert after Argo, but the film does a good job of capturing America’s fearful reaction to the events that followed it — particularly the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. Argo zeroes in on the fate of six embassy staffers who managed to escape the building and flee to the home of the sympathetic Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Back in Washington, short-tempered CIA agents (including a top-notch Bryan Cranston) cast about for ways to rescue them. Enter Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directs), exfil specialist and father to a youngster wrapped up in the era’s sci-fi craze. While watching 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with what Cranston’s character calls "the best bad idea we have:" the CIA will fund a phony Canadian movie production (corny, intergalactic, and titled Argo) and pretend the six are part of the crew, visiting Iran for a few days on a location shoot. Tony will sneak in, deliver the necessary fake-ID documents, and escort them out. Neither his superiors, nor the six in hiding, have much faith in the idea. ("Is this the part where we say, ‘It’s so crazy it just might work?’" someone asks, beating the cliché to the punch.) Argo never lets you forget that lives are at stake; every painstakingly forged form, every bluff past a checkpoint official increases the anxiety (to the point of being laid on a bit thick by the end). But though Affleck builds the needed suspense with gusto, Argo comes alive in its Hollywood scenes. As the show-biz veterans who mull over Tony’s plan with a mix of Tinseltown cynicism and patiotic duty, John Goodman and Alan Arkin practically burst with in-joke brio. I could have watched an entire movie just about those two. (2:00) Balboa, Piedmont, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Beasts of the Southern Wild A year after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (and a Cannes Camera d’Or), Beasts of the Southern Wild proves capable of enduring a second or third viewing with its originality and strangeness fully intact. Magical realism is a primarily literary device that isn’t attempted very often in U.S. cinema, and succeeds very rarely. But this intersection between Faulkner and fairy tale, a fable about — improbably — Hurricane Katrina, is mysterious and unruly and enchanting. Benh Zeitlin’s film is wildly cinematic from the outset, as voiceover narration from six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) offers simple commentary on her rather fantastical life. She abides in the Bathtub, an imaginary chunk of bayou country south of New Orleans whose residents live closer to nature, amid the detritus of civilization. Seemingly everything is some alchemical combination of scrap heap, flesh, and soil. But not all is well: when "the storm" floods the land, the holdouts are forced at federal gunpoint to evacuate. With its elements of magic, mythological exodus, and evolutionary biology, Beasts goes way out on a conceptual limb; you could argue it achieves many (if not more) of the same goals Terrence Malick’s 2011 The Tree of Life did at a fraction of that film’s cost and length. (1:31) New Parkway, Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Beware of Mr. Baker This mesmerizing bio-doc about volatile, wildly talented drummer Ginger Baker (Cream, Blind Faith) begins with the 70-something musician clocking director Jay Bulger in the face. After this opening, Bulger — who also wrote a deeply compelling article about Baker for Rolling Stone last year — wisely pulls himself out of the narrative, instead turning to a wealth of new interviews (with Baker, his trademark red locks faded to gray, and many of his musical and personal partners, including Eric Clapton and multiple ex-Mrs. Bakers), vintage performance footage, and artful animation to weave his tale. Baker’s colorfully-lived, improbably long life has been literally all over the map; he overcame a hardscrabble British childhood to find jazz and rock stardom, and along the way jammed with Fela Kuti in Nigeria (where he picked up his fierce love of polo), broke many hearts (his own kids’ among them) and lost multiple fortunes, spent a stint in the US, and eventually landed at his current farm in South Africa. Two constants: his musical genius, and his frustratingly jerky behavior — the consequence of a naturally prickly personality exacerbated by copious drug use and bitterness. A must-see for musicians and those who love them. (1:30) Roxie. (Eddy)

Bullet to the Head Not to be mistaken for the John Woo passion play, this head wound of a revenge flick instead pits a hired assassin (Sylvester Stallone) against an outsider cop (Sung Kang), the corroded action star who emerged from the thicket of ’70s Italian American iconic actors against a smooth-faced Asian American indie actor associated with the Fast and Furious franchise. Sly’s James Bonomo and his partner have been set up by a set of tepid bad guys (Oz fave Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, here sleep-raging his way through Bullet; a very unpumped Christian Slater; and Jason Momoa, who glowers like he’s still playing a warlord on Game of Thrones). So Bonomo and Kang’s Taylor Kwon — the former’s got the brawn, the latter’s got the smartphone with access to criminal databases — must reluctantly team up to mete out some kind of justice. Yawn. The uninspired oh-so-gritty camera effects don’t help matters when it comes to staving off the sleepies induced by this tired enterprise — director Walter Hill certainly seems to have succumbed to the big snooze. The only real fun to be gleaned here is in watching your random, uh, ax fight and studying the Stallone’s weirdly crumbling yet inert rubble of face, which almost seems to scream to us about — yo, not Adrian, but the ravages of age, surgery, and excess. (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti western homage features a cameo by the original Django (Franco Nero, star of the 1966 film), and solid performances by a meticulously assembled cast, including Jamie Foxx as the titular former slave who becomes a badass bounty hunter under the tutelage of Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Waltz, who won an Oscar for playing the evil yet befuddlingly delightful Nazi Hans Landa in Tarantino’s 2009 Inglourious Basterds, is just as memorable (and here, you can feel good about liking him) as a quick-witted, quick-drawing wayward German dentist. There are no Nazis in Django, of course, but Tarantino’s taboo du jour (slavery) more than supplies motivation for the filmmaker’s favorite theme (revenge). Once Django joins forces with Schultz, the natural-born partners hatch a scheme to rescue Django’s still-enslaved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), whose German-language skills are as unlikely as they are convenient. Along the way (and it’s a long way; the movie runs 165 minutes), they encounter a cruel plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose main passion is the offensive, shocking "sport" of "Mandingo fighting," and his right-hand man, played by Tarantino muse Samuel L. Jackson in a transcendently scandalous performance. And amid all the violence and racist language and Foxx vengeance-making, there are many moments of screaming hilarity, as when a character with the Old South 101 name of Big Daddy (Don Johnson) argues with the posse he’s rounded up over the proper construction of vigilante hoods. It’s a classic Tarantino moment: pausing the action so characters can blather on about something trivial before an epic scene of violence. Mr. Pink would approve. (2:45) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Gangster Squad It’s 1949, and somewhere in the Hollywood hills, a man has been tied hand and foot to a pair of automobiles with the engines running. Coyotes pace in the background like patrons queuing up for a table at Flour + Water, and when dinner is served, the presentation isn’t very pretty. We’re barely five minutes into Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad, and fair warning has been given of the bloodletting to come. None of it’s quite as visceral as the opening scene, but Fleischer (2009’s Zombieland) packs his tale of urban warfare with plenty of stylized slaughter to go along with the glamour shots of mob-run nightclubs, leggy pin-curled dames, and Ryan Gosling lounging at the bar cracking wise. At the center of all the gunplay and firebombing is what’s framed as a battle for the soul of Los Angeles, waged between transplanted Chicago mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) — who wields terms like "progress" and "manifest destiny" as a rationale for a continental turf war — and a police sergeant named John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), tasked with bringing down Cohen’s empire. The assignment requires working under cover so deep that only the police chief (Nick Nolte) and the handpicked members of O’Mara’s "gangster squad" — ncluding Gosling, a half-jaded charmer who poaches Cohen’s arm candy (Emma Stone) — know of its existence. This leaves plenty of room for improvisation, and the film pauses now and again to wonder about what happens when you pit brutal amorality against brutal morality, but it’s a rhetorical question, and no one shows much interest in it. Dragged down by talking points that someone clearly wanted wedged in (as well as by O’Mara’s ponderous voice-overs), the film does better when it abandons gravitas and refocuses on spinning its mythic tale of wilder times in the Golden State. (1:53) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters So here’s something you may not have been wondering: what exactly happened to Hansel and Gretel after they killed the gingerbread-house witch and made their way to freedom? Did they really live happily ever after? Did they land in the foster care system? Did they enter adulthood bearing the deep psychic wounds a person might well suffer after shoving a living creature into an oven and listening to her agonized howls as she burned alive? Or did they realize they’d discovered their life’s vocation without even having to complete the Myers-Briggs test? Shutting his eyes and pointing at random, director and screenplay cowriter Tommy Wirkola (2009’s Dead Snow) chooses the latter scenario, keeping his eyes closed to stab out some weak dialogue and half a plot for a script that leans heavily on the power of 3D technology to send eviscerated-witch guts and other biological shrapnel flying toward the eyeballs of audience members. Hansel (why, Jeremy Renner?) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) have grown up to share the intense sibling bond and wandering ways you might expect from a brother and sister abandoned at a tender age to starve and be rent limb from limb by wild animals. They’ve also taken full advantage of a niche witch-slaying market in and around the gloomy forest where they made their first kill. When they’re hired to track down a particularly loathsome practitioner of the dark arts (Famke Janssen) who’s been snatching up local children, multidimensional mayhem ensues. Arterton’s Gretel is pretty much a badass and the brains of the operation, while Renner’s Hansel is more of a strong, silent, and occasionally shit-faced type. Neither makes for a particularly memorable protagonist, but that flat look on their faces could just be disappointment or boredom with the material. (1:41) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

A Haunted House (1:25) Metreon.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Make no mistake: the Lord of the Rings trilogy represented an incredible filmmaking achievement, with well-deserved Oscars handed down after the third installment in 2003. If director Peter Jackson wanted to go one more round with J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved characters for a Hobbit movie, who was gonna stop him? Not so fast. This return to Middle-earth (in 3D this time) represents not one but three films — which would be self-indulgent enough even if part one didn’t unspool at just under three hours, and even if Jackson hadn’t decided to shoot at 48 frames per second. (I can’t even begin to explain what that means from a technical standpoint, but suffice to say there’s a certain amount of cinematic lushness lost when everything is rendered in insanely crystal-clear hi-def.) Journey begins as Bilbo Baggins (a game, funny Martin Freeman) reluctantly joins Gandalf (a weary-seeming Ian McKellan) and a gang of dwarves on their quest to reclaim their stolen homeland and treasure, batting Orcs, goblins, Gollum (Andy Serkis), and other beasties along the way. Fan-pandering happens (with characters like Cate Blanchett’s icy Galadriel popping in to remind you how much you loved LOTR), and the story moves at a brisk enough pace, but Journey never transcends what came before — or in the chronology of the story, what comes after. I’m not quite ready to declare this Jackson’s Phantom Menace (1999), but it’s not an unfair comparison to make, either. (2:50) Metreon, Shattuck. (Eddy)

The Impossible Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona (2007’s The Orphanage) directs The Impossible, a relatively modestly-budgeted take on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, based on the real story of a Spanish family who experienced the disaster. Here, the family (Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, three young sons) is British, on a Christmas vacation from dad’s high-stress job in Japan. Beachy bliss is soon ruined by that terrible series of waves; they hit early in the film, and Bayona offers a devastatingly realistic depiction of what being caught in a tsunami must feel like: roaring, debris-filled water threatening death by drowning, impalement, or skull-crushing. And then, the anguish of surfacing, alive but injured, stranded, and miles from the nearest doctor, not knowing if your family members have perished. Without giving anything away (no more than the film’s suggestive title, anyway), once the survivors are established (and the film’s strongest performer, Watts, is relegated to hospital-bed scenes) The Impossible finds its way inevitably to melodrama, and triumph-of-the-human-spirit theatrics. As the family’s oldest son, 16-year-old Tom Holland is effective as a kid who reacts exactly right to crisis, morphing from sulky teen to thoughtful hero — but the film is too narrowly focused on its tourist characters, with native Thais mostly relegated to background action. It’s a disconnect that’s not quite offensive, but is still off-putting. (1:54) Metreon, Presidio, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Jack Reacher (2:10) Metreon.

The Last Stand With gun control issues dominating the news, what better time to release a movie that lovingly glorifies the wonders of excessive firepower? Fortunately for star Arnold Schwarzenegger, making his return to leading-man status after that little fling with politics, The Last Stand is stupidly enjoyable enough to make any such PC-minded realizations relatively fleeing ones. When a Mexican drug lord (who also happens to be an expert race-car driver) escapes from federal custody and begins speeding home in a super-Corvette, the lead FBI agent (Forest Whitaker, slumming big-time) realizes his only hope is a teeny Arizona border town that happens to be overseen by Sheriff Schwarzenegger. (Other residents include a couple of hapless deputies; an Iraq war vet; and a gun nut played by a cartoonishly obnoxious Johnny Knoxville.) Can this ragtag crew hold off first the drug lord’s advance team (led by a swaggering Peter Stormare), and then the head baddie himself? Duh. The biggest surprise The Last Stand offers is that it’s actually pretty fun — no doubt thanks to the combo of Korean director Kim Jee-woon (2008’s eccentric The Good, The Bad, and the Weird; 2003’s spooky A Tale of Two Sisters) and the heft of Schwarzenegger’s still-potent charisma. (1:47) Metreon. (Eddy)

Life of Pi Several filmmakers including Alfonso Cuarón, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and M. Night Shyamalan had a crack at Yann Martel’s "unfilmable" novel over the last decade, without success. That turns out to have been a very good thing, since Ang Lee and scenarist David Magee have made probably the best movie possible from the material — arguably even an improvement on it. Framed as the adult protagonist’s (Irrfan Khan) lengthy reminiscence to an interested writer (Rafe Spall) it chronicles his youthful experience accompanying his family and animals from their just shuttered zoo on a cargo ship voyage from India to Canada. But a storm capsizes the vessel, stranding teenaged Pi (Suraj Sharma) on a lifeboat with a mini menagerie — albeit one swiftly reduced by the food chain in action to one Richard Parker, a whimsically named Bengal tiger. This uneasy forced cohabitation between Hindu vegetarian and instinctual carnivore is an object lesson in survival as well as a fable about the existence of God, among other things. Shot in 3D, the movie has plenty of enchanted, original imagery, though its outstanding technical accomplishment may lie more in the application of CGI (rather than stereoscopic photography) to something reasonably intelligent for a change. First-time actor Sharma is a natural, while his costar gives the most remarkable performance by a wild animal this side of Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a charmed, lovely experience. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, New Parkway, SF Center. (Harvey)

Lincoln Distinguished subject matter and an A+ production team (Steven Spielberg directing, Daniel Day-Lewis starring, Tony Kushner adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Williams scoring every emotion juuust so) mean Lincoln delivers about what you’d expect: a compelling (if verbose), emotionally resonant (and somehow suspenseful) dramatization of President Lincoln’s push to get the 13th amendment passed before the start of his second term. America’s neck-deep in the Civil War, and Congress, though now without Southern representation, is profoundly divided on the issue of abolition. Spielberg recreates 1865 Washington as a vibrant, exciting place, albeit one filled with so many recognizable stars it’s almost distracting wondering who’ll pop up in the next scene: Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant! Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln! Lena Dunham’s shirtless boyfriend on Girls (Adam Driver) as a soldier! Most notable among the huge cast are John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and a daffy James Spader as a trio of lobbyists; Sally Field as the troubled First Lady; and likely Oscar contenders Tommy Lee Jones (as winningly cranky Rep. Thaddeus Stevens) and Day-Lewis, who does a reliably great job of disappearing into his iconic role. (2:30) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

LUV Baltimore native Sheldon Candis drew from his own childhood for this coming-of-age tale, which takes place in a single day as 11-year-old "little man" Woody (Michael Rainey Jr.) tags along with his uncle, Vincent (Common), recently out of jail and rapidly heading back down the criminal path. With both parents out of the picture, Woody’s been raised by his grandmother (Lonette McKee), so he idolizes Vincent even though it’s soon clear the short-tempered man is no hero. Of course, things go horribly awry, bloody lessons are learned, tears are shed, etc. Despite the story’s autobiographical origins, the passable LUV suffers greatly by inviting comparisons to The Wire — the definitive docudrama examining drug crime in Baltimore. Most blatantly, sprinkled into an all-star cast (Dennis Haysbert, Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton) are supporting characters played by Wire icons Michael K. "Omar" Williams (as a cop) and Anwan "Slim Charles" Glover (as a meaner Slim Charles, basically). Perhaps if you’ve never seen the show this wouldn’t be distracting — but if that’s the case, you should really be watching The Wire instead of LUV anyway. (1:34) New Parkway. (Eddy)

Mama From bin Laden to wild babes in woods, Jessica Chastain can’t seem to grab a break. Equipped with just the bare outlines of a character, however, she’s one of the few pleasures in this missed-opportunity of a grim, ghostly fairy tale. Expanding his short of the same name, director Andres Muschietti kicks off his yarn on a sadly familiar note in these days of seemingly escalating gun violence: little sisters Victoria and Lily have disappeared from their home, shortly after their desperate father (Game of Thrones‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has gone on a shooting spree. They repair to an abandoned cabin scattered with mid-century modern furniture. Five years on, the girls’ scruffy artist uncle Lucas (also Coster-Waldau) is still searching for them, supported by his punk rock girlfriend Annabel (Chastain). The little girls lost are finally found by trackers — and they appear to be hopelessly feral, with the angelic-looking Victoria (Megan Charpentier), acting as the ringleader and the younger, bedraggled Lily (Maya Dawe) given to sleeping under beds and eating on all fours next to the dog bowl. The arty couple take them in and move into a "test house" provided by the sisters’ enthralled therapist (Daniel Kash), obviously psyched to study not one but two Kaspar Hausers. The traumatized kids are clearly haunted by their experience — in more ways than one — as inexplicable bumps go off, night and day, and Misfits t-shirt-clad Annabel discovers the real meaning of goth while getting in touch with her seemingly deeply buried maternal urges. Unfortunately, despite possessing the raw material for a truly scary outing that plunges to the core of our primal instincts (what’s scarier than an unsocialized kid that’s capable of anything?) and showing off Muschietti’s occasional instances of cinematic flair (as when multiple rooms are shown using split-screens), Mama ends up running away from the filmmaker and is finally simply spoiled by its mawkishly sentimental finale. It doesn’t help that the inadequate script sports logic holes that a mama could drive a truck though. (1:40) California, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Les Misérables There is a not-insignificant portion of the population who already knows all the words to all the songs of this musical-theater warhorse, around since the 1980s and honored here with a lavish production by Tom Hooper (2010’s The King’s Speech). As other reviews have pointed out, this version only tangentially concerns Victor Hugo’s French Revolution tale; its true raison d’être is swooning over the sight of its big-name cast crooning those famous tunes. Vocals were recorded live on-set, with microphones digitally removed in post-production — but despite this technical achievement, there’s a certain inorganic quality to the proceedings. Like The King’s Speech, the whole affair feels spliced together in the Oscar-creation lab. The hardworking Hugh Jackman deserves the nomination he’ll inevitably get; jury’s still out on Anne Hathaway’s blubbery, "I cut my hair for real, I am so brave!" performance. (2:37) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Movie 43 (1:37) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Searching for Sugar Man The tale of the lost, and increasingly found, artist known as Rodriguez seems to have it all: the mystery and drama of myth, beginning with the singer-songwriter’s stunning 1970 debut, Cold Fact, a neglected folk rock-psychedelic masterwork. (The record never sold in the states, but somehow became a beloved, canonical LP in South Africa.) The story goes on to parse the cold, hard facts of vanished hopes and unpaid royalties, all too familiar in pop tragedies. In Searching for Sugar Man, Swedish documentarian Malik Bendjelloul lays out the ballad of Rodriguez as a rock’n’roll detective story, with two South African music lovers in hot pursuit of the elusive musician — long-rumored to have died onstage by either self-immolation or gunshot, and whose music spoke to a generation of white activists struggling to overturn apartheid. By the time Rodriguez himself enters the narrative, the film has taken on a fairy-tale trajectory; the end result speaks volumes about the power and longevity of great songwriting. (1:25) New Parkway. (Chun)

"Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Animated" If you caught Wreck-It Ralph, nominated in the Best Animated Feature category, you’ve already seen John Kahrs’ Paperman, about a junior Mad Men type who bumbles through his pursuit of a lovely fellow office drone he spots on his commute. Or, if you saw Ice Age: Continental Drift, you’ve seen Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare, starring Homer and Marge’s wee one as she grapples with the social order at the Ayn Rand School for Tots. Among the stand-alones, Minkyu Lee’s Adam and Dog features a quick appearance by Eve, too, but the star is really the scrappy canine who gallops through prehistory playing the world’s first game of fetch with his hairy master. Two minutes is all PES (nom de screen of Adam Pesapane) needs to make Fresh Guacamole — which depicts grenades, dice, and other random objects as most unusual ingredients. The only non-US entry, UK director Timothy Reckart’s Head Over Heels, is about an elderly married couple whose relationship has deteriorated to the point where they (literally) no longer see eye to eye on anything. The program is rounded out by three more non-Oscar-nominated animated shorts: Britain’s The Gruffalo’s Child, featuring the voices of Helena Bonham Carter and Robbie Coltrane; French art-thief caper Dripped; and New Zealand’s sci-fi tale Abiogenesis. (1:28) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

"Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Documentary" (3:29) Opera Plaza.

"Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Live Action" (1:54) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

Parker (1:58) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

Quartet Every year there’s at least one: the adorable-old-cootfest, usually British, that proves harmless and reassuring and lightly tear/laughter producing enough to convince a certain demographic that it’s safe to go to the movies again. The last months have seen two, both starring Maggie Smith (who’s also queen of that audience’s home viewing via Downton Abbey). Last year’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, in which Smith played a bitchy old spinster appalled to find herself in India, has already filled the slot. It was formulaic, cute, and sentimental, yes, but it also practiced more restraint than one expected. Now here’s Quartet, which is basically the same flower arrangement with quite a bit more dust on it. Smith plays a bitchy old spinster appalled to find herself forced into spending her twilight years at a home for the elderly. It’s not just any such home, however, but Beecham House, whose residents are retired professional musicians. Gingerly peeking out from her room after a few days’ retreat from public gaze, Smith’s Jean Horton — a famed English soprano — spies a roomful of codgers rolling their hips to Afropop in a dance class. "This is not a retirement home — this is a madhouse!" she pronounces. Oh, the shitty lines that lazy writers have long depended on Smith to make sparkle. Quartet is full of such bunk, adapted with loving fidelity, no doubt, from his own 1999 play by Ronald Harwood, who as a scenarist has done some good adaptations of other people’s work (2002’s The Pianist). But as a generator of original material for about a half-century, he’s mostly proven that it is possible to prosper that long while being in entirely the wrong half-century. Making his directorial debut: 75-year-old Dustin Hoffman, which ought to have yielded a more interesting final product. But with its workmanlike gloss and head-on take on the script’s very predictable beats, Quartet could as well have been directed by any BBC veteran of no particular distinction. (1:38) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Rabbi’s Cat A rabbi, a Muslim musician, two Russians (a Jew and a boozy Christian), and two talking animals hop into an antique Citroën for a road trip across Africa. No, it’s not the set-up for a joke; it’s the premise for this charming animated film, adapted from Joann Sfar’s graphic novel (the author co-directs with Antoine Delesvaux). In 1930s Algiers, a rabbi’s pet cat suddenly develops the ability to talk — and read and write, by the way — and wastes no time in sharing opinions, particularly when it comes to religion ("God is just a comforting invention!") When a crate full of Russian prayer books — and one handsome artist — arrives at the rabbi’s house, man and cat are drawn into the refugee’s search for an Ethiopian city populated by African Jews. Though it’s not suitable for younger kids (there’s kitty mating, and a few bursts of surprising violence) or diehard Tintin fans (thanks to a randomly cranky spoof of the character), The Rabbi’s Cat is a lushly illustrated, witty tale of cross-cultural clashes and connections. Rockin’ soundtrack, too. (1:29) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Rust and Bone Unlike her Dark Knight Rises co-star Anne Hathaway, Rust and Bone star Marion Cotillard never seems like she’s trying too hard to be sexy, or edgy, or whatever (plus, she already has an Oscar, so the pressure’s off). Here, she’s a whale trainer at a SeaWorld-type park who loses her legs in an accident, which complicates (but ultimately strengthens) her relationship with Ali (Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts, so tremendous in 2011’s Bullhead), a single dad trying to make a name for himself as a boxer. Jacques Audiard’s follow-up to 2009’s A Prophet gets a bit overwrought by its last act, but there’s an emotional authenticity in the performances that makes even a ridiculous twist (like, the kind that’ll make you exclaim "Are you fucking kidding me?") feel almost well-earned. (2:00) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)

The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Silver Linings Playbook After guiding two actors to Best Supporting Oscars in 2010’s The Fighter, director David O. Russell returns (adapting his script from Matthew Quick’s novel) with another darkly comedic film about a complicated family that will probably earn some gold of its own. Though he’s obviously not ready to face the outside world, Pat (Bradley Cooper) checks out of the state institution he’s been court-ordered to spend eight months in after displaying some serious anger-management issues. He moves home with his football-obsessed father (Robert De Niro) and worrywart mother (Jacki Weaver of 2010’s Animal Kingdom), where he plunges into a plan to win back his estranged wife. Cooper plays Pat as a man vibrating with troubled energy — always in danger of flying into a rage, even as he pursues his forced-upbeat "silver linings" philosophy. But the movie belongs to Jennifer Lawrence, who proves the chops she showcased (pre-Hunger Games megafame) in 2010’s Winter’s Bone were no fluke. As the damaged-but-determined Tiffany, she’s the left-field element that jolts Pat out of his crazytown funk; she’s also the only reason Playbook‘s dance-competition subplot doesn’t feel eye-rollingly clichéd. The film’s not perfect, but Lawrence’s layered performance — emotional, demanding, bitchy, tough-yet-secretly-tender — damn near is. (2:01) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy)

Skyfall Top marks to Adele, who delivers a magnificent title song to cap off Skyfall‘s thrilling pre-credits chase scene. Unfortunate, then, that the film that follows squanders its initial promise. After a bomb attack on MI6, the clock is running out for Bond (Daniel Craig) and M (Judi Dench), accused of Cold War irrelevancy in a 21st century full of malevolent, stateless computer hackers. The audience, too, will yearn for a return to simpler times; dialogue about "firewalls" and "obfuscated code" never fails to sound faintly ridiculous, despite the efforts Ben Whishaw as the youthful new head of Q branch. Javier Bardem is creative and creepy as keyboard-tapping villain Raoul Silva, but would have done better with a megalomaniac scheme to take over the world. Instead, a small-potatoes revenge plot limps to a dull conclusion in the middle of nowhere. Skyfall never decides whether it prefers action, bon mots, and in-jokes to ponderous mythologizing and ripped-from-the-headlines speechifying — the result is a unsatisfying, uneven mixture. (2:23) Metreon. (Ben Richardson)

Sound City Dave Grohl adds "documentary director" to his ever-lengthening resume with this tribute to the SoCal recording studio, where the grimy, funky décor was offset by a row of platinum records lining its hallway, marking in-house triumphs by Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, Neil Young, and others (even, yep, Rick Springfield). Top acts and producers (many of whom appear in the doc to dish and reminisce) were lured in by a unique recording console, installed in the early 1970s, whose legend grew with every new hit it helped engineer. Despite its reputation as a hit factory — and the attraction of its laid-back vibe and staff — old-school Sound City began to struggle once the highly-polished sound of digital technology overtook the music industry. That is, until Grohl and Nirvana recorded Nevermind there, keeping the studio alive until the unstoppable march of Pro Tools hammered the final nails in. Or did it? Sound City‘s final third follows Grohl’s purchase of the studio’s iconic console ("A piece of rock ‘n’ roll history," he proclaims, though he installs it in a swanky refurbished space) and the recording of an album featuring luminaries from the studio’s past … plus Paul McCartney. The resulting doc is nostalgic, sure, but insider-y enough to entertain fans of classic rock, or at least anyone who’s ever sneered at a drum machine. (1:46) Roxie. (Eddy)

Stand Up Guys Call it oldster pop, call it geriatricore, just don’t call it late for its meds. With the oncoming boomer elder explosion, we can Depends — har-dee-har-har — on the fact that action-crime thrillers-slash-comedies like 2010’s Red, 2012’s Robot and Frank, and now Stand Up Guys are just the vanguard of an imminent barrage of grumpy old pros locking and loading, grousing about their angina, and delivering wisdom with a dose of hard-won levity. As handled by onetime teen-comedy character actor Fisher Stevens, Stand Up Guys is a warm, worthy addition to that soon-to-be-well-populated pantheon. It grows on you as you spend time with it — much like the two aging reprobates at its core, Val (Al Pacino) and Doc (Christopher Walken). Val, the proverbial stand-up guy who took the fall for the rest of his gang, has just completed a 25-year-plus stint in the pen. There to meet him is his only pal, and former partner in crime, Doc, who has been leading a humble life but has one last hit to commit for their old boss Claphands (Mark Margolis), who’s inexplicably named after a Tom Waits song. Sex, drugs, and some Viagra commercial-esque bluesy guitars are in order, but first Val and Doc must find their drive, in the form of their old driver buddy Hirsch (Alan Arkin), who they break out of a rest home, and, perhaps, their moral compass, which arrives with the discovery of a victim (Vanessa Ferlito) of baddies much less couth than themselves. The pleasure comes with following these stand-up guys as they make that leap from craven self-preservation to heroism, which might seem implausible to some. But to the cast’s, and Stevens’s, credit, they make it work — and even give the sentiment-washed finale a swashbuckling buddy-movie romanticism, the kind that a young Tarantino might dislike and an older Tarantino would be loathe to begrudge his lovable louses. (1:34) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Warm Bodies A decade and a half of torrid, tormented vampire-human entanglements has left us accustomed to rooting for romances involving the undead and the still-alive. Some might argue, however, that no amount of pop-cultural prepping could be sufficient to get us behind a human-zombie love story for the ages. Is guzzling human blood really measurably less gross than making a meal of someone’s brains and other body parts? Somehow, yes. Recognizing this perceptual hurdle, writer-director Jonathan Levine (2011’s 50/50, 2008’s The Wackness) secures our sympathies at the outset of Warm Bodies by situating us inside the surprisingly active brain of the film’s zombie protagonist. Zombies, it turns out, have internal monologues. R (Nicholas Hoult) can only remember the first letter of his former name, but as he shambles and shuffles and slumps his way through the terminals of a postapocalyptic airport overrun by his fellow corpses (as they’re called by the film’s human population), he fills us in as best he can on the global catastrophe that’s occurred and his own ensuing existential crisis. By the time he meets not-so-cute with Julie (Teresa Palmer), a young woman whose father (John Malkovich) is commander-in-chief of the human survivors living in a walled-off city center, we’ve learned that he collects vinyl, that he has a zombie best friend, and that he doesn’t want to be like this. We may still be flinching at the thought of his and Julie’s first kiss, but we’re also kind of rooting for him. The plot gapes in places, where a tenuous logic gets trampled and gives way, but Levine’s script, adapted from a novel by Isaac Marion, is full of funny riffs on the zombie condition, which Hoult invests with a comic sweetness as his character staggers toward the land of the living. (1:37) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Zero Dark Thirty The extent to which torture was actually used in the hunt for Osama Bin Ladin may never be known, though popular opinion will surely be shaped by this film, as it’s produced with the same kind of "realness" that made Kathryn Bigelow’s previous film, the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker (2008), so potent. Zero Dark Thirty incorporates torture early in its chronology — which begins in 2003, after a brief opening that captures the terror of September 11, 2001 using only 911 phone calls — but the practice is discarded after 2008, a sea-change year marked by the sight of Obama on TV insisting that "America does not torture." (The "any more" goes unspoken.) Most of Zero Dark Thirty is set in Pakistan and/or "CIA black sites" in undisclosed locations; it’s a suspenseful procedural that manages to make well-documented events (the July 2005 London bombings; the September 2008 Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing) seem shocking and unexpected. Even the raid on Bin Ladin’s HQ is nail-bitingly intense. The film immerses the viewer in the clandestine world, tossing out abbreviations ("KSM" for al-Qaeda bigwig Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) and jargon ("tradecraft") without pausing for a breath. It is thrilling, emotional, engrossing — the smartest, most tightly-constructed action film of the year. At the center of it all: a character allegedly based on a real person whose actual identity is kept top-secret by necessity. She’s interpreted here in the form of a steely CIA operative named Maya, played to likely Oscar-winning perfection by Jessica Chastain. No matter the film’s divisive subject matter, there’s no denying that this is a powerful performance. "Washington says she’s a killer," a character remarks after meeting this seemingly delicate creature, and he’s proven right long before Bin Ladin goes down. Some critics have argued that character is underdeveloped, but anyone who says that isn’t watching closely enough. Maya may not be given a traditional backstory, but there’s plenty of interior life there, and it comes through in quick, vulnerable flashes — leading up to the payoff of the film’s devastating final shot. (2:39) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Bullet to the Head Walter Hill directs this tale of a hired gun (Sylvester Stallone) and a cop (Sung Kang) who become unlikely partners in vengeance. (1:32)

"Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Animated" If you caught Wreck-It Ralph, nominated in the Best Animated Feature category, you’ve already seen John Kahrs’ Paperman, about a junior Mad Men type who bumbles through his pursuit of a lovely fellow office drone he spots on his commute. Or, if you saw Ice Age: Continental Drift, you’ve seen Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare, starring Homer and Marge’s wee one as she grapples with the social order at the Ayn Rand School for Tots. Among the stand-alones, Minkyu Lee’s Adam and Dog features a quick appearance by Eve, too, but the star is really the scrappy canine who gallops through prehistory playing the world’s first game of fetch with his hairy master. Two minutes is all PES (nom de screen of Adam Pesapane) needs to make Fresh Guacamole — which depicts grenades, dice, and other random objects as most unusual ingredients. The only non-US entry, UK director Timothy Reckart’s Head Over Heels, is about an elderly married couple whose relationship has deteriorated to the point where they (literally) no longer see eye to eye on anything. The program is rounded out by three more non-Oscar-nominated animated shorts: Britain’s The Gruffalo’s Child, featuring the voices of Helena Bonham Carter and Robbie Coltrane; French art-thief caper Dripped; and New Zealand’s sci-fi tale Abiogenesis. (1:28) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

"Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Documentary" Selections include San Francisco filmmaker Sari Gilman’s poignant study of a Florida retirement community, Kings Point; Cynthia Wade’s Mondays at Racine, about a beauty salon that provides free services for women who have lost their hair to cancer treatments; Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s Inocente, a profile of a young, homeless, aspiring artist; Redemption, Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill’s take on New York dumpster divers; and Open Heart, Keif Davidson’s look at Rwandan children who travel to Sudan for high-risk surgery. (3:29) Embarcadero.

"Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013: Live Action" Selections include Bryan Buckley’s Asad, about a Somali boy who must choose between fishing and piracy; Sam French’s Buzkashi Boys, about two young friends coming of age in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan; Shawn Christensen’s babysitting yarn Curfew; Tom Van Avermaet’s supernatural love story Death of a Shadow; and another (sort-of) love story, Canadian Yan England’s Henry. (1:54) Embarcadero.

Sound City Dave Grohl adds "documentary director" to his ever-lengthening resume with this tribute to the SoCal recording studio, where the grimy, funky décor was offset by a row of platinum records lining its hallway, marking in-house triumphs by Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, Neil Young, and others (even, yep, Rick Springfield). Top acts and producers (many of whom appear in the doc to dish and reminisce) were lured in by a unique recording console, installed in the early 1970s, whose legend grew with every new hit it helped engineer. Despite its reputation as a hit factory — and the attraction of its laid-back vibe and staff — old-school Sound City began to struggle once the highly-polished sound of digital technology overtook the music industry. That is, until Grohl and Nirvana recorded Nevermind there, keeping the studio alive until the unstoppable march of Pro Tools hammered the final nails in. Or did it? Sound City‘s final third follows Grohl’s purchase of the studio’s iconic console ("A piece of rock ‘n’ roll history," he proclaims, though he installs it in a swanky refurbished space) and the recording of an album featuring luminaries from the studio’s past … plus Paul McCartney. The resulting doc is nostalgic, sure, but insider-y enough to entertain fans of classic rock, or at least anyone who’s ever sneered at a drum machine. (1:46) Roxie. (Eddy)

Stand Up Guys Call it oldster pop, call it geriatricore, just don’t call it late for its meds. With the oncoming boomer elder explosion, we can Depends — har-dee-har-har — on the fact that action-crime thrillers-slash-comedies like 2010’s Red, 2012’s Robot and Frank, and now Stand Up Guys are just the vanguard of an imminent barrage of grumpy old pros locking and loading, grousing about their angina, and delivering wisdom with a dose of hard-won levity. As handled by onetime teen-comedy character actor Fisher Stevens, Stand Up Guys is a warm, worthy addition to that soon-to-be-well-populated pantheon. It grows on you as you spend time with it — much like the two aging reprobates at its core, Val (Al Pacino) and Doc (Christopher Walken). Val, the proverbial stand-up guy who took the fall for the rest of his gang, has just completed a 25-year-plus stint in the pen. There to meet him is his only pal, and former partner in crime, Doc, who has been leading a humble life but has one last hit to commit for their old boss Claphands (Mark Margolis), who’s inexplicably named after a Tom Waits song. Sex, drugs, and some Viagra commercial-esque bluesy guitars are in order, but first Val and Doc must find their drive, in the form of their old driver buddy Hirsch (Alan Arkin), who they break out of a rest home, and, perhaps, their moral compass, which arrives with the discovery of a victim (Vanessa Ferlito) of baddies much less couth than themselves. The pleasure comes with following these stand-up guys as they make that leap from craven self-preservation to heroism, which might seem implausible to some. But to the cast’s, and Stevens’s, credit, they make it work — and even give the sentiment-washed finale a swashbuckling buddy-movie romanticism, the kind that a young Tarantino might dislike and an older Tarantino would be loathe to begrudge his lovable louses. (1:34) (Chun)

Warm Bodies Zombies need love too! (1:37)

ONGOING

Amour Arriving in local theaters atop a tidal wave of critical hosannas, Amour now seeks to tempt popular acclaim — though actually liking this perfectly crafted, intensely depressing film (from Austrian director Michael Haneke) may be nigh impossible for most audience members. Eightysomething former music teachers Georges and Anne (the flawless Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) are living out their days in their spacious Paris apartment, going to classical concerts and enjoying the comfort of their relationship. Early in the film, someone tries to break into their flat — and the rest of Amour unfolds with a series of invasions, with Anne’s declining health the most distressing, though there are also unwanted visits from the couple’s only daughter (an appropriately self-involved Isabelle Huppert), an inept nurse who disrespects Anne and curses out Georges, and even a rogue pigeon that wanders in more than once. As Anne fades into a hollow, twisted, babbling version of her former self, Georges also becomes hollow and twisted, taking care of her while grimly awaiting the inevitable. Of course, the movie’s called Amour, so there’s some tenderness involved. But if you seek heartwarming hope and last-act uplift, look anywhere but here. (2:07) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Argo If you didn’t know the particulars of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, you won’t be an expert after Argo, but the film does a good job of capturing America’s fearful reaction to the events that followed it — particularly the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. Argo zeroes in on the fate of six embassy staffers who managed to escape the building and flee to the home of the sympathetic Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Back in Washington, short-tempered CIA agents (including a top-notch Bryan Cranston) cast about for ways to rescue them. Enter Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directs), exfil specialist and father to a youngster wrapped up in the era’s sci-fi craze. While watching 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with what Cranston’s character calls "the best bad idea we have:" the CIA will fund a phony Canadian movie production (corny, intergalactic, and titled Argo) and pretend the six are part of the crew, visiting Iran for a few days on a location shoot. Tony will sneak in, deliver the necessary fake-ID documents, and escort them out. Neither his superiors, nor the six in hiding, have much faith in the idea. ("Is this the part where we say, ‘It’s so crazy it just might work?’" someone asks, beating the cliché to the punch.) Argo never lets you forget that lives are at stake; every painstakingly forged form, every bluff past a checkpoint official increases the anxiety (to the point of being laid on a bit thick by the end). But though Affleck builds the needed suspense with gusto, Argo comes alive in its Hollywood scenes. As the show-biz veterans who mull over Tony’s plan with a mix of Tinseltown cynicism and patiotic duty, John Goodman and Alan Arkin practically burst with in-joke brio. I could have watched an entire movie just about those two. (2:00) Balboa, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Beasts of the Southern Wild A year after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (and a Cannes Camera d’Or), Beasts of the Southern Wild proves capable of enduring a second or third viewing with its originality and strangeness fully intact. Magical realism is a primarily literary device that isn’t attempted very often in U.S. cinema, and succeeds very rarely. But this intersection between Faulkner and fairy tale, a fable about — improbably — Hurricane Katrina, is mysterious and unruly and enchanting. Benh Zeitlin’s film is wildly cinematic from the outset, as voiceover narration from six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) offers simple commentary on her rather fantastical life. She abides in the Bathtub, an imaginary chunk of bayou country south of New Orleans whose residents live closer to nature, amid the detritus of civilization. Seemingly everything is some alchemical combination of scrap heap, flesh, and soil. But not all is well: when "the storm" floods the land, the holdouts are forced at federal gunpoint to evacuate. With its elements of magic, mythological exodus, and evolutionary biology, Beasts goes way out on a conceptual limb; you could argue it achieves many (if not more) of the same goals Terrence Malick’s 2011 The Tree of Life did at a fraction of that film’s cost and length. (1:31) Four Star. (Harvey)

Beware of Mr. Baker This mesmerizing bio-doc about volatile, wildly talented drummer Ginger Baker (Cream, Blind Faith) begins with the 70-something musician clocking director Jay Bulger in the face. After this opening, Bulger — who also wrote a deeply compelling article about Baker for Rolling Stone last year — wisely pulls himself out of the narrative, instead turning to a wealth of new interviews (with Baker, his trademark red locks faded to gray, and many of his musical and personal partners, including Eric Clapton and multiple ex-Mrs. Bakers), vintage performance footage, and artful animation to weave his tale. Baker’s colorfully-lived, improbably long life has been literally all over the map; he overcame a hardscrabble British childhood to find jazz and rock stardom, and along the way jammed with Fela Kuti in Nigeria (where he picked up his fierce love of polo), broke many hearts (his own kids’ among them) and lost multiple fortunes, spent a stint in the US, and eventually landed at his current farm in South Africa. Two constants: his musical genius, and his frustratingly jerky behavior — the consequence of a naturally prickly personality exacerbated by copious drug use and bitterness. A must-see for musicians and those who love them. (1:30) Roxie. (Eddy)

Broken City Catherine Zeta-Jones’ measured performance and killer wardrobe run away with this uneven political thriller about a made-up Manhattan with real(-ish) problems. Russell Crowe is only slightly improving his record post-Les Mis, as he plays another harried and morally confused agent "for the people." Here, he’s Mayor Hostetler, a swaggering politico with fingers in New York’s real estate cookie jar and the sort of "get shit done" directive that results in bodies lying in NYC’s overfilled gutters. Good thing he has Mark Wahlberg in his back pocket, a cop who slipped a murder wrap and now scrapes the bottom for gigs as a private detective. Seven years ago Billy Taggart (Wahlberg) was seeking vigilante justice for the victim of a rape-murder in the city’s biggest ghetto. The victim became a household name but the killer was let off, leading to cries about the validity of NY’s justice system and to allusions to the Central Park Five. Broken City is less about a broken City and more about broken Men, and there are certain elements that seem too subtle for a story built on such bald-faced and predictable strategy. Between a script that’s struggling to demonstrate moral compromise and integrity, and direction (by Allen Hughes) that’s as sensitive to nuance as a border collie, it’s hard to find much beyond Zeta-Jones’ shoe stylings to admire. (1:49) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti western homage features a cameo by the original Django (Franco Nero, star of the 1966 film), and solid performances by a meticulously assembled cast, including Jamie Foxx as the titular former slave who becomes a badass bounty hunter under the tutelage of Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Waltz, who won an Oscar for playing the evil yet befuddlingly delightful Nazi Hans Landa in Tarantino’s 2009 Inglourious Basterds, is just as memorable (and here, you can feel good about liking him) as a quick-witted, quick-drawing wayward German dentist. There are no Nazis in Django, of course, but Tarantino’s taboo du jour (slavery) more than supplies motivation for the filmmaker’s favorite theme (revenge). Once Django joins forces with Schultz, the natural-born partners hatch a scheme to rescue Django’s still-enslaved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), whose German-language skills are as unlikely as they are convenient. Along the way (and it’s a long way; the movie runs 165 minutes), they encounter a cruel plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose main passion is the offensive, shocking "sport" of "Mandingo fighting," and his right-hand man, played by Tarantino muse Samuel L. Jackson in a transcendently scandalous performance. And amid all the violence and racist language and Foxx vengeance-making, there are many moments of screaming hilarity, as when a character with the Old South 101 name of Big Daddy (Don Johnson) argues with the posse he’s rounded up over the proper construction of vigilante hoods. It’s a classic Tarantino moment: pausing the action so characters can blather on about something trivial before an epic scene of violence. Mr. Pink would approve. (2:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Gangster Squad It’s 1949, and somewhere in the Hollywood hills, a man has been tied hand and foot to a pair of automobiles with the engines running. Coyotes pace in the background like patrons queuing up for a table at Flour + Water, and when dinner is served, the presentation isn’t very pretty. We’re barely five minutes into Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad, and fair warning has been given of the bloodletting to come. None of it’s quite as visceral as the opening scene, but Fleischer (2009’s Zombieland) packs his tale of urban warfare with plenty of stylized slaughter to go along with the glamour shots of mob-run nightclubs, leggy pin-curled dames, and Ryan Gosling lounging at the bar cracking wise. At the center of all the gunplay and firebombing is what’s framed as a battle for the soul of Los Angeles, waged between transplanted Chicago mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) — who wields terms like "progress" and "manifest destiny" as a rationale for a continental turf war — and a police sergeant named John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), tasked with bringing down Cohen’s empire. The assignment requires working under cover so deep that only the police chief (Nick Nolte) and the handpicked members of O’Mara’s "gangster squad" — ncluding Gosling, a half-jaded charmer who poaches Cohen’s arm candy (Emma Stone) — know of its existence. This leaves plenty of room for improvisation, and the film pauses now and again to wonder about what happens when you pit brutal amorality against brutal morality, but it’s a rhetorical question, and no one shows much interest in it. Dragged down by talking points that someone clearly wanted wedged in (as well as by O’Mara’s ponderous voice-overs), the film does better when it abandons gravitas and refocuses on spinning its mythic tale of wilder times in the Golden State. (1:53) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters So here’s something you may not have been wondering: what exactly happened to Hansel and Gretel after they killed the gingerbread-house witch and made their way to freedom? Did they really live happily ever after? Did they land in the foster care system? Did they enter adulthood bearing the deep psychic wounds a person might well suffer after shoving a living creature into an oven and listening to her agonized howls as she burned alive? Or did they realize they’d discovered their life’s vocation without even having to complete the Myers-Briggs test? Shutting his eyes and pointing at random, director and screenplay cowriter Tommy Wirkola (2009’s Dead Snow) chooses the latter scenario, keeping his eyes closed to stab out some weak dialogue and half a plot for a script that leans heavily on the power of 3D technology to send eviscerated-witch guts and other biological shrapnel flying toward the eyeballs of audience members. Hansel (why, Jeremy Renner?) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) have grown up to share the intense sibling bond and wandering ways you might expect from a brother and sister abandoned at a tender age to starve and be rent limb from limb by wild animals. They’ve also taken full advantage of a niche witch-slaying market in and around the gloomy forest where they made their first kill. When they’re hired to track down a particularly loathsome practitioner of the dark arts (Famke Janssen) who’s been snatching up local children, multidimensional mayhem ensues. Arterton’s Gretel is pretty much a badass and the brains of the operation, while Renner’s Hansel is more of a strong, silent, and occasionally shit-faced type. Neither makes for a particularly memorable protagonist, but that flat look on their faces could just be disappointment or boredom with the material. (1:41) California, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

A Haunted House (1:25) Metreon.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Make no mistake: the Lord of the Rings trilogy represented an incredible filmmaking achievement, with well-deserved Oscars handed down after the third installment in 2003. If director Peter Jackson wanted to go one more round with J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved characters for a Hobbit movie, who was gonna stop him? Not so fast. This return to Middle-earth (in 3D this time) represents not one but three films — which would be self-indulgent enough even if part one didn’t unspool at just under three hours, and even if Jackson hadn’t decided to shoot at 48 frames per second. (I can’t even begin to explain what that means from a technical standpoint, but suffice to say there’s a certain amount of cinematic lushness lost when everything is rendered in insanely crystal-clear hi-def.) Journey begins as Bilbo Baggins (a game, funny Martin Freeman) reluctantly joins Gandalf (a weary-seeming Ian McKellan) and a gang of dwarves on their quest to reclaim their stolen homeland and treasure, batting Orcs, goblins, Gollum (Andy Serkis), and other beasties along the way. Fan-pandering happens (with characters like Cate Blanchett’s icy Galadriel popping in to remind you how much you loved LOTR), and the story moves at a brisk enough pace, but Journey never transcends what came before — or in the chronology of the story, what comes after. I’m not quite ready to declare this Jackson’s Phantom Menace (1999), but it’s not an unfair comparison to make, either. (2:50) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Impossible Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona (2007’s The Orphanage) directs The Impossible, a relatively modestly-budgeted take on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, based on the real story of a Spanish family who experienced the disaster. Here, the family (Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, three young sons) is British, on a Christmas vacation from dad’s high-stress job in Japan. Beachy bliss is soon ruined by that terrible series of waves; they hit early in the film, and Bayona offers a devastatingly realistic depiction of what being caught in a tsunami must feel like: roaring, debris-filled water threatening death by drowning, impalement, or skull-crushing. And then, the anguish of surfacing, alive but injured, stranded, and miles from the nearest doctor, not knowing if your family members have perished. Without giving anything away (no more than the film’s suggestive title, anyway), once the survivors are established (and the film’s strongest performer, Watts, is relegated to hospital-bed scenes) The Impossible finds its way inevitably to melodrama, and triumph-of-the-human-spirit theatrics. As the family’s oldest son, 16-year-old Tom Holland is effective as a kid who reacts exactly right to crisis, morphing from sulky teen to thoughtful hero — but the film is too narrowly focused on its tourist characters, with native Thais mostly relegated to background action. It’s a disconnect that’s not quite offensive, but is still off-putting. (1:54) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

In Another Country This latest bit of gamesmanship from South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo (2000’s Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors) has Isabelle Huppert playing three Frenchwomen named Anne visiting the same Korean beachside community under different circumstances in three separate but wryly overlapping stories. In the first, she’s a film director whose presence induces inapt overtures from both her married colleague-host and a strapping young lifeguard. In the more farcical second, she’s a horny spouse herself, married to an absent Korean man; in the third, a woman whose husband has run away with a Korean woman. The same actors as well as variations on the same characters and situations appear in each section, their rejiggered intersections poking fun at Koreans’ attitudes toward foreigners, among other topics. Airy and amusing, In Another Country is a playful divertissement that’s shiny as a bubble, and leaves about as much of a permanent impression. (1:39) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Jack Reacher (2:10) Metreon.

The Last Stand With gun control issues dominating the news, what better time to release a movie that lovingly glorifies the wonders of excessive firepower? Fortunately for star Arnold Schwarzenegger, making his return to leading-man status after that little fling with politics, The Last Stand is stupidly enjoyable enough to make any such PC-minded realizations relatively fleeing ones. When a Mexican drug lord (who also happens to be an expert race-car driver) escapes from federal custody and begins speeding home in a super-Corvette, the lead FBI agent (Forest Whitaker, slumming big-time) realizes his only hope is a teeny Arizona border town that happens to be overseen by Sheriff Schwarzenegger. (Other residents include a couple of hapless deputies; an Iraq war vet; and a gun nut played by a cartoonishly obnoxious Johnny Knoxville.) Can this ragtag crew hold off first the drug lord’s advance team (led by a swaggering Peter Stormare), and then the head baddie himself? Duh. The biggest surprise The Last Stand offers is that it’s actually pretty fun — no doubt thanks to the combo of Korean director Kim Jee-woon (2008’s eccentric The Good, The Bad, and the Weird; 2003’s spooky A Tale of Two Sisters) and the heft of Schwarzenegger’s still-potent charisma. (1:47) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Life of Pi Several filmmakers including Alfonso Cuarón, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and M. Night Shyamalan had a crack at Yann Martel’s "unfilmable" novel over the last decade, without success. That turns out to have been a very good thing, since Ang Lee and scenarist David Magee have made probably the best movie possible from the material — arguably even an improvement on it. Framed as the adult protagonist’s (Irrfan Khan) lengthy reminiscence to an interested writer (Rafe Spall) it chronicles his youthful experience accompanying his family and animals from their just shuttered zoo on a cargo ship voyage from India to Canada. But a storm capsizes the vessel, stranding teenaged Pi (Suraj Sharma) on a lifeboat with a mini menagerie — albeit one swiftly reduced by the food chain in action to one Richard Parker, a whimsically named Bengal tiger. This uneasy forced cohabitation between Hindu vegetarian and instinctual carnivore is an object lesson in survival as well as a fable about the existence of God, among other things. Shot in 3D, the movie has plenty of enchanted, original imagery, though its outstanding technical accomplishment may lie more in the application of CGI (rather than stereoscopic photography) to something reasonably intelligent for a change. First-time actor Sharma is a natural, while his costar gives the most remarkable performance by a wild animal this side of Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a charmed, lovely experience. (2:00) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Harvey)

Lincoln Distinguished subject matter and an A+ production team (Steven Spielberg directing, Daniel Day-Lewis starring, Tony Kushner adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Williams scoring every emotion juuust so) mean Lincoln delivers about what you’d expect: a compelling (if verbose), emotionally resonant (and somehow suspenseful) dramatization of President Lincoln’s push to get the 13th amendment passed before the start of his second term. America’s neck-deep in the Civil War, and Congress, though now without Southern representation, is profoundly divided on the issue of abolition. Spielberg recreates 1865 Washington as a vibrant, exciting place, albeit one filled with so many recognizable stars it’s almost distracting wondering who’ll pop up in the next scene: Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant! Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln! Lena Dunham’s shirtless boyfriend on Girls (Adam Driver) as a soldier! Most notable among the huge cast are John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and a daffy James Spader as a trio of lobbyists; Sally Field as the troubled First Lady; and likely Oscar contenders Tommy Lee Jones (as winningly cranky Rep. Thaddeus Stevens) and Day-Lewis, who does a reliably great job of disappearing into his iconic role. (2:30) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Mama From bin Laden to wild babes in woods, Jessica Chastain can’t seem to grab a break. Equipped with just the bare outlines of a character, however, she’s one of the few pleasures in this missed-opportunity of a grim, ghostly fairy tale. Expanding his short of the same name, director Andres Muschietti kicks off his yarn on a sadly familiar note in these days of seemingly escalating gun violence: little sisters Victoria and Lily have disappeared from their home, shortly after their desperate father (Game of Thrones‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has gone on a shooting spree. They repair to an abandoned cabin scattered with mid-century modern furniture. Five years on, the girls’ scruffy artist uncle Lucas (also Coster-Waldau) is still searching for them, supported by his punk rock girlfriend Annabel (Chastain). The little girls lost are finally found by trackers — and they appear to be hopelessly feral, with the angelic-looking Victoria (Megan Charpentier), acting as the ringleader and the younger, bedraggled Lily (Maya Dawe) given to sleeping under beds and eating on all fours next to the dog bowl. The arty couple take them in and move into a "test house" provided by the sisters’ enthralled therapist (Daniel Kash), obviously psyched to study not one but two Kaspar Hausers. The traumatized kids are clearly haunted by their experience — in more ways than one — as inexplicable bumps go off, night and day, and Misfits t-shirt-clad Annabel discovers the real meaning of goth while getting in touch with her seemingly deeply buried maternal urges. Unfortunately, despite possessing the raw material for a truly scary outing that plunges to the core of our primal instincts (what’s scarier than an unsocialized kid that’s capable of anything?) and showing off Muschietti’s occasional instances of cinematic flair (as when multiple rooms are shown using split-screens), Mama ends up running away from the filmmaker and is finally simply spoiled by its mawkishly sentimental finale. It doesn’t help that the inadequate script sports logic holes that a mama could drive a truck though. (1:40) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Master Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-hyped likely Best Picture contender lives up: it’s easily the best film of 2012 so far. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Lancaster Dodd, the L. Ron Hubbard-ish head of a Scientology-esque movement. "The Cause" attracts Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in a welcome return from the faux-deep end), less for its pseudo-religious psychobabble and bizarre personal-growth exercises, and more because it supplies the aimless, alcoholic veteran — a drifter in every sense of the word — with a sense of community he yearns for, yet resists submitting to. As with There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson focuses on the tension between the two main characters: an older, established figure and his upstart challenger. But there’s less cut-and-dried antagonism here; while their relationship is complex, and it does lead to dark, troubled places, there are also moments of levity and weird hilarity — which might have something to do with Freddie’s paint-thinner moonshine. (2:17) Albany, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Les Misérables There is a not-insignificant portion of the population who already knows all the words to all the songs of this musical-theater warhorse, around since the 1980s and honored here with a lavish production by Tom Hooper (2010’s The King’s Speech). As other reviews have pointed out, this version only tangentially concerns Victor Hugo’s French Revolution tale; its true raison d’être is swooning over the sight of its big-name cast crooning those famous tunes. Vocals were recorded live on-set, with microphones digitally removed in post-production — but despite this technical achievement, there’s a certain inorganic quality to the proceedings. Like The King’s Speech, the whole affair feels spliced together in the Oscar-creation lab. The hardworking Hugh Jackman deserves the nomination he’ll inevitably get; jury’s still out on Anne Hathaway’s blubbery, "I cut my hair for real, I am so brave!" performance. (2:37) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Movie 43 (1:37) Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Parker (1:58) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Move over, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — there’s a new shrinking-violet social outcast in town. These days, life might not suck quite so hard for 90-pound weaklings in every age category, what with so many films and TV shows exposing, and sometimes even celebrating, the many miseries of childhood and adolescence for all to see. In this case, Perks author Stephen Chbosky takes on the directorial duties — both a good and bad thing, much like the teen years. Smart, shy Charlie is starting high school with a host of issues: he’s painfully awkward and very alone in the brutal throng, his only friend just committed suicide, and his only simpatico family member was killed in a car accident. Charlie’s English teacher Mr. Andersen (Paul Rudd) appears to be his only connection, until the freshman strikes up a conversation with feline, charismatic, shop-class jester Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his magnetic, music- and fun-loving stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Who needs the popular kids? The witty duo head up their gang of coolly uncool outcasts their own, the Wallflowers (not to be confused with the deeply uncool Jakob Dylan combo), and with them, Charlie appears to have found his tribe. Only a few small secrets put a damper on matters: Patrick happens to be gay and involved with football player Brad (Johnny Simmons), who’s saddled with a violently conservative father, and Charlie is in love with the already-hooked-up Sam and is frightened that his fragile equilibrium will be destroyed when his new besties graduate and slip out of his life. Displaying empathy and a devotion to emotional truth, Chbosky takes good care of his characters, preserving the complexity and ungainly quirks of their not-so-cartoonish suburbia, though his limitations as a director come to the fore in the murkiness and choppily handled climax that reveals how damaged Charlie truly is. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Quartet Every year there’s at least one: the adorable-old-cootfest, usually British, that proves harmless and reassuring and lightly tear/laughter producing enough to convince a certain demographic that it’s safe to go to the movies again. The last months have seen two, both starring Maggie Smith (who’s also queen of that audience’s home viewing via Downton Abbey). Last year’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, in which Smith played a bitchy old spinster appalled to find herself in India, has already filled the slot. It was formulaic, cute, and sentimental, yes, but it also practiced more restraint than one expected. Now here’s Quartet, which is basically the same flower arrangement with quite a bit more dust on it. Smith plays a bitchy old spinster appalled to find herself forced into spending her twilight years at a home for the elderly. It’s not just any such home, however, but Beecham House, whose residents are retired professional musicians. Gingerly peeking out from her room after a few days’ retreat from public gaze, Smith’s Jean Horton — a famed English soprano — spies a roomful of codgers rolling their hips to Afropop in a dance class. "This is not a retirement home — this is a madhouse!" she pronounces. Oh, the shitty lines that lazy writers have long depended on Smith to make sparkle. Quartet is full of such bunk, adapted with loving fidelity, no doubt, from his own 1999 play by Ronald Harwood, who as a scenarist has done some good adaptations of other people’s work (2002’s The Pianist). But as a generator of original material for about a half-century, he’s mostly proven that it is possible to prosper that long while being in entirely the wrong half-century. Making his directorial debut: 75-year-old Dustin Hoffman, which ought to have yielded a more interesting final product. But with its workmanlike gloss and head-on take on the script’s very predictable beats, Quartet could as well have been directed by any BBC veteran of no particular distinction. (1:38) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Rabbi’s Cat A rabbi, a Muslim musician, two Russians (a Jew and a boozy Christian), and two talking animals hop into an antique Citroën for a road trip across Africa. No, it’s not the set-up for a joke; it’s the premise for this charming animated film, adapted from Joann Sfar’s graphic novel (the author co-directs with Antoine Delesvaux). In 1930s Algiers, a rabbi’s pet cat suddenly develops the ability to talk — and read and write, by the way — and wastes no time in sharing opinions, particularly when it comes to religion ("God is just a comforting invention!") When a crate full of Russian prayer books — and one handsome artist — arrives at the rabbi’s house, man and cat are drawn into the refugee’s search for an Ethiopian city populated by African Jews. Though it’s not suitable for younger kids (there’s kitty mating, and a few bursts of surprising violence) or diehard Tintin fans (thanks to a randomly cranky spoof of the character), The Rabbi’s Cat is a lushly illustrated, witty tale of cross-cultural clashes and connections. Rockin’ soundtrack, too. (1:29) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Rust and Bone Unlike her Dark Knight Rises co-star Anne Hathaway, Rust and Bone star Marion Cotillard never seems like she’s trying too hard to be sexy, or edgy, or whatever (plus, she already has an Oscar, so the pressure’s off). Here, she’s a whale trainer at a SeaWorld-type park who loses her legs in an accident, which complicates (but ultimately strengthens) her relationship with Ali (Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts, so tremendous in 2011’s Bullhead), a single dad trying to make a name for himself as a boxer. Jacques Audiard’s follow-up to 2009’s A Prophet gets a bit overwrought by its last act, but there’s an emotional authenticity in the performances that makes even a ridiculous twist (like, the kind that’ll make you exclaim "Are you fucking kidding me?") feel almost well-earned. (2:00) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Silver Linings Playbook After guiding two actors to Best Supporting Oscars in 2010’s The Fighter, director David O. Russell returns (adapting his script from Matthew Quick’s novel) with another darkly comedic film about a complicated family that will probably earn some gold of its own. Though he’s obviously not ready to face the outside world, Pat (Bradley Cooper) checks out of the state institution he’s been court-ordered to spend eight months in after displaying some serious anger-management issues. He moves home with his football-obsessed father (Robert De Niro) and worrywart mother (Jacki Weaver of 2010’s Animal Kingdom), where he plunges into a plan to win back his estranged wife. Cooper plays Pat as a man vibrating with troubled energy — always in danger of flying into a rage, even as he pursues his forced-upbeat "silver linings" philosophy. But the movie belongs to Jennifer Lawrence, who proves the chops she showcased (pre-Hunger Games megafame) in 2010’s Winter’s Bone were no fluke. As the damaged-but-determined Tiffany, she’s the left-field element that jolts Pat out of his crazytown funk; she’s also the only reason Playbook‘s dance-competition subplot doesn’t feel eye-rollingly clichéd. The film’s not perfect, but Lawrence’s layered performance — emotional, demanding, bitchy, tough-yet-secretly-tender — damn near is. (2:01) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy)

Skyfall Top marks to Adele, who delivers a magnificent title song to cap off Skyfall‘s thrilling pre-credits chase scene. Unfortunate, then, that the film that follows squanders its initial promise. After a bomb attack on MI6, the clock is running out for Bond (Daniel Craig) and M (Judi Dench), accused of Cold War irrelevancy in a 21st century full of malevolent, stateless computer hackers. The audience, too, will yearn for a return to simpler times; dialogue about "firewalls" and "obfuscated code" never fails to sound faintly ridiculous, despite the efforts Ben Whishaw as the youthful new head of Q branch. Javier Bardem is creative and creepy as keyboard-tapping villain Raoul Silva, but would have done better with a megalomaniac scheme to take over the world. Instead, a small-potatoes revenge plot limps to a dull conclusion in the middle of nowhere. Skyfall never decides whether it prefers action, bon mots, and in-jokes to ponderous mythologizing and ripped-from-the-headlines speechifying — the result is a unsatisfying, uneven mixture. (2:23) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Ben Richardson)

Zero Dark Thirty The extent to which torture was actually used in the hunt for Osama Bin Ladin may never be known, though popular opinion will surely be shaped by this film, as it’s produced with the same kind of "realness" that made Kathryn Bigelow’s previous film, the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker (2008), so potent. Zero Dark Thirty incorporates torture early in its chronology — which begins in 2003, after a brief opening that captures the terror of September 11, 2001 using only 911 phone calls — but the practice is discarded after 2008, a sea-change year marked by the sight of Obama on TV insisting that "America does not torture." (The "any more" goes unspoken.) Most of Zero Dark Thirty is set in Pakistan and/or "CIA black sites" in undisclosed locations; it’s a suspenseful procedural that manages to make well-documented events (the July 2005 London bombings; the September 2008 Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing) seem shocking and unexpected. Even the raid on Bin Ladin’s HQ is nail-bitingly intense. The film immerses the viewer in the clandestine world, tossing out abbreviations ("KSM" for al-Qaeda bigwig Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) and jargon ("tradecraft") without pausing for a breath. It is thrilling, emotional, engrossing — the smartest, most tightly-constructed action film of the year. At the center of it all: a character allegedly based on a real person whose actual identity is kept top-secret by necessity. She’s interpreted here in the form of a steely CIA operative named Maya, played to likely Oscar-winning perfection by Jessica Chastain. No matter the film’s divisive subject matter, there’s no denying that this is a powerful performance. "Washington says she’s a killer," a character remarks after meeting this seemingly delicate creature, and he’s proven right long before Bin Ladin goes down. Some critics have argued that character is underdeveloped, but anyone who says that isn’t watching closely enough. Maya may not be given a traditional backstory, but there’s plenty of interior life there, and it comes through in quick, vulnerable flashes — leading up to the payoff of the film’s devastating final shot. (2:39) Balboa, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Beware of Mr. Baker This mesmerizing bio-doc about volatile, wildly talented drummer Ginger Baker (Cream, Blind Faith) begins with the 70-something musician clocking director Jay Bulger in the face. After this opening, Bulger — who also wrote a deeply compelling article about Baker for Rolling Stone last year — wisely pulls himself out of the narrative, instead turning to a wealth of new interviews (with Baker, his trademark red locks faded to gray, and many of his musical and personal partners, including Eric Clapton and multiple ex-Mrs. Bakers), vintage performance footage, and artful animation to weave his tale. Baker’s colorfully-lived, improbably long life has been literally all over the map; he overcame a hardscrabble British childhood to find jazz and rock stardom, and along the way jammed with Fela Kuti in Nigeria (where he picked up his fierce love of polo), broke many hearts (his own kids’ among them) and lost multiple fortunes, spent a stint in the US, and eventually landed at his current farm in South Africa. Two constants: his musical genius, and his frustratingly jerky behavior — the consequence of a naturally prickly personality exacerbated by copious drug use and bitterness. A must-see for musicians and those who love them. (1:30) Roxie. (Eddy)

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton star in this fairy-tale action film directed by Tommy Wirkola (2009’s Dead Snow). (1:41) California.

In Another Country This latest bit of gamesmanship from South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo (2000’s Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors) has Isabelle Huppert playing three Frenchwomen named Anne visiting the same Korean beachside community under different circumstances in three separate but wryly overlapping stories. In the first, she’s a film director whose presence induces inapt overtures from both her married colleague-host and a strapping young lifeguard. In the more farcical second, she’s a horny spouse herself, married to an absent Korean man; in the third, a woman whose husband has run away with a Korean woman. The same actors as well as variations on the same characters and situations appear in each section, their rejiggered intersections poking fun at Koreans’ attitudes toward foreigners, among other topics. Airy and amusing, In Another Country is a playful divertissement that’s shiny as a bubble, and leaves about as much of a permanent impression. (1:39) (Harvey)

Movie 43 An A-list ensemble cast (Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Kate Winslet) and multiple directors (Peter Farrelly, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk) combine their star power for this 12-chapter comedy film. (1:37)

Parker "Jason Statham" is pretty much a distinct genre at this point, yeah? (1:58) Shattuck.

Quartet See "Smith Happens." (1:38) Embarcadero.

ONGOING

Amour Arriving in local theaters atop a tidal wave of critical hosannas, Amour now seeks to tempt popular acclaim — though actually liking this perfectly crafted, intensely depressing film (from Austrian director Michael Haneke) may be nigh impossible for most audience members. Eightysomething former music teachers Georges and Anne (the flawless Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) are living out their days in their spacious Paris apartment, going to classical concerts and enjoying the comfort of their relationship. Early in the film, someone tries to break into their flat — and the rest of Amour unfolds with a series of invasions, with Anne’s declining health the most distressing, though there are also unwanted visits from the couple’s only daughter (an appropriately self-involved Isabelle Huppert), an inept nurse who disrespects Anne and curses out Georges, and even a rogue pigeon that wanders in more than once. As Anne fades into a hollow, twisted, babbling version of her former self, Georges also becomes hollow and twisted, taking care of her while grimly awaiting the inevitable. Of course, the movie’s called Amour, so there’s some tenderness involved. But if you seek heartwarming hope and last-act uplift, look anywhere but here. (2:07) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Argo If you didn’t know the particulars of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, you won’t be an expert after Argo, but the film does a good job of capturing America’s fearful reaction to the events that followed it — particularly the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. Argo zeroes in on the fate of six embassy staffers who managed to escape the building and flee to the home of the sympathetic Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Back in Washington, short-tempered CIA agents (including a top-notch Bryan Cranston) cast about for ways to rescue them. Enter Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directs), exfil specialist and father to a youngster wrapped up in the era’s sci-fi craze. While watching 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with what Cranston’s character calls "the best bad idea we have:" the CIA will fund a phony Canadian movie production (corny, intergalactic, and titled Argo) and pretend the six are part of the crew, visiting Iran for a few days on a location shoot. Tony will sneak in, deliver the necessary fake-ID documents, and escort them out. Neither his superiors, nor the six in hiding, have much faith in the idea. ("Is this the part where we say, ‘It’s so crazy it just might work?’" someone asks, beating the cliché to the punch.) Argo never lets you forget that lives are at stake; every painstakingly forged form, every bluff past a checkpoint official increases the anxiety (to the point of being laid on a bit thick by the end). But though Affleck builds the needed suspense with gusto, Argo comes alive in its Hollywood scenes. As the show-biz veterans who mull over Tony’s plan with a mix of Tinseltown cynicism and patiotic duty, John Goodman and Alan Arkin practically burst with in-joke brio. I could have watched an entire movie just about those two. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Broken City Catherine Zeta-Jones’ measured performance and killer wardrobe run away with this uneven political thriller about a made-up Manhattan with real(-ish) problems. Russell Crowe is only slightly improving his record post-Les Mis, as he plays another harried and morally confused agent "for the people." Here, he’s Mayor Hostetler, a swaggering politico with fingers in New York’s real estate cookie jar and the sort of "get shit done" directive that results in bodies lying in NYC’s overfilled gutters. Good thing he has Mark Wahlberg in his back pocket, a cop who slipped a murder wrap and now scrapes the bottom for gigs as a private detective. Seven years ago Billy Taggart (Wahlberg) was seeking vigilante justice for the victim of a rape-murder in the city’s biggest ghetto. The victim became a household name but the killer was let off, leading to cries about the validity of NY’s justice system and to allusions to the Central Park Five. Broken City is less about a broken City and more about broken Men, and there are certain elements that seem too subtle for a story built on such bald-faced and predictable strategy. Between a script that’s struggling to demonstrate moral compromise and integrity, and direction (by Allen Hughes) that’s as sensitive to nuance as a border collie, it’s hard to find much beyond Zeta-Jones’ shoe stylings to admire. (1:49) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away (1:31) Metreon.

Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti western homage features a cameo by the original Django (Franco Nero, star of the 1966 film), and solid performances by a meticulously assembled cast, including Jamie Foxx as the titular former slave who becomes a badass bounty hunter under the tutelage of Dr. Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Waltz, who won an Oscar for playing the evil yet befuddlingly delightful Nazi Hans Landa in Tarantino’s 2009 Inglourious Basterds, is just as memorable (and here, you can feel good about liking him) as a quick-witted, quick-drawing wayward German dentist. There are no Nazis in Django, of course, but Tarantino’s taboo du jour (slavery) more than supplies motivation for the filmmaker’s favorite theme (revenge). Once Django joins forces with Schultz, the natural-born partners hatch a scheme to rescue Django’s still-enslaved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), whose German-language skills are as unlikely as they are convenient. Along the way (and it’s a long way; the movie runs 165 minutes), they encounter a cruel plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose main passion is the offensive, shocking "sport" of "Mandingo fighting," and his right-hand man, played by Tarantino muse Samuel L. Jackson in a transcendently scandalous performance. And amid all the violence and racist language and Foxx vengeance-making, there are many moments of screaming hilarity, as when a character with the Old South 101 name of Big Daddy (Don Johnson) argues with the posse he’s rounded up over the proper construction of vigilante hoods. It’s a classic Tarantino moment: pausing the action so characters can blather on about something trivial before an epic scene of violence. Mr. Pink would approve. (2:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Gangster Squad It’s 1949, and somewhere in the Hollywood hills, a man has been tied hand and foot to a pair of automobiles with the engines running. Coyotes pace in the background like patrons queuing up for a table at Flour + Water, and when dinner is served, the presentation isn’t very pretty. We’re barely five minutes into Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad, and fair warning has been given of the bloodletting to come. None of it’s quite as visceral as the opening scene, but Fleischer (2009’s Zombieland) packs his tale of urban warfare with plenty of stylized slaughter to go along with the glamour shots of mob-run nightclubs, leggy pin-curled dames, and Ryan Gosling lounging at the bar cracking wise. At the center of all the gunplay and firebombing is what’s framed as a battle for the soul of Los Angeles, waged between transplanted Chicago mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) — who wields terms like "progress" and "manifest destiny" as a rationale for a continental turf war — and a police sergeant named John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), tasked with bringing down Cohen’s empire. The assignment requires working under cover so deep that only the police chief (Nick Nolte) and the handpicked members of O’Mara’s "gangster squad" — ncluding Gosling, a half-jaded charmer who poaches Cohen’s arm candy (Emma Stone) — know of its existence. This leaves plenty of room for improvisation, and the film pauses now and again to wonder about what happens when you pit brutal amorality against brutal morality, but it’s a rhetorical question, and no one shows much interest in it. Dragged down by talking points that someone clearly wanted wedged in (as well as by O’Mara’s ponderous voice-overs), the film does better when it abandons gravitas and refocuses on spinning its mythic tale of wilder times in the Golden State. (1:53) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

A Haunted House (1:25) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Make no mistake: the Lord of the Rings trilogy represented an incredible filmmaking achievement, with well-deserved Oscars handed down after the third installment in 2003. If director Peter Jackson wanted to go one more round with J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved characters for a Hobbit movie, who was gonna stop him? Not so fast. This return to Middle-earth (in 3D this time) represents not one but three films — which would be self-indulgent enough even if part one didn’t unspool at just under three hours, and even if Jackson hadn’t decided to shoot at 48 frames per second. (I can’t even begin to explain what that means from a technical standpoint, but suffice to say there’s a certain amount of cinematic lushness lost when everything is rendered in insanely crystal-clear hi-def.) Journey begins as Bilbo Baggins (a game, funny Martin Freeman) reluctantly joins Gandalf (a weary-seeming Ian McKellan) and a gang of dwarves on their quest to reclaim their stolen homeland and treasure, batting Orcs, goblins, Gollum (Andy Serkis), and other beasties along the way. Fan-pandering happens (with characters like Cate Blanchett’s icy Galadriel popping in to remind you how much you loved LOTR), and the story moves at a brisk enough pace, but Journey never transcends what came before — or in the chronology of the story, what comes after. I’m not quite ready to declare this Jackson’s Phantom Menace (1999), but it’s not an unfair comparison to make, either. (2:50) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

How to Survive a Plague David France’s documentary chronicles the unprecedented impact political activism had on the course of AIDS in the U.S. — drastically curtailing its death toll within a few years despite considerable institutional indifference and downright hostility. As the epidemic here first surfaced in, and decimated, the gay male community, much of Reagan America (particularly in religious quarters) figured the death sentence was deserved. The President himself infamously refrained from even saying the word "AIDS" publicly until his final year of office, after thousands had died. Both terrified and outraged, the gay community took it upon themselves to demand treatment, education, and research. Most of this urgent 1980s overview is concerned with the rise of ACT-UP, whose angry young men successfully lobbied and shamed corporate, academic, medical, and pharmaceutical bodies into action, with the result that by the mid-90s new drugs existed that made this dreaded diagnosis no longer a necessarily terminal one. France is a journalist who’s been covering AIDS practically since day one, and his first feature (made with the help of numerous first-rate collaborators) is authoritative and engrossing. Just don’t expect much (or really any) attention paid to the contributions made by S.F. or other activist hotspots — like many a gay documentary, this one hardly notices there’s a world (or gay community) outside Manhattan. (1:49) Roxie. (Harvey)

The Impossible Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona (2007’s The Orphanage) directs The Impossible, a relatively modestly-budgeted take on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, based on the real story of a Spanish family who experienced the disaster. Here, the family (Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, three young sons) is British, on a Christmas vacation from dad’s high-stress job in Japan. Beachy bliss is soon ruined by that terrible series of waves; they hit early in the film, and Bayona offers a devastatingly realistic depiction of what being caught in a tsunami must feel like: roaring, debris-filled water threatening death by drowning, impalement, or skull-crushing. And then, the anguish of surfacing, alive but injured, stranded, and miles from the nearest doctor, not knowing if your family members have perished. Without giving anything away (no more than the film’s suggestive title, anyway), once the survivors are established (and the film’s strongest performer, Watts, is relegated to hospital-bed scenes) The Impossible finds its way inevitably to melodrama, and triumph-of-the-human-spirit theatrics. As the family’s oldest son, 16-year-old Tom Holland is effective as a kid who reacts exactly right to crisis, morphing from sulky teen to thoughtful hero — but the film is too narrowly focused on its tourist characters, with native Thais mostly relegated to background action. It’s a disconnect that’s not quite offensive, but is still off-putting. (1:54) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Jack Reacher (2:10) Metreon.

The Last Stand With gun control issues dominating the news, what better time to release a movie that lovingly glorifies the wonders of excessive firepower? Fortunately for star Arnold Schwarzenegger, making his return to leading-man status after that little fling with politics, The Last Stand is stupidly enjoyable enough to make any such PC-minded realizations relatively fleeing ones. When a Mexican drug lord (who also happens to be an expert race-car driver) escapes from federal custody and begins speeding home in a super-Corvette, the lead FBI agent (Forest Whitaker, slumming big-time) realizes his only hope is a teeny Arizona border town that happens to be overseen by Sheriff Schwarzenegger. (Other residents include a couple of hapless deputies; an Iraq war vet; and a gun nut played by a cartoonishly obnoxious Johnny Knoxville.) Can this ragtag crew hold off first the drug lord’s advance team (led by a swaggering Peter Stormare), and then the head baddie himself? Duh. The biggest surprise The Last Stand offers is that it’s actually pretty fun — no doubt thanks to the combo of Korean director Kim Jee-woon (2008’s eccentric The Good, The Bad, and the Weird; 2003’s spooky A Tale of Two Sisters) and the heft of Schwarzenegger’s still-potent charisma. (1:47) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Law in These Parts Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s documentary is a rather extraordinary historical record: he interviews numerous retired Israeli judges and lawyers who shaped and enforced the country’s legal positions as occupiers of Palestinian land and "temporary guardians" of a Palestinian populace living under foreign occupation. The key word there is "temporary" — in using here a different (military rather than civil) justice from the one Israeli citizens experience, Israel has been able to exert the extraordinary powers of an invading force in wartime. But what is "temporary" about an occupation that’s now lasted nearly 45 years? How can the state justify (under Geneva Convention rules, for one thing) building permanent Jewish settlements that now house about half a million Israelis on land that is as yet not legally Israel’s? By constantly changing the terms and laws of occupation, they do just that. If many policies have been perhaps necessary to control terrorist attacks, one can argue that they and other policies have created the climate in which oppositional fervor and terroristic acts were bound to flourish. That, of course, is a political-ethical judgement far beyond the public purview of the judges and others here, whose dry legalese admits no personal culpability — and indeed sometimes seems almost absurdly divorced from real-world ethics and consequence, which of course serves an increasingly rigid governmental stance just fine. Without preaching, The Law in These Parts raises a number of discomfiting questions about bending law to suit an agenda that in any other context would seem frankly unlawful. (1:40) Roxie. (Harvey)

Let Fury Have the Hour Though its message — that creative expression is a powerful, meaningful way to fight oppression — is a valuable one, Antonino D’Ambrosio’s Let Fury Have the Hour covers turf well-trod for anyone who has ever seen a documentary about punk rock and social justice. (Especially when it contains usual suspects like Ian MacKaye, Shepard Fairey, and Billy Bragg waxing nostalgic about how nonconformist they were in the 1980s.) In truth, Fury is more collage than doc, pasting together talking-head interviews (also here: Chuck D, John Sayles, Van Jones, Tom Morello, Boots Riley, and Wayne Kramer, plus a few token women, chiefly Eve Ensler) with a mish-mash of sepia-toned stock footage that more or less thematically compliments what’s being discussed at the time. A more focused examination of D’Ambrosio’s thesis might have resulted in a more effective film — like, say, an in-depth look at how Sayles’ politically-themed films (here, he reads from the script for 1987’s Matewan in a frustratingly brief segment) are echoed in works by contemporary artists and citizen journalists, particularly now that the internet has opened up a global platform for protest films. Listen: I admire what the film is trying to do. I am OK with watching yet another doc that contains the phrase "Punk rock politicized me." But with too much lip service and precious little depth, Fury‘s fury ends up feeling a bit diluted. (1:40) Balboa. (Eddy)

Life of Pi Several filmmakers including Alfonso Cuarón, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and M. Night Shyamalan had a crack at Yann Martel’s "unfilmable" novel over the last decade, without success. That turns out to have been a very good thing, since Ang Lee and scenarist David Magee have made probably the best movie possible from the material — arguably even an improvement on it. Framed as the adult protagonist’s (Irrfan Khan) lengthy reminiscence to an interested writer (Rafe Spall) it chronicles his youthful experience accompanying his family and animals from their just shuttered zoo on a cargo ship voyage from India to Canada. But a storm capsizes the vessel, stranding teenaged Pi (Suraj Sharma) on a lifeboat with a mini menagerie — albeit one swiftly reduced by the food chain in action to one Richard Parker, a whimsically named Bengal tiger. This uneasy forced cohabitation between Hindu vegetarian and instinctual carnivore is an object lesson in survival as well as a fable about the existence of God, among other things. Shot in 3D, the movie has plenty of enchanted, original imagery, though its outstanding technical accomplishment may lie more in the application of CGI (rather than stereoscopic photography) to something reasonably intelligent for a change. First-time actor Sharma is a natural, while his costar gives the most remarkable performance by a wild animal this side of Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a charmed, lovely experience. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Harvey)

Lincoln Distinguished subject matter and an A+ production team (Steven Spielberg directing, Daniel Day-Lewis starring, Tony Kushner adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Williams scoring every emotion juuust so) mean Lincoln delivers about what you’d expect: a compelling (if verbose), emotionally resonant (and somehow suspenseful) dramatization of President Lincoln’s push to get the 13th amendment passed before the start of his second term. America’s neck-deep in the Civil War, and Congress, though now without Southern representation, is profoundly divided on the issue of abolition. Spielberg recreates 1865 Washington as a vibrant, exciting place, albeit one filled with so many recognizable stars it’s almost distracting wondering who’ll pop up in the next scene: Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant! Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln! Lena Dunham’s shirtless boyfriend on Girls (Adam Driver) as a soldier! Most notable among the huge cast are John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and a daffy James Spader as a trio of lobbyists; Sally Field as the troubled First Lady; and likely Oscar contenders Tommy Lee Jones (as winningly cranky Rep. Thaddeus Stevens) and Day-Lewis, who does a reliably great job of disappearing into his iconic role. (2:30) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

LUV Baltimore native Sheldon Candis drew from his own childhood for this coming-of-age tale, which takes place in a single day as 11-year-old "little man" Woody (Michael Rainey Jr.) tags along with his uncle, Vincent (Common), recently out of jail and rapidly heading back down the criminal path. With both parents out of the picture, Woody’s been raised by his grandmother (Lonette McKee), so he idolizes Vincent even though it’s soon clear the short-tempered man is no hero. Of course, things go horribly awry, bloody lessons are learned, tears are shed, etc. Despite the story’s autobiographical origins, the passable LUV suffers greatly by inviting comparisons to The Wire — the definitive docudrama examining drug crime in Baltimore. Most blatantly, sprinkled into an all-star cast (Dennis Haysbert, Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton) are supporting characters played by Wire icons Michael K. "Omar" Williams (as a cop) and Anwan "Slim Charles" Glover (as a meaner Slim Charles, basically). Perhaps if you’ve never seen the show this wouldn’t be distracting — but if that’s the case, you should really be watching The Wire instead of LUV anyway. (1:34) Metreon. (Eddy)

Mama From bin Laden to wild babes in woods, Jessica Chastain can’t seem to grab a break. Equipped with just the bare outlines of a character, however, she’s one of the few pleasures in this missed-opportunity of a grim, ghostly fairy tale. Expanding his short of the same name, director Andres Muschietti kicks off his yarn on a sadly familiar note in these days of seemingly escalating gun violence: little sisters Victoria and Lily have disappeared from their home, shortly after their desperate father (Game of Thrones‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has gone on a shooting spree. They repair to an abandoned cabin scattered with mid-century modern furniture. Five years on, the girls’ scruffy artist uncle Lucas (also Coster-Waldau) is still searching for them, supported by his punk rock girlfriend Annabel (Chastain). The little girls lost are finally found by trackers — and they appear to be hopelessly feral, with the angelic-looking Victoria (Megan Charpentier), acting as the ringleader and the younger, bedraggled Lily (Maya Dawe) given to sleeping under beds and eating on all fours next to the dog bowl. The arty couple take them in and move into a "test house" provided by the sisters’ enthralled therapist (Daniel Kash), obviously psyched to study not one but two Kaspar Hausers. The traumatized kids are clearly haunted by their experience — in more ways than one — as inexplicable bumps go off, night and day, and Misfits t-shirt-clad Annabel discovers the real meaning of goth while getting in touch with her seemingly deeply buried maternal urges. Unfortunately, despite possessing the raw material for a truly scary outing that plunges to the core of our primal instincts (what’s scarier than an unsocialized kid that’s capable of anything?) and showing off Muschietti’s occasional instances of cinematic flair (as when multiple rooms are shown using split-screens), Mama ends up running away from the filmmaker and is finally simply spoiled by its mawkishly sentimental finale. It doesn’t help that the inadequate script sports logic holes that a mama could drive a truck though. (1:40) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Les Misérables There is a not-insignificant portion of the population who already knows all the words to all the songs of this musical-theater warhorse, around since the 1980s and honored here with a lavish production by Tom Hooper (2010’s The King’s Speech). As other reviews have pointed out, this version only tangentially concerns Victor Hugo’s French Revolution tale; its true raison d’être is swooning over the sight of its big-name cast crooning those famous tunes. Vocals were recorded live on-set, with microphones digitally removed in post-production — but despite this technical achievement, there’s a certain inorganic quality to the proceedings. Like The King’s Speech, the whole affair feels spliced together in the Oscar-creation lab. The hardworking Hugh Jackman deserves the nomination he’ll inevitably get; jury’s still out on Anne Hathaway’s blubbery, "I cut my hair for real, I am so brave!" performance. (2:37) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

My Worst Nightmare First seen locally in the San Francisco Film Society’s 2012 "French Cinema Now" series, My Worst Nightmare follows icy art curator Agathe (Isabelle Huppert) as her airless, tightly-controlled world begins to crumble — thanks in no small part to an exuberantly uncouth, down-on-his-luck Belgian contractor named Patrick (Benoît Poelvoorde). (His obnoxious, freewheeling presence in Agathe’s precision-mapped orbit gives rise to the film’s title.) Director and co-writer Anne Fontaine (2009’s Coco Before Chanel) injects plenty of offbeat, occasionally raunchy humor into what could’ve been a predictable personal-liberation tale — the sight of classy dame Huppert driving through a bikini car wash, for instance. (1:43) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Parental Guidance (1:36) Metreon.

Promised Land Gus Van Sant’s fracking fable — co-written by stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski, from a story by Dave Eggers — offers a didactic lesson in environmental politics, capped off by the earth-shattering revelation that billion-dollar corporations are sleazy and evil. You don’t say! Formulated like a Capra movie, Promised Land follows company man Steve Butler (Matt Damon) as he and sales partner Sue (Frances McDormand) travel to a small Pennsylvania town to convince its (they hope) gullible residents to allow drilling on their land. But things don’t go as smoothly as hoped, when the pair faces opposition from a science teacher with a brainiac past (Hal Holbrook), and an irritatingly upbeat green activist (Krasinski) breezes into town to further monkey-wrench their scheme. That Damon is such a likeable actor actually works against him here; his character arc from soulless salesman to emotional-creature-with-a-conscience couldn’t be more predictable or obvious. McDormand’s wonderfully biting supporting performance is the best (and only) reason to see this ponderous, faux-folksy tale, which targets an audience that likely already shares its point of view. (1:46) SF Center. (Eddy)

The Rabbi’s Cat A rabbi, a Muslim musician, two Russians (a Jew and a boozy Christian), and two talking animals hop into an antique Citroën for a road trip across Africa. No, it’s not the set-up for a joke; it’s the premise for this charming animated film, adapted from Joann Sfar’s graphic novel (the author co-directs with Antoine Delesvaux). In 1930s Algiers, a rabbi’s pet cat suddenly develops the ability to talk — and read and write, by the way — and wastes no time in sharing opinions, particularly when it comes to religion ("God is just a comforting invention!") When a crate full of Russian prayer books — and one handsome artist — arrives at the rabbi’s house, man and cat are drawn into the refugee’s search for an Ethiopian city populated by African Jews. Though it’s not suitable for younger kids (there’s kitty mating, and a few bursts of surprising violence) or diehard Tintin fans (thanks to a randomly cranky spoof of the character), The Rabbi’s Cat is a lushly illustrated, witty tale of cross-cultural clashes and connections. Rockin’ soundtrack, too. (1:29) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Silver Linings Playbook After guiding two actors to Best Supporting Oscars in 2010’s The Fighter, director David O. Russell returns (adapting his script from Matthew Quick’s novel) with another darkly comedic film about a complicated family that will probably earn some gold of its own. Though he’s obviously not ready to face the outside world, Pat (Bradley Cooper) checks out of the state institution he’s been court-ordered to spend eight months in after displaying some serious anger-management issues. He moves home with his football-obsessed father (Robert De Niro) and worrywart mother (Jacki Weaver of 2010’s Animal Kingdom), where he plunges into a plan to win back his estranged wife. Cooper plays Pat as a man vibrating with troubled energy — always in danger of flying into a rage, even as he pursues his forced-upbeat "silver linings" philosophy. But the movie belongs to Jennifer Lawrence, who proves the chops she showcased (pre-Hunger Games megafame) in 2010’s Winter’s Bone were no fluke. As the damaged-but-determined Tiffany, she’s the left-field element that jolts Pat out of his crazytown funk; she’s also the only reason Playbook‘s dance-competition subplot doesn’t feel eye-rollingly clichéd. The film’s not perfect, but Lawrence’s layered performance — emotional, demanding, bitchy, tough-yet-secretly-tender — damn near is. (2:01) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy)

Skyfall Top marks to Adele, who delivers a magnificent title song to cap off Skyfall‘s thrilling pre-credits chase scene. Unfortunate, then, that the film that follows squanders its initial promise. After a bomb attack on MI6, the clock is running out for Bond (Daniel Craig) and M (Judi Dench), accused of Cold War irrelevancy in a 21st century full of malevolent, stateless computer hackers. The audience, too, will yearn for a return to simpler times; dialogue about "firewalls" and "obfuscated code" never fails to sound faintly ridiculous, despite the efforts Ben Whishaw as the youthful new head of Q branch. Javier Bardem is creative and creepy as keyboard-tapping villain Raoul Silva, but would have done better with a megalomaniac scheme to take over the world. Instead, a small-potatoes revenge plot limps to a dull conclusion in the middle of nowhere. Skyfall never decides whether it prefers action, bon mots, and in-jokes to ponderous mythologizing and ripped-from-the-headlines speechifying — the result is a unsatisfying, uneven mixture. (2:23) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Ben Richardson)

Texas Chainsaw 3D (1:32) Metreon.

This is 40 A spin-off of sorts from 2007’s Knocked Up, Judd Apatow’s This is 40 continues the story of two characters nobody cared about from that earlier film: Debbie (Leslie Mann, Apatow’s wife) and Pete (Paul Rudd), plus their two kids (played by Mann and Apatow’s kids). Pete and Debbie have accumulated all the trappings of comfortable Los Angeles livin’: luxury cars, a huge house, a private personal trainer, the means to throw catered parties and take weekend trips to fancy hotels (and to whimsically decide to go gluten-free), and more Apple products than have ever before been shoehorned into a single film. But! This was crap they got used to having before Pete’s record label went into the shitter, and Debbie’s dress-shop employee (Charlene Yi, another Knocked Up returnee who is one of two people of color in the film; the other is an Indian doctor who exists so Pete can mock his accent) started stealing thousands from the register. How will this couple and their whiny offspring deal with their financial reality? By arguing! About bullshit! In every scene! For nearly two and a half hours! By the time Melissa McCarthy, as a fellow parent, shows up to command the film’s only satisfying scene — ripping Pete and Debbie a new one, which they sorely deserve — you’re torn between cheering for her and wishing she’d never appeared. Seeing McCarthy go at it is a reminder that most comedies don’t make you feel like stabbing yourself in the face. I’m honestly perplexed as to who this movie’s audience is supposed to be. Self-loathing yuppies? Masochists? Apatow’s immediate family, most of whom are already in the film? (2:14) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Wreck-It Ralph Wreck-It Ralph cribs directly from the Toy Story series: when the lights go off in the arcade, video game characters gather to eat, drink, and endure existential crises. John C. Reilly is likable and idiosyncratic as Ralph, the hulking, ham-fisted villain of a game called Fix-It-Felix. Fed up with being the bad guy, Ralph sneaks into gritty combat sim Hero’s Duty under the nose of Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), a blond space marine who mixes Mass Effect‘s Commander Shepard with a PG-rated R. Lee Ermey. Things go quickly awry, and soon Ralph is marooned in cart-racing candyland Sugar Rush, helping Vanellope Von Schweetz (a manic Sarah Silverman), with Calhoun and opposite number Felix (Jack McBrayer) hot on his heels. Though often aggressively childish, the humor will amuse kids, parents, and occasionally gamers, and the Disney-approved message about acceptance is moving without being maudlin. The animation, limber enough to portray 30 years of changing video game graphics, deserves special praise. (1:34) Metreon. (Ben Richardson)

Zero Dark Thirty The extent to which torture was actually used in the hunt for Osama Bin Ladin may never be known, though popular opinion will surely be shaped by this film, as it’s produced with the same kind of "realness" that made Kathryn Bigelow’s previous film, the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker (2008), so potent. Zero Dark Thirty incorporates torture early in its chronology — which begins in 2003, after a brief opening that captures the terror of September 11, 2001 using only 911 phone calls — but the practice is discarded after 2008, a sea-change year marked by the sight of Obama on TV insisting that "America does not torture." (The "any more" goes unspoken.) Most of Zero Dark Thirty is set in Pakistan and/or "CIA black sites" in undisclosed locations; it’s a suspenseful procedural that manages to make well-documented events (the July 2005 London bombings; the September 2008 Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing) seem shocking and unexpected. Even the raid on Bin Ladin’s HQ is nail-bitingly intense. The film immerses the viewer in the clandestine world, tossing out abbreviations ("KSM" for al-Qaeda bigwig Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) and jargon ("tradecraft") without pausing for a breath. It is thrilling, emotional, engrossing — the smartest, most tightly-constructed action film of the year. At the center of it all: a character allegedly based on a real person whose actual identity is kept top-secret by necessity. She’s interpreted here in the form of a steely CIA operative named Maya, played to likely Oscar-winning perfection by Jessica Chastain. No matter the film’s divisive subject matter, there’s no denying that this is a powerful performance. "Washington says she’s a killer," a character remarks after meeting this seemingly delicate creature, and he’s proven right long before Bin Ladin goes down. Some critics have argued that character is underdeveloped, but anyone who says that isn’t watching closely enough. Maya may not be given a traditional backstory, but there’s plenty of interior life there, and it comes through in quick, vulnerable flashes — leading up to the payoff of the film’s devastating final shot. (2:39) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

OPENING

Beware of Mr. Baker This mesmerizing bio-doc about volatile, wildly talented drummer Ginger Baker (Cream, Blind Faith) begins with the 70-something musician clocking director Jay Bulger in the face. After this opening, Bulger — who also wrote a deeply compelling article about Baker for Rolling Stone last year — wisely pulls himself out of the narrative, instead turning to a wealth of new interviews (with Baker, his trademark red locks faded to gray, and many of his musical and personal partners, including Eric Clapton and multiple ex-Mrs. Bakers), vintage performance footage, and artful animation to weave his tale. Baker’s colorfully-lived, improbably long life has been literally all over the map; he overcame a hardscrabble British childhood to find jazz and rock stardom, and along the way jammed with Fela Kuti in Nigeria (where he picked up his fierce love of polo), broke many hearts (his own kids’ among them) and lost multiple fortunes, spent a stint in the US, and eventually landed at his current farm in South Africa. Two constants: his musical genius, and his frustratingly jerky behavior — the consequence of a naturally prickly personality exacerbated by copious drug use and bitterness. A must-see for musicians and those who love them. (1:30) Roxie. (Eddy)

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton star in this fairy-tale action film directed by Tommy Wirkola (2009’s Dead Snow). (1:41) California.

In Another Country This latest bit of gamesmanship from South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo (2000’s Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors) has Isabelle Huppert playing three Frenchwomen named Anne visiting the same Korean beachside community under different circumstances in three separate but wryly overlapping stories. In the first, she’s a film director whose presence induces inapt overtures from both her married colleague-host and a strapping young lifeguard. In the more farcical second, she’s a horny spouse herself, married to an absent Korean man; in the third, a woman whose husband has run away with a Korean woman. The same actors as well as variations on the same characters and situations appear in each section, their rejiggered intersections poking fun at Koreans’ attitudes toward foreigners, among other topics. Airy and amusing, In Another Country is a playful divertissement that’s shiny as a bubble, and leaves about as much of a permanent impression. (1:39) (Harvey)

Movie 43 An A-list ensemble cast (Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Kate Winslet) and multiple directors (Peter Farrelly, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk) combine their star power for this 12-chapter comedy film. (1:37)

Parker "Jason Statham" is pretty much a distinct genre at this point, yeah? (1:58) Shattuck.

Quartet See "Smith Happens." (1:38) Embarcadero.

ONGOING

Amour Arriving in local theaters atop a tidal wave of critical hosannas, Amour now seeks to tempt popular acclaim — though actually liking this perfectly crafted, intensely depressing film (from Austrian director Michael Haneke) may be nigh impossible for most audience members. Eightysomething former music teachers Georges and Anne (the flawless Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) are living out their days in their spacious Paris apartment, going to classical concerts and enjoying the comfort of their relationship. Early in the film, someone tries to break into their flat — and the rest of Amour unfolds with a series of invasions, with Anne’s declining health the most distressing, though there are also unwanted visits from the couple’s only daughter (an appropriately self-involved Isabelle Huppert), an inept nurse who disrespects Anne and curses out Georges, and even a rogue pigeon that wanders in more than once. As Anne fades into a hollow, twisted, babbling version of her former self, Georges also becomes hollow and twisted, taking care of her while grimly awaiting the inevitable. Of course, the movie’s called Amour, so there’s some tenderness involved. But if you seek heartwarming hope and last-act uplift, look anywhere but here. (2:07) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Broken City Catherine Zeta-Jones’ measured performance and killer wardrobe run away with this uneven political thriller about a made-up Manhattan with real(-ish) problems. Russell Crowe is only slightly improving his record post-Les Mis, as he plays another harried and morally confused agent "for the people." Here, he’s Mayor Hostetler, a swaggering politico with fingers in New York’s real estate cookie jar and the sort of "get shit done" directive that results in bodies lying in NYC’s overfilled gutters. Good thing he has Mark Wahlberg in his back pocket, a cop who slipped a murder wrap and now scrapes the bottom for gigs as a private detective. Seven years ago Billy Taggart (Wahlberg) was seeking vigilante justice for the victim of a rape-murder in the city’s biggest ghetto. The victim became a household name but the killer was let off, leading to cries about the validity of NY’s justice system and to allusions to the Central Park Five. Broken City is less about a broken City and more about broken Men, and there are certain elements that seem too subtle for a story built on such bald-faced and predictable strategy. Between a script that’s struggling to demonstrate moral compromise and integrity, and direction (by Allen Hughes) that’s as sensitive to nuance as a border collie, it’s hard to find much beyond Zeta-Jones’ shoe stylings to admire. (1:49) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Gangster Squad It’s 1949, and somewhere in the Hollywood hills, a man has been tied hand and foot to a pair of automobiles with the engines running. Coyotes pace in the background like patrons queuing up for a table at Flour + Water, and when dinner is served, the presentation isn’t very pretty. We’re barely five minutes into Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad, and fair warning has been given of the bloodletting to come. None of it’s quite as visceral as the opening scene, but Fleischer (2009’s Zombieland) packs his tale of urban warfare with plenty of stylized slaughter to go along with the glamour shots of mob-run nightclubs, leggy pin-curled dames, and Ryan Gosling lounging at the bar cracking wise. At the center of all the gunplay and firebombing is what’s framed as a battle for the soul of Los Angeles, waged between transplanted Chicago mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) — who wields terms like "progress" and "manifest destiny" as a rationale for a continental turf war — and a police sergeant named John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), tasked with bringing down Cohen’s empire. The assignment requires working under cover so deep that only the police chief (Nick Nolte) and the handpicked members of O’Mara’s "gangster squad" — ncluding Gosling, a half-jaded charmer who poaches Cohen’s arm candy (Emma Stone) — know of its existence. This leaves plenty of room for improvisation, and the film pauses now and again to wonder about what happens when you pit brutal amorality against brutal morality, but it’s a rhetorical question, and no one shows much interest in it. Dragged down by talking points that someone clearly wanted wedged in (as well as by O’Mara’s ponderous voice-overs), the film does better when it abandons gravitas and refocuses on spinning its mythic tale of wilder times in the Golden State. (1:53) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

The Last Stand With gun control issues dominating the news, what better time to release a movie that lovingly glorifies the wonders of excessive firepower? Fortunately for star Arnold Schwarzenegger, making his return to leading-man status after that little fling with politics, The Last Stand is stupidly enjoyable enough to make any such PC-minded realizations relatively fleeing ones. When a Mexican drug lord (who also happens to be an expert race-car driver) escapes from federal custody and begins speeding home in a super-Corvette, the lead FBI agent (Forest Whitaker, slumming big-time) realizes his only hope is a teeny Arizona border town that happens to be overseen by Sheriff Schwarzenegger. (Other residents include a couple of hapless deputies; an Iraq war vet; and a gun nut played by a cartoonishly obnoxious Johnny Knoxville.) Can this ragtag crew hold off first the drug lord’s advance team (led by a swaggering Peter Stormare), and then the head baddie himself? Duh. The biggest surprise The Last Stand offers is that it’s actually pretty fun — no doubt thanks to the combo of Korean director Kim Jee-woon (2008’s eccentric The Good, The Bad, and the Weird; 2003’s spooky A Tale of Two Sisters) and the heft of Schwarzenegger’s still-potent charisma. (1:47) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Law in These Parts Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s documentary is a rather extraordinary historical record: he interviews numerous retired Israeli judges and lawyers who shaped and enforced the country’s legal positions as occupiers of Palestinian land and "temporary guardians" of a Palestinian populace living under foreign occupation. The key word there is "temporary" — in using here a different (military rather than civil) justice from the one Israeli citizens experience, Israel has been able to exert the extraordinary powers of an invading force in wartime. But what is "temporary" about an occupation that’s now lasted nearly 45 years? How can the state justify (under Geneva Convention rules, for one thing) building permanent Jewish settlements that now house about half a million Israelis on land that is as yet not legally Israel’s? By constantly changing the terms and laws of occupation, they do just that. If many policies have been perhaps necessary to control terrorist attacks, one can argue that they and other policies have created the climate in which oppositional fervor and terroristic acts were bound to flourish. That, of course, is a political-ethical judgement far beyond the public purview of the judges and others here, whose dry legalese admits no personal culpability — and indeed sometimes seems almost absurdly divorced from real-world ethics and consequence, which of course serves an increasingly rigid governmental stance just fine. Without preaching, The Law in These Parts raises a number of discomfiting questions about bending law to suit an agenda that in any other context would seem frankly unlawful. (1:40) Roxie. (Harvey)

Mama From bin Laden to wild babes in woods, Jessica Chastain can’t seem to grab a break. Equipped with just the bare outlines of a character, however, she’s one of the few pleasures in this missed-opportunity of a grim, ghostly fairy tale. Expanding his short of the same name, director Andres Muschietti kicks off his yarn on a sadly familiar note in these days of seemingly escalating gun violence: little sisters Victoria and Lily have disappeared from their home, shortly after their desperate father (Game of Thrones‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has gone on a shooting spree. They repair to an abandoned cabin scattered with mid-century modern furniture. Five years on, the girls’ scruffy artist uncle Lucas (also Coster-Waldau) is still searching for them, supported by his punk rock girlfriend Annabel (Chastain). The little girls lost are finally found by trackers — and they appear to be hopelessly feral, with the angelic-looking Victoria (Megan Charpentier), acting as the ringleader and the younger, bedraggled Lily (Maya Dawe) given to sleeping under beds and eating on all fours next to the dog bowl. The arty couple take them in and move into a "test house" provided by the sisters’ enthralled therapist (Daniel Kash), obviously psyched to study not one but two Kaspar Hausers. The traumatized kids are clearly haunted by their experience — in more ways than one — as inexplicable bumps go off, night and day, and Misfits t-shirt-clad Annabel discovers the real meaning of goth while getting in touch with her seemingly deeply buried maternal urges. Unfortunately, despite possessing the raw material for a truly scary outing that plunges to the core of our primal instincts (what’s scarier than an unsocialized kid that’s capable of anything?) and showing off Muschietti’s occasional instances of cinematic flair (as when multiple rooms are shown using split-screens), Mama ends up running away from the filmmaker and is finally simply spoiled by its mawkishly sentimental finale. It doesn’t help that the inadequate script sports logic holes that a mama could drive a truck though. (1:40) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Arnold’s baaaack! Plus more new movies

Sue Vaughan
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Arnold’s baaaack! Plus more new movies

Get to the theatah! California’s (thankfully, former) Governor returns to the multiplex to do what he does best: speak in one-liners and carry a big gun. My review of The Last Stand below the jump, along with short takes on the Mark Wahlberg-Russell Crowe crime drama Broken City, and more.

Also this week: Hellbound?, a doc about damnation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (Dennis Harvey’s take here); the Mostly British Film Festival (my round-up here); and the Guillermo del Toro-endorsed horror flick Mama, starring Jessica “Zero Dark Oscar” Chastain. Plus, tonight, the original Django (1966) screens at the Castro! More here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCYaWxHJ_BU

Broken City Catherine Zeta-Jones’ measured performance and killer wardrobe run away with this uneven political thriller about a made-up Manhattan with real(-ish) problems. Russell Crowe is only slightly improving his record post-Les Mis, as he plays another harried and morally confused agent “for the people.” Here, he’s Mayor Hostetler, a swaggering politico with fingers in New York’s real estate cookie jar and the sort of “get shit done” directive that results in bodies lying in NYC’s overfilled gutters. Good thing he has Mark Wahlberg in his back pocket, a cop who slipped a murder wrap and now scrapes the bottom for gigs as a private detective. Seven years ago Billy Taggart (Wahlberg) was seeking vigilante justice for the victim of a rape-murder in the city’s biggest ghetto. The victim became a household name but the killer was let off, leading to cries about the validity of NY’s justice system and to allusions to the Central Park Five. Broken City is less about a broken City and more about broken Men, and there are certain elements that seem too subtle for a story built on such bald-faced and predictable strategy. Between a script that’s struggling to demonstrate moral compromise and integrity, and direction (by Allen Hughes) that’s as sensitive to nuance as a border collie, it’s hard to find much beyond Zeta-Jones’ shoe stylings to admire. (1:49) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)

The Last Stand With gun control issues dominating the news, what better time to release a movie that lovingly glorifies the wonders of excessive firepower? Fortunately for star Arnold Schwarzenegger, making his return to leading-man status after that little fling with politics, The Last Stand is stupidly enjoyable enough to make any such PC-minded realizations relatively fleeing ones. When a Mexican drug lord (who also happens to be an expert race-car driver) escapes from federal custody and begins speeding home in a super-Corvette, the lead FBI agent (Forest Whitaker, slumming big-time) realizes his only hope is a teeny Arizona border town that happens to be overseen by Sheriff Schwarzenegger. (Other residents include a couple of hapless deputies; an Iraq war vet; and a gun nut played by a cartoonishly obnoxious Johnny Knoxville.) Can this ragtag crew hold off first the drug lord’s advance team (led by a swaggering Peter Stormare), and then the head baddie himself? Duh. The biggest surprise The Last Stand offers is that it’s actually pretty fun — no doubt thanks to the combo of Korean director Kim Jee-woon (2008’s eccentric The Good, The Bad, and the Weird; 2003’s spooky A Tale of Two Sisters) and the heft of Schwarzenegger’s still-potent charisma. (1:47) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-NeApCGEDE

The Law in These Parts Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s documentary is a rather extraordinary historical record: he interviews numerous retired Israeli judges and lawyers who shaped and enforced the country’s legal positions as occupiers of Palestinian land and “temporary guardians” of a Palestinian populace living under foreign occupation. The key word there is “temporary” — in using here a different (military rather than civil) justice from the one Israeli citizens experience, Israel has been able to exert the extraordinary powers of an invading force in wartime. But what is “temporary” about an occupation that’s now lasted nearly 45 years? How can the state justify (under Geneva Convention rules, for one thing) building permanent Jewish settlements that now house about half a million Israelis on land that is as yet not legally Israel’s? By constantly changing the terms and laws of occupation, they do just that. If many policies have been perhaps necessary to control terrorist attacks, one can argue that they and other policies have created the climate in which oppositional fervor and terroristic acts were bound to flourish. That, of course, is a political-ethical judgement far beyond the public purview of the judges and others here, whose dry legalese admits no personal culpability — and indeed sometimes seems almost absurdly divorced from real-world ethics and consequence, which of course serves an increasingly rigid governmental stance just fine. Without preaching, The Law in These Parts raises a number of discomfiting questions about bending law to suit an agenda that in any other context would seem frankly unlawful. (1:40) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWleS2KfRY0

Let Fury Have the Hour Though its message — that creative expression is a powerful, meaningful way to fight oppression — is a valuable one, Antonino D’Ambrosio’s Let Fury Have the Hour covers turf well-trod for anyone who has ever seen a documentary about punk rock and social justice. (Especially when it contains usual suspects like Ian MacKaye, Shepard Fairey, and Billy Bragg waxing nostalgic about how nonconformist they were in the 1980s.) In truth, Fury is more collage than doc, pasting together talking-head interviews (also here: Chuck D, John Sayles, Van Jones, Tom Morello, Boots Riley, and Wayne Kramer, plus a few token women, chiefly Eve Ensler) with a mish-mash of sepia-toned stock footage that more or less thematically compliments what’s being discussed at the time. A more focused examination of D’Ambrosio’s thesis might have resulted in a more effective film — like, say, an in-depth look at how Sayles’ politically-themed films (here, he reads from the script for 1987’s Matewan in a frustratingly brief segment) are echoed in works by contemporary artists and citizen journalists, particularly now that the internet has opened up a global platform for protest films. Listen: I admire what the film is trying to do. I am OK with watching yet another doc that contains the phrase “Punk rock politicized me.” But with too much lip service and precious little depth, Fury‘s fury ends up feeling a bit diluted. (1:40) Balboa. (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyvfVyV1eq0

LUV Baltimore native Sheldon Candis drew from his own childhood for this coming-of-age tale, which takes place in a single day as 11-year-old “little man” Woody (Michael Rainey Jr.) tags along with his uncle, Vincent (Common), recently out of jail and rapidly heading back down the criminal path. With both parents out of the picture, Woody’s been raised by his grandmother (Lonette McKee), so he idolizes Vincent even though it’s soon clear the short-tempered man is no hero. Of course, things go horribly awry, bloody lessons are learned, tears are shed, etc. Despite the story’s autobiographical origins, the passable LUV suffers greatly by inviting comparisons to The Wire — the definitive docudrama examining drug crime in Baltimore. Most blatantly, sprinkled into an all-star cast (Dennis Haysbert, Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton) are supporting characters played by Wire icons Michael K. “Omar” Williams (as a cop) and Anwan “Slim Charles” Glover (as a meaner Slim Charles, basically). Perhaps if you’ve never seen the show this wouldn’t be distracting — but if that’s the case, you should really be watching The Wire instead of LUV anyway. (1:34) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk6IB_Kgl4E

The Rabbi’s Cat A rabbi, a Muslim musician, two Russians (a Jew and a boozy Christian), and two talking animals hop into an antique Citroën for a road trip across Africa. No, it’s not the set-up for a joke; it’s the premise for this charming animated film, adapted from Joann Sfar’s graphic novel (the author co-directs with Antoine Delesvaux). In 1930s Algiers, a rabbi’s pet cat suddenly develops the ability to talk — and read and write, by the way — and wastes no time in sharing opinions, particularly when it comes to religion (“God is just a comforting invention!”) When a crate full of Russian prayer books — and one handsome artist — arrives at the rabbi’s house, man and cat are drawn into the refugee’s search for an Ethiopian city populated by African Jews. Though it’s not suitable for younger kids (there’s kitty mating, and a few bursts of surprising violence) or diehard Tintin fans (thanks to a randomly cranky spoof of the character), The Rabbi’s Cat is a lushly illustrated, witty tale of cross-cultural clashes and connections. Rockin’ soundtrack, too. (1:29) (Cheryl Eddy)

Dick Meister: Good news for our neediest workers

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By Dick Meister

Bay Guardian columnist Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Here’s some good news for the new year: Ten states are set to raise their minimum wage rates on January first.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) calculates that the increased rates will boost the pay of more than 850,000  low-income  workers in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

The rates, raised in accord with state laws requiring automatic adjustments to keep pace with the rising cost of living, will go up by 10 to 35 cents an hour depending on the state. NELP figures that will mean $190 to $510 more a year for the four million workers who are paid at the minimum in those states.

That may not seem like much in today’s economy, but most of the workers are living at or near the poverty level, and it will mean a lot to them and their families. Another 140,000 needy low-paid workers will get indirect raises as pay rates are adjusted upward to reflect the new minimum wage in their states.

Nineteen states, including California, plus the District of Columbia will now have rates higher than the federal minimum. But though the increases in state minimum wages are vital, what’s needed now is also to raise the federal minimum so that all minimum wage workers are paid at a higher and uniform rate.  The federal rate has remained at $7.25 an hour  – about $15,000 a year for the average minimum wage worker – since it was set in 2007, although inflation has continued to erode its purchasing power

A bill now pending in Congress would raise the federal rate to $9.80 an hour by 2014, set the rate for tipped workers at 70 percent of that, and provide for the rates to rise to match future increases in the cost of living.

Federal action is badly needed, notes NELP’s executive director, Christine Owens, to “make sure workers earn wages that will at the very least support their basic needs. But earning an income that meets basic needs shouldn’t depend on the state where a working family lives.”

OK, but won’t increasing the pay of minimum wage workers discourage employers from hiring more workers and thus weaken the economy and hurt jobless workers? That’s often claimed by fiscal conservatives, but it’s simply not so.

NELP cites a large body of research clearly showing that “raising the minimum wage is an effective way to boost the incomes of low-paid workers without reducing employment.” NELP notes in particular research showing that “even during times of high unemployment, minimum wage increases did not lead to job loss.”

On the contrary. NELP estimates that increased spending by workers paid at the new state minimums will pump an estimated $183 million into the economy, creating the equivalent of more than 100,000 full-time jobs. Other estimates indicate that every dollar increase in wages for workers at the minimum rate would trigger more than $3000 in new spending.

But can employers afford to pay a higher minimum? Wouldn’t it be a burden on small businesses, as those opposing a raise often claim? No. NELP found that more than two-thirds of minimum wage workers are employed by large companies, and that many of the companies could easily afford a raise, especially since they “have fully recovered from the recession and are enjoying strong profits.”

There’s no excuse for inaction.  Ten states have done the right thing for their neediest working citizens. It’s time for Congress and President Obama to do their part.

Bay Guardian columnist Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

W. Kamau Bell plays the Fillmore, but doesn’t hold back for the home crowd

Andrew Lam
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A word of advice to the person who shouted, “who’s your favorite clothing designer?,” at W. Kamau Bell during his December 9th show at the Fillmore: a guy who wears a “Legalize Arizona” t-shirt during a night he considers one of the biggest moments of his career probably doesn’t give a shit about fashion. (Initially befuddled by the question, Bell eventually responded “Dickies.”) In addition, to the person who asked Bell whether or not he thought was a whore for being on TV, if he is a one … well you paid for your ticket to the show, right?

Glad we could get that out of the way first.

Bell’s Fillmore gig in the city where he resided for 15 years was one of seven on his Kamau Mau Uprising tour – the name an obvious nod to his radical political leanings. But perhaps none of the other venues held as much significance for him as this one. As he told me in our recent Guardian interview, “in some sense that’s bigger than getting a TV show, when they said that I was going to play the Fillmore.”

The comic’s giddiness in reuniting with the people of his adopted homeland (he grew up in Chicago) was evident as his 6’4” frame came lumbering onto the stage, just moments after opener Dave Thomason’s set. Thomason supposedly was going to go off stage and then come back on to introduce Bell, but Bell apparently didn’t get the memo and strolled right into the spotlight sans introduction from Thomason.

You don’t have to be Nate Silver (a.k.a., White Jesus, according to Bell) to predict how a show like this was going to begin. When a local comedian leaves town to get his own TV show in New York – Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell was recently renewed for a second season – it’s pretty much de rigueur that he opens by regaling the crowd with an anecdotal New York show biz story followed by some softball home crowd-pleasers.

And that’s how it happened. Bell told a story about the time he appeared on The View with Taylor Swift and his towncar was swarmed by six or seven deranged teenyboppers. As for the home crowd pleaser, Bell teased the East Bay denizens about their reluctance to cross the bridge for pretty much any reason. Low hanging fruit? Sure. Could he have easily flipped which side of the Bay he was joshing? Sure. Was it necessary? Absolutely! Broad home crowd pleasers are hypeman-stand-ins in the world of live comedy.

Once we got past the “homecoming” novelty (it never fully went away) Bell hit full stride, thwacking the audience with his favorite subject: race! A palpable liberal queasiness was rife in the historic theater when Bell struck his harshest notes, especially those recounting his own experiences with racism — he once got called the n-word twice in one night in the Mission.

And then as kicker, he chucked sexuality in the mix:

“Hey I’ve lived in San Francisco for 15 years, I never had any beef with gay people, I had way more beef with Chinese people than gay people. Way more, not even close and that’s why I don’t think we should let Chinese people get married. If there’s one point I’m making tonight it’s that Chinese people should not be allowed to get married…That’s the funny thing about San Francisco, it has this reputation of being gay but it’s way more Asian than gay and on some level, gay trumps Asian.”

For the record W. Kamau Bell isn’t actually against Chinese marriage.

Bell’s best quality is his ability to derive humor from seemingly humorless racial topics, distributing laughter equally among the crowd. At no point during the show did it seem like a certain joke got more laughs from people of a certain race. No one else can make the Fillmore ignite in uproarious laughter with a joke skewering the supposed notion that black people were responsible for Prop. 8 passing.

Bell’s “I’m glad to be back!” moment played out exactly like it was scripted. It took place in the perfect setting. Nostalgia and a familiar audience drove Bell’s success at the Fillmore. His biggest challenge, of course, lies ahead: replicating those fuzzy feelings in TV land. 

 

Phantasms

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Phantasms

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Scene: Midnight, Tiara Sensation drag pageant, Rickshaw Stop, September. A naked, enormously white-and-purple-bewigged figure in two-foot-high Plexiglass heels, laid across three raised Plexiglass pillars, faces away from us. The pitched down strains of Frank Ocean’s “Pyramid,” his voice syrupped into a slo-mo Judy Garland phantasmagoria, drown us in waves of bass. Sheee’s wooorkiiing at the Pyyyramid toniiiight.

Awkwardly, riskily the figure rises almost to the rafters, its back still to us, spreads its legs, and begins to pull a tangled string of multicolored Christmas lights from her crotch. It performs this deliberately, turning the Rickshaw stage into a pressure cooker of strobe lights, sexual horror, and incipient danger — a strip club where no one can hear you scream. The atmosphere is so tense that when the figure finally turns around to reveal her eyeless, bloody-mouthed, death-pale self, as Ocean’s voice tweaks a level higher, shivers and gasps run right through the audience. Shiva the Great Destroyer, her tits bound with duct tape, a makeshift pouch at her crotch the source of her glittering lights.

It’s an out-of-body look that works. And it’s emblematic of a new glitchy-nightmare drag style (or the reboot of one) that’s bewitching clubgoers.

DIA DEAR

The performer was the amazing Dia Dear, one of a number of recent young arrivals who’ve zapped nightlife to another level by unselfconsciously — and quite organically — raiding the shelves of performance art, horror films, contemporary R&B, club kid history, and the Walgreen’s down the street to create striking personae for themselves, and electrify the city’s drag stages. They’re also so freaking smart it scares me, no Christmas crotch lights required.

Drag as confrontational, sometimes blood-spilling performance art has a long history here, of course, from the Cockettes in the 1970s, through the Popstitute and Club Uranus scenes in the early ’90s, through Trannyshack into the ’00s. It’s currently found a home at the Some Thing party every Friday at the Stud, High Fantasy every Tuesday at Aunt Charlie’s, and the Dark Room monthly party at Hot Spot. Iconic, sensibility-scrambling club kid styles like those of Michael Alig, Desi Monster, James St. James, our own Phatima Rude and Ggreg Taylor, and the ultimate drag inverter-perverter Leigh Bowery are all the rage in this retro-minded, post-Gaga moment. But something about this fresh wave, something about how it’s coming from people with no nightlife background at all, is different. Drag stages have become the affordable breeding ground for committed performance artists, expressing essential truths about our moment. Mere lipsyncing is so last century.

boychild

“I never even knew who Leigh Bowery was until people started mentioning his name this summer,” boychild, another of this new tribe, told me over the phone. (I live next door to boychild, and it’s not rare to find a neon-yellow spray-painted birdcage, a chandelier made of wigs, or an entire store display case sitting outside, waiting to become part of a perspective-shattering outfit or brandished onstage in a cyber-Wiccan, dystopian android ritual.) Like Dia, boychild just started going out to clubs very recently — pretty much arriving out of nowhere, both of them declining to share their pasts — and when she did she was almost fully formed as a stage presence, with a genius sense of makeup and a cerebral agenda.

http://www.vimeo.com/49244470

“Everything I do is a reaction to being categorized: as a person of color, as a female-bodied queer,” she said. “It’s really bad right now, because it’s so hip to be black, “urban culture” is being fetishized to an enormous extent. I feel I encounter so much that makes me angry just existing in this world as a queer creature. My performance and look ties everything to my experience through my body. That’s where I express myself most fluidly, more acutely and vividly than through language.”

“Horror is where I’m coming from and where I exist,” Vain Hein, another performer, told me. Unlike Boy Child and Dia Dear, Vain Hein is open about his past: raised as a Born Again Christian in both Puget Sound and Phoenix, Arizona — “My childhood consisted of traveling between extremes” — he eventually found his way to the San Francisco Art Institute to study New Genres (this is actually a program there!) Vain Hein, who also performs to music he chops and screws at home, most explicitly ties sex to horror in his work — it’s chockful of surprise lactations, menstrual blood, live births, prosthetic triple breasts, and weird asses.

VAIN HEIN (Photo by Eric Harvieux)

“I think a lot about the apocalypse, it’s how I filter and understand the world. Decay, destruction — everything I wear is just what’s at hand around my house, held together with scotch tape and nail glue, the shitty, shitty, shittest things ever that just fall apart during the night, even when I’m not performing. I literally shed my skin.”

Yet even as a queer art student in San Francisco, liberated from fundamentalism, he never went out until last year. “I just had preconceived notions about what going to a gay club involved. Then my friend dragged me to a drag show in the spring, and I was like, ‘I can do this.’ I had studied mostly performance art and video so it was a good fit.”

Being a young queer and not going to the clubs is incomprehensible to me — but of course these 20-somethings grew up with the Internet, where you can be gay by yourself, and which looms like a Poltergeist vortex over their work.

“Oh, the vast blessing of the Internet,” boychild half-laughs. “I wish I was better at it. We’re so bombarded with information and images, just so much shit. That can be great because my generation has all of the past available. But we’ve been drowning in this stream of complete crap, too. I can define myself as a freaky-freak just by how I navigate it. But the power of live performance is channeling all that into immediate emotion, a moment when everyone’s together, something that can’t and should never be documented as just images.”

The charming and soft-spoken Dia Dear, who has become kind of a mother the nascent phantasmic drag scene — even though she, like boychild and Vain Hein, operates mostly outside traditional drag house family structures — says, “I haven’t quite figured out my relationship to the Internet. I feel like it’s a positive tool because it can connect us to the spirit of people who are dead. But it’s also this kind of dark rectangle in the corner that can suck out all your energy. It exists for its own sake. But to be on the Internet now, you have to have a certain level of narcissism and self-interest. A lot like you have to have as a performer. Performance and the Internet should be natural lovers, in a sense. Twisted together …entwined.”

 

DISQUIET NIGHT

This live experimental music concert at the Luggage Store Gallery is the brainchild of one of the brainiest yet approachable people I know, Marc Weidenbaum, who started his fascinating daily music site, Disquiet.com, 15 years ago — way before blogs were invented. His project Disquiet Junto challenges Soundcloud members to respond to a prompt with unique compositions. This round: field recordings of Hurricane Sandy, with Cullen Miller, Subnaught, Jared Smith, and more.

Thu/6, 8pm-10pm, $6–$10 sliding scale. Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market, SF. www.luggagestoregallery.org

 

DEE-TOY

Over the past year we’ve been treated to some tasty South African contemporary dance music flavor, from Black Coffee to Die Antewoord. (Somebody please get the Tshetsha Boys out here!) DJ Dee-toy, of Sebokeng Township continues this great microtrend with deep, deep house vibes and off-your-seat Afrofunk jams.

Fri/7, 10pm-4am, $15–$20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. afrofunk.eventbrite.com

 

GIGAMESH

Yeah, yeah, the phenomenally successful Minneapolitan remixes pop hits into slick little machines of hummable electro-disco bliss. He is also very, very fun.

Fri/7, 10pm-3am, $15–$20. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com

 

TORMENTA TROPICAL 5-YEAR ANNIVERSARY

This monthly party launched the nu-cumbia sound in SF, splashing some much-needed Latin electronica onto our shores, while introducing global bass to a new generation of underground-minded clubgoers. Some major players have stomped the floor here, and quite a few sonic permutations of TT’s sound have found more mainstream success — but founders Shawn Reynaldo and oro11, who brought their inspiration directly from Argentina, are keeping it crazy and real with a marathon tag-team set in celebration.

Sat/8, 10pm, $5 before 10pm, $10 after. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

 

ACCIDENTAL BEAR!

Gay people won’t stop rapping and blogging, and that’s OK! Our favorite local blogger (and perpetual crush) Mike “Accidental Bear” Enders covers way too much ground online. Now the super-enthusiastic cutie is celebrating two years of cybergossip by hosting a cartoon-colored gay rapstravaganza with Big Dipper, Rica Shay, and MC Crumbsnatcher, plus singer Tim Carr and DJs Medic and Dav-O of Double Duchess. There’ll be a lot of cute gay guys with beards.

Sat/8, 9pm, $3. Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF. www.accidentalbear.com

 

ATTACK OF THE TYPEWRITERS

Writer, drinker, arts-minded political activist, and bon vivant Hiya Swanhuyser is combining her interests in this neato, monthly, potentially wonderfully absurd thingie. Come to the Makeout Room, grab a drink, and then bang out a letter to any politician you have beef with. “One letter = 100 votes,” she says. Cocktails and truth to power, yasss. She’ll bring the actual, clickety-clackety typewriters! You bring the drink-fueled rage!

Tue/11, 6pm-8pm, free. Makeout Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.tinyurl.com/typeattack

 

Sharing the sun

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Sharing the sun

news@sfbg.com

Dan Rosen, the co-founder of Solar Mosaic, told us there was an ironic note to the devastation that Hurricane Sandy recently brought to New York City. The same power grid that helps create such fierce hurricanes through the burning of fossil fuels was unable to distribute power to thousands of homes, in mostly low-income neighborhoods, for weeks in the wake of storm.

Sandy brought to the forefront a huge energy challenge: how to move over to renewable energy fast enough to avoid catastrophic climate change and the killer storms in generates, build more efficient and reliable grids, and ensure that everyone can equitably participate in the new renewable energy economy. Bay Area energy entrepreneurs such as Rosen are working on innovative energy models that address those issues.

So far, the solar debate has mostly been between proponents of personal solar projects such as residential rooftop installations, also known as distributed generation, and those who back industrial-scale projects in far away plains and deserts.

But Rosen and other entrepreneurs are championing a middle route: They propose vastly increasing the prevalence of large solar power arrays and other renewable power plants close to where the energy is consumed, and opening up creative new ways for more people to buy into those projects.

This kind of approach to energy has the potential to democratize power production, avoid costly and environmentally unsound transmissions lines, and prevent utilities from monopolizing renewable energy.

 

CROWD FUNDING SOLAR

One of the barriers to the proliferation of solar is the relatively high upfront cost of purchasing and installing the panels. But with the rising costs of fossil fuel and the government incentives around renewable energy, investments in solar infrastructure can pay off big.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance crunched the numbers and according to a report that came out in June, large solar projects may soon pay a 5-9 percent return on investment. Big financial institutions and other corporate players have taken note of these figures and potential for profit they represent.

For example, Google has invested almost $1 billion in renewable energy that it plans to sell into the grid, including opening a $75 million fund for residential rooftop solar this past September. The problem is that big lenders are only looking for large-scale solar deals in order to cover their costs.

Enter Rosen and Solar Mosaic, who are coming up with a way to harness the power of crowds to fund the local and decentralized projects that big financial institutions tend to overlook. Solar Mosaic specializes in raising seed capital for solar projects by collecting many small investments into one pool.

That idea won Solar Mosaic a $2 million grant from the Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative, and attracted $3.5 million in venture capital.

“Our job — not just as Mosaic, but as society — is to make sure that the next energy economy has participation and ownership from millions of people and communities around the world,” Rosen said. “Crowd funding is really the beginning of a broader movement to democratize and distribute capital — enabling people to invest in projects they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to.”

This vision proved itself initially with a successful Kickstarter-like crowd funding platform that facilitated the development of five solar projects with the participation of more than 400 small investors and over $350,000 raised. The money went to fund solar panel installations on the roofs of community organizations in California and Arizona, including People’s Grocery in Oakland.

But there’s a catch. As the law currently stands, Solar Mosaic, or any company engaged in crowd funding, cannot offer any interest on the money invested by small online contributors. Since there is only a limited pool of people who believe in an energy revolution enough to shell out money for free, these examples are not entirely replicable. “We chose to start with those ones because they have very strong constituencies and we were using more a philanthropic model,” Rosen said.

The new model the company is developing is “getting people who are not necessarily just environmentalists invested in the clean energy economy,” Rosen said. “I want people who are like, ‘Oh, cool, I can make [a decent return] if I invest in this,’ and that gets more stakeholders than Sierra Club members. Let’s have millions of stakeholders with skin in the game.”

So how to move forward? The controversial federal Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act passed in April by Congress included a much-trumpeted crowd funding provision. The bill charged the Securities and Exchange Commission with the responsibility of putting meat on the legislation’s skeleton.

The SEC has until the Dec. 31 deadline to come up a set of rules allowing start-ups to gather small investments from ordinary people online while still offering provisions to protect the public from fraud. Many are skeptical that the SEC will complete the rule-writing process by the end of year.

Impatient to wait for the SEC and unsure whether the provisions will be practical for their purposes, Solar Mosaic is following a different path. It is using the funds raised already to pay for a lengthy and expensive filing with the SEC to upgrade its financial status.

Rosen said he couldn’t discuss details, but he said the new status should grant Solar Mosaic some leeway on offering financial returns to a wider variety of investors.

 

ENERGY IN THE CLOUD

Investment opportunities in local solar projects may be a good way to get people financially involved in clean energy but what about Californians who simply wish to purchase renewable energy for their homes or business?

California leads the country in rooftop solar installation, much to the credit of two programs: rebates that offset the cost of the panels through the California Solar Initiative and a program that allows those who own a rooftop with solar panels to offset their utility bills with credit from the energy they produce. California Public Utilities Commission statistics indicate these programs are largely responsible for some 1,379 megawatts of solar that have been installed in California at 131,874 different sites; about as much energy as one large nuclear reactor.

There has been record growth in adoption of solar by homeowners in the past two years, according to the CPUC, including a 364 percent jump in low income areas in since 2007. Yet that’s a far shot from the goal of 12,000 megawatts of local clean energy by 2020 called for by Gov. Jerry Brown in July.

Californians who do not have savings or a high credit score or who have shaded roofs usually can’t participate in the state’s renewable energy programs. But the most significant obstacle to increased participation is that only homeowners are eligible, while renters must contend with whatever power they can get from their utility. In a city like San Francisco, where almost two-third of residents rents, that is the overwhelming majority of citizens.

One solution that would circumvent the property-owning restrictions is allowing people to subscribe to solar gardens and other renewable energy facilities in their area and receive the same credit on their utility bill for their share of energy delivered to the grid. Decoupling where energy is made from who is able to buy it “allows everyone to participate, it makes it so it doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, the only thing that matters that you have a utility bill,” said Tom Price of CleanPath, a solar project investment firm.

California Senate Bill 843, introduced by Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) and coauthored by Price, attempted to create the legal framework for this kind of virtual transaction. Over the summer, it died in the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce as result of late session lobbying by Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. Notably, the state’s other largest utility, San Diego Gas and Electric, supported SB843. Also supporting the bill was a wide and diverse coalition ranging from the US Department of Defense to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Wolk plans to reintroduce SB843 in the next legislative session.

Price and other supporters see the bill’s eventual passage as inevitability: “In an age when so many transaction are virtual [and] we can put so many parts of our lives in the cloud, why can’t we put energy in the cloud and let people virtually subscribe to it? From the grid’s perspective, there is no difference.”

 

COOPERATIVE ENERGY

Democratizing the green energy industry is about allowing everyone to participate easily, but it is also about empowering those who are typically left out of the conversation.

Low-income and marginalized communities are often the ones most impacted by the environmental and health effects of burning fossils fuels. As the green energy revolution expands, those same communities will potentially be last in line to benefit from or exert influence over the transformation.

Considering that solar can be small scale and still financially sound in the long term, “there is an opportunity to rebuild the energy infrastructure…from the grassroots,” said Shiva Patel who co-founded Energy Solidarity Cooperative. Patel and his partner Dave Ron want to set up multi-stakeholder cooperatives that promote ownership and decision-making by consumers.

In a low-income neighborhood, residents are most likely tenants with little leverage and no eligibility for California’s renewable energy incentives. The cooperative model suggests residents can pool space, financial resources, and labor to become players in small-scale power production.

Normally, consumers considered downstream along the energy supply chain do not have the financial or political means to make decisions about the energy their communities use. “We are flipping that on its head,” said Ron “We want those people to be upstream. We are taking a very horizontal approach.“

The nuts and bolts of the coop’s structure may be new, but the distinction between those who own and control the community power project and those who finance it is important. There are three types of members in the cooperative: consumers, workers, and community investors. The consumers initiate the community power project and then maintain ownership of it. They contribute labor and money toward the project according to their ability. The workers are a group of energy experts organized into a collective that provide support and advice for the project. Decisions about the coop and its projects are left to the consumers and workers. Community investors are drawn to the project by crowd funding, but financial support does not buy them a decision making role. Once the upfront costs of the project are paid back to the community investors, consumers can keep the revenue or use it to foster more community power projects.

One source of inspiration for the duo is Co-op Power based in Boston, which has more than 150 full-time green jobs with living wages, spawning 10 businesses in the decade since its founding.

“We had a large number of people trying to solve the puzzle of how communities could come together and create sustainable energy models,” said President and CEO Lynn Benander. “It’s the brain child of many people.”

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