Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

Breast intentions

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Breast intentions

CULT CINEMA The 2010 Academy Awards ceremony did indeed mark historic
firsts. Oh, not just the fact that a woman finally won Best Director.
I mean somebody (Alec Baldwin? Steve Martin? I forget) saying
"vagina" live to a bazillion people worldwide, some of them no doubt way short of both voting age and bedtime. Of course you can say fuckwad, fuckhole, and fuckety fuckelstein on cable. But this was network, and the Oscars besides. How community standards do change.

Turn the clock back 50 years or so, and you couldn’t even say "pregnant" — when Lucy Ricardo was "expecting" on I Love Lucy, no euphemism was quite delicate enough. Before audience-restrictive MPAA ratings arrived a few years later, big-screen movies had to be pretty circumspect too, no matter that fully clothed Jayne Mansfield was more obscenely suggestive than the plain old medical-grade v-word could ever be. (FYI, Best Use of the Term in a Porn Title: Big Trouble in Little Vagina.)

That was in the mainstream, where actual public nudity was as yet unthinkable. A few rungs down the cultural ladder, however, things were gradually loosening up. Art and smut conveniently blurred from the late 1940s onward, as certain European filmmakers (Ingmar Bergman among them) began pushing toward greater sexual frankness. This delighted U.S. grindhouse distributors, who wasted little time buying exploitable features, then cutting the offending hell out of them even as their ads promised shocking, adults-only content.

Such was the case with Night of Lust, a 1962 production by Casablanca-born French producer-director-scenarist Jose Bénazéraf. In 1965 American entrepreneur R. Lee Frost announced this feature, purportedly "BANNED all over the world!," could "at last be seen in the U.S. uncut, after three years in court!" He neglected to mention he’d trimmed nearly 20 minutes from it himself.

What remained in the barely-hour-long version playing the Red Vic this week was a lurid jumble that makes it difficult to figure out Bénazéraf’s original intentions, let alone why some then considered him an important Nouvelle Vague figure. (Critics abandoned him once he went into straight-up porn.) But with its continuity gaps, moralizing narrator, atrocious dubbed dialogue, and positively Freudian camera fixation on myriad bared breasts, this supposedly true crime story torn from "Interpol File 218" is campy fun, at least.

This isn’t the Paris of lovers, but Sicilians vs. Frogs fighting over millions in heroin, plus strippers, stranglers, kidnappings, and catfights. Not adding any romance either is an original free-jazz-combo score by no less than Chet Baker — his trumpet playing sometimes mimed by a musically inclined mob boss — who was then living his own European heroin crime saga. It would get him imprisoned in Italy, then deported from England and Germany. Whether those events too were sprinkled with random sightings of jiggling mammaries, we’ll never know. (Dennis Harvey)

NIGHT OF LUST

Wed/17-Thurs/18, 7:15 and 9:30 p.m. (also Wed/17, 2 p.m.), $6–$10

Red Vic

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Fo sho

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Fo sho

THEATER Leave it to a small and scrappy low-to-no-budget theater company to revive, at just the right time, Dario Fo’s We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! Fo, Italy’s esteemed latter-day commedia dell’arte rabble-rouser — the first clown (who really is a clown) to win a Nobel Prize — crafted this gem in inspired response to another period of social-economic bullshit, the tumultuous mid-1970s, when Italy was suffering the brunt of the “stagflation” resulting from an oil-triggered worldwide downturn. Fo’s 1974 farce draws on the real-life price rebellions and grocery-store riots carried out by Italy’s (financially) desperate housewives for a very funny and pointed tale of revolutionary high jinx in the domestic sphere. And Eastenders’ production, confidently helmed by artistic director Susan E. Evans, does it full justice. But the company doesn’t stop there: the second half of the evening is devoted to one of two series of new shorts plays (running in repertory) that take the Fo piece and run with it, in varying contemporary directions.

We Won’t Pay! takes up the bulk of the evening and remains the highlight, however, especially in Ron Jenkins’ lively translation, delivered shrewdly by a strong cast with palpable personality and fine comic instincts. Its homey scenario connects the personal and political effortlessly, as a bright working-class housewife named Antonia (a deft and utterly charming Beatrice Basso) tries to hide from her morally upstanding husband, Giovanni (a drolly pompous yet amiable Craig Dickerson), the groceries stolen in an exhilarating impromptu rebellion at the local market. Upright citizens and the coercive unjust hierarchies they protect are, of course, turned right on their head in the process. Even the policeman who shows up at the door (one of several supporting roles essayed with skill and aplomb by Matt Weimer) has had about enough of the whole system. By the end, an agitprop spirit takes over as Giovanni spouts what by now seems the most commonsensical thing — rebellion — as curtain and forth wall come down.

Often cleaving a little too closely to the original material, the playlets that follow in the second act can have the feel of an exercise rather than a fully wrought play of whatever length. But there are some small surprises to be found along the way. Actor Jeff Thompson strikes just the right pitch of whimsy and incipient political consciousness as he digests what has just gone before from the perspective of an incidental stage property, namely A Frozen Rabbit Head, in Gene Mocsy’s playful monologue of the same name. And playwright Isaiah Dufort’s A Statement shifts the opening scene between Antonia (Tristan Cunningham) and neighbor Margherita (Katarina Fabic) just enough to give it a distinctly Bay Area edge, nicely realized by the actors under Amy K. Kilgard’s direction. Less satisfying are the next two in the series, Jeff Thompson’s The Report, which strains after meaning and humor in a beat cop’s political awakening, and Scott Munson’s Safeway Encounter, which begins promisingly but soon gets off-kilter, charging headlong down broadly absurd aisles of no return. In the end, it’s a mixed bag, rabbit heads and all, but nourishing just the same.

FO/FAUX!

Wed/17-Sat/20, 8 p.m.; Sun/21, 2 p.m., $20

Eureka Theatre

215 Jackson, SF

(510) 568-4118

www.eastenders.org

 

So you think you can choreograph?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
So you think you can choreograph?

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE On March 11, at the eighth Dance Discourse Project — an ongoing series of artist-driven discussions sponsored by CounterPULSE and Dancers’ Group — the topic was “Dance in Pop Culture.” Reality shows like So You Think You Can Dance? and Dancing With the Stars have raised questions about their effect on theater-based dance. Most participants agreed that these media-driven programs have created at least one beneficial change. For reasons cultural and historic, large sections of the population still think of dance as something unknown and unfamiliar. The popularity of these programs — controversial as they are in terms of artistic quality — have made dance more accessible and democratized the art.

The night after that discussion, democratization of a different type took place in the Mission. It was time for another entry in Dance Mission Theater’s long-running “Choreographer’s Showcase” series. Twice a year a cattle call goes out to dancers in the Bay Area. It’s not for a chance to audition or submit a proposal to be considered by experts. Rather, it’s a wide-open process: you have something you want to show, let ’em know — first come, first served.

The result is a freewheeling two hours of dance, with usually about 12 soloists and groups. They range from the barely competent to the highly professional. The house is packed with family and friends who come to cheer their favorites and are exposed to a wide spectrum of theatrical dance. This latest show was no different.

Three soloists stood out. Herve Kayos Makaya’s La Lutte Continue, performed by the choreographer, showed a superb dancer dragging two heavy burlap bags before bursting into an explosive African and Western vocabulary mix of leaping feet and racing arms. Currently a work in progress, the finished Lutte is something to look forward to at the CubaCaribe Festival in late April. First Creation had choreographer-dancer Alison Hammond scoot around the floor, shaking a tambourine. Kneeling on the floor, flowing hair obscuring her head, she deployed neck muscles the size of a prizefighter into a rollicking earthquake before sending her long legs into crotch-exposing propeller rotations. Surely this was one of the oddest performances seen on that stage. Liz Brent’s masked that person you meet was so short it was over before you noticed it. Though tentative, the idea of using hands as a primary expressive tool warrants further exploration.

I have a soft spot for the large Strong Pulse Crew, Kirstin E. Williams’ hip-hop student group from City College. For some of the dancers, it’s a chance to shine; for others, it’s a chance to try, and there is room here for all. Bringin’ It Back Remix featured a welcome dream section in which the dancers choreographed their own parts. Meanwhile, Kimberly B. Valmore teaches college students using a ballet-based eclectic vocabulary. The imagistic Answer the Call, with a central couple surrounded by an ensemble moved with a pulsating febrile intensity, nicely balanced stasis against full-force propulsion. Some of Valmore’s dancers have professional potential. Silvana Sousa’s samba choreography for Syncope of Brazil highlighted the difference between dancers and performers. Except for the three soloists, these samba dancers were too self-consciously awkward to bring to their performance that all-important ingredient called projection.

Two companies managed to create compelling emotional atmospheres. Lee Parmino and Janey Madamba’s Awakening made good use of a small corps in a piece that suggested disruption and healing of a relationship. There was something vaguely ominous in Hilary Palanza’s bent-over and head-butting duets A Perplexing and Brief Study of My Loss. She was shattered by more the score’s sounds of breaking glass.

Peace-out

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Peace-out

kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Who would have thunk that Sonic Reducer would rattle on for so long — unreduced, unredacted, Sonic even while covering Mr. Winkle or Mundane Journeys. It’s been more than seven years since Cheetah Chrome gave me the casual A-OK to borrow the name of his song, and now the end is nigh: this is the final SR in the Guardian, but what a deliciously lengthy, rich, overwhelming run it has had.

Scanning the first Jan. 7, 2003, column — chock-full of New Year’s Eve tidbits concerning one of Dengue Fever’s first shows in SF, Bud E. Luv’s turn as the Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne’s NYE attraction (playing big band versions of “Iron Man,” natch, amid strippers and absurdly outsized sex toys), and an evening out to the Coachwhips/Pink and Brown-reunion house party in a South Van Ness basement, trapped by a moat of mud, buffeted by revelers, and besieged by circuit-breaking blackouts. Lo, there was also scandalous news of rumored onstage fellatio at a Tigerbeat6 showcase and an update on Kimo’s efforts to halt the sonic seepage at its ear-bleed noise shows.

The early ’00s in SF were a giddy, madly experimental, and hyperfertile period for local music — a delirious convergence of imaginations cocked and loaded by the dot-com gold rush, exploded with the blizzard of pink slips and the onset of plentiful time and energy, and the excitement of so many ripe minds coming together — oof — at once, if from widely divergent corners of the cultural landscape: how else to explain the peaceful coexistence of Joanna Newsom and Caroliner, Deerhoof and Comets on Fire, Soft Pink Truth and Hunx and His Punx, Vetiver and Turf Talk, the Morning Benders and the Lovemakers, the Oh Sees and every other band John Dwyer has been involved in, in this fair citay?

Perhaps one day I’ll boil down these 350-plus columns — snipes, jests, always-in-good-fun jabs, and all — and come up with a rough sketch of this equally rough and rewarding zero-hour decade’s blurry contours. In the meantime, glancing hazily back over past columns, I unearthed a few highlights — from lowlifes or bright lights:

•Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories on not performing in Europe, 2003: “We were good enough to cause national alerts and bad international events, so we never got asked back. Again, good work.”

•eXtreme Elvis on SF, 2003: “Too much of culture that surrounds San Francisco has to do with that idea of no spectators. No spectators means everyone’s a DJ, everyone plays didgeridoo, everyone has a band, everyone is a spoken-word artist. There’s a kind of culture of narcissism — guilty as charged, right?”

•Inca Ore’s Eva Saelens on touring, 2006: “When you break through, it’s like being in another world. Sometimes I’ll try to push an explosion or try to lose my mind, and if you do that on a nightly basis, it’s unreliable and it’s also abusive. You’re pushing your emotions in an athletic way, almost.”

•Nick Cave on Grinderman, 2007: “An overriding theme of mine is, I guess, a man and a woman against the world. But for this record, the woman seems to be down in the street, engaged in life, and the man is kind of left on his own, with, um, y’know, a tube of complimentary shampoo and a sock.”

•The Cure’s Robert Smith on dumb pop, 2007: “I’m saying that most good pop singles are stupid — otherwise they’re not good pop singles. I’m from an age when disposable wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

•Joe Boyd on music book signings, 2007: “I can tell you what the queue looks like. There’s a lot of beards. There’s a lot of bald pates. There’s a lot of gray hair, and every once in a while there’s a 20-something woman in the queue, and then you kind of make sure your hair is combed straight. Then she comes up to the head of the queue and says, ‘Will you please sign it “To Peter”? It’s for my father for his 60th birthday.'”

•Lady Gaga on pop perfection, 2008: ” If it isn’t flawless, I gotta work myself up to where it is — otherwise I’m just another pop chick with blonde hair.”

•Will Oldham on music, 2008: “You can find in music just about any ideal emotional landscape you crave, whether it’s angst or rebellion or celebration or union or dissolution. It’s all there, and none of it’s going to call you back or text you at four o’clock in the morning or blame you for anything you did or didn’t do or slap you with a paternity suit.”

•Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny on “Ewok Song,” 2009: “I know it by heart, and it’s the precursor to all these kids with wizard hats. It all comes down to the Ewoks singing around the fire. Akron/Family ain’t got nothing on the Ewoks, man.”

•Laurent Brancowitz of Phoenix on his old Daft Punk bandmates, 2009: “They decided to go to a lot of rave parties, and I didn’t, because I didn’t like the nightclub life. I’m a bit of a snob about it — I find it very vulgar.”

•Jarvis Cocker on his song “Caucasian Blues,” 2009: “I was interested in how blues music has gone from the music of protest, of the oppressed, to the blandest, safest music for white people to listen to in bars.”

Oh, but that was then — and I loathe nostalgia, if that isn’t already clear from the past seven years of cranky natterings and screams at the sky against boring, snorey Sha Na Na-style regurgitations. And this is now. Look for more from me in these and other pages, but never look back in regret.

The incredibly filthy truth

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
The incredibly filthy truth

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Since Xiu Xiu’s Fabulous Muscles came out six years ago, the indie press circuit has settled in to give the group a long run of 4-or-5-star, 7.5-to-10-point, and good-to-very-good ratings. It’s the 2000s’ equivalent of 1970s major label benign neglect, which allowed nominally successful artists to go weird in plain sight.

Xiu Xiu has never not been weird, but it’s a deep and personally honest weirdness that, while acknowledged, is rarely unpacked. Critically, it simply has room to exist, but listening to fans, it seems like this band could save your life. Though they are clearly pop — something band leader Jamie Stewart insists on — dusting off the surface reveals a network of underground reference points that actually have the power to shock the middle class.

If those terms — underground, middle class — seem old-fashioned, that’s because they have the potential to describe life as it’s lived, something Xiu Xiu is clearly going for. These terms might be misapplied to indie rock, but Xiu Xiu’s decadence is a moral one beneath the veneer of self-indulgence. Bright red stickers on Xiu Xiu jewel cases contain descriptions of the charitable organizations that the band contributes part of the profits to, not critical plaudits.

Though Xiu Xiu’s personnel fluctuates, Stewart works best with a female counterpoint. Romantic partner Angela Seo has stepped up as muse and collaborator on the band’s latest record, Dear God, I Hate Myself (Kill Rock Stars). Inside, reference points speak not just to Stewart’s personal obsessions — and Xiu Xiu is nothing if not an intensely personal project — but also reveal what’s really at stake in songs that can seem comically self-loathing and also authentically therapeutic.

As with previous releases, everything that happens on Dear God, I Hate Myself can be unpacked from its poppiest song. To my ears, that’s "Chocolate Makes You Happy." It has many of the elements that make up the Xiu Xiu profile: there’s an outsize chorus, a combination of sturdy electronic beats and destabilizing live percussion, and lyrics that are simultaneously moving and outrageous. Seven albums in, Stewart’s breathy voice is still pushing lyrics like "Chocolate makes you happy/As you deign to sing along/When you thrust your fingers down your throat/And wash away what’s wrong," then pivoting seconds later to deliver something like "out of your mind with whoreishness, incredibly young, incredibly filthy."

Musically, Stewart is sticking with the influences he named years ago: Henry Cowell’s dissonant tone clusters and bisexuality, the Cure’s bedroom catharsis and ill-managed longing, the guilelessness of video game music. Equally important, though, are writers like Dennis Cooper and Peter Sotos, gay writers often categorized as "transgressive" for their fiction’s (though Sotos’ writing takes the form of metareportage of pedophilic crime) interest in distinguishing between fantasy and reality. The impulse seems like a moral one; it’s how they draw that line that gets attention. Sotos is certainly the more underground of the two — press photos of an earlier lineup had Xiu Xiu’s faces partially obscured by books, including Sotos’ 2000 Index — and his way of presenting the intolerable has a few less narrative safe-words than Cooper’s.

The reason Xiu Xiu exists, as Stewart has written on the band’s blog, is to be "blunt about awful shit" — awful shit that Stewart or his loved ones have experienced. The personal register distinguishes it from Sotos’ newsprint-stained writings, but both have a narrative technique easily mistaken for no technique, a kind of narrative edge-play. What makes the band so compelling and relevant and seemingly ill-understood is that they take the plunge into being ridiculous, outrageous, and over-the-top — labeling them "confessional" is selling them seriously short. Lyrics and music put the listener close to soiled underwear and civilian corpses, atrocities that take place in the family den or in Fallujah.

Talking openly and achingly about things painfully hidden acknowledges the manipulation and artifice of pop music and, in doing so, puts more faith in its power. Xiu Xiu inspires testimonials because their music creates a place for collective grief. As a result, their music’s catharsis is a personal and political one. And though not every listener has a need for it, in doing what it does naturally, the band takes indie rock snake oil and turns it into chocolate.

XIU XIU

With tUnE-YaRdS and Noveller

Sat/20, 10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Light into darkness

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Light into darkness

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC High Places’ upcoming release High Places vs. Mankind (Thrill Jockey) opens with the slow-tempered "The Longest Shadow." The chorus offers a supine first-person perspective of the sun’s effect on the earth at dusk. The first verse focuses on letting love in, but by the second verse Mary Pearson’s lyrics narrate the end of a relationship, which includes that universal nostalgia (a.k.a. confusion) of not really knowing why a relationship terminates, and includes the ritual stages of longing, wondering, and finally, remembering.

High Places’ music is designed to be lost in; it infiltrates and instigates meditation, but it also manages to keep the listener constantly moving. That’s how good the beat is as it weaves in and out of Pearson’s vocals. When the second track "On Giving Up" begins, it’s hard to determine if Pearson’s extending the last poem, and is talking about the actual breakup night, or if she’s talking about quitting cigarettes, booze, or some addiction, as she sings: "It’s all because I feel everything that’s gone. It’s all gone. Well, tonight is going to be the night." But that ambivalence is part of the charm, allowing the listener to relate and reflect.

Pearson and Rob Barber are High Places. The pair explored the natural world on the 2008 compilation 03/07-09/07, and on their self-titled album from the same year (both on Thrill Jockey). But on High Places vs. Mankind, there is a clear shift toward "humanity," as Pearson defines it, "for lack of a better word."

Weather — the hot, the cold — as well as spatial relationships, and differences, have a large impact on how we as humans live and operate. The band moved from New York to Los Angeles roughly a year ago. "We really had no good reason to, other than the weather," Barber says when I ask him over the phone why they decided to move. L.A. literally exists because it averages 320 sunny days a year, which made it the ideal location to film, and thus Hollywood emerged. After settling down in L.A. and taking a pause from touring, the duo suddenly had a great deal more space and time. They began writing and recording. But curiously, the warmth, space, and time led to icier sounds and darker themes in its new recording.

Pearson explains that High Places’ music made in New York "is based on escapism and trying to create our ideal environment. But because it’s so beautiful in L.A. all the time, we don’t need to talk about that stuff quite as much." This allowed the band to explore new ideas.

On High Places vs. Mankind, the blissed-out melodies and undeniable dance rhythms along with the complex layering and tidbits of dub are still apparent. But there is more: guitars sounding like guitars, unlike before, when they could’ve been mistaken for steel drums or sitars. And Pearson’s vocals are less affected, allowing them to be vividly heard.

The back of High Places’ self-titled release reads: "recorded at home by High Places." In New York, the band/best friends lived together. "I think that made us write every note together," says Pearson. In L.A., where they no longer share an apartment, they’ve taken a different approach. The pair discovered that they desired different types of workspaces. "I would work at home, and she would work in an outside studio," Barber explains. "We’d meet up and smash it all together. We’d go back and forth with it, responding to each other like call-and-response."

The change in sound is cooler at times, but it is also more direct in its message. "It was much more based on human relationships, and life and death," says Pearson. The album is dark and light at the same time — tragic contemplations are matched with stretched-out synths, as well as those bouncing beats and rhythmic hooks High Places has utilized in the past to keep things airy. The music makes you pause, get lost, question your own mortality, think about your last heartache, and when the daze is over, you feel one step closer to the infinite.

High Places’ forthcoming show will add one more twinge in its exploration of human relationships by including Pearson’s sister Laura on vocals for the first time, and she’ll continue on most of the U.S. tour. Pearson explains that she and her sister have been singing together informally all their lives — "Karaoke," interrupts Barber — and that HP has wanted to include her on tour for a long time now. *

HIGH PLACES

with Mi Ami and Protect Me

Wed/24, 8 p.m., $10/$12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell St., SF

www.rickshawstop.com

A lost San Francisco saga

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
A lost San Francisco saga

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC “There are great artists and musicians who will never be discovered,” says Herman Eberitzsch Jr. III “That’s the way it is,” he reasons. “There’s only so much room at the top.”

That’s why you’ve most likely never heard of Eberitzsch (pronounced “eh-bur-itch”) despite his remarkable music talent. He has a name straight out of a gothic fairy tale — far from the iconic, slick-sounding syllables associated with San Francisco’s psychedelic soul renaissance during the late 1960s and ’70s. Yet his recordings hold up to the best of them. “We had a strong conviction that we were the next big thing,” Eberitzsch says. “But we weren’t.”

Each generation harbors a certain aesthetic mood that mutates and evolves under the prescient vision of a limited number of innovators. Their fresh styles, resonant at first, then become formulated and stagnant, disseminated in the norm. We then await the next genius, or at least a movement of collective creativity, to shake things up. But what attunes us to one artistic strand, pregnant with a world of open-ended meaning and feeling, rather than another with just as much potential richness? How do we come to discern between the vanguard and the wayward? And what if we miss something in the process?

Eberitzsch’s unlikely story might just read like a rediscovery of what we overlooked. He recorded hours of bluesy soul fueled by free-form jazz throughout the ’70s that never saw commercial release. He arranged, wrote, sang, and funkified the keys on dozens of songs with mainstays of Santana’s circuit (Coke Escovedo, Linda Tillery), Lee Oskar of War, and Sly Stone’s drummer, Greg Errico, among many others. Most of the musicians who recorded on Eberitzsch’s own arrangements were, by and large, no-namers, yet it’s their music which now stands out.

Eberitzsch’s songs leap and wander. They gracefully move the spirit while grounding the body in rich, earthy grooves. They are a naive and inspiringly audacious attempt at channeling the sort of raw expression that challenges, mesmerizes, fights, and loves. In the midst of so much experimental and groundbreaking sound, Eberitzsch’s music either missed the ears of the right A&R rep or was just not the right kind of different.

 

A CHANCE REDISCOVERY

Now Eberitzsch is sitting across from me in a café near his former Potrero district home, excited to tell his story. He greets me as Allen Ginsberg (my look-alike visage intact, masked in dark beard and glasses), and I feign appreciation for the well-meaning reference, knowing that although Ginsberg had quite a poetic sharpness, he wasn’t the best-looking fellow. But Eberitzsch’s generous charm and earnest happiness with the course his life has taken, despite the disappointments, quickly win me over. Waves of amiable energy overtake the slightly weathered rasp in his voice. A youthful, idealistic Eberitzsch naturally emerges in the course of minutes. In a way, he’s been waiting for this interview for 40 years.

“Atlantic told me, ‘We don’t hear it at this time,'<0x2009>” Eberitzsch says, highlighting the elusive way a record company executive might elongate time, stretching the curt word like a worn rubber band. “But when you invest your life and your heart and soul into a project of your own creation, your own little children of songs, you don’t throw them away. You don’t send them down the River Styx,” he says, laughing. “So I put ’em in the basement.”

That’s where record collector Daniel Borine mistakenly found the two-inch apex tapes, 35 years later, while doing photo research for a reissue project on lost Bay Area modern soul. What those tapes hid — a dusty time capsule of relentless insight and vigor — amazed Borine. In a move away from the prideful hoarding that typically characterizes collectors, Borine wanted to share the tapes with a larger audience and finally do justice to Eberitzsch’s music. He pursued the new and quickly growing business of recorded music archaeology and preservation, an endeavor that mirrors what so many archivists have done already for literature, film, and visual art. Borine had the tapes mastered and organized the tracks into coherent volumes. He plans to put out four full-length records of Eberitzsch’s brilliant efforts, titled the HE3 Project, over the coming years on his own upstart Family Groove Records.

The first chapter of the compilation is set for release on March 30. It focuses on Eberitzsch’s trailblazing efforts from three distinct recording sessions between 1971 and 1974. These recordings capture Eberitzsch’s far-reaching artistry — a grounded and soulful angle on space-jazz psychedelia, informed as much by Weather Report as by Robert Johnson. This is the story of the man behind the HE3 Project.

 

ORIGINS OF A WOULD-BE TRAILBLAZER

Herman Eberitzsch Jr. III was born in San Francisco’s colorful Portola neighborhood in 1947. He grew up in a German household, where he learned to play the classical composers — Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms — at a young age. But somewhere along the way Eberitzsch caught the funk and couldn’t let go. “In my room I listened to James Brown,” he recalls. “When I grooved and played the boogie, I had a powerful left foot that shook the ground. My left foot took down the house, so I eventually had to move out.”

Eberitzsch conjured doo-wop on the corner with the young funky drummer Greg Errico, who lived down the street. He was enraptured by the blues in Oakland, danced to jazzy R&B grooves in San Francisco, and witnessed the emergence of a new psychedelic sound at the Fillmore and in the streets. Immersed in the Bay Area’s magnetic music community, he naturally gravitated to the keys again. “I figured out how to play funky style clavinet and piano,” Eberitzsch says. “They called me Funky Knuckles for short.”

At 21, the freshly-dubbed Funky Knuckles joined a band with Boots Hughston called Sword and the Stone, and was booked by Bill Graham to perform at the Fillmore. The outfit transitioned into a quartet, Shane, with Santana’s David Brown on bass. They hustled around the city making $10 an hour and all the beer they could drink. The city bubbled over with an unparalleled creative force. The time was electric.

That same year — 1968 — Eberitzsch attended UC Berkeley to study psychiatry. But he quit after one semester to pursue music as a career, preferring the organic therapeutic powers of rhythm and melody to the structured treatment of question and answer. “Music is a much more pure form of psychiatry. It has two potentials: it either incites you to create, or it soothes the savage beast,” he says. “I became a knowledgeable person of people through music.” And cyclically, Eberitzsch’s improvisational music erupted from kinetic relationships with people.

Read part two of “A lost San Francisco saga” here.

Broken promises

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Broken promises

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Zhao Liang’s Petition is an audacious documentary, making up for whatever it lacks in formal innovation with an extraordinary level of commitment and narrative insight. Using a lightweight digital camera to enter repressed zones of Chinese society, both in the guts of bureaucracy and at its most wretched margins, Zhao spent a decade tracking the bitter lives of citizens who travel to Beijing to petition the central government for a fair hearing. Once there, they face malicious neglect and interminable waiting. The petitioners live on the street or crammed into small hotels, in constant fear of "retrievers" from their home provinces. The government estimates local corruption statistics by the numbers of complaints, so there’s incentive for these thugs to prevent dissenters from ever reaching the front of the line.

Forget the critic’s shorthand of "Dickensian" or "Kafkaesque." Franz Fanon is a closer match for Zhao’s radical engagement, but the point is that Petition‘s testimonies are not positioned for literary identification. "Our city has millions of people," a retriever threatens a petitioner, unaware that he’s on camera, "We don’t care if one disappears." The film does. Zhao’s rage is made clear without recourse to platitudes. More important, Petition‘s chorus of suffering never congeals into an undifferentiated mass; we never forget that this purgatory is finally someone’s life.

Zhao’s hidden camera generates damning evidence, but the documentarian’s most effective tool is time. Ten years is a long enough span to realize aging, a necessary reference point for Petition‘s trail of arrests and relocations — with each, the prospect of justice ever more remote. When the petitioners’ tents are razed for an Olympic park, their slow grind is directly juxtaposed with the country’s rapid development, and the common murmurs of uprising come to seem comprehensible, perhaps even inevitable.

Over her decades as the engaged American intellectual par excellence, Susan Sontag occasionally received flack for projecting her own quest for moral seriousness on other peoples’ struggles. Promised Lands (1974), one of four films she made and the only documentary, is not so well known as "Trip to Hanoi" or her productions of Beckett in Sarajevo, but it does nonetheless issue from this less appealing side of her intellect. Unlike Petition‘s effortful humility, Promised Lands has the tokenizing insouciance of a tourist’s slideshow. The 16mm film was cobbled together in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War, with strident Zionist Yuval Ne’eman and leftist intellectual Yoram Kaniuck serving as the alpha and omega of the Israeli soul.

Their rhetorical styles are opposed, though the conclusions they draw are equally foregone — for Ne’eman, Israel will follow Spain in ousting the Arabs (he says this without a trace of irony, the Inquisition notwithstanding), while for Kaniuck it is enough to say it can only end tragically, since both sides are "right." Both avoid any serious talk of political realities. For her part, Sontag presses a densely collaged soundtrack (shades of Godard and Emile de Antonio) over voyeuristic, estranged views of Jews at the Wailing Wall, encroaching consumer capitalism (Promised Lands‘ most significant insight), Hasids roaming the desert streets, and blackened corpses in the dunes.

The real problem with Promised Lands isn’t its lack of Palestinian voices — it’s that Sontag never rises to the challenge of describing what it means to make this film as an American. Given what she would later write in On Photography, it’s curious that she could be so blasé here about wielding the camera as a mystifying poetic-ethnographic instrument. The film ends with the sound of an unseen woman’s cries, her suffering wholly detached from its cause and context. One can’t escape the sense that Sontag was enamored by a place where moral issues were right on the surface, but that she never solidified this abstract "interest." Our loss.

YBCA PRESENTS HUMAN RIGHTS AND FILM 2010

Petition, Thurs/18, 7:30 p.m., $8

Promised Lands, March 25, 7:30 p.m., $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Life after death

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Life after death

arts@sfbg.com

FILM By the time the first of Stieg Larsson’s so-called “Millennium” books had been published anywhere, the series already had an unhappy ending. Its author planned 10 volumes total, but only finished three (plus some work on a fourth) before he died in 2004, none printed during his lifetime. The following year The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became a Swedish, then eventually international sensation, its sequels following suit (though the English-translated third won’t come out here till May).

The books are addicting, to say the least, and despite their essential crime-mystery-thriller nature, don’t require putting your ear for writing of some literary value on sleep mode. As a result, there’s a sense of frustration and injustice that Larsson isn’t around to finish the job — no doubt exacerbated by the rumors that have milled around his premature demise. Like his male protagonist, he was a well-known muckracking journalist specializing in exposing right-wing scandals (especially racist and white-power organizations), so his massive heart attack at an apparently very healthy age 50 naturally set the conspiracy theories rolling.

Then there’s the matter of what happened to his fabulous, ever-escalating posthumous “Millennium” wealth: he never married a longtime partner, since his nonfiction work had drawn death threats and registration as a legal couple might have led violent extremists to their door. Unfortunately, that meant the onetime Trotskyist journal editor’s fortune now flows directly to the conservative family he was largely estranged from. No doubt there will be eventual books and films about this real-life intrigue.

Meanwhile, the first of three adaptive features shot back-to-back has reached U.S. screens. (Sorry to say, yes, a Hollywood remake is already in the works — but let’s hope that’s years away.) Even at two-and-a-half hours, this Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by necessity must do some major truncating to pack in the essentials of a very long (600 pages), very plotty novel. Some significant relationships, back stories, subsidiary characters, most humor, and a lot of interesting detail are sacrificed; that paring down means some very disturbing violence (warning: the book’s Swedish title was Men Who Hate Women) now looms much larger.

Still, all but the nitpickingest fans will be fairly satisfied, while virgins will have the benefit of not knowing what’s going to happen and getting scared accordingly. Soon facing jail after losing a libel suit brought against him by a shady corporate tycoon, leftie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) gets a curious private offer to probe the disappearance 40 years earlier of a teenage girl. This entangles him with an eccentric wealthy family and their many closet skeletons (including Nazi sympathies) — as well as dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), androgynous loner, 24-year-old court ward, investigative researcher, and skillful hacker. She and Blomkvist eventually, uneasily team up to uproot what becomes a very nasty burial ground of old misdeeds.

Director Niels Arden Oplev (replaced on the two remaining films by Daniel Alfredson) and his scenarists do a workmanlike job — one more organizational than interpretive, a faithful transcription without much style or personality all its own. Mikael is straight man to Lisbeth’s wild card, yet Nyqvist is still duller than need be; Jacob Groth’s original score is downright cheesy at times. Nonetheless, Larsson’s narrative engine kicks in early and hauls you right along to the depot, with nary a dull moment, nor an overly formulaic one. And to think he wrote the series as a sort of hobby (supposedly basing Lisbeth on Pippi Longstocking!), doubtless never imagining in death he’d quite possibly take a turn as the world’s most popular author.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO opens Fri/19 in Bay Area. theaters.

 

Pool loops

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Pool loops

superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO “Don’t you think that scratching records might annoy the people who spent a long time in the studio making them?”

I’m snickering at a jaw-droppingly antiquated — yet actually quite relevant — video from 1983 titled “1st UK DJ to Mix Live on TV.” It features famous, fresh-faced turntablist Greg Wilson, gracefully fending off tin-eared questions from Tube program host Jools Holland while demonstrating to an antsy, angular-haired audience what this whole “mixing records” thing is about.

The scratching bit’s a hoot because Wilson — who recently emerged from an 18-year retirement and will be performing at Triple Crown on Friday — isn’t scratching at all. He’s merely cueing up the record, a simple act that draws gasps. “Well, that’s it, that’s the danger,” Wilson replies to Holland, poker-faced, his soft brown Afro unshaken. “But when a record’s been played in the club for a long time, people get a bit fed up hearing it, and it’s nice to hear it in a different way. And that’s why I kind of … play about with them a bit.”

Wilson goes on to blow post-punk minds by phasing on two — two — tables at once. Then he takes it to a whole other level by revving up his trademark, Steampunk-prophesying Revox B77 reel-to-reel effects machine, real-time sampling David Joseph’s Jheri curl-slick classic “You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me),” filling out the back-end with sly loops and layering on psychedelic dub echoes. It’s a wondrous bit of analog theater that I imagine, in this “digital age” I keep hearing about, would cause the same kind of pop-culture rupture if played out on American Idol today.

Or maybe not so much. Two of the big nightlife media hooks of the past few years have been the disco revival and the vinyl resurgence — twinned digital-reactionary movements that recall the late-1990s hip-hop and soul crate-digging of hometown heroes like DJ Shadow and Ren the Vinyl Archeologist, a fruitful response to the CD reissue mania of that time. Every technology carves out an implicit niche for its own backlashes. Now, it swallows them too. Despite all the retro nostalgia, DJs need the Internet to get their mixes out and research rare tunes. Plastic and silicon moving in tandem — it’s a real mishmash.

Wilson, who spent his decks hiatus pursuing his production career, may still keep one hand on the vintage — that Revox B77 still travels with him — but he’s made no secret of his enthusiasm for new fad gadgets, and felt that with the simultaneous rise of disco re-fever and software hijinks, a comeback was due.

“I think it’s an exciting time,” he e-mailed me from Australia, in the midst of a bonkers world tour to support his latest compilation of rejiggers, Credit to the Edit, Vol. 2 (Tirk). “Some people pine for the old days. But great as they were, I don’t like to dwell on the past too much in a nostalgic way, but use it to inform the future. I like the way younger people, who didn’t directly experience the original disco era, are drawing influence from it, reshaping it from their own perspective here and now. For me, music — no matter how old it might be — is always alive and evolving, so I’m all for bringing it into a new context.”

Wilson made his name in the ’70s and ’80s by birthing the electro-funk movement in the U.K. (www.electrofunkroots.co.uk), which pipelined many hard-to-find American dance releases to British crowds, and he came of age in a world of DJ record pools — strategic vinyl-sharing cabals that hooked cash-strapped DJs up with record companies eager to get their releases heard. Record pool culture opened the doors for innumerable disco and funk edits: DJs wanted to sound unique, so they mixed (or had someone else mix) their own versions of hits, stamping them with an individual sonic imprint. Thus the hugely influential edit scene was born, paving the way for a spectrum of club remixes from genius and egregious.

No one handled edits quite like Wilson, whose pitch-perfect additions, stretches, and overlaps and live technique proved to be a bulletproof blueprint. The disco edit scene, a subsection of disco revivalism that also digs up more contemporary “lost” tracks, keeps looping back into view, the most recent fanatic attack including acts like Wolf + Lamb, Soul Clap, Les Edits Du Golem, and Tensnake, and labels like Rong, Wurst, and Ugly.

Our very own rulers of the local edit scene are King & Hound (www.myspace.com/garthgrayhound), a collaborative effort between two SF DJ legends, Garth and James Glass, on the Golden Goose label. The two met in the early ’90s at the notorious Record Rack music store and have lately released tasty versions of David Ian Xtravaganza’s kiki 1989 “Elements of Vogue” and Can’s space-groovy “A Spectacle.”

“I have quite a few of Greg’s records,” Garth told me over e-mail. “I recently rediscovered one of his early hip-hop records called ‘We Don’t Care’ by Ruthless Rap Assassins, which I bought in 1987!” Glass joined in, “I grew up in London listening to Greg’s mixes and I’d hear him out and about.” Both of them shake off suggestions of Wilsonian influence, however. “But we’re all doing the same thing — taking out the cheese and respecting the quality,” Glass said.

Wilson’s brilliant 2009 Essential Mix mix for the U.K.’s BBC1 radio found Massive Attack and Talking Heads sharing space with Geraldine Hunt and Chic, and reintroduced him to American ears (“I think that mix illustrates what I always strive for: connecting back but moving on,” he told me. “I was shocked at the overwhelmingly positive response.”) But to Bay players he was always in the loop, working with the invaluable Anthony Mansfield of the Green Gorilla crew and Qzen and even visiting Haight Street a few years back to feed his ’60s obsession.

I recently had the opportunity to explore a bit of the Bay Area’s record pool and disco edit past with DJ Jim Hopkins of the ubiquitous Twitch Recordings, and who currently spins eclectic sets at venues like 440 Castro and Trax. He’s no stranger to the edit scene, becoming one of the youngest edit contributors in the early ’80s to San Francisco disco and Hi-NRG record pool Hot Tracks and later, after Hot Tracks owner Steve Algozino passed away from AIDS, Rhythm Stick, helmed by Algozino’s protégée Jenny Spiers. (He also namechecks the Bay’s Disconet and New Wave-friendly Razor Maid.) Hopkins got his edit start as a teen in the ’70s, using the pause button on his dad’s tape deck to make his own edits, and soon grabbed professional attention. “Record companies wanted several versions of their records available for DJs, and record pools wanted to put out compilation issues for subscribers that featured unique takes on tracks, so I happily provided,” he told me. “It’s funny that those things are worth a fortune today.”

Hopkins just started an online organization called the San Francisco Disco Preservation Society (find it at www.twitchrecordings.com) to collect and celebrate Bay-centric edits and reel-to-reel mixes. “As for the edit scene now, there seem to be two kinds being produced. There are easy-sounding ones that just extend the good parts. Then there are more serious ones that take the original and make it into something new and more moody. I think that’s good for the future — because sometimes I have to laugh. Disco kids these days are pulling anything out of vinyl resale bins from 20 years ago and calling it ‘classic’ when most of it is crap. It was crap back then, too. Making it into anything different is doing it a favor, really.”

Read Marke B.’s full interview with Greg Wilson here.

GREG WILSON: CREDIT TO THE EDIT TOUR

Fri/19, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $15/$20

Triple Crown

1772 Market, SF

www.triplecrownsf.com

HONEY SUNDAYS PRESENTS JIM HOPKINS

Sun/21, 10 p.m., $3

Paradise Lounge

1501 Folsom, SF

www.paradisesf.com


From Beijing to Oakland

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From Beijing to Oakland

arts@sfbg.com

LIT In 2005, after dropping out of a PhD program in immunology, Chinese writer Yiyun Li debuted her first book of fiction, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. A collection of stories exploring the aftershock of the Cultural Revolution on mainland and overseas Chinese, it won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award. Li’s story “Immorality” won the Paris Review Plimpton Prize.

Afterward, Li’s green card application was rejected by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — twice. Her “extraordinary ability” as an artist (Title 8, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 204.5) could not be proven until she won, on top of those accolades, a Pulitzer Prize.

Fortunately for the status of fiction in America, Li’s extraordinary ability was finally recognized in 2007, 11 years after her arrival to the United States. In a journey that has taken her from Beijing to Iowa, Li now resides in Oakland with her family. Li left China in 1996 to pursue a doctorate in immunology at the University of Iowa. Living in China, she had no interest in writing fiction, and her natural affinity and aptitude for telling stories in English took her by surprise. Her second language in speaking, she discovered, was really a “first language in creating and thinking.”

Li has a scientist’s eye toward precision and a gifted storyteller’s ability to extract meaning from the mad fracas of human circumstance. Last year, she published a well-received first novel called The Vagrants. Set in China during 1979, in a fictional provincial city called Muddy River, the novel provides an unflinching view into the era’s brutality and violence. The novel also reveals, carefully and without sentiment, the unexpected moments of transcendence that result when love, empathy, and human emotions bloom in the harshest of environments.

Li spoke with the SFBG about The Vagrants, released in paperback by Random House a few weeks ago.

SFBG You write in English, which you learned as an adult. Does this have to do with any innate differences linguistic between English and Chinese? Does it have anything to do with your associations with China?

YIYUN LI I wasn’t trained as a writer in China, and even though I widely read Chinese literature when I was in China, I never had the urge to write in Chinese until I came to America, picked up English, and felt it a natural way to express myself. I think it is a more personal decision than I may have indicated, though honestly I myself sometimes feel mystified by this switch of languages too. I feel much more like myself when I write in English, which is to say English is really my first language in creating and thinking. In a way I do censor myself less when I write in English — again, that censoring is not from others, but from myself.

SFBG Do you think in Chinese?

YL I no longer think in Chinese. Of course as my mother tongue, Chinese is still used in my everyday life — I still count and do my math in Chinese, but when I think about literature, art and philosophy I think in English.

SFBG As an international student, your decision to forgo a promising medical career and become a writer was extremely brave. During the process of writing your first book, did you experience great anxiety or doubt? Were you ever tempted to give up and go back to medicine?

YL I didn’t feel self-doubt — I think by the time I gave up my immunology career, I was certain I wouldn’t go back. There was a certain level of anxiety but I would say at the time it was minimal. I probably just lived with a tunnel vision and all I thought about was to write, and write well. I was certain that I needed some time to improve myself, so it did not occur to me to give up.

SFBG When you write, do you find you draw any lessons from your experiences studying medicine?

YL Medical knowledge, like any kind of knowledge, is helpful and useful for a fiction writer. I think my training perhaps helps me look at the world and its many violences without being sentimental.

SFBG In The Vagrants, even small children in Muddy River are completely unmoved by public executions. This strikes me as devastating and true. My mother told me that when she was growing up in China during the early 1970s, she saw a man bleed to death on the side of the road. The real horror of the experience didn’t dawn on her until decades later. You were seven years old in 1979, the year in which The Vagrants takes place. Writing about violence from the perspective of children, do you recall events from your own childhood in China?

YL Your mother’s experience was quite close to my own experience, and indeed for most children, empathy and sympathy come not naturally, but with some help from grownups and education. When violence is prevalent, as one sometimes finds in life, not only children but adults too stop questioning the injustice. I did draw from my own memories of the time, but like your mother, I had to look back as a different person to understand the tie.

SFBG Have you gone back to China since you’ve left? How are you received?

YL Yes, I have been back visiting. I keep a very low profile when I visit China. so there is not much trouble for me.

SFBG You’ve mentioned that your biggest literary influence is William Trevor. You’ve named Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Greene as influences, too. Do you draw any influences from Chinese literature?

YL My favorite Chinese author — Shen Congwen — influenced me a lot, not in the way of how he wrote stories and how he used language but how he looked at the world as a storyteller.

SFBG Speaking of Chinese novels, some of your characters in The Vagrants, like Teacher Gu, are quite literary. I enjoyed that Kai and Kialin hold their clandestine meetings in the library. I also liked that Jialin’s mother steals books for him from the shelves she’s supposed to guard. What books are these characters reading? If you could pick a book for each Gu, Kai, and Jialin, what might be a book that affected the way each viewed the world at that time?

YL This is a great question. For Jialin and Kai, I imagine they would be reading Gadfly, a little-known novel in the West but a hugely popular novel in China (and Soviet Union) written by the Irish author Ethel Voynich. I also thought Jialin might be interested in reading French authors. For Teacher Gu, I would imagine he would read Tolstoy.

alt.sex.column: Ti-ming

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alt.sex.column: Ti-ming

Dear Andrea:

My boyfriend and I have been dating for three years and we have always had the same issue. It takes a long time for him to come, whether I am performing oral sex or we are having anal sex. We’ve talked about it, and I am always trying to understand what I can do to make him come. Since it takes so long, he always ends up finishing off himself. I would like to be the one who makes him come when I give him a blow job, but I don’t know what to do. Please help.

Love,

Spectator

Dear ‘Tator:

I understand that you want to be the one who “makes” him come. And if it’s blow-job-to-ejaculation you’re after and not getting, I also understand that there could be some considerable loss of sensation/pay-off/money shot for you, too. And I understand that we (that would be humans) often enjoy the giddy sense of accomplishment and mastery we get from creating and controlling an enjoyable experience for our partners. I don’t imagine, though, that this is the first time I have had to sing this old song to one of my correspondents: You really can’t always get what you want. However …

There may be something going on with your boyfriend physically or emotionally that can be addressed, but I actually kind of doubt it. I’d imagine that he would have come out with it by now or you would have sussed it out yourself. I’m going to assume that all of the “a little harder/softer/shallower/deeper/faster/slower/wetter/drier/firmer/softer/did I miss any? issues have already been addressed. Is he on any medication that could cause the unfortunately-named “retarded ejaculation?” One kind of hopes so, since a medication change can just wave the problem away like a magic wand.

If no such insta-fix is available, what are the quickish fixes, and what are the more gradual, therapy-based approaches, and are any of them likely to work? The answer is a resounding “maybe!” All I can do is throw suggestions at the wall and see what sticks.

It’s somewhat painful to admit that one’s partner is insufficiently aroused, but as long as you take care not to end that sentence with “by me” you should be able to work through this without too much ego-bruising. He does need something extra, so figure out together if there’s a fantasy component missing. Or maybe he has accustomed himself to some form of arousal or fantasy that you can’t reasonably imitate for him, and you will need to work together to replace that with something you can supply.

Maybe he has control issues — what often looks, to the frustrated partner, like an inability to give turns out to be, on closer inspection, an inability to take. Or maybe he just wants a hand job? That wasn’t on your list of things that aren’t working, so … ? And finally, have you tried just doing what you’re doing, then turning it over to him as though for the big finish, and then, on his signal, jumping back in? That isn’t cheating. That’s timing.

Love,

Andrea

Got a question? Write Andrea at andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Rep Clock

David Talbot
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Schedules are for Wed/17–Tues/23 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. "Other Cinema:" "Extreme Animation," works by Paper Rad, Nate Boyce, Martha Colburn, and more, Sat, 8:30.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Cedar, Berk; (510) 841-4824. Awakening from Sorrow: Buenos Aires 1997 (Epperlein and Knoop, 2009), Fri, 7.

CAFÉ OF THE DEAD 3208 Grand, Oakl; (510) 931-7945. Free. "Independent Filmmakers Screening Nite," Wed, 6:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. Alice in Wonderland (Burton, 2010), through April 1, 1, 4, 7, 9:45.

CENTER OF LIGHT 2944 76th Ave, Oakl; (510) 207-6593. Free. The Age of Stupid (Armstrong, 2009), Fri, 7:30.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-10. An Education (Scherfig, 2009), call for dates and times. The Art of the Steal (Argott, 2009), call for dates and times. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Ehrlich and Goldsmith, 2009), call for dates and times. North Face (Stölzl, 2008), call for dates and times. A Prophet (Audiard, 2009), call for dates and times. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Oplev, 2009), March 19-25, call for times. Live! (Guttentag, 2007), with director Bill Guttentag in person, Sun, 7.

FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; www.thrillville.net. $10. "Thrillville:" •Monsturd (Popko and West, 2003) and Retardead (Popko and West, 2008), Thurs, 7:30. Local cult classics with filmmakers and cast in person, plus live music by Meshugga Beach Party.

GOETHE-INSTITUT 530 Bush, SF; www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco. $7. "New German Cinema:" Parkour (Rensing, 2009), Wed, 6:30.

HUMANIST HALL 390 27th St, Oakl; www.humanisthall.org. $5. The Secret of Oz, Wed, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. "CinemaLit Film Series: Star Power, A Month of Meryl Streep:" A Cry in the Dark (Schepisi, 1988), Fri, 6.

ODDBALL FILMS 275 Capp, SF; (415) 558-8117, info@oddballfilm.com. $10. "India Films: The Naked Eye," Fri, 10. "Under the Sea: Maritime Movies from the Archives," Sat, 10.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. "Film 50: History of Cinema:" Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961), Wed, 3. "Joseph Losey: Pictures of Provocation:" The Servant (1963), Sun, 5; These Are the Damned (1965), Sun, 7:20. San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, Wed-Sat. See film listings for schedule.

PARAMOUNT 2025 Broadway, Oakl; 1-800-745-3000, www.oebs.org. $20-65. "The Mighty Wurlitzer: Music at the Movies:" The General (Keaton and Bruckman, 1926), Fri, 8; Sun, 2.

PIEDMONT 4186 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 464-5980. $5-8. "Cult Classics Attack 5:" The Neverending Story (Petersen, 1984), Fri-Sat, midnight; Sun, 10am.

PLAYHOUSE THEATER 40 Main, Tiburon; www.tiburonfilfestival.com. "Tiburon International Film Festival," March 18-26. Check web site for program information.

RED POPPY ART HOUSE 2698 Folsom, SF; www.redpoppyarthouse.org. $8-12. Marina of the Zabbaleen: Portrait of a Child Recycler (Wassef, 2008), Sun, 7.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994. $6-10. Night of Lust (Bénazéraf, 1963), Wed-Thurs, 7:15, 9:30 (also Wed, 2). Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson, 2009), Fri-Mon, 7:15, 9:15 (also Sat-Sun, 2, 4). The Road (Hillcoat, 2009), March 23-25, 7, 9:20 (also March 24, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. Closed for renovation until April 1.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. "Human Rights and Film:" Petition (Zhao, 2009), Thurs, 7:30. "2009 British Television Advertising Award Winners," Sat-Sun, 2, 4 (also Sat, 6, 8).

Film listings

David Talbot
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Erik Morse, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. The film intern is Peter Galvin. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

SF INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival runs through Sun/21 at the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Viz Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Camera 12 Cinemas, 201 South Second St, San Jose. Tickets (most shows $12) available at www.asianamericanmedia.org. All times pm.

WED/17

PFA Agrarian Utopia 7. Mundane History 9:20.

Sundance Kabuki "Classic Filipino American Shorts" (shorts program) 4:15. God is D_ad 4:30. "FutureStates" (shorts program) 6:45. Wo Ai Ni Mommy 7. You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting 9:15. Aoki 9:30.

Viz "Memory Vessels and Phantom Traces" (shorts program) 4:45. Ninoy Aquin and the Rise of People Power 7. Dear Doctor 9:15.

THURS/18

PFA Hana, Dul, Sed… 7. Bayan Ko: My Own Country 9.

Sundance Kabuki Mundane History 5. "Wandering, Wondering" (shorts program) 5. "Blueprints for a Generation" (shorts program) 5. Au Revoir Taipei 7. "FutureStates" (shorts program) 7:15.

Viz "Sweet Dreams and Beautiful Nightmare" (shorts program) 5. Tehran Without Borders 7:30.

FRI/19

Camera Au Revoir Taipei 7.

PFA What We Talk About When We… 7. The Forbidden Door 9:10.

SAT/20

Camera Dear Doctor noon. "3rd I South Asian International Shorts" (shorts program) 2:45. Aoki 3. The People I’ve Slept With 4:45. A Village Called Versailles 5:30. Make Yourself at Home 7:15. Like You Know it All 7:45. Prince of Tears 9:15.

PFA Manila in the Claws of Neon 6. About Elly 8:30.

SUN/21

Camera "Wandering, Wondering" (shorts program) noon. Talentime 2. State of Aloha 2:15. Cooking With Stella 4:30. Fog 4:45. In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee 6:45. The Forbidden Door 7. The Message 9.

OPENING

The Bounty Hunter Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston play a formerly married couple who … zzzzz. Huh? Oh, whatever. (1:50)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid The agonies of middle school come to life in this kid-friendly comedy. (2:00)

The Girl on the Train André Téchiné’s beautifully photographed, ripped-from-the-headlines film explores the events that led a young Parisian girl to lie about being the victim of an anti-semitic attack. Téchiné’s dramatization fails as an account of the incident, but the film manages to evoke a powerfully mysterious tone due largely to two stellar performances, by Émilie Dequenne as the 20-something Jeanne and Catherine Deneuve as her persistent mother. Much of the running time follows Jeanne’s experiences before the fabrication, as she falls for (and moves in with) a young wrestler named Franck, before a tragic event causes Jeanne to invent the famous lie. An arty exploration into the psychology of victimization that happens to be anchored by a real-life event, The Girl on the Train may disappoint those looking for easy answers but is undeniable as a showcase for some outstanding acting. (1:42) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Galvin)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo See "Life After Death." (2:32) Albany, Embarcadero.

Mother Bong Joon-ho’s latest is a crime drama about a mentally challenged murder suspect and his formidable mother. See review at www.sfbg.com. (2:09) Clay, Shattuck.

*Neil Young Trunk Show As loose as Jonathan Demme’s prior Neil doc Heart of Gold (2006) was tidy, with a taste for rave-ups where that film emphasized the mellower country-rock side, this neck-deep wade into Young’s four-decade-plus songbook is pretty dang nirvanic. Shot at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA —exactly the kind of funky old midsized venue you’d want to see him at — it’s assembled via camera and editorial choices as seemingly random yet astute as Young’s grab bag of tunes. The latter range from historic hits ("Cinnamon Girl," "Harvest," "Cowgirl in the Sand") to more recent compositions ("The Believer," "No Hidden Path") and some real obscurities from the bottom of that trunk, including a few acoustic heartbreakers. Even shown out of concert order — there’s never any sense just where we are in the audience’s evening — they meld seamlessly, the epic half-hour oceanics of "Path" just as well as something small and plaintive like "Sad Movies." Never in better voice (qualify that as you will) at age 65, surrounded by an assured band of five plus scattered oddball props and one live canvas painter, Young is the eye of this particular hurricane — even if "Like a Hurricane" is the one performance that feels a tad uninspired. If you’re a fan, this will be pretty close to sheer ecstasy. If not … well, frankly, I have absolutely no idea whether
you’ll be converted, mildly entertained, or bored to death. (1:22) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Repo Men Nope, not a sequel to the 1984 cult classic. Jude Law and Forest Whitaker will, however, relieve you of your futuristic mechanical organs if you can’t pay for them post-transplant. (1:53) Shattuck.

The Runaways In Floria Sigismondi’s tale of the rise and fall of a 1970s all-girl band, LA producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) proclaims that the Runaways are going to save rock and roll. It’s hard to gauge the sincerity of this pronouncement, but you can certainly hear, in songs like "Cherry Bomb" and "Queens of Noise," how the band must have brightened a landscape overrun by kings of prog rock. Unfortunately, a handful of teenagers micromanaged by a sleazy, abusive nutcase proved not quite up to the task, though the band did launch the careers of metal guitarist Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and, more famously, Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). Sigismondi’s film entertainingly sketches the Runaways’ beginnings in glam rock fandom and gradual attainment of their own rabid fan base. We get Currie lip-synching Bowie to catcalls at the high school assembly, Jett composing "Cherry Bomb" with Fowley, glamtastic hair-and-wardrobe eye candy, pills-and-Stooges-fueled intra-band fooling around, and five teenage girls sent off sans chaperone on an international tour with substantial quantities of hard drugs in their carry-on luggage. What follows is less pretty: a capsule version of the band’s disintegration after the departure of bottoming-out 16-year-old lead singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). In a film darkened by Currie’s trajectory, Jett’s subsequent success is a feel-good coda, but it’s awkwardly attached and emblematizes one of The Runaways‘ main problems. When the band begins to fall apart, the film doesn’t know which way to turn and ends up telling no one’s story well. (1:42) Bridge. (Rapoport)

ONGOING

Ajami You may recognize the title of Yaron Shoni and Scandar Copti’s debut collaboration as one of five films nominated for a 2010 Academy Award in the Foreign Category. Though it didn’t bring home the grand prize, Ajami remains a complex and affecting story about desperation and its consequences in a religiously-mixed town in Israel. As we follow the lives of four of Ajami’s residents the narrative shifts perspective almost maddeningly, switching characters seemingly at the height of each story’s action. But once all of the stories fully intersect, the final product has the distinction of feeling both meticulously calculated and completely natural. I was most impressed to learn that Shani and Copti prepared their actors with improvised role-playing rather than scripts. By withholding what was going to happen in a scene before shooting, we are treated to looks of surprise and emotion on actor’s faces that never feel unnatural. Attaining such a level of realism may be Ajami‘s crowning achievement; it can’t have been easy to make a foreign world feel so familiar. (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Galvin)

Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton’s take on the classic children’s tale met my mediocre expectations exactly, given its months of pre-release hype (in the film world, fashion magazines, and even Sephora, for the love of brightly-colored eyeshadows). Most folks over a certain age will already know the story, and much of the dialogue, before the lights go down and the 3-D glasses go on; it’s up to Burton and his all-star cast (including numerous big-name actors providing voices for animated characters) to make the tale seem newly enthralling. The visuals are nearly as striking as the CG, with Helena Bonham Carter’s big-headed Red Queen a particularly marvelous human-computer creation. But Wonderland suffers from the style-over-substance dilemma that’s plagued Burton before; all that spooky-pretty whimsy can’t disguise the film’s fairly tepid script. Teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) displaying girl-power tendencies is a nice, if not surprising, touch, but Johnny Depp’s grating take on the Mad Hatter will please only those who were able to stomach his interpretation of Willy Wonka. (1:48) Castro, Cerrito, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Art of the Steal How do you put a price on something that’s literally priceless? The Art of the Steal takes an absorbing look at the Barnes Collection, a privately-amassed array of Post-Impressionist paintings (including 181 Renoirs) worth billions — and the many people and corporate interests who schemed to control it. Founder Albert C. Barnes was an singular character who took pride in his outsider status; he housed his art in a specially-constructed gallery far from downtown Philadelphia’s museum scene, and he emphasized education and art appreciation first and foremost. But he had no heirs, and after his death in 1951, opportunists began circling his massive collection; the slippery political and legal dealings that have unfolded since then are nearly as jaw-dropping as Barnes’ prize paintings. Philly documentarian Don Argott has a doozy of a subject here, and his skillful, even suspenseful film does it justice. (1:41) Elmwood, Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Avatar James Cameron’s Avatar takes place on planet Pandora, where human capitalists are prospecting for precious unobtainium, hampered only by the toxic atmosphere and a profusion of unfriendly wildlife, including the Na’vi, a nine-foot tall race of poorly disguised cliches. When Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine, arrives on the planet, he is recruited into the "Avatar" program, which enables him to cybernetically link with a part-human, part-Na’vi body and go traipsing through Pandora’s psychedelic underbrush. Initially designed for botanical research, these avatars become the only means of diplomatic contact with the bright-blue natives, who live smack on top of all the bling. The special effects are revolutionary, but the story that ensues blends hollow "noble savage" dreck with events borrowed from Dances With Wolves (1990) and FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). When Sully falls in love with a Na’vi princess and undergoes a spirit journey so he can be inducted into the tribe and fight the evil miners, all I could think of was Kevin Bacon getting his belly sliced in The Air Up There (1994). (2:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Richardson)

The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article "The Ballad of Big Mike" — which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game — nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher — a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) Elmwood, Oaks. (Daniel Alvarez)

Brooklyn’s Finest "Really? I mean, really?" asked the moviegoer beside me as the final freeze-frame of Brooklyn’s Finest slapped our eyeballs. Yes, that’s the sound of letdown, despite the fact that Brooklyn’s Finest initially resembled a promisingly gritty juggling act in the mode of The Wire and Cop Land (1997), Taxi Driver (1976) and Training Day (2001). Bitter irony flows from the title — and from the lives, loves, bad habits, pressure-cooker stress, and unavoidable moral dilemmas of three would-be everyday cops, all occupying several different rungs on a food chain where right and wrong have an unpleasant way of switching sides. Eddie (Richard Gere) is the veteran officer just biding his time till he gets his pension, all while comforting himself with the meager sensuous attentions of hooker Chantel (Shannon Kane). Sal (Ethan Hawke) is the bad detective, stealing from the dealers to fund a dream home for his growing family with Angela (Lili Taylor). Tango (Don Cheadle) is the undercover detective who has cultivated friendships with dealers like Caz (Wesley Snipes) and sacrificed his marriage for a long-promised promotion from his lieutenant (Will Patton) and his superior (Ellen Barkin, in likely the most misogynist portrayal of a lady with a badge to date). You spend most of Brooklyn’s Finest waiting for these cops to collide in the most unfortunate, messiest way possible, but instead the denouement leaves will leave one wondering about unresolved threads and feeling vaguely unsatisfied. In any case, director Antoine Fuqua and company seem to pride themselves on their tough-minded if at times cartoonish take on law enforcement, with Hawke in particular turning in a memorably OTT and anguished performance. (2:13) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Crazies Disease and anti-government paranoia dovetail in this competent yet overwhelmingly non-essential remake of one of George A. Romero’s second-tier spook shows. In a small Iowa hamlet overseen by a benevolent sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell), who’s also the town doctor, a few odd incidents snowball into all-out chaos when a mysterious, unmarked plane crashes into the local water supply. Before long, the few residents who aren’t acting like homicidal maniacs are rounded up by an uber-aggressive military invasion. Though our heroes convey frantic panic as they try to figure out what the hell is going on, The Crazies never achieves full terror mode. It’s certainly watchable, and even enjoyable at times. But memorable? Not in the slightest. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Crazy Heart "Oh, I love Jeff Bridges!" is the usual response when his name comes up every few years for Best Actor consideration, usually via some underdog movie no one saw, and the realization occurs that he’s never won an Oscar. The oversight is painful because it could be argued that no leading American actor has been more versatile, consistently good, and true to that elusive concept "artistic integrity" than Bridges over the last 40 years. It’s rumored Crazy Heart was slotted for cable or DVD premiere, then thrust into late-year theater release in hopes of attracting Best Actor momentum within a crowded field. Lucky for us, this performance shouldn’t be overlooked. Bridges plays "Bad" Blake, a veteran country star reduced to playing bars with local pickup bands. His slide from grace hasn’t been helped by lingering tastes for smoke and drink, let alone five defunct marriages. He meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), freelance journalist, fan, and single mother. They spark; though burnt by prior relationships, she’s reluctant to take seriously a famous drunk twice her age. Can Bad handle even this much responsibility? Meanwhile, he gets his "comeback" break in the semi-humiliating form of opening for Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) — a contemporary country superstar who was once Bad’s backup boy. Tommy offers a belated shot at commercial redemption; Jean offers redemption of the strictly personal kind. There’s nothing too surprising about the ways in which Crazy Heart both follows and finesses formula. You’ve seen this preordained road from wreckage to redemption before. But actor turned first-time director Scott Cooper’s screenplay honors the flies in the windshield inherited from Thomas Cobb’s novel — as does Bridges, needless to say. (1:51) Lumiere, Piedmont, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*An Education The pursuit of knowledge — both carnal and cultural — are at the tender core of this end-of-innocence valentine by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig (who first made her well-tempered voice heard with her 2000 Dogme entry, Italian for Beginners), based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Hornby breaks further with his Peter Pan protagonists with this adaptation: no man-boy mopers or misfits here. Rather, 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a good girl and ace student. It’s 1961, and England is only starting to stir from its somber, all-too-sober post-war slumber. The carefully cloistered Jenny is on track for Oxford, though swinging London and its high-style freedoms beckon just around the corner. Ushering in those freedoms — a new, more class-free world disorder — is the charming David (Peter Sarsgaard), stopping to give Jenny and her cello a ride in the rain and soon proffering concerts and late-night suppers in the city. He’s a sweet-faced, feline outsider: cultured, Jewish, and given to playing fast and loose in the margins of society. David can see Jenny for the gem she is and appreciate her innocence with the knowing pleasure of a decadent playing all the angles. The stakes are believably high, thanks to An Education‘s careful attention to time and place and its gently glamored performances. Scherfig revels in the smart, easy-on-eye curb appeal of David and his friends while giving a nod to the college-educated empowerment Jenny risks by skipping class to jet to Paris. And Mulligan lends it all credence by letting all those seduced, abandoned, conflicted, rebellious feelings flicker unbridled across her face. (1:35) Oaks, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski’s never-ending legal woes have inspired endless debates on the interwebs and elsewhere; they also can’t help but add subtext to the 76-year-old’s new film, which is chock full o’ anti-American vibes anyway. It’s also a pretty nifty political thriller about a disgraced former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who’s hanging out in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion with his whip-smart, bitter wife (Olivia Williams) and Joan Holloway-as-ice-queen assistant (Kim Cattrall), plus an eager young biographer (Ewan McGregor) recently hired to ghost-write his memoirs. But as the writer quickly discovers, the politician’s past contains the kinds of secrets that cause strange cars with tinted windows to appear in one’s rearview mirror when driving along deserted country roads. Polanski’s long been an expert when it comes to escalating tension onscreen; he’s also so good at adding offbeat moments that only seem tossed-off (as when the PM’s groundskeeper attempts to rake leaves amid relentless sea breezes) and making the utmost of his top-notch actors (Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach have small, memorable roles). Though I found The Ghost Writer‘s ZOMG! third-act revelation to be a bit corny, I still didn’t think it detracted from the finely crafted film that led up to it. (1:49) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Green Zone Titled for the heavily-guarded headquarters of international occupation in Baghdad, Green Zone reunites director Paul "Shaky-Cam" Greengrass with star Matt Damon, the two having previously collaborated on the last two Bourne films. Instead of a super-soldier, this time around Damon just plays a supremely insubordinate one as he attempts to uncover the reason why his military unit can’t find any of Saddam’s WMDs. With the aid of the CIA, a Wall Street Journal reporter and a friendly Iraqi, Damon goes rogue in order to suss out the source of the misinformation. The Iraq War action is decent if scarce, but an overindulgence in (you guessed it) shaky-cam and political jargon cannot hide the fact that Green Zone‘s plot is simplistic and probably light on actual facts. Damon makes a fine cowboy-cum-hero, but the effectiveness of the mix of patriotism and Pentagon paranoia will vary based on your penchant for such things. Still, Green Zone moves fast enough that it remains worth a matinee for conspiracy thriller aficionados. (1:55) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

The Hurt Locker When the leader of a close-knit U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad is killed in action, his subordinates have barely recovered from the shock when they’re introduced to his replacement. In contrast to his predecessor, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) is no standard-procedure-following team player, but a cocky adrenaline junkie who puts himself and others at risk making gonzo gut-instinct decisions in the face of live bombs and insurgent gunfire. This is particularly galling to next-in-command Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). An apolitical war-in-Iraq movie that’s won considerable praise for accuracy so far from vets (scenarist Mark Boal was "embedded" with an EOD unit there for several 2004 weeks), Kathryn Bigelow’s film is arguably you-are-there purist to a fault. While we eventually get to know in the principals, The Hurt Locker is so dominated by its seven lengthy squad-mission setpieces that there’s almost no time or attention left for building character development or a narrative arc. The result is often viscerally intense, yet less impactful than it would have been if we were more emotionally invested. Assured as her technique remains, don’t expect familiar stylistic dazzle from action cult figure Bigelow (1987’s Near Dark, 1989’s Blue Steel, 1991’s Point Break) — this vidcam-era war movie very much hews to the favored current genre approach of pseudo-documentary grainy handheld shaky-cam imagery. (2:11) Cerrito, Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Last Station Most of the buzz around The Last Station has focused on Helen Mirren, who takes the lead as the Countess Sofya, wife of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer). Mirren is indeed impressive — when is she not? — but there’s more to the film than Sofya’s Oscar-worthy outbursts. The Last Station follows Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), hired as Tolstoy’s personal secretary at the end of the writer’s life. Valentin struggles to reconcile his faith in the anarchist Christian Tolstoyan movement with his sympathy for Sofya and his budding feelings for fellow Tolstoyan Masha (Kerry Condon). For the first hour, The Last Station is charming and very funny. Once Tolstoy and Sofya’s relationship reaches its most volatile, however, the tone shifts toward the serious — a trend that continues as Tolstoy falls ill. After all the lighthearted levity, it’s a bit jarring, but the solid script and accomplished cast pull The Last Station together. Paul Giamatti is especially good as Vladimir Chertkov, who battles against Sofya for control of Tolstoy’s will. You’ll never feel guiltier for putting off War and Peace. (1:52) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Peitzman)

*The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers For many, Daniel Ellsberg is a hero — a savior of American First Amendment rights and one of the most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam war. But as this documentary (recently nominated for an Academy Award) shows, it’s never an an easy decision to take on the U.S. government. Ellsberg himself narrates the film and details his sleepless nights leading up to the leak of the Pentagon Papers — the top secret government study on the Vietnam war — to the public. Though there are few new developments in understanding the particulars of the war or the impact the release of the Papers had on ending the conflict, the film allows audiences to experience the famous case from Ellsberg’s point of view, adding a fresh and poignantly human element to the events; it’s a political documentary that plays more like a character drama. Whether you were there when it happened or new to the story, there is something to be appreciated from this tale of a man who fell out of love with his country and decided to do something about it. (1:34) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

*North Face You’ll never think of outerwear the same way again — and in fact you might be reaching for your fleece and shivering through the more harrowing climbing scenes of this riveting historical adventure based on a true tale. Even those who consider themselves less than avid fans of outdoor survival drama will find their eyes frozen, if you will, on the screen when it comes to this retelling/re-envisioning of this story, legendary among mountaineers, of climbers, urged on by Nazi propaganda, to tackle the last "Alpine problem." At issue: the unclimbed north face of Switzerland’s Eiger, a highly dangerous and unpredictable zone aptly nicknamed "Murder Wall." Two working-class friends, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann of 2008’s Jerichow) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) — here portrayed as climbing fiends driven to reach summits rather than fight for the Nazis — take the challenge. There to document their achievement, or certain death, is childhood friend and Kurz’s onetime sweetheart Luise (Johanna Wokalek, memorable in 2008’s The Baader Meinhof Complex), eager to make her name as a photojournalist while fending off the advances of an editor (Ulrich Tukur) seeking to craft a narrative that positions the contestants as model Aryans. But the climb — and the Eiger, looming like a mythical ogre — is the main attraction here. Filmmaker Philipp Stölzl brings home the sheer heart-pumping exhilaration and terror associated with the sport — and this specific, legendarily tragic climb — by shooting in the mountains with his actors and crew, and the result goes a way in redeeming an adventure long-tainted by its fascist associations. (2:01) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Our Family Wedding America Ferrera and Lance Gross play a couple of lovebirds who must jump through some serious family hoops before they get married in the mostly serviceable Our Family Wedding. What begins as a dual Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, with the differences in each family’s traditions forcing complications and compromises, soon loses sight of its matrimonial plot as the focus steers towards a childish rivalry between the fathers. While it’s being marketed as a goofy comedy, the final product seeks a relatively sentimental tone, which makes the few slapstick moments — like a goat trying to rape Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker — seem pretty inappropriate. Still, for some audiences the well-tread plot will act as comfort food: they fight, they make up, and it all ends in a big wedding where we watch the characters dance for damn near ten minutes. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Galvin)

*Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief It would be easy to dismiss Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief as an unabashed Harry Potter knock-off. Trio of kids with magic powers goes on a quest to save the world in a Chris Columbus adaptation of a popular young adult series — sound familiar? But The Lightning Thief is sharp, witty, and a far cry from Columbus’ joyless adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001). Logan Lerman stars as Percy Jackson, the illegitimate son of Poseidon and Catherine Keener. Once he learns his true identity at Camp Half-Blood, he sets off on a quest with his protector, a satyr named Grover, and potential love interest Annabeth, daughter of Athena. Along the way, they bump into gods and monsters from Greek mythology — with a twist. Think Percy using his iPhone to fight Medusa (Uma Thurman), or a land of the Lotus-Eaters disguised as a Lady Gaga-blasting casino. A worthy successor to Harry Potter? Too soon to say, but The Lightning Thief is at least a well-made diversion. (1:59) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*A Prophet Filmmaker Jacques Audiard has described his new film, A Prophet, as "the anti-Scarface." Yet much like Scarface (1983), A Prophet bottles the heady euphoria that chases the empowerment of the powerless and the rise of the long-shot loner on the margins. In its almost-Dickensian attention to detail, devotion to its own narrative complexity, and passion for cinematic poetry, A Prophet rises above the ordinary and, through the prism of genre, finds its own power. The supremely opportunistic, pragmatically Machiavellian intellectual and spiritual education of a felon is the chief concern of here. Played by Tahar Rahim with guileless, open-faced charisma, Malik is half-Arab and half-Corsican — and distrusted or despised by both camps in the pen. When he lands in jail for his six-year sentence, he’s 19, illiterate, friendless, and vulnerable. His deal with the devil — and means of survival — arrives with Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), temporarily locked up before his testifies against the mob. Corsican boss Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup) wants him dead, and Malik is tagged to penetrate Reyeb’s cell with a blade hidden in mouth. After Malik’s gory rebirth, it turns out that the teenager’s a seer in more ways than one. From his low-dog position, he can eyeball the connections linking the drugs entering the prison to those circulating outside, as well as the machinations intertwining the Arab and Corsican syndicates. It’s no shock that when Cesar finds his power eroding and arranges prison leaves for his multilingual crossover star that Malik serves not only his Corsican master, but also his own interests, and begins to build a drug empire rivaling his teacher’s. Throughout his pupil’s progress, Audiard demonstrates a way with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, and when Malik finally breaks with his Falstaffian patriarch, it makes your heart skip a beat in a move akin to the title of the director’s last film. This Eurozone/Obama-age prophet is all about the profit — but he’s imbued with grace, even while gaming for ill-gotten gain. (2:29) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Remember Me Ominously set in New York City during the summer of 2001, Remember Me, starring Robert Pattinson (of the Twilight series) and Emilie de Ravin (of TV’s Lost), pretty much answers the question of whether it’s still too soon to make the events of September 11 the subject of a date movie. Or rather, not the subject so much as the specter waiting just off-camera for its walk-on while brooding 21-year-old Tyler Hawkins (Pattinson) quotes Gandhi, gets into brawls, gets drunk, writes letters to his dead brother, and otherwise channels despondency and rage into various salubrious outlets. One of these is romancing (under circumstances severely testing the viewer’s credulity) de Ravin’s Ally Craig, grappling somewhat more constructively with her own familial tragedy. Ally is the sort of self-possessed, strong-willed young woman whose instincts, shortly after she’s been backhanded by her drunk father (Chris Cooper), tell her to placate and have sex with her drunk boyfriend when he comes home enraged after battling his own father (Pierce Brosnan). She is there to teach Tyler, through quirky habits like eating dessert first, what director Allen Coulter (2006’s Hollywoodland) wishes to teach us: that time is short and one must fill one’s life with meaningful actions — like throwing a fire extinguisher through a window to convince a classroom of tweens to stop bullying one’s little sister. The film is seeded with allusions to an impending catastrophe that feels less integrated than exploited. And it’s uncomfortable seeing the fall of the towers used to make the ground shake under a sweet, fairly depthless depiction of love and grief. (2:08) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

She’s Out of My League From the co-writers of the abysmal Sex Drive (2008), She’s Out of My League could be another 90-minute assemblage of gross-out humor, dick jokes, and unabashed homophobia. As it turns out, the latest offering from Sean Anders and John Morris is legitimately funny — far better than the trailer (and that half-assed title) would have you believe. The adorkable Jay Baruchel stars as Kirk, a hapless loser who finds himself dating bonafide hottie Molly (Alice Eve). Once you get past the film’s silly conceit — Kirk’s only "movie ugly," and personality goes a long way — you’re left with a surprisingly charming comedy. The characters are amusing and the wit is sharp. Not to mention the fact that She’s Out of My League offers a downright heartfelt message. There’s a sincerity here that feels genuine instead of just tacked-on: yeah, yeah, it’s about what’s inside that counts, but there’s more to it than that. Ignore the dreadful "jizz in my pants" scene, and the movie’s almost an old-fashioned romcom. (1:44) Elmwood, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Shutter Island Director Martin Scorsese and muse du jour Leonardo DiCaprio draw from oft-filmed novelist Dennis Lehane (2003’s Mystic River, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone) for this B-movie thriller that, sadly, offers few thrills. DiCaprio’s a 1950s U.S. marshal summoned to a misty island that houses a hospital for the criminally insane, overseen by a doctor (Ben Kingsley) who believes in humane, if experimental, therapy techniques. From the get-go we suspect something’s not right with the G-man’s own mind; as he investigates the case of a missing patient, he experiences frequent flashbacks to his World War II service (during which he helped liberate a concentration camp), and has recurring visions of his spooky dead wife (Michelle Williams). Whether or not you fall for Shutter Island‘s twisty game depends on the gullibility of your own mind. Despite high-quality performances and an effective, if overwrought, tone of certain doom, Shutter Island stumbles into a third act that exposes its inherently flawed and frustrating storytelling structure. If only David Lynch had directed Shutter Island — it could’ve been a classic of mindfuckery run amok. Instead, Scorsese’s psychological drama is sapped of any mystery whatsoever by its stubbornly literal conclusion. (2:18) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

A Single Man In this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, Colin Firth plays George, a middle-aged gay expat Brit and college professor in 1962 Los Angeles. Months after the accidental death of Jim (Matthew Goode), his lover for 16 years, George still feels worse than bereft; simply waking each morning is agony. So on this particular day he has decided to end it all, first going through a series of meticulous preparations and discreet leave-takings that include teaching one last class and having supper with the onetime paramour (Julianne Moore) turned best friend who’s still stuck on him. The main problem with fashion designer turned film director Tom Ford’s first feature is that he directs it like a fashion designer, fussing over surface style and irrelevant detail in a story whose tight focus on one hard, real-world thing — grief — cries for simplicity. Not pretentious overpackaging, which encompasses the way his camera slavers over the excessively pretty likes of Nicholas Hoult as a student and Jon Kortajarena as a hustler, as if they were models selling product rather than characters, or even actors. (In fact Kortajarena is a male supermodel; the shocker is that Hoult is not, though Hugh Grant’s erstwhile About a Boy co-star is so preening here you’d never guess.) Eventually Ford stops showing off so much, and A Single Man is effective to the precise degree it lets good work by Goode, Moore and especially the reliably excellent Firth unfold without too much of his terribly artistic interference. (1:39) 1000 Van Ness, Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Sweetgrass Recorded between 2001-03 by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, Sweetgrass immerses us in sheep farming before taking off after a pair of latter-day cowboys on a 150-mile drive through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth range — a journey with deep historical roots and no practical future. As its rugged scenery beggars (but ultimately unseats) projections of the pastoral, so too do its mild sheep trigger myriad symbolic associations. Sweetgrass is finally about the relationship between farmhands and their flocks, and in this, it is notably unsentimental. During long takes of shearing and birthing, the correspondent displays of violence and tenderness, much of it erotic and seemingly reflexive, speaks to the human-animal encounter Berger eulogized in 1977. The lonesome cowboys whisper sweet nothings to the dogs and hurl fantastically mismatched streams of curses at the sheep (the absence of women being the common link). Through it all, Castaing-Taylor’s camera is an embodied presence, and hard work at that. Compared with Planet Earth‘s impossible views and spectacular displacements, Sweetgrass has its feet planted on the ground. (1:41) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Goldberg)

REP PICKS

The Female Bunch Al Adamson was the Ed Wood Jr. of the late 60s and 1970s, albeit a version without any delusions of grandeur — in it for the money, he knew his ultra-cheap films were crap. This one, titled to cash in on The Wild Bunch and made the same year (though there were no distribution takers until 1971, two years later), is closer to an unacknowledged, soporific remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ great ’68 She-Devils on Wheels, with the deadly dames on horseback rather than motorcycles. When Sandy (Nesa Renet) is dumped by her faithless Vegas lounge singer boyfriend — and no wonder, since she behaves like a Velcro doormat — her showgirl friend Libby (peroxide-blonde perennial Adamson star and subsequent spouse Regina Carroll) recommends she join a "club" of women on a secret ranch. They smuggle drugs, have soft-core orgies (with Mexican men and each other), abuse the local "wetbacks," and enforce a strict "no men" rule on ranch property whose violation can lead to the poor sod getting branded, dragged to death, or worse. One such unfortunate is Russ Tamblyn, who sure fell hard and fast from being third-billed in Best Picture winner West Side Story just eight years prior; another is pathetic ranch hand Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his last roles, seeming even more pathetic than called for because he was undergoing debilitating cancer treatments at the time. The "she-devil" here is serious man-hater Grace, whose thespian Jennifer Bishop also appeared in such greats as 1970’s Bigfoot (as one of the pretty girls it keeps chained in its cave), 1974’s Impulse (imperiled by William Shatner), 1969’s The Maltese Bippy, and two Hee Haw episodes. The Female Bunch was advertised with slogans including "Hot Pants — and a Fast Draw! They Treat Their Horses Better Than Their Men!" It was partially shot at the Spahn Ranch, also home at the time to Charlie Manson and company. This grade-Z opus is preceded at the Vortex Room by the very big-budget Candy (1968), an abysmal stab at Terry Southern’s porn satire whose all-star cast included everyone from Brando and Burton to Ringo Starr, Sugar Ray Robinson, John Huston, and Anita Pallenberg. Thurs/18, 9 p.m., $5, Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. (Harvey)

Stage listings

David Talbot
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

Baby: A Musical Off-Market Theatres, 965 Mission; 1-800-838-3006, www.roltheatre.com. $20-32. Previews Thurs/18, 8pm. Opens Fri/19, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 18. Ray of Light Theatre performs a comedy about pregnancy.

Ramble-Ations: A One D’Lo Show Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St; 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Opens Wed/17, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through April 3. Performance artist D’Lo offers up a comedic solo show from a unique (gay, Hindi, Sri Lankan, SoCal, hip-hop) perspective.

Truce Noh Space, 2840 Mariposa; 826-1958. $10-25. Previews Wed/17, 8pm. Opens Thurs/18, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through April 3. Playwright-performer Marilee Talkington stars in Vanguardian Productions’ presentation of her autobiographical work about a woman struggling with impending blindness.

ONGOING

…And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi Cutting Ball Theater, 277 Taylor; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $15-30. Opens Fri/19, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through April 11. Cutting Ball presents this deeply personal fantasy play inspired by the myth of Demeter and Persephone and directed by Amy Mueller.

Caddyshack: Live! Dark Room, 2263 Mission; 401-7987, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/99361. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 27. The Dark Room presents Jim Fourniadis’ live adaptation of the iconic movie.

Death Play EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; 673-3847, www.theexit.org. $15-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 27. Thunderbird Theatre Company presents the third installment in the comedy series by Sang S. Kim.

*Den of Thieves SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $40. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through April 17. Stephen Adly Guirgis has been good to SF Playhouse. The company already scored big with two of the New Yorker’s gritty, dark and sharply funny plays, Our Lady of 121st Street and Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train. Director Susi Damilano continues the streak with SF Playhouse’s latest, the less heavy but very funny Den of Thieves, about an unlikely foursome of inept bandits caught trying to heist a Mafioso’s safe under a discotheque in Queens — a simple tale that gives plenty of scope to Guirgis’s muscular way with dialogue and the clash of characters. The story opens on a depressed recovering kleptomaniac, Maggie (an affectingly understated Kathryn Tkel), and her 12-step sponsor Paul (the excellent Casey Jackson), a nerdy fast-talking mixed-race former safecracker, whose Jewish grandfather headed up a famous crime ring that robin-hooded their take to library construction for kids in the neighborhood. Enter Maggie’s former boyfriend, a Puerto Rican tough named Flaco (a hilariously spot-on Chad Deverman), with his new squeeze, erotic dancer Boochie (a deftly comic Corinne Proctor), and a lead on a large traceless sum of cash. Suddenly the smell of big money sends recovery out the window and makes uneasy bedfellows of the motley, hostile bunch. Enter angry but softhearted mobster Little Tuna (Ashkon Davaran), his sadistic sidekick Sal (Peter Ruocco), and big gun Big Tuna (Joe Madero). Facing mob vengeance, it’s time for some fast-talking and deal making among the mini-den, and all bets are off. The ending seems to have eluded Guirgis a little, but the way there makes for meaty comedy, while the exceptional cast sells the conceit so beautifully they make it a crime to miss. (Avila)

Desperate Affection Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; www.expressionproductions.com. $28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through April 10. Expression Productions presents a dark comedy by Bruce Graham.

Eat, Pray, Laugh! Off-Market Theaters, 965 Mission; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Wed, 8pm. Through April 28. Off-Market Theaters presents stand up comic and solo artist Alicia Dattner in her award-winning solo show.

*Juliet Little Theatre, Creative Arts Bldg, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway; http://creativearts.sfsu.edu/events/1412/juliet. $8-12. Thurs/18-Sat/20, 8pm; Sun/21, 2pm. Can a cast of seven Juliets a Romeo and Juliet make? Very much so. In fact, this devised work, directed by Mark Jackson and beautifully brought to life by an exceptional student cast from SF State’s theater department, conveys not just the poetry but the sheer energy, surprise, and shock of living — at the very heart of the work — better than any recent straight-ahead production in recent memory. This vibrant, movement-based, and repeatedly stunning postmodern Juliet retains the dramatic arc of Shakespeare’s tragedy, yet runs another parallel arc of its own, exploring the perspective of Juliet as an extremely intelligent, vital and growing young woman by ingeniously refracting her through the lives and memories of seven actors, six female (Arisa Bega, Charlotte Gulezian, Meredith, Frannie Morrison, Megan Trout, Mai Kou Vang) and one male (Dara Yazdani). The results are not to be missed, providing something truly unique as well as one of the most compelling ways into a text that refuses to die despite a million bad productions. Excellent scenic and lighting designs (by Hannah Murray and Clyde Sheets, respectively) and a truly outstanding sound design by Matt Stines offer fine mood-casting support throughout. (Avila)

KML Preaches to the Choir Jewish Theater, 470 Florida; www.killingmyblobster.com. $15-20. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 7 and 10pm; Sun, 7pm. Through March 28. The award-winning sketch comedy group takes aim at the higher powers in this piece directed by Paco Romane.

*Loveland The Marsh, 1074 Valencia; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through April 11. Los Angeles–based writer-performer Ann Randolph returns to the Marsh with a new solo play partly developed during last year’s Marsh run of her memorable Squeeze Box. Randolph plays loner Frannie Potts, a rambunctious, cranky, and libidinous individual of decidedly odd mien, who is flying back home to Ohio after the death of her beloved mother. The flight is occasion for Frannie’s own flights of memory, exotic behavior in the aisle, and unabashed advances toward the flight deck brought on by the seductively confident strains of the captain’s commentary. The singular personality and mother-daughter relationship that unfurls along the way is riotously demented and brilliantly humane. (Avila)

*Mirrors In Every Corner Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia; 626-2787, www.theintersection.org. $15-25. Thurs/18-Sun/21, 8pm. Try to ask someone who’s ever felt marked by the color (any color) of their skin if they believe in a post-racial society, and see what kind of a response you elicit. That there is no tidy answer to this potentially messy question is a conundrum well-illustrated by playwrite Chinaka Hodge’s hypothetical fable of a white-skinned baby born into an African-American family. Each member of the family has a different reaction to and relationship with the mysterious blonde-haired changeling Miranda, dubbed "Random". Her father, who dies when she is young, is reported to have hated her. Her oldest brother Watts (Daveed Diggs) claims to understand her best, but in trying to get her to unravel what it means to be "black" vs. "white", reveals himself to be as confused as anyone by the lack of a single definition. Her mother Willie—played tough and no-nonsense by Margo Hall (who also plays the teenaged Miranda)—loves her unconditionally, yet ultimately sacrifices her for the well-being of the greater family unit. Hodge’s first full-length play, Mirrors succeeds in strong performance, warm humor, and crackling, poetic dialogue, but fails to adequately resolve how it is that the otherwise uncompromising Willie lets the low card of an unfortunate accident trump her otherwise strong hand of "colorblind" maternal loyalty. With Dwight Huntsman and Traci Tolmaire. (Gluckstern)

Now and at the Hour EXIT Stage Left, 156 Eddy; 673-3847, www.theexit.org. $15-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 27. EXIT presents the subtly unnerving show by theatrical magician Christian Cagigal.

Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome, 575 Tenth St.; 1-800-838-3006, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-69. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through April 24. Thrillpeddlers presents this revival of the legendary Cockettes’ 1970 musical extravaganza.

The Real Americans The Marsh, 1062 Valencia; 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $18-50. Wed-Fri, 8pm (April 16, show at 9pm; starting April 24, no Fri shows except May 28, 8pm); Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 30. The Marsh presents the world premiere of Dan Hoyle’s new solo show.

Shopping! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $27-29. Fri-Sat, 8pm. The musical is now in its fifth year at Shelton Theater.

Something You Might Want Stagewerx Theatre, 533 Sutter; www.catchynametheatre.org. $16. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through March 28. CatchyNameTheatre presents this dark comedy written and directed by Jim Strope.

Suddenly Last Summer Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $15-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 27. Actors Theatre presents one of Tennessee Williams’ finest and most famous plays.

The Sugar Witch New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-4914, www.nctcsf.org.

Wed-Sat, 8 pm; Sun, 2pm. Through April 4. NCTC presents the premiere of Nathan Sanders’ crime story.

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through July 30. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

BAY AREA

Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, berkeleyrep.org. $13.50-27. Days and times vary. Through April 11. Berkeley Rep presents a sexy and intriguing new show from Naomi Iizuka.

*East 14th Laney College Theatre, 900 Fallon St, Oakl; www.east14thoak.eventbrite.com. $10-50. Fri-Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 28. Also at the the Marsh Berkeley in March. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

Handless Central Stage, 5221 Central, Richmond; 1-800-838-3006, www.raggedwing.org. $15-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 27. Ragged Wing Ensemble presents Amy Sass’ re-invention of the folk-tale The Handless Maiden.

*Learn to be Latina La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk. impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 27. Impact Theatre continues its 14th season with the world premiere of Enrique Urueta’s play.

Singin’ in the Rain Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; (510) 665-5565, www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $19-28. Fri/19, 7:30pm; Sat/20, 2 and 7pm; Sun/21, 1 and 6pm. Berkeley Playhouse presents this classic musical.

PERFORMANCE

"All Star Magic & More" SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter; 646-0776, www.comedyonthesquare.com. Sun, 7pm. Ongoing. $20. Magician RJ Owens hosts the longest running magic show in San Francisco.

"Bananaritis!" CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Sat, 8pm. $20. Tim Rubel Human Shakes presents a performance piece that examines queer relationships.

BATS Improv Theatre Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, B350 Fort Mason; 474-6776, www.improv.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm. $17-20. The Theatresports show format treats audiences to an entertaining and engaging night of theater and comedy presented as a competition.

"The Cat’s Pajamas" Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St; www.makeoutroom.com. Mon, 8pm. $5. This month’s installment of the performance series hosts the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, among other acts.

"HyperReal" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, 701 Mission; 978-ARTS, www.ybca.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. $25. Bay Area artist Sara Kraft debuts her tech-vs-mind exploration, a fusion of text, song, sound, movement, and video.

PianoFight Studio 250 at Off-Market, 965 Mission; www.pianofight.com. Mon, 8pm. Through March 29. $20. The female-driven variety show Monday Night ForePlays returns with brand-new sketches, dance numbers, and musical performances.

"Sheherezade X: A Year in Review (2009)" Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason; 885-8526. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 27. $25. Short plays by local writers take on topics as varied as Muni and Bernie Madoff.

"Two on a Party" Artaud Theater, 450 Florida; 1-800-838-3006. Sat-Sun, 8pm. $18-20. Word for Word performs the Tennessee Williams work before they head off to present it in France.

VergeFest Garage, 975 Howard; 885-4006. Fri-Sun, 8pm. $10-20. Featuring contemporary dance, improvisation, and performance.

Virgin Play Series Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Marina at Laguna, SF; 240-4454, http://magictheatre.org. Mon, 6pm. Free (reservations recommended). Through March 29. Magic Theatre presents Martha Heasley Cox’s series of staged readings of works currently in development. This week: Ryan Purcell’s Brazilian musical Marinheiro.

Music listings

David Talbot
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Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Astral Force, DC/AC El Rio. 7pm, donation. Benefit for AIDS/LifeCycle.

Epiphanette, Great Girls Blouse, Miriam Speyer and New Blend Retox Lounge. 9pm, free.

Filthy Thieving Bastards, Blag Dahlia, Zander Schloss Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Gomez, Buddy Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $28.

Kegels, Jokes for Feelings, Mitchell Experiment Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Kim Wilson Blues Revue Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $24.

Camaron Ochs, Spooky Flowers, Ayla Nereo Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Razorhoof, Iron Witch, Hazzards Cure Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Undead Boys, Love Songs, Dope Charge, Keeners Elbo Room. 6pm, $8.

Zoo Station, Stung Slims. 8pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St., SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Common Eider King Eider, Raccoons, Das Blut, Hiss and Hum, Marigold Crowns Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Willie G Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Gomez, One Eskimo Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $28.

Groove Armada, Lilofee Fillmore. 8pm, $30.

HIJK, Love is Chemicals, Rademacher Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Hurry Up Shotgun, Victory and Associates, Genius and the Thieves Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

*Jucifer, Grayceon, Serpent Crown Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Static Thought, Spawn Atomic, Step Up! El Rio. 8pm, $7.

Tokyo Raid, Pan Demon, Bitch Be Cool, Housecoat Project, Red Penny One Paradise Lounge. 9pm, $7.

Trifles, Cheetahs on the Moon, Bodice Rippers Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

Victims Family, Bar Feeders, Polar Bears Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Babatunde Lea Quintet Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $20.

Dred Scott Quartet Coda. 9pm, $7.

Pepe Jacobo Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bassekou Kouyate, Ngoni Ba Slims. 8pm, $25.

Dime Store Dandy Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-7. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, and guest Earthrise Soundsystem spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

DJ Key Bump and Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 5-9pm. With a performance by Mestiza.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Echo-A-Gogo Knockout. 10pm, free. Vintage dub reggae with DJ Lucky and friends.

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Good Foot Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Meat DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $2-5. Industrial with DJs BaconMonkey, Netik, Sage, and Unit 77.

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest.

Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

Solid Club Six. 9pm, $5. With resident DJ Daddy Rolo and rotating DJs Mpenzi, Shortkut, Polo Mo’qz and Fuze spinning roots, reggae, and dancehall.

FRIDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Joe Bagale, Oona, Thrill of It All Independent. 9pm, $14.

Blasphemous Rumours, Cured Slims. 9pm, $15.

Con Funk Shun Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26-30.

Deceptikon, Captain Ahab, Twin Crystals, Tik/Tak Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Gomez, Little Ones Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $28.

Groove Armada, Fenech-Soler Live Fillmore. 8pm, $30.

Horse Operas, Goldie Wilson House of Shields. 10pm, $5.

Kaptron, James Lanman, Kit, Kat and the Suitcase Brothers Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Voodoo Glow Skulls, Hub City Stompers, Compton SF Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Yung Mars, Get Back Crew Coda. 10pm, $10.

Z-Trane Electric Trio, Justin Ancheta, Con Brio Pier 23. 9:30pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Emily Anne’s Delights Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Equinox Trio Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Keith Jarrett Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-95.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Harlem Gospel Choir Kanbar Hall, 3200 California, SF; www.jccsf.org. 8pm, $40-45.

"Jewish Music Festival" Congregation Sherith Israel, 2266 California, SF; www.jewishmusicfestival.org. 6pm, free. "Journey to Shabbat" performance with Rita Glassman, Yuval Ron, and Jamie Papish. See website for complete festival schedule.

Mazacote Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

Nell Robinson, Henriettas Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 8:15pm, $18.

Bassam Saba Arab Cultural and Community Center, Two Plaza, SF; www.arabculturalcenter.org. 8pm, $15.

Smiley Mountain Band Plough and Stars. 9pm, $6-10.

Zoyres Eastern European Wild Ferment Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Alcoholocaust Presents Riptide Tavern. 9pm, free. DJ What’s His Fuck spins old-school punk and other gems.

Bridges: Brooklyn to the Bay and Beyond Elbo Room. 9pm, $8. With DJs Concerned and Jimmy Love, and live performance by Andy Allo.

Deep Fried Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. DJs jaybee, David Justin, and Dean Manning spinning indie, dance rock, electronica, funk, hip hop, and more.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

DJ Jeremiah and Friends Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. Afrobeat, ju ju, and tribal funk.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk. This week’s guest is QDUP Foundation.

Hubba Hubba Revue DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Burlesque show.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Loose Stud. 10pm-3am, $5. DJs Domino and Six spin electro and indie, with vintage porn visual projections to get you in the mood.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. Doo-wop, soul, and one-hit wonders with DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat.

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; http://222hyde.com. 6pm, free. Low-budget synthesizers and Eastern European cold war beats.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St., SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Tingel Tangel Club Second Anniversary Blowout Celebration Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $20. With Veronica Klaus, Joey Arias, Basil Twist, Todd Almond, Fauxnique, Marga Gomez, and DJs Juanita More and Bus Station John.

SATURDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Airfix Kits, Housecoat Project, Teutonics, DJ the Wizard, DJ Phil Lantz Knockout. 5-9pm, free. Crime record signing from 5-6pm.

Tim Barry, Possessed by Paul James, Fire Whiskey Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $10.

Con Funk Shun Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $30.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Foreverland, Barely Manilow Mezzanine. 9pm, $15.

Inferno of Joy, Reaction, Dutch Windmill El Rio. 9pm, $7.

Lilan Kane Blues Band Lou’s Pier 47, 300 Jefferson, SF; www.louspier47.com. 8pm.

Octomutt, Dandeline Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Rosin Coven, George Cole Quintet, Kim Boekbinder Café du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Ron Silva and the Monarchs, Franco Nero Ska Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Slipstream Sparrows, Headshear, Richard Bitch, Anhata Sound Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Small Change Romeos, Mavalour, Midway Delta, DJ unk’l funk’l El Rio. 3pm, $8.

Uzi Tattoo, Prik Flower, Economen Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Xiu Xiu, tUne-YaRdS, Noveller Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Alphabet Soup Coda. 10pm, $10.

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Hiromi, Robert Glasper Experiment Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-55.

Loveseat Trio Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Albino!, Alma Desnuda Independent. 9pm, $17.

Mark Levine and the Latin Tinge Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

Marara Music Store, 66 W. Portal, SF; www.shelbyashpresents.net. 2pm, free.

Pine Box Boys, Earl Brothers, Last Men on Earth, Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit Slims. 8:30pm, $15.

Fito Reinoso Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

Sila, Meklit Hadero, DJ Jeremiah Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14.

Marcus Tardelli, Carlos Oliviera, Ricard Peixoto Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 242-4500. 8pm, $34.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie: Donner Party DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups with John! John! and the Wagonistas.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickinson.

Cockfight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. With DJs Earworm and Matt Hite.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Fringe: An Indie Rock Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Blondie K and subOctave.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Road to Ultra Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF; info@santrancecisco.com. 10pm, $15. With Javi Cannus, Sheff, Dutch, Michael Anthony, Jeff Richmond, and Hil Huerta.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. With DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Sharam 1015 Folsom. 10pm, $10. With DJ Rooz, Taj, and more.

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

B-Stars, Hi Rhythm Hustlers, Royal Deuces, Karling Abbeygate Band Knockout. 9pm, $8.

*Blowfly, Clarence Reid, Knights of the New Crusade, Awesome Party DNA Lounge. 6:30pm, $15.

David Matthew Daniels, Robert Meade, Sean McArdle Brainwash Café, 1122 Folsom, SF; www.brainwash.com. 6pm, free.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

*Kreator, Kataklysm, Evile, Lightning Swords of Death Slims. 8pm, $24.

Massive Moth, Your Cannons, Here Come the Saviours Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Janelle Monae Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Ralph’s World Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 3pm, $18.

Rollercoaster, Watch it Sparkle, Sweet Nothing Kimo’s. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Terry Disley Washington Square Bar and Grill, 1707 Powell, SF; (415) 433-1188. 6pm, free.

"Jazz Jam Session" Epicenter Café. 6pm, free.

Sunday Sessions Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With Wil Blades.

Kenny Washington Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Motel Drive, Clay Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

"Salsa Sundays" El Rio. 4pm, $5. With Danilo y Universal.

Jake Shimabukuro Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7 and 9pm, $18-24.

"Te Gusto Musical" Coda. 8pm, $10. With Anthony Blea and friends.

DANCE CLUBS

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and guest DJG.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

American Studies, Ash Reiter, Mark Matos and Os Beaches Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

*Karine Denike, Dina Maccabee Band, Upstairs Downstairs Knockout. 9pm, $7.

"Felonious Presents Live City Revue" Coda. 9pm, $7.

Mama Lion, Eighteen Individual Eyes, Heated El Rio. 7pm, $5.

Janelle Monae Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more.

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic and industrial with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Motown on Mondays Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

TUESDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Axe, Terroritmo, Foga Na Roupa Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Devendra Banhart and the Grogs, Dorothy and the Originals Warfield. 8pm, $27.50-32.50.

Bias Tape, AJ Rivlin El Rio. 8pm, free.

Jason Collett, Bahamas, Zeus Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $15.

Jamie Cullum, Imelda May Fillmore. 8pm, $35.

Fell Voices, Addaura, Elk, Necrite, DJ Rob Metal Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Bleached Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $17.

Serena Maneesh, Depreciation Guild, Veil Veil Vanish Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Savoy Brown Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $20.

Stagger and Fall, Hollowbodys, Idle Threats, Hounds and Harlots Knockout. 9:30pm, free.

Thralls, All Time High, Hollow Earth Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJs Corruptor Ref, Sebastian Twot, and What’s His Fuck.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Psychic Dream Astrology

David Talbot
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0

March 17-23

ARIES

March 21-April 19

Setting your priorities with your ego will put you on a path that will bring you no joy. Slow down and reassess your motives before it’s too late to change direction and you’re stuck with damage control.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

You are able to start something meaningful this week, so check in with yourself to see what feels most deserving of your awesomeness. Don’t waste energy seeking approval.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Just because you feel sad doesn’t mean you have to tear things up. Make creative changes that allow more room for what you want.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

Before you do anything rash, take a breather. This week’s theme is motive, and you better check yours. Don’t convince others about where you’re coming from — embody it.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

If everything has to go your way for you to feel fabulous, you are working off a shallow foundation. Develop tools for nurturing yourself even when you hit a rough patch.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Don’t pathologize yourself. Feeling bad is OK when you are experiencing crappy times, just like feeling excellent is the right response to the good stuff. Experience life without fearing your own head.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Handle yourself with a little restraint or you’ll lose yourself in others. If you set wise boundaries with the folks you care most about, you can sustain the good vibes you crave.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

Resist the temptation to barrel forward when you have no clue about what you’re doing. You’re likely to create more problems than you solve by pushing ahead. Cool it till you have a clearer game plan.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

You can be such a visionary when you get out of your own way. Don’t focus on nasty "what ifs." Instead, focus on what you hope to create.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

You are going to get through this, Cappy. You just need to stay focused on what’s in front of you rather than on all the baggage you brought with you. Let go of your rusty old ways this week and trust in your own strength.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

You’re on the edge of a hecka big change and you need a breather, pal. Your best medicine right now is a time out, toddler style. Let your inner baby have a meltdown, then put her to sleep. When she wakes up, you’ll be ready for anything. *

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

Be willing to make some choices and take some risks. The time for procrastination has come and gone. Take responsibility for how your state of mind effects the people around you.

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a psychic dreamer for 15 years. Check out her Web site at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com.

Urethra, frankly

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Urethra, frankly

Dear Andrea:

I have always had an interest in inserting thin objects into my urethra, and now manage a large-diameter pencil. It really feels thrilling, and depending on the mood, I tend to orgasm. My question is: how much can the urethra in a woman stretch? I have also inserted the same into my cervix; are there dangers in either?

Love,

Intrepid Explorer

Dear Ex:

There is no question that the urethra, or at least its surrounding tissue, is sexually sensitive.

Ernest Gräfenburg’s orginal break-out paper was called “The Role Of Urethra in Female Orgasm” and figured the locus of internal vaginal sensitivity (later called the G-spot) to be the area of nerve-rich erectile tissue wedged between the urethra and the upper wall of the vagina. You stimulate the paraurethral area though the vagina. There’s no reason it shouldn’t work from the other direction. Except for that pesky business about the vagina being thickly muscled, tough, flexible, and dead-ended, while the urethra is relatively inflexible and fragile and leads directly into the bladder, which leads to the kidneys, which you do not want to mess with. But assuming you are real and really female, you have already done this and lived to tell. Yay for you. Your job now is either to quit it (recommended) or find a very clean and safe way to do it.

I was intrigued to hear from a physician (this was 10 or so years back, but not, like, 40 years back) that little girls are routinely brought to emergency departments with hairpins in their urethras. Let’s say that “hairpin” was just shorthand for “small, easily accessible, and inappropriate random object” and consider why it’s a bad idea: small things get lost; easily accessible random objects are dirty; and small, dirty objects loose in your urinary tract will cause infection and may cause perforations. Either way, you would end up in the ER. The only appropriate object for urethral insertion is a urethral sound, or something as smooth, appropriately sized, long-handled, and sterilizable as a urethral sound. Does any of that say “Use a pencil!” to you?

As for the cervical insertion: I will admit that it ought to be technically possible. The cervix, even in a woman who’s never been pregnant, is closed-ish but not entirely closed, and it waxeth and waneth like the moon. You do hear of people doing cervix “play” or see pictures of such things on the Internet. But that does not mean you should do it.

For one thing, there’s pain. If you have never had a baby or a miscarriage (I have had both, and may I add OMG) or really horrible menstrual cramps, you have no idea how much having your uterus cranked open hurts. That muscular organ, inevitably referred to as “fist-sized,” is usually clenched down tight, and for a reason. Anything introduced in there can perforate, causing peritonitis and possible death, or just plain infect, causing peritonitis and possible death. If you do not want to risk peritonitis and possible death, please just leave your cervix alone. It has a job to do and does not need you interfering with it.

Love,

Andrea

See Andrea’s other column at carnalnation.com.

 

Urethra, frankly

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Urethra, frankly

andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have always had an interest in inserting thin objects into my urethra, and now manage a large-diameter pencil. It really feels thrilling, and depending on the mood, I tend to orgasm. My question is: how much can the urethra in a woman stretch? I have also inserted the same into my cervix; are there dangers in either?

Love,

Intrepid Explorer

Dear Ex:

There is no question that the urethra, or at least its surrounding tissue, is sexually sensitive. Ernest Gräfenburg’s orginal break-out paper was called "The Role Of Urethra in Female Orgasm" and figured the locus of internal vaginal sensitivity (later called the G-spot) to be the area of nerve-rich erectile tissue wedged between the urethra and the upper wall of the vagina. You stimulate the paraurethral area though the vagina. There’s no reason it shouldn’t work from the other direction. Except for that pesky business about the vagina being thickly muscled, tough, flexible, and dead-ended, while the urethra is relatively inflexible and fragile and leads directly into the bladder, which leads to the kidneys, which you do not want to mess with. But assuming you are real and really female, you have already done this and lived to tell. Yay for you. Your job now is either to quit it (recommended) or find a very clean and safe way to do it.

I was intrigued to hear from a physician (this was 10 or so years back, but not, like, 40 years back) that little girls are routinely brought to emergency departments with hairpins in their urethras. Let’s say that "hairpin" was just shorthand for "small, easily accessible, and inappropriate random object" and consider why it’s a bad idea: small things get lost; easily accessible random objects are dirty; and small, dirty objects loose in your urinary tract will cause infection and may cause perforations. Either way, you would end up in the ER. The only appropriate object for urethral insertion is a urethral sound, or something as smooth, appropriately sized, long-handled, and sterilizable as a urethral sound. Does any of that say "Use a pencil!" to you?

As for the cervical insertion: I will admit that it ought to be technically possible. The cervix, even in a woman who’s never been pregnant, is closed-ish but not entirely closed, and it waxeth and waneth like the moon. You do hear of people doing cervix "play" or see pictures of such things on the Internet. But that does not mean you should do it.

For one thing, there’s pain. If you have never had a baby or a miscarriage (I have had both, and may I add OMG) or really horrible menstrual cramps, you have no idea how much having your uterus cranked open hurts. That muscular organ, inevitably referred to as "fist-sized," is usually clenched down tight, and for a reason. Anything introduced in there can perforate, causing peritonitis and possible death, or just plain infect, causing peritonitis and possible death. If you do not want to risk peritonitis and possible death, please just leave your cervix alone. It has a job to do and does not need you interfering with it.

Love,

Andrea

See Andrea’s other column at carnalnation.com.

Claire, clearly

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Claire, clearly

TV EYED Still stuck on Lost? Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are counting on it, and it’s about half-past the time to finally wrap it up, because the time-travel device and the many dead people who flitted around the island were starting to make it seem like very little was at stake. The revelation that the Lost crash survivors appeared to simply be chess pieces in a cosmic bout between the blonde, sad-eyed, and benevolent-seeming Jacob (Mark Pellegrino) — who intercedes in the islanders’ destinies — and his murderous-minded Smoke Monster/Man in Black/anti-Locke nemeses (played by Titus Welliver and Terry O’Quinn) didn’t help matters either

So despite the attractions of brawls between Sayid (Naveen Andrews) and Dogen (Hiroyuki Sanada); the dryly smart-ass, geek charm of the intuitively gifted Hurley (Jorge Garcia) sparring with the telepathically talented Miles (Ken Leung); the promise of seeing killed-off faves like physicist Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) and rock star Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) again; and the weird mixed personal pleasure of seeing Oahu haunts standing in for, say, downtown South Korea (an effect that usually jars my Honolulu-bred self straight out of the story) — I must confess that the most intriguing and chilling character this season is Claire (Emilie de Ravin). She gave birth on the island to a son who, an Aussie psychic prophesied, was surrounded by danger. She then becomes the focus of the latest rescue mission embarked upon by Kate (Evangeline Lilly), who has a thing for saving moms.

Bestowed with a name that seems diametrically opposed to the smoky obfuscation veiling Lost, Claire also embodies the cyclical patterns of the island. She’s "gone native" in the madly violent, Col. Kurtz-style survivalist swagger of the French woman Rousseau (Mira Furlan), who also gave birth on the island and, after the disappearance of her baby, likewise took leave of her senses. Claire’s ax murder of a captive Other truly shocked: both in its prime-time bloodlessness — the death of Boone (Ian Somerhalder) was gorier — and uncharacteristic cold-bloodedness. We’re not in the Kansas of the guileless, sweet-faced single mom anymore.

Claire also embodies more than a few of the themes critical to Lost survivors: she has a missing-daddy issue, much like the father-challenged Jack (Matthew Fox), Locke, Hurley — hell, who doesn’t have problems with Pops on this show? Much like Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sayid, she was also an abduction victim, and she’s in the thick of the current crisis between good and evil. Despite Lost‘s references to dharma and Ram Dass, this battle between the island god-titans seems to be disappointingly flattened into a kind of Judeo-Christian light vs. dark, do-gooders vs. sinners sort of dichotomy. Claire upsets that tidy apple cart as the little nut-bag lost who is locked into a deal with the gloom and doom team.

www.abc.go.com/shows/lost

Feel the ‘Love

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Feel the ‘Love

kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER How to reconcile an ultra-catchy, hooligan-cozy chorus like “These girls fall like dominos!” with the unpretentious, Dennis Cooper-idolizing music lover who dreamed it up — namely Milo Cordell of the rosily buzzing U.K. outfit the Big Pink?

It helps to have a little distance from your unreliable narrator, according to Cordell, son of producer Denny Cordell (the Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Joe Cocker). “I kind of see it, in a way, as kind of dumb and quite crass and slightly throwaway, really. But it’s got this bubblegum sugar-coated layer on it, though underneath it’s pretty dark,” says Cordell matter-of-factly of “Dominos,” while tucking into dinner at a Turkish restaurant in his Dalton hood in London. The unpretentious keyboardist’s home “twiddling his thumbs,” waiting for a replacement for a lost passport while the rest of the band tours Australia.

“The whole subject matter is about the weakness of man, really, and then it’s made to be quite jubilant. I think it’s throws a lot of people people who think it could be misogynistic, but I think it’s quite honest.”

At least a few critical people understand: he recently e-mailed Carly Simon to get permission for a version of “Dominos” that the Big Pink put together for NME, which included a portion of “You’re So Vain,” sung by Lily Allen, in its bleak candy center. Fortunately, Simon got it. “I get a bit freaked out about it sometimes,” Cordell confessed. “That people will get it all wrong.”

Tossed-off one-night stands, MDMA massives (“Crystal Visions”), late nights spent battling back that fiery orb (“At War With the Sun”), youthful rebellion (“Too Young to Love”), and Dennis Cooper-style entanglements (“Frisk”) crop up, judgement or no, on the Big Pink’s debut, A Brief History of Love (4AD). The disc’s big hooks, up-close ruminations, and ear-teasing sounds, ranging from the 8-bitty to the Congotronic, are defined as poppier and punchier than, say, Crystal Castles, whose early recording Cordell released on his Merok label — a smudgy amalgam of “digital Velvet Underground” mixed with “Timberland and Ministry,” as he puts it.

“I think at the moment there’s a lot of bands that are bored by every other band in England,” he offers, when asked about the clouds of noise and experimentation creeping into U.K. rock. “Every other band trying same licks, all these shit bands referencing the Kinks and Beatles, which is all fair enough, but there’s so many of them! You flip through NME, and it’s the same band on every page, wearing the same checkered shirt. There’s a bunch of people who are bored by that and are creating their own sonic atmospheres. Whether it’s the Klaxons or the xx — there’s something similar between all of us because perhaps we don’t want to sound like the Kooks.”

Cordell started the project with his teenage friend and vocalist-guitarist Robbie Furze after tinkering in Furze’s studio one day. “We both had come out of relationships and were a bit lost,” recalls Cordell, “and I think we kind of found each other and found something to do as well. We filled a void of a lover with each other and making music.” Furze also supplied Cordell with one major revelation: “‘You don’t have to be a musician to make music,’ he said. ‘You’ve got an amazing ear.’ He knew all the bands I worked with [via Merok, like Titus Andronicus]. We started playing around with noise through pedals, chopping it up and layering sound.”

And as for the band name, Cordell explains, “We probably couldn’t be further apart from the Band in terms of musical styles, but there’s a certain ideology we share with them: knuckling down and having a good time on tour, the sense of grandeur and being slightly phallic-like.”

Or a vulvic, I add. “I never even thought of it as female privates till somebody said it a few months ago,” he marvels. “You just translate it as you translate it. I think it’s great. I bet Oasis doesn’t get asked that much about their name.”

THE BIG PINK

Wed/10, 8 p.m., $17

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.gamh.com

GUNSLINGERS AND BEACHES

Bloody digits mark the the French three’s darkabilly creations, and the all-girl latter’s promise souped-up garage psych. Fri/12, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

SURF CITY AND THE ART MUSEUMS

The Kiwis blend the Flying Nun swirl of the Clean with riptide licks, whereas Glenn Donaldson’s lo-fi jangle rumbles off a new Woodsist release. Sun/14, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

Music mitzvah

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Music mitzvah

MUSIC I am a Judaism junkie. I love Fiddler on the Roof. I read Heeb magazine online. And I collect Jewish puns the way Midwest moms used to collect Beanie Babies. But until recently, I knew shockingly little about Jewish music. Turns out the term doesn’t just refer to music made by Jews (sorry, Beastie Boys), nor is it limited to songs sung in synagogue. Even the broad genre of klezmer music is just one facet of an ancient and dynamic musical tradition that mixes the theme of Jewish experience with Jewish languages like Yiddish, Hebrew, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), and Judeo-Arabic dialects, all translated through crosscultural musical tropes. And just as the Jewish experience continues to grow and change, so does the music associated with it.

It is this ongoing genre-bending cultural conversation that the 25th edition of Berkeley’s Jewish Music Festival, hosted by the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, will honor. “This year, we’re focusing on that dialogue between the sacred and the secular,” said director Eleanor Shapiro. “The idea was music that’s revelation as well as revelry.”

The program starts with sacred Jewish and Muslim music from the Middle East, performed by the award-winning Yuval Ron Ensemble (whose founder and namesake, incidentally, won an Oscar for the score of the comedy short West Bank Story). Next up is a free concert for Jewish sacred music that can be sung during the Sabbath and on Passover (which starts several days later).

The lineup takes a contemporary turn with the American premiere of Diaspora Redux, a jazzy, avant-garde project created by top musicians from New York, Berlin, and Buenos Aires, and featuring members of Klezmer Buenos Aires, who were a hit at the 2007 festival and will perform as a duet during a special Monday matinee. Sunday sees the West Coast premiere of Saints and Tzadik, a collaboration between Grammy-winning Celtic singer Susan McKeown and Klezmatics alum Lorin Sklamberg.

As if that isn’t enough, four of the festival’s musicians will host a four-hour master class for seasoned musicians. And, for the first time, the festival will return for one day in July for a free, outdoor concert featuring local Jewish music talent and a new work from award-winning composer Dan Plonsey exploring the theme of becoming an adult.

Shapiro says the intention of the festival has always been twofold: entertainment and education. With that in mind, JCC East Bay will host a pre-festival roundtable of expert scholars to discuss the Jewish musical revival on March 14, a discussion that won’t be necessary to enjoy the coming concerts but will “help frame the music with a historic background.” Shapiro is particularly proud to present a full festival of music that wouldn’t be heard many other places, given that Jewish music is often buried within the broad genre of roots or world music.

But with such an eclectic lineup, it might be hard for Jewish music novices like me to know where to start or what to prioritize. Shapiro’s advice? “If you’re spiritually-oriented, come to Yuval Ron. If jazz-oriented, come to Diaspora Redux. If you like folk, come to Saints and Tzadiks. If you play the accordion or piano, don’t miss Klezmer Buenos Aires. And if you have kids, try the matinee on Monday.”

Me? I’ll do my best to go to all of ’em, especially the event in July, which will feature an instrument petting zoo. I’m also going to bring all my gentile sisters and goy boys along. After all, Shapiro says of Jewish music, “you don’t have to be Jewish to either do it or like it.”

JEWISH MUSIC FESTIVAL

March 14–29 and July 11

Multiple locations, including

Jewish Community Center of the East Bay

1414 Walnut, Berk.

(510) 848-0237

www.jewishmusicfestival.org

 

Place of refuge?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Place of refuge?

LIT If you’ve been tracking the battle over San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinance, or you’re simply interested in the fight for immigration reform at the federal level, then check out Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America (Scribner, 400 pages, $27.99). Written by Helen Thorp, a journalist married to Denver mayor and Colorado gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper, Just Like Us is the true story of four young girls whom Thorp tracked for five years, starting with their senior year in high school.

“All had at least one parent who entered the country from Mexico without the right documentation,” Thorp says over the phone. “One was born here; one had a green card; and two didn’t have papers, so they were split down the middle on their legal status — through no fault of their own — but because of a situation they inherited.” This split led to differing experiences as all four girls came of age in the United States, even though all excelled in public high school.

“Two of them didn’t have the same opportunities, privileges, or even ways to pay for college as the two with papers had,” Thorp explains, noting that she changed the names of all four students to protect their identities. The main narrative of Thorp’s book sticks closely to the experiences of these four exemplary girls — including the political firestorm that broke out in Denver (and spread statewide) after an undocumented Denver resident committed a violent crime.

The echoes for San Francisco are obvious. The slaying in 2008 of three members of the Bologna family by the alleged killer Edwin Ramos, an immigrant who repeatedly passed through the city’s justice system as a juvenile, increased the heat in a political firestorm that had been crackling since the city passed its City of Refuge ordinance in 1989 and burst into flames in December 2007. That was when federal agents intercepted San Francisco probation officers at a Houston airport as they tried to repatriate Honduran teenagers by flying them home instead of reporting them for formal federal deportation.

In the Denver-based story Thorp recounts in Just Like Us, a young man who never had much schooling and was in Colorado without the necessary paperwork shot two police officers at a party, killing one. To add to the intrigue, the man was employed as a dishwasher at a restaurant owned in part by Thorp’s husband.

“It certainly was a heinous crime, since this young man shot two police officers in the back,” Thorp recalls. “Even the Mexican immigrant community was horrified, and no one rallied to his side. He was disrupting a baptismal party for a Mexican family in a popular social hall. He destroyed the celebration and he had a young daughter, who he essentially ended up abandoning, when he went to jail. He had lived in Los Angeles — that’s where he purchased the gun — and may have had gang ties. That, at least, was what was alleged at his sentencing. He shot the police officers because he felt one of them had insulted him and allegedly had mishandled him. His pride was wounded, but his response was so aggravated, there was no justification for it.”

As a result of this tragedy, which touched one of the high school students she was tracking, Thorp ended up becoming close to the widow of the police officer. “His family had an immigrant background, and he grew up in a Spanish-speaking family — though that was not reported in the media — and his widow’s mother was an immigrant from England who kept her green card and never became a citizen,” Thorp continues. “So the widow ended up having an incredibly nuanced point of view and would comment on what happened to her family with more grace and generosity than you would ever expect a human being to muster in those circumstances.”

Thorp feels that heated debates between advocates on opposing sides of the immigration equation is a result of what she calls “a collision of different beliefs.”

“We believe strongly that you are innocent until proven guilty, and we believe in the United States as a nation founded by immigrants. But we also believe in the value of law and order, so we don’t have a favorable view of illegal immigrants, and definitely not of illegal immigrants who commit crimes,” Thorp observes. She also noted that people tend to view juvenile immigrants in a kinder light: “They are morally in a different category than people who made the decision to come here without documents.”

But Thorp suggests that tackling immigration locally may be a losing proposition. “I understand why people want to tackle the subject at a local level since the federal government continues not to resolve the issue,” she says. “But you run into the fact that, peculiarly, this issue needs a federal solution even though we feel the impacts at the local level.” She believes the Obama administration needs to create reform that clarifies whether the feds are offering people a path to citizenship and that involves penalties for those who knowingly broke the law when they came here without papers,

“I understand that San Francisco is on the cutting edge of many things, but I can’t imagine that my husband, as mayor, would adopt a sanctuary policy in Denver,” she says. “And that’s because the concept of a sanctuary city in Colorado is only used by social conservatives with derision. The way ‘sanctuary city’ is used here signals a flagrant disrespect for law and order.”

That said, Thorp notes that the question of whether local police should become an arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and an enforcer of federal immigration laws has been debated, and that people generally agree that this is not the job of the local police. “Local police department budgets are exhausted simply by doing the other tasks we’ve given them. If you add to that locking up nonviolent offenders [accused of being here illegally], it would break the bank.”

Work it!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Work it!

arts@safbg.com

LIT/VISUAL ART Yvan Rodic has to be one of the luckiest souls on the planet. He’d have to be to make my cynical ass fall in love with him. His new book Facehunter (Prestel, 320 pages, $24.95), a pastiche of photo book, style manual, travelogue and (hallelujah!) manifesto, has just the right combination of couture and subversion to earn a place on every cigarette- burned coffee table in the world.

"Globalization is a myth," he declares in his introduction. "The belief that international brands and pop culture are making the world a standardized society populated by clones is an old-skool science-fiction vision of the future, not the reality of the 21st century."

If anyone would know it is Rodic, who has traveled in nearly 30 countries, taking pictures of real people looking real fly for his blog, which eventually landed him as a contributor to Tokion, GQ, and Modette, which in turn got him a book deal with Prestel. Told you he was lucky. But luck, in this case, is only preparation meeting opportunity, because Rodic has an eye and a philosophy that is long overdue in the worlds of art, fashion and photography.

"Judging from the people I’ve met on my travels, it’s obvious that instead of talking about globalization, we should talk of ‘creole-ization,’" he says. Rodic calls this phenomenon of customizing identity from fragments of culture from different parts of world "New Creole Culture." I can think of another name for it …

Whether standing in front of the lush foliage of Turku or the stark grayness of a Manhattan winter, the clothes and the everyday people in Facehunter are beautiful. The mostly 20-something Nordic models within Rodic’s pictures are to be expected. He calls his peers "the iPod generation," and credits them for taking "this chameleon-like approach to fashion, exploring the many facets of their personalities with radically different looks, or customizing their individual styles with elements from different eras and cultures." John Galliano, Prince, Vivienne Westwood, Afrika Bambaataa, and myself cuff you on the ear for that one, young’un.

The real surprises in Facehunter come from Rodic’s more atypical models: the stout, the squat, the over 30. In these photos, I find the folks who really knew how to "work it" in the parlance of prêt-à-porter rabble-rousers. They bring a radical cohesion to the book’s overall aesthetic. People from cities as disparate as Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Warsaw have a shared sense of what is fashionable, transcending economics, geography, race, and gender — an encouraging sign if there ever was one.

There are no labels mentioned in Facehunter, no designers, allowing the clothes to speak for themselves, and even better, allowing you to bite that style without it coming back to bite you in the ass. Rodic posits that the rise of the "New Creole Culture" encourages this.

"Trends are dead, baby!" my new favorite shutterbug announces. "Nietzsche’s exhortation ‘Become what you are’ is now a reality." I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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