Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

Womb raiders

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Womb raiders

TRASH A primary figure in Philippine folklore dating back centuries, the aswang is a monster that has taken many forms — shape shifting being one constant. But arguably the most prevalent, at least in pop culture today, is that of a vampiric “witch” who uses the guise of a seemingly harmless old woman to ingratiate herself wherever there are pregnant women or young families, with the goal of eventually making a snack of the newborn or not-quite-yet-born. They manage the latter selection by using an extremely long proboscis to suck the … oh, you don’t want to know. (Although surely that image will someday be used by the ever-more-hysterical anti-abortion forces.)

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ “New Filipino Cinema” series (see Film story) features a mockumentary about Lilia Cuntapay, a senior actor whose modicum of local fame has come from playing variations on these mythical creatures, notably in the never-ending Shake, Rattle & Roll horror movie franchise. But for all the aswang’s ongoing ubiquity in the Philippines — a popular costumed Aswang Festival was held for several years in provincial Capiz until the Catholic Church got it shut down as “devil worship” — it’s rarely surfaced in entertainment abroad. Of course other cultures have their own traditional ghouls to play with. But it’s hard to deny that the baby lifeforce-sucking hag is a concept rather low on international-export value

One major exception is among the great underappreciated U.S. indie horrors of the last 20 years: 1994’s Aswang, shot on 16mm in and around Milwaukee for a reported grand total of $70,000, was the first feature for young Midwesterners Wrye Martin and Barry Poltermann. Their screenplay, devised from a story idea by Philippines-raised friend Frank Anderson, was the heartwarming tale of a lass in conventional “trouble” who finds a savior who’ll do what’s best for both her and her unwanted baby. Or so she thinks.

Knocked up by an irresponsible mullet-head boyfriend, barely-legal Katrina (Tina Ona Paukstelis) refuses to abort, instead agreeing to an unusual advertised offer: she will carry the child to term, posing as the bride of Peter Null (James Spader-ish Norman Moses). The last male heir to an aristocratic émigré Filipino clan, he claims he and his actual wife cannot conceive, and must resort to this ruse to inherit the family fortune. In an uncomfortable meeting presided over by a hilariously bored lawyer (John Garekis), the parties meet and sign the necessary contractual documents.

Seven months later, now ready-to-pop Katrina and her “husband” reunite, driving from the city to Chez Null, a rambling, isolated rural property with an aura of going-to-seed grandeur. She’s introduced to regal matriarch Olive (Flora Coker), given a creepy once-over by Tagalog-only-speaking housekeeper Cupid (Mildred Nierras), and pointedly told not to visit a small adjacent house where Peter’s sister Claire (Jamie Jacobs Anderson) is, ahem, not well. An uninvited, unwelcome guest of sorts also shows up, one Dr. Roger Harper (Josh Kishline). He says he’s just renting a vacation cottage nearby, but seems to be poking an investigative nose into some Null family mischief that is most definitely not for public consumption.

It does, however, involve consumption — as Katrina finds out after being put to bed heavily drunk on Cupid’s homemade special cider. Waking groggily, she senses a disturbance under the covers. To her considerable distress, it turns out she’s getting an intrusive visit from what one crew member later called a “50-foot tongue with a mind of its own.” Thus begins, just half an hour into the film’s 82 minutes, a nonstop escalation of grotesquely funny, tasteless mortal crises that rank ought to rank Aswang up there with The Evil Dead (1981) and Re-Animator (1985) for freaky, semi-camp gore-horror ingenuity.

Ought to, but Aswang sort of fell through the cracks, despite gaining some attention (not all favorable) as part of the Sundance Film Festival’s first-ever midnight sidebar. Theatrical release never came to pass; the U.S. video distributor released it cut, redubbed The Unearthing, and dumped into low-end retail outlets. Fame and fortune did not ensue for the filmmakers, who’ve separately stayed active in various capacities — editing, producing, even directing a documentary record of Charles Nelson Reilly’s one-man stage show — but never again created anything remotely like their crazily intense debut

The Mondo Macabro DVD release, out a few years now, has helped Aswang gain a small cult following, as well as regain its original title. Among factoids revealed in the extras are that most cast members were drafted from longtime Milwaukee avant-garde company Theatre X, though male lead Moses was, incongruously, a regional stage musical star. (Despite his memorably unhinged performance here, he seems to have never made another film.)

The making-of documentary is amusingly contentious, with some participants still discomfited by the paces they were put through, others retroactively doubting the directors’ competence, scruples, or whether they even shot particular scenes. They may still not quite know what they got themselves into, but hopefully time will prove it was something perversely great. Aswang does aswangs proud.

Pinoy rising

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Pinoy rising

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Cinema has had a long and colorful history in the Philippines, with a first “golden age” of home-grown product in the 1950s, a turn toward exportable exploitation films in the ’60s, notable new-wave directors (like Lino Brocka) emerging in the ’70s, and so forth — sustaining one of the world’s most prolific film industries despite difficulties political and otherwise. At the turn of the millennium those wheels were wobbling and slowing, however, hard-hit by a combination of too many low-grade formula films, shrinking audiences, and stiffer competition from slick imported entertainments. The commercial sector stumbled on, but as a shadow of its robust former self.

But there’s something percolating beyond hard consonants on the archipelago these days, signs of a new DIY vigor coming from independent sectors juiced by the inexpensive accessibility of digital technology, undaunted (at least so far) by problems of exhibition and income-generating at home. It’s a sprawling, unpredictable, work-in-progress scene that some figure could well become the next “it” spot for cineaste types seeking one of those spontaneous combustions of fresh talent that arise occasionally where you least expect it — like Romania, to name one recent example.

One person who definitely thinks that’s the case is Joel Shepard, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ longtime Film/Video Curator. He’s traveled to the Philippines several times in recent years (once serving on the jury at CineManila), and has previously programmed a few prime examples of the country’s edgy new voices — particularly Brilliante Mendoza, whose notorious 2009 police-corruption grunge horror Kinatay (a.k.a. Butchered) was one of the most hotly divisive Cannes jury-prize winners in recent history. Now YBCA is presenting “New Filipino Cinema,” Shepard’s first “big fat snapshot” — hopefully to be continued on an annual basis — of a wildly diverse current filmic landscape, assembled in collaboration with Manila critic Philbert Ortiz Dy.

Shepard’s program notes call the Philippines “an extremely fascinating country…but the more I learned about the place and its people, the less I felt like I actually understood anything. The truth felt more and more slippery.” One might get a similar sensation watching the films in this expansive (nearly 30 titles, shorts included) sampler, in that they’re all over the map stylistically and thematically — from lyrical to gritty, satirical to anarchistic — suggesting no single defining “movement” or aesthetic to New Filipino Cinema.

Nor should they, since these movies reflect very different cultures, politics, and issues in regions hitherto underrepresented onscreen. After all, Manila isn’t the only place you can get your hands on a digital camera; and Tagalog is primary language for just one-third of all Filipinos.

The series opener has significant local ties: Loy Arcenas is a lauded stage set designer who’s worked frequently with our own American Conservatory Theater. Unavailable for preview, in description his feature directorial debut Niño (2011) sounds redolent of Luchino Visconti and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (as well as, perhaps, 1975’s Grey Gardens) as it depicts a once grand family of Spanish émigrés living in decrepit splendor, diminished over generations by political inconvenience and a proud, fatal inability to adapt.

Their aristocratic pretensions are a far cry from the rowdier real life captured or depicted in other YBCA selections. A bizarre footnote to the United States’ complicated, incriminating relationship with the Philippines is documented in Monster Jiminez’s Kano: An American and His Harem (2010). Its subject is a Yankee Vietnam vet whose military pension allowed him to construct a sort of one-man imperialist paradise centered around his penis. Whether he was a gracious benefactor, a bullying rapist, or both is a puzzle only clouded further by contradictory input from former/current wives and mistresses (even while he’s in prison), stateside relatives who recall a childhood ideal to shape a sociopath, and the authorities who’ve lately kept him in prison.

War is ongoing, marriage an impractical hope in Arnel M. Mardoquio’s impressive Crossfire (2011), whose young lovers in southern region Mindanao must dodge government-vs.-rebel-vs.-bandit guns as well as a rural poverty sufficient to make our heroine vulnerable to being offered as a lender-debt payoff. Their plight is starkly contrasted with the spectacular scenery of countryside few tourists will ever hazard.

Its atmospheric opposite is Lawrence Fajardo’s Amok (2011), whose thousand threads of seemingly free-floating narrative depict life dedicatedly melting down all race, age, class, and economic divisions during a heat wave passage through one of Manila’s busiest intersections. What birth and development keeps apart gets nail-gunned together, however, once this string of naturalistic vignettes hits a plot device that delivers deus ex machina to all with no melodramatic restraint. Fate also lays heavy hand on the junior protagonists of Mes de Guzman’s At the Corner of Heaven and Earth (2011), a crude but honest neo-realist drama about four orphaned and runaway boys trying to eke out a marginal existence in Nueva Vizcaya.

Should this all sound pretty grim, be informed there’s lots of levity — albeit much of it gallows-humored — on the YBCA slate. Jade Castro’s exuberantly silly Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings (2011) finds the funny in homophobia as its crass young hero (a farcically deft Mart Escudero) is “cursed” by an angry queen he’d insulted to become gay himself; meanwhile somebody goes around their regional burg assassinating cross-dressers via ray-gun. Plus: zombies, and the proverbial kitchen sink. Also on the frivolous side is Antoinette Jadaone’s mockumentary Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay (2011), in which the titular veteran screen thespian struggles for recognition after decades playing bit parts and occasional showier ones, notably as witchy folkloric “aswang” attempting to suck the lifeblood from newborn babes. (See aswang-related coverage in this week’s Trash column, too.)

Yet those are but moderately playful New Filipino Cinema exercises compared to the determined off-map outrages practiced by Mondomanila (2011). This gonzo eruption of spermazoidal huzzah! by multimedia Manila punk underground mover Khavn de la Cruz seeks to leave no societal cavity unexplored, or unoffended. Opening with an infamous quote from Brokedown Palace (1999) star Claire Danes, who characterized Manila as a “ghastly and weird city … [with] no sewage system,” it delivers both fuck-you and fuck-me to that judgment via 75 minutes of mad under caste collage. There isn’t much plot. But there’s variably judged arson, pedophilia, yo-yo trick demonstrations, poultry abuse, upscale mall shopping, voyeuristic pornographia, Tagalog rap, rooftop drum soloing, and limbless-little-person salesmanship of duck eggs.

Further complicating your comprehension of a very complex scene, the YBCA series encompasses avant-garde shorts by veteran John Torres and newer experimentalists. There’s also a free afternoon Indie-Pino Music Fest Sat/9, and on June 17 there’s a postscript: Lav Diaz’s Florentina Hubaldo, CTE, the six-hour latest epic in a career whose patience-testing wide open cinematic spaces make Béla Tarr look like Michael Bay. 

“NEW FILIPINO CINEMA”

June 7-17, $8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

In the air

Andrew Lam
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3
In the air

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE It’s Sunday afternoon and the hosts of Mutiny Radio’s Cannabis Cuts: The Next Generation have effectively commandeered the smoking lounge at SoMa’s Igzactly 420. They are deep into solving the world’s problems.

The crusade may just involve a pictorial calendar featuring sexy men smoking marijuana — a project which hosts Vaperonica Dee and Merry Toppins staunchly resist any attempts to qualify as frivolous. It’s about achieving parity in cannabis imagery, they say — much like their weekly podcast of marijuana news, product reviews, music, and banter.

“If you look at all the ads [for cannabis businesses and products], it’s sexy nurses or girls holding cannabis leaves over their tits,” Dee says between Volcano puffs. The young radio vet didn’t find that image particularly representative of her experience with the medicine (both she and Toppins are medical marijuana patients), so she jumped at the chance to work with DJ Wiid on his marijuana variety show at Pirate Cat Radio.

Merry Toppins and Vaperonica Dee plot their takeover of cannabis media (that’s not their car.) Guardian photo by Caitlin Donohue

Dee stuck with the project through Pirate Cat’s transformation into Mutiny Radio, the shuttering of its cafe and demise of its infamous maple bacon lattes — “I was excited!” she says. “I wanted to be in radio, I didn’t give a shit about the cafe” — and the exodus of her male co-host.

And when DJ Wiid moved onto new projects, it left the door open for an idea that seems nearly revolutionary in an industry filled with men: a platform for women’s perspectives on the cannabis movement.

Toppins was a natural choice as on-air co-host for Dee. The two had met when chef Toppins appeared on Cuts to hype her marijuana-infused olive oil that she had entered into the High Times Cannabis Cup. Toppins’ ebullience is the perfect compliment to Dee’s well-informed on-air tone. They both have natural radio voices, impeccable banter rhythm. “It was so cool to see a chick doing the news on a weed show,” says Toppins of their initial meeting. “I knew right away I’d either be their intern or host my own radio show.”

Listeners are responding. Toppins volunteers the following stats: 5,000 Cannabis Cuts podcast downloads each week, each one yielding an average of an hour spent with the two-hour long show. And though the women express views that aren’t always in lockstep with the cannabis establishment (a February 14 edition of the show highlighted a disempowering experience with Americans for Safe Access activists at a City Hall hearing and the two are candid about the fact that not all their tokes are strictly medicinal), many of the community’s luminaries have lent their support. They count Proposition 215 co-author Dennis Peron and Cannabis Action Network co-founder Debby Goldsberry as personal friends, and have interviewed Peron on the show.

The enthusiasm that has come their way makes sense — the continued strength of activists to improve cannabis access depends on developing and raising awareness about diverse viewpoints within the movement.

“We’re changing the idea that there could be a profile of a standard cannabis activist,” says Dee, who wants the world to know that it’s not just the grey-ponytailed Deadheads who care about access to pot. “Plus, radio doesn’t have that many women involved in it, cannabis doesn’t have that many women involved in it — the two go together.” 

Cannabis Cuts: The Next Generation Live podcast every Tuesday, 4pm-6pm. www.mutinyradio.org. Also available on www.stitcher.com and www.medicinalmarijuananetwork.org

 

Time’s on his side

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Time’s on his side

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Nick Waterhouse no longer calls San Francisco home, but the city’s fingerprints are all over Time’s All Gone, his effortlessly fun, debut LP. The retro-minded songwriter-producer crafts perfect little tributes to the punchy 1950s R&B sounds he’s been drawn to since he was a kid, all steeped with an endearing reverence for old-school record culture and recording techniques.

“We cut as live as possible, so a lot of the record is eight people in one room playing at the same time,” he explains. “Everybody’s gotta feel it together, and if they don’t, you really don’t have a song, in my opinion.”

As a Southern California kid growing up in the Costa Mesa area, Waterhouse approached his music listening from a studious angle, soaking up the Van Morrison and John Lee Hooker records of his parents, along with the Descendents and Sonic Youth albums he found. The well-rounded sonic diet can be heard within the frayed edges and garage rock appeal that Time’s All Gone has in spades.

“I listened to everything I could because I wanted to gain as much experience as possible,” he says. “I was the kid staying up for hours with the radio under the covers.”

By 18, Waterhouse had moved to San Francisco and quickly jumped headfirst into the DJ scene, spinning and building a network of like-minded cohorts at the Knockout’s Oldies Night and Saturday Night Soul Party at the Elbo Room, which brought him in touch with folks like Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin. No connection, however, would become as important to him as his relationship with Rooky Ricardo’s, the Dick Vivian-owned oldies-R&B-soul-centric gem of a record store in the Lower Haight.

“Rooky Ricardo’s informed a lot of how I developed as a person, and it’s all in the spirit of the place,” he says. “It’s got that clubhouse feel.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJruQmdlU10

Waterhouse recorded the saxophone-propelled blast of “Some Place” in the summer of 2010, an undertaking that he says was fueled more by a desire to sell vinyl copies to friends and fellow Rooky’s shoppers than to start a full-fledged music project.

“I really had no interest in it at the time,” he explains. “I figured I’d just keep making these 45s for fun and no one would even know who I was.”

After some nagging by friends to put something together for live shows, however, he caved and began recruiting players for the beginnings of what is now the Tarots, his perfectly complementary backing band. Together with Waterhouse’s guitar playing and expressive croon, the group uses horns, piano, drums, and female backing vocals to pay tribute to soulful R&B without ever falling victim to hollow mimicry or self-conscious irony. This is warm music made by passionate people with only the purest of intentions.

When it came time to record an LP, Waterhouse did what anyone who’s heard his music might expect and found an all analog studio in Costa Mesa called the Distillery to work out of. With the use of vintage gear, old ribbon mics, and classic recording techniques, he says that Time’s All Gone was constructed entirely with vinyl in mind.

“I can’t lie and pretend that as somebody born in the late-1980s I haven’t had moments of discovery because of digital music,” he says. And while yes, he has found music digitally over the years, he doesn’t have any vivid, concrete memories of those discoveries, the way he does with physical records. “I can still remember what listening station at Rooky’s I was at when I first heard a record, or what weird flea market I found something at. Having something tangible in front of you helps you associate.”

Waterhouse recently moved back to Southern California due to his quickly escalating, hectic tour schedule, but the plan has always been to officially release his album in San Francisco. In a beautiful bout of planning, Wednesday night’s show will not only mark the release of Time’s All Gone, but will also serve as a celebration for the 25th anniversary of the day Rooky Ricardo’s first opened its doors. Expect the dance party to start early and run late, as Waterhouse has enlisted the help of some of his favorite local DJs to spin before and after his set.

“In my mind, my album was born out of Rooky’s and out of a specific period of time in San Francisco more than anything else,” he says. “So this is my party for all the people and things that really mattered to me there.”

NICK WATERHOUSE

With DJs Carnita, Primo, Matt B, Lucky

Wed/6, 8pm, $12 sold out

Verdi Club

2424 Mariposa, SF (415) 861-9199

www.verdiclub.net

 

Revival signs

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC A few musicians with slick hair and black-frame glasses are seen setting up their equipment in Chicago’s Hi-Style Studio: amps, a mustard Telecaster, glittering gold drums, a huge stand-up bass, and vintage condenser microphones. What year is this?

The drum hits crack and the bass strings ripple with heavy plucks. The finger-snapping beat is unavoidable, almost cloying in its blitheness. Potent vocals reminiscent of Little Richard suddenly overpower it all. It’s Broken Arrow, Oklahoma’s JD McPherson — singing so hard a craggy vein in his otherwise smooth forehead bulges — in the video for the single that has brought him this far: “North Side Gal.”

It’s due to be inescapable this summer. “The Chicago Cubs have actually been playing that song at the stadium during games,” McPherson says during a phone call from his car, where the singer-songwriter-occasional vegetarian is waiting on an order of red pepper tofu. “It’s really exciting. There’s really no other team I’d rather have that song associated with. It’s the ultimate old ballpark, underdog team.”

Like contemporaries Nick Waterhouse (who, coincidentally, is also playing San Francisco this week, and un-coincidentally is also profiled in this issue) and Nick Curran and the Lowlifes, McPherson is tackling the invigorating rock’n’roll power and bluesy vocals of early R&B and 1950s rock, exploring retro record-making processes,while nonchalantly dressing the part.

It’s another revival, likely to sell well across the mainstream in the Heartland, but also appeal to the underground listeners throughout rockabilly pockets. Though this is beyond classic rockabilly’s precise replications of the past, past kitsch and overwhelming aesthetics. These band leaders with undeniable guitar skills and a very modern drive have something that can only be described, apologetically, as star power. Out of the smoky clubs and into the mind’s eye.

And while rockin’ McPherson may have the sound, the side-parted hair, and the analog recording process back-story like the others in this current resurgence, his own background is fairly different; if the more soulful California boy Waterhouse is Rat Pack wool suits, McPherson is dusty rolled denim.

McPherson was raised on a cattle farm in Buffalo Valley, Southeast Oklahoma — dutifully feeding the cows before school — but later fell into a nearby punk scene, and met his wife (and mother to his two young daughters) at a new wave-goth club night in Tulsa; wearing a Smiths shirt herself, she approached him to say,”You look like a Smiths fan.” She’s now his biggest supporter, sitting patiently while he runs by new guitar parts or song lyrics. She’s also the original “North Side Gal.”

But before all that, before his interest in punk and new-wave, before the wife and kids, and long before the release of his modern reinterpretation of early rock’n’roll record, Signs and Signifiers, he was just a 13-year-old kid in the Midwest learning to play the guitar.

His much older brothers showed him their ’70s-era Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers, and Jimi Hendrix records. He grew obsessed with Led Zeppelin then Van Halen, and later, Nirvana, which led to searches for punk origins records by the Stooges and the Ramones. As a late teen, he discovered early rock’n’roll, the backbeat to all those spinning vinyl dreams.

“I found the Decca recordings of Buddy Holly, and that sort of seemed to marry the exuberance of the Ramones, with the country Arcadian aesthetic that I was growing up around. It made sense…and it got me.”

His teenage punk band began interjecting Buddy Holly’s “Rocking Around with Ollie Vee” into their sets; the sound had a pervasive pull, and he fell backwards, deeper into the roots of rock’n’roll — Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, blues artists his Alabama-born dad loved such as Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, and early jazz musicians.

He looked to Little Richard in particular, to whom he has garnered favorable comparisons (see the beginning of this story). Because of his style, and, perhaps, his skin color, he’s also seen comparisons to Elvis. “I love Elvis, I mean, I lo-ove Elvis,” he stretches out the “of” sound in the word “love” with an endearingly twangy accent. “I don’t know if there’s a huge musical similarity between us and Elvis, maybe instrumentation-wise, but we’re way more Specialty Records than Sun Records.”

“Little Richard is my favorite recording artist,” he continues, “[I’m] way more interested in Elvis’ black counterparts and predecessors. I do love rockabilly, but we don’t interject a lot of hillbilly sounds into our rhythm and blues the way Elvis did.”

In the ’90s Midwest, pop-country was taking over the airwaves, Billy Ray Cyrus and the like — it’s what all McPherson’s high school classmates were popping in the tape decks. It wasn’t for him. Perhaps this is why he shies away from any hillbilly sounds, those that can lead to psychobilly when mixed with the punk roots. Not that he disparages rockabilly.

“There’s a subculture of all these bands that have no intention of doing anything other than just really faithfully reproducing these sounds, there’s a lot more rockabilly and Western swing bands doing that thing, [yet] these are folks that are putting out quality music.”

But in those scenes and beyond he saw a shortage of the more straight-forward rock’n’roll he loved. That’s why he and musical partner Jimmy Sutton (the gray fox thumping those stand-up bass strings in the “North Side Gal” video) decided to make the DIY, all-analog Signs and Signfiers album in the first place. “So our record basically was almost like an art project, like ‘let’s just make this record and do what we always wanted to do.'”

The drummer on the album was Alex Hall, who doubled as the engineer. Now he’s still “in the family,” often playing keyboards with the band; drummer Jason Smay is on the current tour. During the recording process, McPherson and Sutton would run through a song then Hall would head into the control booth to mix. He’d set the levels, start the tape, run in, then get behind the drums. “That was kind of the magic of it, it was essentially mixed as we recorded it. Real fast, instant gratification. It’s the best way to record.”

Like contemporary Waterhouse noted, McPherson of course has his own connections with modern technology and has used digital recording processes in the past, but he prefers the analog way, to extract that authentic sound. “I’ve seen the amazing things you can do in a digital environment, but there’s some special thing to getting a band live in the studio and recording an actual performance. And then you know, the equipment sounds amazing too.”

While the record was originally released in 2010 on Sutton’s tiny Hi-Style label, the “North Side Gal” single and album have really started picking up this year. With the homemade video as the ultimate calling card, Rounder Records signed the band and rereleased the album this spring. The video has gained half a million views as of press time, and the band’s television debut is tonight on Conan. Despite all that, they’re still relatively unknown in the US, but McPherson and his band have a huge following in the UK — they regularly play sold-out shows and festivals, and have daily rotation on BBC Radio.

During the recording process, and up until the end of the 2011 school year, McPherson was still employed in a local Broken Arrow middle school as a computer and arts teacher (he went to college for fine arts). When he was laid off last summer he says he told the band, “well, I’m getting a paycheck through the summer, so let’s tour and try to make some money while I look for another job.” They’ve been touring consistently ever since.

Perhaps this batch of ’50s-inspired rockers and analog R&B crooners will move beyond the past, and into the future musical pantheon, gaining elusive mainstream success. Or maybe they’ll remain lovable underdogs. Only time will tell. For your McPherson fix now, you could always take in a Cubs game. Check back at the end of summer ’12.

JD MCPHERSON

With Toshio Hirano

Thu/7, 8pm, $21

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

Rites of passage

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Rites of passage

arts@sfbg.com

FILM It’s commonly said of Nathaniel Dorsky’s films that they are beautiful beyond words. Which is true as far as it goes, but then the same could be said of many poems and they are words. What’s clear is that Dorsky is absorbed with a classical fulfillment of form, and as such his films do better with poetics than interpretation (he has himself supplied a fine entry point with his slim volume Devotional Cinema). Poetics in this context means respecting the mystery and proceeding gingerly with gesture, metaphor, and detail. No one ever says of a Dorsky film, “I liked it the more I thought about it.” Conversely, watching a second or third time one marvels to find the beauty springing to life with the same force, subtler and lovelier now for this trick of renewal. No one ever says of a sunset, “I’ve seen this one before.”

A three-part retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive beginning June 10 retraces the last decade of Dorsky’s work. The Return (2011) and August and After (2012) receive local premieres this weekend, accompanied by the delicate Pastourelle (2010). June 17 brings his “Quartet,” to my mind a signal achievement of the young century. The series concludes June 24 with three earlier films confirming Dorsky’s mastery of an open (sometimes called polyvalent) form of montage: Song and Solitude (2006), Threnody (2004), and The Visitation (2002). How fitting that these films should be spaced out over consecutive days of rest! They will be shown on 16mm because that is what they are (last I checked the museums still show the Old Masters in paint).

It’s our good fortune to share a city with Dorsky: opportunities to see the films with him as a guide come a little more frequently, and the phenomena that supply his visual repertoire are that much more familiar. Here are the blossoms, the Chinatown lanterns, the drifting Muni trains, the ocean skies, and the seasons as we only dare to see them in deepest reverie.

Dorsky began making movies under the influence of people like Stan Brakhage and Gregory Markopoulos, filmmakers who strove for an intrinsic cinematic language (while the auteurists chiseled out an essential cinema, they sought cinema’s essence). After relocating to San Francisco in 1971, he reemerged with Hours for Jerome (1980-1982), a dense exercise in spiritual autobiography culled from pastoral years in New Jersey. The films began arriving with greater regularity after Triste (1998) and continue apace even after the desertion of his beloved Kodachrome.

The silence of Dorsky’s films is lush, providing intoxicating accompaniment to the slowed projection of 18 frames per second which dips the photographic action just out of the flow of representation. The crescendos that surge past the finish of his films invariably leave me surprised that I haven’t been listening to music, as the black of the theater seems clarified in the same way silence is after an expressive composition. Pushing the analogy further, the relationship between movement and stillness in his films is akin to that of sound and rest in music, the two leaved together as intonation. We really need a new word to describe the juddering movement of branches and buds that punctuate Dorsky’s films. “Quiver” is close, but it doesn’t capture the spring in the frame, like dancers on a stage.

A couple of months ago, Dorsky showed something called Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 1) at Lincoln Center: Song and Solitude-era footage in the chronological order in which it was shot. The material had a completely distinct character viewed this way. Dorsky talked of it as a journal. The loose form made it easier to relate to his eye being grasped by something in the world, and yet one missed the justice of the cuts.

If pressed for a defining quality of these films, I would say rightness —each shot developing to its fullness, tuned to what comes before and after. The fact that this formal refinement is itself the focus of the films creates a suspension of time which, after all, is a basic condition of paradise. Certainly the films are colored by experience, as August and After for instance is clearly marked by grief, yet this is never what they are “about.” Trust is placed in the self-expression of the film stock — its luster and dusk.

Dorsky’s films will reintroduce you to what branches make of the sky and how the grass gladdens when the sun reappears from its shade. I think this is what people are talking about when they say the films remind them of childhood. “A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full/hands;/How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any/more than he./I guess it must the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful/green stuff woven.” We could choose many lines of verse to say the same, but Whitman’s will do. There is something mystical in Dorsky’s slightly ajar illuminations of worldly objects and features. And yet so too is there something altogether sensible and almost courtly in their formal arrangements. The shots of dogs make us chuckle because we’re in a position to recognize our own recognition, all too human.

On first viewing The Return struck me as a deeply melancholy work, its darkly reflecting surfaces and doublings bearing the impression of lost sleep. August and After, on the other hand, is more immediate in its effect and a superior example of how Dorsky’s style can serve distinct emotional structures (threnody here). Tender impressions taken near the end of George Kuchar’s life, the filmmaker surrounded by family and friends, are framed in the light of long afternoons. Everything that follows is touched by these pictures of intimacy: two workers sliding down a skyscraper, a distant glass door sweeping a ray of light across a café, agitated steps into bramble. A rhythmic montage focuses on packages and fruits carried down the street, the actual things transfigured into pure color. When the film’s ship finally sails, it does so with such grace as to say love without saying.

“AFTERIMAGE: THREE NIGHTS WITH NATHANIEL DORSKY”

June 10, 17, and 24, 7:30pm, $5.50-$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

bampfa.berkeley.edu

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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Schedules are for Wed/6-Tue/12 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features (and more) are marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Colectivo Cinema Errante presents: Brazilian Voices of Cinema:” Limite (Peixoto, 1931) with “Clarice’s Cups” (Piffer, 2011), Sun, 8.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-11. Titanic 3D (Cameron, 1997/2012) Wed-Thu, 7 (also Wed, 2:30). Yellow Submarine (Dunning, 1968), Fri and Sun-Tue, 7, 9 (also Sun, 2:30, 4:45). Newly restored version. “Midnites for Maniacs: Killer Summer All-Day Five Film Fest:” •One Crazy Summer (Holland, 1986), Sat, 2:30; Wet Hot American Summer (Wain, 2001), Sat, 4:45; Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980), Sat, 7:15; Dead Alive (Jackson, 1992), Sat, 9:20; The Burning (Maylam, 1981), Sat, 11:30. $13 for one or all five films.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. Bernie (Linklater, 2012), call for dates and times. First Position (Kargman, 2011), call for dates and times. I Wish (Kore-eda, 2011), call for dates and times. Bel Ami (Donnellan and Ormerod, 2012), June 8-14, call for times. Peace, Love and Misunderstanding (Beresford, 2011), June 8-14, call for times. Shining Night: A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen (Stillwater, 2012), Sun, 7. With film subject Morten Lauridsen and filmmaker Michael Stillwater in person.

“FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK” This week: Central Field, Broadway at Bank, Fairfax; www.filmnight.org. Donations accepted. Rio (Saldanha, 2011), Fri, 8.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Peter Greenaway: Cinema and Painting:” Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (Greenaway, 2008), Fri, 7; Nightwatching (Greenaway, 2007), Sat. 6. “From the Collection:” “Trailer Trash: A Mini-Movie Extravaganza,” Fri, 8:50. “Three Czech New Wave Classics:” Daisies (Chytilová, 1966), Sat, 8:30. “Afterimage: Three Nights with Nathaniel Dorsky:” “Films of Nathaniel Dorsky: Recent Films (2010-2012),” Sun, 7:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-10. “New Czech Film Films US Tour 2012:” Long Live the Family (Sedlácek, 2011), Wed, 6:30; Leaving (Havel, 2011), Thu, 6:30. The Color Wheel (Ross Perry, 2011), Wed-Thu, 7:15, 9.

SF FILM SOCIETY CINEMA 1746 Post, SF. $10-11. Hide Away (Eyre, 2011), Wed-Thu, 3, 5, 7, 9. The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Part Two: Expressionism, Impressionism, and Surrealism: Golden Age of World Cinema (1920s) and The Arrival of Sound (1930s) (Cousins, 2011), Sat, noon. British TV series; new episodes every Sat through June 21. The Wages of Fear (Clouzot, 1953), June 8-14, 2:30, 5:30, 8:30. New 35mm print.

TOP OF THE MARK InterContinental Mark Hopkins, One Nob Hill, SF; www.topofthemark.com. Free. “Summer Movie Nights:” Mary Poppins (Stevenson, 1964), Tue, 7:30. Wine tasting at 5:30.

2969 MISSION SF; www.answersf.org. $5-10 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Under the Bombs (Aractingi, 2007), Sat, 7.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “New Filipino Cinema:” Niño (Arcenas, 2011), Thu, 7:30; Kano: An American and His Harem (Jimenez, 2010), Fri, 1; “Poetry and Mystery: Films By John Torres,” Fri, 4; At the Corner of Heaven and Earth (de Guzman, 2011), Fri, 7; Boundary (Bautista, 2011), Fri, 9; “Sex, Drugs, and the Avant-Garde: Filipino Shorts,” Sat, 1; Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay (Jadaone, 2011), Sat, 4; Rakenrol (Henares, 2011), Sat, 7; Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings (Castro, 2011), Sat, 9:30; Friday Friday (Various directors, 2011), Sun, 1; Mondomanila (de la Cruz, 2011), Sun, 3; Crossfire (Mardoquio, 2011), Sun, 5; Amok (Fajardo, 2011), Sun, 7; Forever Loved (Gozum, 2012), Sun, 2 (free screening in YBCA Large Conference Room). Novellus Theater, 700 Howard, SF; www.qwocmap.org. Free. “Queer Women of Color Film Festival,” Fri-Sun.

Psychic Dream Astrology

Andrew Lam
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June 6-12

ARIES

March 21-April 19

Being receptive is an action, Aries. Be courageous, because you need to take as much goodness in as possible this week. It can be a challenge to stay present for the good stuff, ’cause the more you have, the more you have to loose. Enjoy your bounty and leave your worries behind you for now.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

Your greatest enemy is your own mind, Taurus. No matter what’s going on in your world, you’ve got to be able to check in with yourself and believe in your ability to carry out your own best interests. Don’t worry so much about the “what ifs” and worst-case scenarios. Strengthen your insides this week.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Resist the urge to fret over your future this week. You need to go slow through your situations so that you can participate in the way you want to, instead of being a blindly defensive and reactive Jekyll and Hyde kind of Twin Star. Don’t try and control things; find your truth in them and go from there.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

Your future sits brightly before you, Cancer. Whether you’ve been lovingly supported in your past, or you’ve had to figure out how to do that for yourself, now is the time to value what your history has taught you. Take the time to revisit your roots. Never forget what and where you come from.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

It is your job (but not your forte) to know when to call it quits. If you pursue fun too fiercely it can turn your good times into a burden. Pace yourself through the awesome in your world so you can enjoy it for a long time to come; otherwise you’re likely to have some serious backtracking to do, Leo.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Taking a leadership role in your relationships is well-starred, but it doesn’t involve getting to boss people. Lead only by example this week, Virgo. If you engage in dynamics that you don’t like, how do you expect anything to change? Participate only in ways you feel good about, or not at all.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Focusing your energy into your worries feeds them, Libra. Do what you’ve got to do to take care of business instead of endlessly fussing over it, and starve your fears out. There is only so much you can accomplish, so if you’ve done your best for now, at a find a way to enjoy the reprise from enterprise.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

If you aren’t certain where you stand, what are you certain of? This week you should strive to clarify your position on the things. Solidifying your opinions and needs will help you to know when things are veering off course before they get too far. Know yourself, you complicated Scorpio, you.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Stand on your own without the threat of obligation pushing you. This week you are meant to revisit your relationship to responsibility; don’t do it because you have to, do it ’cause it’s right for you. Freely choose to rise to the occasion, Sagittarius and not only because you feel it’s required of you.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

You are not meant to have control, all of the answers or even to be on top of your game all of the time, Capricorn. Sometimes you’ve got to go with the flow and see where it takes you. Make peace with your uncertainty this week, because it’ll take you places that your willfulness is unlikely to bring you.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

Obsessing over details will lead you to anxiety and not answers, Aquarius. Write a short list of the practical things you can do this week to improve or support your situation. Every day this week, write a new list of what you should do that day. Outside of those tasks, your primary work is to manage your overactive mind, pal.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

It doesn’t matter who or what is to blame for things, it only matters how you deal with it, Pisces. Think about laying foundations upon which you can build success, not about how to manifest your accomplishments immediately. Enjoy the stage you’re at this week, even if it feels tedious.

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 17 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

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

Aftermath Stagewerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Previews Thu/7, 8pm. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. Theatre, Period presents Jessica Blank and Erik Jenson’s docu-drama, based on interviews with Iraqi civilians forced to flee after the US military’s arrival in 2003.

Lips Together, Teeth Apart New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Terrence McNally’s play about two straight couples spending July 4 amid Fire Island’s gay community.

Reunion SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Previews Wed/6-Thu/7, 7pm; Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. SF Playhouse presents a world premiere drama by local playwright Kenn Rabin.

“Risk Is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. Free ($20 donation for reserved seating; $50 donation for five-play reserved seating pass). Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 14. Cutting Ball’s annual fest of experimental plays features two new works and five new translations in staged readings.

Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Previews Fri/8 and June 15, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm. Opens June 16, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; June 22, 8pm. Through July 21. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.

BAY AREA

Wheelhouse TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through July 1. TheatreWorks’ 60th world premiere is a musical created by and starring pop-rock trio GrooveLily.

ONGOING

A Behanding in Spokane SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through June 30. If Garth Ennis had been asked to write a comic book about a one-handed sociopath with a dark obsession, he might well have written something similar to Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane. And admittedly, approached from that angle, a lot of the script’s dramatic flaws are more easily forgiven. There’s not a whole lot of subtle context or languid metaphor to be found in McDonagh’s criminal caper about the little-known “hand-dealing” trade, but as in Ennis’ best known work, Preacher, the pretty girl (Melissa Quine) is the smartest one in the room; the sociopath (Rod Gnapp) is interested in enacting as vicious a revenge on all humanity while spewing as many blatantly offensive invectives as possible; the boyfriend (Daveed Diggs) has some arrested development issues to work out; and the receptionist (Alex Hurt) takes the caricature of man-child to a whole new level. In fact, while all four actors deliver rock-solid performances of their mostly unsympathetic characters, it’s Hurt’s that impresses most. His spooky intensity and goofily tone-deaf determination plays like a combination of Adam Sandler and Arno Frisch, and if there’s a real sociopath in the room, the evidence suggests it’s probably him. Ultimately though the piece relies too heavily on hollow one-liners to remain interesting — a 20-minute farce stretched to 90 minutes — and quite unlike an Ennis comic, it does not leave one wanting more. (Gluckstern)

The Full Monty Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.roltheatre.com. $25-36. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 30. In desperate times, how far would you go to turn a buck? The central premise of the 1997 movie and its namesake musical comedy The Full Monty, the answer to this question is right in the title, which limits the suspense, but amps up the expectations. Set not in Sheffield, England as in the movie, but the similarly economically challenged climate of Buffalo, New York circa the late nineties, the comical romp follows a group of unemployed steel workers who decide, rather optimistically, that spending one night as exotic dancers will solve their immediate financial woes. Banish all notions of a Hot Chocolate sing-along; the soundtrack of the stage musical has little in common with its cinematic predecessor, but there are a couple of toe-tappers, particularly the songs writ for the ladies: a belter’s anthem for their spry but elderly accompanist Jeanette (Cami Thompson), a snarky commentary on male beauty, “The Goods,” for the ensemble. On opening night, Ray of Light’s production ran about 15 minutes long after a late start, and the tempo seemed sluggish in parts, but once it hits its stride, The Full Monty should provide a welcome antidote to the ongoing, we’re-still-in-a-recession blues, red leather g-strings and all. (Gluckstern) Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu/7, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm; Sun/10, 7pm. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

100 Saints You Should Know Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.therhino.org. $10-30. Wed-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 17. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Kate Fodor’s comedy-drama about family love, homosexuality, and adolescence.

Othello Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-18. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Ninjaz of Drama performs Shakespeare’s classic in a contemporary setting.

Slipping New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Daniel Talbott’s drama about a gay teen who finds new hope after a traumatic breakup.

Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Extended run: June 14 and 21, 7:30pm; June 15-16 and 22-23, 8pm (also June 16 and 23, 2pm); June 18 and 24, 5pm. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through June 24. Berkeley Rep presents a world premiere from writer-performer Dael Orlandersmith (a Pulitzer finalist for 2002’s Yellowman).

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. That’s because slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next whose penchant for making lackluster life choices has sentenced them to an indefinite prison term of couch-surfing and Teen Mom marathons in their childhood home. Naturally, they desire change, but it’s not until their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man that things do. In an egregious breach of the TMI line, it appears that Mom’s orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz subsequently fall into. Thus removed from the entropy of their former reality they begin testing the parameters of their new one, quickly coming to the realization that sometimes the alternatives to what you already have are even worse. Getting home again is a convoluted, not fully mapped-out process, but in the interim, their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern)

God of Carnage Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also June 16, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 17. Marin Theatre Company performs Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning comedy about two sets of parents who meet after their children get into a schoolyard fight.

The Great Divide Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 24. Shotgun Players performs Adamn Chanzit’s drama about the hot topic of fracking, inspired by Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.

The Tempest Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; (510) 809-3290, www.calshakes.org. $35-71. Tue-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also June 23, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through June 25. California Shakespeare Theater opens its season with this dance-filled interpretation of the Bard’s classic tale.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Fri, 6pm; Sun/10, June 16, 24, and 30, 11am. Through June 30. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

American Foundation for Equal Rights benefit Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon/11, 8pm. $25-50. BATS Improv and Tom Bruett of marriageequalityplays.com present short plays by local playwrights, plus an improvised short play, on the theme of marriage equality.

“Beef Cake Comedy Show” Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; www.decosf.com. Sun/10, 8pm. $10. Comedy music group Saw Dem Eyes headlines this night of “straight guys telling jokes with their shirts off.”

“The BY Series” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 17. $25. Robert Moses’ Kin Dance Company presents work by guest choreographers Molissa Fenley, Ramon Ramos Alayo, and Sidra Bell, plus the world premiere of Moses’ Scrubbing the Dog.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“Elementary, My Dear Watson, It Was Crack” Purple Onion, 140 Columbus, SF; (415) 956-1653. Thu/7, 9pm. $20. Comedian Will Franken performs his latest one-man sketch comedy show.

“A Funny Night for Comedy” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.natashamuse.com. Sun/10, 7pm. $10. Natasha Muse and Ryan Cronin host a comedy talk show, followed by “A Funny Night for Improv” at 9pm.

“Feel the Power of the Dork Side” Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm. $15. Engineering professor by day, stand-up comedian by night: Dr. Pete Ludovice performs his solo show.

“Get In Front” Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.getinfront.org. Wed/6, 7pm. $35-250. A benefit for Cancer Prevention Institute of California, this event features performances by principal dancers from San Francisco Ballet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, ODC/Dance, and more.

“House of Matter” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 7pm. $15-25. Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project presents its latest installment of urban dance theater.

“Idina Menzel: Barefoot at the Symphony” Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; (415) 864-6000. Thu/7, 8pm. $69.50-125. The Tony winner performs a show of Broadway and modern pop songs.

“Kunst-Stoff Arts/Fest 2012” Kunst-Stoff Arts, One Grove, SF; kunststoffartsfest2012.eventbrite.com. Thu/7-Sat/9 (Program One) and June 14-16 (Program Three), 8:30pm; Tue/12, 8pm (Program Two). $15. Program one: Dance Elixir and Kunst-Stoff Dance Company; program two: Silvia Girardi performing multimedia theater work All I Wanted to Say; program three: Bruno Augusto and Meisha Bosma.

“Performance Night at the Strand” Strand Theater, 1127 Market, SF; maryarmentroutdancetheater.com. Fri/8, 8:15pm. Free (donations accepted). Mary Armentrout Dance Theater, Oakland’s Milkbar, and Paz de la Calzada present an evening of site-specific performances and installations inspired by de la Calzada’s mural on the shuttered Strand Theater.

“R16 North American B-Boy Championships” Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.r16usa.com. Sat/9, 2-6pm. $10-25. Come check out dancers popping, locking, and otherwise vying to represent North America at the Supreme World Championship finals in South Korea.

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.worldartswest.org. Sat/9, 2pm. $15. Artist dialogue with “American Tribal Style Belly Dance” creator Carolena Nericcio, followed by a performance by FatChanceBellyDance. Also Sun/10, 2pm, Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin, SF; www.worldartswest.org. Sun/10, 2pm. Free with museum admission ($7-12). Shamanic dance performace by Korean dance master Il Hyun Kim.

“Sex and the City: Live!” Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Tue, 7 and 9pm. Through June 26. $25. Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger, Lady Bear, Trixxie Carr play the fab four in this drag-tastic homage to the HBO series.

“Talkies” Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. Fri/8, 8pm. $6. Stand-up comedy and short comedic films hosted by Anna Seregina and George Chen.

“Voca People” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com. Tue-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6:30 and 9:30pm; Sun, 3 and 6pm. Through June 17. $49-75. A capella from outer space.

“X” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/6-Thu/7, 8pm. $10-20. Australian performer Sunny Drake presents his new show in conjunction with the National Queer Arts Festival.

BAY AREA

“Jazz Hams” Odell Johnson Performing Arts Center, Laney College, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 1pm. $10. The plus-sized performers of Big Moves present a new, full-scale production featuring an array of dance styles.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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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. Complete listings are located at www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Aftermath Stagewerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Previews Thu/7, 8pm. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. Theatre, Period presents Jessica Blank and Erik Jenson’s docu-drama, based on interviews with Iraqi civilians forced to flee after the US military’s arrival in 2003.

Lips Together, Teeth Apart New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Terrence McNally’s play about two straight couples spending July 4 amid Fire Island’s gay community.

Reunion SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Previews Wed/6-Thu/7, 7pm; Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. SF Playhouse presents a world premiere drama by local playwright Kenn Rabin.

“Risk Is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. Free ($20 donation for reserved seating; $50 donation for five-play reserved seating pass). Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 14. Cutting Ball’s annual fest of experimental plays features two new works and five new translations in staged readings.

Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Previews Fri/8 and June 15, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm. Opens June 16, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; June 22, 8pm. Through July 21. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.

BAY AREA

Wheelhouse TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through July 1. TheatreWorks’ 60th world premiere is a musical created by and starring pop-rock trio GrooveLily.

ONGOING

The Full Monty Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.roltheatre.com. $25-36. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 30. Ray of Light Theatre performs the hit musical.

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu/7, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm; Sun/10, 7pm. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

100 Saints You Should Know Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.therhino.org. $10-30. Wed-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 17. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Kate Fodor’s comedy-drama about family love, homosexuality, and adolescence.

Othello Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-18. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Ninjaz of Drama performs Shakespeare’s classic in a contemporary setting.

Slipping New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Daniel Talbott’s drama about a gay teen who finds new hope after a traumatic breakup.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through June 24. Berkeley Rep presents a world premiere from writer-performer Dael Orlandersmith (a Pulitzer finalist for 2002’s Yellowman).

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. Slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next; when their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man, her orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz fall into. Their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern)

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.

Film Listings

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

OPENING

Bel Ami Judging from recent attempts to shake off the gloomy atmosphere and undead company of the Twilight franchise, Robert Pattinson enjoys a good period piece, but hasn’t quite worked out how to help make one. Last year’s Depression-era Water for Elephants was a tepid romance, and Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s belle epoque–set Bel Ami is an ungainly, oddly paced adaptation of the Guy de Maupassant novel of the same name. A down-and-out former soldier of peasant stock, Georges Duroy (Pattinson) — or “Bel Ami,” as his female admirers call him — gains a brief entrée into the upper echelons of France’s fourth estate and parlays it into a more permanent set of social footholds, campaigning for the affections of a triumvirate of Parisian power wives (Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman, and Kristin Scott Thomas) as he makes his ascent. His route is confusing, though; the film pitches forward at an alarming pace, its scenes clumsily stacked together with little character development or context to smooth the way, and Pattinson’s performance doesn’t clarify much. Duroy shifts perplexingly between rapacious and soulful modes, eyeing the ladies with a vaguely carnivorous expression as he enters drawing rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms, but leaving us with little sense of his true appetites or other motivations. (1:42) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)

Double Trouble When crooks nab a priceless painting from a Taipei museum, two security guards — wannabe hero Jay (Jaycee “Son of Jackie” Chan) and Chinese-tourist-on-vacation Ocean (Xia Yu) — reluctantly team up to recover the piece. A road trip of sorts ensues, laden with petty bickering, wacky melees, bonding moments, mistaken identity, gangsters both comical and sinister, and other buddy-comedy trappings. As expected, there are a few high-flying fight scenes; in the film’s production notes, director David Hsun-Wei Chang reveals he was inspired by the Rush Hour movies. Alas, Chan is neither as charismatic nor as breathtakingly nimble as his father (and, obvi, Xia is no Chris Tucker). It should be noted, however, that one of the slithery art thieves is played by underwear model Jessica C., famed in Hong Kong for her “police siren boobs.” So there’s that. (1:29) Metreon. (Eddy)

Elena The opening, almost still image of breaking dawn amid bare trees — the twigs in the foreground almost imperceptibly developing definition and the sky gradually growing ever lighter and pinker in the corners of the frame — beautifully exemplifies the crux of this well-wrought, refined noir, which spins slowly on the streams of dog-eat-dog survival that rush beneath even the most moneyed echelons of Moscow. Sixtyish former nurse Elena (Nadezhda Markina) is still little more than a live-in caretaker for Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov), her affluent husband of almost 10 years. She sleeps in a separate bed in their modernist-chic condo and dutifully funnels money to her beloved layabout son and his family. Vladimir has less of a relationship with his rebellious bad-seed daughter (Yelena Lyadova), who may be too smart and hedonistic for her own good. When a certain unlikely reunion threatens Elena’s survival — and what she perceives as the survival of her own spawn — a kind of deadly dawn breaks over the seemingly obedient hausfrau, and she’s driven to desperate ends. Bathing his scenes in chilled blue light and velvety dark shadows, filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (2003’s The Return) keeps a detached but close eye on the proceedings while displaying an uncanny talent for plucking the telling detail out of the wash of daily routine and coaxing magnetic performances from his performers. (1:49) Lumiere. (Chun)

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted The animated zoo animals (voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith) join a circus. Hence the clown wigs. (1:33)

Peace, Love and Misunderstanding How is that even as a bona fide senior, Jane Fonda continues to embody this country’s ambivalence toward women? I suspect it’s a testament to her actorly prowess and sheer charisma that she’s played such a part in defining several eras’ archetypes — from sex kitten to counterculture-heavy Hanoi Jane to dressed-for-success feminist icon to aerobics queen to trophy wife. Here, among the talents in Bruce Beresford’s intergenerational chick-flick-gone-indie as a loud, proud, and larger-than-life hippie earth mama, she threatens to eclipse her paler, less colorful offspring, women like Catherine Keener and Elizabeth Olsen, who ordinarily shine brighter than those that surround them. It’s ostensibly the tale of high-powered lawyer Diane (Keener): her husband (Kyle MacLachlan) has asked for a divorce, so in a not-quite-explicable tailspin, she packs her kids, Zoe (Olsen) and Jake (Nat Wolff), into the car and heads to Woodstock to see her artist mom Grace (Fonda) for the first time in two decades. Grace is beyond overjoyed — dying to introduce the grandchildren to her protests, outdoor concerts, and own personal growhouse — while urbanite Diane and her kids find attractive, natch, diversions in the country, in the form of Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Cole (Chace Crawford), and Tara (Marissa O’Donnell). Yet there’s a lot of troubled water for the mother and daughter to cross, in order to truly come together. Despite some strong characterization and dialogue, Peace doesn’t quite fly — or make much sense at its close — due to the some patchy storytelling: the schematic rom-com arch fails to provide adequate scaffolding to support the required leaps of faith. But that’s not to deny the charm of the highly identifiable, generous-spirited Grace, a familiar Bay Area archetype if there ever was one, who Fonda charges with the joy and sadness of fallible parent who was making up the rules as she went along. (1:36) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Prometheus Ridley Scott returns to Alien (1979) turf with this sci-fi thriller starring Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Noomi Rapace, and Guy Pearce. (2:03)

ONGOING

Bernie Jack Black plays the titular new assistant funeral director liked by everybody in small-town Carthage, Tex. He works especially hard to ingratiate himself with shrewish local widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), but there are benefits — estranged from her own family, she not only accepts him as a friend (then companion, then servant, then as virtual “property”), but makes him her sole heir. Richard Linklater’s latest is based on a true-crime story, although in execution it’s as much a cheerful social satire as I Love You Philip Morris and The Informant! (both 2009), two other recent fact-based movies about likable felons. Black gets to sing (his character being a musical theater queen, among other things), while Linklater gets to affectionately mock a very different stratum of Lone Star State culture from the one he started out with in 1991’s Slacker. There’s a rich gallery of supporting characters, most played by little-known local actors or actual townspeople, with Matthew McConaughey’s vainglorious county prosecutor one delectable exception. Bernie is its director’s best in some time, not to mention a whole lot of fun. (1:39) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

A Cat in Paris This year’s Best Animated Film nominees: big-budget entries Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, and eventual winner Rango, plus Chico and Rita, which opened just before Oscar night, and French mega-dark-horse A Cat in Paris. Sure, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s film failed to cash in on 2011’s Paris craze, but it’s still a charming if featherweight noir caper, being released stateside in an English version that features the voices of Marcia Gay Harden and Anjelica Huston. A streetwise kitty named Dino spends his days hanging with Zoey, a little girl who’s gone mute since the death of her father — a cop killed in the line of duty. Zoey’s mother (Harden), also a cop, is hellbent on catching the murderer, a notorious crook named Costa who runs his criminal empire with Reservoir Dogs-style imprecision. At night, Dino sneaks out and accompanies an affable burglar on his prowlings. When Zoey falls into Costa’s clutches, her mom, the thief, and (natch) the feisty feline join forces to rescue her, in a series of rooftop chase scenes that climax atop Notre Dame. At just over an hour, A Cat in Paris is sweetly old-fashioned and suitable for audiences of all ages, though staunch dog lovers may raise an objection or two. (1:07) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Color Wheel Carlen Altman, a nervous comedian who moonlights as a Jewish rosary maker, was doing stand-up in Brooklyn when filmmaker Alex Ross Perry approached her about collaborating on a project. The idea for a brother-sister movie came to be: The Color Wheel, a droll and perverse take on vexed lives in transition, tinged with 16mm. Perry directed, produced, and edited the film while co-writing with Altman. When the film begins, a dopey JR (Altman) shows up at the apartment of her misanthropic brother Colin (Perry). JR convinces him to help move her stuff out of her professor ex-boyfriend’s place. Inevitably, their Northeastern road trip follows other tangents, taking the pair on a hilarious and sad journey that raises more questions than answers about their fraught relationship. They meet a lot of jerks, but no one more so than themselves; their characters, filterless with no desire to grow up or shut up, are far behind everyone they encounter. With all its zeitgeisty humor and lovably awful people, The Color Wheel takes some dark turns — it begins as a charming, dour comedy, but ends up viscerally queasy and pitiful, with its two leads as mixed-up as ever. (1:23) Roxie. (Ryan Lattanzio)

I Wish It’s tempting to hold Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish up to that other kids adventure story in the theaters, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, but that’s a disservice to Anderson: his arch look back at an age of innocence comes off as loftily contrived in contrast to this gently empathetic, ground-level view of children’s dreams and desires, one that falls well short of preciousness, thanks to Kore-eda’s acute eye for a changing Japan. Brothers Koichi and Ryunosuke (real-life sibs Koki and Ohshiro Maeda) are living apart like their two parents: the former bunks with his mother (Nene Otsuka) and grandparents in Kagoshima, where he plots to get his parents together again and frets over the ash-spewing still-active volcano; the latter is busy enabling his laid-back guitar-playing father (Jo Odagiri of 2003’s Bright Future) on the other side of the island, where he grows fava beans, eats takeout, and hangs out with pals like budding actress Megumi (Kara Uchida). These offspring of Peter Pan-like parents, who have had a tough time growing up and fulfilling their own dreams, have been forced to grow up fast — but Koichi is pinning his hopes on something faster: the new bullet train line that will link his town with his brother’s. He gets it in his mind that if a wish is made when the first trains pass each other, a miracle, like his bickering parents’ reunion, will occur. The kids conspire to grab to that magical moment, by hook or crook, and a little help from an elderly couple that might have stepped out of an older, more gracious Japan, as rhapsodized by Yasujiro Ozu. And as with his devastating portrait of abandoned kids eking out a living on their own, Nobody Knows (2004), Kore-eda effortlessly coaxes great performances out of his child actors. Like Nobody Knows‘s Akira, Koichi and Ryunosuke are determined to persevere, post-familial meltdown, through all personal Armageddons, be they triggered by volcano, tsunami, or heartbreak. (2:08) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Michelle Devereaux)

Snow White and the Huntsman It’s unclear why the zeitgeist has blessed us this year with two warring iterations of the Snow White fairy tale, one broadly comedic (April’s Mirror Mirror), one starkly emo. But it was only natural that Kristen Stewart would land in the latter rendering, breaking open the hearts of swamp beasts and swordsmen alike with the chaste glory of her mien. As Snow White flees the henchmen and hired killers dispatched by her seriously evil stepmother, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), and traverses a blasted, virulent forest populated with hallucinogenic vapors and other life-threatening obstacles, Stewart need not act so much as radiate a dazzling benignity, weeping the tears of a martyr rather than a frightened young girl. (Unfortunately, when required to deliver a rallying declaration of war, she sounds as if she’s speaking in tongues after a heavy hit on the crack pipe.) It’s slightly uncomfortable to be asked, alongside a grieving, drunken huntsman (The Avengers’ Chris Hemsworth), a handful of dwarfs (including Ian McShane and Toby Jones), and the kingdom’s other suffering citizenry, to fall worshipfully in line behind such a creature. But first-time director Rupert Sanders’s film keeps pace with its lovely heroine visually, constructing a gorgeous world in which armies of black glass shatter on battlefields, white stags dissolve into hosts of butterflies, and a fairy sanctuary within the blighted kingdom is an eye-popping fantasia verging on the hysterical. Theron’s Ravenna, equipped in modernist fashion with a backstory for her sociopathic tendencies, is credible and captivating as an unhinged slayer of men, thief of youth, destroyer of kingdoms, and consumer of the hearts of tiny birds. (2:07) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport) *

Little runaways

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Little runaways

arts@sfbg.com

FILM It’s hard to make any grand pronouncements about Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. Does the Boy King of Quirk’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably.

In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, aside from a new font for the title sequence (Futura, we hardly knew ye), he gives us his first period piece. The tale is set in 1965, when New Penzance Island (entirely fictional, but ostensibly off the New England coast) is populated by children who would rather listen to educational records about British composer Benjamin Britten on their portable turntables than the latest Stones album — ironically, this is perhaps Anderson’s only film not to feature any ’60s British Invasion pop. (There is, however, plenty of Hank Williams on the soundtrack to lend some low-fi kitsch.)

After a chance encounter at a church play (Noye’s Fludde, Britten’s operatic version of Noah and the ark), pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). It’s not hard to understand why — Hayward’s sad doe eyes and petulant mouth bring to mind a mini-version of the prototypical Godard femme fatale; she’s Anna Karina in a training bra. The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids.

The bespectacled, corncob pipe–smoking Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes (they both call each other “counselor” when arguing). Suzy’s mother has cuckolded her dad by having an affair with island cop Bruce Willis (in full middle-age-man mode, looking a bit like a decrepit Tintin), who takes an interest in the troubled Sam.

But that interest can’t stop the two kids from running off together into the woods to play Blue Lagoon. It’s hard to blame them. “Does it concern you that your daughter’s just run away from home?” Mrs. Bishop asks her husband. “That’s a loaded question,” he responds after a significant beat. The whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. (Suzy even stabs a boy with scissors in a pivotal scene.) But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard.

Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment. It’s a simple yet inspired idea. And it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. It’s also very funny — any movie that features Tilda Swinton, bedecked in navy cape and jaunty hat, as a soulless bureaucrat who refers to herself exclusively as “Social Services,” can’t be all wrong.

Still, something is missing. Much of Anderson’s wit and charm stems from a postmodern out-of-time quality, a sense of existence just this side of real. But that ironic detachment seems to be methodically sapping his ability to make a different kind of love connection: the one between his onscreen romance and his audience’s collective heart. Yes, it’s beautiful, exotic, lovely, and romantic (in both the lower-case and upper-case “R” senses). But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. And so it doesn’t seem real. In a word, it’s simply too damn tame.

Even when Hurricane Maybelline descends on the island, there is never any sense of mortal danger, emotional or otherwise. At one point Sam gets cold-cocked by a bolt of lightning, quickly rises as his head still smokes, and announces, “I’m okay.” I don’t think anyone in the audience was surprised. Even the possibility of the Great Flood itself washing everything away seems a bit of a skin game.

As his characters do, Wes likes his toys. I like his toys as well. But I wonder if it might be time for him, like Sam and Suzy, to grow up a little and put away some childish things. He can feel free to hold onto the portable turntable, though — especially if he puts on some old Stones records.

 

MOONRISE KINGDOM opens Fri/1 in San Francisco.

Wall down, joints up

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Wall down, joints up

The tallest structure in Germany is a sky needle with a majestic ball sitting well up its length. Due to some vagaries of the physics of light and the shiny, Epcot-like nature of this ball, Berlin's Fernsehturm (a.k.a., television tower) casts the shadow of a cross over the city, much to the consternation of its East German builders.

One wonders what they would think of the head shop nestled into the base of their show of socialist triumph. For the past 11 years Udopea has been here, currently occupying a space next to a bike rental shop and mere feet from a line where a million visitors cue every year to ascend into the Fernsehturm's observation decks and fancy restaurant.

But maybe this isn't such a weird thing. A cursory look at Udopea's window offerings reveal the standard wacky tourist fare: rainbow hair dyes, black-light bongs, bongs spotted with hippie daisies. I was in the market for cotton candy hair, so we stopped in — only to see my beloved California-made Magic Flight vaporizer (see Herbwise, "Hippies do it better," 2/8/12) vaporizer. It appears Udopea actually knows its cannabis.

Berlin is not the least tolerant place for marijuana in Europe. Head over to Görlitzer Park in the trendy Kreuzberg neighborhood and you can score baggies of dry cannabis in a flash. Marijuana is openly smoked in many of the town's world-famous, dirty-as-hell techno churches. But it's no cannabis culture capital. After all, this is a place where entering "marijuana" as a search term on the website of Berlin's reigning English-language culture magazine turns up only one result: an interview with Evidence, of LA underground hip-hoppers Dilated People. (He's making a pun off of "bagpipes.")

So those looking for a conversation about weed that goes deeper than "you want" and "how much" should drop through Udopea. In addition to klassy US products, you can find Germany's finest glass company Roor (www.roor.de). Glassblower Martin Birzle's brand inspires fierce adherents — you should have heard the Udopea sales assistant's roar of disbelief when I told him I was unfamiliar with the product. (Nationalists.)

Plus, stuff for growing so that you don't have to keep heading out to Görlitzer. The quantity of lights, fertilizers, and various other accoutrements that Udopea deals will actually sound the death knell for their most idiosyncratic of its five Germany-wide locations. More space is needed to properly stock the grow section, so the Berlin store is moving to a more spacious location in another neighborhood. Later, tourists.

Two for the road

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Two for the road

arts@sfbg.com

FILM They met at a comedy club in Brooklyn. Carlen Altman, a nervous comedian who moonlights as a Jewish rosary maker, was doing stand-up when filmmaker and Tisch graduate Alex Ross Perry approached her about collaborating on a project.

"I came down from the experience of having my first movie out there in the world," said Perry, who directed the little-seen indie Impolex (2009) when he was only 24. "I started thinking about success, disappointment and the way that people grow apart from one another."

The idea for a brother-sister movie came to be. Altman and Perry, both 28, drafted the film in the summer of 2009 and shot it a year later. "You feel like you're stuck with someone and have been your whole life," Perry said of his time spent working with Altman on The Color Wheel, a droll and perverse take on vexed lives in transition, tinged with 16mm. Perry directed, produced, and edited the film while co-writing with Altman.

When the film begins, a dopey JR (Altman) shows up at the apartment of her misanthropic brother Colin (Perry). She is met with disdain by his girlfriend and by Colin, blue-balled by his stuffy long-term relationship. JR convinces him to help move her stuff out of her professor ex-boyfriend's place. Inevitably, their Northeastern road trip follows other tangents, taking the pair on a hilarious and sad journey that raises more questions than answers about their fraught relationship. They meet a lot of jerks, but no one more so than themselves.

"We were both really cranky filming," Altman recalled. "It [really] felt like we were brother and sister."

Both characters have had little personal and professional success, though JR, a would-be news anchor, even less than her brother.

Many of the characters' repellant mannerisms and frustrating habits are hewn from the real-life Perry and Altman — with exaggerations, of course.

"JR is more representative of what both of us actually feel and how we perceive ourselves in her creative ideas and lack of shame," Perry said. "My character represents the cautious side, what both of us feel like we should be doing."

Altman took the name of her character from a scrappy tomboy she once met at summer camp. "In terms of personality, my character is kind of my worst nightmare," Altman said of JR, who is really aggressive about success but has no specific passions of her own. "She's like 'Hey, look at me!' but, oh my god, there's nothing to look at. I feel shy about asking for favors, and I wanted to paint a picture of someone who is so not shy about asking."

Though the film is as talky, anxious, and self-revising as anything from the mumblecore school, Perry and Altman possess more maturity and even more cynicism than their profligate classmates. On the converse, their characters, filterless with no desire to grow up or shut up, are far behind everyone they encounter, from Colin's harpy high school crush to JR's haughty celebrity idol.

With all its zeitgeisty humor and lovably awful people, The Color Wheel takes some dark turns. What begins as a charming, dour comedy ends up viscerally queasy and pitiful, with its two leads as mixed-up as ever.

"The ending was my idea from the very beginning. It was easy to build it in a way that was natural and organic," Perry said of the film, which encourages, almost immediately, a repeat viewing.

Applauded by Cahiers du Cinéma and Mubi, among other cinephilic publications, The Color Wheel, a film that begins and ends in transit, no doubt has a long life ahead.

In the meantime, Altman wants to make a documentary about her Lionhead rabbit. And Perry, initially rejected by myriad producers and investors, hopes "there will be some traction after my two films," he said. "Maybe someone will help this guy."

Maybe someone will help these guys. *


THE COLOR WHEEL opens Fri/1 at the Roxie; also plays Sun/3 at the Smith Rafael Film Center.

Destroy build destroy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Destroy build destroy

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC “Harsh urban space, with a light misting.” That’s how Dan Bejar describes 2011’s Kaputt, his ninth full-length under the Destroyer moniker; listen to it with headphones, on a foggy day in San Francisco, and you just might agree.

Much has been made of the stylistic shift the Vancouver singer-songwriter has initiated on this record. Awash with fretless bass, lite-jazz sax noodling, and a syrupy synth-haze reminiscent of Avalon by Roxy Music, Kaputt comes across as subdued and wistful, in contrast to the baroque, acerbic tone of his previous output.

Bejar spoke with me over the phone from his home in Vancouver, detailing the second Destroyer lineup since the release of Kaputt, and their renewed approach to the material, as, “more dynamic and muscular than the aesthetic of the production… it’s mostly just a disco band, really,” he explains, with a tinge of sarcasm. “Yeah, hard-rock disco.”

However, while the previous tour was almost exclusively concerned with translating Kaputt to the stage, Bejar suggests that his current octet has, “probably learned twice as much material as any other Destroyer band before it.” The upcoming tour will find Destroyer approaching older, guitar and piano-based songs with trumpet, sax, and mega-synths for the first time. “We’ve not necessarily Kaputtified [the older material],” he explains, “but definitely given things a new sound.”

Kaputtified? Bejar wouldn’t likely be using this word if the album didn’t possess such a distinct, consistent atmosphere. The production aesthetic of Kaputt has inspired countless nerd-debates over the past year or so, largely concerning the merits of tributing a musical era — the early 1980s — that some listeners find questionable these days.

“I think there’s some things on the record that, some people might find repellent,” Bejar observes. “Not necessarily younger people so much as people my age, or a bit older, who maybe lived through the late ’70s and the ’80s, and were kind of just bludgeoned with really bad examples of production techniques and instrumentation that went down.”

That said, Bejar himself is hesitant to slap the “’80s” tag on Kaputt, despite this strong reaction from the blogosphere. “You never know when your intentions, and when the reality of what you’re doing, match up,” he admits, “[but] I always just think the songs are distinct enough that they can just grab hold of whatever style they feel like, and still come out sounding like their own voice.”

Another common misconception about Kaputt is the suggestion that it was written and recorded from a nostalgic perspective. After all, Bejar was a mere nine years of age when Avalon came out. “I don’t think it’s really nostalgic,” he insists. “I’ve always thought of it more as, say, someone on their deathbed, pumped full of morphine, maybe seeing what visions go wafting by.”

This deathbed image sheds some light on what Bejar describes as a “blankness” at the heart of Kaputt‘s songwriting and vocal delivery. “The sense of space was always important,” he contends. “There’s probably half the word count than there is on any other Destroyer album.” This relative economy of words is reflected in Kaputt‘s relaxed, unhurried pacing, which provides a stark contrast to the freewheeling energy of, say, 2006’s Destroyer’s Rubies.

In describing his aesthetic influences, Bejar mentions, “most of my inspiration comes from Miles Davis, on a daily basis, anyway,” Thinking within that context, Kaputt very well might be Destroyer’s In a Silent Way: a deeply transitional affair steeped in lush ambiance, with the ability to go hog-wild, but the class, restraint, and wisdom to keep things at a simmer.

It’s an ideal soundtrack to this city at its grayest. A light misting, indeed.

DESTROYER

With Sandro Perri, Colossal Yes

Tue/5, 9pm, $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

Trans-formation

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Trans-formation

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC After touring on 2009’s Words of the Knife with his band Os Beaches, Mark Matos’ world fell crashing from the cosmos. Internal struggles compelled him to fire his producer and his guitarist; Os Beaches’ practice space that doubled as a crash pad burned down (relegating the fresh-off-the-road group back to van sleeping); and Matos began to develop a destructive relationship with drugs.

When I meet up with him over an extremely tall glass of weizen beer at German restaurant Suppenküche, Matos — an eloquent, bearded 30-something who comes off as much like a shaman as the front person of a psychedelic rock collective — explains how he somewhat-recently hit rock bottom; and how psychedelics enabled him to climb out of a debilitating death hole and build a mountain on top of it.

“I was up all night on cocaine. I hate cocaine. I felt it all slipping away. And I was like, ‘I’m going to take the heroic dose’ — five grams of mushrooms,” Matos recalls. “It’s what the shamans of South America say is the proper dose. It’s not fun.”

Matos says after he emerged from his heroic experience, he felt completely reborn. “I didn’t want to do coke. I didn’t care about being famous, and I really, really felt high. I was so high that people thought I was losing it.”

He says his consumption of the heroic dose, coupled with a series of vision quests, spawned the creation of his enlightened self — Trans Van Santos — and drew him toward the concept of communal musicianship.

The Trans Van Santos identity came to Matos during a vision quest in the desert. He remembers big hands lifting him onto a pyramid, and voices beckoning him to embrace his spirit name, Trans Van Santos.

“Santos is my grandmother’s maiden name, and in our [Portuguese] tradition we often take the matriarch’s name. When I think ‘Santos,’ it reminds me to honor the feminine.”

Coyote and the Crosser, Mark Matos & Os Beaches’ recent release, tells the story of Matos’ transformation into Trans Van Santos and his quest for “the ball of light” — a metaphor for illumination and enlightenment. The band will debut the Coyote and the Crosser live show this week at the Rickshaw Stop.

“This show will be a rock’n’roll extravaganza: loud, psychedelic, and very electric,” Matos says. “The album is a malleable rock opera, so it’s a rock opera in a sense that there’s a narrative structure — a group of [six songs] — but there are other [songs] too. There’s a mythological universe coming across, so certain songs of mine fit into that world.”

With the help of Joel Dean (who’s built sets for Phil Lesh and extravagant art pieces for Burning Man), Matos has constructed visually compelling stage props for his performance, including “the Spirit Molecule Sound Chambers with spinning disco balls hovering inside,” eight-foot tall glowing cacti, and a 13-foot tall dream catcher.

“I think having intention in the visual aspect of [Coyote and the Crosser] will bring people to the point where we can have a shared experience,” Matos anticipates.

Matos’ cosmic alter-ego Trans Van Santos will perform at Starry Plough the following night, which should be a calmer, quieter ceremony. Trans, along with his Trans Band, will explore “Americalia”: a synthesis of American folk and Brazilian Tropicalia.

For his Trans Van Santos other self and Trans Band, Matos says he “kept the direction to a minimum, focusing on the spiritual approach to the material. I want to hear the choices these folks make, to feel the spirit of discovery between us.”

Matos’ mystical transformation has compelled him to share his “acid gospel” with the community. “What I am trying to do with my little corner of rock’n’roll is to treat it as a new psychedelic ceremony,” Matos explains. “That and throw a birthday party for the whole galaxy!”

MARK MATOS & OS BEACHES’ COYOTE AND THE CROSSER

With Zodiac Death Valley, Little Owl, Ash Reiter

Fri/1, 8pm, $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

TRANS VAN SANTOS

With the Bottlecap Boys, The Know Nothings

Sat/2, 9:30 p.m., $7-10 sliding scale

Starry Plough

3101 Shattuck, Berkeley

(510) 841-2082

www.starryploughpub.com

 

Tricky sings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Tricky sings

MUSIC Compared with the smooth operator currently installed in the Oval Office, how nervous Richard Nixon looks now as a representative of America abroad, all stiff grins, rumpled shiftiness, outbursts of awkward rhetoric. Reviewing vintage footage of him recently, I half expected a rappin’ granny to suddenly appear, and goofy Uncle Dick to start “breaking it down.” And yet, 40 years after California’s second-most problematic political progeny (pace, zombie Reagan) went to Beijing to “open China” — ending 25 years of separation and going on to win re-election in a landslide, despite the growing Watergate scandal — might it be time to look past the jerky, jowly image of Tricky Dick and reassess the character of the man and the moment, to keep us on our toes?

“Nixon was an incredibly complicated man, whose intellect constantly got in his way,” Canadian opera director Michael Cavanagh told me over the phone during a wide-ranging interview. “And it’s especially relevant to examine him now in that light, with a certain distance of history. We tend to stop at the jowls, the scandal, and the Republicanism. But it’s often been remarked during this election cycle that there’s no way in hell Nixon would ever be considered for the Republican ballot now. He was too small ‘r’ republican, too centrist. So there’s this complexity to him that confronts lefties with their own stereotypes, assuming most patrons of the arts lean left. That’s something I really like.”

Cavanagh’s complexifying occasion will be his production of John Adams’ 1987 Nixon in China, part of the San Francisco Opera’s nifty-looking summer season. The opera, with a luminescent libretto by poet Alice Goodman and an engrossing, fever-dream score by Adams, whose melodies, time signatures, and musical reference points churn and shift like memory itself, takes us from the moment Nixon’s Spirit of ’76 touches down on the tarmac (Kissinger in tow), through his historic meetings with Chou En-Lai and Mao Tse-Tung, along with First Lady Pat on an eventful factory tour, and finally into the major characters’ bedrooms, memories, and fantasies. It’s a sensually intoxicating work, full of barnstorming arias sung by a multi-ethnic cast (you will have “I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung” stuck in your head for days) that examines media spectacle, modern myth-making, and cultural difference on a truly, well, operatic scale.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Nixon was Californian, Adams is a longtime Bay Area resident. It’s the 40th anniversary of the China visit, and also an insanely contentious election year. The Bay Area as a huge Chinese population — many families escaped Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Do you feel any particular pressure bringing this production here, now? 

Michael Cavanagh I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility, but I also feel a lot of freedom. Of course, the events the opera depicts and its roots in the Bay Area will resonate, and that’s hugely exciting. But this isn’t a documentary, it’s a rumination, more of a poem. As Nixon says in the beginning of the opera, “News has a kind of mystery” — and I feel that’s what Adams and Goodman were really expanding upon with this.

I do think that this production, especially, will bring up memories for a lot of people. I myself had an inkling of this whole thing happening when I was really young — it’s something that a lot of the world shares, a memory of this iconic moment, even if that memory is only a glimpse of pavement or a handshake, kind of like my own. The opera works with that abstraction, those fuzzy frames of memory that overlay images of the past, while still sharpening some of the more historically relevant moments. I hope people can relate to it on all of those levels.

SFBG Twenty-five years separate us from the opera’s premiere in Houston in 1987 — and yet China remains, to use a slightly loaded term, as inscrutable as ever to many Americans, yet as enmeshed in their daily lives as ever. What relevance do you think the opera may hold today?

MC I think it has an eerie relevance. Even back when Nixon in China premiered, China was still remote and threatening to many, and this was before the reform machine revved into life, before China’s emerging economic dominance. In one scene, in Mao’s library, Mao goes off quite poetically about the revolution, and how things were changing, and he plays fast and loose with the concepts of capitalism and communism, almost as if he foresees the necessary reforms ahead, that came to pass.

Beyond that, the opera is very prescient about the evolution of the media — this was one of the first major world events to be broadcast on a global scale, to be covered as the kind of spectacle we base much of our opinions and thoughts on today. We think of Nixon as shifty-eyed, but he was really just trying to figure out where the cameras were most of the time, trying to acclimate to this new kind of fishbowl environment in which political figures were treated like movie characters. The opera records the beginnings of all that, and ends with them reviewing their memories of everything that’s occurred as if it was all this footage, which it is quite actually on stage.

Basically, though, the deepest relevance a work can have is by connecting to the audience through its characters. Take Pat Nixon. We hurt for Pat Nixon. She’s been betrayed. Nixon promised her a simple home life, the comforts of family and a man at home, and here she is traveling all the way to China! She’s bewildered, but as First Lady there’s really no place for that, so she forges her own, I think very American kind of resolve that cracks a couple times, but still gets her through.

It’s a very poignant psychological and emotional study, projected on the world stage, and amplified as only opera can. That’s what opera does better than any other art form: it amplifies life.

SFBG You’re a Canadian — have you caught any flack for interpreting these events that are so associated with the US?

MC You know, despite appeals to the contrary, our two countries really share the same history. This version of the opera was premiered in Vancouver during the Olympic Festival — it’s what Canada chose to represent itself will to the entire world. And when it comes down to it, really, everything you do effects us Canadians just as much. We sleep with the elephant. *

NIXON IN CHINA

June 8-July 3, times and prices vary

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF.

(415) 861-4008

www.sfopera.com

 

Deep dish

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Deep dish

SUPER EGO Ooh, she's windy! And everybody knows it. I'm writing you from Chicago, specifically and improbably from the Hard Rock Hotel in the gorgeous old Union Carbide building. It's not so tacky (I'm staying on the Prince Floor, displaying several of his blouses), even though it's brimming with hopefuls for the International Mr. Leather Competition-related "Grabbys," the big annual gay porn awards. Someone please tell their hairdressers that 2005 was seven years ago! No more gay porn cockatoos, please. It is also big, hairy bear week here — officially called Bearpawcalypse 2012, I shit you not — so everything is thuper-thuper-gay.

I'll be back to join you at the following ragers, but right now I'm off to "grabby" me some drinks in the stunning Second City. First stop: a strong sidecar and some live Latin jazz at Al Capone's favorite hang, the Green Mill. Straight mobbin', y'all.

OMAR SOULEYMAN


Are you ready to completely lose it, hypnotic synth-groove hi-NRG Syrian folk-pop style? Even just thinking of how this hyper-energetic, legendary Middle Eastern singer somehow came to be embraced by Western ravers makes me smile — but we'll all be too busy bouncing and trying to sing along to deconstruct all that.

Fri/1, 8pm doors, $20 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

STOMPY 20-YEAR REUNION


The Stompy label, party crew, and music production powerhouse has helped keep the chunky, funky, banging SF house sound alive (DJ Deron, Stompy's honcho, is one of my favorites when I just wanna let loose). To celebrate its second decade, Berlin's sunny tech-house wiz Ian Pooley is joining Jonene, Tasho, Sweet P, and Deron to stomp us good.

Fri/1, 9pm, $10 before 11pm, $20 after. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.stompy.com

DOPPLEREFFEKT


Keepers of the true mad scientist techno flame, this mysterious, essential group — headed by mental lab technician Heinrich Mueller, a.k.a. Gerald Donald, a.k.a. Rudolf Klorzeiger — was all the rage, and one of the actual quality offspring, of the electro clash scene, which is now experiencing a full-blown revival. Dark thoughts and porn dreams burble up through insanely catchy melodies and sci-fi Kraftwerk affect. With C.L.A.W.S., Robot Hustle, Josh Cheon, Caltrop, and the No Way Back crew.

Sat/2, 10pm, $25. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com

KONTROL GRAND FINALE


What would the city's techno scene be like without Kontrol? Ace new crews like As You Like It and Rocket might not be around if it hadn't been for the seven-year-old monthly blast of live news from the global techno underground. Originally started at the storied Rx Gallery as a clean, minimal-pumping break from all the baroque, bombastic clutter that was techno in the early 2000s (and as a showcase for the burgeoning international touring circuit created by the Internet and advancing digital technology), Kontrol grew at the EndUp into one of our invaluable electronic faces to the world. Now the Kontrollers — Greg Bird, Alland Byallo, Sammy D, Nokloa Baytala, and Craig Kuna — have way too much going on, damn their popular talents! This seventh anniversary event is also the end of the line for the monthly party, although Kontrol will live on in other forms, including, I'm sure, one day, a 21st anniversary party, at which I will be raving in my hover-wheelchair. Berlin master Heiko Laux performs. Danke and aufweidersehn!

Sat/2, 10pm-6am, $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.tinyurl.com/kontrolbye

WICKED 21-YEAR ANNIVERSARY


After last year's incredible reunion (and a hugely successful world tour) one of SF's original rave crews — the one that brought a tasty touch of pagan British psychedelia to its eclectic productions — gathers again to howl. DJs Garth, Jeno, Thomas, and Markie, plus a signature cast of beloved characters, get devilish all night. *

Sat/2, 10pm-7am, $20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

On utopian frequencies

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
On utopian frequencies

arts@sfbg.com

CULTURE It’s the tangible buzz I notice first, a tingling awareness of something important about to occur, followed swiftly by the realization that there are free quesadillas courtesy of the Great Tortilla Conspiracy, silk-screened with chocolate sauce and rabble-rousing sentiment: “Eat the Rich.”

It’s opening night for the ambitious Streetopia festival, and the scene outside the Luggage Store Gallery is vibrant and chocolate-scented. On the sidewalk, Brontez Purnell scrawls ritual sigils in bright pink chalk, while a watchful Amara Tabor-Smith, in Butoh face paint and bare feet, leans against a tree, waiting to enter the circle and begin her ceremonial dance. Festival co-curator (with Kal Spelletich and Erick Lyle) Chris Johanson is overheard gushing unselfconsciously about the “vibe,” and among the gathered throng of artists and tourists, Sixth Street residents and urban activists, bookworms and cinephiles, tastemakers and thinkers, old punks and new parents, it’s as apt a descriptor of the electric excitement as any.

Inside the Luggage Store itself, a fanciful reimagining of the space awaits, just past the heavily-graffitied stairwell and the bright shock of Day-Glo paint and black light of the entryway. A multi-level, wooden loft structure dominates the gallery itself, crammed with little nooks in which one might find a contemplative interactive art project involving paper boats, a tribute to Valerie Solanas, a solitary disco ball, a pirate radio set-up, a “live open letter office,” and countless murals, photographs and sculptures — frankly too much to absorb in one sweep through.

Down Market Street, beneath the Renoir Hotel, the cacophonous screech and throb from Shaun O’Dell’s noise installation “THE SOMETHING” attracts the curious, with amplifier knobs to twiddle, an out-of-tune ukulele to bang, synthesizers to desynchronize, and numerous cameras to record the emphatically spontaneous proceedings on. A rare opportunity for the public to visit the San Francisco Drug Users Union to view an art installation by Barry McGee, plus the promise of free food at the Tenderloin National Forest/Luggage Store Annex at 509 Ellis, entices the intrepid to wander further afield, into the TL night.

Impressively all-encompassing by any measure, Streetopia’s first weekend (it opened May 18) included nods to almost every possible artistic discipline with participants from all corners of the country. It gave space to panel talks, such as AIDS chronicler and former ACT UP activist Sarah Schulman’s “A Gentrification of the Mind” (an event co-curator Erick Lyle was eager to point out represented “the multi-generational teaching and sharing aspect of Streetopia”). It reinvigorated the idea of food as communion with Sy Wagon’s Free Café, the previously-mentioned Great Tortilla Conspiracy, and the War Gastronomy Food Cart; precipitated an off-site “spirit gardening” event at the Hayes Valley Farm with performance artist-musician Ryder Cooley; and hosted the kickoff to “endurance” performer Marshall Weber’s 72-hour poetry reading — a marathon that made that morning’s Bay to Breakers run look even more inconsequential than usua l.

My favorite moment of the project thus far, however, came on the evening of May 20 at the Tenderloin National Forest during an all-too rare performance by dark folk minstrels Hazy Loper, currently a duo comprised of Devon Angus and Patrick Kadyk. Torn between our desire to listen to the mournful melodies and observe the onset of the solar eclipse, the entire crowd wound up in the street squinting at the sun through postcard pinholes, loosely-clenched fists, the holes of a colander, and the leaves of a nearby tree, while the band gamely finished their set out on the curb for the whole neighborhood to enjoy. It was an experience that, for me, best encapsulated a straying from the script that the entire Streetopia project seems designed to encourage: offering a framework for building lasting interpretations of an urban utopia, rather than an experience ready-made and soon forgotten.

STREETOPIA

Through June 23

Various venues, SF

www.streetopiasf.com

 

A different world

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
A different world

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Moving, especially when it’s not by choice, is never fun. Losing your home after some 30 years of relative comfort and security is really the pits. That’s how I felt when I heard that the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival — my first encounter with the Bay Area’s voluptuous dance culture — would not be able to continue performing at the Palace of Fine Arts because of the Doyle Drive reconstruction.

Yet EDF has survived; the new, smaller, more varied venues have encouraged the re-thinking of what had become a comfortable format. One more time EDF is taking its shows on the road — to Fort Mason Center’s Cowell Theater and Firehouse, and to the de Young Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Presentations range from intimate lecture formats to full-throttle multi-company performances.

Unlike previous years, however, the popular January auditions (where you could get your fill, or a least a taste of what world dance is all about, for a $10 day pass) had to be cancelled for financial reasons. Like other arts organizations, EDF is struggling, though the 34-year-old fest has been hit particularly hard. “We were forced into an expansion of projects at a time when the economy was contracting,” says Carlos Carvajal, EDF’s co-artistic director along with CK Ladzepko. The Novellus Theater also seats 200 fewer people than the Palace, a significant loss of earned income.

The Ghana-born Ladzekpo founded his African Music and Dance Festival in 1973 and has introduced generations of artists into the intricacies of African rhythms and traditions. Carvajal started folk dancing when he was in high school in San Francisco and has performed with SF Ballet and European and South American companies. Both men have been closely involved with the Festival for years — as adjudicators and observers and now as artistic directors.

The absence of auditions allowed the two curators to go for the best and the brightest for this year’s 30 slots. They were particularly looking for innovation because, as Carvajal quotes Ladzekpo, “We can’t hide behind tradition.” Master artists whose primary concern was the preservation and dissemination of specific traditions started many of these ensembles. But more and more, this generation of ethnic dancers feels free to reinterpret and experiment what used to be considered inviolate practices.

Today’s artistic directors very likely have not only encountered other global dance forms but probably have studied modern dance, choreography, and even ballet. Many of them are as willing to test the boundaries of their fields as their colleagues in other art forms. This year’s line-up, while still offering plenty of what we all have come to love — Chinese Dragon dance, Native American hoop dance, rites of passages rituals from Liberia, temple ceremonies from Bali — offers plenty of contemporary choreography grounded in specific cultural traditions. It’s global dance in all its complexity.

Two different gamelans working together — as the Balinese Gamelan Sekar Jaya and the Sundanese Pusaka Sunda are for the new Bayangan Jiwa — would have been unheard of two decades ago (not to speak of them using very cutting-edge shadow-light technology). Neither would you have had an Uzbek percussionist (Abbos Kosimov) pair up with a Tajikistani dancer (Mariam Gaibova). And, “We specifically asked Abhinaya Dance Company to return with San Jose Taiko,” Carvajal says. It took guts and imagination to bring (successfully) together Japanese Taiko and Indian Bharata Natyam.

Carvajal is also delighted by how Carola Zertuche has revitalized Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco. For EDF, the Company will perform flamenco barefoot, milonga style, reconnecting the dance with its Moorish and Gypsy roots and also reminding us that flamenco’s percussive qualities originated in a musician’s use of a cane and not the dancer’s heels.

Maybe OngDance Company personifies EDF at its most sophisticated. At Dance Mission Theater in January they showed themselves profoundly steeped in Korean tradition, absolutely contemporary in their perspective and brilliant in the art of stagecraft. They’ll present Shadow of Cheoyong during the festival’s third weekend of performances. *

SAN FRANCISCO ETHNIC DANCE FESTIVAL

June 2-July 1, $12-$20

Various venues, SF

www.worldartswest.org

 

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