We here in San Francisco and the Bay Area might have it better than anywhere else in the US when it comes to breadth and variety of movie programming. We’ve got different rep houses, the usual chains, some daring museums, possibly the best independent spaces, and so many festivals I’ve given up counting. Yet while there’s no avoiding a coming blockbuster, there’s still a chance that a great movie or a movie that at least sounds like it has potential might not come to town. In that spirit, with a monumental SFIFF 50 banquet set to commence, I’m throwing down a list of 50 movies I’d like to see — films or videos that (I think) have yet to play here. I’ve spoken with enough programmers to know that some things listed below might be impossible or overly expensive dreams, while others might simply turn out to be rotten. If something below has played SF, email me at johnny@sfbg.com, and I’ll take it off the list and replace it with something else. This list is now open — to endless revision. What do you want to see? Post your suggestions; I wanna know!
- No categories
Pixel Vision
A dancer until the end.
By Rita Felciano
Michael Smuin photo courtesy of Smuin Ballet.
Michael Smuin, artistic director and founder of Smuin Ballet, died today of a heart attack while rehearsing a new ballet. He was 68.
Like few others, Smuin’s choreography reached far and wide. In addition to choreographing ballets, he also worked on movies, television, and Broadway. He won a Tony, three Emmys, and a Drama Desk Award; in 1983, he was honored with a Dance Magazine Award.
He was a member of American Ballet Theater and San Francisco Ballet (1973-1985), for whom he created ballets which attracted younger and new audiences. Famously, he opened one gala with a performance by hip hop dancers, probably the first time that this genre had been seen on an opera house stage anywhere. For his own Smuin Ballet he choreographed over 40 works in the last 13 years. He was known for his ebullience, unwavering commitment to his performers, and an ability to create dances which were always accessible and often innovative.
He will be missed.
Allison Jay in Michael Smuin’s Carmina Burana, from the company’s Spring 2007 season. Photo credit: Tom Hauck.
I Dig Digg
By Molly Freedenberg
A party just isn’t a party without a soldering gun. That’s what I always say. At least, that’s what I’m going to say now that I’ve been to last night’s Digg user appreciation party at Mezzanine, where I made my own electronic digg counter.
For $15, I purchased a kit for the smaller-than-palm-sized blinking toy that the Make Magazine editor at the table was wearing. Then I sat down, held my Corona between my knees, and assembled the battery-powered device with the help of a cute bespectacled girl and one 700-degree sautering iron.
When I was finished, I had a new skill (I can solder!) – and a nifty device hanging from my neck that counts how many times its button has been pushed (or “dug”) and displays the number in L.E.D. lights. Sure, from afar it looked like any other annoying blinking glowing device that ravers love to wear (which is why I had to pretend to be fire-dancing with it all night), but at least **I** knew the truth: it wasn’t the sign of my affinity for pacifiers and necklaces made of candy. It was the sign of my affinity for geeks and for doing projects while drinking. Much better.
And in case you were wondering, I got over 100 diggs before I managed to break my new toy (and only, like, three quarters of them were my friends and me pushing the button over and over). Which is pretty close to the number this article got. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Circus city
by Molly Freedenberg
My friends are circus freaks. Literally. And one of my favorite circus freaks is Marina Kardjieva (pictured), a Bulgarian beauty who is as talented at aerial work (silks, straps, aerial hoop, trapeze) as she is sweet. Lucky for me, I’ve gotten to see a lot of her lately, as she’s been in town rehearsing with musician/performer/community activist extraoardinaires think13 for balance, a multi-media performance opening this Friday at Fort Mason Center.
I stopped by the think13 rehearsal last night to watch the incomparably beautiful Hollis try on her costume, and the scrumptious and hilarious Brennan Figari practice his aerial tissu, and to hear think13 co-founder Dee Kennedy’s strong, haunting voice layered over her partner Christoph’s rockin’ tribal music. And, of course, to watch Marina do what she does absolutely best.
I didn’t see the whole run-through, so I can’t really report on what it will be like. But I do know there will be modern dance, fire dancing, plenty of aerial work, spoken word delivered by a cute boy in a kilt, live drumming, video projections, and lots of think13’s rich, ethereal (think Amy Lee) music.
I also was duly impressed with the performers I did see, and with the story the performance purports to tell. If all goes as I expect, balance will be a gorgeous spectacle that continues to blur the boundaries between the music scene and the performance art scene (which, by the way, sooo needs to be blurred).
If nothing else, it’ll be another reflection of the circus that is this city. Long live the freaks.
Save the Hole
I’ve always fondly called legendary rock ‘n roll queer SoMa suds spot Hole in the Wall the “TGI Fridays of leather biker bars” because of its insane decor.
Yet this tiny bar with the enormous AIDS remembrance candle was always my favorite spot in the city — not least because I’ve been one of the lucky few 86’d from it (don’t ask. I mean really don’t ask.) But especially after a fire in its host building last year, it needed a change of venue, and the awesome-cute grizzly biker owners John and Joe bought a spot around the corner to relocate.
And of course the NIMBYs (“Not in my backyard” folks) are trying to block its move by complaining their little suburban-wannabe asses off about it. A gay bar? In SoMa? GASP!
What I have to say about that you can find in my comments posted on our article about what’s happening. Suffice it to say, John and Joe have been incredibly beneficial friends to the gay community through their fundraising efforts at the Eagle and Hole, and are more a part of what makes SoMa SoMa than any complainy nitwit.
But the NIMBYs just might win — the future of the Hole looks grave. Here’s how you can help, from a letter sent out by John and Joe:
Hot and Heavy Hangover Cure
This is Installment Number Two in our ongoing, occasional series on hangover cures, as tested by the expert drinkers of our staff (under pseudonyms, in many cases, for reasons that should become obvious). Here, in his own words, are the results of Colfax Corruthers’ ultra-scientific testing of the method of “Morning After Lovin'” following a recent all-day drinking binge.
Graphic from www.soyouwanna.com
EXPERIMENT TWO: Mornin’ After Lovin’
Day 1
11:30 Consciousness achieved.
12:00 Keg tapped, celebratory Jameson shot consumed.
2:00 Total of two beers and one shot consumed.
4:00 Total of four beers, two shots, and 1 line of white contraband consumed.
The pigs are alright: talking with the creators of HOT FUZZ
In certain circles, “from the creators of Shaun of the Dead” are powerful, powerful words. Rejoice, fans of smart, sharp, genre-tweaking comedy: Hot Fuzz — the latest from writer-director Edgar Wright, cowriter-star Simon Pegg, and costar-slacker extraordinare Nick Frost — is a worthy follow-up for the ever-growing cult of Shaun. Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a London supercop whose makes-everyone-else-look-bad ways get him shunted to a small town, where crime is limited to underage drinking and escaped swans. Or is it? Hot Fuzz apes British cop shows as well as American blockbusters that take law enforcement to ridiculously explosive levels, including Point Break, Lethal Weapon, and Bad Boys II. Recently, I sat down with cinema’s coolest trio du jour (apologies to Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, and Rose McGowan) to get the buzz on Fuzz.
Fashion for freaks (like the rest of us)
By Molly Freedenberg
Oh, how I love me some fire. Which is how I found myself at The Crucible in Oakland on Friday night, home of fire arts and metal sculpture and non-profity goodness. And, on this particular night, fun and funky fashion. It seemed fitting that the theme of the show, Industrial Chic, was all about using recycled materials, as we’ve been working on our Green Issue all week. But that wasn’t why I was there. No, I was there for fire and the clothes that fire lovers would make. Which, it turned out, was a good reason indeed.
Sites We Love: No sleep ’til Mendocino
Wanna travel? Wanna get away? Why drive when you can fly, right? Wrong. There’s tons of great travel opportunities right here in the Bay — not all of them boutique-y in that precious Wine Country way or “Look at all these distressed and antiqued finds up here in Half Moon Bay” way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
But lately — and post-Spring breakly — we’re lovin’ 71 Miles, a local travel site put together by former television travel commentator and late-night heartthrob John Vlahides — who certainly seems to know a lot about the Bay’s “hidden spots” …
And why not? Who doesn’t want to fondle the soft, white, nearby underbelly of the Bay in terms of restaurants, B&Bs, shops and other such getaway stuff? So forget about Puerto Vallarta — we’ve got Truckee! Yes, Truckee. The “next Aspen.” Really!
Frock you: Givin’ it for Viv — and Funky Chicken 4 Life!
This just in from drag icon Juanita More and more …
A More Perfect Union: Mr. David and Fauxnique Stage a Fashion Uprising
Uprising, upfrocking
This Friday, two of my favorite performers — Mr David and Fauxnique — have put together a fashion extravaganza in honor of fashion luminary Vivienne Westwood’s show at the De Young. It’ll be a punkrock-drag-drunk-politico-darlings revolution — full of SF’s most flamboyant underground stars. All up in DeDe Wilsey’s DeDe Young garden no less.
Friday, April 13, 2007
6 – 8:30 PM / Show @ 7 PM
de Young Museum / Wilsey Court
Golden Gate Park
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
SF, CA 94118
Free
PLUS — FUNKY CHICKEN: Dining Out For Life (after the jump)
Tiger pause — Jason Shamai gets Tropical Malady
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Frame by Frame” presentation last Friday (April 6) at the Pacific Film Archive of his lovely 2004 pain in the ass Tropical Malady didn’t provide much in the way of explanations. Armed with a DVD player remote and an unpretentious appreciation of his own film, the Thai director instead offered truckloads of tiny, personal details as reassurance that the thick-growth trail through his story is a simple one if we just let it be.
The Pirate and the Princess
This week, in Careers and Education, Justin Juul seeks expert help to write erotic prose. Here’s his first attempt at the easy to publish, but not so easy to write, art form. And yes, he found a pseudonym.
The pirate costume I ordered from eBay was sitting in a box by my door when I got home last night. I took it upstairs, set it on the kitchen table, and poured myself a glass of rum. Rum…that’s what pirates drink isn’t it? “What else do they do?” I wondered. If I wanted Chloe to swab my deck for more than five minutes I knew had to be in full swashbuckler mode by the time she arrived. I could put it off no longer. It was time to become a pirate.
I popped in a bootleg copy of Dead Man’s Chest for background noise and prepared myself for a feverish Wikipedia session. Pirate lingo was all I needed, really. I had the accent down pretty good, but I couldn’t just keep saying “arrr,” and I knew words like “landlubber” and “scallywag” would only make us laugh. I cut the box open with a rusty knife as my computer booted, and then, with the blade clenched in my teeth, plunged into the Styrofoam popcorn to search for some treasure. I felt my cock stiffen as I ran my fingers over the beard, eye-patch, scarf, sword, and sexy felt hat. Arrr matey. I was gonna get some princess booty tonight.
Magic and memory: Matt Sussman chats with Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Whereas David Lynch at times utilizes all the excesses of a bad rock video to give form to the dream logic of his films, Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul creates quietly evocative cinematic reveries. Paced to the unhurried rhythms of their character’s lives and structured around the landscapes (frequently, the verdantly green jungles of his native Thailand) in which they unfold, Apichatpong’s films invite introspective contemplation as much as they have puzzled many an audience and critic. His elliptical narratives, shot through with moments of sharp humor and unexpected beauty, are imbued with a sense of openness, a kind of responsive flexibility that allows their course to be redirected by other forces: a song, memories, folktales. These last two items, in particular, kept coming up as Apichatpong discussed his latest feature Syndromes and a Century (a twice told tale loosely based on how his parents met, showing April 13-15 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts), his love of American disaster movies, and the magical potential of film. (Matt Sussman)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul and actor Sakda Kaewbuadee accepting the Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival
Guardian: You are doing a scene by scene breakdown of Tropical Malady at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive. How do you feel about that kind of engagement with your film?
Apichatpong Weerasethakul: I’m not sure. I’m excited about it, because it’s a film that’s quite difficult to explain. One part of my mind thinks that it’s not good to talk about this film because it’s very open to interpretation, but another part thinks that it’s a very nice way to get the audience’s feedback. And I may learn that we can also maybe adapt [the format] and do similar events in Thailand, where very few people relate to my films.
Blue Door’s Delroy Lindo — an ethic for theater
Delroy Lindo has appeared in dozens of films over the years. Currently, he’s directing Tanya Barfield’s Blue Door at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Lindo, who played Herald Loomis in the Broadway run of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, has only recently returned to the stage. He brings the intensity and drive that comes through on the screen to his directorial work – this is the first time he’s directed in the Bay Area – and to his conversation. Tommy Amano-Tompkins recently spoke with him.
Delroy Lindo
Guardian: There’s a scene in Blue Door in which the protagonist, Lewis, the only black man at a faculty party, looks at his hands and feels a kind of cosmic dislocation – misunderstood and out of place. You’re nearly six feet four inches tall – did you ever wish you were a few inches shorter?
Delroy Lindo: You mean as a black man? Did I ever wish I stood out less because of how people react to me? No, never. Would I prefer because of my size that I not be responded to the way I am? Certainly. Because often people don’t respond to the way a person is but to the way they think a person is. That’s the problem. And that’s exactly one of the things that the play is examining.
After Dark tote bags — on the phone with Lypsinka
No one knows more about timing than Lypsinka, who could school every MTV video clone of the past two decades on the art of talking silent and saying something. The lady is in town at the Plush Room with her most recent show, The Passion of the Crawford. While Passion draws upon an onstage interview with a drunk, fiesty and almost huggable Joan Crawford for much of its material, Lypsinka’s portrayal is still hypnotically scathing, while also appreciative of the star’s pre-feminist power. It’s completely amazing how Lypsinka can mouth the words of someone long dead more convincingly than just about any stage actor can deliver words using his or her own voice.
Lypsinka as (and in front of) Joan
I recently gave Lypsinka’s leading man, John Epperson, a call to discuss matters of great importance: After Dark magazine, Marilyn Maye, Greer Garson, Grayson Hall, Bette vs. Joan, Pepsi, and the glory of The Fury. Click and ye shall find.
International Ms. Leather: “A stick of gum, a SuperBall, and a frog”
Well, I didn’t get to go to any Cat Circus like Ms. Cheryl Eddy (see previous post), but I DID get to attend the fantastic International Ms. Leather competition at the Holiday Inn on Van Ness on Easter Vigil Saturday.
The contestants — a little blurry cuz the lens was steamy
(All pics by Hunky Beau)
The leather community still manages to amaze, and pump out enough fetishistic mojo to keep cultural critics scratching their spinning heads. The International Ms Leather contest — IMsL, or “imzel” — is only a small part of a grand weekend for leather women (and admirers — there were a lot of men and pansexuals in attendance) that’s been going on annually for 10 years. This year, it was also accompanied by the Internal Ms. Boot Black competition — or “imzbuhbuh.”
One weird Easter
I blame the cats. The Russian cats. The Moscow Cats Theatre. First of all, when the cat circus comes to town, I’m pretty sure there’s a law on the books that you don’t miss it under any circumstances. Actual performing cats! Kitties in little sparkly ruffs, scampering across high wires and jumping through hoops! Who passes that up??
Pretty much everyone I happen to know, it seems. I was already in a grumbly mood because I didn’t get a scrap of ham all day, nor did I even come near any sort of ham, or even spam — dude, I didn’t get corned beef on St. Patty’s, either, so the holiday-meat-deprivation pity party is only getting worse. On Thanksgiving I fully expect to be hunched over my Hello Kitty toaster, jar of Smuckers in hand, weeping over birds that are going uneaten. Yeah, I’m bitter. Feed me a cheeseburger, I’ll get over it. Anyway, the point is, I was already in a grumbly mood, like I said, when I hauled my carcass down to the Palace of Fine Arts. Alone. To see performing cats. Once I got there, I actually ran into some folks I knew — but the off-kilter tone of the day was already set.
Missive from Whiskeyville
From the files of our cocktail sniffer Jonathan Beckhardt
Dear Mom,
I am sorry that I only contact you when i need something, but I was wondering if you could send me my whiskey-shoes. I imagine they’re on the bottom shelf of my dresser, since I haven’t worn them since Jim Holt’s barbecue last summer. If you could get them in the mail this week, that would be great, as I need them for next Saturday. I am covering the Whiskeys of the World Expo on Saturday, April 14th. Whiskey vendors from all over will be serving samples from across two ballrooms of the Palace Hotel (yes, the same Palace Hotel where pneumonia got the best of Warren G. Harding). All that, while we get to listen to the Peninsula Scottish Fiddlers, and hopefully even check out some great speakers, like Lorne Mackillop, from MacKillop’s Choice Whisky. This is my chance to be something more than a Jim Beam hack, and I don’t want to blow it. Thanks mom,
I hope everything else is well with you,
Love,
Jonathan
6 great sandwich shops
The sandwich has both moral turpitude and spiritual strength in its legendary origins. It was named for John Montagu (1718-1792), the fourth Earl of Sandwich and member of the infamous cabal of whoring, hammered, pseudo-satanic noblemen known as “The Friars of Saint Francis of Wycombe,” but better known as “The Hellfire Club.” Montagu, who had a fondness of deflowering virgins, was also fond of eating cold roast beef between bread so he could continue gambling at cribbage without getting the cards greasy. The treat itself, however, can be traced back to the Jewish Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who lived in Jerusalem in the time of King Herod and is said to have placed Passover lamb between matzos as a reminder of the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt. At this point, though, they’re pretty damned international. And that’s what this piece is about: a bringing together of world’s disparate peoples through the common enjoyment of meat between bread. Of course, there are meat-free sandwiches as well, but my olive branch only extends so far. (Duncan Davidson)
HOT PASTRAMI
In honor of Hillel the Elder, and his noble matzo-munchies of the Pre-Sandwich Era, I’ll start with a classically Jewish sandwich: the hot pastrami. A favorite nosh in New York, the HP, like tattoo work, is one of those “get what you pay for” items. At Katz’s Deli in the Lower East Side, they go for $13.45, with the following rejoinder written on the menu: “Ask for mayo at your own peril.” What is pastrami? It’s a beef brisket, cured with salt and spices in a brine (i.e. corned beef), then smoked. Some fancier pastrami-makers skip the brine and employ a dry salt cure followed by smoking. For the layman, you need only know the following about pastrami: it’s magic.
We see dead people: Traipsing through the valley of the Bay Area kings, all dead as coffin nails
It’s always a grand old, gruesome time visiting Mountain View Cemetery at the dead edges of Oakland. The Bay’s most historic burial ground was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also had a hand in NYC’s Central Park and Yosemite, and encompasses so many generations, grandiose sacrophagi, weird crypts, oddball mausoleums, and intriguing headstones that one’s head begins to spin, imagining all the dead people roaming Gold Rush ‘Fisco, bunkered down during WW II, forever dying young and leaving a beautiful monument.
Busty pinup sphinxes guard one once-very-wealthy dead person’s house. All photos by Kimberly Chun.
The Moore Brothers were inspired by Mountain View to make their last album, and guarens, you’ll be similarly transported, drawn inexorably back, back, back, to visit it again, again, again, to look for more pyramids.
Believe it or not, this is one of two sizable pyramids at Mountain View Cemetary.
I’ve yet to glimpse the lasting resting spots of author Frank Norris, artist Thomas Hill, architects Julia Morgan and Bernard Maybeck, and railroad builder Charles Crocker, but I have marveled at the stony facade of candyman Ghiradelli’s crypt and checked out the lovely, mossy, creepy pond deeper into the grounds. You can spend hours here amid the crumbling headstones from the 1800s.
A sweet little ’30s-era angel – with a rave-ready whistle around her neck.
Disarray in the forgotten corners of the cemetary.
The tombstone reads “Rest at last, dear one.”
There was a daytime mini-rave/party going on atop one hill the day I last visited. But you can do it the official way: free docent-led tours begin at 10 a.m. the second Saturday of each month and last about three hours. The next one is April 14. You can also arrange your own tailored outing by contacting Mountain View Cemetery, 5000 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, at (510) 658-2588.
For reals? “Mother and Baby 1901”?
Comic pusher: Tha Funky Worm
Intern Sam Devine slips between the photocopied covers ….
Down by Union Square tourists clog the streets like automatons bent on material satisfaction. You can almost hear their thoughts humming beneath their skulls like the cable car cord beneath the road.
“mmm…Neiman Marcus…bzzit…shoe sale… must…buy…”
What you can hear – all too often – are the guys who ask for change:
“Spare change?” “Help the homeless, tonight!” “Street Sheet, Street Sheet.” “Would you like to buy a comic book, sir?”
Wait: what?
Thom creates beautiful art, as honest and brutal as the life he leads. You can find him pushing his photocopied mini-comics next to the Street Sheet sellers on O’Farrell and Powell. If he sounds familiar, you probably used to see him at 16th and Valencia hawking “Mission Mini-Comix.”
I picked up three of his little books the other week on St. Patty’s day: Burritos are the Best, The Sun Also Sets, and Tha Funky Worm – “You know,” said Thom in his West Coast stoner drawl, surrounded by the green, white and orange mayhem of the afternoon. “Like that Ohio Players cut.”
Legendary! Photos of Leola King’s Blue Mirror
Below are additional photos from the paper version of our story on 84-year-old Leola King who owned a string of popular businesses in the Fillmore District before they each succumbed to a nationwide urban redevelopment push that began in the 1940s. These images document King’s Blue Mirror club, which she opened in 1953 at 935 Fillmore St.
