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Don’t say mommy blogger, but mommies should be blogging

Andrew Lam
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0

There is good and bad about the rise of the “mommy blog,” says mother and author Kate Hopper. Good: women should write! Writing spreads one’s voice, motherhood can be an intense time. Bad: why must we qualify them as something apart from any other blogger, memoirist, etc. Hopper promises to discuss these topics — and more saliently, how you can get started on a chapter of your own — at her upcoming appearance at Good Vibrations‘ mothers-specific hang-out, which also features Carol Queen speaking about post-natal nookie, on Wed/1. We caught up with her before she hit SF to get a sneak peek at her relationship with the written word.

SFBG: What’s with the current mommy blogger vogue? Haven’t women always been writing about parenthood? Why is it so popular right now, and why use that particular label?

KH: Women have been writing about parenthood for a long time, but not in [these] numbers and not so publicly. The Internet and blogging have given women a forum to write about their lives in a way that hasn’t happened before. Countless mother bloggers have really found a sense of community in the blogosphere. Motherhood can be so isolating, and blogging can help combat that isolation. And they can make money. I have never advertised on my blog, but I know it can be lucrative.

About the label: I really dislike the term “mommy blogger,” just as I dislike the term “momoir” to describe memoirs that have anything to do with motherhood. The names people use to describe literature or movies — or anything — have an impact on how those things are perceived. And when you categorize books as “chick lit,” “mommy lit,” “momoir,” and blogs as “mommy blogs” you make it easier for people to discard these books and blogs. They are viewed as less serious, less important. Once something is labeled “momoir” or a “mommy blog” people don’t take it seriously as literary venture. And there are some really amazing books and blogs being written by mothers right now.

The motherhood literature I read and review (and the motherhood blogs I read) deal with more than the minutiae of daily life with children. They are dealing with issues of identity, with loss and longing, neurosis and fear, ambivalence and joy. They are about transformation and how we see ourselves in relation to the world in which we live.

SFBG: At what point did you realize motherhood would become the primary thing you write about?

KH: I began writing about motherhood in 2004, a few months after my older daughter was born prematurely. Stella was born two months early and spent a month in the hospital, and the long winter months that followed home with me. At the time I was in the third year of the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, and I had to withdraw from school in order to stay home and care for my fragile and extremely fussy daughter. Up until that point, writing had been the way I processed what was happening in my life. But I couldn’t think much less write in those early months.

It was only when Stella was five months old that I finally realized I needed to find my way back into words. So I went to the coffee shop near our house and pulled out paper and a pen. And the images of my daughter — a miniature thing on an open warming bed, her legs splayed like a frog’s, a white ventilator tube taped over her mouth, purple veins tracking across her skull like spider webs — came spilling out. After an hour, words covered the page. And for the first time since Stella was born, I felt grounded and the world felt a little bigger. I felt less alone. I’ve been writing about motherhood ever since, though in recent years, I’ve spent more time helping other women get their motherhood stories down on paper.

SFBG: You teach women how to write. Is there a particular challenge that you see as being particularly difficult for your students?

KH: One thing that always comes up when you’re teaching creative non-fiction is the ethics of writing about the people in your life. This ethical dilemma is heightened for women writing about their children, because it’s our job as parents to protect these small people. I always tell my students not to worry about this as they are beginning to write. If they do, they will self-censor and might not get to the heart of the stories they need to write. But before they decide to send a piece of writing about their children out into the world, it’s important to acknowledge how their children might react to reading it. It’s a very personal decision and there is no right or wrong way to it, but it’s important to know what you feel comfortable with — what’s the line you won’t cross? — and then trust your gut.

SFBG: Who, in your opinion, are the best mommy bloggers in the game today?

KH: I’m not sure I can say who the “best” motherhood bloggers are, but I know whose writing resonates with me. A few of my favorites are Rachel Turiel, Kristen Spina, Jenn Mattern, Heather King, and Elizabeth Aquino. They are all very talented writers, and their posts are reflective and well thought out. They also all write from the heart and aren’t afraid to be honest. I really respect that.

Kate Hopper at Mommy’s Playdate

Wed/1 7-9pm, free

Good Vibrations

1609 Polk, SF

www.goodvibes.com

Meet the finalists in Oakland’s youth poet laureate competition

Andrew Lam
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4

Bay Area, our young people are wrapping words of wisdom around subjects like survival, poverty, oppression, community, life, and death. It’s time to listen up.

“Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a word can provoke a thousand memories,” says Tele’Jon Quinn, one of seven 16 to 18-year-old Oakland youth poet laureate finalists. “Memorizing goes hand in hand with reflection. If my words can cause someone to reflect on an important issue or event in their life, then my words were worth sharing.” The East Bay bards are now preparing for the first group performance at the Art and Soul Festival in Oakland on Sat/4.

The Oakland Public Library teams up with Youth Speaks, the local youth spoken word nonprofit, to stage the competition. Like any poet laureate, the chosen versifier will officially represent his or her community via the media and public appearances.

A panel of celebrity judges including California poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, and Oakland-based poets Kenju Liu, Arisa White, Juliana Spahr, and Joshua Merchant, will select Oakland’s inaugural poet laureate in September. Every finalist will have their work published in an anthology that comes out in 2013, and the ultimate victor will receive a $5000 scholarship as well as the title of youth poet laureate for Oakland.

Take a moment to read up on seven of the most creative young wordsmiths around, and check out snippets from their creative works.

Oakland youth poet laureates at the Art and Soul Festival, festival entrances at 14th St. and Broadway; 16th St. and San Pablo; Promenade beside City Center West Garage, Oakl. www.oaklandpubliclibrary.org; www.artandsouloakland.com. Performance at Rotunda Building, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza. Sat/4 5pm – 7pm, $5-$8 seniors and kids, $10-$15 adults

Stephanie Yun, age 18, Skyline High School

Stephanie Yun has always been a writer. “To me, poetry is pure expression. It’s beautiful, and painful, and liberating, and frightening, all at once,” she tells the Guardian. “It’s being vulnerable, and teaches us to better understand things we never could.” Her poem “‘Til Death”, is infinitely more than your stereotypical love poem. Her lines tackle severe insecurities, body image issues, depression, cutting:

… Before my first and current relationship,

I wondered how potential suitors would react

when their fingertips wandered and read my wrists like Braille

Here lies emotionally unstable girl …

Describing her foray into love, her first boyfriend, her first romance, Yun slips in images of her internal battles, questions of existence, identity. 

… Everything may be fine as I speak this

but I’ve envisioned dream wedding

in the spring 

wearing tulle or lace ball gown

with three-tiered chocolate cake     

fewer times and in less detail

than my suicide … 

Yun says she started writing poetry in second grade, but became actively involved two years ago as a high school sophomore with Youth Speaks. She says writing is a release — she writes out of necessity and tells us doesn’t know if she would be alive today without the ability to lay her words down. “There is just something about letting things out, things we have kept so deep inside of us, or things that threaten to burst from our being,” Yun says. “It’s that transition from containing them within ourselves, to their manifestation into the outside world. We make ourselves vulnerable and are forced to face things head-on, and from there our ideas and feelings exist beyond us, and we can share them with others.”

Tele’jon Quinn, age 17, MetWest High School

Tele’jon Quinn is an activist and spoken word artist. He enjoys performing to large crowds, and uses his creative talents to raise consciousness in his community. His wordplay draws attention to social issues like police brutality, classism, poverty, and community. From his poem “Dialouge”: 

… Because Elites are never open minded unless there is lots for sell 

They have packaged us like we’re bots on shelves 

Robotically boxing each other and concocting diabolical plots 

To exile one another to hell …

Quinn says his poetry is not limited to his own emotions or feelings. He draws some of his material from the social programs he participates with, like Heal the Streets, Bay-Peace, and Youth Speaks. He says that for the past two years, poetry has been his outlet for everything he endures. He seeks to educate, liberate, and inspire members of the Oakland community with his words. In the final lines of “Dialogue” he writes:

So if my poetry could walk she’d walk right here

And tell you a story that gives you hope for the future of her home Oakland

The Navajo people once said you can’t wake a person that pretends to be asleep

So lets stop pretending that we do not see our reality

Open our eyes

And transform the reality we live in …

Robin Levy, age 16, Saint Joseph Notre Dame

Poetry, she says, allows Robin Levy to organize the helter-skelter thoughts that run rampant in her brain. Levy has written poetry in earnest for three years now, and says every time she writes a poem, she records another part of herself. 

“Poetry, for me, is collecting all the scraps of beauty or strangeness or whatever I can find and piecing them together so other people can see just how vivid everything is,” she tells the Guardian. Levy is a big fan of Robert Frost, but her favorite poet is a slam poet who calls herself Jasmine Luve. “The way she writes just seems so unthinkingly perfect, like she just wrote down everything she thought that day and it was already poetry,” Levy says. Her own subject matter evolves from little snippets she hears, reads, or thinks. “Just anything that is accidentally amazing, something that probably didn’t mean to be poetic but is,” she says. “The reason I write what I do is that whenever I read or hear something poetic, I just want to elaborate on it and make it into something more, weave that one thread into a full tapestry.”

In her poem “Before You Were You” Levy’s ability to turn a casual phrase into poetry is apparent. The first lines read:

you told me once

that before you were you

you were a stone.

heavy, immobile,

stranded at the ocean floor

by the cruel grip of gravity.

The poem runs full circle to explore questions of identity and shared existence. It ends with:

you told me once

that before you were you,

you poured from my mind

into the sand

you told me once

that before  you were you,

you were me

Levy asks anyone who reads this to write a poem today.

Kerby Lynch, age 17, Oakland School for the Arts

When asked if she reads poetry, Kerby Lynch responds, “Reading poetry is such an understatement. I live, breathe and eat poetry. Life is poetry. The sun, the moon and the truth is poetry. When one realizes that, life is on a path of divinity.” 

In the middle of this creative flight, she interrupts herself. “Enough of that, I’ll answer the question.” 

It turns out Lynch reads, watches, and listens to a whole gamut of poetry from traditional, to contemporary (particularly Ise Lyfe from Oakland), to spoken word (Def Jam Poetry, season 3), to rappers (Jay-Z, Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, and Lauryn Hill), and her teachers and peers at Oakland School for the Arts. Her favorite song, ever, he adds, is “Mathematics” by Mos Def—largely for the lyrics. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5vw4ajnWGA

“These are all my favorite poets and people, because they are who I am,” she says. Lynch has written poetry since she was 14, and says she got heavily into the beauty and complexity of poetry and spoken word in the summer of 2011. “Poetry is me, but not in a pretentious way. Poetry is me in a way that it completes me and aides my purpose in life.” Lynch writes about issues of race and separation, class, social and political issues. Her words are progressive, like a call to action:

Watch your brother. Tell him 

no matter what he wears he will fit the description

tell him about Oscar

tell him about Aiyana

Sean

Carlos

Sergio

Danny 

Shaima

tell him about Trayvon and these statistics that define us…

She says she uses poetry to reflect the “messed up workings of the world,” insecurities and vulnerabilities of people, and as a tool to sway the masses. “I strive to write as if I am using political propaganda,” he says, noting the influences of Martin Luther King Jr., and Stokeley Carmichael. “I use words  for me, the same way words have been used against me. Whether it be in the constitution or in a hate speech. Words are the tools for the bigger machine. Who has access to that machine? We all do. Why don’t we all use it? We didn’t know we could.”

Euna Bonovich, age 16, International High School of San Francisco

Euna Bonovich is half-Korean, half-white. She says the confusion and frustration that goes along with finding herself split between two very different cultures and in the middle of adolescence can only be soothed by writing poetry. She wants to provide a voice for those who are prevented from speaking because of the depression and exhaustion of living, and spread the message that no one is emotionally alone. Her writing is hopeful, soulful, and gets to the roots of human connection. The lines of Bonovich’s “The Gossamer of Our Hope” tell of a connection that is able to reawaken feeling and soul. 

The poem begins:

My soul has slipped away like the fleeting moments of a nightingale

Distant memories that can only be recovered by the breath of the wind

Losing my existence within the grains of sand,

But when I sense the warmth of your fingertips 

I know I’ve found it once more

The song of my sleepless night 

The feeling of laying in cold grass as the sun spreads across my skin

The laughter of a falling snowflake

The fragility of a wet moth’s wing …

Bonovich says the importance of poetry is its ability to show someone beauty in the ugliest thing in existence: life.

Jose Saldona, age 18, Envision Academy of Arts and Technology

Jose Saldona says poetry is a piece of clay; it is up to the artisan to decid its shape, color, texture and size. “It’s up to the customer to figure out its use,” he says. “Words are another set of tools: another way to communicate. Another path to enter the untapped emotions of people. Another method to reach the doubts people have.” Saldona says poetry has always been a way for him to express himself, free from speech and grammatical rules. “Sometimes you can even sneak in a few spelling ‘mistakes’ for effect,” he says. Saldona has written poetry since sixth grade, and spoken poetry since he was three. His poetry speaks to life, truth—he describes his inspirations as, “anything from nature to human nature.” 

“I am a reflection of my community, and my community lives within no boundary,” says Saldona, who describes himself as half-Spaniard, half-Tarahumara, but recognizes himself as a whole-hearted, proud Mexican. “I was raised with the idea of corima, sharing and charity. As I approach this unliberated world, I see poetry as a way to remake that world.” Saldona says stories are shared among people to teach lessons in tribes to the younger folk. He views himself as a chief, the storyteller, the ‘back in Mexico’ kid, who in ninth grade refused to write essays because he felt it took the ideas of others. The 18-year-old messenger wrote he poem “Baby’s First Words” as a dedication to his unborn baby boy:

I’m enslaved to this holy string I pull

perhaps a chord that keeps me fed

I have not an idea what it is, but it keeps me alive.

 

I stretch and barrage my mommy with kicks.

It gets her to speak and I love hearing her distant, soothing voice.

Yes, that marvelous singing in the raindrops, drizzling

with echoes of angelic harmony,

lulling me to sleep … 

 

My mouth opens wide in a gaping yawn

that quickly closes around my thumb.

Siesta in my warm incubated cove..

Goodnight.

Victoria Kupu, age 18, Mills College

Victoria Kupu has written poetry since fifth grade, but did not tell anyone about it until her sophomore year in high school. The first-generation Polynesian-American says it is her means of self expression during stressful times, as well as a reflection of her experiences and culture. “I see poetry as seeing the beauty in struggles,” she says. “[It is] an art, a way of self expression.  It can be left up to the artist how they want to convey that to the audience.” Kupu writes to tackle issues that affect people of color, and her poem, “Roots”, is an example of the way her words explore generational and cultural gaps.  

… He whispered, Ou’a foki mai, Osi tala atu ka koi 

My love does not speak your language 

A Polynesian growing up in America left my identity an orphan 

Father America was a con-artist, selling the “American Dream”

Mother liberty stood on her pedestal made of sand and dressed herself up in Monopoly money

She sold herself to the white man, capitalism 

That left no nurturing time for this brown child

I turned my back on my roots, so he turned his back too

He spewed words of my biggest fear

Ou’a  foki Mai, Osi tala atu ka koi

Your heart no longer lives here …

Kupu says she is usually sitting on a bus or in class when a line pops into her head. She writes it down and it expands into a poem. “I also usually try to touch upon issues that are not talked about as much,” Kupu says. “One of my poems talks about colorism. I also like to write about issues or marginalized communities, such as the disabled community. … I am Polynesian-American. I am not only writing to represent other Polynesians but also many other people.”

Queens, aliens, isles of wonder, and more: what to watch this week

Sue Vaughan
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My pick for movie of the week is The Queen of Versailles, a likely (I’m callin’ it in July) inclusion on my top 10 list for 2012. Seriously, this doc is revealing, timely, surprising, beautifully lensed (by photographer-turned-director Lauren Greenfield), and affords an insidery peek into the mysterious borderlands between extreme weath and excessive tackiness.

Hollywood would like you to see either an alien-invasion comedy with Ben Stiller or the fourth Step Up entry … you could do worse, but you could do better. Frankly, I’d pencil in The Queen of Versailles for your Saturday night, and settle in tonight for the 2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, which comes complete with the amusement park-ish title “Isles of Wonder.” All the buzz indicates that the extravaganza, directed by Danny Boyle (not known for his subtlety), will be one for the ages, or at least supply some juicy fodder for the meme generation.

Reviews of everything opening this week (spoiler: there’s a lot) below the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoVRetUMub0

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry Unstoppable force meets immovable object — and indeed gets stopped — in Alison Klayman’s documentary about China’s most famous contemporary artist. A larger than life figure, Ai Weiwei’s bohemian rebel persona was honed during a long (1981-93) stint in the U.S., where he fit right into Manhattan’s avant-garde and gallery scenes. Returning to China when his father’s health went south, he continued to push the envelope with projects in various media, including architecture — he’s best known today for the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ “Bird’s Nest” stadium design. But despite the official approval implicit in such high-profile gigs, his incessant, obdurate criticism of China’s political repressive politics and censorship — a massive installation exposing the government-suppressed names of children killed by collapsing, poorly-built schools during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake being one prominent example — has tread dangerous ground. This scattershot but nonetheless absorbing portrait stretches its view to encompass the point at which the subject’s luck ran out: when the film was already in post-production, he was arrested, then held for two months without official charge before he was accused of alleged tax evasion. (He is now free, albeit barred from leaving China, and “suspected” of additional crimes including pornography and bigamy.) (1:31) (Dennis Harvey)

The Queen of Versailles Lauren Greenfield’s obscenely entertaining The Queen of Versailles takes a long, turbulent look at the lifestyles lived by David and Jackie Siegel. He is the 70-something undisputed king of timeshares; she is his 40-something (third) wife, a former beauty queen with the requisite blonde locks and major rack, both probably not entirely Mother Nature-made. He’s so compulsive that he’s never saved, instead plowing every buck back into the business. When the recession hits, that means this billionaire is — in ready-cash as opposed to paper terms — suddenly sorta kinda broke, just as an enormous Las Vegas project is opening and the family’s stupefyingly large new “home” (yep, modeled after Versailles) is mid-construction. Plugs must be pulled, corners cut. Never having had to, the Siegels discover (once most of the servants have been let go) they have no idea how to run a household. Worse, they discover that in adversity they have a very hard time pulling together — in particular, David is revealed as a remote, cold, obsessively all-business person who has no use for getting or giving “emotional support;” not even for being a husband or father, much. What ultimately makes Queen poignantly more than a reality-TV style peek at the garishly wealthy is that Jackie, despite her incredibly vulgar veneer (she’s like a Jennifer Coolidge character, forever squeezed into loud animal prints), is at heart just a nice girl from hicksville who really, really wants to make this family work. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Dennis Harvey)

Red Lights Skeptics and budding myth busters, get ready. Maybe. Director-writer Rodrigo Cortés blends the stuff of thrillers and horror in this slippery take on psychics and their debunkers. Psychologist Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her weirdly loyal assistant Tom (Cillian Murphy) investigate paranormal phenomena — faith healers, trance mediums, ghost hunters, and psychics — in order to peer behind the curtain and expose all Ozs great and small. Spoon-bending blind ESP master Simon Silver (Robert De Niro) is their biggest prize: he’s come out of retirement after the death of his most dogged critic. Has Silver learned to kill with his mind? And can we expect a brain-blowing finale on the same level as The Fury (1978)? Despite all the high-powered acting talent in the room, Red Lights never quite convinces us of the urgency of its mission — it’s hard to swallow that the debunking of paranormal phenomenon rates as international news in an online-driven 24/7 multiniched news cycle — and feels like a curious ‘70s throwback with its Three Days of the Condor-style investigative nail-biter arc, while supplying little of the visceral, camp showman panache of a De Palma. (1:53) (Kimberly Chun)

Ruby Sparks Meta has rarely skewed as appealingly as with this indie rom-com spinning off a writerly version of the Pygmalion and Galatea tale, as penned by the object-of-desire herself: Zoe Kazan. Little Miss Sunshine (2006) directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris helm this heady fantasy about a crumpled, geeky novelist, Calvin (Paul Dano), who’s suffering from the sophomore slump — he can’t seem to break his rock-solid writers block and pen a follow-up to his hit debut. He’s a victim of his own success, especially when he finally begins to write, about a dream girl, a fun-loving, redheaded artist named Ruby (scriptwriter Kazan), who one day actually materializes. When he types that she speaks nothing but French, out comes a stream of the so-called language of diplomacy. Calvin soon discovers the limits and dangers of creation — say, the hazards of tweaking a manifestation when she doesn’t do what you desire, and the question of what to do when one’s baby Frankenstein grows bored and restless in the narrow circle of her creator’s imagination. Kazan — and Dayton and Faris — go to the absurd, even frightening, limits of the age-old Pygmalion conceit, giving it a feminist charge, while helped along by a cornucopia of colorful cameos by actors like Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas as Calvin’s Big Sur-dwelling boho mom and her furniture-building boyfriend. Dano is as adorably befuddled as ever and adds the crucial texture of every-guy reality, though ultimately this is Kazan’s show, whether she’s testing the boundaries of a genuinely codependent relationship or tugging at the puppeteer’s strings. (1:44) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW1aAxBG_50

Sacrifice Power-mad General Tu’an (Wang Xueqi) engineers the slaughter of the entire Zhao clan — including the newborn son who’s the last of the line. But the baby’s been swapped with the child of the doctor, Cheng Ying (Ge You), who delivered him, and the deception train pretty much goes off the rails after that. Suffice to say the Zhao heir survives while Cheng Ying’s wife and infant do not, and Tu’an is none the wiser. Revenge seems the only logical move, so Cheng Ying patiently waits years for the boy to grow up and learn martial arts from Tu’an, plotting that he’ll reveal the truth when the (kinda bratty) child becomes capable of killing his beloved “godfather” — a.k.a. the guy who massacred his family (and the family of his adoptive father). If that sounds complicated, know that this epic from Chen Kaige (1993’s Farewell My Concubine) has over two hours to get through all those plot mechanics. Also, it’s gorgeously shot, mixing the classy trappings of a big-budget historical melodrama with thunderous battles and scenes of brutal violence. (2:10) SF Film Society Cinema. (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBw1PFjKnrs

Shit Year Santa Cruz artist Cam Archer’s 2006 debut feature Wild Tigers I Have Known was a texturally gorgeous but content-lite exercise that often seemed like an extended audition for the role of Next Gus Van Sant. (The real one was, in fact, its executive producer.) This sophomore effort strikes pretty much the same (im-) balance. Colleen West (Ellen Barkin) is a famous, now middle-aged actress who decides to retire — why, we don’t know, particularly since she only seems more brittle, dissatisfied, and hollow upon retreating to an isolated home in a woodsy area. (She doesn’t even seem to like nature.) There, she tolerates a sorta-friendship with an irritatingly chirpy neighbor (Melora Walters), endures a visit by the irritatingly uncomplicated, stable brother she was never close to (Rick Einstein), and recalls an unfulfilling affair with her much younger co-star in a play (Luke Grimes). She also imagines (?) appointments with a terse interrogator (Theresa Randle) offering some sort of futuristic experience-simulation service in an eerie all-white environ. While one questions whether there actually was one, per se, Archer’s fragmentary script alternates these flashbacks, surreal interludes, and present-tense expressions of existential ennui (“I’m surrounded by a world of nothing,” Colleen moans) into pretty formations. The film’s black and white photography (by Aaron Platt), editing, production design, musical choices, etc. are all impeccably mannered. But our protagonist’s bored self-absorbsion and self-pity, lacking any backgrounding psychology, is ultimately as vacuous a dead-end as it is when Vincent Gallo is baring his soul. Having a bitchy, platinum-haired Barkin do the job for Archer makes the effect a little campier, but no more resonant. That said, this movie would probably seem brilliant if watched on quaaludes. (1:35) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

Step Up Revolution The Step Up franchise makes a play for the Occupy brand, setting up its fourth installment’s Miami street crew, the Mob, as the warrior dance champions of the 99 percent — here represented by a vibrant lower-income neighborhood slated for redevelopment. Embodying the one percent is a hotel-chain mogul named Bill Anderson (Peter Gallagher), armed with a wrecking ball and sowing the seeds of a soulless luxury monoculture. Our hero, Mob leader Sean (Ryan Guzman), and heroine, Anderson progeny and aspiring professional dancer Emily (Kathryn McCormick), meet beachside; engage in a sandy, awkward interlude of grinding possibly meant to showcase their dance skills; and proceed to spark a romance and a revolution that feel equally fake (brace yourself for the climactic corporate tie-in). The Mob’s periodic choreographed invasions of the city’s public and private spaces are the movie’s sole source of oxygen. The dialogue, variously mumbled and slurred and possibly read off cue cards, drifts aimlessly from tepid to trite as the protagonists attempt to demonstrate sexual chemistry by breathily trading off phrases like “What we do is dangerous!” and “Enough with performance art — it’s time to make protest art!” Occasionally you may remember that you have 3D glasses on your face and wonder why, but the larger philosophical question (if one may speak of philosophy in relation to the dance-movie genre) concerns the Step Up films’ embrace of postproduction sleights of hand that distance viewers from whatever astonishing feats of physicality are actually being achieved in front of the camera. (1:20) (Lynn Rapoport)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G8rzHJsWpM

The Watch Directed by Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer (famed for Saturday Night Live’s popular digital shorts, including “Dick in a Box”), The Watch is, appropriately enough, probably the most dick-focused alien-invasion movie of all time. When a security guard is mangled to death at Costco, store manager and uber-suburbanite Evan (Ben Stiller, doing a damn good Steve Carell impersonation) organizes a posse to keep an eye on the neighborhood — despite the fact that the other members (Vince Vaughn as the overprotective dad with the bitchin’ man cave; Jonah Hill as the creepy wannabe cop; and British comedian Richard Ayoade as the sweet pervert) would much rather drink beers and bro down. Much bumbling ensues, along with a thrown-together plot about unfriendly E.T.s. The Watch offers some laughs (yes, dick jokes are occasionally funny) but overall feels like a pretty minor effort considering its big-name cast. (1:38) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Z2zG6xMA0

The Well-Diggers Daughter Daniel Auteuil owes a debt of gratitude to Marcel Pagnol, courtesy of his breakthrough roles in the 1980s remakes of the writer and filmmaker’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. He returns the favor with his debut directorial work, reworking the 1940s film and crafting a loving, old-school tribute to Pagnol. The world is poised on the edge of World War I; Auteuil plays salt-of-the-earth Pascal Amoretti. The poor widower does the town’s dirty work (oh, the dangerous symbolism of hole-digging) and cares for his six daughters — his favorite, the eldest and the most beautiful, Patricia (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), has caught the eye of his assistant, Felipe (Kad Merad). The happy home — and tidy arrangement — is shattered, however, when Patricia meets an inconveniently dashing pilot Jacques Mazel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), who sweeps her away, in the worst way possible for a girl of her day. “You’ve sinned, and I thought you were an angel,” says the stunned father when he hears his beloved offspring is pregnant. “Angels don’t live on earth,” she responds. “I’m like any other girl.” Faced with the inevitable, Auteuil and company shine a sweet but, importantly, not saccharine light — one that’s as golden warm as the celebrated sunshine of rural Provence — on the proceedings. And equipped with Pagnol’s eloquent prose, as channeled through his love of the working folk, he restores this tale’s gently throwback emotional power, making it moving once more for an audience worlds away. (1:45) (Kimberly Chun)

6 locally-made treats to snag at Bluxome’s Meet Market

Andrew Lam
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6 locally-made treats to snag at Bluxome’s Meet Market

Why does a new farmers market make us salivate so here in the city? Something something foodie frenzy, something something voracious next-big-thing-icitis. Fact of the matter is, such small-scale food resources keep popping up and we’re going to go along for the ride. Tomorrow on Sat/28, Forage SF’s Underground Market is back — but if you can’t stomach the lines or prefer a glass of red with your cover admission, head to urban winery and tasting room Bluxome Street Winery for its so-called Meet Market.

To aide in your shopping amidst the table of artisan food and garden supplies, Bluxome will be selling glasses of its vino, the perfect companion to the gourmet popsicles, empanadas, and traditional Indian spreads that will abound. Everything goes well with wine, right? Here are six of the local producers you’ll find. 

The Meet Market Sat/28, noon-5pm, free. Bluxome Street Winery, 53 Bluxome, SF. www.bluxomewinery.com 

Cocotutti

Cocotutti’s products resemble its name — that is, they are adorable little clouds of sugary delight you want to repeat over and over again. Its collection of truffles and bonbons include flavors like hot chocolate, raspberry, ginger, and cappuccino, while its series of caramels offers hints of vanilla bean and orange-chocolate confit. Browsing Cocotutti’s wares, you’ll see the adjective “roasted” used a lot, which by our reckoning is usually codeword for “delicious.” It’ll be offering wine and chocolate pairings on Saturday at Bluxome? Parfait.

www.cocotutti.com 

Pop Nation

Clever name aside, there’s nothing cheesy about Pop Nation’s collection of totally vegan, gluten-free popsicles. The company’s year-round flavors are strawberry lemonade, banana pudding, mango coconut with black sesame, watermelon mint, and sea-salted dark chocolate. However, you can also bet on a few seasonal additions (let’s cross our fingers for bourbon and peach, Mexican chocolate, lemon lavender cake, PB&J and — mainly because we’re curious how it pans out in popsicle form — peanut butter and fluff). 

www.thepopnation.com

El Sur

Latin America-raised and Paris-educated Cordon Bleu chef Marianne Despres provides everything one could possible want from an empanada; that is, an plethora of mouth-watering, savory ingredients and an overload of gooey cheese. Food purists can try the beefy traditional empanada, while the more fusion cuisine-inclined can feast on the French-infused Parisienne empanada, which is filled with prosciutto, chives, five kinds of cheeses, and other morsels.

www.elsursf.com 

Sumana’s Soul Spreads

You’ve tasted tamarind sauce and gobbled down chutney, but what is rotu pacchadi? It’s a traditional South Indian spread that was good enough to convince chef Sumana Pathi to quit a gig as software engineer and become a chef. The spread is traditionally used as an appetizer, but it can also be Americanized to be served as whatever the heck you desire, from a sandwich spread to a dip. 

www.sumanasf.com 

Kevin and Gail’s Chili Palace 

This writer is endowed with a peculiar affinity for homey bowls of warm food and dishes so spicy they make her eyes pop out, and so Kevin and Gail’s Chili Palace’s offerings seems mighty tasty. After winning over 15 chili cook-offs with its celebrated chili verde and, most recently, taking home the Marin County Fair award for best chili con carne, chefs and owners Kevin and Gail are now settling back into the world of farmers markets, serving up chili that’s steaming and ready-to-eat, and also hawking frozen packages perfect for taking home. 

www.chilipalace.net 

 

Urban Farmgirls

A San Francisco love story if we’ve ever heard one. Owner and creator Tina Calloway thought up the name for her company while working at the Bernal Heights Community Garden with her daughter, and the company unfolded just as the name would suggest. Its urban farming meets girly-girl aesthetic is evident in Calloway’s line of living wreaths of succulents, earthy artisan pots, and vertical garden boxes. They maintain an English garden, old-fashioned charm, despite being up-to-the-minute terrarium-trendy.

www.urbanfarmgirls.com 

Nazi doctors, walrus anus, incest dances, Kinderdeutsch! (Gezundheit)

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Nazi doctors, walrus anus, incest dances, Kinderdeutsch! (Gezundheit)

Berlin’s darkly comedic, pan-theatrical experimental performance troupe Kinderdeutsch Projekts is briefly in town, Fri/27-August 4, with new show Arctic Hysteria. 

And you should go not just for the “parallel universe King Lear in a psychotic snowscape”-sounding plot, or the promise of “Nazi doctors, war-torn sets buried in ash, dance numbers of disembowelment and incest” — but also because it looks pretty dang cool in an icy home-apocalypse way.

Lively alternative arts space Bindlestiff Studio, recently remodeled, hosts the company, which is renowned for its heady multimedia fables (intense surround sound effects!), like this one, “set in a land of artificial snow and imagined Eskimos” which “follows three ungrateful daughters as they unwillingly inherit a frozen kingdom from their warlord mother — in the process descending into madness and taking the play with them.”

Fear no pure abstraction though (although there will be thrilling glimpses of that) – the play is billed as “part musical, part B-grade incest porn, part disastrous sparkle pop music video.”

Sorry I’m quoting so much of the press release here — it’s not just lazy journalism, although I am hungover, it’s because you never know what to expect with Kinderdeutsch, except a gratifyingly wiggy experience and an audience of fellow madcap adventurers. The show is produced locally by SNAP: Some New Arts Project. 

Here’s a very tiny taste, captured by videographer Stephen Quinones at a recent rehearsal — “How to dive into a walrus anus and die: preparation.”

Oh, do let’s.

ARCTIC HYSTERIA

July 27-29, August 2-4 (preview July 26 at 8pm) 

$10-$25, 8pm (also 2pm on August 4)

Bindlestiff Studio

185 Sixth St., SF.

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/252113

 

8 cultural happenings this week in the big, best, beautiful Bay

Andrew Lam
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8 cultural happenings this week in the big, best, beautiful Bay

It is inevitable after reading today’s Best of the Bay 2012 issue that your heart will be swole with pride for our beautiful Bay Area By the Bay. Seize the moment! There are a plethora of arts and culture happenings this week that are perfect examples of — as our managing editor Marke B. put it in his intro to BOB — “the sheer gorgeousness, thriving alternative culture, and promise of freedom and acceptance that are unique to our shores.” Cheers!

CELLspace open critical studio

Turns out, artists aren’t always their best critic. That’s why CELLspace’s open critical studio is such a great opportunity for creatives. Come discuss your art, discover the work of others, and — hopefully — take away a dose of constructive criticism that every creator needs from time to time. 

Wed/25, 7-10pm, free

CELLspace

2050 Bryant, SF 

www.cellspace.org

Cobb’s Comedy Club Showcase

Though it’s one of the city’s premier comedy clubs, Cobb’s isn’t stupid enough to forget the little guys. This Wednesday, check out the club’s up-and-comer showcase, where you can see some of the Bay’s funniest fledglings before they hit it big and really start taking your money. 

Wed/25, 8pm, $12.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

www.cobbscomedyclub.com 

SF International Poetry Festival

The San Francisco International Poetry Festival brings you tons of excuses to brood in a vaguely-Italian coffee house while penning lines into your journal. The series of readings from poets of international acclaim — from Iraq to Italy, Sweden to Malta — kicks off this Thursday. Set ever-so aptly in Jack Kerouac Alley, hosts Jack Hirschman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and city librarian Luis Herrera will introduce the festival’s lineup of poets with the accompaniment of a modern concert from Neeli Cherkovski, Matt Gonzales, and Jonathan Richman. 

Thu/26, 7-9:00pm, free.

Kerouac Alley, SF

www.sfipf.com

The Wizard of Oz movie night with the San Francisco Symphony

Join the San Francisco Symphony for a unique screening of America’s favorite kids-movie-that’s-not-actually-a-kids-movie. Beyond the fantastical plot line of The Wizard of Oz, the film’s striking visual elements and majestic music and score are part of what has made it the timeless classic it is today. Bridge the gap between silly and sophistication this Thursday by dressing up in your favorite Oz costume, watching the movie, and listening to the SF Symphony perform the score live.

Fri/27, 7:30pm, $12.50-$70

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

www.sfsymphony.org

“Re: Told” closing night 

If you missed this month’s run of Root Division’s modern story-telling art exhibit, you still have a chance to catch this glamorous culmination, closing reception, and publication release. Taking a page from Ernest Hemingway, “Re: Told” reframes cultural narratives in order to create a contemporary storytelling experience, yielding an accessible look into some very intimate realities.

Fri/27, 6-9pm, $1-$20

Root Division

3175 17th St., SF

www.rootdivision.com 

Naoya Hatakeyama: Nature Stories 

Prominent Japanese nature photographer Naoya Hatakeyama shows us the dualistic relationship between man and nature in this large-scale photography exhibit illustrating man’s attempt to control nature and, in the wake of the Tohuku earthquake and tsunami. The austere power of nature over humans’ best attempts to rein it in figures prominently in “Natural Stories,” which possesses an ironically calm visual approach to such a powerful concept. 

Through Nov. 4

Opening reception: Sat/29, 10am-5:45pm, $18 (adult general) 

SFMoMA

151 Third St., SF

www.sfmoma.org 

Ohlone basket welcoming ceremony 

The native Californian basket collection at the Oakland Museum of Art would, from a novice’s eye, seem to be complete. Yet due to the Ohlone tribe’s tradition of burning their possessions after death, the tribe’s baskets are scarcely represented among the collection’s 2,500 pieces. To remedy this dearth, the museum commissioned Ohlone artist and scholar Linda Yamane to create a basket. After a two-year documented process, we have an opportunity to welcome the 20,000-stitch, several thousand feathers, and 1,200-bead that make up the Ohlone basket into the museum’s collection with a day of festivity, including story-telling, dance, and song. 

Sat/28, 1-3pm, $12 general. 

Oakland Museum of California

1000 Oak, Oakl. 

www.museumca.org

The Coming Century of War Against Your Computer

Hey you, the one with the oversized headphones and approximately windows to burn open on your laptop, listen up. As part of its specialization in the speculative — that is, fantasy, horror, and science fiction — Borderlands Books presents Corey Doctorow and his book The Coming Century of War Against Your Computer. Copyright laws, net neutrality, and SOPA may be much more serious indicators of the technology takeover than we thought, so let this be your opportunity to decide whether you’re going to let technology-driven measures govern your life.  

Tue/31, 7:30pm, $10

Borderlands Cafe

870 Valencia, SF

www.borderlands-books.com 

 

Free Shamu! ‘Death at SeaWorld’ event tomorrow

Sue Vaughan
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Just a reminder that Wed/25 is the date for author David Kirby’s local event to promote his new book, Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity. Check out my interview with Kirby in the July 11 Guardian here; his website features updates on SeaWorld’s battle with OSHA over allowing trainers to enter the water with killer whales after the much-publicized death of a trainer.

But there’s more, Kirby told me when we spoke:

“Death at SeaWorld also absolutely refers to all of the orcas who have died at SeaWorld, and continue to die at SeaWorld. To me, the whales are as important as any of the people in the book — Tilikum [the whale caused the trainer’s death] becomes a main character that you get to know. I used to tell people when I was writing the book, it’s like Jaws, only it’s non-fiction, more people die, and you actually care about the whale.”

Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project and St. Martin’s Press will be hosting tomorrow’s event, which features Kirby in conversation with Mark Berman (seen in Keiko: The Untold Story) and Rose Aguilar of KALW’s Your Call.

Wed/25, 7pm, free (seating on a first-come, first-served basis)
The Hub
901 Mission, Ste 105, SF
www.deathatseaworld.com

Trash Lit.: Endless summer reading edition

Zelda Bronstein
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Trash Lit.: Endless summer reading edition

So much summer trash lit. So little of note.

I’ve been reading as fast as I can, catching up on all of the beach books I can find, looking for the Great Work of Summer, 2012. I still haven’t found it. There’s plenty worth reading, some decent drivel and distractions. But overall, I can’t say anything had my head spinning.

So here’s the first installment of my rundown, the good, the fair and the total waste cases.

Against All Enemies, Tom Clancy, Berkeley Books, 799 (gasp) pages, paperback $9.99.
Tom Clancy doesn’t need to write anymore. He’s 65, firmly ensconsed in the top slice of the 1 Percent, owns part of the Baltimore Orioles, makes a killing off franchising his name for cheap and worthless spin-off books … he can chill. And maybe he should.

Against All Enemies has his name on the top, although there’s a tiny “with Peter Telep” down below. That should have been a warning. The first 100 pages should have been another one. But I soldiered on to the very end, and trust me: It was a struggle.

Say what you want about Clancy’s politics; the guy can tell a story. His characters are interesting, the action crisp, the plots intricate and engrossing … and this one’s a piece of shit. It’s actually boring, deadly dull. And that’s a thriller no-no.

Nice idea: The Taliban and the Mexican drug gangs have formed an alliance and are using tunnels to sneak terrorists into the US. Could be full of fascinating people. But it’s not. The hero is a loser, the drug lords and terrorists are weak parodies of themselves — and it goes on and on and nothing happens. Don’t bother.

Robert Ludlum’s The Borune Imperative by Eric Van Lustbader, Hatchette, 435 pages, $27.99.

Another cheap attempt to profit off a talented (in this case, dead) author, but Van Lustbader’s no slouch himself, and some of his earlier efforts at this have been at least entertaining, so I thought I’d see what he could do with his laterst effort at reviving one of the great thriller characters in history. Shouldn’t have bothered.

There’s an assassin with amnesia (sound familiar?), a Russian spy gone rogue, a terrorist mastermind, a global conspiracy and … what? People going in and out of freezing water while they get shot. This series is getting seriously slow.

The Affair, Lee Child, 405 pages, Delacourte Press $28.

This one’s just coming out in paper, and it’s worth the wait. It’s a bargain at $9.99, a bit of a stretch at full price.

Jack Reacher is one of the best action characters of our time, up there with Spenser and Travis McGee, (and that’s serious). Child came up with a spectacular mix, a former military cop who wanders the world like Kwai Chang Caine, doing good work, sometimes relucatantly, with superior fighting skills that make him a true badass.

The Affair is sort of a prequel, and takes us back to Reacher’s army days. It’s absolutely formulaic, completely predictable, just like all the other Reacher books. There’s a murder that puts Reacher in danger, a gang of thugs who get their butts kicked, a beautiful woman in law enforcement with whom Reacher has what we all know will be a short-lived affair … and plenty of sharp dialogue the keeps the pages turning.

With all the pablum out there, it was a pleasure to sit down and read the work of a master who is still in his prime. At a certain point, like Ian Fleming in the glory days of Bond, Reacher can get away with formula — because it’s such a good formula. It still works, still delivers. He’s just a great writer, and if we sort of know what’s going to happen when half a dozen of the local losers try to attack Reacher in the streets, it’s still fun to see it unfolding.

Don’t expect anything new or dramatic here (except what Reacher fans will realize is the absolutely critical tale of where he got his portable toothbrush), but The Affair won’t let you down.

Stolen Prey, John Sandford, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 402 pages, $27.95.

Put this one up there with The Affair. If you love Lucas Davenport and his world of twisted murder shit in and around the Twin Cities, then Stolen Prey works fine. Again, Mexican drug gangs, which seem to be the Most Evil Fuckers In The World this summer, and in Stolen Prey, they’re particularly horrible, doing a stomach-turning murder that takes place in a nice upper-middle class town. The dead family appears to have no ties to any type of criminal activity — but ah, there is much more here. Again, nothing radically new (except a suprising ending involving Davenport’s adopted daughter, Letty, who apparently has some of the step-old-man in her). But Sandford, like Child, is a master, and you can enjoy this with the guilt of a lazy afternoon of Bud Light and bourbon. Nothing wrong with that.  

Celebrate a book about DJs at a bar that is in said book

Andrew Lam
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A rather strange-looking book alit upon my desk the other day. It told me it would teach me how to fold underwear. It lied. Luckily, the book did contain a rather amusing little cat-and-mouse story about a cute SF DJ traversing Hong Kong and surrounds in the exuberant days of the late 1990s. This is local author Steven Fruhmoto’s Underwear Origami — a misleading title if ere I’ve heard one. Nonetheless, Mr. Fruhmoto invites you to swallow your dismay at not being able to learn how to fold underwear (it’s a metaphor), and accompany him to the location of the book’s first scene for some beveraging, reading, and book signing on Sat/28. 

I read the book, and recommend for anyone who is into tales that revolve around international party scenes, casual drug use, and Norweigan pop stars emerging from dancing mushrooms. Fruhmoto is a product of Dartmouth College’s masters program in electro-acoustic music — founded in 1989, do you believe? — and Underwear Origami‘s tone is educated in the bpm of the music that fuels its characters, but also literate enough that the whole thing doesn’t come off as a product of someone’s bed-bound Burning Man comedown. 

Why the 1990s, though? Don’t we have enough DJs around these days. Says Fruhmoto, via an email sent to the Guardian in response to that question: 

I lived in San Francisco from 1994 to 2002. The period of the mid- to late ’90s was a uniquely optimistic time in the city, and I wanted to capture the exuberance and innocence of that time. It was pre-9/11, with no Osama Bin Laden, no Iraq, no Guantanamo, no Great Recession, etc. It was also the early days of the Internet, with the excitement of the dot-com phenomenon, and the US economy was booming overall.

I suppose if I were to have set the book in current times, the feel might be a lot more edgy, because the 1990s were a very different time. Also, the advancement of music composition and performance technology, and the advent of the social media connectedness of people would be important themes. In terms of music, I’d probably be talking about the phenomenon of the mainstreaming of electronic musicians, and new genres like dub-step, glitchhop, etc.

Anyways, I suppose we’re all in for some unique optimism. Drop by the Noc Noc for a free beer when you buy a paperback copy of the book. 

Underwear Origami book signing 

Sat/28 6-8pm, free

Noc Noc

557 Haight, SF

www.nocnocs.com

Werk It Out! dances under the disco ball

Andrew Lam
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Add a disco ball to any situation and you will not decrease its likelihood of becoming a party. When I stopped by ODC Theater earlier this week to snap some photos of the Alyce Finwall Dance Theater‘s rehearsals for the upcoming three-day dance festival Werk It Out!, it appeared that the dancers were in a festive mood. Werk It Out! features performances by six up-and-coming Bay Area choreographers, including Alyce Finwall, Minna Harri, Tanya Bello, Christine Bonansea, Michelle Fletcher, and Malinda LaVelle.

The pieces incorporate music ranging from the Beach Boys to Biosphere and themes revolve around a variety of topics — relationships and sexuality are there in spades, just like at any good party. Some pieces request audience participation, so make sure you’re wearing dancing shoes. From the preview I was able to see this week, this dance showcase is not to be missed, and not only because over it all spins that fabulous, glittering disco ball.

Werk It Out!

Fri/20, 8pm; Sat/21, 3pm and 8pm; Sun/22 3pm, one performance $25, festival pass $50-$60

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

www.odcdance.org

Getting into a pickle: Canning beans and beets at La Cocina

Andrew Lam
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I’m a sucker for pickled things, probably because I grew up in a house where my dad always had a pot of kimchee fermenting on the counter or a bottle of homemade pineapple vinegar, getting perfectly bubbly on top of the fridge. Preserving food also feels very nostalgic for the times when our great-grandparents would can the summer’s bounty so we could eat peaches and tomatoes through the winter. So you can imagine how excited I was to take my dad with me to La Cocina for a pickling party with Emiliana Puyane of Jarred SF Brine, to brush up on our fermentation implementation.

There were three pickles on the to-do list for the evening: garlic-and-dill pickled green beans, oven-roasted golden beets and shallots, and the one that I was most excited to try (and still am — we have to wait a week or more before we can pop the lids), cinnamon-and-thyme pickled peaches. Emiliana led us through the process, from the sanitation of the jars to making a perfectly-balanced brine. There was a lot of peeling, chopping, and de-stemming to be done. Everyone helped, including my dad, who helped blanch peaches over a steaming pot.

After two hours we jarred our creations and indulged in the most delicious Nepalese dinner, prepared by Bini’s Kitchen. Crazy-good rice, wonderful eggplant, everything made with spices that Bini herself mixes, a homemade touch which yielded bright and fresh flavor in her dishes.

I’d also just like to say how much I love La Cocina. I’ve been to a couple of their cooking classes and they are such great events, bringing together a lovely group of people for a night of cooking. La Cocina’s director Caleb Zigas always gives the warmest welcome. As an entrepreneur myself, I know how much work goes into starting a business, and I think it’s wonderful that La Cocina gives blossoming chefs the tools, space and skills they need to get their business up and running. If you want to try some of these amazing eats, don’t miss the SF Street Food Festival, which starts August 18. 

 

To be a poster artist during Occupy: Chuck Sperry on psychedelic art, social change, and port shutdowns

Andrew Lam
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To be a poster artist during Occupy: Chuck Sperry on psychedelic art, social change, and port shutdowns

With Occupy’s first anniversary sneaking up on us, has enough time past since its inception to reflect on its urban encampments and frightening conflicts with law enforcement in a rational, reasonable manner? Maybe rational is the wrong word — I’m sure many would agree that the movement’s major contributiont to date was a general firing up of the 99 percent, even of those 99 percenters who would sooner have ridden a bike to work than sit in on GA meeting in Oscar Grant Plaza. Through leaving its agenda undefined, Occupy allowed us all to paint our own hopes and dreams for the world onto it like a piece of drawing paper. 

For some more literally than others. This month, an exhibit opened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that accumulates the work of 25 Bay Area artists who spun their Occupy dreams into poster form. Chuck Sperry is perhaps one of the most well-known name of the bunch. Sperry’s lived in the Bay since 1989, and recently came home early from a camping trip to answer our questions about his relationship with Occupy, the way he distributed his “This Is Our City And We Can Shut It Down” prints on the day of the Oakland port shutdown, and general “what does art mean” token asks. 

SFBG: At what moment did you realize that Occupy was an important event? How did you first hear about it? 

CS: Through the beginning of 2011, I was creating an installation for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curated by Renee de Cossio, with artists Chris Shaw and Ron Donovan. Each artist would install work in one of three artists’ gallery windows on the side of the SFMOMA on Minna Street. The proposal for the installation was to bring the aesthetic of San Francisco’s poster traditions to painting, and to realize these in monumental form. I wanted this piece to reflect San Francisco’s poster history beginning in the freedom of speech movement through the 1960’s, and to also reflect the psychedelic tradition that gave birth to the rock poster.

While I was working on an 11-foot by nine-foot acrylic painting, I was following the progress of the Arab Spring movements, Tahrir Square, and the gathering Occupy Wall Street movement that was spreading across America. I decided to use my reaction to these events as inspiration for an iconographic painting titled, “Saint Everyone.” I wanted to express the opening mind, and spreading enlightened humanism, the decentralization of power — or awakening sense of people power — to the piece. I used vibrating, reactive colors to paint a figure holding an opening lotus (symbol of enlightenment), against a background of op-art circles, which communicate decentralization — that the background has many centers — like the movement which has no leaders.

“Saint Everyone” was installed at the SFMOMA in June 2011. So I was getting with it by then.

As Occupy Oakland was forming by the fall of 2011, my artist friend Jon-Paul Bail of Political Gridlock was printing his iconographic “Hella Occupy Oakland” posters on Frank Ogawa Plaza (re-named Oscar Grant Plaza) from the point when people were first gathering there. When I say printing, Jon-Paul Bail was printing live, right there, with a table set up in the open, printing and handing people freshly-made posters. In a few short weeks he had printed hundreds, if not, thousands of posters which were being handed out to people there. He was joined there on Oscar Grant Plaza by Melanie Cervantes and Jesus Barraza of Dignidad Rebelde, who created more iconographic posters for the Occupy movement.

SFBG: What led to your decision to make art inspired by Occupy? Was it a different process than your other creative projects?

CS: In September I was in an art show, LA VS. WAR, with Bail, Barraza, and Cervantes, (among others) and we discussed making posters for the November 2 Occupy action to close the Port of Oakland. Fellow artist Chris Shaw — who was involved in the SFMOMA Window Gallery Installation — offered to pay for the production of any Occupy posters through the printing account of rock band Moonalice who was in solidarity with Occupy. 

I created “This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down.” I usually work with images and take a lot of time to work my art into a design. In this case, the message was so overriding and important that I felt it was my job as an artist to stay out of the way, and let the words and message do their job. So in this way it was different. I used color theories learned in studying the long San Francisco tradition of psychedelic poster art, the use of hot colors against cold colors to make the words read from a half mile away — haha! I wanted a strong, radical message, used with bold nurturing colors that convey a positive emotion. It would not be a typical political poster.  

SFBG: How do you want your Occupy poster to be used?

CS: Chris Shaw and I discussed printing our posters on heavy paper stock, and printing on both sides to double the exposure we could give people to our message. You could use this poster as a placard, hold it up over your head. It would make quite an impression and be useful to the action. I stood at Oscar Grant Plaza next to the street and passed out nearly 1000 posters in 45 minutes to the front of the march, so when television camares picked up the action at the Port of Oakland, the front of the march was a sea of my poster with the message, “This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down.” No one directed us to make these posters. No one asked. We just did it. And passed them out.

SFBG: What’s been some of your favorite protest art throughout history?

CS: I am very inspired by Emory Douglas‘ art in the Black Panther Party newspaper. I’ve had the honor to work with Mr. Douglas to reprint some of his iconic images. I also am very fond of the French Situationist posters of May 1968, and had the good fortune to print a poster, while I was visiting Paris to make a poster show about five years ago, on the very same press that produced these memorable images. When my artist friend told me that Guy Debord had worked with artists on this very same press, I laughed and dropped to my knees and just could not believe it.

Sperry at Occupy

I invited Jon-Paul Bail to collaborate in teaching a class at the Free University of San Francisco, as I’m organizing the art department of that cooperatively-organized free school. We told the story of making posters for the Occupy movement and created a poster for the Occupy Education action last spring. I think the ideas coming together from the Occupy protests will move through society in a very healthy and transformative way. There’s no way to stop people once they have been awakened to their potential. 

SFBG: What is the role of art in social protest?

CS: Art can reach many people in many walks of life. I was invited by San Francisco’s Varnish fine art gallery to exhibit at SCOPE / Miami in conjunction with Art Basel Miami art fair. Even in the context of the fine art world I felt it was important to express the social revolution that was taking place through the Occupy movement, and created a piece titled, “Mind Spring,” which expressed some of the same ideas I put in my SFMOMA painting and my Occupy poster. In “Mind Spring”, I created an icon of the worldwide Occupy movement and it’s antecedent in the Arab Spring. The figure wreathed in blooming spring flowers is a representation of the surprising enlightened humanism, the opening mind, the broadened socio-political possibilities which has swept the world in 2011.

I’ve had many discussions about the role of political art over the years. Two solutions to this problem constantly come to mind, first, “content over style” — that content is more important than style. Your message is the most important element in creating art of social protest. Second, that “the personal is political”, your own experience is so very often shared by others all over the world. When you make a piece of art in social protest, and just tell your story from your own perspective, and you do not hold back, you will be describing a situation that is shared by others half a world away. It’s uncanny, but our local problems are very similar to everyone else’s globally. So get in there and try to change what you can from where you are. Many hands make light work.  

“Occupy Bay Area”

Through Oct. 14

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-ARTS

www.ybca.org

Full-flavored beer talk with Russian River Brewing Co.

Tony Robles
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1

Over the past 30 years, California microbrew has conquered niche markets and infiltrated the mainstream in its evolution from “social lubricant” to “serious, artisanal product.” Arguably, no individual is more responsible for this spirit of innovation than Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing Company, based in Santa Rosa.

Acclaimed for his generously hoppy beers, which possess a cult following of Trekkie-like fervor, Cilurzo is credited with inventing the double IPA early in his career in San Diego; and Russian River’s elusive, seasonally released Pliny the Younger was recently determined, by popular vote, to be the best beer in the world.

However, Cilurzo’s mavericky side is perhaps best reflected in his sour ales: a highly specialized range of Belgian-derived brews, revered in beer-geek circles for their complexity. Aged in wine barrels for years at a time, with the addition of fruit like sour cherries and currants, and often subjected to the risky practice of spontaneous fermentation, sours are as temperamental as they are inefficient in respect to time, cost-effectiveness, and space preservation. Often called “wild ales,” these beers require a knowledgeable, experienced brewer to tame them.

I spoke with Cilurzo over the phone recently about his approach to sour beers, his brand’s esteemed reputation, some recent collaborations with Sierra Nevada and Toronado, and his favorite hops, as well as the various brews gracing his fridge at home. Beer lovers, and novices alike, read on:

SFBG You make a pretty diverse lineup of beers. Is there anything that your beers have in common? Anything that ties them all together?

Vinnie Cilurzo They’re all, for the most part, full-flavored beers. Obviously, we have a pretty eclectic lineup, from our super-hoppy beers [Pliny the Elder; Blind Pig IPA], to the Belgian beers [Damnation; Sanctification], to barrel-aged beers [Supplication; Beatification]. And then we make a lot of session-type beers at the pub. I’m not sure there’s anything that ties them together, other than from a quality standpoint, you know, being Russian River. But we like having the diversity at the brewpub for sure, and the brewpub is hands-down the main part of our operation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYzqf0Ukssg

SFBG “Sour” is a pretty popular umbrella term for a whole range of beers. Do you accept that term? Reject that term? How do you classify them?

VC I’m fine if someone wants to call them sour, or barrel-aged, or whatever they want to call them. I think, for the most part, the beer connoisseurs know what they are. You know, on occasion, a non-beer-enthusiast will buy a bottle and be surprised when they find it is sour in flavor. It doesn’t say it on the front of the label, but we don’t make a huge deal out of it, either way. Barrel-aged funky beers… is the term we tend to go with, typically [laughs].

SFBG Looking at opposite ends of the spectrum, what do you think is a good barrel-aged beer to start out with, for someone who’s looking to jump in? What’s a good example of one that goes all the way, and just does something radical?

VC We have three main barrel-aged beers, and then the fourth being Sanctification, which is the 100% brett-fermented, and we add bacteria to it. The Sanctification is probably the mildest. We purposefully make it less sour and less tart, so that, maybe a person that’s new to the funky beers can maybe taste one of these, as sort of an entry level funky, barrel-aged beer…

On the most extreme side, I would definitely go with Consecration, which is 10% alcohol, and we age it in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels. There’s currants added to the barrels, so that provides sugar for the secondary fermentation. That’s definitely got the biggest, boldest flavors, not only from the beer part of it, but the wine contribution, and the barrel contribution, and although it’s not over-the-top sour, there’s just a lot of big, bold, complex flavors there.

SFBG Also, Beatification. That’s the only one that’s completely spontaneously fermented, right?

VC Yeah, it is. That, too, could also be considered, probably on the pretty extreme side of the funky beers, in that we do 100% spontaneous fermentation… In Belgium, a spontaneous beer would originally be called a Lambic, but that’s a protected term that can only be used in Belgium. We obviously respect our friends in Belgium making lambic, so we’ve come up with this kind of playful term called “Sonambic” (a contraction between Sonoma and Lambic.)

So, we have multiple batches of Sonambic aging all the time, and then we take different batches, blending them together to make Beatification. Beatification is, typically, a once-a-year release.

SFBG Since this beer’s picking up these wild yeasts, do you think they have a specific flavor profile that you would not get if you were aging these beers in Belgium, or somewhere else?

VC No, I think they’re wild yeasts that are inherent to brewing these types of beers, in general. So, if you know how to manipulate your environment, you can probably get these types of flavors to come through. But, it certainly takes time.

SFBG You mentioned “manipulating your environment.” These sours, you’ve been making them for a while. Do you feel like you’ve kind of gotten the variables down, and know how to control it, pretty much every step of the way?

VC We have a good handle on it, but the beer is always in control. The time when you start feeling that you know what you’re doing, the yeast and the bacteria will throw a curveball at you, that’s for sure. So, the beer really does tell you when it’s ready. It’s weather dependent; it’s temperature dependent; it’s seasonally dependent; it’s what was in the barrel before; it’s how long you clean the barrel. For the spontaneous beers, specifically, it’s how long we leave the wort in the koelship, which is the open fermenter. There’s so many variables. So, you have to be very, very pliable, and be able to go with the flow, if you will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9-umFtNSVE

SFBG Moving on, there’s the Toronado 25th Anniversary collaboration…

VC Yeah, we’ve got that in the bottle now. Four-and-a-half years ago, we made Toronado’s 20th anniversary beer, [Toronado owner] Dave Keene liked it a lot and asked me if I’d do the 25th anniversary. We actually started it about a year ago, so by the time the Toronado 25th anniversary happens, which is Aug. 11, it’ll have been about a year-and-a-half project.

We started brewing them in the spring of 2011, and we just bottled it recently. It’s a disproportionate blend of the six beers… Dave and I made the blend ourselves, so he came up here one day a while back. We sat down and tasted through all the beers first, and created the base blend, started tweaking it here and there, and got it to a point where we were happy with it.

SFBG Are there any other San Francisco-centric collaborations going on? Any other collaborations with breweries, in general?

VC We do have a big one coming out, but it was actually brewed at Sierra Nevada, so it was a Russian River / Sierra Nevada collaboration… specifically between Brian Grossman [Sierra Nevada owner Ken Grossman’s son] and I. Brian and I are very close friends so, we wanted to do a beer together.

We didn’t want to do something that we both make already, so hoppy beers were out. Being that we do sour, barrel-aged beers, that was out. And, also, there was no way that Ken was going to allow bacteria at Sierra Nevada. But, they had never used brettanomyces before, and Brian thought his dad would be okay with that. So, I started working on a recipe on our pilot brewery here, and then Brian started working on his dad to get him to sign off on the project. Finally, Ken was okay with it.

We came up with an original recipe here at our brewery, on our little half-barrel pilot system, and then we handed that recipe off to Sierra Nevada, and they brewed it for several months, on their 10-barrel pilot brewery. Then, once we dialed the recipe in, there, and made a couple more tweaks to the recipe, it was ready to go. Earlier this year, January, we brewed it there in Chico on their 100-barrel system, and it got bottled mid-February. They start shipping it out late this month, to all their respective distributors throughout the country.

The beer is called Brux, which is short for bruxellensis: a strain of brettanomyces. You’ve got multiple strains of brett, and so we chose the bruxellensis strain as the one we wanted to use, as it had the best flavor profile. So, it’s bottle-conditioned with the brettanomyces, and that’s one of the flavor components, although there’s contributions from the main yeast, and all kinds of nice, beautiful, round flavors in the beer. I’m really excited about it. It’s probably one of my favorite beers I’ve ever brewed before.

SFBG Given all these American breweries innovating with Belgian beers, is there anything you’d like to see American beer culture pick up from Belgian beer culture?

VC Glassware, to me, is something where we could do a better job. That’s looking internally at ourselves, too. We could do a better job getting pubs and restaurants to use proper glassware, even for our own beers. It’s a little more difficult to do. But yeah, that is a part of the Belgian culture that I do absolutely love.

SFBG Is there a glass that you feel that your sours are particularly well served in?

VC If you’re at home drinking Belgians or sour, barrel-aged beers, I’d say: try a pint glass with half the beer, and put the other half in a wine glass, if you don’t have a stemmed, beer-type glass, and see if you can tell the difference. I think you can tell a big difference, particularly in aroma, and obviously some flavor, as well, by using a non-pint glass. A wine-type glass works a lot better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZEISow-vM4

SFBG Moving on to your hoppier beers… Are there any hops in particular that you feel you have an affinity for?

VC Simcoe would be the main hop. If not the first, we were one of the first breweries in America to use Simcoe, back in the late ‘90s when it came out originally. That is kind of the predominant hop that you get in Pliny the Elder, [which] we’ve been making since 1999. I think I first messed around with Simcoe in ‘97 or ‘98 back when it was an experimental hop called YCR-014.

We originally designed the Pliny recipe around Simcoe, and we also use it in Pliny the Younger. A little bit goes into Blind Pig IPA. Then, we have this new beer called Row 2/Hill 56, which is a 100% Simcoe beer. The name Row 2/Hill 56 references the exact location of the very first ever Simcoe vine, up in Yakima, that was grown through the experimental program. So, it was in the second row, and the 56th hill into the hopyard.

It’s sort of a deconstructed pale ale. There’s only three farms in the world that grow Simcoe, and they’re all in Yakima Valley, so… we pelletize the hops separately, and process them separately, [adding] the hops to the brew kettle based on the farm, not just by the variety. Normally, when you’re doing a hop addition, you’re looking at it, saying, ‘I’m gonna add Cascade, or Simcoe, or whatever the recipe is.’ In this case, it’s all Simcoe and it’s farm specific.

We use a ton of other hops, too: CTZ, Amarillo, Chinook, Cascade, Centennial. In the Belgian beers, we use a lot of Styrian Golding, Sterling, Saaz, and Northern Brewer.

SFBG You’re basically credited with inventing the double IPA in San Diego, and it’s developed a lot since then. What do you think about that?

VC To be honest with you, it doesn’t really mean that much to me. If I was the first, then great. If not, then no big deal. It really is amazing, though, to see the amount of hops being used in the craft beer industry right now. I was at the Hop Growers’ Convention earlier this year, and there was a fact that was thrown out, that by the end of 2013, if craft beer grows at the same pace that it is now, craft brewers in general will be using the exact same amount of hops as all the big breweries in America, the big industrial breweries, making industrial lagers. So, it does go to show that we use a lot of hops, and we use them rather inefficiently, as Matt Reynoldson at Firestone Walker says. Anyways, it’s nice for people to recognize me, but it’s not the end-all by any means.

SFBG I read in a previous interview that Orval is your favorite beer.

VC Yeah, you can always find Orval, Duvel, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in my fridge at home. Those are my three go-to beers at home. But, there’s some other great little Belgian breweries. There’s a little brewery in West Flanders called De Ranke that makes a beer called XX Bitter, that is a beautiful, hoppy Belgian beer. There’s a small startup brewery (well, they’ve been in business for several years now) in Brussels called De la Senne, and they make a beer called Taras Boulba, that’s just absolutely beautiful, as well.

SFBG Do you think Orval’s rubbed off on the way you make beer? Do you look to it for inspiration?

VC Well, Orval is a brett-finished beer, and until we’ve done this beer with Sierra Nevada, Brux, it was actually the first brett-finished beer we’ve really done on any kind of scale. Although we have made one or two at the pub over the years, they were single, one-off batches, so, we use brettanomyces at Russian River as just a part, just one component of the barrel-aged beers, where Orval is a brett-finished beer. It’s refermented in the bottle with brett, so I would say that Brux is more Orval-esque than anything Russian River has ever done, because we are souring our beers, and brettanomyces doesn’t make the acidity; bacteria makes the acidity in the barrel-aged funky beers. Brett just contributes a funky, earthy flavor and characteristic.

Although I do plan to put more of those style beers out, and I really love that style of beer, it’s actually not something we’ve done a lot of. When we made Brux with Sierra Nevada, it was as much a learning curve for me as it was for Sierra Nevada, who had never used brett before.

SFBG Are there any American brewers who you feel are approaching beer from a similar angle that you are? Or, just some that you feel are doing a really good job?

VC Top of the list is Sierra Nevada. I love what they do. Their commitment to quality is like no one else, and it was really neat to kind of be a part of a process there, with a beer like Brux. And, although they don’t do funky beers, they are my everyday, go-to beer at home. They’re doing a tremendous job, but yeah, there’s lots of breweries.

Although you don’t get it here in California, I love what Brooklyn Brewery is doing. They’re doing some phenomenal Belgian inspired beers. Particularly, they’ve got a beer called Sorachi Ace which is a saison. Just a really beautiful beer. Allagash are some of my favorite Belgians. There’s a little brewery down in Central Valley: Kern River Brewing. They make a really good IPA. The list is too long. I mean, there’s just so much good beer being made in the US right now.

Probably, in the big picture, the US is leading the way in innovation now for beer, whereas in the past, you probably would have said Belgium, or Germany, or something like that. But really, it probably is American breweries doing it. All these little breweries coming up with all these crazy, wacky beer recipes, you know?

Batman and beyond: new movies

Sue Vaughan
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Batman and beyond: new movies

Yep. It’s here.

But THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN THE LATEST BATMAN MOVIE, PEOPLE! (Especially when this entry ain’t even the best in the series. See my review below. And to those who would jump all over a critic for being a critic … why so serious?)

First of all, the very excellent San Francisco Jewish Film Festival begins tonight. Check out our takes here (docs) and here (music docs).

Todd Solondz has a new one. Dennis Harvey reviews Dark Horse right herrre.

And the Lumiere is screening a digitally-remastered Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), complete with all the lines you love to quote and featuring a new 12-minute short, Terry Gilliam’s Lost Animations.

Oh yeah, and this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Sktgm0aD8

The Dark Knight Rises Early reviews that called out The Dark Knight Rises’ flaws were greeted with the kind of vicious rage that only anonymous internet commentators can dish out. And maybe this is yet another critic-proof movie, albeit not one based on a best-selling YA book series. Of course, it is based on a comic book, though Christopher Nolan’s sophisticated filmmaking and Christian Bale’s tortured lead performance tend to make that easy to forget. In this third and “final” installment in Nolan’s trilogy, Bruce Wayne has gone into seclusion, skulking around his mansion and bemoaning his broken body and shattered reputation. He’s lured back into the Batcave after a series of unfortunate events, during which The Dark Knight Rises takes some jabs at contemporary class warfare (with problematic mixed results), introduces a villain with pecs of steel and an at-times distractingly muffled voice (Tom Hardy), and unveils a potentially dangerous device that produces sustainable energy (paging Tony Stark). Make no mistake: this is an exciting, appropriately moody conclusion to a superior superhero series, with some nice turns by supporting players Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in trying to cram in so many characters and plot threads and themes (so many prisons in this thing, literal and figural), The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately done in by its sprawl. Without a focal point — like Heath Ledger’s menacing, iconic Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight — the stakes aren’t as high, and the end result feels more like a superior summer blockbuster than one for the ages. (2:44) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKCWELGjpg8

Romantics Anonymous An awkward, bumbling Parisian chocolatier named Jean-Rene (Benoît Poelvoorde) falls for his gorgeous, equally awkward sales rep, Angélique (Isabelle Carré), while never missing an opportunity to say the wrong thing, surrender to shyness, or panic under pressure. It’s crucial for films involving such protracted awkwardness to give the audience something to cling to emotionally, but instead we’re handed a limp, formulaic story, sorely underdeveloped characters, and lazy writing in which the protagonists act uncharacteristically stupid/gullible/oblivious for the sake of plot-expedience. Amélie (2001) mined similar thematic territory, but its success lay in the depth of its characters; Romantics Anonymous is about little more than the idea of two hopeless romantics, and that’s simply not enough to hold interest. It’s beautifully scored, lovingly shot, and steeped in vintage French atmosphere — but that doesn’t compensate for sketchy characterization and weak, predictable storytelling. (1:20) Roxie. (Taylor Kaplan)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Iy6gPnPlks

30 Beats A sweltering summer day or two in the city ushers in a series of youthful good-lookers, unencumbered and less than dressed, together in kind of NYC-based mini-La Ronde that I’m surprised Woody Allen hasn’t yet attempted. Fresh young thing Julie (Condola Rashad) is off to pop her cherry with lady’s man Adam (Justin Kirk of Weeds), who’s more accustomed to chasing than being chased. Unsettled, he consults with sorceress Erika (Jennifer Tilly), who plies him with sexual magic and then finds herself chasing down her booty-call bud, bike messenger Diego (Jason Day), who’s besotted with the physically and emotionally scarred Laura (Paz de la Huerta). What goes around comes around in director-writer Alexis Lloyd’s debut feature, but alas, not till it’s contorted and triangulated itself in at least one ridiculously solemn BDSM scene. Matters get trickier when romance begins to creep into these urban one-offs. Nonetheless, those with short attention spans who like their people-watching with a healthy splash of big-city hookups, might find this adult indie as refreshing as a romp with a beautiful stranger they’ve briefly locked eyes with. (1:28) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdFiV9yDHG4

Trishna Ever difficult to pin down, director Michael Winterbottom continues his restless flipping between the light (2010’s The Trip), artily experimental (2004’s 9 Songs), pulpy (2010’s The Killer Inside Me), and the dead serious (2007’s A Mighty Heart). Trishna, loosely based on Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and set in small-town and big-city modern-day India, lines up neatly on the bookshelf alongside Winterbottom’s other Hardy bodice-ripper, 1996’s Jude. By chance beautiful village girl Trishna (Freida Pinto) falls in with the handsome, thoroughly Westernized Jay (Riz Ahmed) and his laddish pals on holiday. A truck accident leaves her father unable to provide for their family, so she goes to work at the luxury hotel owned by Jay’s father and overseen by his privileged son. There she gently gives him language tips, accepts his offer to educate her in travel industry management, and enjoys his growing attentions, until one day when he rescues her from roving thugs only to seduce her. Though she flees to her family home and eventually has an abortion, Trishna still proves to be an innocent and consents to live in Mumbai with Jay, who is flirting with the film industry and increasingly effaces his trusting girlfriend as their sexual game-playing becomes increasingly complicated. The shadows of both Hardy and Bollywood flit around Trishna, and this cultural transplant nearly works — the hothouse erotic entanglement between its two principals almost but not quite convinces one that Trishna would be driven to desperate ends. Still, even as Trishna, like Tess, infuriates with her passivity, her story occasionally enthralls — the fruit of Pinto’s surprisingly brave, transparent performance. (1:53) (Kimberly Chun)

The Performant: Storming the Bastille

Sue Vaughan
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How fortunate for lovers of patriotic display, that just as the last of the illegal Fourth of July fireworks have been shot off, the 14th should roll around, giving us all another excuse to celebrate liberty, equality and fraternity en français. Of course Bastille Day, France’s Fête Nationale, is much less the spectacle in Californi-ay than along the Champs Elysees, but you’ll still find the Francophones of (don’t-call-it) Frisco decked out in their own brand of red-white-and-blue sipping Bordeaux and nibbling on quiche, if not rioting in the streets.

A special Friday the 13th edition of French pop dance party Bardot A Go Go kicked off the Francophilic festivities at the Rickshaw Stop Friday night. Though the awkwardly laid-out venue, with its crowded entryway and underutilized upper level, is a far cry from a smoke-filled 1960s era Parisian boîte de nuit, a modish, mostly French soundtrack, heavy on the Gainsbourg, pulsated through the room. Psychedelic minis, tall boots, sleek bouffants, and frantic fruggers crowded the dance floor, gyrating to playful hits such as the growly “Roller Girl” (which sounds suspiciously similar to “Get off of My Cloud,” but cute … and French).

As with Paris-Dakar at the Little Baobab, opportunities abounded to brush up on one’s conversational French skills, no matter how rudimentary, and for the time-pressed coquette, free mod hairstyling was being offered at the door, which lent many a mane bobbing on the dance floor a certain glamorous je ne sais quoi.

It was good for me to get my French fantasy on early, as Sat/14 I landed smack dab right back in America, the Great American Music Hall to be exact, for a locals-only double header CD release party: officially for Joe Rut, and unofficially for opening band the Low Rollers. Shades of Santa Cruz color the laid-back Caliphorisms of both bands, a bit of the old Camper Van, manifesting itself in the wryly nostalgic, conversational lyrics penned by Joel Murach of the Low Rollers, and multi-instrumental jam magic orchestrated by Joe Rut.

One aspect of Joe Rut’s oeuvre that speaks more directly of San Francisco than Santa Cruz is his fondness for silly props, including an imposing, 12-foot flyswatter, giant inflatable Koi floating around the room, and a tiny, foul-mouthed robot named “Chatbot” who threw around some abuse before being literally thrown himself. But though Rut’s props and lyrics are mostly of the overtly humorous kind, think Mojo Nixon with a bigger vocal range, they don’t detract a bit from the sheer energy and passion underlying the composition, from the down-home exasperated twang of “Turn Signal” and the breakneck blues of his foot-fetish anthem “Barbie Feet.”

His new album, Joe Rut Live, recorded during his last show at the Great American Music Hall in 2010, is a comprehensive overview of his obsessions past and present (copyright law, myspace, hippie chicks) performed by a stellar guest lineup, many of who were in attendance for this triumphal reprise. Now that they’re practically regulars, hopefully it won’t take another two years for Rut and friends to grace the GAMH stage a third time.

A surprisingly sentimental evening with Chuck Palahniuk

Sue Vaughan
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A surprisingly sentimental evening with Chuck Palahniuk

“I write so that I don’t forget the fascinating and heartwarming things people tell me,” explained Chuck Palahniuk. He was at the Castro Theatre Mon/16 to chat about his newest book, Invisible Monsters Remix. Some audience members were disappointed that the event didn’t include a book signing — but no one could deny Palahniuk’s earnest nature and his deep connection to his fans.

To those who only know Palahniuk as the author of the cult hit Fight Club, one might think the man behind this contemporary classic of anarchy and disgust at our capitalist society could be a shady character. But the mind that concocted that (and other) twisted fables anchors his outlandish tales with an incredibly human element to his characters. If you look beyond Fight Club‘s bloody mayhem (vividly depicted in its popular film version), you’ll find a story of how a white-collar businessman combats loneliness and isolation, and finds fulfillment in embracing chaos. Palahniuk is certainly not afraid of being politically incorrect in his books, but he is a much more relatable guy than you might think.

He did not disappoint in entertaining the audience with his eccentric ways, but he also told many touching stories, and a few that incited guilty laughter. Palahniuk has been one of my favorite authors since I was 16, and listening to him read his short story “Romance” to the crowd was a complete dream come true. It was like Palahniuk was the coolest dad you’ve ever met, reading the kind of story you were never allowed to get your hands on. His pacing was impeccable, and he sat with his legs crossed and a giant stuffed tiger perched on his lap. (Anyone who asked a question received a tiger of his or her own, sometimes tossed into the audience by the author himself.)

Palahniuk has certainly had ample personal experiences that have shaped his explorations of the dark side of the human psyche — his grandfather murdered his grandmother before killing himself, and his father was killed by a vengeful ex of a woman he met through a personal ad in the newspaper. While completing an endless cycle of interviews and red carpet events with Fight Club stars Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, and Ed Norton, Palahniuk learned that his father had been killed and had to identify his body and deal with the proceedings.

He explained what a chaotic time it was — he loved the movie version of his novel, but his personal life was just too much to handle. He told us that while driving back home during the press onslaught of Fight Club, he decided he needed to pull over and get out of the car to lie down in the road. The audience at the Castro became incredibly silent as we all hoped this was not Palahniuk’s description of considering suicide.

Instead, he explained that all he wanted was for someone to notice him and call the police. When the policeman would arrive, Palahniuk imagined this figure of authority would carefully hold him and tell him everything was going to be all right.

“That’s all I wanted, for someone with authority to tell me everything was going to be OK, and then I could get up and move on. And so that’s what I did, I laid on the ground in my fancy suit … and I waited. And I waited … and no one came for a very long time. So I started to think, what would be an acceptable way that someone could be given a bit of affection in public, from a stranger. And that’s how I thought of choke: someone who would pretend to choke in public places to have that essential few moments of human connection. So I got up, dusted myself off and went home to begin writing Choke.” (Choke was made into a feature film in 2008.)

Fans were excited to learn that Fight Club was partially inspired by a group Palahniuk himself participated in called the “Cacophony Club,” made up of young professionals who needed a bit of organized chaos that could fit into a planned amount of time each week. (Their various pranks and shenanigans were, of course, to a much less violent degree than those enacted by Tyler Durden and his crew.) Another highlight of the night was the waves of laughter that greeted Palahniuk’s recounting of his struggle to get the book published, especially since it remains his biggest hit and became a ’90s classic.

During the question and answer period, Palahniuk gave this fantastic advice to a young man about becoming a writer: “Take the best part of a story idea you have and bring it to party. Tell all your friends and see what variations they have on it. That’s how most of my best work has grown. Friends can offer really interesting additions to the story, and you can make sure your idea has potential.”

At the end of the Q&A, tigers were distributed to those who could make baby shapes out of balloons. Popping balloons and pandemonium ensued as fans eagerly presented Palahniuk with their balloon children, or tried to snag a signature. Books were sold pre-signed, but Palahniuk graciously tried to sign a few books and agreed to a few photos with fans before being ushered off. He told us that the baby balloons will make sense next year — and with over 15 books so far in his highly successful career, I cannot wait to see what he has in store for us next.

Herbwise radio: Catch Caitlin Donohue today on Cannabis Cuts

Andrew Lam
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Herbwise radio: Catch Caitlin Donohue today on Cannabis Cuts

Our culture editor-cannabis columnist Caitlin Donohue interviewed Cannabis Cuts‘ Vaperonica Dee and Merry Toppins for her weekly Herbwise rant-and-rave back in June and now the on-air marijuana news duo is repaying the favor. Their smoke-filled catch-up will air live on the Mutiny Radio website today, Tue/17 at 4-6pm (the podcast will also be available for free download after airtime.)

Toppins was in the audience for last week’s “Bay Area Feminism Today” panel, which she informed us inspired some questions she’ll have for Donohue on the subject of cannabis feminism. What’s that mean? Given the popularity of portraying women in cannabis as pot-leaf-over-the-aureole airheads, it sounds like a term that needs coining. 

You’ll also be able to stream the show after air time at www.stitcher.com

Noir to nerds: 8 artsy-cultural happenings you could check out this week

Andrew Lam
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Remember the time you lived in one of the most exciting, cultured places in the world? Hold up, that’s right now. Check our picks for 8 amazing — and oftentimes free — ways to spend your nights and days this week.

Jim Nisbet: Old and Cold

Jim Nisbet’s protagonist is old, cold, and totally cool. A confusing infusion of mystery, Dexter-style serial murder, and flat-out noir creepiness, Nisbet’s Old and Cold follows the wrongdoings of a man who lives under a bridge and will do anything for a martini. All the action is enveloped within our dear city’s seven miles of dive bars, beaches, and grey sidewalk.

Wed/16, 7pm, free

City Lights Bookstore 

261 Columbus, SF

www.citylights.com 

Nerd Nite! 

What’s better than a gregarious gaggle of boozed-up nerds? Robin Marks, Nick Bouskill, and Justin Benttinen will each give three snarky-smart 30-minute lectures at the Rickshaw as a part of the monthly lecture series Nerd Nite. Covering a broad span of topics — peer-reviewed journal satire, to the nasty nuances of nitrogen, to a history of bizarre invention and innovation in San Francisco — the lecture series even offers a brief break for DJs. Drink, dance, and dig the dork.

Wed/18, 7:30-11pm, $9

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

www.rickshawstop.com 

Pint Sized Plays 

Usually stationed in the Tenderloin’s Cafe Royale, San Francisco Theater Pub’s Pint Sized Plays is making a special performance at the Plough and the Stars. With more than 10 directors crammed into 90 minute show, variety is guaranteed: there’ll be images of love and loss from Megan Cohen’s Beeeeeeaar, Stuart Bousel and Megan Cohen’s Llama let us follow the travails and triumphs of a llama at a crossroads, and William Bivin’s Celia Sh**s makes an appearance reminding us that, well, everybody sh**s. 

Wed/18, 8pm, free

The Plough and the Stars

116 Clement, SF

sftheaterpub.wordpress.com

Renegade Craft Fair 

Your dreams of glass-blown bug figurines, artisan jewelry, and paper-mache wall hangings have been answered. The fifth annual Renegade Craft Fair makes its appearance at the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion for a day of showcasing unique, artisan products from over 250 emerging crafters. Enjoy a day of (hopefully) sunshine, food, drink, and, most importantly, art that you can actually use. 

Sat/21-Sun/22, 11am-7pm, free

Fort Mason, SF

www.renegadecraft.com

Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Grand Slam 

America’s youth has something to say and you’re going to listen, dammit. The creativity and eloquence of these performers aged 13 to 19 are not to be taken lightly at the 15th annual BNV grand slam finals. BNV was created by Youth Speaks in 1998 to represent a forum of dialogue for a new, socially-aware, mutually respecting, and artistically-active generation of young individuals who are anything but shy. The competition and festival runs from July 17-21, with the the culminating grand slam competition offering an inspiring and hopeful alternative to your regular Saturday night. 

Sat/21 7pm, $20

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.youthspeaks.org

LaborFest book fair and poetry reading 

The annual LaborFest kicks off the arts portion with an all-day reading series at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. Speakers, poets, and authors like award-winning Sean Burns with his biography, Archie Green, The Making of a Working Class Hero will be present as testament to the longstanding collaboration between labor, community, and art. 

Sun/22, 10am-9pm, free

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts

2868 Mission, SF

www.laborfest.net

Dana Johnson and Paula Priamos

Dana Johnson and Paula Priamos paint an ironically dark picture of sunny Southern California as they read from their two books Elsewhere, CA and The Shyster’s Daughter. Johnson’s novel follows the search for self-discovery of Avery, a black girl growing up in Los Angeles who doesn’t seem to fit in to her community’s vision of ideal femininity and ideal blackness. Priamos’ book takes a memoir-turned-noir tone, remembering her own family’s actions and anxieties after the conviction of murderer Kevin Cooper for murdering an innocent family in a neighborhood not far from their very own. 

Mon/23, 7pm, free

Books, Inc.

601 Van Ness, SF

www.booksinc.net

Sketch Tuesdays

The ultimate place to see and be seen. Sketch Tuesdays brings a night of live art making and artist-to-buyer exchange to 111 Minna. This Tuesday’s artsy attendees can look forward to an all-female lineup of live artists and International Museum of Women, a full bar, music from DJ Pre-K, and current exhibition, “Shinkasen Conspiracy” by Last Gasp Publishing. 

Tue/24, 6-10pm, free

111 Minna, SF

www.sketchtuesdays.com

Appetite: Bar talent and rare bourbon barrels on 16th Street

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Appetite: Bar talent and rare bourbon barrels on 16th Street

Sixteenth Street between Valencia and Guerrero in SF is packed with good food and longtime dive bars. As classic cocktail dens and mixology menus are the norm rather than the exception in this town, it’s easy to forget that some of our great ‘tenders continue to serve the quality drinks we crave without fuss. On this stretch of 16th, there are two spots in particular that have a lot going for them, including cocktail talent.

As with any bar, who is tending makes a difference and these gifted few craft their own robust creations while nailing down boozy classics. Chat them up about what they’re working on lately or ask for one of these recent pleasures, including a rare, single barrel bourbon collection.


Elixir

Elixir is an SF institution, the intimate, wood-lined saloon harkening back to Barbary Coast days — a bar since 1858. Run by one of our country’s cocktail pioneers, H. Joseph Ehrmann, and talented bar manager duo Shea Shawnson and Nick DesEnfants, the cocktail menu is a mix of 1800s saloon classics, Elixir classics like H.’s Celery Cup No. 1, and rotating seasonal drinks.

Elixir is also for the whisk(e)y aficionado, with over 220 bottles behind the bar — not to mention a solid tequila selection. Now is the time go, however, for a flight ($25) or single pour ($12.50) of its four special single barrels of Four Roses bourbon, aged 8 to nearly 11 years, personally selected by H., Shea and Nick in Kentucky when visiting master distiller Jim Rutledge (selected while I was also in Kentucky judging spirits alongside H. for the American Distilling Institute awards).

The four single barrel whiskies show an impressive range and body, all at barrel strength/high proof. Part of their unique profile as a bourbon is due to the signature Four Roses style of a higher mashbill (which is essentially the grain mix used to make a whiskey or beer) of rye grain: 20%-35%. Bourbon must be corn dominant (51% or more) and no other bourbon contains as much rye as Four Roses, except for Bulleit Bourbon due to the fact that it’s distilled at Four Roses. This higher inclusion of rye grain adds the spice and character us rye devotees adore, while retaining those sweet, caramel bourbon notes.

In reference to the combination of proprietary yeast strains used to make each of these bourbons, Elixir’s barrels are labeled by yeast strain combinations: OBSK, OBSO, OESO, OBSQ. Lest all this start to sound a little geeky, just ask for the tasting sheet and see what tasting notes jump out at you (chocolate and caramel or pickle brine, wood, hay?), then choose your pour accordingly. Better yet, share the flight with someone and find your favorite the best way: side-by-side comparison. My favorites? OBSK, which was the unanimous first choice of the Elixir guys, for its orange zest and earthy chocolate notes, and the OBSQ with greater bite and salty, grassy soul. Sampling Four Roses Limited Edition 2012 Single Barrel release (aged 12 years) alongside Elixir’s one-of-a-kind four rounded out the pleasure at a bracing 111.2%, still smooth with vanilla cream and toasted almond tempered by a spice bite.

The latest cocktails at Elixir? A few so new they aren’t on the menu: Roses for a Peach uses the OBSQ single barrel bourbon, muddling fresh, juicy peaches, peach bitters and Shea’s house sage syrup. Though sweet as summer, the bourbon’s higher proof imparts body, holding up to and elevating the natural peach sweetness. Bartender Levanah Ananda created this cocktail beauty along with Sunny Side, an ebullient mix of Aviation Gin with the sage syrup, pineapple, lemon and an absinthe rinse – a large slice of lemon floats in the glass like a sunny side up egg yolk (hence the name).

I’m in love with the wet stone/slate quality of Nick and Shea’s Que Sea Rapido (make it quick!) Del Maguey Vida imparts the smoky stone notes, while just the right touch of Domaine De Canton ginger liqueur and lime rounds it out, with ancho chile powder giving it earthiness rather than heat.

Elixir is a small, often crowded bar so for those such as myself who like it mellow, preferred time is afternoon or early evening hours for a seat at the bar and time with these bartenders who keep it real… as they casually craft winning cocktails.

Dalva and The Hideout

Dalva is the main bar, a worn-but-comfortable Mission classic, thankfully untrendy, divey and to be relied upon for a beer under a screen showing classic films and lesser seen Bruce Lee movies. I typically head straight to The Hideout, a cozy, dim back bar with superior craft spirits selection. Here one or two bartenders, including the occasional guest bartender like Josh Harris of the Bon Vivants, craft classics and classically-influenced cocktails… accompanied by loud, kitschy-cool tunes (see my review from early 2011). Arriving early one night before the Hideout opens at 7pm, I’m taken care of by bartender David Curiel who tends both in Dalva and The Hideout (currently he’s at the latter Wednesday and Friday nights). Even with big name brands lining Dalva’s bar, I’m not suffering for a craft drink.

Curiel operates with a classics ethos of just a few ingredients – including vermouth and bitters – allowing boozy attitude to shine, tempered with mature restraint. A prime example is a creation he was considering naming Michael Landon (after the TV actor, who I grew up with both on Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie): rye whiskey, Italian aperitif Cocchi Americano, musky Oloroso sherry and orange bitters. This imbibement hits first with rye spice and Oloroso nuttiness, balanced by Cocchi’s bright bitterness. Another Curiel drink, Smoking Gun, goes the peaty route with Ardbeg 10yr Scotch, and if at Dalva’s bar, it’s vivid with two Italian aperitifs, Campari and Cynar, plus Angostura bitters. In The Hideout it’s local great Gran Classico and Italian amaro Ramazotti instead of Campari and Cynar. Ask what Curiel or any of the Hideout bartenders are working on or excited by lately – or give them your mood (bitter, smoky, citrus, herbaceous, etc…) and let them satisfy.

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com

Like an Eric Andre in a china shop

Tony Robles
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What’s to be anticipated when Adult Swim’s most degenerate program hits the road? On Monday night, a sold-out crowd filled the Rickshaw Stop, ready for just about anything short of a Mitt Romney endorsement.

A love letter to the Reddit-surfing, bong-ripping, Flying Lotus-bumping demographic, The Eric Andre Show stampedes through its weekly, 15-minute time-slot with reckless abandon and utter perversity, hanging onto its “talk-show” descriptor by a single Funyun. If Pete & Pete, Hype Williams, and Gary Busey invested in a sleazy public-access channel, transmitted from the bowels of Suave Ben’s house in Blue Velvet, The Eric Andre Show would be its flagship broadcast.


MF Doom’s Special Herbs played over the soundsystem as the doors opened, aptly reflecting the intoxicated, Bohemian crowd shuffling in. The show kicked off with three stand-up routines, starting with co-host and Andre-sidekick Hannibal Buress, followed by local comics Stroy Moyd and Chris Garcia.

Buress was by far the funniest, transitioning from scrambled eggs to Eddie Griffin without the slightest thread of contrivance. Moyd’s set, while mostly successful, was hindered by a sense of forced confrontation, while Garcia uncannily recalled every schtick-dependent, guitar-equipped comedian you’ve ever seen on Comedy Central at 1am.

After a short break, Andre stormed the stage impolitely and unapologetically, ketchup and mustard bottles in hand, dousing the feverish crowd in red and yellow corn-syrup sludge, with GWAR-like contempt for social etiquette. After plopping down behind his big-kahuna desk, Andre invited Buress on stage, trading quips like Letterman and Paul Shaffer all fucked up on Ween’s Scotchgard.

Despite its chaotic pretense, the show barreled forward with an astute sense of rhythm and timing, flipping between stand-up bits, video clips, live music from the delightfully inept house band, and fake celebrity appearances, in a fast-paced spectacle, tailor-made for the goldfish-like attention spans of Adult Swim’s viewership.

The audience was treated to guest appearances from Tatyana Ali (Will Smith’s little cousin from Fresh Prince, remember?) and a very fake Russell Brand. Counterfeit TV commercials were shown, the most memorable of which involved Andre, dressed as Ronald McDonald, slamming whiskey and sobbing uncontrollably. In the most gut-bustingly hilarious moment of the night, a clown of the childrens’-parties variety took the stage, fashioning balloon animals with Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” playing seductively in the background.

After the unrestrained, brain-frying energy of Andre’s set, acclaimed Oakland hip-hop duo Main Attrakionz cooled things down beautifully with their balance between rugged, hard-boiled lyricism and luminous, electronic soundscapes. Taking the stage with great authority, Squadda B and Mondre delivered a steadily compelling set that, at a short-and-sweet 30 minutes, never overstayed its welcome.

Sauntering back onto Fell Street, with mustard-caked belongings, the audience was visibly gratified, and for good reason. Given the scarcity of live events that merge stand-up comedy, live hip-hop, and whatever the hell Eric Andre does, Monday night’s show was as satisfyingly complete as it was totally unpredictable.

Batman approacheth…but what to see THIS weekend?

Sue Vaughan
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Batman approacheth…but what to see THIS weekend?

You already have your tickets for The Dark Knight Rises (opens July 20) — if not, you might want to get on that — but there’s an entire week between then and now. Parental types are already locked into Ice Age: Continental Drift, which, in addition to Ray Romano and company, features teenage mammoths voiced by Nicki Minaj and Drake and a baboon pirate captain voiced by Peter Dinklage. So there’s that. Cineastes won’t want to miss the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (check out Dennis Harvey’s tribute to featured filmmaker William Beaudine here).

The best of the rest includes an eye-opening doc about teen athletes being groomed for MLB in the Dominican Republic; a doc about a rebellious Tibetan Buddhist; a lush Marie Antoinette drama; a family drama set against the backdrop of a kite festival in India; and an Australian import about a dog whose scruffy brio united a hardscrabble community. Which one made me sob like a tween Belieber? Hint: its star has four legs and very pointy ears.

Ballplayer: Pelotero With upbeat music, slick editing, and narration by John Leguizamo, Ballplayer: Pelotero is an entertaining, enlightening investigation into exactly why the Dominican Republic produces so many baseball stars. Comparisons to acclaimed sports doc Hoop Dreams (1994) are apt, as filmmakers Ross Finkel, Trevor Martin, and Jonathan Paley travel to the DR to follow a pair of teenage baseball players dreaming of big-league stardom (and big-league paychecks). But the Hoop Dreams kids weren’t being confronted by the shady, sinister, bottom-line-obsessed recruiters working for Major League Baseball, which maintains a pee-wee farm system of sorts in the country to train young prospects — the best of whom are snapped up at the magic age of 16 for bargain-basement (relatively speaking) prices. And in this environment, questions about numbers reign supreme: how much with each kid be signed for? And, more intriguingly, is either kid lying about his true age? (1:12) SF Film Society Cinema. (Cheryl Eddy)

Crazy Wisdom Not exactly your average Buddhist leader, Chogyam Trungpa was one part monk to two parts rock star. Recognized as a reincarnated master while still an infant, he left Tibet behind to flee Chinese government forces in 1960, eventually landing in the UK, where he founded its first Buddhist center. A decade later he’d move to the US, founding its first Buddhist university. Amidst all that achievement and enlightenment-spreading, however, he also found time to marry a 16-year-old upper-class Brit, have myriad affairs with students, partially paralyze himself driving a car into a shop front, frequently get drunk in public, and so forth — even though, incongruously, he frowned upon marijuana (and rock music). All this made sense in a tradition of Tibetan Buddhist “crazy wisdom” — or so his supporters would (and still) claim in his defense. Having left this life at age 48, his body exhausted by decades of hedonistic excess, he still has a powerful hold over diverse, multi-faith followers and acquaintances who recall his extraordinary spiritual-personal magnetism. Johanna Demetrakas’ entertaining documentary gathers up testimony from a gamut of them, including Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Thurman, and Anne Waldman. (1:26) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu95AAbj7bE

Farewell, My Queen (Benoît Jacquot, France, 2012) Opening early on the morning of July 14, 1789, Farewell, My Queen depicts four days at the Palace of Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution, as witnessed by a young woman named Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) who serves as reader to Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). Sidonie displays a singular and romantic devotion to the queen, while the latter’s loyalties are split between a heedless amour propre and her grand passion for the Duchess de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen). These domestic matters and other regal whims loom large in the tiny galaxy of the queen’s retinue, so that while elsewhere in the palace, in shadowy, candle-lit corridors, courtiers and their servants mingle to exchange news, rumor, panicky theories, and evacuation plans, in the queen’s quarters the task of embroidering a dahlia for a projected gown at times overshadows the storming of the Bastille and the much larger catastrophe on the horizon. (1:39) (Lynn Rapoport)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8dH2BEj5Os

Patang (The Kite) Loving memories tethered to a place (Ahmedabad, India), moment (the city’s kite festival, the largest of its kind in the country), and season (according to the Hindu calendar, the event coincides with the day that wind direction shifts) beautifully suffuse this first feature film by director and co-writer Prashant Bhargava. Certainly Patang (The Kite) is the story of a family: Delhi businessman Jayesh (Mukund Shukla) has returned with his freewheeling, movie-camera-toting daughter Priya (Sugandha Garg) to his majestically ramshackle family home, where he supports his mother, sister-in-law (Seema Biswas of 1994’s Bandit Queen), and nephew Chakku (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). He’s come to indulge his childhood love of kite flying and to introduce Priya to Ahmedabad’s old-world sights and ways. Entangled among the strands of story are past resentments —harbored by Chakku against his paternalistic uncle — and new hopes, particularly in the form of a budding romance between Priya and Bobby (Aakash Maherya), the son of the kite shop owner. Above all — and as much a presence as any other — is the city, with its fleeting pleasures and memorable faces, captured with vérité verve and sensuous lyricism on small HD cameras by Bhargava and director of photography Shanker Raman. Their imagery imprints on a viewer like an early memory, darting to mind like those many bright kites dancing buoyantly in the city sky. (1:32) (Kimberly Chun)

Red Dog Already a monster hit in Australia, provenance of the Babe movies, this animal-centric charmer comes to the Bay Area as part of the Windrider Bay Area Film Forum in Atherton. It’s based on Louis de Bernières’ collection of tales (and tall tales) about a legendary canine that roamed the country’s Northwestern wilderness in the 1970s. Director Kriv Stenders centers his film in the mining burg that erected a statue to the animal after its death — an event that serves as the movie’s starting point, as the townspeople gather to toast Red Dog’s many contributions to the community (in addition to providing a much-needed source of amusement in a bleak, barren place, he also became a mascot for the local union, match-made multiple couples, prevented a suicide-by-shark attempt, and engaged in epic brawls with his arch-nemesis, Red Cat). It’s a shaggy, sentimental story elevated by some appealing human performances — Josh Lucas is the token American star, though Aussie film fans will recognize Noah Taylor and Keisha Castle-Hughes — and, of course, one very charismatic pooch. If you can’t make the trek down the peninsula for the screening, Red Dog will be available On Demand starting August 14; the DVD will be out September 4. (1:32) Menlo-Atherton Performing Arts Center. (Eddy)

Appetite: Sipping caramel, tasting pastry breadth at Craftsman and Wolves

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Media hype has been fierce for pastry chef and owner William Werner’s new Craftsman and Wolves, a unique Mission bakery-cafe-patisserie for creative baked goods and sweets, changing sandwiches and salads, Sightglass Coffee, Naivetea, crave-inducing Valrhona drinking chocolate and (you’re hearing right) dreamy, sippable caramel made with salted butter and mini-croissant crostini to dunk.

At a media preview on 6/13 a few days before the cafe opened, I sampled in an ideal way through nearly the entirety of offerings (though they will continue to change), a helpful way of grasping the menu’s breadth and vision. In keeping with Werner’s past, it’s an impeccable selection that thankfully does not duplicate what you find in many topnotch cafes and pastisseries around the city. In fact, it does its own thing entirely: foods made with a fine-dining aesthetic and forward-thinking creativity, but served casually to-go or in the inviting, skylit, brick-walled space.

Besides my early taste-through, I’ve been back for a couple visits during initial opening days. Here is a photo journey with stand-outs noted.

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com

7 ways to revive your sunburned brain this week

Andrew Lam
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Dead set on frying your brain in this sunshine? Fine. Just hit up one of your city’s affordable cultural happenings afterwards and your gray matter will have no choice but to call it a draw. 

Epicenter reading series 

Sip on some of Cafe Tosca’s famous non-coffee cappuccino (brandy and hot chocolate, what could be better?) and listen to three members of the contemporary literati. Along with San Francisco-native Josh Mohr, the program will include Joe Meno reading from Office Girl, his new fiction work of artistic detachment and big city love, plus Nathan Larson’s The Nervous System, a novel depicting a terrorist-induced dystopia in the walls of the New York Public Library, starring a protagonist dubbed Dewey Decimal.

Thu/12 7pm, free

Cafe Tosca

242 Columbus Ave., SF

www.citylights.com

True Stories Lounge

Have your mind blown (pardon the pun) with Salon’s sex writer Tracy Clark-Flory at the True Stories Lounge. The reading series offers the unique opportunity to turn out your Friday night pre-game with a winning combination of cocktails and creative non-fiction, featuring writers from various genres recounting poignant childhood memoir, true crime, and sex follies.

Fri/13, 7pm, $10

Make Out Room

3225 22nd, SF

(415) 647-2888

www.makeoutroom.com

“Myth” 

An art reception wrought magical and mystical is this “Myth,” a group art exhibit exploring menaing in various types of folklore — everything from Greek myth to religious icons. Exhibiting artists will be in attendance at the opening reception, so you can ask them for the (assuredly fascinating) tales behind the images over drinks and and DJ. 

Sat/14, 6pm, free

Modern Eden Gallery

403 Francisco, SF

(415) 956-3303

www.moderneden.com

“Sin and Redemption” 

Have a perfectly sinful Saturday afternoon with what may be the SFMOMA Fort Mason annex’s most tantalizing exhibition yet. Artists will create pieces that play with themes of sin and redemption via pointed sculpture installations, interactive confessionals, and more. It’s sure to be an afternoon of contemplation and question amid the stunning Bay views.

Sat/14, opening reception 1pm-3pm, free

SFMOMA Artists Gallery 

Fort Mason, SF. 

(415) 441-4777

www.sfmoma.org

Chuck Palahniuk 

Brave hordes of dark literature lovers to hear none other than this legendary author of trangressional (OK, downright disturbing) fiction. Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and other contemporary literature treasures like “Guts” and Choke will discuss the “remix” of his 1999 novel Invisible Monsters. Already a story of plastic surgery, drugs, tragic hope, and other delights, the book is now equipped with an edgy new design and even edgier new material.  

Mon/16, 6pm, $20-$40

Castro Theatre 

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

LitSlam 

Competitive literary lunacy takes the stage at Lit Slam on selected Monday nights in the Mission. A variety show by nature that involves spoken word poetry, workshops, and friendly (maybe) competition, the event is also a brilliant move towards guerrilla publication. Audience members (like you) choose the winners of the slam, who will go on to be published in the organization’s annual literary journal. Get there early if you’re gunning to perform. Stage fright? Lit Slam picks four audience members at random to act as judges for the competition, that’s a little more behind the scenes. 

Mon/16, 8pm, free

Viracocha

998 Valencia, SF

www.viracochasf.com

The Performant: Why a duck?

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Pianofight takes on Tchaikovsky — and the death of theatre — and Boxcar’s Hedwig has us humming in the shower.

Zombies are so over. The next monster movie massacre sensations are totally going to be murderous waterfowl, so props to PianoFight and Mission CTRL for jumping on that bandwagon before it even rolled out of the studios with their ensemble-created, ballet-horror-comedy, Duck Lake. When Raymond Hobbs as theatre director Barry Canteloupe (sic) boasts “no one has ever done what we are about to do,” while tweaking his own nipples, you get the feeling he’s talking about more than the production he is supposedly directing — a musical theatre adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.”


“Duck Lake” opens innocuously enough with a series of scenes focused on Canteloupe’s directing methods, which includes literally suckling his wary charges on the “teat of creativity.” These last perhaps a smidge too long, and fail to foreshadow the eventual horrors that await the hapless cast, but they do drive home the sheer awfulness of being cast in a Canteloupe production. Shades of Waiting for Guffman’s Corky St. Clair color Hobbs’ turn as the narcissistic Canteloupe, whose singular theatrical vision has seen him voted the “best up-and-coming director” 10 years in a row, mainly for previous remixes of the iconic ballet, including a scat porn. Isolated on the banks of Duck Lake for a weekend rehearsal intensive, Canteloupe’s misfit cast members work hard to keep their simmering doubts from derailing the “process,” even when their prima donna “Prince” (Sean Conroy) mysteriously disappears, leaving only a bloody scrap of his cranium behind.

Cue encroaching pandemonium. Murdered park rangers! A groundskeeper with a terrible secret! Obnoxious jet-skiers! An awkward love story tangent! Tortured showtunes! Bloodthirsty, vengeful ducks! And the indescribable horror known only as the Harem Master (Rob Ready); a drama camp kid gone oh so very wrong. In the best tradition of Hollywood villains everywhere, the Harem Master gets to deliver a stirring speech regarding his motivations, which diverges into a reflection on the long slow decline of attendance in theatres, attributed by the loincloth-clad duck enthusiast in part to directors’ insistence on mining the classics for inspiration rather than creating new work. So meta! Truthfully “Duck Lake” itself is probably not in danger of being remounted 400 years from now, but it may yet prove itself useful to future generations, at a minimum for its handy tips on how to drive away angry flocks of mutant ducks. The day may be coming that such information will prove indispensable.

Speaking of classics, though, Boxcar Theatre’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, sizzled for a scant, two-weekend run, like an incandescent streak of showbiz lightning. Hitting upon a novel way to fully embellish each distinct facet of Hedwig’s somewhat fractured personality, director Nick Olivero cast twelve separate actors as the would-be rock star, adding a free-for-all twist to the already anarchic, transgendered glam-rock musical. From the fierce, punk snarl of Brionne Davis, to the coyly nude antics of Ste Fishell, to the Aretha Franklin-esque majesty of Michelle Ianiro, a dozen Hedwigs reenacted the tragic events of their backstory to the patrons of “Bilgewater’s,” with grace, guts, and a staggering array of platinum wigs. If you missed its too-short summer run, all hope is not lost. Rumor has it that a late autumn remount is not out of the question. Hopefully by then I’ll have stopped incessantly humming “Wig in a Box” in the shower, though honestly I’d rather be humming Stephen Trask than Tchaikovsky any day, so there’s that.

DUCK LAKE
$25, through July 28
The Jewish Theatre
470 Florida, SF
www.pianofight.com
www.missionctrlcomedy.com

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