My second year of attending the Sundance Film Festival was at the age of 15; it was 1991 and I took a chance on a film called Slacker by Richard Linklater.
This is the ticket stub that started my film journals. It’s still taped into a spiral ring notebook that cradles my coming of age, and I have treasured every film of Linklater’s since: his mainstream breakthrough, cult classic Dazed and Confused (1993); his hilarious remake of The Bad News Bears (2005); his underrated adaptation of Fast Food Nation (2006); his overlooked staging of Tape (2001); his pioneering, existentialist, rotoscoped duet Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). And, of course, his soul-searching Before trilogy.
I have consistently been amazed by his solid output and the impressive auteurism of his career. And all the while — as he kept delivering works like the unfairly dismissed Me and Orson Welles (2008) or the universally celebrated School of Rock (2004) — Mr. Richard Linklater had his magnus opus, Boyhood, stirring beneath us. Working from an idea concieved immediately after 1998’s The Newton Boys (the only Linklater film I haven’t seen!), the writer-director decided to follow a boy from the age of six to 18 in real time — following the model of Michael Apted’s Up series, which began in 1964 and has since followed the same group of children, checking in every seven years which is currently at 56 Up (2012).
Linklater cast frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as the boy’s parents, along with his own daughter Lorelei Linklater, and has filmed them all every year for the past 13 years. The excitement and anticipation I have felt for this epic journey through adolescence has been something of a personal obsession. In fact, I even questioned Linklater after the premiere of Bernie (2011) as to when this damn film was going to be completed, to which he casually responded, “Oh yeah, I should probably finish that someday.”
It’s truly wondrous to watch Boyhood‘s titular character, Ellar Coltrane, grow up right before your eyes, enhanced by masterful editing of perfectly scripted moments. The end effect is transcendent; it’s as if you are watching your own childhood, combined with the knowledge and experience of being the older characters who often make even more mistakes than the young boy. There is nothing anyone can say that will deter me from defining this film as an undisputed legendary masterpiece on par with The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather II (1974) combined.
Check out Jesse’s intro to his Sundance Film Festival series here.
This year, there were few films that stood out as across-the-board crowd pleasers. Gareth Evans’ violent, 148-minute The Raid 2: Berandal (UK/Indonesia) — a sequel to his 2011 cult hit — is an absolute must-see, as is the latest from Wet Hot American Summer (2001) director David Wain, They Came Together (US); it’s a comedy spoof that pitches Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler into a slew of rom-com tropes and clichés (delivering some huge laughs in the process).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MuXrN8L9ro
But the festival’s biggest surprise was perhaps Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz’s Land Ho! (US/Iceland). From the press notes: “A pair of aging ex-brothers-in-law set off to Iceland in an attempt to reclaim their youth through Reykjavik nightclubs, trendy spas, and rugged campsites. This bawdy adventure is a throwback to 1980s road trip comedies, as well as a candid exploration of aging, loneliness, and friendship.” And it really delivered. So it’s no surprise Sony Pictures Classics picked up this hot dog, aiming to bring its magic to audiences beyond Sundance. Stars Paul Eenhoorn (from one of last year’s secret treasures, Chad Hartigan’s This Is Martin Bonner) and relative newcomer Earl Lynn Nelson (who popped up in Martha Stephens’ spellbinding 2012 Pilgrim Song) could be looking at Independent Spirit Award nominations. Yeah, it’s a year away, but I’m calling it now.
Another film that got a distributor at the fest: Todd Miller’s Dinosaur 13 (US), a documentary about a team of independent paleontologists in South Dakota who in 1990 unearthed the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found. What ensues is a twisted and even stomach-churning tale that questions who “Sue” (as the skeleton was dubbed) belongs to. This was one of the most thought-provoking (and, possibly, argument-inducing) films of the fest. Are the paleontologists pirates? Does the government have control of the land, or should the discovery belong to the landowner? And what if those lands are tribal lands? If this sounds intriguing, it is, and you won’t have to wait long to see it for yourself, since Dinosaur 13 was picked up by CNN Films and Lionsgate for a million bucks (or around one-eighth of the value of a T-rex skeleton, as it turns out).
Along the same lines was Andrew Rossi’s Ivory Tower (US), which does its best to explore the dilemmas facing modern universities — tuition hikes, trillion-dollar debts (did you really need that brand-new swimming pool?), etc. — and what they mean for their students. It poses the modern questions of onsite vs. online, skills vs. information, and most importantly “Is college worth it anymore?” The film feels as confused as the questions it’s attempting to delve into, but I was still deeply affected by many moments. I’d recommend everyone involved with education [ed. note: Ficks is the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University] to jump in.
Stay tuned for more of Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ Sundance (and Slamdance!) screening adventures, including tomorrow’s look at Richard Linklanter’s epic Boyhood.
On the back wall of the main room of the old Victorian building at 1096 S. Van Ness is a sculpture of two creepy angels. One holds the other in its arms, their wings keeping them up. These angels are part of the original construction of the building, back when it functioned as a mortuary. Perhaps due to the haunting angels, perhaps due to the thought of a dead body storage center, the building has sat empty on the corner of South Van Ness and 22nd Streets for 15 years.
Today, the angels are still there and the building’s new owner has no intention of taking them down. “We will preserve as much as we can from this old look,” says Steve Fox, the man behind San Francisco’s first indoor mini-golf course, Urban Putt, set to open in April. The “high-concept” course will feature a restaurant with “eclectic California comfort cuisine” upstairs and two bars with a “creative bar program,” according to Urban Putt’s most recent press release.
Urban Putt is not your traditional mini-golf course. The fantastical, technologically advanced, steampunk-y 14-hole course (four short of the customary 18 due to space constraints) will be composed of high-tech gadgets, countless buttons and nobs, and a few obligatory tongue-in-cheek twists (see: the “TransAmerica Windmill”) contained within its homages to San Francisco landmarks.
A replica of the Painted Ladies shakes in a simulated earthquake at the first hole. At the “Musical” hole, the golf ball is catapulted toward the ceiling before bouncing delicately on drums and a cymbal. A two-hole underwater area pays homage to Jules Verne: an intricate submarine embellished with control panels and levers — although the 150 motion-sensor LED floorboards (imitating the lights of phytoplankton) are exceptionally post-Verne. Next to those wistful angels, the “Day of the Dead” hole honors the building’s previous tenants.
With a name like Urban Putt and its kitschy concept, it’s tempting to call out the spot as yet another example of gentrification in the Mission. Can’t you just see the hordes of trendy techies lining up to play putt-putt before hitting up the Make-Out Room on a Saturday night? (Because you know they will…)
Fox, a longtime mini-golf fanatic, was prepared for the criticism. “The very first note we got was like ‘the nerve of these people.’ It was written up on the Chron that we were doing this,” he says about the initial backlash. “We had signed the lease two days before.”
So Fox put up his phone number outside the building to encourage any and all complaints about Urban Putt. He also set out to connect with the neighborhood, reaching out to the community when he started hiring. “I think they realized that I had every intention of not being some sort of carpet bagger,” says Fox.
For Fox, Urban Putt is a longtime dream. A lousy golf player himself, the former editorial director of PCWorld and editor in chief of InfoWorld is an avid putt putt player. Since the 1990’s Fox and his wife have been hosting mini golf parties at their house. So what happens when you grow old and have a lot of money? Make your dream come true.
“My theory in all of this, having spent years and years running organizations — albeit editorial organizations, not mini golf — is if you don’t have expertise, go out and find the best people you can and have them do it,” says Fox.
With experience that spans Burning Man, Maker Faire, the Exploratorium, and even MythBusters, the members of the design and construction team have an expansive background in creativity and innovation. “We have a group of people with real expertise in these areas. You can get that in San Francisco. There’s a lot of places you couldn’t find that. There’s that kind of wonderful talent base,” says Fox. At their disposal: the $17,000 3D printing ShopBot. Claiming it as one of their competitive advantages, Fox explains that the in-house printer will help his team can easily innovate, make changes, and repair the course over time.
Despite UrbanPutt’s extravagance, Fox maintains that the wonderland will be accessible to both children and adults, as well as both techy transplants and long-established local residents. His mission to keep games affordable ($8 for kids, $12 for adults) and to retain the vibrant local culture demonstrates his dedication to the city. Much of the building’s original construction will remain the same: the historical exterior, the metal front gate, the Victorian sconces, and the two angels at the back wall.
“People get that I am really of this neighborhood,” says Fox. “I think they’re responding well to that.”
I grew up at the Sundance Film Festival — beginning in 1990, when my father took my 14-year-old self to an archival screening of Melvin Van Peebles’ X-rated Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), and my best friend Grayson Jenson’s parents introduced us to Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1963).
These two films have polar-opposite subject matter, but they do share some odd similarities; they both make aggressive statements about counterculture, and both are cut together with hyperkinetic, French New Wave-esque editing. But back then, all I knew was that my life was maniacally changed … forever.
This transformative experience was enhanced by accidentally sitting next to only movie critic I had ever heard of: Mr. Roger Ebert. As it happens, a documentary about the late writer’s career, Steve James’ Life Itself, was one of the 2014 festival’s biggest hits. Friendly and engaging, Ebert explained to me (at 14) that he personally enjoyed watching the Beatles’ “best film” on 16mm as opposed to 35mm. The conversation we shared (“What are your favorite films?” Me: “Hellraiser II, Aliens, Evil Dead 2, and Phantasm II“) left a long and deep impression on me.
That was my first memorable Sundance moment. But this year’s Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals — celebrating their 30th and 20th anniversaries, respectively — were (on the occasion of my own 24th Sundance anniversary) maybe the best I’ve ever experienced, overall.
Yeah, I say that every year, but there was something special about 2014. I attended 50 features, a handful of remarkable short films, two intimate concerts (Belle and Sebastian, DJ Steve Aoki), a poetry reading at Sundance with the finest Native and Indigenous filmmakers in the world right now, and a Slamdance awards ceremony for Christopher Nolan — who brought along his entire family!
Based on the above, I feel confident in predicting that this year is gonna be a remarkable one for cinema. Check back tomorrow for the first in my Sundance (and Slamdance) series of spoiler-free reviews, with an emphasis on under-the-radar films that you do not wanna miss.
Up next: Indonesian action sequel The Raid 2: Berandal and Amy Poehler-Paul Rudd rom-com spoof They Came Together. It’s on!
Forgive the late (mid-season) arrival, some copy got lost in translation. And if you buy that, Juan Pablo’s public image has a shot.
So last week, amid all the real news (Chris Christie things, GOP things, Obama-NSA things, Sochi things) and amid all the Bieber news (eggs, DUI’s, Jeremy Bieber’s existence, shiny shorts, smiling mugshots) there was a bad piece of Bachelor news.
But because The Bachelor was filmed awhile ago, we got to travel back to the vacuum that was Episode 4, and Episode 4 was filmed before this question undoubtedly (and justly) ruined Juan Pablo in front of cameras for forever. If you’re still reading, you know the deets, but before we go for some fish pedicures, let’s dive into the events in a totally chronological fashion:
It opens with Juan Pablo wishing his daughter goodbye, which a week ago would’ve been super-sweet or whatever. Not this week, JP! Meanwhile, Chris Harrison shows up to the girls’ house and lets the girls know that they’re going to South Korea.
Clare, who’s a hairstylist from Sacramento, cries because no one else is crying. She then let’s the viewers know that she’s never been anywhere before. Anywhere. It turns out that Clare doesn’t count Sacramento as a place. Shots fired, Clare, shots fired.
Juan Pablo starts the South Korean expedition with a group date. The date’s clue: Pop! Onomatopoetic, JP, onomatopoetic. Also, very vague. But details emerge. Those details? Again, murky.
The girls ride to the date in a van. They talk about how awesome South Korea is. Chelsie, the Science Educator, displays a poor knowledge of how to wear seat belts by wearing it below her chest, and no one else seems to make this mistake. The girls meet Juan Pablo outside a giant building, which, he so kindly informs us, is a K-Pop recording studio. Juan Pablo tells the girls that, “All the K-Pop is made here.” Hear that girls? ALL OF IT.
2NE1, we are told, is the biggest K-Pop group in all of South Korea. They’re like the “Spice Girls of South Korea,” Juan Pablo says. Maybe Juan Pablo, but the Spice Girls without Scary, Baby, Ginger, or Posh, soooo…
The girls get their date task from what appears to be the front woman of the uber-famous band, 2NE1. How do we know that she is the front woman? We don’t, but she certainly is assertive. The task she assigns them is dancing.
Nikki, the pediatric nurse from Missouri, hates dancing. But Kat, the medical sales rep from Scottsdale, loves it. Kat loves everything, it would seem, but she especially loves dancing. And she is incredible at it, she doesn’t mind telling us. “I was made for this,” she says.
(For whatever reason, Cassandra, the NBA Dancer, is neither offended by this comment nor is she interviewed. She is either the most boring person ever or the producers are as confused about the girls’ identities as Juan Pablo is.)
Back to the dancing. Nikki is really bad. Kat announces once again that she’s really good. Because this is a newspaper blog, that claim was investigated. The findings? Inconclusive. When the camera shows Kat dancing, only Kat is shown dancing. So, in regards to its validity, the statement is difficult to assess.
2NE1, a group that, in case you forgot, is really famous in South Korea, teaches them dance steps, then leaves the room. The girls learn these dance steps. 2NE1, a really famous K-Pop group (they really drove this point home, so I feel I should too), comes back into the dance studio with big news: The girls will be backup dancers at their show that may or may not take place in a few hours.
Nikki is pissed. She hates dancing, after all. Kat, on the other hand, besides possessing a generally unpleasant demeanor, is thrilled.
Kat decides that the crowd is here to see her. Again, no mention of Cassandra’s profession.
*Pause.* BACKUP DANCING IS HER PROFESSION, ABC, HER PROFESSION. IT WOULD BE LIKE JUAN PABLO GOING TO A SOCCER FIELD ON THE BACHELORETTE (WHICH HE DID) AND FAILING TO MENTION THAT HE USED TO DO THAT FOR MONEY (WHICH THEY DIDN’T. PS: SORRY FOR THE DOUBLE NEGATIVES AND FOR THE CAPSLOCK). *Play.*
Back to the show. The girls perform inside a mall, which means only one thing: South Korea has very few limitations when it comes to choosing concert venues.
After the date, the girls do the awkward group dinner date thing, and Nikki ends up with a rose, much to the chagrin of the rest of the girls. They think she’s a downer — which she totally is — and they don’t understand why she got the rose. This, for those wondering, is standard practice on The Bachelor.
Meanwhile, at Bachelor Mansion: South Korea, Sharleen gets the one-on-one date card, and proceeds to look unenthused. The date is thankfully not one that involves a private concert featuring a marginally known country-pop star singing to an audience of two. Those are the worst.
Instead, JP asks Sharleen to sing on their date. Sharleen does not, however, ask JP to perform his profession afterwards, which is a good thing. We know plenty about Juan Pablo, but we have no idea what he does to make money in real life. He is listed as a “Sports Consultant” on the Bachelor website, which is only slightly more specific than the title of “Government Person.”
Anyways, back to the date. JP and Sharleen kiss. It’s way less awkward than their Episode 3 kiss and far more private. They stop kissing and start talking, which means an awkward transition from one of Juan Pablo’s strengths to one of his weaknesses. He wants kids, she doesn’t. Doesn’t seem to faze either one. Cross that bridge when we get there, I suppose.
A bridge Sharleen doesn’t need to worry about crossing? The Rose Ceremony Bridge, which doesn’t really exist, but whatever. Why? She got a rose, because she always gets a rose. Juan Pablo thinks she has “mundo,” like Atlas, or something.
Moving on. The rest of the girls get the clue for their group date. They are going to be eating street-food and exploring Seoul, Seoul style. On their date, we learn that Clare is petrified of eating octopus. Andi, the lawyer, reminds us that octopus is widely available outside South Korea, and its presence shouldn’t alarm anyone. Kelly, the Dog Lover from Atlanta (real title), makes a fellatio joke, which is funny, but in a you-had-to-be-there kind of way. And, to be clear, it was a you-had-to-be-there-while-we-were-filming-in-South-Korea kind of way.
After the tasting fiasco, the group goes to an establishment offering fish pedicures. For the uninitiated out there, a fish pedicure is when you stick your feet in a plastic tub filled with fish that snack on your dead foot-flesh. It looked about as comfortable as it sounds. Post-fish feeding, JP takes the girls to sing karaoke, because all Juan Pablo likes to do is sing and dance, we’re learning.
After the Octopus-Fishicure-Karaoke date, the girls get their alone time with Juan Pablo.
But there’s a M. Night twist coming at the girls: Juan Pablo won’t kiss any of them on this Seoul-ful evening. His reasoning? He has a daughter, who he doesn’t want to set a bad example for. At this time, it’s important to note that this fact has neither stopped him from making out with “six” other girls since this thing has started, nor does it explain his motives for coming onto the show in the first place.
(And after host Chris Harrison‘s “27 Girls” shenanigans and JP’s secret pact with himself, the only fitting ending to this season of The Bachelor would be an “After the Rose” revelation that Harrison has, in fact, been dead this whole time and we, America, are now all blessed with the gift/curse of Young (aka Best) Haley Joel Osment. I can see no other alternative, regardless of what Reality Steve says.)
But I digress… Andi gets time with Juan Pablo. She wants a kiss, but JP’s made that personal pact. Impasse, folks, impasse. What does Andi do? Busts ol’ JP’s balls for being both a bad dancer and a dude who is more clearly a dancer than he is a professional. In any field. That second part was made up, but she was thinking it. She was totally thinking it. JP likes the ball-busting, though, and seems smitten. Still no kiss for Andi, though.
Then Lauren, the accomplished pianist, gets her one-on-one time, and she is worried about the connection between her and the Venezuelan dancing machine. Juan Pablo reassures her that everything is fine, but he refuses to kiss her when she directly propositions him for such, because of his whole sabbatical from kissing thing. Weird rationale, Juan Pablo, weird rationale.
Anyway, she’s visibly crushed, and he then goes on to explain to the poor girl that even sans kiss he is still super into her and that he really wants to get to know her more, which is sort of like the Bachelor equivalent of George telling Lenny how awesome their farm is going to be. Message to Lauren: You’re an accomplished pianist, you’ll be fine. You don’t want to live in Miami. You’re not named Pitbull. Back to the action!
After the JP-Lauren awk-fest, Clare, the hairstylist from Sacramento who has already cried this episode, gets more screen time, which we can file in the Non-Octopus Related folder. Clare is a piece of work, behavior-wise, but Juan Pablo is absolutely unabashed about how “hot” he thinks she is. Juan Pablo calls himself helpless. They kiss. Juan Pablo apparently forgets he has a daughter whom he may or may not be disappointing.
After the kiss, he awards Andi with the date rose. Yes, Andi. To recap (within the recap): He’s admittedly helpless around Clare, won’t kiss Andi, Lauren or anyone else on the second group date, but he then awarded the date rose to someone other than Clare. Makes total sense.
Following a necessary commercial break, the Episode 4 Rose Ceremony gets underway. The three girls who already got roses — Sharleen, Nikki and Andi — agree to let the other girls have the precious one-on-one time with JP, because they already got their roses. Who says the Bachelor is all about girl-on-girl crime?
Whoever it was is totally right. Nikki, who is potentially the human manifestation of a rain cloud, decided that she didn’t agree to this rule and that she wanted her one-on-one time with JP regardless of rose acquiescence. She interrupts Clare, who was in the process of talking smack on Nikki. (The timing on this show makes NASA look like amateurs, BTW.) Nikki, oblivious to the smack talk, asks for time. Clare is displeased. Juan Pablo asks Nikki awkward questions about her relationship with the rest of the girls in the house. Nikki throws Clare under the bus. It all happens very fast.
After Girl, Interrupted: Bachelor concludes, Nikki seeks out Kelly for moral support-venting camaraderie. Some righteous talk is dropped regarding Clare, neither of them like her attitude, but… But!!! BUTTTT… Clare emerges from around a corner and walks up to the clandestine-ish meeting. Kelly changes the subject remarkably well. She should consider changing her profession from Dog Lover to Subject Switcher.
BUT! Kelly can’t handle the awkwardness and spills the beans that she and Nikki were talking about Clare. Sort of. Again, this season is vague. Clare and Nikki talk about barely anything, and then the Rose Ceremony begins (Note: The events might not have proceeded that quickly, but this is a two-hour show, folks. Latitude is requested.)
The roses, in order, go to Renee, Chelsie, Kelly, Danielle, Cassandra, Alli, Clare and Kat, the Dancing Queen. Lauren was predictably sent packing, and so was Elise, a girl whose existance I was unaware of until she didn’t get a rose. It’s down to 11. Here’s to hoping Juan Pablo gets interviewed some more this week.
Episode Grade: B.*
*Justification for Episode Grade: None. But, to be more specific, only an episode featuring either, a) real violence, b) real, deserved tears, c) an ambulance or d) a hot tub/paddle boat combo can earn an A from this particular grader.
“I didn’t know I was a Chicano until I met Jose.” — actor and activist Edward James Olmos at the Jose Montoya Memorial Celebration at Sacramento’s Crest Theater, Jan. 23, 2014. Photo by Fernando Andrés Torres.
Read Fernando Andrés Torres’ story on NorCal’s poesia en espanol revival in this week’s paper.
About 15 minutes into taking a seat at center stage of the Castro Theatre last night before an enthusiastic and fairly inebriated crowd, Jack Black turned to the audience and sheepishly confessed, “I’m getting sleepy.” To which, his cohort Kyle Gass added, “Is any of this even interesting?’
It was an honest, and funny, way to acknowledge a slow-out-of-the-gate interview moment for Tenacious D — comedic duo Black and Gass as the greatest acoustic heavy metal band in the world — who would probably have felt more in their element battling Satan in an epic guitar showdown than awkwardly sitting in tall chairs answering questions with a moderator.
And after all, expectations in the room were considerable. For the high-profile opening night of SF SketchFest on Jan. 23, the devoted audience in attendance had waited outside nearly two hours — in a quarter mile line that rambled throughout the neighbor — in an effort to see the duo take the Castro stage to be honored for their hyper brand of rock-stardom absurdity and Spinal Tap genius. But after a big-screen montage of the duo’s funniest clips got the event rolling, the D sitting down to chat with moderator and fellow comedian Paul F. Tompkins took a moment to get momentum.
Although early musings on how the band got their start via Mr. Show and a short-lived HBO series lumbered along, the interview got interesting as the band deviated from explaining their origins and just started telling funny tour stories, such the D’s disastrous opening slot for TOOL (“The boos had extra strength, cause you know…that band’s music plumbs the depths of man’s soul”), an equally terrible promotional show for Miller Genuine Draft in Las Vegas (“It was unanimous, all these people from the around the country hated us”) and a concert that had to be stopped at the House of Blues because someone had been stabbed (“The Rolling Stones did a whole movie on their stabbing”).
The session of crowd questions got nutty quickly, ranging from the duo being asked to name their favorite Muppet (Animal), to what it would take to get another Tenacious D film made (“If everyone here could just donate $500,000”), as well as fanatical inquiries into the band’s song catalogue (“Alaskan Fan Club here, let’s talk about ‘Jesus Ranch’”).
All in all, the “seated” portion of the show actually proved pretty good, and the stilted vibe that surfaced early on had quickly given way to some genuinely funny off-the-cuff moments, like when a meowing sound filtered through the crowd and Black pondered its source (“I’m like a sommelier of bad trips”).
To the great joy of the crowd, the interview session soon transitioned to the band pulling on their acoustic guitars and charging into a riotous 15-song set ranging from the band’s self-titled debut album (“Tribute,” “Friendship,” and “Kyle Quit the Band”) to Pick of Destiny (“Kickapoo”) and the more recent Rize of the Fenix (“Low Hanging Fruit” and Roadie”). Finally in their element, the D just started killing place as Jack Black went full throttle — all bulging eyes and rubber expressions — and Gass strummed along with mostly deadpan stage presence to favorites like “Classico” and “Double Team,” as well as covers of Van Halen’s “Panama” and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” By the time the band reached “Fuck Her Gently” the crowd left their theater seats and just flooded to the front of the stage to sing along, “And then I’ll fucking fuck you discreetly/And then I’ll fucking bone you completely.”
What else can you say? It’s the Motherfuckin’ D, and long lines and tall chairs were a small price for such a big showcase. If opening night was any indication, it’s gonna be one hell of Sketchfest this year.
UPDATE: This just in from Ron Turner: “Hello Friends. There will be a memorial for Gary this coming Tuesday at 11 AM at 225 Berry St. off 4th, very near the Giants ballpark and the Cal Train station. Hope to see you there. It is a modern Senior Center where Gary made his home. Bring stories and memories to share.”
Just got word from Last Gasp Press founder Ron Turner that comics legend Gary Edson Arlington has passed away at age 75. In 1968, he opened what is considered the first comic book store in the United States, San Francisco Comic Book Company, which galvanized the hotbed Bay Area underground comix scene (and helped house his enormous collection, too).
“San Francisco was the capitol of comix culture in the ’60s and early ’70s; and Gary Arlington’s hole-in-the-wall shop was, for me, the capitol of San Francisco.”
He was truly a fascinating character who supported local comics and art until the end, and influenced pop culture exponentially.
Turner wrote:
“Gary died last night in San Francisco. He had been living on his own in a nice subsidized apartment near the ball park. He had a motorized wheel chair and was out and about in SF. He had heart and circulatory problems that led to several hospital stays during the last decade. The comic community will remember Gary as founding the first comic book store in America, on 23rd st. in the Mission. I bought my first underground comic there in 1968. It was a hangout for all the early underground comic artists and fans. Services have not been announced as yet.”
We’ll update this post when we find out about services. Meanwhile, go out to your nearest comics bookstore and buy a bunch of indies in his honor!
Hello, listeners. Brilliant breakout podcast “Welcome to Night Vale” has gained a rabid (yet adorably introspective) fanbase since it launched in June 2012. The twice-monthly, 20-minute-long show, created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, takes the form of a surreal newscast, coming to us from “somewhere in the Southwestern United States” by way of Twin Peaks.
Describing a community of indelible characters, it’s a twisted take on Lake Wobegone that vacillates cunningly from whimsical to chilling, often veering into outright poetry. “Night Vale” also recalls the golden age of radio plays: even though it lacks sound effects and depends mostly on the deep, hypnotic voice of narrator Cecil, it summons the entrancing atmosphere of such classics as “The Shadow.”
And now it’s coming to the Victoria Theater for a big live show-reading on Tue/21. Expect seismic things, tiered heavens, off-limits dog parks, magic lightbulbs, hovering livestock, public service koans, and the heirarchy of angels.
Also expect: cosplay — something a radio-like show can carve out extra imaginative room for.
I asked Cecil about coming to San Francisco (he really does sound like that in real life!). He enthused about visiting us:
“San Francisco has been an amazing city for ‘Welcome to Night Vale.’ Last September, we did a live reading at The Booksmith in Haight-Ashbury and it was so much fun — the fans were super-excited, lots of really creative cosplay. One person walking by the bookstore asked, ‘are they giving out free weed in there?’
“This time we are performing at the Victoria Theatre in the Mission for a larger audience and I can’t wait to see who (or what) the fans come dressed as. I think there’s a special relationship between Night Vale and San Francisco. The people of the Bay Area are exceptionally smart, creative and techno-savy: it’s a great combination!”
And now we interrupt this broadcast for a special bulletin: Look to the north. Keep looking. There’s nothing coming from the south.
Imagine a place where all the gay men are masculine, well-built, physically unselfconscious, and fashionably tousled; where young male artists and young male people of color mingle with young white male techies (yet are still happily banished to Oakland or work the door at Esta Noche); where having a “lazy eye” or being “slightly portly” renders you disqualified for relationships; where HIV, addiction, and politics barely exist; and where everyone is drenched in soft-spoken sophistication, vague existential ennui, and puppy-eyed cuteness.
This isn’t quite San Francisco (yet), but it is the San Francisco of gorgeously produced, play-it-safe-so-far gay-themed HBO series Looking (it begins airing Jan. 19) — at least the first two episodes, which previewed tonight at the Castro Theater. It’s too early of course to pass any kind of judgment on the entire series, which in many ways may be an accurate reflection of current gay culture, and I maintain very high hopes, especially with such good actors, writers, and attention to detail involved.
But let me tell you: I have never wished more for a stereotypically sassy drag queen to stomp onscreen and break some shit in my life.
The dramatic comedy series so far is so polite, well-crafted, and unassuming that even though you gotta applaud the desire to produce a mainstream gay program whose mission is to avoid gay stereotypes — no flaming creatures here — the end result seems to be a warm apple pie with no teen dick stuck in it, let alone a Cockette. And while Looking is more representative when it comes to ethnicity than initially feared (two Latinos!), it doesn’t seem too keen on taking any risks when it comes to social issues or body types. There is nothing remotely “queer” about Looking so far. Sad trombone!
Hopefully, Looking isn’t shooting itself in the expensive workboots with its own good intentions: to present gay men as basically “normal.” Trouble is, normal gay men at this point on our yellow brick road toward complete assimilation are basically just straight people with an extra hot dog between them. It’s simply not enough anymore to have gay men do normal things — like experience typical relationship problems or worry about getting older — and consider it interesting just because they’re gay. There have to actually be interesting things. And so far the most interesting thing here, besides the yummy SF-centric particulars, might be the characters’ varying degrees of facial hair. (Is contemporary gay exceptionalism hiding behind its own beard?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnGwmP8qg2c
Here are the dilemmas the three hunks we’re following on Looking face so far: the young, cute videogame designer keeps flubbing dates by saying the not-quite-right thing; the beautiful artist and his beautiful boyfriend just moved in together and one’s worried they’re not going out enough; and the smokin’ hot late-30ish career waiter is having mild symptoms of a midlife crisis and ambient ex-in-the-picture anxieties. Except for the primly presented three-way, a fumbling public hand job, and a brief Grindr hookup, we might as well be inside a Cathy cartoon. Seriously: one of the characters even ends up guiltily diving into a late-night bowl of naughty starch to eat his problems away. ACK.
To be sure: this show is also in many ways a scruffy dream date, all scrubbed up for dinner at farmerbrown. Hot Chip and Hercules and Love Affair replace Britney and Rihanna at Castro bars. Characters who surely have never seen a real backroom before wave around coffee mugs from The Cock in NYC and other super-insidery gay culture totems. There has been no gym scene. And some of the lines are pretty funny, especially from the requisite saucy gal pal. San Francisco looks absolutely perfect, and well-wrought local details abound. The Brit director is Andrew Haigh, whose dreamy, oh-so-indie “gay boys on fixies” romance Weekend (2011) was like a cool, refreshing splash of the Smiths — or more like the Sundays, or, for the young’uns, James Blake — onto an overheated gay film scene that seemed skewed more towards Katy Perry.
But transplanted to TV mode, the yearning hipster mumblecore aesthetic isn’t casting quite the same spell yet.
Maybe I’m jaded/spoiled, but I remember the feeling of the top of my head being ripped off during the first episodes of the British Queer as Folk (still the high water mark of guilty-pleasure gay television) and parts of The L Word and Six Feet Under — that wondrous sense of audacity that fully dimensional queer people with epic faults, uncanny similarities, and infuriating differences were being flaunted in plain sight. Even the severely problematic American Queer As Folk and Will and Grace, with their flaming stereotypes and frustrating pop culture naivety, at least gave us some fascinating characters. I hated the fact that Middle America probably thought all gay men were like Jack, but I really couldn’t wait to hear what outrageous zinger would come flying out of his mouth next.
There isn’t much of that so far on Looking, although it’s still holding my curiosity. (An after-screening Q&A with writer Michael Lannan indicated that there would be lesbian and trans characters as the series progressed, as well as some actual male nudity finally — come on, HBO). I realize that the show owes as much verisimilitude to the actual San Francisco gay scene as Queer as Folk USA owed to Pittsburgh. But for goddess’s sake, someone protest a condo eviction, somebody get blocked on Grindr for being too fem, someone eat a whole burrito drunk on a unicycle, somebody be nude or pagan or Asian, hopefully all three!
Again, this is just the start of a show whose initial demographic may quite possibly be a swath of gay men hoping for nothing more than to look hip and fit in. But if fitting in means blanding out, we might want to start Looking for something different.
This week: August: Osage County(bumped from its previously-scheduled opening last week) unleashes 2014’s first bolt of LOOK AT ME I’M ACTING! Other choices you have while you count down to the Golden Globes (Sunday night) and the Oscar nominations (next Thursday) include Ralph Fiennes’ latest actor-director turn in Charles Dickens tale The Invisible Woman; Mark Wahlberg’s Navy SEALs drama Lone Survivor; and Renny Harlin’s CG’d-up action-tacular The Legend of Hercules.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hd_uO72h1s
August: Osage CountyConsidering the relative infrequency of theater-to-film translations today, it’s a bit of a surprise that Tracy Letts had two movies made from his plays before he even got to Broadway. Bug and Killer Joe proved a snug fit for director William Friedkin (in 2006 and 2011, respectively), but both plays were too outré for the kind of mainstream success accorded 2007’s August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer, ran 18 months on Broadway, and toured the nation. As a result, August was destined — perhaps doomed — to be a big movie, the kind that shoehorns a distracting array of stars into an ensemble piece, playing jes’ plain folk. But what seemed bracingly rude as well as somewhat traditional under the proscenium lights just looks like a lot of reheated Country Gothic hash, and the possibility of profundity you might’ve been willing to consider before is now completely off the menu. If you haven’t seen August before (or even if you have), there may be sufficient fun watching stellar actors chew the scenery with varying degrees of panache — Meryl Streep (who else) as gorgon matriarch Violet Weston; Sam Shepard as her long-suffering spouse; Julia Roberts as pissed-off prodigal daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts), etc. You know the beats: Late-night confessions, drunken hijinks, disastrous dinners, secrets (infidelity, etc.) spilling out everywhere like loose change from moth-eaten trousers. The film’s success story, I suppose, is Roberts: She seems very comfortable with her character’s bitter anger, and the four-letter words tumble past those jumbo lips like familiar friends. On the downside, there’s Streep, who’s a wizard and a wonder as usual yet also in that mode supporting the naysayers’ view that such conspicuous technique prevents our getting lost in her characters. If Streep can do anything, then logic decrees that includes being miscast. (2:10) (Dennis Harvey)
The Legend of Hercules Renny Harlin rises from the dead to direct Twilight series hunk Kellan Lutz in this 3D, CG-laden retelling of you know which myth. (1:38)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDVCuSY7PEk
Lone Survivor Peter Berg (2012’s Battleship, 2007’s The Kingdom) may officially be structuring his directing career around muscular tails of bad-assery. This true story follows a team of Navy SEALs on a mission to find a Taliban group leader in an Afghani mountain village. Before we meet the actors playing our real-life action heroes we see training footage of actual SEALs being put through their paces; it’s physical hardship structured to separate the tourists from the lifers. The only proven action star in the group is Mark Wahlberg — as Marcus Luttrell, who wrote the film’s source-material book. His funky bunch is made of heartthrobs and sensitive types: Taylor Kitsch (TV’s Friday Night Lights); Ben Foster, who last portrayed William S. Burroughs in 2013’s Kill Your Darlings but made his name as an officer breaking bad news gently to war widows in 2009’s The Messenger; and Emile Hirsch, who wandered into the wilderness in 2007’s Into the Wild. We know from the outset who the lone survivors won’t be, but the film still manages to convey tension and suspense, and its relentlessness is stunning. Foster throws himself off a cliff, bounces off rocks, and gets caught in a tree — then runs to his also-bloody brothers to report, “That sucked.” (Yesterday I got a paper cut and tweeted about it.) But the takeaway from this brutal battle between the Taliban and America’s Real Heroes is that the man who lived to tell the tale also offers an olive branch to the other side — this survivor had help from the non-Taliban locals, a last-act detail that makes Lone Survivor this Oscar season’s nugget of political kumbaya. (2:01) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)
Liv and Ingmar You wouldn’t expect anything less than soul-scorching intimacy from a documentary on the relationship of acting icon Liv Ullmann and moviemaking maestro Ingmar Bergman. And Dheeraj Akolkar satisfies with the help of plentiful clips from Bergman’s filmography, disarmingly frank interviews with Ullmann, behind-the-scenes footage, and grainy images of and excerpts from letters and memoirs by Bergman. Ullmann was the unforgettable face and inspiration for Persona (1966) and other Bergman classics; he was her director, mentor, and teacher; and they were brought together by film and remained drawn to each other despite the scandal of their respective spouses. Their at-first-happy then increasingly jealously-filled and isolated life is translated into intensely personal, searing visions like Shame (1968), which sparks at least one close-to-the-bone anecdote from Ullmann. She shows Akolkar photos of a bundled-up Bergman in a boat beside a vessel carrying an underdressed, freezing Ullman and Max Von Sydow. “He was really angry that day,” she recounts. “You ask if he was ever cruel to me. This time, he was really cruel. I hated him so much and I was planning to leave him.” Some might criticize Akolkar for his loose hand with the couple’s story and his heavy reliance on invaluable Bergman works like 1973’s Scenes From a Marriage — no dates or clues to the films or productions used are given until the credits roll — but more irksome are the sentimental montages, “reenactments,” and score: one can picture Bergman convulsed in the beyond during the most saccharine moments. Liv and Ingmar’s strength is the woman at its center. Revealing mementos from her “dearest Pingmar,” as well as unguarded glimpses into her heart, the almost achingly sincere Ullmann gets the last word here, as befits a survivor and an actress who never hesitated to let the camera see every emotion flitting across her lush features — making this doc less about Ingmar and the specifics of his career, and more about Liv and her still living, breathing emotional life. (1:23) (Kimberly Chun)
A pit under the floor becomes a wellspring for 100 performances over six hours at SOMArts this Saturday night
There’s a hole under the gallery floor at SOMArts. And art abhors a vacuum.
This century-old sand casting pit rests under a trap door, a leftover of the 17,000-square-foot venue’s industrial past. But this weekend the hatch is lifted and the hole becomes a generative site of time-based art making. Six hours will see more than 150 local artists delivering two-minute performances “for the hole” in a mini-marathon like no other.
This fourth iteration of SOMArts’ 100 Performances for the Hole features a rowdy roster of artists working their inspiration from across a wide spectrum of disciplinary backgrounds: Guillermo Gómez-Peña with Anja Flower and Jacques LeFemme; Alec White and Baruch Porras-Hernandez; Paige Tighe; Annie Danger; Peter L. Stein; Trina Merry’s Art Alive Gallery; La Chica Boom, DavEnd and Craig Calderwood; Sara Kraft; Mitsu Okubo; the list goes on — and on.
It also includes a not-too-pricey VIP lounge featuring complimentary beer from the Ninkasi Brewing Company.
If you can’t be there in person, SOMArts will stream the event live on its website (at least those portions suitable for broadcast under BAVC standards), and public access station SF Commons (Comcast Channel 76, Astound Channel 30) will also broadcast. 100 Performances for the Hole Sat/4, 5:58–midnight, $12-$25 934 Brannan, SF www.somarts.org
Oscar-winning actor (for 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas), cultural curiosity (for his Superman and Elvis obsessions, tax troubles, hair, etc.), Coppola family member (Francis Ford is his uncle), meme generator, and cult icon Nicolas Cage is about to become a half-century man. And what better way to celebrate the 50th birthday of one of the most predictably unpredictable movie stars of all time than by checking out a pair of his movies?
Tomorrow (NC’s actual bday: Jan. 7), Midnites for Maniacs unspools a pair of Cage classics, starting with his breakout role as a totally tripandicular Hollywood punk mooning after the title character in 1983’s Valley Girl. This movie has it all: a killer soundtrack, terrible-amazing hair and fashions, the immortal EG Daily, and maybe the best prom scene in the 1980s teen-movie canon. We melt with you, Nic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSX4YgdKKMk
Second half of the show is the brilliantly bizarre rom-com crime thriller 1987 Raising Arizona, which is not only one of Cage’s best films, but also a top-spot contender from directors the Coen Brothers. Insert your favorite quote here … “Son, you got a panty on your head.”
Also promised: “dozens of Cage trailers!”, so prime yourself for scenes of balls-to-the-wall insanity and greatness. Here’s hoping for high-pitched hilarity from Peggy Sue Got Married (1986); Cher getting feisty in Moonstruck (1987); snakeskin perfection in Wild at Heart; TCB-ing from 30,000 feet in Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) — and a healthy showing from his 1990s action classics (1996’s The Rock, 1997’s Face/Off and Con Air). I’ll even to go bat for National Treasure (2004) if that means extra clips from Adaptation (2002) and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009). SHOOT HIM AGAIN…HIS SOUL IS STILL DANCING!
(Just let’s leave the 2006 Wicker Man remake out of it, OK?)
“Nicolas Cage’s 50th Birthday” Triple Bill Fri/3, 7:20pm, Valley Girl; 9:20pm, Raising Arizona, $12 Castro Theatre 429 Castro, SF www.midnitesformaniacs.com
While it could be argued that every day represents a new year, with each date falling exactly one year after the last, like unconscious clockwork, there’s something comforting in the ritual of observing the change in calendar year en masse. A time to take accounts, and make new goals. A time of psychic housekeeping: ridding oneself of the spiritual and mental detritus of the past, in order to make space for a future as yet undefined.
All of which is on my mind as I prepare to bang out my last Performant, at least for the time being. During the last three-and-a-half years I’ve witnessed hundreds of performances, featuring thousands of performers, in venues large and small, each one a brief, incandescent flame feeding into a bonfire of epic creativity. House concerts, punk shows, spoken word, street festivals, performance art meditations, live comedy, high drag camp, amateur wrestling competitions, robot soccer, battle rap, obscure cinema, alternative dance, home theater, and circus arts have all found a place in the Performant, proving, I hope, that just as borders geographical and psychological can be transcended, so too can artistic ones.
But, point proven, the Performant is going to take a bit of a break to focus on some other projects I’ve been neglecting. Avoiding, really. But I’ll still be out there, an ever-appreciative oddience of one, reveling in our infinity of scenes, influences, disciplines. As a parting gift, here’re a few recommendations I can make for our collective new beginning. It’s been an honor to Performant for you.
1) Godwaffle Noise Pancakes: Do you like Noise? Do you like vegan pancakes? Do you like The Lab? Duh, yes, of course you do. Usually Sundays, usually from noon-2pm, usually at The Lab, except when it’s not. By far the best-sounding brunch spot in the Mission, and no line!
2) Saturday Write Fever: It’s like a playwriting bootcamp for the broke-ass camp, this monthly event held in the café of the EXIT Theatre brings together budding monologists — writers and actors both — for an evening of spontaneous writing and seat-of-your-pants performance. Writers have 30 minutes to prepare a new piece, riffing off a common theme, and then each mini-script gets a quicky performance treatment by members of the oddience. It’s free, it’s fresh, it’s fearless, and frankly, it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.
3) The Cynic Cave: Actually, it would hardly matter what “the Cynic Cave” was, I’d have to go for its name alone. But the fact that it’s a literally underground comedy club ensconced in the basement of my fave local video store, Lost Weekend, makes it a total win. Hosted by George Chen and Kevin O’Shea, the Cave has quietly hosted some of the Bay Area’s funniest humans for just $10 a pop since 2012.
4) Boxcar Theatre’s Speakeasy: Boxcar Theatre has always had a knack for thinking outside of the (black) box, and this totally immersive, three-and-a-half hour-long performance sounds like their most enterprising yet. Like Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, the interactive show promises to be different for each individual participant, a self-directed foray into the seedy underbelly of a 1920’s Speakeasy, populated by showgirls, war veterans, blackjack dealers, and bootleggers, each of whom has a story arc which can be followed to its end, or abandoned halfway through in favor of another. In short, prepare to go a couple of times to get a real sense of what’s going on, and don’t be shy about eavesdropping. Or playing a round of roulette.
Welcome to the Starship Dental Prize. A vessel so intrepid it dares to probe the darkest, dankest folds of outer space, not to mention the incandescent snarls of surrealistic whimsy. Fish. Squonk. Celine Dion. Her stalwart crew includes a sassy computer powered by illogic (Becky Hirschfeld), a vodka-swilling ensign Anton Anton (Bryce Byerley), psychic science officer Mentoo Fractosa (Chandler White), and a pelvic-thrust obsessed captain Oliver Clozoffe (Jody Frandle). Her mission, undetermined. Her story, as yet unwritten.
The third in an ongoing series of “Exquisite Corpse” theatrical events spearheaded by members of Foul Play Productions and Stage Werx, the evening’s production, entitled Defenders of Intergalactic Donuts: They Dared to Conquer Infinity, admittedly doesn’t have much to do with donuts in the end. Scripted on the spot by oddience members who are given a choice of random props and three minutes to pen a few crucial lines of dialogue without seeing the lines that come before (except the very last), the resultant play dwells at the crossroads of blind chance and organized chaos. Or as host and “Voice of Stage Directions” Mikl-em points out in his welcome speech, it’s a “piece of art … that no one would make on purpose.” Purpose be damned, let’s play.
The Exquisite Corpse writing game was popularized by the surrealists in the early part of the 1900s, in which a word or series of words would be written on a blank page by the first player then passed on to the next, whose own contribution would follow a previously agreed upon sequence (i.e. noun adverb verb) or spring off of whatever the last line of the previous contribution was. Adapted into a theatrical format by the San Francisco Cacophony Society in the 1980s, the corpse has been recently revived down at Stage Werx as an occasional occurrence, taking on film noir and sci-fi tropes with equal verve. I’m still holding out for a musical (hint to organizers).
The first hour of the evening is one part cocktail party, one part scriptwriting boot camp, as attendees are first encouraged to mingle with the cast in order to get a bead on their personalities in order to write lines of dialogue for them. From the outrageous, androgynous intergalactic rock star Lord Lady Chameleon (Gerri Lawlor) to her estranged sister and chanteuse Camilla Chameleon (Christina Shonkwiler), to the television-obsessed Queen Vixxnord! (Dawn Corine) and her evil sidekick Professor Fritzdoctorsteinberg (Brendan Hill), each character has just enough backstory (not to mention improv training) to keep the party patter flowing along with a few choice libations and some groovy, space lounge tunage. After some chit-chat, each oddience member gets a crack at the script, and the results are predictably unpredictable.
As the actual play unfolds, part of the fun becomes trying to guess which person is responsible for penning the mort disturbed set of lines which include such gems as “I’ve got glitter in my ass-crack,” “I liked them better when they were dead,” “No tickling for you, I fear,” and “I’m feeling festive, we’re heading to planet Get-down-get-down.” Plot twists are as varied and muddled as the frantic search for the correct props becomes, but some universal truths do still manage to shine through. Rock stardom may have little to do with actual talent but much to do with seduction. Desire is a universal drive. Always look on the bright side of life (whistle, whistle). If you’ve got it, flaunt it … and if you flaunt it, make sure people are wearing sunglasses. Hiccup. Weevil. Splat.
Smuin Ballet’s The Christmas Ballet, which the late choreographer Michael Smuin premiered in 1995, has earned its spot among the myriad of Bay Area holiday entertainments. This year’s opening night at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts — performances run through Dec. 28 — was packed with a casually dressed yet festive crowd of all ages, including grandparents with their elementary school age charges. (Gratefully absent were the toddlers that flood ballet performances). It was probably the most diverse and receptive audience an evening of ballet can muster these days.
And why not. The late choreographer knew how to entertain a crowd. With this take on the holidays he created a flexible show that changes a little bit every year as new material gets added and some of it is shelved for the time being. Christmas shows Smuin at his best — a broad-based love for music, an excellent sense of how to communicate through dance, and at his not so good —an unwillingness or inability to dig below the surface. Here he offered a mostly well-grown evergreen of what the holidays represent: kitsch and grandeur, sentimentality and sentiment, conviviality and loneliness, all wrapped up in tinsel-covered package.
The ballet is divided into two parts, “Classical Christmas,” with a frontispiece of Renaissance angel musicians blowing away their heavenly songs; the after-intermission introduces “Cool Christmas” with Louis Armstrong’s inimitable reciting of ‘Twas the Night before Christmas, which runs over grade school kids’ illustrations of the poem, including one which disputes the fact that “not even a mouse” was stirring.
The first part’s highlights from great and classical music works remain problematic. These are the sections in which the music has to carry the communicative weight because the choreography too often slithers over the top of the scores. Still, to see Smuin’s men soar in flying jetés and the women kick their legs to the beginning of Bach’s Magnificat suggested what could have been.
When he let himself be guided by simplicity Smuin’s choreography often beguiles. The calm walking patterns for Veni, Veni Emmanuel that evolved into a garland dance grew out of the music’s longing. New company member Eduardo Permuy did his best to convey La Virgen Lava Panãles‘ lilting poignancy, in which nature jubilates while the virgin washes diapers. Another newish dancer, Nicole Haskins, who stood out every time she was on stage, phrased the Zither Carol every so musically.
Also lovely to watch was the gently celebratory Gloucester Wassail, which echoed folk dance traditions. Robert Dekkers’ The Bells, an intricately structured and high-spirited sextet, became a welcome addition this year.
For “Cool Christmas,” the pointe shoes came off, and everybody went to town. The post-intermission segment is filled with popular music: Willie Nelson, Irving Berlin, the Chieftains, Eartha Kitt, and Elvis Presley — where Smuin was most comfortably at home. He also had a special touch with ballads. Blue Christmas, with a pelvis-rolling and grinning Jonathan Dummar plus a bevy of teeny boppers, was on the dot. So were, on a much softer note, Erin Yarbrough and Ben Needham Wood, who turned a ribbon into a cat’s cradle as they wooed each other in Pretty Paper. Twirling his drumsticks ever more expertly, Wood built Drummer Boy into something more expressive than sheer technical expertise.
Popular music has also inspired some non-Smuin additions from previous years. Robert Sund’s jazz-based trio Winter Wonderland (Erica Chipp, Haskin and Yarbrough) still looks fresh. Val Caniparoli’s Jingle Bells Mambo was performed lustily by Aidan DeYoung, Weston Krukow, and Jonathan Powell. And Amy Seiwert’s new, full-company I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm — a romp involving headgear (among other things) — is sure to join the list of perennial favorites.
Still, there are super favorites. Santa Baby, with its oversized boa, was back, but unless the company finds another dancer of Celia Fushille’s sophistication and wit — not to speak of her legs — it might have to be shelved. Shannon Hurlburt, Dummar, and Powell tap-danced through the sad-sack Droopy Little Christmas Tree, which finally hit the dust. Hurlburt also returned in his tap shoes for Bells of Dublin, which he premiered brilliantly quite a few years ago.
Some other numbers work because of how well these dancers realize slapstick. To watch Krukow wobble on that surfboard like a country hick on a Hawaiian vacation in Christmas Island is enough to make you fall in love with every failed body builder. But perhaps the most heartwarming solo in “Cool Christmas” — because you both laugh at and want to embrace her — is Terez Dean in Seiwert’s furiously stomping, yet ever so lonely, Please Come Home for Christmas. Even if you don’t like the holidays, “The Christmas Ballet” is worth seeing. And it just might change your anti-Yule attitude to boot.
“XXmas: The Christmas Ballet, 2013 Edition” Tonight and Sat/21, 8pm (also Sat/21, 2pm); Sun/22, 2 and 7pm; Tue/24, 2pm; Dec 26-28, 8pm (also Dec 26, 2pm), $24-64 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Lam Research Theater 700 Howard, SF www.smuinballet.org
Upon reaching the fifth floor of the California Institute of Integral Studies, a wall of makeshift web diagrams asks arriving oddience members to detail what the longest amount of time they went without sleep was, and what do they tell themselves to get through stress. The average appears to be around 36 hours — which is about as long as I can boast — but no responders quite match the Guinness Book record of 449 hours held by Maureen Weston, nor even to the 60 hours that Mugwumpin, creators of performative “occurrences,” intend to stay awake in this, its last presentation of the year, Asomnia.
More of an experiment in endurance than a traditional performance marathon, Asomnia ushers in what artistic director Christopher W. White promises to be a season focused on the theme of exhaustion. A rigorous schedule of private confessionals, cognitive testing, hygiene and wellness breaks, group check-ins, and meals are interspersed with performances staged for those in attendance, as well as the time necessary to create them. Every two hours a new piece is ready to be performed for whoever has dropped by at that time, whether it’s 4pm or 4am.
The room feels especially conducive to this kind of experiment. Book shelves of philosophical, political, and artistic content line one wall; mirrors, another. A mural of jagged, abstract lines adorns the “stage” area, while a bank of windows offer a spectacular view of the skyline from dusk to dawn to dusk again. Wooden drafting tables, brightly-colored metal stools, and comfy chairs appear scattered almost randomly, and a low table laden with munchies and a fortifying tea kettle invites judicious snacking.
“We’ve been eating a lot,” performer Michelle Talgarow tells me as she gives me a tour of the space around the 30-hour mark. She’s surprisingly alert despite having just performed a medley of musical numbers under the direction of guest artist Erika Chong Shuch, one of four non-asomniancs to direct the “process-oriented performance showings,” or “POPS.” The highlight of Shuch’s piece is almost certainly the moment she places her eight-month-old son Wakes on the ground with the performers and has him “choreograph” a segment to the music of Peter Cetera. The performers seem to appreciate both its whimsy as well as the opportunity to get off their feet for a few minutes, and Wakes basks in his spotlight with the casual aplomb of a pro.
I return around the 35-hour mark and again at the 59-hour mark, when the six core performers (Talgarow, White, Ashley Rogers, El Beh, Stephanie DeMott, and Natalie Greene) present the final POPS: a “best-of” compilation of their favorite performative moments from the weekend. How they even remember what they are is impressive to me, and they range from purely playful (a segment involving sunglasses and the music of Esquivel) to an esoteric game of “Blind Man’s Bluff,” from an impromptu group dance party set to “Drinking in Spanish,” by Diego’s Umbrella, to an equally participatory mirroring exercise involving everyone in the room.
The line between spectators and spectatees, already blurred under the extreme circumstances dissolves completely at this point, the only thing continuing to separate us is amount of sleep we’ve had over the past three days. I can think of no other performance I’ve been to in recent memory where oddience members brought cookies and kittens to fortify the performers, and performers offered gracious cups of tea, hugs, and unfiltered access to their completely vulnerable, sleep-deprived psyches. Sure, ultimately the event comes off as more of a congenial scientific experiment than a cohesive work of theater, but for White, that’s precisely the point.
“Primarily we’re doing this piece as research,” he explains prior to the marathon via email. “And as part of (our) ongoing interest in integrating the audience into the process of making a show, we decided to conduct this research publically.” No word yet on how many hours of sleep each performer got to indulge in that night, but perhaps we’ll discover the results in a future piece.
Dudes! Nerds! Pedro-voters! SF Sketchfest 2014 posted its complete schedule today, unveiling over 200 shows to be held in 20 venues from Jan. 23-Feb. 9. Over the past 13 years, the fest has exploded from humble local offering to one of the most popular comedy events in the country, luring the biggest names in the biz — as well as cult comedy heroes — to town.
Tickets go on sale Sun/15 at 10am, and since SF Sketchfest is P.O.P.U.L.A.R., you won’t want to delay if something in the line-up catches your eye. (Pro-tip: though the festival does contain sketch shows, it also has music, film screenings, live recordings of pod casts, panel discussions, lots of tributes, and more.) You want guidance? Highlights? Best bets and sleeper hits? Read on!
Opening night (Jan. 23), there’ll be a tribute to the tenth anniversary of Napoleon Dynamite, with Jon “Napoleon” Heder, Efren “Pedro” Ramirez, and Diedrich “Rex” Bader in person at the Castro Theatre. Later that night, also at the Castro, Jack Black and Kyle Gass attend a celebration of all things Tenacious D, which promises “an evening of conversation, clips, and songs.” Better get it on in the party zone, if you know what I’m sayin’.
Other highlights include:
* SF Sketchfest’s tribute to Key and Peele (Jan. 25), whose Comedy Central show is provocative, smart, and hilarious (exhibit A, below)
* a “Farewell, Futurama!” (also Jan. 25) chat sesh with cast and crew members of the beloved animated show
* a Feb. 2 spotlight on HBO’s Enlightened, with Laura Dern, Mike White, Luke Wilson, and others in conversation
* a tribute to THE ALAN ARKIN with a 35th anniversary screening of The In-Laws (Feb. 6)
* a 30th anniversary screening of Revenge of the Nerds, with cast and crew in person (Feb. 8)
Plus so much more: Tim Heidecker! Allison Brie! Maya Rudolph! Amy Schumer! Comedians I’m not cool enough to know about, but you probably are! Hustle over to SF Sketchfest’s website and feast your eyes.
Breathe easy, halfling: the middle installment in Peter Jackson’s Hobbittrilogy is a huge improvement over the first film. Also new this week: Emma Thompson turns in a cranky-yet-lovable performance as the woman who wrote Mary Poppins in Saving Mr. Banks (with Tom Hanks playing Walt Disney); Liev Schreiber battles oddly familiar space monsters in The Last Days on Mars; and Tyler Perry celebrates the holidays as only he can, with A Madea Christmas. Read on for reviews and trailers.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of SmaugJust when you’d managed to wipe 2012’s unwieldy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey from your mind, here comes its sequel — and it’s actually good! Yes, it’s too long (Peter Jackson wouldn’t have it any other way); arachnophobes (and maybe small children) will have trouble with the creepy, giant-spider battle; and Orlando Bloom, reprising his Lord of the Rings role as Legolas the elf, has been CG’d to the point of looking like he’s carved out of plastic. But there’s much more to enjoy this time around, with a quicker pace (no long, drawn-out dinner parties); winning performances by Martin Freeman (Bilbo), Ian McKellan (Gandalf); and Benedict Cumberbatch (as the petulent voice of Smaug the dragon); and more shape to the quest, as the crew of dwarves seeks to reclaim their homeland, and Gandalf pokes into a deeper evil that’s starting to overtake Middle-earth. (We all know how that ends.) In addition to Cumberbatch, the cast now includes Lost‘s Evangeline Lilly as elf Tauriel, who doesn’t appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original story, but whose lady-warrior presence is a welcome one; and Luke Evans as Bard, a human poised to play a key role in defeating Smaug in next year’s trilogy-ender, There and Back Again. (2:36) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6JiCJ5x3Qw
The Last Days on Mars An eight-member crew of a multinational expedition to Mars are just wrapping up their six-month mission when they discover sign of life — well, “bacterial cell division,” albeit of a virulent strain that seems hellbent on turning anyone who comes in contact with it into violent un-dead. Hence the visiting humans are soon battling for survival, including Liev Schreiber (hero), Romola Garai (sorta-love interest), Olivia Williams (mean girl), and Elias Koteas. Though well crafted, this first feature by Irish director Ruairi Robinson (adapted by Clive Dawson from Sydney J. Bounds’ 1975 short story) can’t help but be a letdown as its menace turns out to be nothing more than transformed humans in pasty “monster” makeup lurching around grabbing the panicked, still-living specimens. You’ve seen all this before, in forms both scarier and cheesier, but either way often more memorably handled than here. (1:38) (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16MdSZH6I4o
Saving Mr. BanksHaving promised his daughters that he would make a movie of their beloved Mary Poppins books, Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) has laid polite siege to author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) for over 20 years. Now, in the early 1960s, she has finally consented to discuss the matter in Los Angeles — albeit with great reluctance, and only because royalty payments have dried up to the point where she might have to sell her London home. Bristling at being called “Pam” and everything else in this sunny SoCal and relentlessly cheery Mouse House environ, the acidic English spinster regards her creation as sacred. The least proposed changes earn her horrified dismissal, and the very notion of having Mary and company “prancing and chirping” out songs amid cartoon elements is taken as blasphemy. This clash of titans could have made for a barbed comedy with satirical elements, but god forbid this actual Disney production should get so cheeky. Instead, we get the formulaically dramatized tale of a shrew duly tamed by all-American enterprise, with flashbacks to the inevitable past traumas (involving Colin Farrell as a beloved but alcoholic ne’er-do-well father) that require healing of Travers’ wounded inner child by the magic of the Magic Kingdom. If you thought 2004’s Finding Neverland was contrived feel-good stuff, you’ll really choke on the spoons full of sugar force-fed here. (2:06) (Dennis Harvey)
For as long as I can remember, my family has spent New Year’s Day at my aunt and uncle’s house in Campbell. As we had our fill of sushi and kamaboko, watched football, and, in more recent years, entertained my little cousins, my Uncle Hiro would walk around the house with his video camera, getting everyone on tape. He would focus in on my brother and me, narrating in Japanese so I could only catch our names and how old we were that year. It was just a thing Uncle Hiro did on New Years Day. I never thought of it as recording history.
But that’s exactly what home movies are – a largely untapped source of our histories from an intimate and personal perspective. Recognizing this, the Center for Asian American Media has developed Memories to Light, an initiative that collects, digitizes, and shares the home movies of Asian American families. Advances in digital media and discussions between CAAM executive director Stephen Gong and archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger gave way to the project, which has now gained over a dozen family collections and somewhere between 30 and 50 hours of footage.
“I think Asian-American communities are becoming more relevant and more engaged and more deeply embedded in the American story and making our presence felt,” said Gong. “It’s a good time for a lot of good stories.”
Given today’s technology, it’s never been a better time to share these stories recorded on early film. Memories to Light takes donated home movies, digitizes them, and returns the original copy and a digital copy to the family. That way, the original footage doesn’t just sit in an archive and collect dust. And all it costs is the family’s willingness to share their little slice of history.
“One of the tenants of this project is not to treat these like they’re copyrighted materials that we need to monetize,” Gong explained. “That it is with a new ethos of saying that like a participatory society and culture that we can have greater effect in the culture if we do our best to make this stuff as widely accessible as possible.”
By having such an open transaction with donators and leaving the task of preserving the original film in their hands, Gong can focus on gathering, editing, and presenting collected content. CAAM’s mission to show the richness and diversity of Asian Americans, and Memories to Light achieves that by showcasing real, everyday life as important history.
“For communities of people that don’t have a sort of rich, moving image history, who have been depicted in mainstream media in stereotyped ways, articulated by someone else to someone else’s ends and needs, there is something that is amazingly liberating just by saying, ‘Let’s go right to the material that people themselves decided to shoot,’” said Gong.
The footage collected spans from as early as the 1930s all the way up to the 1970s. Though this medium is usually considered more personal than educational, there is a lot to be learned by these moments captured by various families. Mark Decena of Kontent Films, who originally got involved with Memories to Light to produce a trailer for the project, unearthed his own family’s films and had them digitized. He did not expect the onslaught of emotions that came with viewing the footage, which he ended up editing together into a film called The War Inside.
“The War Inside came about from the very implausible and ultimately ill-fated union of my Mom and Dad,” said Decena. “My mom is Japanese and my dad is Filipino. Not a common coupling, especially after Japan’s brutal imperialistic binge and World War II defeat. I always bemused that I was at war with myself by having such different racial and cultural mix.”
With a script he wrote in a day after viewing the footage, along with editing work by Blake Everheart and soundtrack by CAAM’s program manager Davin Agatep, Decena shared his film for the first time with an audience that included his entire family.
“Since it’s basically a story of a family breaking up, it was emotional for everyone,” he said. “In some ways, you could see it as an indictment of certain people, but it’s as much about the circumstances that brought them to make the choices they made.”
Decena’s film is just one form of presentation that has come out of this initiative. Another collection of footage, presented in September at the Asian Art Museum, was accompanied by live performances by DJ Deeandroid and Lady Fingaz. Given that much of this footage is silent, there are many creative options for screenings.
So when you head home for the holidays this year, ask your family about old home movies they might have hiding in a closet somewhere. Though videotapes like the ones my uncle recorded aren’t what Memories to Light is looking for, the project is currently accepting more 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8mm film to digitize and add to the collection.
Valencia Street art space struggles to retain its physical and spiritual existence
Sometimes you stumble across places that just feel like home the instant you step across the threshold. Maybe not the kind of home where you lounge around in sweatpants binging on Dynamo Donuts and Netflix, but a home that offers comfort for the spirit, where creativity and intention reign. Curiosity shop, design showcase, and artist enclave, Viracocha at 998 Valencia Street has been one such home for many, from the poets who helped build its pallet-wood walls, to the neighborhood literati who donated to and borrowed from Ourshelves, the private lending library that until very recently occupied the back of the building, to the acoustic musicians and spoken-word artists who gathered in the basement to perform and to connect, to the visual artists whose work was treated as décor first and merchandise almost as an afterthought.
One part art installation, one part community outlet, and one part ostensible retail venture, the four year-old Viracocha feels far older, thanks perhaps in part to its proximity to the venerable Artists’ Television Access, or a lingering resonance from santería supply store Botanica Yoruba, which occupied the same space for many years. Stepping inside always feels like stepping through a cool, jazz-infused looking-glass into a parallel world where life is art and art is life, and all that other stuff doesn’t matter quite as much as you thought it did. Plus, typewriters.
But it’s a brave new Valencia Street, and in matters of merchantry (some of that “other stuff” we wish didn’t matter) it’s an increasingly challenging atmosphere in which to be experimenting with idiosyncratic business models. And as many creatives-turned-commercialists have discovered, sinking all of your energies into commerce can sap those same energies from creation, and balancing the two can be a constant struggle. So it wasn’t exactly a surprise when Viracocha announced that it was raising funds in order to reorganize in the new year, a reorganization that includes proprietor Jonathan Siegel passing the baton to an as-yet unnamed group of successors, and applications for permits to legalize the heretofore “secret” performance venue below the floorboards of the retail space. Not a surprise, but still a sad shock. We like our quirky empires to remain unchanged and unperturbed by the pressures of the outside world, even when clinging onto the “old ways” can mean driving them out of existence. It’s an often unspoken conundrum, but retaining loyalty is a delicate balance too.
It began as much an experiment as anything else. The idea of a space that put the art before the consumption of it had come to Siegel years before while he lived in New York working as an actor and in the construction industry. After moving to San Francisco in 2005 he became a known denominator on the poetry scene, including as the organizer for the Poetry Mission reading series at Dalva, and as a member of the erstwhile Collaborative Arts Insurgency. And when he signed a lease on the space in 2009, it was to members of the latter that he turned for assistance in building the space up from scratch, a modern-day barnraising where a vision of community was constructed along with each new wall. A community Siegel refers to as “an orphanage for the lost creative spirit inside all of us,” where practitioners of many mediums might find a place to commune, and where patrons of same might come to discover new artists and new-to-them treasures in a non-pressured, almost anti-commercial environment.
While the future of Viracocha is still uncertain and dependent in large part on what repairs and modifications are deemed necessary by the city (ADA-compliant elevator and restroom for starters, an expense Siegel claims is manageable) and what kind of entertainment venue permits the space is able to secure in the new year. But from Siegel’s POV, he’s leaving Viracocha’s future in capable hands (“the (people) coming onboard don’t want to see the energy of the space shift into something radically different”). As for his own future, he alludes to completion of not one but four books in the works, and a reconnection with his own creativity.
“It’s time for me to let go of many things in my world and rebuild from within,” he muses via email, a sentiment which seems to apply also to Viracocha, and its current state of rebirth, and pretty apropos both for a space named for the Incan god of creation, and for the modern-day visionary who named it.
(Full disclosure: the author’s collaborative literary bike map is currently for sale at Viracocha.)
This week, we feature a pair of excellent documentaries: Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley (review here) and The Punk Singer, about riot grrrl icon Kathleen Hanna (review and interview here). Read on for short takes on this week’s new releases!
Art Gods: An Oral History of the Tower Records Art Department Bay Area filmmaker Strephon Taylor (2012’s The Complete Bob Wilkins Creature Features) turns his lens on Tower Records circa its 1980s heyday, when the hard-partying bros of the store’s in-house art department crafted displays for the hottest new album releases. Taylor, himself a veteran of the crew, gathers its founding members to reminisce, including original store artist Steve Pollutro, who made eye-catching magic using everyday supplies (posters, foam board, X-Acto knives, spray paint, etc.) and spawned an art style that invaded record stores worldwide. An odd length at just over an hour, Art Gods could have been trimmed of some of its superfluous anecdotes (a story about Pollutro’s failed attempts to enter the UK to help Tower set up its London branch drags on forever) and presented as a more fine-tuned shorter doc — or made more substantial by widening its interview pool beyond nostalgic former artists. (1:12) Balboa. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shvYNVlHMm8
Bettie Page Reveals All Mark Mori’s affectionate Bettie Page Reveals All is narrated in the form of a rambling, chuckle-punctuated interview with the late pin-up icon herself. (We never actually see her except in archival film and images.) Even die-hards who already know the story behind the legend — a rough childhood, several unsuccessful marriages, mental-health issues — will likely learn some new tidbits. (A friend recalls watching 2005’s unauthorized biopic The Notorious Bettie Page with its subject, who hollered her opinion — “Lies! Lies!” — throughout.) Associates like Hugh Hefner and Dita Von Teese drop by to praise Page’s talents and legacy, but there’s no greater proof of lasting glamour than Page’s famous photographs, which she clearly loved posing for, and never regretted, even after embracing Christianity later in life. (1:41) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClzRVlMhU2E
Out of the Furnace Scott Cooper is best-known for directing Jeff Bridges to a long-overdue Oscar in 2009 country-music yarn Crazy Heart. Perhaps that’s why his follow-up contains so many stars: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, Sam Shepard, Zoe Saldana, and Woody Harrelson. That cast is the main draw for Out of the Furnace, a glum fable of dying American dreams co-written by Cooper and Brad Inglesby. Furnace retains Crazy Heart‘s melodramatic tendencies and good ol’ boy milieu, though this time we’re deep in Pennsylvania’s Rust Belt, which manages to be even more depressing than Crazy Horse‘s honky-tonks. Cue gray skies, repeated shots of train tracks and smoke stacks, an emo banjo score, and dialogue that casually mentions that “the mill,” the only source of income for miles around, is about to close. Probably the nicest guy in town is Bale’s character, arrested early on for causing a fatal car accident thanks to his inability to turn down a drink offered by the town heavy (Dafoe). Post-prison, he discovers that his girlfriend (Saldana) has taken up with another man, and that his money-troubled Iraq-vet brother (Affleck) has been entering high-stakes pit fights. Really, this can’t end well for anyone. Adding to Out of the Furnace‘s bleak take on modern masculinity is Harrelson, stealing all his scenes with ease as a psychotically violent redneck. Mickey Knox lives! (1:56) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrGkVdL8xUA
Sweet Dreams When the all-female drum troupe at the center of Sweet Dreams performs — and we hear some of the players’ stories about their battles to emerge from the enormity of the Rwandan genocide — we fully understand why Oscar-winning editor Lisa Fruchtman and her brother, documentary director Rob Fruchtman, gravitated toward this story. Ingoma Nshya is rooted in a tradition that was once reserved for men, and is composed of the orphans, widows, wives, and offspring of both the victims and perpetrators of the genocide. Music seems to be one of the sole sources of creative expression and healing for them, until founder and theater director Kiki Katese convinces the hipster owners of Brooklyn’s Blue Marble Ice Cream to start a collective with the women to open the country’s first ice cream shop. The Fruchtmans touch on the horrors of the past but devote most of the drama to the quietly emotional as well as physically tangible issues of opening the store and actually going about making its soft-serve treats. With that focus, Sweet Dreams sometimes seems to overlook the obvious — the ever-lingering specter of violence and trauma, the unanswered questions of justice, and the women’s daily struggle to coexist — and those with a journalistic, or even musically ethnographic, mindset, will be frustrated by some of the absences, like the lack of information about the performances and music itself. That’s not to say Sweet Dreams‘ story isn’t worth telling — or relishing. (1:23) (Kimberly Chun)
