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Lee should veto Parkmerced

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Lee should veto Parkmerced

EDITORIAL Mayor Ed Lee got his start as a lawyer working on tenant issues. He understands the city’s rent laws and the shortage of affordable housing. He also knows — or ought to know — that when the city’s tenant groups are unanimously opposed to a project, elected officials who care about tenant rights should pay attention.

The Parkmerced project will be a clear test: Does he follow his activist roots, stick with the people he started with and show his independence — or side with the big out-of-town developer and allow the project to move forward?

The supervisors approved the project by the narrowest of margins, 6-5. All of the progressives voted to reject the development agreement and rezoning — and for good reason. The deal would lead to the demolition of 1,500 units of rent-controlled housing. And while the developer says it will abide by the rent laws for the newly built replacement units, that’s a shaky legal guarantee. The larger point, tenant advocates say, is that demolishing existing affordable housing is always a bad idea.

In the end, 1,500 people will have to leave the homes they’ve lived in for years — in some cases, many years. They will be offered replacement units in a high-rise — very different from the garden apartments (with, yes, gardens) that they’ve occupied. And if the developer decides that there’s more money to be made by jacking up the rents on those units, it’s a safe bet that an army of lawyers will arrive attempting to undermine the questionable guarantees now in the deal.

There’s also the problem of transportation and traffic. The project will include a new parking space for every new unit, meaning 6,000 new cars in an area already overwhelmingly congested. Since the vast majority of the units will be market-rate (the developer will provide 15 percent affordable units, under city law, which means 85 will be sold or rented to rich people) the development will transform what is now still something of a working-class neighborhood into another enclave for the wealthy.

When we talked to Mayor Lee, he was noncommittal on the deal. At the same time, he noted that the garden apartments are old and will have to be replaced at some point. We don’t dispute that there are ways to add more density at Parkmerced. But wholesale demolition of affordable housing isn’t the answer.

This deal is bad for tenants and bad for the city. Mayor Lee ought to recognize that then tenant groups opposing this have analyzed it carefully and come to an entirely reasonable conclusion.

Sup. David Chiu, the swing vote in favor of the project, did serious damage to his reputation as a progressive and lost thousands of tenant votes by siding with the developer. Lee, who insists he isn’t running in November, ought to demonstrate that he hasn’t forgotten his roots, that he listens to activists, and doesn’t simply go along with poorly conceived development projects. He should veto the development agreement and zoning changes and send this thing back to the drawing board.

Behind the all-smiles budget

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Behind the all-smiles budget

news@sfbg.com

When Mayor Ed Lee released his 2011-12 budget proposal June 1, all was sweetness and light at City Hall.

The mayor delivered the document in person, to the supervisors, in the board chambers. Sup. Carmen Chu, chair of the Budget Committee, was standing to the mayor’s right. Board President David Chiu was to his left. There was none of the imperious attitude we’d come to expect in the Gavin Newsom era — and little of the typical hostility from the board.

As Sup. David Campos, who was elected in November 2008, remarked afterward: “It’s the first time since I’ve been elected that the mayor has taken the time to come to chambers. It’s reflective of how this has been a lot more of an inclusionary process.”

Lee went even further. “This is a pretty happy time,” he said. “There are no layoffs, and instead of closing libraries we’ll be opening them.” That earned him an ovation from assembled city leaders, including mayoral candidates City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting along with District Attorney George Gascón. “I think this budget represents a lot of hope.”

It’s true that this year’s cuts won’t be as bad as the cuts over the past five years. It’s also true that the pain is spread a bit more — the police and fire departments, which Newsom, always the ambitious politician, wouldn’t touch, are taking their share of cuts.

But before everybody stands up and holds hands and sings “Kumbaya,” there’s some important perspective that’s missing here.

Over the past half-decade, San Francisco has cut roughly $1 billion out of General Fund spending. The Department of Public Health has eliminated three- quarters of the acute mental health beds. Six homeless resource centers have closed. The waiting list for a homeless family seeking shelter is between six and nine months. Muni service has been reduced and fares have been raised. Recreation centers have been closed. Library hours have been reduced.

In other words, services for the poor and middle class have been slashed below acceptable levels, year after year — and Mayor Lee’s budget doesn’t even begin to restore any of those cuts.

“We’re not ready yet to restore old cuts,” Lee told the Guardian in a June 2 interview. “It was enough for us to accomplish a pretty steady course and keep as much. Particularly with the critical nonprofits that provide services to seniors and youth and homeless shelters, we kept them as close as we could to what last year’s funding was.”

But the current level of funding is woefully inadequate. As Debbi Lerman, administrator of the Human Services Network, noted, the people who work in the nonprofits Lee was talking about haven’t had a pay raise in four years — even though the cost of living continues to rise. “Our costs have gone up with cost of inflation,” she noted.

She said the cuts over the past few years have deeply eroded services for children, homeless people, substance abuse programs, and others. “There have been significant cuts to every area of health and human services.”

And in a city with 14 billionaires and thousands more very wealthy people, Lee’s budget is distinctly lacking in significant new ways to find revenue.

 

THE GOOD NEWS

Just about everyone agrees that the budget process this year has been far better than anything anyone experienced under Newsom. “He [Mayor Lee] listened to everybody,” Lerman said. “That doesn’t mean they fixed everything. Mayor Lee fixed as much as he could.”

At his press conference announcing the release of the budget, Lee thanked Police Chief Greg Suhr for having already made significant cuts through management restructuring and for considering an additional proposed cut of $20 million.

“We want to thank you for that great sacrifice,” Lee said, addressing Suhr, who sat in front row of public benches, dressed in uniform. Lee next acknowledged that adequate funding for social services also helps public safety. “Without those services, officers on the street would have a harder job,” he said.

Lee also praised the departments of Public Health and Human Services for helping to identify $39 million in federal dollars and $16 million in state dollars, to help keep services open and the city safer.

Lee noted that San Francisco no longer has a one-year budget process and has just released its first five-year financial plan as part of its decision to go in five-year planning cycles.

“To address this, I’ve asked for shared sacrifice, ” Lee continued, adding that he recently released his long-awaited pension reform charter amendment, emphasizing that it was built through a consensus and collaborative-based approach.

Lee also said he would consider asking voters to approve what he called “a recovery sales tax” in November if Gov. Jerry Brown is unable to extend the state’s sales tax. That would bring in $60 million — but it is only on the table as a way to backfill further state budget cuts.

Lee observed that San Francisco is growing, the economy is looking brighter, and unemployment is down from more than 10 percent last January to 8.5 percent today. He plugged the America’s Cup, the city’s local hire legislation, the Department of Public Works’ apprenticeship programs, and tourism, both in terms of earmarking funding in the budget for these programs and their potential to boost city revenues.

He said his budget proposed $308 million in infrastructure investments that include enhanced disability access, rebuilding jails, and energy efficiency, and is proposing a $248 million General Obligation bond for the November ballot to reduce the street repair backlog.

“We will get these streets repaired,” he promised.

“This submission of a budget is not an end at all, it’s the beginning of the process,” he continued, going on to recognize Chu for her work getting the process rolling and thanking Budget Analyst Harvey Rose in advance. “I do know his cooperation is critical.”

And he concluded by thanking each of the supervisors. “I will continue enjoying working with you — we need to keep the city family tight and together.”

The sentiment was welcomed by supervisors. “As he said, this is the beginning of the process, and it’s an important and symbolic step” Campos said. “The budget shows that a lot of good programs have been saved. But there is still work to do.

“There are still gaps in the safety network,” he added, singling out cuts to violence-prevention programs. “It’s my hope they will be restored.”

 

THE BAD NEWS

But even if the cuts for this year are restored, the city budget is nowhere near where it ought to be. “We still had to make cuts,” Lee acknowledged.

“We did consider very seriously a whole host of revenue ideas that we had,” he said. “They were not off the agenda at all.” At the same time, he noted that state law requires a two-thirds vote for new taxes (although that threshold drops to 50 percent in presidential election years). “We decided that it’s not that they were bad ideas, but that we wouldn’t be able to sell them at this time.”

Lee praised some of the revenue ideas that have been suggested in the past year, including the alcoholic beverage fee proposal by Sup. John Avalos, which Lee called “a pretty good idea.” He said that “a year or two from now” an additional sales tax and a parcel tax (for the police or for schools and open space) might be on the agenda.

The city now has a multiyear budget process and projections are supposed to go beyond a single year. But what’s missing — and what nobody is talking about — is a long-term plan to restore critical city services to a sustainable level. That means talking — now — about tax proposals for 2012 and beyond and including those revenue streams in long-term budget planning.

Because the city parks, the public health system, the libraries, the schools, affordable housing programs, and the social safety net are in terrible condition today, the result of year after year of all-cuts budgets. And while the supervisors and the mayor wrangle over the final details, and advocates try to win back a few dollars here and a few dollars there, it’s important to recognize that this budget does nothing to fix the damage.

“We’re about $10 million short of what we need right now to keep service providers at current levels,” noted Jennifer Freidenbach, who runs the Coalition on Homelessness. “But we also need to restore the health and human services system that was slaughtered under Gavin Newsom.”

Cold comfort

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Cold comfort

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I write to you from Dot’s Diner in Jefferson Parish, La. Hedgehog is getting her knee looked at down the road, and I thought I would find me a place to sit that wasn’t the waiting room. Or a pool hall. Or bar. Or fast food joint or automotive shop. Or warehouse, thrift store, or — but only because it’s 9:30 a.m. and I ain’t the slightest bit hungry — a fried seafood shack or po-boy shop.

Jefferson’s got good eats in its own right. Crabby Jack’s is here, and at the French Canadian Quarter Festival this spring they fed me the best boudin I ever had, but at 9:30 a.m. the only way you can get a table, apparently, is if you’re an upside-down chair.

If it were 10 a.m. or even three hours later, I would have been in heaven. All’s I really required was a good strong cup a coffee and a seat, but this ain’t California or Seattle or even New Orleans. It’s the parish, as the locals call it, where you can’t exactly sit down without having a meal.

But how pretentious of them to refer to their parish as “the parish.” Don’t you think that’s pretty arrogant? Louisiana has a lot of parishes. They’re like counties everywhere else.

Whatever, I’m sure you’re more interested in what I’ve been eating San Franciscowise than Dot’s Diner’s biscuit with a fried egg on top, smothered in crawfish julie.

I will tell you: duck soup.

As always I have been on the prowl, trying to find the city’s best bowl of cold medicine and antidepressant.

It ain’t at Big Lantern here in the ‘hood, I can promise you that. Me and Hedgehog went there the last time we were in the city together, and I was fighting a cold. A fight, by the way, that I lost.

I’m human. I get sick. In fact, I get sick more than most people, being not only human but a hypochondriac. (Not that I’ve been diagnosed with hypochondria. I can just tell I have it.)

Anyway, I had wanted to show Hedgehog something special like Zuni, Delfina, or Slanted Door, but I felt too much like crap to eat anything but duck noodle soup, pea sprouts in garlic, and string beans with smoked pork.

There were dumplings, too. I forget what they were called on the dim sum menu. Some kind of “little buns,” I think. The ones that were soupy inside, they were great, but some weren’t so soupy. They had lost their juice. Not so great.

I can’t really complain about the duck soup because it wasn’t technically on the menu. Nor was it all that half bad. But the pea sprouts needed a lot of doctoring to taste like anything, and the beans with smoked pork were some of the worst things ever. About half of the beans were lifelessly old tough shriveled ones, overcooked. And the pork was like pork jerky. Very dry. Very tough. Which — granted — maybe that’s what smoked pork means in Chinese restaurants. I don’t often order it, and won’t often order it again, to be safe.

To their credit, the garlic pea sprouts and the beans and pork got better the next day for lunch, and better still the day after that, because I doctored and doctored them back to life.

The soup hit the spot, but as long as I’m healthy enough to get on BART and buses, I will be having my future duck soups in Chinatown, at Great Eastern Restaurant, thank you.

The legendary Jackson Street standby, it turns out, has a rich, flavorful dark broth with perfectly succulent roast duck and great homemade noodles. Or wontons. Or both. For $9, it’s the reigning duck noodle champion, in my book.

I would like to thank John’s Snack and Deli for being out of kimchi burritos again, or else I might never have found this out.

Oh, and Great Eastern also has crocodile soup and soft-shell turtle soup, by the way. In case you’re not sick when you go there. *

New favorite restaurant! *

GREAT EASTERN RESTAURANT

Daily: 10 a.m.–1 a.m.

649 Jackson, SF

(415) 986-5603

Beer and wine

MC/V

Stopping foreclosure secrecy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4
Stopping foreclosure secrecy

OPINION Thanks to a shadowy corporate mortgage recording system, millions of Californians have no idea who owns their home loans.

As we suffer through this recession triggered by reckless subprime lending and Wall Street speculation, our recovery is being held back in part because people are struggling with foreclosures and underwater home values — exacerbated by a lack of mortgage transparency.

The mess created by Wall Street is causing wrongful foreclosures and wreaking havoc. Real people — often lower-income families and communities of color — are enduring the devastation of foreclosure processes because of the excesses of bankers and investment firms.

In San Francisco, we’ve seen the highest number of foreclosures in the Ingleside-Excelsior, Bayview, Tenderloin, and Mission neighborhoods — many of the places where home values have fallen most. Whether or not you face foreclosure, we all pay for this crisis by losing vital tax revenue that could go to support our schools, protect our neighborhoods, or build our economy.

When Wall Street realized it could make billions by bundling mortgages and selling them to investors, banks and financial institutions needed a way around recording the ownership and assignment of home loans. What the banks and Wall Street came up with is a shadowy, industry-backed reporting system called MERS — mortgage electronic reporting system.

Simply stated, subprime and predatory lending allowed banks to create millions of questionable mortgages, Wall Street bundled these risky mortgages together to sell to investors, and MERS made it quicker and easier to conduct these risky transactions with impunity.

As San Francisco’s assessor-recorder and a financial advocate for low-income communities, we have seen harmful industry practices wreak havoc on families trying to stay in their homes — whether by use of MERS that clouds property titles, wrongful foreclosures, or denied loan modifications.

The state Legislature considered several good foreclosure bills this year. One proposal placed a $20,000 fee on financial institutions attempting a foreclosure. This would have discouraged foreclosure and helped defray costs to communities if the process went ahead.

State Sen. Mark Leno( D-SF) and Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) offered legislation stopping banks from proceeding with foreclosures when a homeowner is attempting to modify his or her mortgage.

Assessor-Recorder Ting is sponsoring a bill requiring that all mortgage assignments and transfers be recorded with counties, thus taking this process out of the murky MERS system.

Unfortunately, the banks and their armies of lawyers and lobbyists have been able to stymie these reforms.

We must continue to fight these wealthy, powerful lobbies so that the long road to recovery in our housing markets and communities can begin. We cannot let Sacramento forget it was financial institutions that fueled the housing bubble, crashed the stock market, and sent shockwaves throughout the economy with their reckless practices.

Few states have been ravaged by subprime lending and the meltdown of mortgage-backed securities the way California has, so we must continue reforming the practices of banks and Wall Street that have thrown our economy and communities into turmoil.

Phil Ting is San Francisco assessor-recorder. Kevin Stein works with the California Reinvestment Coalition.

Father’s day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Father’s day

arts@sfbg.com

FILM The central figures in Mike Mills’ Beginners — a grown son and his elderly, newly out father — share a relationship rarely featured on screen. But however unique the story seems, it’s based on real events in the writer-director’s life.

“I thought my dad coming out was the most awesome thing that ever happened in my life,” Mills (2005’s Thumbsucker) reflects. “What happened between us after he came out — it was the biggest story I had to tell. I like it when filmmakers make really personal stories.”

Even though Beginners is based on his life, Mills made sure the film would have a broader appeal. When he appealed to Ewan McGregor — eventually cast as Oliver, the son — Mills stressed the importance of expanding on the personal.

“The first thing I said to Ewan when I wrote a letter, I was like, ‘This has to be more than personal. It has to reach out to people. You can’t feel like you have to mimic or anything like that.'<0x2009>”

For McGregor, the truth behind the script was part of what attracted him to the project. Although he was committed to playing Oliver and not Mills himself, the actor also wanted to connect with the reality of the film.

“I thought it was a wonderful story,” McGregor says. “I wanted to know more and more about the real story. I think that’s always really important. That’s what makes you identify and commit to something wholeheartedly — believing in the story you’re telling.”

Veteran actor Christopher Plummer stars opposite McGregor as Hal, who comes out at 75 and proceeds to make the best of his twilight years. Again, Mills wanted the character of Hal to be distinct from his actual father, though he was charmed by the similarities between the two men.

“It was a real natural fit, I’ve got to say,” Mills admits. “Christopher got so many of the key points, like the humor.”

Indeed, all the actors — including costars Mélanie Laurent and Goran Visnjic — brought humor to their roles, helping Beginners achieve the bittersweet tone Mills intended. The film maintains a whimsical style, alternating between moments of joy and tragedy throughout. But on either end of the spectrum, it feels organic, something McGregor credits to the positive energy of the set.

“It was absolutely the best environment to create good acting, to create good work for us,” he notes. “It very much felt like we had this space — and the peace and quiet and the time — to live those scenes and to make them feel very, very real.”

Although McGregor says he doesn’t pick films based on their budgets, he does acknowledge the benefits of working on a smaller, independent movie.

“On a big film, there are maybe 500 people on the set — you don’t know who anyone is,” he explains. “All the direction is given through earpieces to everybody, and you can feel very lonely. But on a film like this, you’re just part of the process. It’s lovely, and it really feels wonderful.”

Mills is pleased with the finished product, which is one of the all-too-infrequent depictions of a happy older gay man. He believes that his father and the film-loving friends he met with weekly would have appreciated the portrayal. But he also notes the need for more.

“I’m very honored to get to treat a gay character in a movie hopefully with respect and curiosity,” Mills says. “The thing that would be more interesting would be a movie not just with an older gay man, but by an older gay man. We need more stories obviously through gay eyes, not just a straight guy telling a story about a gay guy.” *

BEGINNERS opens Fri/10 in San Francisco.

 

Ladies first

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Ladies first

arts@sfbg.com

FILM The phenomenon of scene-stealing Japanese divas is all too familiar to this wannabe, having grown up in the clutches of unrepentantly demanding, real-life J-power matrons — the kind who will ply you with unsolicited advice, gifts, and edibles while smilingly applying the thumbscrews of sweet guile, pile-driving guilt, and sheer gambatte.

Where to begin when it comes to the overwhelming careers of the five femme forces of nature rhapsodized in “Japanese Divas” at the Pacific Film Archive? Inspired by, though not identical to, this spring’s series at the Film Forum in New York City, “Japanese Divas” flips the focus, with an elegantly loaded bow and a smile, away from the Toshiros, Chishus, and the other male stars of Japan’s cinematic classics and toward idealized Yasujiro Ozu beauty Setsuko Hara; the crossover face of midcentury Japanese film, Michiko Kyo; Kenji Mizoguchi favorite Kinuyo Tanaka; and Naruse muse Hideko Takamine. And though this incarnation of “Japanese Divas” can often seem like the Setsuko Hara show with its attention to Ozu’s works, other formidable females show themselves fully capable of grabbing viewers’ attention.

One compelling player is Tanaka, Mizoguchi’s once-go-to-gal for her open-faced humanity, unforgettable in the revered The Life of Oharu (1952) and the wrenching Sansho the Bailiff (1954) depicting noble women on their way down to the lower depths. At 24, but looking barely legal with her tremulous baby face and minuscule chin, Tanaka’s remarkable at the center of the 1933 Ozu silent Dragnet Girl as the titular shady lady straddling the straight world of good office wenches and fiery dance-hall molls.

In this slice of hard-boiled gangster tropes speckled with eloquent imagery, Tanaka’s fearsome, politically savvy Tokiko rules the school, be it boxing circles or the academy of 20th-century hard knocks, and plays all the angles. A prickly intelligence and overpowering will are clearly ping-ponging behind that dolly plate-face, as Tokiko fights for her heavily guylinered boy-toy Jyoji (Joji Oka) against challengers, both femme and fuzz, then undertakes the ultimate surrender. This dragnet girl is the whip-smart, indomitable harbinger of modern Japanese womanhood, come the hell of battle, the humility of occupation, and the struggles of survival while tugged by the tide of change.

In Mizoguchi’s biggest crowd-pleaser, and arguable masterpiece, 1953 ghost story Ugetsu, Tanaka crumbles, now the angelic, self-sacrificing wife and mother Miyagi, seemingly lacerated by stark branches in one of the filmmaker’s most strikingly composed images. The moment somehow foreshadows Tanaka’s professional break with Mizoguchi after he tried to stop Nikkatsu studio from hiring her as a director (her first film, Love Letter, was released the same year as Ugetsu).

Rivalry apparently knows few earthly bounds, and in Ugetsu, Tanaka found her worthy seductive, spectral counterpart in Machiko Kyo’s ethereal Lady Wakasa. Kyo — who stars in that other J-cinematic monument Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) as well as Kon Ichikawa’s now-tough-to-see Odd Obsession (1959) — strides a quivering line between untouchable delicacy and teasing desire, her half-moon eyes flaring through an immaculate alien-aristocratic visage. Kyo’s almost unrecognizable as ’60s-cute, jewel-polishing, distrusted wife-in-a-box in The Face of Another (1966), Hiroshi Teshigahara’s mad, mod, fantastic-looking postwar treatise on disfiguring trauma and Japan’s obsession with the mask and identity.

My current favorite diva of the bunch: the bravely smiling, long-suffering Hideko Takamine, epicenter of Mikio Naruse’s wonderful drama, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960). Also the star of Keisuke Kinoshita’s Technicolor Carmen Comes Home (1951) and his well-loved Twenty-Four Eyes (1954), Takamine’s put-upon, stubbornly independent hostess Mama is beautifully filled out with almost imperceptible shading — from the slightly arch, whiny tone she assumes when drunk and forced to consort with a heartless customer to the guarded polonaise of politeness she undergoes while sitting down with a rival hostess. Here, as Naruse matter-of-factly breaks down the economics of the biz, Takamine is less Douglas Sirk’s Jane Wyman than Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Hanna Schygulla, colored in less lurid hues: a post-World War II heartbreaker all too familiar with the disaster attendant with hitching one’s hopes and fortunes to men. 

JAPANESE DIVAS

June 17–Aug. 20, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, SF

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’

arts@sfbg.com

FILM There are “documentaries” that use staged or fictive elements to fib, and others toward some greater truth. Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte is of the second type. You might well question just how much of this “docu-essay” simply occurred on camera, or occurred when/how it did for the camera. But that really doesn’t matter, because the results have their own enigmatic, lyrical truth, one that might not have been arrived at by pure observation. In some ways, this is a better movie about life, existence, and the possibility of God than The Tree of Life. At the very least, it’s shorter.

It might help to know — though the film itself won’t tell you — that Frammartino drew inspiration from the purported theories of ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, and mystic Pythagoras. (Purported because his sect was highly secretive and no writings survive.) He believed in transmigration of the soul, a.k.a. metempsychosis — souls reincarnating from human to animal to various elements, endlessly replenishing nature.

Pythagoras and followers moved to a Greek-émigré outpost in the southern Italian region of Calabria to start their own religious community, one whose extreme exclusivity led to their persecution and demise — though the unquestionably brilliant leader’s ideas would live on not just in mathematics but as an influence on later quasi-religious “secret societies” like Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism.

There, now you have some CliffsNotes on a movie that itself chooses to wash over the viewer almost as neutrally as the stationary landscape studies of James Benning. Void of recorded music and nearly all speech (the few overheard bits go untranslated), Frammartino’s film — shot in and around the medieval Calabrian village of Serra San Bruno — is part neorealist nod and part metaphysical rapture. (No Harold Camping reference intended.) It is gorgeous, and occasionally goofy. Just like the deity one might pick to be Up There.

The narrative, so to speak, first focuses on a wizened goat herder (Giuseppe Fuda) who creakily drives his flock into the grazing hills. The world might be getting more crowded every minute, humanity overbearing on nature till hairy predators invade suburbs — but there are still some places people are mostly leaving. Metaphorical tumbleweeds might as well be tumbling through the streets of his depleted town. Coughing himself to sleep at night in his spare room — three chairs used as shelves, suggesting company he’ll never have — he’s an exemplar of a vanishing lifestyle, one seemingly little-changed since the town’s founding a millennium ago.

Indeed local human society appears less diverse, sturdy, and communicative than that of our protagonist’s goats, which fascinate. The young ones are cute as heck; the adults handsome and dignified. A kid whose birth we observe slides out of mom splay-legged, looking a bit like the “baby” in Eraserhead (1977), making a sound like a squeak toy — then later panicking at being left behind in a gully. Guarding the goat-pen, the herder’s dog freaks at a passing annual costumed parade of Passion Play reenactors. When the gate is broken, goats scatter surreally around town, including the quarters of their dying keeper. (This is where the “documentary” claim seems least probable, as the fabulous imagery can hardly have been an accident.)

Le Quattro Volte — the four times, meaning four soul migrations — goes on from there, transferring its focus from man to kid to a tree felled for another annual ritual. (Yes, that’s just three incarnations; Frammatino flummoxed me on the fourth.) It’s a frequently ravishing abstract, sonically as well as visually — collar-bells meld with church bells, and even the buzzing of flies seems part-of-the-natural-order beneficent.

Let’s face it: there has never been an unpretentious movie made by a filmmaker named Michelangelo. But this one merits that weight. It begins and ends with the area residents’ traditional creation of coal in a smoking pile of lumber that looks like a half-buried meteor. Point taken: in the end, we’re all compost recycled back to the air, earth, and sea. *

LE QUATTRO VOLTE opens Fri/10 in Bay Area theaters.

Truly, deeply, sweetly

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Truly, deeply, sweetly

arts@sfbg.com

LIGHTS OUT That randiest of Mission District corners, 17th and Capp streets, has long been a hotbed for DIY music, art, and the occasional can-blasting block party. Now San Francisco’s best-known indie video blogcast, Yours Truly (yourstru.ly) was taking it over. The Truly team — Caleb Moriarty, Nate Chan, Will Abramson, Babak Khoshnoud — recently invited me to a live shoot at a warehouse near the corner.

Lifelong music fans, the YT foursome creates intimate videos, following videographer Chan’s vision, of musicians performing songs in unusual spaces sliced with live interview material. Inspired by blogs like La Blogotheque and gorilla vs. bear, YT wanted to create a similar platform based in San Francisco. Besides local artists, YT films bands as they come through on tour; more recently, they’ve flown out to shoots, like one with Tame Impala in a Santa Cruz forest and one in Los Angeles, where they filmed Wavves.

“It’s very personal,” explains Chan about how they choose bands to film. “Only the four of us decide.” (Luckily, their sensibilities line up nicely with the great Indie Consensus: tUnE-YArDs, Little Dragon, Tyler, the Creator, Kurt Vile … ) Chan elaborates that they’re drawn to bands with strong pop sensibilities that perform well in a live setting. “The other challenge is finding the right space for it. We want the right mood.”

I can’t figure out which warehouse the shoot is taking place in because the correct door has lost its numbers, so I call Chan. I’m quickly escorted down into the basement of the Sub. I’ve been to shows here before, but those have always been on the second floor. Downstairs, there’s a wood-shop with off-white walls, piles of wood chippings, elaborate electric saws, a cabbie’s top-light on an electric organ advertising a strip joint, doors that lead nowhere, and a chorus of fellow onlookers.

Soon Claire Boucher, the force behind Montreal synth-pop project Grimes, and her crew arrive. Introductions all around, and then Boucher begins humming, unnecessarily apologizes, and goes into even more elaborate warm-up scales. Her look is striking — the limits of beauty are one of Grimes’ musical themes, and here they carry over. Boucher wears a plaid-collar dress-shirt under a taupe thrift-store sweater whose previous owner appears to be Santa, so she literally swims in it. It’s pocked with stickers, some sporting Lykke Li’s name, whom Grimes is touring with. (The band will be performing later that night at the Regency Ballroom.) Her bangs are bright blonde and the rest of her hair is dark black and pulled into a bun.

Within the wood-shop, Chan and Moriarty start rearranging Quikrete cement bags into tables, pile crates to make stools, and turn a red-painted door into a table-top that Boucher sets her keyboard on. Next, Chan unlocks a briefcase and pulls out his DSLR camera.

Boucher launches into a new song, still unnamed, that will be featured on Grimes’ next release. After the track, she waves her hands in circular motions above her head and declares she was nervous. Chan suggests they record “Vanessa,” Grimes’ hypnotizing track that has garnered her a large following. They do three takes of “Vanessa,” then Boucher announces to the rapt room that she’s more used to performing at dance parties. I think we were all simply too awe-struck to know how to react, but in response we burst into applause. (Clapping can be dancing.)

“It has to be really unobtrusive,” Moriarty says of making Yours Truly videos. “You’re trying to ask the artist how it feels and what they want to do over again. We’re trying to build the shoot around Claire but not trying to direct her.” Close-ups of fingers or lips, interview clips that capture an ephemeral moment or a bit of personality, and stripped-down versions of artists’ songs.

“It has to be very natural,” he adds. “I think people feel that when they watch the videos, they’re in the room.”

By letting the audience feel as close to the musician as I actually was during the shoot, the videos create an immediacy for fans. “Everything we create is purely passion-based,” Chan said. We love every band — and we want them to look good.”

 

Tour de tasting room

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Tour de tasting room

virginia@sfbg.com

For establishing intimacy and focus, there’s nothing like sitting down to a meal and tasting with a vintner when you want to catch a glimpse of the vision and inspiration behind their wines. I recently had the chance to do just that with several local winemakers in Napa and Sonoma — and don’t worry, I took good notes.

KAPCSÁNDY WINES

Kapcsándy may not be the easiest name to pronounce, but take note if you love complex, balanced wines. Though there is a blessedly steady (if slow), trend toward lower alcohol, old world-style wines in the Wine Country lately, this Yountville vineyard — helmed by Lou Kapcsándy, his wife Roberta, and their son Louis Jr. — has been making these types of pours since 2000.

Lou, with winemaker Rob Lawson, lets Napa’s terroir fully express itself while staying close to old world principles — a philosophy that is apparent in his acclaimed State Lane Vineyard cabernet sauvignon. A Hungarian native, Lou’s roots manifest in his wines and his rustic tasting room centered around an 1800s wooden wine press from Hungary. I found the 2009 rosé (a cab-merlot blend with touch of petit verdot and cab franc) a unique beauty: more full and dense than many rosés yet managing to retain a crisp acidity. Roberta’s Reserve is a memorable wine, an homage to Pomerol and Bordeaux. The 2007 and 2008 are both understandably lauded vintages of Roberta’s, but I found the 2009, young as it is, to hold intriguing promise. It’s already drinking beautifully, with hints of cassis, blossoms, cherries, and earthy cocoa.

1001 State, Yountville. (707) 948-3100, www.kapcsandywines.com

RAYMOND VINEYARDS

The transformations at Raymond Vineyards have to be seen to be believed. Although it has been a historic St. Helena vineyard since 1970 known primarily for its cabernet, it’s not the vineyard’s rich heritage — or even its wines — that stand out most today: it’s the changes wrought to its grounds by Boisset Family Estates, a global company with Burgundy roots that now owns the vineyard.

Delightfully eccentric Jean-Charles Boisset is the spirit behind the new era at Raymond. “I love personally the word[s] sexy and voluptuous,” he tells me after we’ve descended into the Crystal Cellar (where cabernet tastings go for $25), a room that has been lined with steel to give the effect of being inside a wine vat. An explosion of Baccarat crystal shimmers off its walls, vats, and giant mirrors glinting around us. Encased vintage crystal decanters are inscribed with wine descriptors — in lipstick.

From the moment you glimpse the interactive art exhibits on the lawn, you know something unusual is afoot here. A “Theatre of Nature” self-guided tour of the grounds — which include a pool and midcentury house — is in the works, as is a fashion show on the Crystal Cellar’s catwalk.

We were the first to taste in the vineyard’s newly unveiled guest room (now available for group tastings and private parties). It housed gold and white leather couches covered in fur throws, a stuffed leopard standing guard in the corner, a dining table set with black and gold plates featuring each of the seven deadly sins (perhaps prophetically, I got “gluttony”). The pièce de résistance: a giant flat-screen rimmed in gold — of course! — playing Jackson 5 music videos.

I’ve never had another wine tasting experience like it. Boisset is currently working on a red room (in “all red — and velvet”) and releasing two bubblies, including a rosé, to taste there this summer.

All this flair naturally leaves one wondering: are the wines any good? In fact, the new French pours are far better than their predecessors, even if the new Raymond is about the one-of-a-kind tasting experience.

Boisset’s JCB wines do have their pleasures. They’re playful and more balanced than many Napa wines, the No. 81 Chardonnay and No. 7 pinot noir allowing for nice acidity. He and Raymond winemaker Stephanie Putnam teamed up to make the No. 1 cabernet, which reflects both Napa and French sensibilities.

Boisset clearly leads in innovation, and he has a passion to bring California wines to the world. The man’s on a mission to make wine hip, approachable, and, yes, sexy.

849 Zinfandel, St. Helena. (707) 963-3141, www.raymondvineyards.com

AMAPOLA CREEK

Richard Arrowood — a Sonoma winemaker for 45 years — and wife Alis are charmers. Over lunch at Wayfare Tavern, we spent hours talking and tasting wines from his young Glen Ellen boutique winery Amapola Creek.

This is Arrowood’s passion project. He produces wines typifying the robust grapes of the Mayacamas Mountains located near the town of Sonoma. After decades of creating wines for major players like Chateau St. Jean and his own Arrowood Winery, he’s having fun with small batches — his current operation produces a maximum of 3,000 cases annually.

Though lush, Arrowood’s 2008 zinfandel — and original 2005 zin — shows restraint, with enough tannins and acidity to keep it food-friendly (ideal paired with Wayfare’s medium-rare steak). The zin benefits from a rare asset: 115-year-old vines located in a tiny lot at neighboring Monte Rosso Vineyards. His 2007 syrah and cabernet sauvignon are bold and black, fruit-heavy yet balanced with tannins and delicate spice accents (the cab is CCOF certified organic). He’s also working on a grenache-syrah blend, so watch for more Amapola Creek wines on the way.

(707) 938-3783, www.amapolacreek.com 

Subscribe to Virginia’s twice monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot (www.theperfectspotsf.com).

 

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article was incorrectly edited to say Miller thought Raymond Vineyard’s current batch of wines were inferior to those produced when the vineyard was family-run; she actually thinks the reverse is true. The Guardian regrets the error, and promises to drink less wine while editing our contributing writers.

Return to Barbary Lane

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Return to Barbary Lane

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER The mainstream apotheosis of once-outré subculture is always a complex matter. Even the good-natured, good-time stories in Armistead Maupin’s original “Tales of the City” San Francisco Chronicle serial had a subversively political edge to them in 1976 (which made their publication in the paper beginning that year both remarkable and fraught with behind-the-scenes battles between writer and editorial). So it is a little weird, if also apt, to see a full-fledged musical adaptation of Maupin’s classic Tales of the City — the first and eponymous title in what became an eight-book series — getting its Broadway-bound debut at American Conservatory Theater.

Although inevitably speaking less to today’s San Francisco than to an idealized conception of a glorious recent past, this Tales is still recognizably homegrown (despite all the out-of-town talent), affirming, lightly risqué, and overall slickly accomplished. Minor weak points aside, there’s plenty of vitality throughout a generally shrewd production, whose creative team includes playwright Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) and music group Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears and John Garden (providing the eclectic music and occasionally awkward but mostly inspired lyrics for Whitty’s admirably clear, compact book).

The results are nostalgic but never blinkered. Even the shopworn feel of Haight Ashbury and disco kitsch proves less than annoying thanks to Maupin’s set of palpable and sympathetic characters (animated by a strong cast), his nicely entangling storyline, and the show’s engaging, even rousing period-savvy score. Whether it will play in Peoria — or New York City for that matter — who knows. But for the audience at last week’s opening in San Francisco, it solidly earned the love fest it probably would have gotten either way.

Cleveland-reared but Bay-curious Mary Ann Singleton (a formidable Betsy Wolfe) arrives in 1976 San Francisco, a city celebrating its own version of the “bi-sexi-centennial” year with a burgeoning alternative culture mixing remnants of Summer of Love hippiedom with mirror-ball dance floors and gay bathhouses. Fleeing her oppressive hometown and shedding gradually her straight-laced upbringing, Mary Ann makes her new home at 28 Barbary Lane, a Russian Hill apartment complex (a skyward Victorian framework flanked by great locks of greenery in Douglas W. Schmidt’s choice scenic design) overseen by the benignly extravagant matron and marijuana maven Anna Madrigal (played with serene assurance by Broadway’s golden-throated Judy Kaye). She soon joins the other tenants in a loose alternative “family” (with all attendant subplots) centered on the mysterious Anna, who we learn started out even more remotely from her present self than did Mary Ann.

The numerous other characters come equally well realized. As Mary Ann’s out gay neighbor Michael “Mouse” Tolliver, for instance, Wesley Taylor is as believably down-to-earth as he is charming (Michael’s loving coming-out letter to his Anita Bryant–loving parents is just one of the show’s dramatic highlights). Broadway veteran Richard Poe, meanwhile, delivers Edgar Halcyon — the stuffy businessman grasping for a last chance at life under Anna’s amorous tutelage — with commanding aplomb and a nicely understated vulnerability. Many other fine turns abound in the large cast, amid some fine musical numbers — although an otherwise effective power ballad from secret Anna daughter Mona (the excellent Mary Birdsong) is somewhat marred by the unintentionally comic title “Seeds and Stems.” And the final “No Apologies” number, while good, is stretched thin with the duty of wrapping up various subplots.

If nostalgia reigns here, the story till has real roots that make themselves gently felt throughout. In 1976, Maupin was a young transplant from North Carolina, via the Navy, and newly, enthusiastically out as a gay man and budding author. Capturing the gig with the Chronicle, he serialized what would become his first novel in a rush of five installments per week under the column title “Tales of the City.” He wrote close to the ground (and the Chronicle society desk), delivering what was at times almost as much reportage as fiction, peppering his hastily composed plotlines and characters with anecdotes from the city he was coming to know intimately. Of course, the ground he worked was then heaving in a cultural and political earthquake that set San Francisco ever further apart from the rest of the country. Tales of the City, in its various incarnations, is still a no-apologies love letter home. 

TALES OF THE CITY

Through July 10

Check website for dates and times, $35–$98

American Conservatory Theater

405 Geary, SF

(415) 749-2228

www.act-sf.org

A fountain of Penn

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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A fountain of Penn

When Arthur Penn died at 88 last September, obituaries listing career highlights reinforced the notion that he was one of those directors — others include Mike Nichols and George Roy Hill — who were BFDs in the 1960s and ’70s yet rapidly faded from prominence thereafter. In Penn’s case the decline was especially steep, particularly given that during arguably the single most roiling period of change in mainstream American filmmaking, he was at the top of the heap in terms of prestige and thematic adventure.

Did he simply lose interest? Did some significant flops dishearten him? Whatever the cause, post-1976 his occasional films — he was never very prolific — became those of any competent journeyman whose projects seemingly picked him rather than vice versa. (Particularly dismaying was 1981 “turbulent ’60s” drama Four Friends, in which he reduced that era of his own greatest impact to stereotype-ridden soap opera.) After the respectable 1996 TV movie Inside, about apartheid, he never directed another feature.

The Pacific Film Archive’s June retrospective is titled “Arthur Penn: A Liberal Helping.” That moniker pays tribute to his lefty conscience, yet in another sense this assortment isn’t so liberal: there’s nothing here dating from after the 1976 Bicentennial Year, when both he made his last identifiably personal film and saw it widely trashed. (That would be The Missouri Breaks, a Jack Nicholson-Marlon Brando revisionist western that deserved better than it got but was doomed to ridicule by one of Brando’s deliberately bizarre later performances. Now, of course, that’s its major attraction.)

What we’ve got here is an extraordinary run: encompassing 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, one of those movies that changed the movies in general; 1969’s counterculture pulse-taking Alice’s Restaurant; Little Big Man, the big-noise historical black-comedy literary adaptation (along with Nichols’ Catch-22) of 1970; and 1962’s The Miracle Worker, a joltingly good translation of the play he directed on Broadway. Even his commercial failures were exceptionally interesting, from 1958 film debut The Left Handed Gun (Paul Newman as Gore Vidal’s neurotic Billy the Kid) to 1965’s Mickey One (a dazzling, pretentious expressionist nightmare with Warren Beatty at its bewildered center) and 1975’s Night Moves (private eye Gene Hackman wading into a morass of Florida Keys corruption).

But there was a blot even during those glory days. In the mid-1960s the country was in thrall to civil rights struggles, and them “Hollywood liberals” duly responded. Penn’s 1966 The Chase was arguably the worst, most artificial “prestige” effort to deal with the issue this side of Otto Preminger’s 1967 Hurry Sundown, which humiliated Jane Fonda even more. (It has a scene in which she tries to arouse probably-gay Southern tycoon husband Michael Caine by fellating his saxophone.)

Hopes were high for a while, though. Adapting The Chase, Horton Foote’s 1952 Broadway failure about an escaped con settling a score with a Texas sheriff was no less than literary lioness Lillian Hellman, penning her first (and as it turned out, last) screenplay since being blacklisted as an alleged commie threat.

Everybody was excited about their involvement in the prestigious project, packed as it was with high-profile talent on and off-screen. (Besides Brando’s sheriff, Robert Redford’s fugitive, and Fonda as his pining ex-wife, the cast included E.G. Marshall, Angie Dickinson, Janice Rule, Miriam Hopkins, Robert Duvall, and James Fox.) Penn wanted to prove he could direct a large-scale commercial picture; Fonda to break away from sex-kitten roles; Redford to establish himself as a movie star; etc. All were thrilled about working with the exalted Brando, who badly needed a hit. He also strongly identified with the (initial) script’s potent commentary on civil rights struggles.

Like Foote before her, Hellman envisioned a taut, intimate drama about small-town tensions boiling over during one long night of drunkenness, bigotry, and violence. But this was, above all, a “Sam Spiegel Production.” And the notoriously egomaniacal, controlling, duplicitous producer (one colleague called him “a corkscrew … very effective … but twisted and bent”), hungry for more Oscar gold after a major roll encompassing The African Queen (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), kept pressing her to make it “larger.” He eventually brought other writers in to further tart things up.

As detailed in James Robert Parish’s book Fiasco: A History of Hollywood’s Iconic Flops, the steadily cheapening rewrites continued daily even after shooting commenced. Morale sank, with Brando the most conspicuous malcontent. (One scene he remained enthused about was his sheriff being badly beaten by local bigots — onscreen it’s as if the sleepwalking actor suddenly wakes up for a couple vivid minutes.) Penn clashed with the old-school cinematographer he hadn’t chosen. Adding insult to injury, Spiegel managed to exclude the director from the editorial process, insisting that the film be cut in London or Los Angeles while fully aware that Penn was stuck in New York City on a Broadway assignment.

The result was crude, inauthentic (it was shot in SoCal), stagey-looking, with variably laughable Texas accents and barn-door-broad sexual innuendos. Aiming for importance in the worst way imaginable, it instead recalls the lurid finger-waggling Southsploitation of such later non-triumphs as Shanty Tramp (1967), The Klansman (1974), Scum of the Earth (1963), Mandingo (1975), and (more recently) Hounddog (2007), albeit on a more grandiose scale. Embarrassingly, this movie about Southern prejudice and injustice kept any people of color waaaay in the background: its lone “noble Negro” was played by Joel Fluellen, billed 21st.

Reviews were scathing (“witless and preposterous drivel,” “a phony, tasteless movie”) and the expensive project tanked commercially as well. It also turned Spiegel’s luck for keeps: all his subsequent films were ambitious disappointments. Penn recovered, and then some — next stop, Bonnie and Clyde — but one suspects that he (or Foote, or Hellman, or Brando) never quite got over being so callously undermined and pushed around. For the next decade, at least, he made sure he’d never be in that kind of compromised position again.

ARTHUR PENN: A LIBERAL HELPING

June 10–29, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

Wanderlust

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Wanderlust

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE In the sunlit studio at 499 Alabama St., Jessica Swanson affixed her blonde wig atop loose pin curls to rehearse a scene from Joe Goode’s new work, The Rambler, premiering at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Friday, June 10. She recited a line about how freedom skips a generation as Goode, clutching a cup of coffee, closed his eyes to listen. Then meticulously, word-by-word, he adjusted the script, recording each edit on his open laptop. The rigor continued to clarify every movement and tune for Swanson, who plays a character left behind by a certain rambler.

“We started very simply with the peripatetic impulse to roam in a general way, and then I became interested in what it means for the person who is attached,” Goode said. “The rambler is a romantic figure, particularly in American culture, the wanderer and seeker. So we’ve been asking questions on both ends — about being the rebel and being left.” In addition, his team explored the redemptive quality of moving forward, even without a clear direction, versus staying still. “Dancing is also that — not really about going anywhere, but about movement, feeling the body and its ability to be alive and move.”

Joining forces with Goode, puppeteer Basil Twist created a photographic lens with curtains that will serve as a moving frame to zoom in and scope out, following the action onstage. In the role of scenic designer, Twist provides possibilities for Goode to amplify certain aspects of the production with the aperture. In a rehearsal three weeks prior to the premiere, Swanson also manipulated a life-size puppet of Twist’s making, although its presence in The Rambler is still to be determined.

“We always have about 100 pieces of material and end up using about 20, and decisions really can’t happen until the end when we have all the variables,” Goode explained. Continuing to direct each detail, Goode demonstrated precise and dramatic gestures as Swanson translated the choreography for the puppet. She grasped the molded hand with her human one, skillfully performing for two characters simultaneously. Alongside the puppets, The Rambler also features an original score composed by Jesse Olsen Bay, lighting design by Jack Carpenter, and costumes by Wendy Sparks.

Goode constantly edits his work even after performances begin. “My pieces look very different three years after opening. For me, nothing is fixed,” he said. “I’m not interested in having masterworks that can be caught and frozen in the Louvre.”

The impulse to update and stay current permeates his attitude about legacy as well. “I feel at this point in my career, I want to codify that technique and find some ways to disseminate it. I’m not interested in having my works performed by people who didn’t originally make them, say 25 years from now. I’m more interested in passing along a technique of how to approach work, build it, and keep art-making an exciting pastime. Sharing that journey and discovery is a real service to provide to the world.”

His technique entails taking an idea’s temperature and acknowledging a personal perspective, then approaching the results like a collision, juxtaposing stories and ideas that don’t necessarily go together to render new possibilities.

Now in its 25th year, Joe Goode Performance Group enjoys its new Alabama Street home and dedicated facility. “One of the reasons for having my own space is that I feel in San Francisco we are a little bit bereft of international conversation about dance theater and interdisciplinary art-making. I really want to do a lot of exchange and present an opportunity for people to come, talk about, and show their work — particularly people from out of the country,” Goode said.

“I’d also like to present some kind of a platform series where more established artists can curate and mentor a younger artist and present them while trying to explain their work and why he or she is attracted to it,” he continued. “Again, it’s something you’ll see a lot in Europe — artists curating series — and I think it’s an important thing to do.”

Furthermore, Goode acknowledges the potential for installation work in the vast new space. With impossibly high ceilings, the building can be transformed to accommodate a variety of installations and sets, also of increasing interest to the choreographer: “The proscenium assumes that we’re the professional and you’re the person who gives us money. The separation of feeling and the distance takes away some of the volition of the viewer. When you think about installation work, you have to get involved. You have to make decisions and discover on your own — and then it’s much more personal.”

Mining human terrain to develop his work, Goode champions going deeply into tactile, embodied, and sensual moments. He considers the practice especially relevant in a society that tends toward thinking and technology. “I’m really beginning to understand after so many years my own values about making folk art and the simple connection of delving into material that people can understand,” he said. “I do want to start beating the drum very loudly for this kind of work — an alternative approach that really values the human experience, especially in our troubled times.”

For Goode, making art is a sort of survival technique for living in a world that’s dangerous, threatening, and bewildering. “Its a way of locating myself and understanding where I am in a given time — and hopefully providing others with a kind of perspective.”

THE RAMBLER

Fri/10–Sat/11 and June 16–18, 8 p.m.;

Sun/12, 7 p.m., $19–$49

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Novellus Theater

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.joegoode.org

 

Don Pisto’s

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Don Pisto’s

DINE Not all restaurants have mantras, but Don Pisto’s must be “our kitchen is small.” It’s what we heard over and over from our server. Actually, we didn’t hear her; we just read her lips as best we could. When Don Pisto’s starts to fill up — and, being snug, it fills up quickly — it becomes as noisy a restaurant as I’ve been in. If you’ve ever stood near the end of a runway as a fully loaded 747 roared into the sky over your head, you’ll have some idea of the decibels, which reach such levels as to become a fourth dimension. I was deafened. Maybe that was a mercy.

Food chic has migrated outside, to trucks, in the past few years, so Don Pisto’s (which opened late in 2009) represents a countertrend of sorts. It’s a food truck, or at least the personality of a food truck, implanted into a handsome old building of exposed brick walls. From its trio of bordello-red lights along the sidewalk to its nicely burnished wooden tables and chairs and its youthful crowd, it’s about as visually appealing a place as could be. All it needs is a Mute button. (Food-truck chic, incidentally, strikes me as an odd development in the senescent years of petroleum, but it does suggest the profound American attachment between eating and motor vehicles. Fifty years ago, people were thrilled to drive to McDonald’s; now the restaurant drives to them.)

Considering the size of the kitchen, which is very much on display at the rear of the space and not at all big (especially considering that there is a semi-subterranean private dining room to go with the main one), the food is both electrifyingly good and reasonably priced. Part of the magic lies in menu brevity; on offer are about a half-dozen or so taco plates, a comparable number of house specialties, a smattering of seafood dishes, and a couple of sides. All of it fits on one side of a small card. (The other side holds the equally to-the-point drinks list: a few beers, a few wines, a margarita, a sangría made with açai berry juice.)

The kitchen’s marquee item is the hamburguesa ($9), and it’s possibly the most intense hamburger experience I’ve ever had. It’s not enhanced with cheese or swaddled within a fancy, heavily buttered bun. But the meat is “marinated” with bacon and onions, and bacon largely seems to mean pork fat, while marinated means permeated. The beefiness of the burger does survive the presence of these other formidable players, but they are mingled in a way that transforms them all. The result is something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s possible you could get a burger this intense from a street truck or cart, but it would be from one that was unusually conscientious and not in a hurry. If you were served this burger at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, you would probably think it was well worth the $30 they would probably charge you.

At least two other items on the menu rival the hamburguesa for memorable verve. One is the platter of mussels ($13) simmered in white wine then stuffed with crumblings of house-made chorizo. The sausage brought out the mussels’ meatiness, while the toast spears were useful in sopping up the broth, mostly white wine and cilantro enlivened by the tasty chorizo.

The other is the Mexican sashimi ($11), flaps of tombo tuna laid out in a chain on a long, narrow platter and scattered with rounds of serrano chile, red-onion slivers, minced scallion, and cilantro, and finished with lime juice and soy sauce. The only minus is that you don’t get any bread to mop up the sauce. (On the other hand, you do get endless baskets of tortilla chips, along with an addictive tomatillo salsa, but the chips are thick and more than usually useless for sopping.)

The tacos are sized the way tacos should be sized: they’re more than bites or nibbles, but they don’t become unwieldy behemoths that spill half their contents like wet paper sacks when you pick them up. Each plate holds two tortillas, made from proper masa (not wheat flour), about three inches in diameter, and laid flat. You get to fold them yourself. Of the available fillings, I would say the carnitas ($8) — with onions, cilantro, and arbol salsa — is exceptional, with ropes of juicy meat just slightly crisped at the edges. We were also offered an unlisted vegetarian option ($6) of rice, pinto beans, cheese, and a smear of guacamole. It was commendable, though as a partier it wasn’t quite up to the standard of the carnitas. But a little diffidence isn’t going to drag down a party like the one at Don Pisto’s.

DON PISTO’S

Dinner: Tues.–Sun., 5:30 p.m.–12:30 a.m.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

510 Union, SF

(415) 395-0939

www.donpistos.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Deafeningly loud

Wheelchair accessible; bathrooms on lower level

 

Around the bay, around the world

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Around the bay, around the world

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE “When one door closes, another opens” is the kind of cliché that drives you batty when you’ve been fired, or your lover has literally showed you the door. But once in a while even clichés prove their right to exist. Take the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, which last year faced homelessness when Caltrans requisitioned the Palace of Fine Arts’ parking lot for the duration of the Doyle Drive reconstruction. With poor access to MUNI and no parking lot, EDF had no choice but to start a frantic search for another venue. The crisis challenged them to rethink a format that has worked for them since 1989 — potentially very risky, because, to quote another cliché: “Don’t mess with success.”

With a need to move from one temporary shelter to another, EDF took the opportunity to reshape its offerings in a way that might yet prove beneficial to both audiences and performers.

For one group of dancers, however, this year’s EDF is a homecoming. For the first time in more than 200 years, dancers and musicians from the Rumsen Ohlone Tribe will perform on their own land. Decimated by disease and dispersed because of persecution and discrimination, most live in a diaspora in their own country. But they did not, as popular history and the federal government would have it, die out; the tribe is 2,000 members strong. Many, including tribal chief Tony Cerda have settled in the Pomona area. But their ancestors are buried below what is now Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

On Friday, June 3, in the presence of tribal dancers and musicians, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee presented Cerda with the EDF’s annual Malonga Casquelourd Lifetime Achievement Award. The homecoming festivities continue on June 18, when a half-dozen other California tribes join the Ohlones for an all-day “California Indian Big Time Gathering” at Yerba Buena Gardens.

Two other aspects of this year’s program deserve special attention. June 11 and 12, eight companies will perform at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley for the first time. For dancers used to showing their work in community halls, stepping onto a generous professional stage (and in front of a potential audience of 2,000) will be both a challenge and a delight. In January, EDF held its auditions at Zellerbach to an enthusiastic response from the primarily East Bay crowd. The word clearly had gotten out about how much fun these auditions are. In previous years at the Palace, the events regularly sold out.

The Zellerbach lineup aims to offer a similarly broad perspective of world dance. The eight companies will present taiko and Bharatanatyam contextualizing each other; African music and dance as practiced in Benin and Ghana; ancient belly dancing with a modern twist; and theatrically appropriate rituals from the Philippines and Bali. It also includes a barefoot version of flamenco, dances from a multicultural Veracruz, and, to top off the evening, a premiere for 100 celebrating Tahitian culture.

This year’s other innovation relates to performances June 19, 25, and 26 at YBCA’s Forum, where audience members will have the opportunity to enter the world of these dances. It makes sense. Culturally-rooted dance is integral to a community’s sense of well-being. It enhances milestones — courting, funerals, the changing of seasons, coming-of-age ceremonies, and thanksgiving practices.

These dances are not primarily meant to entertain — although of course they do — and many are participatory. When divorced from their contexts and put on a proscenium stage, something is inevitably lost. The Forum performances will restore some of the communal aspect of world dance. Each program offers a different quartet of companies that will perform a short piece, then invite the audience to join them in one aspect of their practice. You can choose among Balinese, Polish, square, Filipino, capoeira or African dance.

Or how about a piece of poppy seed cake served on a sword?

SAN FRANCISCO ETHNIC DANCE FESTIVAL

Through July 3, $18–$58

Various venues

www.sfethnicdancefestival.org

 

Stage Listings

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

THEATER

OPENING

Wish We Were Here New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $20-32. Previews Thurs/9, 8pm. Opens Fri/10, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 25. Slacker meets genie in this Michael Phillis comedy.

BAY AREA

Metamorphosis Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Previews Fri/10-Sat/11 and June 15, 8pm; Sun/12, 2pm; Tues/14, 7pm. Opens June 16, 8pm. Runs Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through July 17. Aurora Theatre Company performs a terrifying yet comic adaptation of Kafka’s classic by David Farr and Gísli Örn Gardarsson.

 

ONGOING

All Atheists Are Muslim Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Runs Sun, 7pm. Through July 10. Zahra Noorbakhsh returns with her timely comedy.

Assassins Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.roltheatre.com. $20-36. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 25. Ray of Light Theatre performs the Sondheim musical.

*Blue Man Group Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor, SF; www.tickets.shnsf.com. $50-200. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 19. Jaw-slackening feats of circus skill combine with elaborate otherworldly percussion, subtle fresh-off-the-spaceship clowning, and of course lots of blue body paint in the updated version of the long-running now internationally strewn multi-group Blue Man Group. Mutatis mutandis, it’s a two decades–old formula. But its driving, eyeball-popping musical spectacle and wry, deft way with mass culture send-ups and (albeit rather pushy) audience participation can’t help but entertain. (Avila)

Fighting Mac! Thick House Theatre, 1695 18th St, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.therhino.org. $15-30. Opens Fri/10, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 19. Theatre Rhinoceros performs John Fisher’s play about real-life queer British general Hector MacDonald.

“Fury Factory 2011” Various venues and prices; www.brownpapertickets.com. Through July 12. Over 30 Bay Area and national companies participate in this bi-annual theater festival.

*Little Shop of Horrors Boxcar Theatre Playhouse. 505 Natoma; www.boxcartheatre.org. $20-50. Tues-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 26. From the moment the irritable Mr. Mushnik (Alex Shafer) chases his temp clerk (Amy Lizardo) out the lobby door and onto the street for the opening number, it’s clear that Boxcar Theatre’s production of Little Shop of Horrors is going to be unique. Boasting an energetic cast, an ingenious set, a few updated lyrics, and a marvelously menacing man-eating plant, Little Shop is engaging enough to distract from the somewhat awkwardly-mixed wireless mikes, and the fact that the doo-wop trio (Nikki Arias, Lauren Spencer, and Kelly Sanchez), though each individually blessed with awesome pipes, don’t always vocally blend well together. But they play their streetwise characters to a tough and tender T, while the awkwardly schlubby Seymour Kleborn (John R. Lewis) and his battered muse Audrey (Bryn Laux) tend Seymour’s mysterious botanical discovery and their burgeoning love affair with real sweetness. Everyone’s favorite badass dentist is played to sadistic perfection by Kevin Clarke, who rolls up Natoma Street on an actual motorcycle, while the able chorus morphs from skid row bums to cynical ad execs without missing a musical beat. As usual, Boxcar Theatre’s design team is a strong one, particularly in the case of puppet designers Greg Frisbee and Thomas John, whose trio of Audrey Jrs. are superbly executed. (Gluckstern)

Much Ado About Lebowski Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.sfindie.com. $25. Fri-Sun, 8pm. Through June 28. SF IndieFest and the Primitive Screwheads perform a Shakespeare-inflected take on the Coen Brothers’ classic film.

Nobody Move Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, Golden Gate; 626-2787, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-35. Thurs/9-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 3pm. Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo present a play based on the novel by Denis Johnson.

The Pride New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 10. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs the West Coast premiere of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s love-triangle time warp drama.

Reborning SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter; 677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org. Wed/8, 7pm; Thurs/9-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat/11, 3pm). Though emphatically fictional, Zayd Dohrn’s play Reborning, currently receiving its world premiere at the SF Playhouse, provides an intriguing introduction to a decidedly fringe occupation. That of reborning: the art of crafting photo-realistic doll children commissioned by collectors, and sometimes by grieving parents. The play opens with an act of creation, as Kelly (Lauren English) tidies up a closed eye with a sculptor’s blade while a joint burns in the ashtray beside her. Enter Lorri Holt as Emily, a crisp, efficient businesswoman, and a client, come to check on the progress of her “baby” Eva. Things start to go South when Emily suggests some modifications and Kelly’s own obsession with the project eventually spirals out of control. Amiable foil, Alexander Alioto as Kelly’s boyfriend Daizy, exudes eager, golden retriever-like loyalty, but as Emily coolly observes, has “nothing to offer someone who is drowning.” All three actors are top-notch and do a fine job processing thoroughly uncomfortable moments, and the crack design team set the stage and mood precisely. Unfortunately the script itself skews towards melodrama and certain themes (dildo-design, drug abuse, “the dumpster darling”) imbue Reborning with an almost seedy, Jerry Springer vibe that seems inconsistent with director Josh Costello’s strictly straightforward approach to the charged material. (Gluckstern)

Risk is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival EXIT on Taylor, 227 Taylor; (800) 838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. Free. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 25. Cutting Ball Theater closes its 11th season with a festival of experimental plays, including works by Eugenie Chan, Rob Melrose, and Annie Elias.

The Stops New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $24-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 25. New Conservatory Theater Center presents a musical comedy set in San Francisco.

A Streetcar Named Desire Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 25. Actors Theatre of San Francisco presents the Tennessee Williams tale.

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 31. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of the Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

BAY AREA

Care of Trees Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $17-26. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 26. E. Hunter Spreen’s Care of Trees, which is receiving an inventively bold world premiere production in Shotgun’s capable hands is at once ambitious yet unsatisfying. The basic plot — “girl meets boy then turns into a tree &ldots; sort of” — is a quirky premise full of untapped potential. With so many possible interpretations of Georgia’s (Liz Sklar) unique predicament, the one that seems most predominant is an unwitting critique of the banality of the self-realization movement. “If I don’t do &ldots; what I see as right, then I’ll be lost to myself,” she tells her understandably frustrated husband Travis (Patrick Russell), as she abruptly shuts off her empathy-meter and bids him to do the same. During isolated pockets of dramatic tension, Georgia is stabbed in an altercation with a tree-hugger, suffers a series of violent seizures, is shuttled off to a battery of clueless doctors, and granted an audience with a Peruvian shaman, yet the underlying significance of actually turning into a tree, is barely explored, certainly never understood. Sklar and Russell turn in standout performances as the forest-crossed lovers, and the canopy of Nina Ball’s inventive set soars, but overall this Tree could stand to develop some stronger roots. (Gluckstern)

Distracted 529 South Second St, San Jose; (408) 295-4200, www.cltc.org. $15-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 19. City Lights Theater Company of San Jose presents a drama written by Lisa Loomer and directed by Lisa Mallette.

Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $32-53. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also June 16, 1pm; Sat/11 and June 25, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7:30pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 26. Marin Theatre Company performs Albee’s most divisive play, an erotic thriller-cum-comic allegory.

Let Me Down Easy Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $17-73. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 26. Anna Deavere Smith performs her latest solo show.

Open Central Stage, 5221 Central, Richmond; 1-800-838-3006, www.raggedwing.org. $20-35. Thurs/9-Sat/11, 8pm. Ragged Wing Ensemble performs Amy Sass’s world-premiere play, inspired by the story of Bluebeard.

[title of show] TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $24-42. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 26. TheatreWorks performs a new musical about musicals by Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen.

*Welcome Home, Julie Sutter Marion E. Greene Black Box Theater, 531 19th St, Oakl; www.theatrefirst.com. $10-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 19. On her first day back from Iraq, African American Marine, mother, and amputee Jenny Sutter (a pensive, quietly affecting Omoze Idehenre) sits in Beckett-like stasis at a bus depot operated by a wound-up cockroach-crazed attendant (Joe Estlack), until a chatty middle-aged woman named Louise (Nancy Carlin), recovering from addiction to everything, convinces her to come to Slab City. The off-the-grid settlement of semi-permanent campers and kooks on the desert edge of Los Angeles turns out to have once been a Marine base, much to the dismay of traumatized and anguished Jenny, who can’t work up the courage to answer the cell phone calls from her mother and children, let alone return to them. A physically handicapped internet-certified preacher (Brett David Williams) meanwhile takes it upon himself to help Jenny, with assistance from sometime girlfriend and recidivist Louise and a local soi-disant shrink (Karol Strempke). They throw a public coming-home ceremony for the cast-off vet. It’s Slab City’s socially awkward and pugnacious jewelry maker Donald (a sharp Jon Tracy) who challenges the militarism and religious pabulum in this enterprise, even as he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the deeply wounded Jenny. Nevertheless, playwright Julie Marie Myatt’s involving story (smoothly and engagingly directed for TheatreFIRST by Domenique Lozano) carries a real if not quite heavy-handed spiritual dimension, peppered with traditional gospel tunes (heard in Johnny cash recordings during scene transitions but echoed by cast members at other times) and undergirded by doubting Jenny’s unconscious quest for signs of a seemingly absent Christian god. What she finds is a community of equally messed up but compassionate souls, and that’s enough. (Avila)

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Dance Continuum SF Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri-Sun, 8pm. $20. The dance-theater company performs their fifth annual concert, Darkness Before Light, featuring three premieres and two repertory works.

Garrett + Moulton Productions ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat-Sun, 2pm (also Sun, 7pm). $24-30. Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton join forces to co-choreograph the new dance theater work The Experience of Flight in Dreams.

Joe Goode Performance Group Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Novellus Theater, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.joegoode.org. Fri/10-Sat/11 and June 16-18, 8pm; Sun/12, 7pm. $19-49. The acclaimed choreographer presents a world premiere work about a restless soul.

“The Legend of Hedgehog Boy” San Francisco LGBT Center, 1800 Market, SF; www.renecapone.com. Sat, 7:30pm. $12. Author René Capone reads from his graphic novel in a staged, multi-media performance.

Mary Carbonara Dances Kunst-Stoff Arts, 1 Grove, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed-Sat, 8pm. $20. The world premiere What Does It Feel Like to Kill Someone? addresses acts of violence in the contemporary world.

BAY AREA

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph, Berk; (415) 474-3914, www.worldartswest.org. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. $18-58. The 33rd annual festival continues with its second of five weekends of performances. Performers include Gadung Katsuri Balinese Dance and Music, Shabnam Dance Company, African Heritage Ensemble, and more. 

 

Rep Clock

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Schedules are for Wed/8–Tues/14 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

BALBOA 3620 Balboa, SF; www.balboamovies.com. $20. “Opera, Ballet, and Shakespeare in Cinema:” Coppelia, performed by Bolshoi Ballet, Sat-Sun, 10am; June 15, 7:30.

BRAVA 2989 24th St, SF; www.qwocmap.org. Free. “Queer Women of Color Film Festival,” featuring five different screening programs, panel discussions, parties, and more, Fri, 7:30; Sat, 1; Sun, 2.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. Regular programming $7.50-10. “70mm Festival:” Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Wed-Fri, 2, 5, 8; Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962), Sat-Sun, 2, 7.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $10.25. The Double Hour (Capotondi, 2010), call for dates and times. The First Grader (Chadwick, 2010), call for dates and times. Queen to Play (Bottaro, 2009), call for dates and times. 13 Assassins (Miike, 2010), call for dates and times.

FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; www.lntsf.com. $10. “Asian Movie Madness: Jet Li Now and Then” •Clash (Le, 2009), and Iron Fan and Magic Sword (Chan, 1971), Thurs, call for times.

LUMIERE 1572 California, SF; www.contractorsroutine.com. $8-10.50. Contractor’s Routine (Tsapayev, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Music and Nostalgia:” Roxie Hart (Wellman, 1942), Fri, 6.

MISSION CULTURAL CENTER FOR LATINO ARTS 2969 Mission, SF; www.answercoalition.org. $5-10. South of the Border (Stone, 2009), Thurs, 7. With a report back on Cuba by Gloria La Riva.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “The Cult of the Kuchars:” Sins of the Fleshapoids (Mike Kuchar, 1965), Fri, 7; The Devil’s Cleavage (George Kuchar, 1973), Sat, 6; Burlesk King (Chiongio, 1999), Sat, 8:35. “Arthur Penn: A Liberal Helping:” The Left Handed Gun (1958), Fri, 9; The Miracle Worker (1962), Sun, 5:30; Mickey One (1965), Sun, 7:30.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. Wayne’s World (Spheeris, 1992), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:20. House (Obayashi, 1977), Thurs, 7:15, 9:15. Kuroneko (Shindo, 1968), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:25 (also Sat, 2, 4:15). Mars Attacks! (Burton, 1996), Sun-Mon, 7:15, 9:30. Live music with the California Jug Band Association, Sun, noon-5. This event, $5. The Cockettes (Weber and Weissman, 2002), June 14-15, 7:15, 9:30 (also June 15, 2).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “Another Hole in the Head Film Festival,” through June 16. Horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films; visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule.

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF; www.patagoniarising.com. $10. Patagonia Rising (Lilla, 2011), Wed, 8. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Dirty Diaries,” 12 short erotic films by Swedish women directors, Thurs and Sat, 7:30.

Film Listings

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

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD

The eighth Another Hole in the Head Film Festival runs through June 17 at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., SF. For tickets ($11) and complete schedule, visit www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

*Beginners See “Father’s Day.” (1:44) Embarcadero.

Bride Flight Who doesn’t love a sweeping Dutch period piece? Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight is pure melodrama soup, enough to give even the most devout arthouse-goer the bloats. Emigrating from post-World War II Holland to New Zealand with two gal pals, the sweetly staid Ada (Karina Smulders) falls for smarm-ball Frank (Waldemar Torenstra, the Dutchman’s James Franco) and kind of joins the mile high club to the behest of her conscience. The women arrive with emotional baggage and carry-ons of the uterine kind. As the harem adjusts to the country mores of the Highlands, Frank tries a poke at all of them in a series of sex scenes more moldy than smoldery. This Flight, set to a plodding score and stuffy mise-en-scene, never quite leaves the runway. Not to mention the whole picture, pale as a corpse, resembles one of those old-timey photographs of your great grandma’s wedding. These kinds of pastoral romances ought to be put out to, well, pasture. (2:10) Clay, Shattuck. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer A girl has an adventurous summer in this live-action family film adapted from the best-selling book. (1:31) Shattuck.

My Heart is an Idiot Although My Heart is an Idiot is billed as a documentary about love, it fails to wade in at any depth. Instead, it focuses on the routine personal issues its subject, Davy Rothbart (editor-publisher of Found magazine), has with his own past and present romances. The only person mystified by his troubled relationships, though, is Davy. You want to palm your forehead and mumble “duh” throughout much of the film, but therein lies, perhaps, its one saving grace; Davy is almost miraculously endearing as a tragic romantic cast by himself as the protagonist of his own epic love story. Is this self-indulgent? Yes. Is he naive? Yes. Does he look kinda pathetic? Absolutely. Though it’s hard not to empathize with and even quietly champion someone who thoroughly wants to believe in true love (even if he doesn’t seem to know what that means), it’s also ultimately hard to really care. (1:34) Roxie. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*Le Quattro Volte See “Wheel in the Sky Keeps on Turnin’.” (1:28) Lumiere, Shattuck.

Submarine Coming-of-age tale about a 15-year-old who becomes a little too interested in the sex life of his parents. (1:37)

Super 8 They’re heeeere. (1:52) California, Four Star, Presidio.

ONGOING

*L’Amour Fou Pierre Thoretton’s documentary L’amour fou opens with two clips of men bidding farewell. The first, from 2002, is of the French-Algerian couturier Yves Saint Laurent announcing his retirement in a moving and emotional speech worthy of his favorite writer Marcel Proust. The second is of Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s longtime business partner and former lover, eulogizing his departed friend at the designer’s memorial service six years later. Thoretton’s film is suffused with goodbyes, many tender and candid, some portentous and rehearsed. To be sure, L’amour fou is a touching portrait of the powerful and tempestuous bond between Saint Laurent and Bergé, a bond that lasted close to five decades and resulted in one of the great empires of 20th century fashion. But it is also, alongside David Teboud’s two 2002 YSL documentaries, another entry in the hagiography of Saint Laurent, one cannily steered by Bergé as much as by Thoretton. Well-spoken and charming, Bergé still comes off as the punchy entrepreneurial foil to Saint Laurent’s dazzling but fragile genius. He can be both hyperbolic (praising Saint Laurent’s gifts) but also forthcoming (discussing the designer’s demons). Former muses Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux are also interviewed, but this is clearly Bergé’s show. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

*Bill Cunningham New York To say that Bill Cunningham, the 82-year old New York Times photographer, has made documenting how New Yorkers dress his life’s work would be an understatement. To be sure, Cunningham’s two decades-old Sunday Times columns — “On the Street,” which tracks street-fashion, and “Evening Hours,” which covers the charity gala circuit — are about the clothes. And, my, what clothes they are. But Cunningham is a sartorial anthropologist, and his pictures always tell the bigger story behind the changing hemlines, which socialite wore what designer, or the latest trend in footwear. Whether tracking the near-infinite variations of a particular hue, a sudden bumper-crop of cropped blazers, or the fanciful leaps of well-heeled pedestrians dodging February slush puddles, Cunningham’s talent lies in his ability to recognize fleeting moments of beauty, creativity, humor, and joy. That last quality courses through Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’ captivating and moving portrait of a man whose reticence and personal asceticism are proportional to his total devotion to documenting what Harold Koda, chief curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes in the film as “ordinary people going about their lives, dressed in fascinating ways.” (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

*Blank City “No one was doing what they were trained to do” — key to the explosion in Super-8 movie-making in late ’70s and mid-’80s New York City, according to John Lurie, star of 1984’s Stranger Than Paradise. Filling in the blanks of a burnt-out city-turned-artistic playground, musicians like Lurie and Jim Jarmusch made films, and artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Kern plopped themselves in front of the camera or behind it. Those grainy artifacts were populated by performers oozing with character and charisma, à la Steve Buscemi and Debbie Harry, while combos that ran the generational gamut, from Patti Smith to the Contortions to Sonic Youth, provided the soundtracks as well as the vivid onstage visuals. French filmmaker Celine Danhier does the noble work of trying to encapsulate and couple the disparate No Wave and Transgressive cinemas under the umbrella of shared geography — the squatter-friendly, pre-Times Square-cleanup New York — though organizationally and conceptually Blank City has a tough time surmounting flaws like choppy chronology and uneven allotments of screen time. The No Wave years get short shrift — you’re yearning to see more of the actual films. Should these two movements be paired in the first place — and where does the wildly successful 1983 hip-hop document Wild Style fall (and why isn’t the same year’s Style Wars included)? Danhier fails to make convincing connections, though the snippets of interviews with provocateurs like Amos Poe and Lydia Lunch almost make up for it (who knew, say, that late Dreamlander Cookie Mueller was Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s dealer, as John Waters gossips?), and snippets of movies such as the vibrant Downtown 81 (1981) transmit the scene’s energy — loud, clear, and cacophonous. (1:35) Shattuck. (Chun)

*Bridesmaids For anyone burned out on bad romantic comedies, Bridesmaids can teach you how to love again. This film is an answer to those who have lamented the lack of strong female roles in comedy, of good vehicles for Saturday Night Live cast members, of an appropriate showcase for Melissa McCarthy. The hilarious but grounded Kristen Wiig stars as Annie, whose best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is getting hitched. Financially and romantically unstable, Annie tries to throw herself into her maid of honor duties — all while competing with the far more refined Helen (Rose Byrne). Bridesmaids is one of the best comedies in recent memory, treating its relatable female characters with sympathy. It’s also damn funny from start to finish, which is more than can be said for most of the comedies Hollywood continues to churn out. Here’s your choice: let Bridesmaids work its charm on you, or never allow yourself to complain about an Adam Sandler flick again. (2:04) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Cave of Forgotten Dreams The latest documentary from Werner Herzog once again goes where no filmmaker — or many human beings, for that matter — has gone before: the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, a heavily-guarded cavern in Southern France containing the oldest prehistoric artwork on record. Access is highly restricted, but Herzog’s 3D study is surely the next best thing to an in-person visit. The eerie beauty of the works leads to a typically Herzog-ian quest to learn more about the primitive culture that produced the paintings; as usual, Herzog’s experts have their own quirks (like a circus performer-turned-scientist), and the director’s own wry narration is peppered with random pop culture references and existential ponderings. It’s all interwoven with footage of crude yet beautiful renderings of horses and rhinos, calcified cave-bear skulls, and other time-capsule peeks at life tens of thousands of years ago. The end result is awe-inspiring. (1:35) SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*The Double Hour Slovenian hotel maid Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport) and security guard Guido (Filippo Timi) are two lonely people in the Italian city of Turin. They find one another (via a speed-dating service) and things are seriously looking up for the fledgling couple when calamity strikes. This first feature by music video director Giuseppe Capotondi takes a spare, somber approach to a screenplay (by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, and Stefano Sardo) that strikingly keeps raising, then resisting genre categorization. Suffice it to say their story goes from lonely-hearts romance to violent thriller, ghost story, criminal intrigue, and yet more. It doesn’t all work seamlessly, but such narrative unpredictability is so rare at the movies these days that The Double Hour is worth seeing simply for the satisfying feeling of never being sure where it’s headed. (1:35) Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Everything Must Go Just skirting the edge of sentimentality and banality, Everything Must Go aims to do justice by its source material: Raymond Carver’s rueful, characteristically spare short story, “Why Don’t You Dance?,” from the 1988 collection Where I’m Calling From. And it mostly succeeds with some restraint from its director-writer Dan Rush, who mainly helmed commercials in the past. Everything Must Go gropes toward a cinematic search for meaning for the Willy Lomans on both sides of the camera — it’s been a while since Will Ferrell attempted to stretch beyond selling a joke, albeit often extended ones about masculinity, and go further as an actor than 2006’s Stranger Than Fiction. The focus here turns to the despairing, voyeuristic whiskey drinker of Carver’s highly-charged short story, fills in the blanks that the writer always carefully threaded into his work, and essentially pushes him down a crevasse into the worst day of his life: Ferrell’s Nick has been fired and his wife has left him, changing the locks, putting a hold on all his bank accounts, and depositing his worldly possessions on the lawn of their house. Nick’s car has been reclaimed, his neighbors are miffed that he’s sleeping on his lawn, the cops are doing drive-bys, and he’s fallen off the wagon. His only reprieve, says his sponsor Frank (Michael Pena), is to pretend to hold a yard sale; his only help, a neighborhood boy Kenny who’s searching for a father figure (Christopher Jordan Wallace, who played his dad Notorious B.I.G. as a child in 2009’s Notorious) and the new neighbor across the street (Rebecca Hall). Though Rush expands the characters way beyond the narrow, brilliant scope of Carver’s original narrative, the urge to stay with those fallible people — as well as the details of their life and the way suburban detritus defines them, even as those possessions are forcibly stripped away — remains. It makes for an interesting animal of a dramedy, though in Everything Must Go‘s search for bright spots and moments of hope, it’s nowhere near as raw, uncompromising, and tautly loaded as Carver’s work can be. (1:36) Piedmont, SF Center. (Chun)

Fast Five There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in Fast Five, in addition to a much demolition derby-style crunch — instances that stretch credulity and simultaneously trigger a chuckle at the OTT fantasy of the entire enterprise. Two unarmed men chained to the ceiling kick their way out of a torture cell, jump favela rooftops to freedom with nary a bullet wound in sight, and, in the movie’s smash-’em-up tour de force, use a bank vault as a hulking pair of not-so-fuzzy dice to pulverize an unsuspecting Rio de Janeiro. Not for nothing is rapper Ludacris attached to this franchise — his name says it all (why not go further than his simple closing track, director Justin Lin, now designated the keeper of Fast flame, and have him providing the rap-eratic score/running commentary throughout?) In this installment, shady hero Dominic (Vin Diesel) needs busting out of jail — check, thanks to undercover-cop-turned-pal Brian (Paul Walker) and Dominic’s sis Mia (Jordana Brewster). Time to go on the lam in Brazil and to bring bossa nova culture down to level of thieving L.A. gearheads, as the gearhead threesome assemble their dream team of thieves to undertake a last big heist that will set ’em up for life. Still, despite the predictable pseudo-twists — can’t we all see the bromance-bonding between testosteroni boys Diesel and Dwayne Johnson coming from miles of blacktop away? — there’s enough genre fun, stunt driving marvels, and action choreography here (Lin, who made his name in ambitious indies like 2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow, has developed a knack for harnessing/shooting the seeming chaos) — to please fans looking for a bigger, louder kick. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The First Grader After a government announcement offering free elementary school educations to all Kenyans, an elderly man, Maruge (Oliver Litondo), shuffles to the nearest rural classroom in search of reading lessons. Though school officials (and parents, miffed that the man would take a child’s place in the already overcrowded system) protest, open-minded head teacher Jane (Naomie Harris) allows him to stay and study. Maruge’s freedom-fighter past, which cost him his family at the brutal hands of the British, is an important part of this true story, which otherwise would’ve felt a bit too heavy on the heartwarming tip. (His classmates, actual students at the school used for filming, are pretty unavoidably adorable.) As directed by Justin Chadwick (2008’s The Other Boleyn Girl ), Harris and Litondo turn in passionate performances, but the film unfolds like a heavy-handed TV movie. The facts of this story are inspiring enough — the film shouldn’t have to try so hard. (1:43) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Forks Over Knives Lee Fulkerson steps up as the latest filmmaker-turned-guinea-pig to appear in his own documentary about nutrition. As he makes progress on his 12-week plan to adopt a “whole foods, plant-based diet” (and curb his Red Bull addiction), he meets with other former junk food junkies, as well as health professionals who’ve made it their mission to prevent or even reverse diseases strictly through dietary changes. Along the way, Forks Over Knives dishes out scientific factoids both enlightening and alarming about the way people (mostly us fatty Americans, though the film investigates a groundbreaking cancer study in China) have steadily gotten unhealthier as a direct result of what they are (or in some cases, are not) eating. Fulkerson isn’t as entertaining as Morgan Spurlock (and it’s unlikely his movie will have the mainstream appeal of 2004’s Super Size Me), but the staunchly pro-vegan Forks Over Knives certainly offers some interesting, ahem, food for thought. (1:36) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Hangover Part II What do you do with a problematic mess like Hangover Part II? I was a fan of The Hangover (2009), as well as director-cowriter Todd Phillips’ 1994 GG Allin doc, Hated, so I was rooting for II, this time set in the East’s Sin City of Bangkok, while simultaneously dreading the inevitable Asian/”ching-chang-chong” jokes. Would this would-be hit sequel be funnier if they packed in more of those? Doubtful. The problem is that most of II‘s so-called humor, Asian or no, falls completely flat — and any gross-out yuks regarding wicked, wicked Bangkok are fairly old hat at this point, long after Shocking Asia (1976) and innumerable episodes of No Reservations and other extreme travel offerings. This Hangover around, mild-ish dentist Stu (Ed Helms) is heading to the altar with Lauren (The Real World: San Diego‘s Jamie Chung), with buds Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug (Justin Bartha) in tow. Alan (Zach Galifianakis) has completely broken with reality — he’s the pity invite who somehow ropes in the gangster wild-card Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). Blackouts, natch, and not-very-funny high jinks ensue, with Jeong, surprisingly, pulling small sections of II out of the crapper. Phillips obviously specializes in men-behaving-badly, but II‘s most recent character tweaks, turning Phil into an arrogant, delusional creep and Alan into an arrogant, delusional kook, seem beside the point. Because almost none of the jokes work, and that includes the tired jabs at tranny strippers because we all know how supposedly straight white guys get hella grossed out by brown chicks with dicks. Lame. (1:42) Empire, Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Incendies When tightly wound émigré Nawal (Luba Azabal) dies, she leaves behind adult twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) — and leaves them documents that only compound their feelings of grief and anger, suggesting that what little they thought they knew about their background might have been a lie. While resentful Simon at first stays home in Montreal, Jeanne travels to fictive “Fuad” (a stand-in for source-material playwright Wajdi Mouawad’s native Lebanon), playing detective to piece together decades later the truth of why their mother fled her homeland at the height of its long, brutal civil war. Alternating between present-day and flashback sequences, this latest by Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (2000’s Maelstrom) achieves an urgent sweep punctuated by moments of shocking violence. Resembling The Kite Runner in some respects as a portrait of the civilian victimization excused by war, it also resembles that work in arguably piling on more traumatic incidences and revelations than one story can bear — though so much here has great impact that a sense of over-contrivance toward the very end only slightly mars the whole. (2:10) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Kung Fu Panda 2 The affable affirmations of 2008’s Kung Fu Panda take a back seat to relentlessly elaborate, gag-filled action sequences in this DreamWorks Animation sequel, which ought to satisfy kids but not entertain their parents as much as its predecessor. Po (voiced by Jack Black), the overeating panda and ordained Dragon Warrior of the title, joins forces with a cavalcade of other sparring wildlife to battle Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), a petulant peacock whose arsenal of cannons threatens to overwhelm kung fu. But Shen is also part of Po’s hazy past, so the panda’s quest to save China is also a quest for self-fulfillment and “inner peace.” There’s less character development in this installment, though the growing friendship between Po and the “hardcore” Tigress (Angelina Jolie) is occasionally touching. The 3-D visuals are rarely more than a gimmick, save for a series of eye-catching flashbacks in the style of cel-shaded animation. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Sam Stander)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Nostalgia for the Light Chile’s Atacama Desert, the setting for Patricio Guzmán’s lyrically haunting and meditative documentary, is supposedly the driest place on earth. As a result, it’s also the most ideal place to study the stars. Here, in this most Mars-like of earthly landscapes, astronomers look to the heavens in an attempt to decode the origins of the universe. Guzmán superimposes images from the world’s most powerful telescopes — effluent, gaseous nebulas, clusters of constellations rendered in 3-D brilliance — over the night sky of Atacama for an even more otherworldly effect, but it’s the film’s terrestrial preoccupations that resonate most. For decades, a small, ever dwindling group of women have scoured the cracked clay of Atacama searching for loved ones who disappeared early in Augusto Pinochet’s regime. They take their tiny, toy-like spades and sift through the dirt, finding a partial jawbone here, an entire mummified corpse there. Guzmán’s attempt through voice-over to make these “architects of memory,” both astronomers and excavators alike, a metaphor for Chile’s reluctance to deal with its past atrocities is only marginally successful. Here, it’s the images that do all the talking — if “memory has a gravitational force,” their emotional weight is as inescapable as a black hole. (1:30) Opera Plaza. (Devereaux)

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides The last time we saw rascally Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), he was fighting his most formidable enemy yet: the potentially franchise-ending Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007). The first Pirates movie (2003) was a surprise critical success, earning Depp his first-ever Oscar nomination; subsequent entries, though no less moneymaking, suffered from a detectable case of sequel-itis. Overseeing this reboot of sorts is director Rob Marshall (2002’s Chicago), who keeps the World’s End notion of sending Jack to find the Fountain of Youth, but adds in a raft of new faces, including Deadwood‘s Ian McShane (as Blackbeard) and lady pirate Penélope Cruz. The story is predictably over-the-top, with the expected supernatural elements mingling with sparring both sword-driven and verbal — as well as an underlying theme about faith that’s nowhere near as fun as the film’s lesser motifs (revenge, for one). It’s basically a big swirl of silly swashbuckling, nothing more or less. And speaking of Depp, the fact that the oft-ridiculous Sparrow is still an amusing character can only be chalked up to the actor’s own brand of untouchable cool. If it was anyone else, Sparrow’d be in Austin Powers territory by now. (2:05) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Queen to Play From first-time feature director Caroline Bottaro comes this drama about … chess. Wait! Before your eyes glaze over, here are a few more fast facts: it’s set in idyllic Corsica and features, as an American expat, Kevin Kline in his first French-speaking role. (Side note: is there a Kline comeback afoot? First No Strings Attached, then The Conspirator, and now Queen to Play. All within a few short months.) Lovely French superstar Sandrine Bonnaire plays Héléne, a hotel maid who has more or less accepted her unremarkable life — until she happens to catch a couple (one half of which is played by Jennifer Beals, cast because Bottaro is a longtime fan of 1983’s Flashdance!) playing chess. An unlikely obsession soon follows, and she asks Kline’s character, a reclusive doctor who’s on her freelance house-cleaning route, to help her up her game. None too pleased with this new friendship are Héléne’s husband and nosy neighbors, who are both suspicious of the doctor and unsure of how to treat the formerly complacent Héléne’s newfound, chess-inspired confidence. Queen to Play can get a little corny (we’re reminded over and over that the queen is “the most powerful piece”), and chess is by nature not very cinematic (slightly more fascinating than watching someone type, say). But Bonnaire’s quietly powerful performance is worth sticking around for, even when the novelty of whiskery, cardigan-wearing, French-spouting Kline wears off. (1:36) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

*13 Assassins 13 Assassins is clearly destined to be prolific director Takashi Miike’s greatest success outside Japan yet. It’s another departure for the multi-genre-conquering Miike, doubtless one of the most conventional movies he’s made in theme and execution. That’s key to its appeal — rigorously traditional, taking its sweet time getting to samurai action that is pointedly not heightened by wire work or CGI, it arrives at the kind of slam-dunk prolonged battle climax that only a measured buildup can let you properly appreciate. In the 1840s, samurai are in decline but feudalism is still hale. It’s a time of peace, though not for the unfortunates who live under regional tyrant Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), a li’l Nippon Caligula who taxes and oppresses his people to the point of starvation. Alas, the current Shogun is his sibling, and plans to make little bro his chief adviser — so a concerned Shogun official secretly hires veteran samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) to assassinate the Lord. Fully an hour is spent on our hero doing “assembling the team” stuff, recruiting other unemployed, retired, or wannabe samurai. When the protagonists finally commence their mission, their target is already aware he’s being pursued, and he’s surrounded by some 200 soldiers by the time Miike arrives at the film’s sustained, spectacular climax: a small village which Shinzaemon and co. have turned into a giant boobytrap so that 13 men can divide and destroy an ogre-guarding army. A major reason why mainstream Hollywood fantasy and straight action movies have gotten so depressingly interchangeable is that digital FX and stunt work can (and does) visualize any stupid idea — heroes who get thrown 200 feet into walls by monsters then getting up to fight some more, etc. 13 Assassins is thrilling because its action, while sporting against-the-odds ingeniousness and sheer luck by our heroes as in any trad genre film, is still vividly, bloodily, credibly physical. (2:06) Bridge, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Thor When it comes to superhero movies, I’m not easily impressed. Couple that with my complete disinterest in the character of Thor, and I didn’t go into his big-screen debut with any level of excitement. Turns out Kenneth Branagh’s Thor is a genre standout — the best I’ve seen since 2008’s Iron Man. For those who don’t know the mythology, the film follows Thor (Chris Hemsworth) as he’s exiled from the realm of Asgard to Earth. Once there, he must reclaim his mighty hammer — along with his powers — in order to save the world and win the heart of astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Hemsworth is perfectly cast as the titular hero: he’s adept at bringing charm to a larger-than-life god. The script is a huge help, striking the ideal balance between action, drama, and humor. That’s right, Thor is seriously funny. On top of that, the effects are sensational. Sure, the 3D is once again unnecessary, but it’s admittedly kind of fun when you’re zooming through space. (2:03) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) California, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*Win Win Is Tom McCarthy the most versatile guy in Hollywood? He’s a successful character actor (in big-budget movies like 2009’s 2012; smaller-scale pictures like 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck; and the final season of The Wire). He’s an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (2009’s Up). And he’s the writer-director of two highly acclaimed indie dramas, The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007). Clearly, McCarthy must not sleep much. His latest, Win Win, is a comedy set in his hometown of New Providence, N.J. Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer who’s feeling the economic pinch. Betraying his own basic good-guy-ness, he takes advantage of a senile client, Leo (Burt Young), when he spots the opportunity to pull in some badly-needed extra cash. Matters complicate with the appearance of Leo’s grandson, Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer), a runaway from Ohio. Though Mike’s wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan), is suspicious of the taciturn teen, she allows Kyle to crash with the Flaherty family. As luck would have it, Kyle is a superstar wrestler — and Mike happens to coach the local high school team. Things are going well until Kyle’s greedy mother (Melanie Lynskey) turns up and starts sniffing around her father’s finances. Lessons are learned, sure, and there are no big plot twists beyond typical indie-comedy turf. But the script delivers more genuine laughs than you’d expect from a movie that’s essentially about the recession. (1:46) Shattuck. (Eddy)

*X-Men: First Class Cynics might see this prequel as pandering to a more tweeny demographic, and certainly there are so many ways it could have gone terribly wrong, in an infantile, way-too-cute X-Babies kinda way. But despite some overly choppy edits that shortchange brief moments of narrative clarity, X-Men: First Class gets high marks for its fairly first-class, compelling acting — specifically from Michael Fassbender as the enraged, angst-ridden Magneto and James McAvoy as the idealistic, humanist Charles Xavier. Of course, the celebrated X-Men tale itself plays a major part: the origin story of Magneto, a.k.a. Erik Lehnsherr, a Holocaust survivor, is given added heft with a few tweaks: here, in an echo of Fassbender’s turn in Inglourious Basterds (2009), his master of metal draws on his bottomless rage to ruthlessly destroy the Nazis who used him as a lab rat in experiments to build a master race. The last on his list is the energy-wrangling Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who’s set up a sweet Bond-like scenario, protected by super-serious bikini-vixen Emma Frost (January Jones). The complications are that Erik doesn’t ultimately differ from his Frankensteins — he pushes mutant power to the detriment of those puny, bigoted humans — and his unexpected collaborator and friend is Xavier, the privileged, highly psychic scion who hopes to broker an understanding between mutants and human and use mutant talent to peaceful ends. Together, they can move mountains—or at least satellite dishes and submarines. Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique and Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast fill out the cast, voicing those eternal X-Men dualities — preserving difference vs. conformity, intoxicating power vs. reasoned discipline. All core superhero concerns, as well as teen identity issues — given a fresh charge. (2:20) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

 

Psychic Dream Astrology: June 8-14

Maria Poblet
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You are on the right path, but there is a fork in the road this week and you need to be vigilant so that you choose the right path. Watch out for your blind spots and illusions as you take considered steps forward.

 

ARIES

March 21-April 19

It’s an excellent time to assert yourself in a bold, clear way. The trick is to make sure you aren’t coming across as aggressive and stepping on others’ toes, Aries. Enlist the support of others, even if you don’t feel that you need it.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

The surest path to turning your fears into reality this week is by pressuring yourself to take on or do things that you don’t feel ready for yet. So don’t do it! Your ego may say “GO!” but the rest of you isn’t prepared.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Babatunde Olatunji said “Today is a gift — that’s why they call it the present.” Your challenge is to accept the gift of this moment without attaching all your hopes and fears about what will happen next to it. Be where you’re at.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

You are on the right path, but there is a fork in the road this week and you need to be vigilant so that you choose the right path. Watch out for your blind spots and illusions as you take considered steps forward, Cancer.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

Love is an awesome thing, and whether you’re in love with a person, a song, or a place. The same thing is required of you this week: don’t overdo it. Too much of any good thing can suck the fabulous from it. Pace yourself, Leo.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

Moving forward is wonderful as long as you’re not motivated by fear and avoidance. If you are more clear on what you’re leaving behind than what you’re moving toward, take a minute to reassess, Virgo.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

The only way out of tortured thinking and obsessive worrying is with good old-fashioned TLC. Be nice and sweet to you by surrounding yourself with supportive people and inspiring ideas. Redirect your attentions.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

It’s time for a much needed break, dear Scorpio. Pursue adventure, no matter how small or big. The power of play is healing if pursued within your means. Know your limits before you hit them.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Extend yourself to the people you love, Sag. Share with your friends or family where you’re at and take the time and energy to really listen to them. Your relationships are changing, make it a good change.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

It may be hard to make a decision about your relationships this week, Capricorn, and that’s okay. Allow time for gathering information instead of forcing yourself to make a choice before you’re ready.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

The old adage “the bigger the hair, the closer to God” is hella true — until someone sits behind that big hair at the movies. Sometimes your awesome oversteps other people’s space; don’t let this be one of those times.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

Instead of using a magnifying glass, try finding your reflection in a less intense way. You’re looking too hard at things and it’s distracting your focus away from what really counts. Realign with your goals. 

 

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 16 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com or contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading at (415) 336-8354 or dreamyastrology@gmail.com.

 

Alerts

Maria Poblet
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ALERTS

By Jackie Andrews

 

THURSDAY, JUNE 9

Reporting back from Cuba

Gloria la Riva, recent winner of the Friendship Medal by the Cuban Council of State, will update the public on the new Cuban economic policies, their impact on the country’s economy, and the Latin American struggle for liberation — often called the Bolivarian Revolution. Afterward, check out a special screening of South of the Border, Oliver Stone’s investigative documentary that exposes the mainstream media’s misrepresentation of Latin America in its demonization of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

7–9 p.m., free

ANSWER Coalition

2969 Mission, SF

www.answersf.org

 

FRIDAY, JUNE 10

Protest nuclear power

It’s been almost three months since the earthquake in Japan and resulting Fukushima nuclear disaster, and many fear that California’s coast is similarly vulnerable. Rally against the corporations that influence the U.S. government in favor of nuclear industry despite its dangers to people and the environment. Demand that all U.S. power plants — funded by tax dollars — be shut down and help promote a cleaner public power.

3:30–5:30 p.m., free

The Consulate General of Japan

50 Fremont, SF

Facebook: No Nukes Action SF-Solidarity with 6.11 Action in Japan

 

SATURDAY, JUNE 11

World Naked Bike Ride

Ride your bike in the buff to express the public’s vulnerability to the social, economic, and environmental dangers caused by a global dependence on oil. A kind of naked Critical Mass, this fun, provocative bike ride will tour the city’s hot spots including Fisherman’s Wharf, the Marina, and Civic Center. All are welcome, so ride as you dare — bare or square — but don’t forget the sunscreen.

11 a.m., free

Justin Herman Plaza

Market and Embarcadero , SF

Facebook: World Naked Bike Ride-San Francisco

 

International Day of Solidarity

Enjoy an evening of solidarity and support for Marie Mason and Eric McDavid, two political prisoners sentenced for Earth Liberation Front-endorsed actions — what the feds call ecoterrorism. This event features a screening of If a Tree Falls: A Story Of the Earth Liberation Front, as well as information about the so-called “green scare,” or the recent wave of government repression meant to disrupt and discredit environmental activism.

7–9:30 p.m., $15

Women’s Building

3543 18th St., SF

www.june11.org 

 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Waggoner for Police Commission

Maria Poblet
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Waggoner for Police Commission

By Harry Britt, Matt Gonzalez, and Aaron Peskin

OPINION Given the escalating scandals in the San Francisco Police Department, the time is ripe to appoint a police commissioner who understands the recurring problems and the need for reform.

The supervisors have the opportunity to appoint such a commissioner: David Waggoner. Waggoner’s extensive background in policy reform, community policing, and criminal justice issues will be a valuable asset to the commission.

Waggoner has worked as a pro bono attorney before the Oakland Civilian Police Review Board and has earned the respect and admiration of people from highly diverse political and social backgrounds. His integrity and sense of justice and fairness inspire trust and confidence — and frankly, we could use a lot more of that in this city.

Credibility with historically marginalized communities — including people of color, new immigrants, the homeless, people with disabilities and the LGBT community — is essential in developing the kind of mutual respect that makes the department’s work effective or even possible. David Waggoner has that credibility.

In 2003, in response to years of strained relations between the SFPD and the community, the voters approved Proposition H. Prop. H gave the Police Commission more authority to adjudicate cases of officer misconduct and changed the makeup of the commission by giving the board three appointments to balance the mayor’s four.

Despite these significant steps toward reform, eight years later we have a Police Department that is under investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI and struggling to overcome serious credibility and morale problems.

Case in point: in the last year alone, the department’s credibility was undermined by a major crime lab scandal, the disclosure of Fourth Amendment violations in SRO hotels, use of excessive force on the mentally ill, and widespread withholding of evidence of officer misconduct from attorneys. These scandals resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of cases.

A number of outstanding policy issues remain in need of serious attention. In 2005, the Civil Grand Jury published a report on compensation in the Police Department, finding that officers receive greater salary increases than other city employees while San Francisco is in a state of fiscal stress. In 2007, the grand jury recommended filling significant numbers of desk jobs with civilians. When the department finally rolled out a pilot program this year, it called for only 15 civilians.

The San Francisco Police Department needs to improve its training of officers, including fostering a respect for the civil liberties that San Franciscans cherish. This should be basic to all police work. However, last year San Francisco paid $11.5 million in lawsuits because of police misconduct.

San Francisco needs police commissioners who understand the challenges of police work but who also are willing to explore the nature of endemic problems that have led to embarrassing scandals. We need commissioners who have a broader understanding of criminal justice policy and how it can be changed to promote public safety.

We join with the San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association, Community United Against Violence, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, and a host of other elected officials, community activists, attorneys, and local leaders in wholeheartedly supporting the appointment of David Waggoner to the San Francisco Police Commission. It’s about time. 

 

Harry Britt is a former president of the Board of Supervisors and the author of the landmark 1982 legislation that created the Office of Citizen Complaints. Matt Gonzalez is chief attorney in the Public Defender’s Office, a former president of the Board of Supervisors, and a co-sponsor of Prop. H. Aaron Peskin is chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, a former president of the Board of Supervisors, and a co-sponsor of Prop H.

 

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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7
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Three weeks before the June 25-26 Pride Weekend — which is the unofficial opening of the official fall mayoral race — there are two front-runners: state Sen. Leland Yee and Sup. John Avalos.

I’m not saying either is going to win. Things change quickly in this town. We don’t even know for sure if the incumbent, Ed Lee, is going to be in the final scrum.

But here’s what we do know: Yee and Avalos — right now, today — are doing the things they need to do to emerge from a crowded pack. And the others are either hanging back or flailing around.

Avalos had more than 400 people at his kickoff. State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano was there to endorse him. He’s got window signs all over the east side of town. He’s showing momentum, energy; he’s on track to solidify the progressive base and start moving west. He has agreed to cosponsor the mayor’s pension reform plan (but only if SEIU Local 1021 gets the amendments the union wants).

Yee has figured out a very smart strategy: He realizes that he’s already got name recognition and a west-side base, that he’s never going to get the support of the Chinatown establishment (powerbroker Rose Pak hates him), and that he’s one of at least five candidates fighting over the center. So he’s trying to grab a share of the left.

Yee’s people were thrilled that he and Avalos got the Sierra Club. The more groups that endorse the two together (in any order), the more Yee becomes associated with the progressive standard-bearer. And the more second-place votes he gets on the left. (Don’t kid yourself; this race may well come down to who gets second-place votes on the left.)

And Sup. David Chiu just gave Yee a great big gift. Chiu defied every single tenant group in town and became the swing vote in favor of the Parkmerced project. Now the tenants are pissed — and you know Yee is going to try to take advantage of it.

The frustrating part of that scenario is that Yee was never a good tenant vote when he was a supervisor. That’s his Achilles’ heel on the left — but it’s old history, and the anger at Chiu is here today.

Would Chiu be a better mayor for tenants than Yee? Quite possibly. Is any tenant group thinking that right now? No.

Chiu’s in a tricky spot. He’s trying to be the centrist progressive — and that’s a hard thing to sell to either the center (where he’s one of five candidates) or the left (where Yee is edging him out in cozying up to Avalos).

City Attorney Dennis Herrera hasn’t recovered from the political consultant lobbying mess (not a new story, he’s hardly the only, or even remotely, the worst offender, but damn, it makes him look bad). Former Sup. Bevan Dufty’s doing great at the candidate forums but doesn’t have a breakout move. Assessor Phil Ting is awfully quiet.

It’s only June. But it won’t be “only” anything much longer.

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