Books

The problem with the yellow pages

Zelda Bronstein
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5
The problem with the yellow pages

 


Editors note: We ran an opinion piece this week opposing Sup. David Chiu’s proposal to limit delivery of yellow pages phone books. It’s gotten a lot of comments. Chiu asked if his supporters could respond.


By Michelle Myers and Janet Pomeroy
 
Tired of getting stacks of yellow pages books delivered to your front steps every year when you didn’t ask for them? Most people are.
 
Phone companies distribute 1.6 million phone book directories in San Francisco every year, which is two for every man, woman and child – producing 3,600 tons of waste annually, and costing residents as much as $1 million dollars a year. There are approximately 350,000 residential units in San Francisco and 80,000 businesses. If we had a single phone book in every home and office we would only need a third of what is currently being produced. That doesn’t even take into account the fact that many individuals no longer use the yellow pages to get information, and non-English language speakers don’t use the English print directory.
 
Does anyone in San Francisco need two five-pound yellow pages phone books delivered every year? No. So why does the industry do this? According to the Green Chamber of Commerce and independent research, the companies do it to pump up ad sales, which are based on inflated circulation numbers.
 
San Francisco’s attempt to restrict the mass over distribution of yellow pages, and to force an honest look at the industry, marks some of the most important environmental legislation of the last several years.
 
Supervisor David Chiu’s Yellow Pages legislation is supported by the Sierra Club, Rain Forest Action Network, The Green Chamber of Commerce, the Product Stewardship
Institute, Californians Against Waste, Senior Action Network, numerous small businesses, the San Francisco Small Business Commission, homeowners, tenants, and landlords.
 
The San Francisco city economist did an independent economic impact analysis of the legislation and found that this pilot program was good for business, good for the environment and would create 111 jobs while pumping $12 million dollars back into the local economy. The legislation is considered a no-brainer by serious economists, climate change experts and environmentalists who have examined it.
 
If you oppose this simple legislation, you are inviting a major corporation to come in, dump garbage on our front steps, and then volunteer to pay for the clean up. The financial loss of cleaning up over produced yellow pages is passed down to the residents and businesses of the city. And since the yellow pages are not produced locally the majority of the economic benefit of this industry accrues elsewhere.
 
The legislation will create a three year pilot program to reduce the waste of unwanted yellow page phone books. Under this legislation, anyone who wants a yellow page book can get one — but those who don’t want one won’t be responsible for the disposal of the books. Because this innovative and historic legislation is being set up as a test pilot for the nation, if San Franciscans see any negative impact we can adjust the program or end it altogether.
 
The paper industry is a massive polluter. It is the single largest consumer of water, has a toxic by-product, destroys trees we need to absorb carbon, and is the fourth largest manufacturing source of carbon dioxide in the United States. If we only distributed half as many yellow pages in San Francisco – to the people who actually need and want them — we would save 6,180 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
 
Rather than being a good steward of the environment, the yellow page industry is producing far beyond the demand for their product. The companies do this as a way of inflating the amount they charge to the businesses that advertise with them. Today, this business model is wasteful and unnecessary. It is time to demand that these paper directories are only distributed to the people that want and need them.


Michelle Myers is with the Sierra Club and Janet Pomeroy is with the Green Chamber of Commerce.

5 Things: May 12, 2011

John Elberling
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5 Things: May 12, 2011

>>SCOBY SNACKS Lest you think that only barbarians and Bear Grylls eat their food alive, consider the case of fermentation. Sauerkraut, kombucha, bleu cheese, and kim chee are all living foods whose microbial make-ups diversify the tiny critters that live inside you (and we all know diversity is a good thing!) If we didn’t just freak you out, this week is an optimal time to learn more about making and snarfing fermented foods. House Kombucha, Omnivore Books, Cafe Gratitude, and Happy Girl Kitchen are all hosting workshops to teach you the power of a biodiverse kitchen. But the kicker is the Ferment Change festival (May 14-22), a full week of East Bay bike tours to homebrewing abodes, cocktail parties, culture swaps, and appearances by the anointed god of Planet Fermenation, Sandor “Sandorkraut” Katz himself.

>>WHO’S IN CHARGE? We’re big-time boosters of Ride Your Bike to Work Day, so once again we rode, we schmoozed, we accumulated swag — most of it aimed at luring more of us onto the streets with the promise of bigger, better, safer, kinder, gentler bike lanes. Which is why we had to wonder at the cover of the Connecting the City pamphlet, a happy-talk scenario showing a smiling woman and two darling kiddies riding along a reimagined bike lane on Market Street. Sweet — until you notice that the woman (the mother?) isn’t wearing a helmet. And neither is the woman staring off into stage-left space behind her. And that group of huddled people in black hoodies — are they supposed to be chess players? With big plastic bags of garbage at their feet? And what about that guy who appears to be rifling through the garbage? Why do we feel like the sell just got harder.

>>ASSEMBLAGE Collage artist David King was awarded a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation last year, and he’ll be showing new work later this month at the Visual Aid booth at the San Francisco Fine Art Fair, one of three different art showcases taking place in SF during the third weekend of May. He’s also showing work, along with Mark Faigenbaum, at Inclusions Gallery from Saturday, May 14 through June 19. The opening reception is this Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

>>CHUCK IT We are all well aware that our days are numbered, and that they are going to be pretty well filled up doing more loads of laundry, cleaning the cat box, working, etc. What we really don’t have time for are any more bucket lists taunting us with 100 more things we have to do, see, eat, and ponder before the old dust to dust thing takes place. That’s why we were disheartened to see that there’s a new bucket list just for Giants fans: Bill Chastain’s 100 Things … . We have nothing against Chastain, but we do wish his publisher had come up with a better marketing scheme than this tired, gimmicky genre. Besides, with post World Series prices what they are, we can barely even afford to cross off item 39, “Attend a Game at AT&T Park,” let alone item 40, “Attend a Spring Training Game in Scottsdale.”

>>THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS If there’s one thing that separates the rubes from the natives, it’s pronunciation. Only a rube-and-proud-of-it would risk the derisive sniggering of Manhattanites by asking directions to Houston Street, pronounced like that city in Texas, or the rolled eyeballs of Show-Me Staters by rhyming the last syllable of their great state with “misery.” That’s why we are mystified that Muni hired such a collection of rubes (who may even be robotic rubes) to announce pending stops on its bus lines. Who approved “Di-VEYE-sa-dero”? And who signed off on “Valen-CHA”? Yo, Muni, you never heard the phrase “hire local”?

Into the Vortex, part one

Maria Poblet
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Into the Vortex, part one

arts@sfbg.com

For some the ’60s and ’70s never stopped swinging — even (or especially) if they were barely out of womb when all that decadence crashed into the anti-counterculture, pro-coke Reagan era.

For many years, one of SF’s greatest connoisseurs of retro sexual revolution kitsch and coolness has been Scott Moffett. For all we know, even as you read this he’s reclining on a fun fur rug, drinking Martini & Rossi on the rocks, reeking of Hai Karate, sandwiched by Barbarella and Pussy Galore.

In 1994 he and Jacques Boyreau cofounded the Werepad, a waaaaaay-south o’ Market psychedelic lounge that hosted parties and screened rare, frequently scratchy 16mm prints of movies with titles like Maryjane (1968), Island of the Bloody Plantation (1983), and William Shatner’s Mysteries of the Gods (1977). He also created the Cosmic Hex Archive (whose website lets you can download everything from 1966’s Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs and 1976’s Shriek of the Mutilated to 1972’s Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny for a modest fee) to protect and show just such “forgotten works.” He’s collaborated on movies, books, and traveling exhibits, all reflecting the same groovy aesthetic.

The Werepad is now gone (as is Boyreau, to Portland, Ore.), but Moffett now runs its more compact successor not-so-far south of Market, the Vortex Room, and with Joe Niem programs its Thursday Film Cult nights.

The theme to the Vortex’s May schedule — sorry if you missed last week’s bill of Roger Corman’s 1959 beatnik parody Bucket of Blood and the astonishing 1969 Japanese portrait-of-a-crazed-artist erotic horror Blind Beast — is “Art, Obsession, and Film Cult.” The series unites a widely disparate slate dealing with art-making in one form or another, as inspired, manipulated, or rendered homicidal by sexuality and violence.

Thursday, May 12 there’s a double bill whose first half unusually (for the Vortex) reaches back to mainstream Hollywood’s “golden” era. German Expressionist master Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927; M., 1931), followed up 1944’s The Woman in the Window by regathering its stars on a new suspense melodrama: 1945’s Scarlet Street. The latter is crasser, pulpier, and driven by demure 1930s ingénue (and future Dark Shadows matron) Joan Bennett’s inspired vulgarity as Kitty “Lazy Legs” March, whose yea lazier boyfriend (Dan Duryea) proposes that she seduce an accountant and amateur painter (Edward G. Robinson) whom they both mistake for a wealthy artist. This lurid saga ends on an unusually bitter, ironic, haunted note for its time.

A greater discovery is Scarlet Street‘s Vortex cofeature. Scream Baby Scream (1969) is vintage psychedelic horror at its trippiest. This low-budget but pretty dang groovy artifact goes out of its way to be with-it: the cast wears ultra-mod fashions, the interiors are crammed with objets d’Op Art, the score is cool jazz-rock (dig those flute solos), and the dialogue is chock-full of Now Generation philosophizing (some rather grammatically-challenged, such as “I feel so strange — like a nightmare that I don’t want to think about”).

All of which doubles the fun in watching an otherwise (slightly better made) imitation of movies like Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1965 Color Me Blood Red. Written by future genre hero Larry Cohen, its young protagonists are four art-school students; hero Jason is practically cohabiting with girlfriend Janet, but she’s acting like maybe she Needs Some Space. (Of course, he’s also acting like a jealous jerk — it’s unclear whether the film is aware how clearly it reflects the none-too-feminist gender dynamics of mainstream hippiedom.)

Janet takes her art very seriously, attracting attention from a creepy established artist (Larry Swanson) famous for oil portraits of hideously distorted faces. Meanwhile, models, art students, and miscellaneous youth-on-the-beach keep “disappearing.”

You can guess what happens. But among Scream Baby Scream‘s many surprises are a long LSD trip sequence (protagonists go motorcycling on the highway! Feed baby elephants at the zoo! Imagine themselves as monkeys in a cage! Interpretive dance!), scenes at a psychedelic coffeehouse, a party setpiece with groovy band the Odyssey (plus go-go dancers and liquid light projections), and zombie ghouls on the loose.

There’s also nudity, pot smoking, and a lot of relationship arguments. The last half hour takes a weird left turn into Vincent Price terrain, complete with a gloomy old mansion, a mad-doctor flashback, and so forth. The movie was clearly intended for drive-ins at best, but it’s colorful, fast-paced, and ever so delightfully wrong. Directed by little remembered B-pic toiler Joseph Adler, it was an early big-screen writing credit for Cohen, showing signs of the perversity that would later result in 1973’s Black Caesar, 1974’s It’s Alive, 1976’s God Told Me To, and 1988’s Maniac Cop, to name a few.

Trash will spotlight the rest of the Vortex’s May schedule next week. A $5 donation gets you into these Thursday screenings. For that dough, you could buy half a ticket to Bridesmaids. Please don’t tell me that’s a tough decision. (Dennis Harvey)

ART, OBSESSION, AND FILM CULT

Scarlet Street, Thurs/12, 9 p.m.;

Scream Baby Scream, Thurs/12, 11 p.m., $5

Vortex Room

1082 Howard, SF

www.myspace.com/thevortexroom

 

Film Listings

Maria Poblet
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0

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.

OPENING

*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) Balboa. (Peitzman)

*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) Clay, 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) (Chun)

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) Bridge. (Eddy)

*Hesher See “Ride the Lightning.” (1:45) Embarcadero.

*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) Lumiere. (Devereaux)

Priest Paul Bettany stars as the titular vampire-fighter in this graphic novel adaptation. (1:27)

True Legend “Directed by Yuen Woo Ping” = high-flying martial arts galore. (1:56) Lumiere.

ONGOING

The Beaver It’s been more than 15 years since Jodie Foster sat in the director’s chair; she’s back with The Beaver, which tells the unique story of Walter Black (Mel Gibson), a clinically depressed man who struggles through his suicidal desires with the help of a beaver puppet. Walter uses the puppet — which he also voices — as a way of connecting with his family and the outside world. The film examines both the comedic aspects and the devastating reality of mental illness, and the script walks the line between dark and light — it’s the first feature from Kyle Killen, who created the critically adored but short-lived TV series Lone Star. The Beaver gets points for ambition, but it’s ultimately too all over the place to come together in the end. The moments of humanity are undercut by scenes of Walter and his wife Meredith (Foster) having sex with the puppet in the bed — intentionally funny, but jarring nonetheless. Still, Foster’s direction is solid and, for all its faults, The Beaver is a great reminder of Gibson’s legitimate talent. (1:31) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*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) Embarcadero. (Sussman)

*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, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Conspirator It may not be your standard legal drama, but The Conspirator is a lot more enjoyable when you think of it as an extended episode of Law & Order. The film chronicles the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the lone woman charged in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. It’s a fascinating story, especially for those who don’t know much of the history past John Wilkes Booth. But while the subject matter is compelling, the execution is hit-or-miss. Wright is sympathetic as Surratt, but the usually great James McAvoy is somewhat forgettable in the pivotal role of Frederick Aiken, Surratt’s conflicted lawyer. It’s hard to say what it is that’s missing from The Conspirator: the cast — which also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Tom Wilkinson — is great, and this is a story that’s long overdue to be told. Still, something is lacking. Could it be the presence of everyone’s favorite detective, the late Lennie Briscoe? (2:02) Embarcadero. (Peitzman)

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) Empire, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Hanna The title character of Hanna falls perfectly into the lately very popular Hit-Girl mold. Add a dash of The Boys from Brazil-style genetic engineering — Hanna has the unfair advantage, you see, when it comes to squashing other kids on the soccer field or maiming thugs with her bare hands — and you have an ethereal killing/survival machine, played with impassive confidence by Atonement (2007) shit-starter Saoirse Ronan. She’s been fine-tuned by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), a spy who went out into the cold and off the grid, disappearing into the wilds of Scandinavia where he home-schooled his charge with an encyclopedia and brutal self-defense and hunting tests. Atonement director Joe Wright plays with a snowy palette associated with innocence, purity, and death — this could be any time or place, though far from the touch of modern childhood stresses: that other Hannah (Montana), consumerism, suburban blight, and academic competition. The 16-year-old Hanna, however, isn’t immune from that desire to succeed. Her game mission: go from a feral, lonely existence into the modern world, run for her life, and avenge the death of her mother by killing Erik’s CIA handler, Marissa (Cate Blanchett). The nagging doubt: was she born free, or Bourne to be a killer? Much like the illustrated Brothers Grimm storybook that she studies, Hanna is caught in an evil death trap of fairytale allegories. One wonders if the super-soldier apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since evil stepmonster Marissa oversaw the program that produced Hanna — the older woman and the young girl have the same cold-blooded talent for destruction and the same steely determination. Yet there’s hope for the young ‘un. After learning that even her beloved father hid some basic truths from her, this natural-born killer seems less likely to go along with the predetermined ending, happy or no, further along in her storybook life. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (1:25) 1000 Van Ness.

*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) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*Jane Eyre Do we really need another adaptation of Jane Eyre? As long as they’re all as good as Cary Fukunaga’s stirring take on the gothic romance, keep ’em coming. Mia Wasikowska stars in the titular role, with the dreamy Michael Fassbender stepping into the high pants of Edward Rochester. The cast is rounded out by familiar faces like Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins — all of whom breathe new life into the material. It helps that Fukunaga’s sensibilities are perfectly suited to the story: he stays true to the novel while maintaining an aesthetic certain to appeal to a modern audience. Even if you know Jane Eyre’s story — Mr. Rochester’s dark secret, the fate of their romance, etc. — there are still surprises to be had. Everyone tells the classics differently, and this adaptation is a thoroughly unique experience. And here’s hoping it pushes the engaging Wasikowska further in her ascent to stardom. (2:00) Opera Plaza. (Peitzman)

Jumping the Broom (1:48) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

Last Night Married for three years and together “since college,” New York City yuppies Michael (Sam Worthington) and Joanna (Keira Knightley) have a comfortable, loving relationship, though it’s unclear how much passion remains. Still, it doesn’t take much for Joanna to bristle jealously when she meets Michael’s co-worker and frequent business-trip companion, Laura (Eva Mendes). As Michael and Laura flirt their way to an overnight meeting in Philly, Joanna runs into an old flame (Guillaume Canet); before long, it becomes a cross-cutting race to see who’ll cheat first. Writer-director Massy Tadjedin isn’t spinning a new story here — and though the film offers a sleek look at contemporary marriage, Last Night takes itself a tad too seriously, purporting to showcase realistic problems and emotions amid a cast beamed directly from Planet Gorgeous Movie Star. Beautiful people: they’re just like us? (1:30) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*Limitless An open letter to the makers of Limitless: please fire your marketing team because they are making your movie look terrible. The story of a deadbeat writer (Bradley Cooper) who acquires an unregulated drug that allows him to take advantage of 100 percent of his previously under-utilized brain, Limitless is silly, improbable and features a number of distracting comic-book-esque stylistic tics. But consumed with the comic book in mind, Limitless is also unpredictable, thrilling, and darkly funny. The aforementioned style, which includes many instances of the infinite regression effect that you get when you point two mirrors at each other, and a heavy blur to distort depth-of-field, only solidifies the film’s cartoonish intentions. Cooper learns foreign languages in hours, impresses women with his keen attention to detail, and sets his sights on Wall Street, a move that gets him noticed by businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro in a glorified cameo) as well as some rather nasty drug dealers and hired guns looking to cash in on the drug. Limitless is regrettably titled and masquerades in TV spots as a Wall Street series spin-off, but in truth it sports the speedy pacing and tongue-in-cheek humor required of a good popcorn flick. (1:37) 1000 Van Ness. (Galvin)

*Meek’s Cutoff After three broke down road movies (1994’s River of Grass, 2006’s Old Joy, 2008’s Wendy and Lucy), Kelly Reichardt’s new frontier story tilts decisively towards socially-minded existentialism. It’s 1845 on the choked plains of Oregon, miles from the fertile valley where a wagon train of three families is headed. They’ve hired the rogue guide Meek to show them the way, but he’s got them lost and low on water. When the group captures a Cayeuse Indian, Solomon proposes they keep him on as a compass; Meek thinks it better to hang him and be done with it. The periodic shots of the men deliberating are filmed from a distance — the earshot range of the three women (Michelle Williams, Zoe Kazan, and Shirley Henderson) who set up camp each night. It’s through subtle moves like these that Meek’s Cutoff gives a vivid taste of being subject to fate and, worse still, the likes of Meek. Reichardt winnows away the close-ups, small talk, and music that provided the simple gifts of her earlier work, and the overall effect is suitably austere. (1:44) Opera Plaza. (Goldberg)

*My Perestroika Robin Hessman’s very engaging documentary takes one very relatable look at how changes since glasnost have affected some average Russians. The subjects here are five thirtysomethings who, growing up in Moscow in the 70s and 80s, were the last generation to experience full-on Communist Party indoctrination. But just as they reached adulthood, the whole system dissolved, confusing long-held beliefs and variably impacting their futures. Andrei has ridden the capitalist choo-choo to considerable enrichment as the proprietor of luxury Western menswear shops. But single mother Olga, unlucky in love, just scrapes by, while married schoolteachers Lyuba and Boris are lucky to have inherited an apartment (cramped as it is) they could otherwise ill afford. Meanwhile Ruslan, once member of a famous punk band (which he abandoned on principal because it was getting “too commercial”), both disdains and resents the new order just as he did the old one. Home movies and old footage of pageantry celebrating Soviet socialist glory make a whole ‘nother era come to life in this intimate, unexpectedly charming portrait of its long-term aftermath. (1:27) Balboa. (Harvey)

*The Princess of Montpensier Marie (Mélanie Thierry), the titular figure in French director Bertrand Tavernier’s latest, is a young 16th century noblewoman married off to a Prince (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) of great wealth and property. But they’ve barely met when he’s called off to war — leaving her alone on his enormous estate, vulnerable to myriad suitors who seem to be forever throwing themselves at her nubile, neglected body. Lambert Wilson (2010’s Of Gods and Men) is touching as the older soldier appointed her protector; he comes to love her, yet is the one man upstanding enough to resist compromising her. If you’ve been jonesing for the kind of lush arthouse period epic that feels like a big fat classic novel, this engrossing saga from a 70-year-old Gallic cinema veteran in top form will scratch that itch for nearly two and a half satisfyingly tragic-romantic hours. (2:19) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Potiche When we first meet Catherine Deneuve’s Suzanne — the titular trophy wife (or potiche) of Francois Ozon’s new airspun comedy — she is on her morning jog, barely breaking a sweat as she huffs and puffs in her maroon Adidas tracksuit, her hair still in curlers. It’s 1977 and Suzanne’s life as a bourgeois homemaker in a small provincial French town has played out as smoothly as one of her many poly-blend skirt suits: a devoted mother to two grown children and loving wife who turns a blind eye to the philandering of husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), Suzanne is on the fast track to comfortable irrelevance. All that changes when the workers at Robert’s umbrella factory strike and take him hostage. Suzanne, with the help of union leader and old flame Babin (Gerard Depardieu, as big as a house), negotiates a peace, and soon turns around the company’s fortunes with her new-found confidence and business savvy. But when Robert wrests back control with the help of a duped Babin, Suzanne does an Elle Woods and takes them both on in a surprise run for political office. True to the film’s light théâtre de boulevard source material, Ozon keeps things brisk and cheeky (Suzanne sings with as much ease as she spouts off Women’s Lib boilerplate) to the point where his cast’s hammy performances start blending into the cheery production design. Satire needs an edge that Potiche, for all its charm, never provides. (1:43) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Sussman)

Prom (1:44) 1000 Van Ness.

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) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Rio (1:32) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Scre4m Back in 1996, Wes Craven’s Scream revitalized the slasher genre with a script (by Kevin Williamson) that poked fun at horror clichés while still delivering genuine scares. The sequels offered diminishing returns on this once-clever formula; Scream 4 arrives 11 years past Scream 3, presumably hoping to work that old self-referential yet gory magic on a new crop of filmgoers. But Craven and Williamson’s hall-of-mirrors creation (more self-satisfied than self-referential, scrambling to anticipate a cynical audience member’s every second-guess) is barely more than than a continuation of something that was already tired in 2000, albeit with iPhone and web cam gags pasted in for currency’s sake. Eternal Ghostface target Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to her hometown to promote what’s apparently a woo-woo self-help book (Mad Men‘s Alison Brie, as Sidney’s bitchy-perky publicist, steals every scene she’s in); still haunting Woodsboro are Dewey (David Arquette), now the sheriff, and Gale (Courteney Cox), a crime author with writer’s block. When the Munch-faced one starts offing high school kids, local movie nerds (Rory Culkin, Hayden Panettiere) and nubile types (Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere) react by screening all seven Stab films, inspired by the “real-life” Woodsboro murders, and spouting off about the rules, or lack thereof in the 21st century, of horror sequels. If that sounds mega-meta exhausting, it is. And, truth be told, not very scary. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Something Borrowed (1:53) 1000 Van Ness.

*Source Code A post-9/11 Groundhog Day (1993) with explosions, Inception (2010) with a heart, or Avatar (2009) taken down a notch or dozen in Chicago —whatever you choose to call it, Source Code manages to stand up on its own wobbly Philip K. Dick-inspired legs, damn the science, and take off on the wings of wish fulfillment. ‘Cause who hasn’t yearned for a do-over — and then a do-over of that do-over, etc. We could all be as lucky — or as cursed — as soldier Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who gets to tumble down that time-space rabbit hole again and again, his consciousness hitching a ride in another man’s body, while in search of the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. On the upside, he gets to meet the girl of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) — and see her getting blown to smithereens again and again, all in the service of his country, his commander-cum-link to the outside world (Vera Farmiga), and the scientist masterminding this secret military project (Jeffrey Wright). On the downside, well, he gets to do it over and over again, like a good little test bunny in pinball purgatory. Fortunately, director Duncan Jones (2009’s Moon) makes compelling work out of the potentially ludicrous material, while his cast lends the tale a glossed yet likable humanity, the kind that was all too absent in 2010’s Inception. (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Stake Land Not gonna lie — the reason I wanted to review this one was because of the film still in the San Francisco International Film Festival catalogue. Rotten-faced vampire with a stake through its neck? Yes, please! But while Jim Mickle’s apocalyptic road movie does offer plenty of gore, it’s more introspective than one might expect, following an orphaned teenage boy, Martin (Connor Paolo, Serena’s little bro on Gossip Girl), and his gruff mentor, Mister (Snake Plissken-ish Nick Damici), on their travels through a ravaged America. As books, films, and comics have taught us, whenever a big chunk of the human race is wiped out (thanks to zombies, vampires, an unknown cataclysm, etc.), the remaining population will either be good (heroic, like Mister and Martin, or helpless, like the stragglers they rescue, including a nun played by Kelly McGillis), or evil — cannibals, rapists, religious nuts, militant survivalists, etc. Stake Land doesn’t throw many curveballs into its end-times narrative, but it’s beautifully shot and doesn’t hold back on the brutality. Larry Fessenden (director of 2006’s The Last Winter) produced and has a brief cameo as a helpful bartender. (1:38) Roxie. (Eddy)

There Be Dragons (2:00) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

These Amazing Shadows If you love movies, it’ll be hard to resist These Amazing Shadows (subtitled “A story about the National Film Registry and the power of the movies”) — it’s chock full o’ clips from films that’ve been deemed worthy of inclusion in the National Film Registry’s elite ranks. This includes, of course, the likes of 1942’s Casablanca and 1939’s Gone With the Wind, but also more recent cultural touchstones like 1985’s Back to the Future and a number of experimental, short, and silent works, and even a few cult films too. Along the way film scholars and makers (including locals Barry Jenkins, Rick Prelinger, and Mick LaSalle) chime in on their favorite films and stress why preserving film is important. There’s a healthy dose of film history, as well, with mentions of groundbreaking director Lois Weber (one of early cinema’s most prolific artists, despite her gender) and a discussion of why racially questionable films like 1915’s The Birth of a Nation — a film that Boyz n the Hood (1991) director John Singleton recommended for Registry inclusion — are historically important despite their content. Dedicated film buffs won’t discover any surprises, and there’s not much discussion of queer film (unless John Waters talking about 1939’s The Wizard of Oz counts?), nor any mention of the current shift from film to digital formats (of course preserving old films is important, but will the Registry also start considering digital-only films for inclusion?) But perhaps these are topics for another film, not this nostalgia-heavy warm fuzzy that’ll affect anyone who remembers the magic of seeing a personally significant film — join the mob if it’s 1977’s Star Wars — for the first time. (1:28) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*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) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family (2:00) 1000 Van Ness.

Water for Elephants A young man named Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) turns his back on catastrophe and runs off to join the circus. It sounds like a fantasy, but this was never Jacob’s dream, and the circus world of Water for Elephants isn’t all death-defying feats and pretty women on horses. Or rather, the pretty woman also rides an elephant named Rosie and the casualties tend to occur outside the big top, after the rubes have gone home. Stumbling onto a train and into this world by chance, Jacob manages to charm the sadistic sociopath who runs the show, August (Christophe Waltz), and is charmed in turn by August’s wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), a star performer and the object of August’s abusive, obsessive affections. Director Francis Lawrence’s film, an adaptation of Sarah Gruen’s 2006 novel, depicts a harsh Depression-era landscape in which troupes founder in small towns across America, waiting to be scavenged for parts — performers and animals — by other circuses passing through. Waltz’s August is a frightening man who defines a layoff as throwing workers off a moving train, and the anxiety of anticipating his moods and moves supplies most of the movie’s dramatic tension; Jacob and Marlena’s pallid love story feeds off it rather than adding its own. The film also suffers from a frame tale that feels awkward and forced, though Hal Holbrook makes heroic efforts as the elderly Jacob, surfacing on the grounds of — what else? — a modern-day circus to recount his tale of tragedy and romance. (2:00) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Rapoport)

*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) Lumiere. (Eddy)

 

Guardian poll: Do we still need the yellow pages?

Zelda Bronstein
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34
Guardian poll: Do we still need the yellow pages?

Sup. David Chiu is pushing legislation to restrict the delivery of yellow pages phone books in the city. His proposal: If you want the books, you should ask for them. Right now you get the stuff piled up on your door whether you like it or not — and that creates a fair amount of waste.


But some small business groups say that local independent businesses still use the yellow pages (and there are a lot of plumbers and locksmiths who clearly agree) — and consumer groups like The Utility Reform Network worry about seniors and people without internet access, many of whom might not understand that they have to opt in to keep getting the books.


Too much trash? Public service? You can vote after the jump.






Free polls from Go2poll.com

5 Things: May 5, 2011

John Elberling
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0
5 Things: May 5, 2011

>>FINELY BREWED PROSE Though his boozy empire is no longer based in the Bay Area of his youth, we still have a soft spot in our hardened alcoholic hearts (or is that livers) for Jeremy Cowan. The founder of Shmaltz Brewing, Cowan has brought corny Jewish wit into the world of craft beers — see the label for his nut brown Messiah Bold: “the beer you’ve been waiting for” — and done so at a time when we all still considered Sam Adams a microbrew. He’s written a memoir about his rise to beer lord, which he’ll be back in the Bay promoting this week. Check out his signing at Omnivore Books on Sat/7, and tell him l’chaim for us.

>>A WEDNESDAY KNIGHT Sharon Funchess contributed vocals to a standout track on Teengirl Fantasy’s album 7AM, but her main musical project is Light Asylum, with Bruno Coviello. “Knights and Week Ends,” one of four songs on the recent tour EP In Tension, exemplifies the duo’s melding of powerfully dramatic ’80s diva vocalization and cold metallic beats. The Brooklyn-based Funchess and Coviello have an album due next year on Mexican Summer, and they return to SF for a show this month.

Light Asylum, “Dark Allies”:

>>PREPARE TO STOP The clusterfuck of a new-bike-lane-meets-intersection that is Fell and Scott streets is being revamped in an effort to un-fuck and un-cluster the mess. The center of-the-street bike lane—a recent addition to assist cyclists turning left from Route 47 on Scott to Route 30 on Fell—has proved perilous to pedestrians crossing east and west due to hordes of cyclists who don’t stop for them, and to drivers turning left from Fell onto Scott who have had to swerve to avoid oncoming cyclists in their lane. This week the city installed two more signals, which have yet to be turned on but will likely be dedicated left-turn lights for bikes and cars. Now, if the city can only do something about doofuses turning right onto Fell -– right into three lanes of oncoming traffic…like maybe a “No right turn” sign?

Signs of a messy pedestrian, cyclist, and driver intersection.

Signs of a pedestrian, cyclist, and driver intersection.

>>CINCO DE DRINKO? On the hunt for the best deal on a bucket of Pacifico bottles, we ran across Colorlines’ timely reflection on the de-politification of Cinco de Mayo. Kinda crazy how all immigrant commmunity celebrations become occasions for the country to get shit-faced (see: St. Patrick’s Day).

 >>REINSTALLATION Bliss Dance, a 40-foot sculpture of a dancing nude woman, was one of the best art projects at Burning Man last year. And this week, artist Marco Cochrane and his talented and hard-working crew have been installing the piece on Treasure Island, where she’ll be dancing for city residents until at least October. The build, sponsored in part by the Black Rock Arts Foundation, should be finished by the weekend. An opening reception is set for May 26.

Bliss Dance giving the hand on the playa in 2010. Photo by DJ Guacamole/Guacarazzi Photography

 

Go Deep and get slicked at El Rio

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Go Deep and get slicked at El Rio

Woman scantily clad and covered in lube is hot enough, but then the bell rings. They slip, they slide, they ride; lady parts will flail again in a tub full of slippery goop this Thursday at El Rio’s Go Deep! Lube Wrestling. 

Girl on girl wrestling at my favorite dive bar? Yes, this seems like a trick, but Go Deep! is a real event, produced by the lovely Dottie Lux of Red Hot Burlesque. The new monthly night started in April and Dottie says the sexy matches couldn’t have been more successful. “I stood with my mouth agape for three solid hours — it was super fun, amazing, and totally hilarious.” 

The current line-up of  “celebrity wrestlers” are local, fearless femmes handpicked by Dottie. From stylists to sassy clowns, the request for daring athletes was sent to over 40 businesses and organizations in the Bay, targeted at any lass who has a connection to “something larger.”  Contestants are encouraged to bring a posse, a supportive group of pals to cheer and wail and gush over their slimy acquaintance in the ring. So far the wrestling isn’t set up like a tournament, meaning everybody is a winner– literally, every girl gets a prize from Dottie’s box, including donated sex toys, garter belts, steamy books — and bacon?

“Bacon is always a prize,” Dottie says, pointedly not following up the comment any sign of mirth. This is serious: pin a hottie and bring home the salty meat. 

godeep_1

Ideally, participation in the ring will open up to the lady community at large as the event builds its fan base. If you’re interested in stripping down and pinning an unfamiliar femme, Dottie is currently accepting applications. Just remember, this ain’t no easy romp in the kiddie pool. 

“These women are out of breath. They’re working hard in there,” she says, noting the difficulties a challenger must face. “Gravity, stabilization, balance? All gone. All the usual resources you would normally have during wrestling are gone. It’s just too slippery.”

godeep_3

So far the rules simply summarized: women only, no shoes, no choking, be nice, don’t be drunk. Oh, and private parts must be legally covered — boo! Thankfully this rule has a tendency to slip. Bikinis and lube don’t sit well, at least as far as modesty’s concerned. 

“We had to learn how to better secure clothing. The girls kept losing their tops.” Keeping her eyes open for this type of situation is Dottie’s main job during the event. When a human body is glazed, the senses get a little blurry. At one point during the last Go Deep!, “we paused the show and the crowd started chanting, ‘double-knot, double-knot.'” The tops were retied fairly successfully. You wrestle and you learn. 

“Some girls tried electrical tape on their nipples. Sports bras are great. I think they should try out t-shirts, maybe little t-shirts.” From slings to spacesuits, I’m pretty sure the crowd will support any and all wrestler wardrobe choices — as long as the moves remains wet and wild. Last month’s audience was perfectly rowdy and Dottie hopes that people will continue to come with lots of enthusiasm. It’s not every day a scene from the L-Word or stereotypical frat boy’s dream comes to life. Thankfully, the female-objectifying crowd you might suspect to show up at event promising nearly naked wrestling won’t be invited. 

“As for the douche factor, it’s absolutely something I’m going to keep my eye on. My number one as a producer of this event is to make sure women are safe,” Dottie reassures. “I don’t want to kick people out, but I wouldn’t put it past me.”

godeep_2

Dottie plans to continue marketing the event to people and places that understand this is a woman-positive event, and she wants to keep it at El Rio, regardless of how popular the event becomes. If it would move to a larger venue, she’d loose some of the control and endanger it’s sanctity. “It’s an event for us, by us.”

I can only hope it goes down something like this:

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

Go Deep!

Thurs/5 9 p.m., $10-15 sliding scale

El Rio 

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elrio.com

 

Clare Rojas’ safe space

Andrew Lam
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3

As far as books go, Everything Flowers (Chronicle Books, $22.95) may just be my favorite to come out of the Bay Area this year. And not for its revelatory prose or whip-smart characters (it has neither). The small volume is filled with Clare Rojas’ quietly woman-centric, garden-toned designs that – can a book do this? – make me feel supported. I found myself breathing deeply while reading it, as if I’d just shook an asymmetrically packed satchel from my shoulders.

Resolved: I’d either get the heliotropic flower design tattooed on my skin, or I would meet the illustrator. Life being what it is, the latter proved to be the most accessible mission — and I’m glad that it was. Being in a room with Mission School vanguard Rojas is an experience akin to sitting quietly with Everything Flowers – or for that matter, listening to the breathy guitar folk of her alter ego, singer Peggy Honeywell. She creates calming, deep, feminine moments. 

“I feel so much pain being a woman in this world that I just wanted to create a safe place for them.”

Rojas barely seems to take up space in the interview room we’ve somewhat incongruously occupied at Chronicle Books, the company that published her most recent bound project. But behind her quiet presence, there’s a solidity. You have to lean in close to hear what she’s saying – in making you come to her, it’s like she’s subverting the model of self-promotional artist.

Everything Flowers, like the rest of Rojas’ canon, draws on the “super Americana, super Ohio” quilt art she saw her mother create when she was young. Rojas is fond of telling a story about visiting the place her mother used to attend quilting circles. All the cars in the parking lot, she says, were of the radical bumper sticker variety.

“There’s a certain energy and power with the way women express themselves,” she reflects when I ask her why she draws on these historical forms for her own very modern work. “When you make somebody lasagna it’s like love – and not sexy-time love either.”

When Chronicle Books approached her to do a book from which they could also cull art for pretty notecards and a gardening journal, it seemed a perfect fit for Rojas. After many years of what she felt to be acutely political work – the feminist mythology obliquely present behind her past gallery shows – she was ready to “let go of politics and just focus on beauty.” She was ready to draw some flowers, to heal for a moment.

She says. But as she takes me through the gorgeous pages of the book, it’s clear that some of the images (which were created between 2004 and 2010), hold significance for her past the simple desire to represent beauty. But good luck finding out the dirt on them – Rojas is an extraordinarily private person for our world of status updates and “about the author” pages. She tells me she’s “shy” about the paintings in the book, their hidden meanings so deeply personal that she feels weird seeing them on the page for others to examine. The most I get are small chinks in the armor I can peek through if I feel so inclined:

“Becoming an adult, figuring out what you stand for – the garden couldn’t be a better metaphor for growth.” 

Turning to a page with a fuschia design: “That one, I just enjoy painting flowers.” 

A radiating eye: “This one’s political for me.”

What are these politics Rojas keeps talking about? Again, personal. “I always feel like politics start in the home. If we can’t get it straight there…” she shrugs her shoulders, and holds my gaze.

It could have made for a real boring interview. But there’s something about Rojas that put me at ease, even if I didn’t understand quite what she was talking about, or even if we were talking about anything at all besides the literal words coming out of our mouths. After so many years of creating art in San Francisco, she is comfortable in her work. I’d entered the safe space.

“Blue Deer,” whose original now hangs in gate room G of SFO’s international terminal

Now, I’ll look at Everything Flowers and read my own stories on its pages, my frustrations and quiet victories as a female. This too, it seems, is part of Rojas’ plan. “You can only tend your own garden. If you’re happy and taking care of yourself, that resonates too.” 

 

Everything Flowers book release

Fri/6 6-8 p.m., free

Park Life

220 Clement, SF

(415) 386-7275

www.parklifestore.com

 

Evicting hoarders

Andrew Lam
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2
Evicting hoarders

news@sfbg.com

People who collect massive amounts of stuff in their apartments often suffer from a mental disability that causes them to become hoarders. Even so, they can face eviction — despite state laws that protect renters with disabilities. And when hoarders get evicted, they usually become homeless.

“Hoarding behaviors may result in a landlord issuing an eviction notice on the basis that the tenant has created a nuisance, fire hazard, or other danger in the building. If the tenant is diagnosed as disabled, the tenant may notify the landlord of the disability and request the landlord provide a reasonable accommodation to enable the tenant to remain in the apartment rather than being evicted,” reads a recent report from San Francisco’s Mental Health Association, which is seeking to educate renters, landlords, and the general public on the issue.

Evictions in San Francisco are on the rise. Between March 1, 2010 and Feb. 28, 2011, 1,370 evictions were filed, an 8 percent rise from 1,269 evictions the previous year. The Federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) and California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) offer protections to those who have a disability, but landlords say there are liability issues associated with excessive hoarding.

Tenants can fight evictions by asking their landlords for a “reasonable accommodation” whose duration depends on the situation. A reasonable accommodation could be a plan that requires 30 days of cleaning and support service for hoarders in an effort to avoid eviction.

According to Mayoclinic.com, hoarding is labeled an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). But many researchers consider it a distinct mental health problem that can be treated with therapy or counseling. California law defines a disability as a physical or mental impairment that limits one or more life activities, such as walking, seeing, hearing, working, learning, or caring for oneself.

Sandra Stark, 66, hasn’t allowed anyone in her home for five years. She collects kitchenware and antiques. Like most hoarders, she started collecting after a traumatic event. It occurred when she was in her 30s and was gaining weight. Stark had never heard of the term “hoarder” until she watched a special on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

She claims her hoarding is a symptom of depression and disability, not OCD. “I feel like, with my weight, the clutter is a barrier between me and the world that hurt me,” she told us.

Before TV shows uncovered the lives of hoarders, family and friends often were the ones to call for help. These days, hoarders often seek help themselves. A&E’s Hoarders receives 1,000 submissions every month. After we spoke to some hoarders, they were all willing to seek change.

MHA recognized the problem and created a task force in 2007. Its goal was to build a plan of action to combat compulsive hoarding in San Francisco. The task force puts the costs of compulsive hoarding at more than $6 million per year. In 2009, the task force completed its report and estimated that between 12,000 and 25,000 residents in San Francisco struggle with this condition.

Most landlords try not to evict hoarding tenants right away. “Landlords may be compassionate and, in many cases, I believe, try hard to prevent evictions. However, they still have liability insurance and strict guidelines to follow,” said Tim Ballard, a social work supervisor for the city. “It is their responsibility to protect the other tenants, and the painful result used as a means of harm reduction is often the legal option of eviction proceedings.”

He said the heavy cleaning required on a hoarder’s home can cost between $6,000 and $8,000 and can include removing trash to create safety in their home. The largest amount spent was $16,000. Currently, Ballard has 300 clients who are hoarders or clutterers in San Francisco.

On March 10, MHA hosted its 13th Conference on Hoarding and Cluttering. Keynote speaker Christiana Bratiotis, who has her doctorate in social work and is director of the Hoarding Research Project, defined compulsive hoarding as the “acquisition of, and failure to discard, a large number of possessions that appear to be useless or of limited value.”

Michael Badolato, administrative assistant of Broderick Street Adult Residential Facility, attended to find a reasonable approach to deal with a hoarding resident living in his facility. “The challenge of hoarding is the mental health issue involved,” he said. Other attendees included educators, landlords, healthcare workers, attorneys, and hoarders themselves.

One panel discussion topic was how hoarding and cluttering are portrayed in the media. The panel included Michael Gause, associate director of MHA; Robin Zasio, a physician on A&E’s Hoarders; and Kari Peterson, an organizer from Hoarding: Buried Alive. Hoarders was created to show people in crisis and prevent the behaviors through the show.

The panelists claim that in order to show what the crisis is, a sensational aspect is involved. Ceci Garnett, whose mother was featured in an episode of Hoarders, says knowing that others are out there is “worth it to let people know they are not alone.

“And at least now there is treatment,” she continued. “We have to risk sensationalism to start a conversation.”

Ray Cleary, who was on season one of TLC’s Buried Alive, also appeared on the panel. Featured before and after treatment, he is still in the process of recovering. “I didn’t have to throw everything away,” he says. “I still have boxes and don’t know what to do with them.”

Another hoarder, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid eviction, was critical of the media attention on hoarding. “It’s a cult. People are going to make a career off my circumstance — making it a disease.”

These people have “already decided it’s a pre-mental disease,” she continued.

Inside her home near Van Ness Avenue, a small path led from the door to her living room. By the door hung green bead necklaces from years of parades; yellowing stacks of paper filled every space in the rooms. An information junkie, she collects newspapers and books. A San Francisco resident for 45 years, she used to be homeless and has suffered from a head injury. “Throwing something away is like throwing away memory — and that means it’s gone forever,” she says.

When she was homeless, her belongings went to storage. But when she got housing, she couldn’t throw anything away. Everyone she knows who has suffered from a head injury has this problem as well, she says, claiming it comes from gradually mixed emotional issues from losses and her health.

For years she tried to find someone to help her recycle or donate items, but she couldn’t find the help she needed, even from her case manager. Other hoarders claim that most caseworkers aren’t aware of their condition and assume they just need to throw everything out at once — something hoarders don’t feel they can easily do.

Her landlord isn’t involved with the property and doesn’t know of the situation. She would like someone to sit and accompany her as she cleans, but she doesn’t know of any service that provides this. During the interview, she picked up a phone call from someone who was going to stop by later to help. “But they usually flake on me,” she acknowledged. Her hoarding, she says, is part of a physical health issue, not a mental health problem.

But San Francisco does offer places such as the MHA conference to discuss the issue. Hoarders‘ Dr. Zasio says the show helps the people who are willing to go on TV. In exchange for going public, the network pays for six months aftercare, including services such as home repairs and therapy sessions. Although the network recognizes that it gains ratings by sensationalizing the condition for 44 minutes, it also wants to raise public awareness.

Of the 1,370 evictions in San Francisco in the past year, 442 cases were prompted by a breach of rental agreement and 271 cases were for committing a nuisance. These cases could include hoarding, but the city doesn’t specify that in its statistics.

As Teresa Friend from the Homeless Advocacy Project said: “If the person with a disability including hoarding is without family or friends to turn to or is not part of a legal intervention process and evicted, they will end up homeless.”

 

Northwest passage: Kelly Reichardt on “Meek’s Cutoff”

Sue Vaughan
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Northwest passage: Kelly Reichardt on “Meek’s Cutoff”

Over the past decade, Kelly Reichardt has consistently created an alternative cinema that is in opposition to modern Hollywood blockbusters. Her films, which emphasize minimalist and highly visual storytelling, transcend even the industry’s edgiest darlings (think Darren Aronofsky and Quentin Tarantino). Her films Ode (1999), Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy (2008), and now Meek’s Cutoff (2010) cannot be categorized in the decade’s overhated mumblecore movement of Andrew Bujalski or the Duplass Brothers. Neither are they part of the world of extreme experimental artists, a la James Benning or Sharon Lockhart.

Somehow Reichardt has found a cinematic middle ground, balancing quiet and poetic allegories with accessible and emotional journeys — an achievement that present and future audiences will be hypnotized by for generations to come. After interviewing her for Wendy and Lucy, I spoke with her after Meek’s Cutoff played the 2011 Sundance Film Festival; it recently had its local debut at the San Francisco International Festival, and opens theatrically Fri/6.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: I recently saw your earliest films at the Pacific Film Archive retrospective and your adaptation of the Robby Benson-starring Ode to Billy Joe (1976), Ode (1999), was amazing! You shot the whole thing on Super 8, right? Do you like your earlier films?

Kelly Reichardt: Ode is very near and dear to my heart. It set me on my own way of making films. I don’t think I’m naturally a non-narrative person. And definitely not as much as I revere those kind of filmmakers like my colleagues: Peggy Ahwesh, Peter Hutton. I love seeing how their films unfold and really make the viewer be interactive in deciding what they’re about and what they mean to them. That’s what I’d like to do as a filmmaker. But I can see myself learning in all of my films, which is painful. A couple of students walked out of that screening of my earliest short films and I wanted to run out after them and say, “I totally understand!”

SFBG: You and [screenwriter] Jon Raymond seem to be consciously aware of just that! I know I have told you this before but I find your films so inspired. Your films are like the kind of classes I always wanted to have in college. You’re never telling me what to think, yet you are very precisely leading me towards something extremely imminent. And along the way, I get to experience my own journey with these characters and situations. Do you run into problems getting your films made and released because of this structure?

KR: That part of it, the endings, is [an element] coming from the world of non-narrative filmmaking. It doesn’t hand things over to the audience. It’s like a series of questions unfolding which is like a dream, which is something I want to bring into a more narrative form. It opens up the traditional genre a little which you already know how its’ suppose to go. Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy were both released through Oscilloscope, while Old Joy was distributed by Kino. These are all small independent distributors and the things that they are looking for are not for everyone.

The hard part with filmmaking is getting the money to make the film. Everybody has a camera now. You can shoot a video. But if you’re not into naturalism and you’re trying to make things that are more extravagant, that vision is going to be much harder to just do on your own. If I were a student right now, my biggest fear would be how to rise up out of such a huge sea of voices. When I submitted my first feature, River of Grass, to Sundance in 1994, they had 600 entries that year which seemed overwhelming and huge. Six hundred and they were only gonna pick 16. And what was it this year? Didn’t they have something like 6,000 entries?

Getting your film out … worry about that later. Get your film made first. Plus there’s always the fear of even having something to say at the age of 20! Before you’ve lived on your own and been connected to the big black hole of employment, and public transportation and all those things. That could be good “big” fear to have as a young filmmaker.

SFBG: In your Q&A after the screening of Meek’s Cutoff at the Egyptian Theatre [in Park City, Utah], I was very excited about your bringing up forgotten and unavailable older films like Nicholas Ray’s The Lusty Men (1952).

KR: Me too! I was trying to make that point and I became so distracted by the woman sitting behind you filming. It’s just such a weird thing to look out and see 15 people videotaping you and you realize that no experience can ever just be with the people in the room again. Everything has to be some bigger purpose and I completely quit thinking about the film and the interaction. I think it’s a bizarre that people feel completely free about videotaping you and posting it on the Internet without asking me.

SFBG: Not only is it exciting that your films feel influenced by older cinema but you do it in a way that’s very much like Peter Bogdanovich, where it feels as if you truly understand the film’s themes and goals and you’re not just making a mixtape of your favorite scenes. Wendy and Lucy feels like a Vittorio De Sica neo-realist film, while Meek’s Cutoff feels like an existential William Wellman Western by way of Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922). I mean, you even used the old Hollywood aspect ratio of 1.33:1 on Meek’s Cutoff! And it doesn’t come off kitschy; in fact, it feels even futuristic.

KR: It’s funny that you mention the aspect ratio. If anything is kitschy, and when you read back about the period, widescreen was what was kitschy. It was a gimmick! It’s what 3D or IMAX is to us today. What did Fritz Lang say, “Widescreens are for funerals and snakes.”

It’s funny now that this memory of widescreen is so embraced but it’s such a diminished landscape in a way. That question is always being asked to me in some tone of like, “When you accidentally picked the wrong aspect ratio did you have to just keep going with it?” (laughs) Though I knew going into it that it would limit the amount of theatres we can play Meek’s at. Sadly, very few theaters have the capabilities. 

SFBG: I’ve been watching a lot of Westerns this year and your horizons in every single shot of Meek’s Cutoff are truly spectacular. Your multi-layered colors! Your floating cowboys! The lined-up pioneers! I could just go on. All of it is so particular. How did you design this film? Did you do it on the landscape or storyboard it first?

KR: I storyboard but I can’t draw. (laughs) I have many different notebooks. Color is an early thing. But everything comes first from relentless scouting.  Scouting, scouting, scouting, scouting. I get familiar with the light and the colors of the day. The places you’re gonna be shooting in at certain times of the day. These locations were really remote and very hard to get to. And we ended up spending such a huge amount of time in that desert.

SFBG: Did you have to sleep out on the plains?

KR: We stayed in this town, Burns, Oregon. It’s a good two-street town and we’d drive off-road for two hours into the desert each day. This is where the actual wagon train got lost. There was nothing out there. We were actually finding pieces of wagon from the 1840s! So it would eat up a huge amount of our shooting day, which is already short because when you’re shooting in the mountains, the sun is gonna go behind them. So that’s four hours already out of your day.

My shooting schedule was so restricted that other producers would have said “You are sinking your ship by shooting out on these locations.” Fortunately my producers backed me and off we went, for better or worse. So you have to be on top of it when you’re there, knowing that there will be unexpected things to occur especially when you are dealing with oxen and mules and donkeys. All of that is to be embraced.

I also have to have a plan because we move so quickly. My DP [Chris Blauvelt] and I are talking, talking, talking. I have some books that are references, that I’ll steal frames from. Some that are location photos, people standing in the locations, some from old films. And some are just really crappy drawings I’ve done because I cannot draw, which I consider a huge handicap as a filmmaker. People always ask “Are you improvising?” We don’t have time for improv! Of course because of the weather, and the terrain, and rattlesnakes and the animals there’s certainly a certain amount of adjustment because when I storyboarded this, it wasn’t snowing. But you can’t go out there without a plan. The camera for me is the storyteller.

SFBG: Now you edit your own movies. Is that because you are a tyrant and you have to have it your own way or have you tried working with others? And by “tyrant,” I mean it in the nicest way possible.

KR: (laughs) You go through different stages: I have my writing partner [Jon Raymond] and that’s one stage and then it becomes very public and you’re working with a bunch of people when filming. Then editing is where you get your film back and it’s when I get to find my film. It’s a great moment when I’m in the editing room an I can say, “Oh yeah, that’s what Jon was originally talking about!” or “I felt that in Jon’s short story!”

But when you’re in production, there’s just so much going on! And editing is where you learn where you fucked up and should have put the camera. It’s the big payoff for me and I don’t want to hand it over to anyone else. It’s the interesting part of filmmaking. It’s where you can manipulate space and completely change the dynamic of a conversation or situation just by adding or taking away time. It’s not fun to edit with me, so I stopped using editors (laughs).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEmL9at6JT0

Meek’s Cutoff opens Fri/6 in Bay Area theaters.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University and programs the film series Midnites for Maniacs.

Music Listings

Maria Poblet
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Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Pryor Baird and the Deacons Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Between the Buried and Me, Job for a Cowboy, Ocean, Cephalic Carnage Slim’s. 8pm, $19.

Gas Mask Colony, Fist Fam, DJ Okeefe Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. With comedians Chris Storin, Kaseem Bentley, and Joseph Anolin.

Janks, Shivers Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

J Mascis, Black Heart Procession Independent. 8pm, $20.

Shelley Short, Darren Hanlon Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Frank Turner, City Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Vivian Girls, No Joy, Lilac Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $14.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Tom Jonesing Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Jesse Cook Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $16-22.

Wanda Jackson, Red Meat, DJ Britt Govea Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top 40, mash-ups, hip-hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash-ups.

THURSDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Beach Fossils, Craft Spells, Melted Toys Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

James Blunt, Christina Perri Warfield. 8pm, $40-50.

Dessa, Sims and DJ Lazerbeak, Sister Crayon Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Dredg, Dear Hunter, Balance and Composure, Trophy Fire Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

Glass Trains, Ugly Winner, Books on Tape Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Hundred in the Hands, Silver Swans, DJs Aaron Axelsen and Nako Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $10.

Inferno of Joy, Jesse Morris and the Man Cougars Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

Cass Mccombs, Frank Fairfield Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $15.

Pigeon John, Chicharones, Rocky Rivera Rock-it Room. 9pm, $12.

Ron Pope, Ari Herstand Café Du Nord. 8pm, $15.

Stop Motion Poetry Sub-Mission Art Space, 2183 Mission, SF; www.sf-submission.com. 8:30pm, $6.

Ty Curtis Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“From New Orleans to Now” Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $5-15. With the SF Jazz High School All-Stars Jazz Orchestra.

Manhattan Transfer Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35-45.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and “Tender” Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Country Casanovas Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

“Twang! Honky Tonk” Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. Cinco de Mayo celebration with DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, plus guests El Kool Kyle and Roger Mas, spinning Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

CakeMIX SF Wish, 1539 Folsom, SF; www.wishsf.com. 10pm, free. DJ Carey Kopp spinning funk, soul, and hip-hop.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

80s Night Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party has a new venue, featuring video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

FRIDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Avant Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $32.

Curren$y, Trademark, Young Roddy, Fiend, Corner Boy P Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $20.

Diddy Dirty Money featuring P. Diddy, Lloyd, Tyga Warfield. 9pm, $38-58.

Donkeys, Social Studies, Rademacher Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Dredg, Dear Hunter, Balance and Composure, Trophy Fire Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $20.

Eddie and the Hot Rods, Prima Donna, Midnite Snaxx Thee Parkside. 9pm, $12.

Glitter Wizard, Hot Lunch, Gypsyhawk, El Topo Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $8.

Groggs, True Foes, Shrouds Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Mission Players Brick and Mortar, 1710 Mission, SF; (415) 371-1631. 9:30pm, $5.

RU36, Saint Vernon, Almost Dead, Kick Rocks Slim’s. 9pm, $14.

Telekinesis, Unknown Mortal Orchestra Fillmore. 9pm, $20.

Zola Jesus, Naked on the Vague, DJ Omar Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $14.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

CéU Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-75.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, Youssoupha Sidibe with the Mystic Rhythms Band Independent. 9pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bikes and Beats Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. 10pm, $10. With Polish Ambassador, Party Ben, Non Stop Bhangra, M.O.M., and more, plus DIY bike crafts, street food vendors, a bike fashion show, and other attractions.

Deeper 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With rotating DJs spinning dubstep and techno.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Hot Pink Feathers: Ten Year Anniversary DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-75. Burlesque performances and live music by Blue Bone Express and the Hot Pink Feathers All-Star Marching Band.

120 Minutes Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Goth and witchhouse with Whitch, oOoOO, and Nako.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s doo-wop, rockabilly, jive, and more.

Some Thing Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and after-hours dancing.

Strangelove: Sacrilege Cat Club. 9:30pm, $6 (free before 10pm). Goth and industrial with DJs Tomas Diablo, Decay, Xander, and Ms. Samantha.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Crystal Stilts, Mantles Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $12.

English Beat Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $25.

Rick Estrin and the Nightcats Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

It Thing, Verms, Okie Rosette Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Manic Hispanic, Old Man Markely, Hounds and Harlots Slim’s. 9pm, $18.

Rhett Miller, Robert Francis Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $25.

Jonas Reinhardt, Cloudland Canyon, White Cloud Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Corin Tucker, Billy and Dolly, Bruises Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $14.

Wolfshirt, Paranoid Freakout Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Y&T, Kip Winger Fillmore. 9pm, $36.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Manhattan Transfer Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $35-45.

Yanni Warfield. 8pm, $39-89.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bootie SF DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups.

Everlasting Bass 330 Ritch. 10pm, $5-10. Bay Area Sistah Sound presents this party, with DJs Zita and Pam the Funkstress spinning hip-hop, soul, funk, reggae, dancehall, and club classics.

Gemini Disco Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Disco with DJ Derrick Love and Nicky B. spinning deep disco. HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip-hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Kontrol Endup. 10pm, $20. With resident DJs Alland Byallo, Craig Kuna, Sammy D, and Nikola Baytala spinning minimal techno and avant house.

Leisure Paradise Lounge. 10pm, $7. DJs Omar, Aaron, and Jet Set James spinning classic britpop, mod, 60s soul, and 90s indie.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock. Same Sex Salsa and Swing Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; (415) 305-8242. 7pm, free.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. DJs Lucky, Paul Paul, and Phengren Oswald spin butt-shakin’ ’60s soul on 45.

Souf Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Jeanine Da Feen, Motive, and Bozak spinning southern crunk, bounce, hip hop, and reggaeton.

Soundscape Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. With DJs C3PLOS, Brighton Russ, and Nick Waterhouse spinning Soul jazz, boogaloo, hammond grooves, and more.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Cowboy and Indian, Gentleman Coup Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Dirty Heads, New Politics, Pacific Dub Fillmore. 8pm, $18.50.

William Fitzsimmons, Slow Runner Independent. 8pm, $18.

Symphony X, Powerglove, Blackguard Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

KT Tunstall, Charlie Mars, Miggs Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $24.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

New York Voices, Alan Paul Trio Yoshi’s San Francisco. 6 and 8:30pm, $25.

Swing-out Sundays Milk Bar. 9pm, $7-15. With beginner swing lessons.

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Joe and the Sons of Emperor Norton Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afterglow Nickies, 466 Haight, SF; (415) 255-0300. An evening of mellow electronics with resident DJs Matt Wilder, Mike Perry, Greg Bird, and guests.

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death. Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

MONDAY 9

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Fred Frith, Beth Custer Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $12.

Mogwai, Errors Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $26.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Ghostland Observatory Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $30.

Kina Grannis featuring Misa and Emi Grannis, Imaginary Friend Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $15.

David Liebe Hart, Cool Ghouls Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

My Jerusalem, Michael Kingcaid, Dead Ships Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Raveonettes, Tamaryn Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

 

Film Listings

Maria Poblet
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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.

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The 54th annual San Francisco International Film Festival runs through Thurs/5. Venues are the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; New People, 1746 Post, SF; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third, SF; and Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, SF. For tickets (most shows $13) and complete schedule visit www.sffs.org.

OPENING

The Beaver See “The Darkness Underneath.” (1:31)

*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) (Eddy)

*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) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Jumping the Broom It’s wedding (movie) season! Angela Bassett and Paula Patton star in this one. (1:48) Shattuck.

Last Night Married for three years and together “since college,” New York City yuppies Michael (Sam Worthington) and Joanna (Keira Knightley) have a comfortable, loving relationship, though it’s unclear how much passion remains. Still, it doesn’t take much for Joanna to bristle jealously when she meets Michael’s co-worker and frequent business-trip companion, Laura (Eva Mendes). As Michael and Laura flirt their way to an overnight meeting in Philly, Joanna runs into an old flame (Guillaume Canet); before long, it becomes a cross-cutting race to see who’ll cheat first. Writer-director Massy Tadjedin isn’t spinning a new story here — and though the film offers a sleek look at contemporary marriage, Last Night takes itself a tad too seriously, purporting to showcase realistic problems and emotions amid a cast beamed directly from Planet Gorgeous Movie Star. Beautiful people: they’re just like us? (1:30) (Eddy)

*Meek’s Cutoff See “Nothing Was Delivered.” (1:44) Albany, Embarcadero.

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) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Something Borrowed Kate Hudson and Ginnifer Goodwin play frenemies of the highest order in this rom-com adapted from the best-selling novel. (1:53) Shattuck.

There Be Dragons Dougray Scott and Wes Bentley star in this drama set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. (2:00)

*These Amazing Shadows If you love movies, it’ll be hard to resist These Amazing Shadows (subtitled “A story about the National Film Registry and the power of the movies”) — it’s chock full o’ clips from films that’ve been deemed worthy of inclusion in the National Film Registry’s elite ranks. This includes, of course, the likes of 1942’s Casablanca and 1939’s Gone With the Wind, but also more recent cultural touchstones like 1985’s Back to the Future and a number of experimental, short, and silent works, and even a few cult films too. Along the way film scholars and makers (including locals Barry Jenkins, Rick Prelinger, and Mick LaSalle) chime in on their favorite films and stress why preserving film is important. There’s a healthy dose of film history, as well, with mentions of groundbreaking director Lois Weber (one of early cinema’s most prolific artists, despite her gender) and a discussion of why racially questionable films like 1915’s The Birth of a Nation — a film that Boyz n the Hood (1991) director John Singleton recommended for Registry inclusion — are historically important despite their content. Dedicated film buffs won’t discover any surprises, and there’s not much discussion of queer film (unless John Waters talking about 1939’s The Wizard of Oz counts?), nor any mention of the current shift from film to digital formats (of course preserving old films is important, but will the Registry also start considering digital-only films for inclusion?) But perhaps these are topics for another film, not this nostalgia-heavy warm fuzzy that’ll affect anyone who remembers the magic of seeing a personally significant film — join the mob if it’s 1977’s Star Wars — for the first time. (1:28) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*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) (Peitzman)

ONGOING

The Adjustment Bureau As far as sci-fi romantic thrillers go, The Adjustment Bureau is pretty standard. But since that’s not an altogether common genre mash-up, I guess the film deserves some points for creativity. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau takes place in a world where all of our fates are predetermined. Political hotshot David Norris (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness — but not if he lets a romantic dalliance with dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) take precedence. And in order to make sure he stays on track, the titular Adjustment Bureau (including Anthony Mackie and Mad Men‘s John Slattery) are there to push him in the right direction. While the film’s concept is intriguing, the execution is sloppy. The Adjustment Bureau suffers from flaws in internal logic, allowing the story to skip over crucial plot points with heavy exposition and a deus ex machina you’ve got to see to believe. Couldn’t the screenwriter have planned ahead? (1:39) Shattuck. (Peitzman)

African Cats (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

*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) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Sussman)

Certified Copy Abbas Kiarostami’s beguiling new feature signals “relationship movie” with every cobblestone step, but it’s manifestly a film of ideas — one in which disillusionment is as much a formal concern as a dramatic one. Typical of Kiarostami’s dialogic narratives, Certified Copy is both the name of the film and an entity within the film: a book written against the ideal of originality in art by James Miller (William Shimell), an English pedant fond of dissembling. After a lecture in Tuscany, he meets an apparent admirer (Juliette Binoche) in her antique shop. We watch them talk for several minutes in an unbroken two-shot. They gauge each other’s values using her sister as a test case — a woman who, according to the Binoche character, is the living embodiment of James’ book. Do their relative opinions of this off-screen cipher constitute characterization? Or are they themselves ciphers of the film’s recursive structure? Kiarostami makes us wonder. They begin to act as if they were married midway through the film, though the switch is not so out of the blue: Kiarostami’s narrative has already turned a few figure-eights. Several critics have already deemed Certified Copy derivative of many other elliptical romances; the strongest case for an “original” comes of Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy (1954). The real difference is that while Rossellini’s masterpiece realizes first-person feelings in a third-person approach, Kiarostami stays in the shadow of doubt to the end. (1:46) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Goldberg)

The Conspirator It may not be your standard legal drama, but The Conspirator is a lot more enjoyable when you think of it as an extended episode of Law & Order. The film chronicles the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the lone woman charged in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. It’s a fascinating story, especially for those who don’t know much of the history past John Wilkes Booth. But while the subject matter is compelling, the execution is hit-or-miss. Wright is sympathetic as Surratt, but the usually great James McAvoy is somewhat forgettable in the pivotal role of Frederick Aiken, Surratt’s conflicted lawyer. It’s hard to say what it is that’s missing from The Conspirator: the cast — which also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Tom Wilkinson — is great, and this is a story that’s long overdue to be told. Still, something is lacking. Could it be the presence of everyone’s favorite detective, the late Lennie Briscoe? (2:02) Embarcadero, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont. (Peitzman)

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (1:47) SF Center.

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) Empire, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Hanna The title character of Hanna falls perfectly into the lately very popular Hit-Girl mold. Add a dash of The Boys from Brazil-style genetic engineering — Hanna has the unfair advantage, you see, when it comes to squashing other kids on the soccer field or maiming thugs with her bare hands — and you have an ethereal killing/survival machine, played with impassive confidence by Atonement (2007) shit-starter Saoirse Ronan. She’s been fine-tuned by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), a spy who went out into the cold and off the grid, disappearing into the wilds of Scandinavia where he home-schooled his charge with an encyclopedia and brutal self-defense and hunting tests. Atonement director Joe Wright plays with a snowy palette associated with innocence, purity, and death — this could be any time or place, though far from the touch of modern childhood stresses: that other Hannah (Montana), consumerism, suburban blight, and academic competition. The 16-year-old Hanna, however, isn’t immune from that desire to succeed. Her game mission: go from a feral, lonely existence into the modern world, run for her life, and avenge the death of her mother by killing Erik’s CIA handler, Marissa (Cate Blanchett). The nagging doubt: was she born free, or Bourne to be a killer? Much like the illustrated Brothers Grimm storybook that she studies, Hanna is caught in an evil death trap of fairytale allegories. One wonders if the super-soldier apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since evil stepmonster Marissa oversaw the program that produced Hanna — the older woman and the young girl have the same cold-blooded talent for destruction and the same steely determination. Yet there’s hope for the young ‘un. After learning that even her beloved father hid some basic truths from her, this natural-born killer seems less likely to go along with the predetermined ending, happy or no, further along in her storybook life. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (1:25) 1000 Van Ness.

*In a Better World Winner of this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this latest from Danish director Susanne Bier (2004’s Brothers, 2006’s After the Wedding) and her usual co-scenarist Anders Thomas Jensen (2005’s Adam’s Apples, 2003’s The Green Butchers) is a typically engrossing, complex drama that deals with the kind of rage for “personal justice” that can lead to school and workplace shootings, among other things (like terrorism). Shy, nervous ten-year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard) needs a confidence boost, but things are worrying both at home and elsewhere. His parents are estranged, and his doting father (Mikael Persbrandt) is mostly away as a field hospital in Kenya tending victims of local militias. At school, he’s an easy mark for bullies, a fact which gets the attention of charismatic, self-assured new kid Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen), who appoints himself Elias’ new (and only) friend — then when his slightly awed pal is picked on again, intervenes with such alarming intensity that the police are called. Christian appears a little too prone to violence and harsh judgment in teaching “lessons” to those he considers in the wrong; his own domestic situation is another source of anger, as he simplistically blames his earnest, distracted executive father (Ulrich Thomsen) for his mother’s recent cancer death. Is Christian a budding little psychopath, or just a kid haplessly channeling his profound loss? Regardless, when an adult bully (Kim Bodnia as a loutish mechanic) humiliates Elias’ father in front of the two boys, Christian pulls his reluctant friend into a pursuit of vengeance that surely isn’t going to end well. With their nuanced yet head-on treatment of hot button social and ethical issues, Bier and Jensen’s work can sometimes border on overly-schematic melodrama, meting out its own secular-humanist justice a bit too handily, like 21st-century cinematic Dickenses. But like Dickens, they also have a true mastery of the creating striking characters and intricately propulsive plotlines that illustrate the points at hand in riveting, hugely satisfying fashion. This isn’t their best. But it’s still pretty excellent, and one of those universally accessible movies you can safely recommend even to people who think they don’t like foreign or art house films. (1:53) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Insidious (1:42) California.

*Jane Eyre Do we really need another adaptation of Jane Eyre? As long as they’re all as good as Cary Fukunaga’s stirring take on the gothic romance, keep ’em coming. Mia Wasikowska stars in the titular role, with the dreamy Michael Fassbender stepping into the high pants of Edward Rochester. The cast is rounded out by familiar faces like Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins — all of whom breathe new life into the material. It helps that Fukunaga’s sensibilities are perfectly suited to the story: he stays true to the novel while maintaining an aesthetic certain to appeal to a modern audience. Even if you know Jane Eyre’s story — Mr. Rochester’s dark secret, the fate of their romance, etc. — there are still surprises to be had. Everyone tells the classics differently, and this adaptation is a thoroughly unique experience. And here’s hoping it pushes the engaging Wasikowska further in her ascent to stardom. (2:00) Albany, Lumiere, Piedmont. (Peitzman)

Kill the Irishman If you enjoy 1970s-set Mafia movies featuring characters with luxurious facial hair zooming around in Cadillacs, flossing leather blazers, and outwitting cops and each other — you could do a lot worse than Kill the Irishman, which busts no genre boundaries but delivers enjoyable retro-gangsta cool nonetheless. Adapted from the acclaimed true crime book by a former Cleveland police lieutenant, the film details the rise and fall of Danny Greene, a colorful and notorious Irish-American mobster who both served and ran afoul of the big bosses in his Ohio hometown. During one particularly conflict-ridden period, the city weathered nearly 40 bombings — buildings, mailboxes, and mostly cars, to the point where the number of automobiles going sky-high is almost comical (you’d think these guys would’ve considered taking the bus). The director of the 2004 Punisher, Jonathan Hensleigh, teams up with the star of 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, Ray Stevenson, who turns in a magnetic performance as Greene; it’s easy to see how his combination of book- and street smarts (with a healthy dash of ruthlessness) buoyed him nearly to the top of the underworld. The rest of the cast is equally impressive, with Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, and Linda Cardellini turning in supporting roles, plus a host of dudes who look freshly defrosted from post-Sopranos storage. (1:46) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (1:46) Four Star.

*Limitless An open letter to the makers of Limitless: please fire your marketing team because they are making your movie look terrible. The story of a deadbeat writer (Bradley Cooper) who acquires an unregulated drug that allows him to take advantage of 100 percent of his previously under-utilized brain, Limitless is silly, improbable and features a number of distracting comic-book-esque stylistic tics. But consumed with the comic book in mind, Limitless is also unpredictable, thrilling, and darkly funny. The aforementioned style, which includes many instances of the infinite regression effect that you get when you point two mirrors at each other, and a heavy blur to distort depth-of-field, only solidifies the film’s cartoonish intentions. Cooper learns foreign languages in hours, impresses women with his keen attention to detail, and sets his sights on Wall Street, a move that gets him noticed by businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro in a glorified cameo) as well as some rather nasty drug dealers and hired guns looking to cash in on the drug. Limitless is regrettably titled and masquerades in TV spots as a Wall Street series spin-off, but in truth it sports the speedy pacing and tongue-in-cheek humor required of a good popcorn flick. (1:37) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Galvin)

*The Lincoln Lawyer Outfitted with gym’d-tanned-and-laundered manly blonde bombshells like Matthew McConaughey, Josh Lucas, and Ryan Phillippe, this adaptation of Michael Connelly’s LA crime novel almost cries out for an appearance by the Limitless Bradley Cooper — only then will our cabal of flaxen-haired bros-from-other-‘hos be complete. That said, Lincoln Lawyer‘s blast of morally challenged golden boys nearly detracts from the pleasingly gritty mise-en-scène and the snappy, almost-screwball dialogue that makes this movie a genre pleasure akin to a solid Elmore Leonard read. McConaughey’s criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller is accustomed to working all the angles — hence the title, a reference to a client who’s working off his debt by chauffeuring Haller around in his de-facto office: a Lincoln Town Car. Haller’s playa gets truly played when he becomes entangled with Louis Roulet (Phillippe), a pretty-boy old-money realtor accused of brutally attacking a call girl. Loved ones such as Haller’s ex Maggie (Marisa Tomei) and his investigator Frank (William H. Macy) are in jeopardy — and in danger of turning in some delightfully textured cameos — in this enjoyable walk on the sleazy side of the law, the contemporary courtroom counterpart to quick-witted potboilers like Sweet Smell of Success (1957). (1:59) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*My Perestroika Robin Hessman’s very engaging documentary takes one very relatable look at how changes since glasnost have affected some average Russians. The subjects here are five thirtysomethings who, growing up in Moscow in the 70s and 80s, were the last generation to experience full-on Communist Party indoctrination. But just as they reached adulthood, the whole system dissolved, confusing long-held beliefs and variably impacting their futures. Andrei has ridden the capitalist choo-choo to considerable enrichment as the proprietor of luxury Western menswear shops. But single mother Olga, unlucky in love, just scrapes by, while married schoolteachers Lyuba and Boris are lucky to have inherited an apartment (cramped as it is) they could otherwise ill afford. Meanwhile Ruslan, once member of a famous punk band (which he abandoned on principal because it was getting “too commercial”), both disdains and resents the new order just as he did the old one. Home movies and old footage of pageantry celebrating Soviet socialist glory make a whole ‘nother era come to life in this intimate, unexpectedly charming portrait of its long-term aftermath. (1:27) Balboa. (Harvey)

*The Princess of Montpensier Marie (Mélanie Thierry), the titular figure in French director Bertrand Tavernier’s latest, is a young 16th century noblewoman married off to a Prince (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) of great wealth and property. But they’ve barely met when he’s called off to war — leaving her alone on his enormous estate, vulnerable to myriad suitors who seem to be forever throwing themselves at her nubile, neglected body. Lambert Wilson (2010’s Of Gods and Men) is touching as the older soldier appointed her protector; he comes to love her, yet is the one man upstanding enough to resist compromising her. If you’ve been jonesing for the kind of lush arthouse period epic that feels like a big fat classic novel, this engrossing saga from a 70-year-old Gallic cinema veteran in top form will scratch that itch for nearly two and a half satisfyingly tragic-romantic hours. (2:19) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Of Gods and Men It’s the mid-1990s, and we’re in Tibhirine, a small Algerian village based around a Trappist monastery. There, eight French-born monks pray and work alongside their Muslim neighbors, tending to the sick and tilling the land. An emboldened Islamist rebel movement threatens this delicate peace, and the monks must decide whether to risk the danger of becoming pawns in the Algerian Civil War. On paper, Of Gods and Men sounds like the sort of high-minded exploitation picture the Academy swoons over: based on a true story, with high marks for timeliness and authenticity. What a pleasant surprise then that Xavier Beauvois’s Cannes Grand Prix winner turns out to be such a tightly focused moral drama. Significantly, the film is more concerned with the power vacuum left by colonialism than a “clash of civilizations.” When Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson) turns away an Islamist commander by appealing to their overlapping scriptures, it’s at the cost of the Algerian army’s suspicion. Etienne Comar’s perceptive script does not rush to assign meaning to the monks’ decision to stay in Tibhirine, but rather works to imagine the foundation and struggle for their eventual consensus. Beauvois occasionally lapses into telegraphing the monks’ grave dilemma — there are far too many shots of Christian looking up to the heavens — but at other points he’s brilliant in staging the living complexity of Tibrihine’s collective structure of responsibility. The actors do a fine job too: it’s primarily thanks to them that by the end of the film each of the monks seems a sharply defined conscience. (2:00) California, Opera Plaza. (Goldberg)

*Poetry Sixtysomething Mija (legendary South Korean actor Yun Jung-hee) impulsively crashes a poetry class, a welcome shake-up in a life shaped by unfulfilling routines. In order to write compelling verse, her instructor says, it is important to open up and really see the world. But Mija’s world holds little beauty beyond her cheerful outfits and beloved flowers; most pressingly, her teenage grandson, a mouth-breathing lump who lives with her, is completely remorseless about his participation in a hideous crime. In addition, she’s just been disgnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and the elderly stroke victim she housekeeps for has started making inappropriate advances. Somehow writer-director Lee Chang-dong (2007’s Secret Sunshine) manages not to deliver a totally depressing film with all this loaded material; it’s worth noting Poetry won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Yun is unforgettable as a woman trying to find herself after a lifetime of obeying the wishes of everyone around her. Though Poetry is completely different in tone than 2009’s Mother, it shares certain elements — including the impression that South Korean filmmakers have recognized the considerable rewards of showcasing aging (yet still formidable) female performers. (2:19) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Don’t even think about shortening the title: Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Story Ever Sold is ingenious, bitingly funny, and made possible by corporate sponsorship. POM paid good money to earn a spot about the title, so damned if I’m going to leave them out. Instead of keeping product placement subliminal — or at least trying — Spurlock shows exactly what goes into the popular marketing practice. His film isn’t so much critical as it is honest: he doesn’t fight product placement, but rather embraces it to his own advantage. It’s win-win. Spurlock gets to make his movie without losing any cash, and the audience gets a hilarious insider look into a mostly hidden facet of advertising. As he says, it’s about transparency, and no one can claim Spurlock is trying to go behind our backs. And what of the advertising that pops up throughout the film? I can only speak to my own experience, but yes, I’m drinking POM as I write this. (1:26) SF Center, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

Potiche When we first meet Catherine Deneuve’s Suzanne — the titular trophy wife (or potiche) of Francois Ozon’s new airspun comedy — she is on her morning jog, barely breaking a sweat as she huffs and puffs in her maroon Adidas tracksuit, her hair still in curlers. It’s 1977 and Suzanne’s life as a bourgeois homemaker in a small provincial French town has played out as smoothly as one of her many poly-blend skirt suits: a devoted mother to two grown children and loving wife who turns a blind eye to the philandering of husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), Suzanne is on the fast track to comfortable irrelevance. All that changes when the workers at Robert’s umbrella factory strike and take him hostage. Suzanne, with the help of union leader and old flame Babin (Gerard Depardieu, as big as a house), negotiates a peace, and soon turns around the company’s fortunes with her new-found confidence and business savvy. But when Robert wrests back control with the help of a duped Babin, Suzanne does an Elle Woods and takes them both on in a surprise run for political office. True to the film’s light théâtre de boulevard source material, Ozon keeps things brisk and cheeky (Suzanne sings with as much ease as she spouts off Women’s Lib boilerplate) to the point where his cast’s hammy performances start blending into the cheery production design. Satire needs an edge that Potiche, for all its charm, never provides. (1:43) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Sussman)

Prom (1:44) 1000 Van Ness.

Rio (1:32) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

The Robber (1:37) Lumiere, Shattuck.

Scre4m Back in 1996, Wes Craven’s Scream revitalized the slasher genre with a script (by Kevin Williamson) that poked fun at horror clichés while still delivering genuine scares. The sequels offered diminishing returns on this once-clever formula; Scream 4 arrives 11 years past Scream 3, presumably hoping to work that old self-referential yet gory magic on a new crop of filmgoers. But Craven and Williamson’s hall-of-mirrors creation (more self-satisfied than self-referential, scrambling to anticipate a cynical audience member’s every second-guess) is barely more than than a continuation of something that was already tired in 2000, albeit with iPhone and web cam gags pasted in for currency’s sake. Eternal Ghostface target Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to her hometown to promote what’s apparently a woo-woo self-help book (Mad Men‘s Alison Brie, as Sidney’s bitchy-perky publicist, steals every scene she’s in); still haunting Woodsboro are Dewey (David Arquette), now the sheriff, and Gale (Courteney Cox), a crime author with writer’s block. When the Munch-faced one starts offing high school kids, local movie nerds (Rory Culkin, Hayden Panettiere) and nubile types (Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere) react by screening all seven Stab films, inspired by the “real-life” Woodsboro murders, and spouting off about the rules, or lack thereof in the 21st century, of horror sequels. If that sounds mega-meta exhausting, it is. And, truth be told, not very scary. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

I Am File in the dusty back drawer of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) wannabes. The cringe-inducing, pretentious title is a giveaway — though the good intentions are in full effect — in this documentary by and about director Tom Shadyac’s search for answers to life’s big questions. After a catastrophic bike accident, the filmmaker finds his lavish lifestyle as a successful Hollywood director of such opuses as Bruce Almighty (2003) somewhat wanting. Thinkers and spiritual leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn, UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, and scientist David Suzuki provide some thought-provoking answers, although Shadyac’s thinking behind seeking out this specific collection of academics, writers, and activists remains somewhat unclear. I Am‘s shambling structure and perpetual return to its true subject — Shadyac, who resembles a wide-eyed Weird Al Yankovic — doesn’t help matters, leaving a viewer with mixed feelings, less about whether one man can work out his quest for meaning on film, than whether Shadyac complements his subjects and their ideas by framing them in such a random, if well-meaning, manner. And sorry, this film doesn’t make up for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). (1:16) Shattuck. (Chun)

*Source Code A post-9/11 Groundhog Day (1993) with explosions, Inception (2010) with a heart, or Avatar (2009) taken down a notch or dozen in Chicago —whatever you choose to call it, Source Code manages to stand up on its own wobbly Philip K. Dick-inspired legs, damn the science, and take off on the wings of wish fulfillment. ‘Cause who hasn’t yearned for a do-over — and then a do-over of that do-over, etc. We could all be as lucky — or as cursed — as soldier Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who gets to tumble down that time-space rabbit hole again and again, his consciousness hitching a ride in another man’s body, while in search of the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. On the upside, he gets to meet the girl of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) — and see her getting blown to smithereens again and again, all in the service of his country, his commander-cum-link to the outside world (Vera Farmiga), and the scientist masterminding this secret military project (Jeffrey Wright). On the downside, well, he gets to do it over and over again, like a good little test bunny in pinball purgatory. Fortunately, director Duncan Jones (2009’s Moon) makes compelling work out of the potentially ludicrous material, while his cast lends the tale a glossed yet likable humanity, the kind that was all too absent in Inception. (1:33) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Stake Land Not gonna lie — the reason I wanted to review this one was because of the film still in the San Francisco International Film Festival catalogue. Rotten-faced vampire with a stake through its neck? Yes, please! But while Jim Mickle’s apocalyptic road movie does offer plenty of gore, it’s more introspective than one might expect, following an orphaned teenage boy, Martin (Connor Paolo, Serena’s little bro on Gossip Girl), and his gruff mentor, Mister (Snake Plissken-ish Nick Damici), on their travels through a ravaged America. As books, films, and comics have taught us, whenever a big chunk of the human race is wiped out (thanks to zombies, vampires, an unknown cataclysm, etc.), the remaining population will either be good (heroic, like Mister and Martin, or helpless, like the stragglers they rescue, including a nun played by Kelly McGillis), or evil — cannibals, rapists, religious nuts, militant survivalists, etc. Stake Land doesn’t throw many curveballs into its end-times narrative, but it’s beautifully shot and doesn’t hold back on the brutality. Larry Fessenden (director of 2006’s The Last Winter) produced and has a brief cameo as a helpful bartender. (1:38) Roxie. (Eddy)

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

Water for Elephants A young man named Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) turns his back on catastrophe and runs off to join the circus. It sounds like a fantasy, but this was never Jacob’s dream, and the circus world of Water for Elephants isn’t all death-defying feats and pretty women on horses. Or rather, the pretty woman also rides an elephant named Rosie and the casualties tend to occur outside the big top, after the rubes have gone home. Stumbling onto a train and into this world by chance, Jacob manages to charm the sadistic sociopath who runs the show, August (Christophe Waltz), and is charmed in turn by August’s wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), a star performer and the object of August’s abusive, obsessive affections. Director Francis Lawrence’s film, an adaptation of Sarah Gruen’s 2006 novel, depicts a harsh Depression-era landscape in which troupes founder in small towns across America, waiting to be scavenged for parts — performers and animals — by other circuses passing through. Waltz’s August is a frightening man who defines a layoff as throwing workers off a moving train, and the anxiety of anticipating his moods and moves supplies most of the movie’s dramatic tension; Jacob and Marlena’s pallid love story feeds off it rather than adding its own. The film also suffers from a frame tale that feels awkward and forced, though Hal Holbrook makes heroic efforts as the elderly Jacob, surfacing on the grounds of — what else? — a modern-day circus to recount his tale of tragedy and romance. (2:00) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Rapoport)

*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) Bridge, California, Piedmont. (Eddy)

REP PICKS

*A Place in the Sun A poor relation to wealthy manufacturers, George Eastman (31-year-old Montgomery Clift) accepts his uncle’s offer of a job, starting at the bottom but proving a quick study. As he rises up the ladder, he acquires an altatross — an atypically demure Shelley Winters as factory girl Alice — that becomes a serious liability as his stature rises enough to attract socialite goddess Angela (17 year-old Elizabeth Taylor). This kickoff to the Mechanics Institute’s month-long Taylor tribute was a sensation in 1951. Taylor had been a juvenile star (1944’s National Velvet), then a teenage ingenue, but this film established her as the most beautiful movie star of her generation — matched with dreamily vague Clift, a newcomer who’d created a sensation himself in 1948’s Red River and 1949s The Heiress. George Stevens — smack amidst his journey from being a lively iconoclast (Astaire and Rogers, Tracy and Hepburn, 1939’s Gunga Din) to the decreasingly prolific maker of solemn Oscar-bait epics — filmed the two of them in swooning, gigantic close ups that were the most star-makingly heated since Garbo met John Gilbert. In 1951, nobody read Clift’s aching sensitivity as gay; women wanted to clutch his bony, Brylcreemed body to their bosoms. Despite the actor’s tragic history — guarantee of his continued mythologizing — he’s a remote screen presence, as opposed to Taylor’s superficial ease. (She became an interesting actress later, when permitted to play harpies and hysterics.) But he’s very poignant in a monologue where George confesses all — well, nearly all — his vulnerable points to a potential future father-in-law. This adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 An American Tragedy — an actual Great American Novel, published the same year as yea greater The Great Gatsby — is fairly frank for its era about unwedded pregnancies, the inaccessibility of abortion, and unbridgeable class divides. But it’s also aged unevenly, with awkward use of back-projection and a crucial softening of the novel’s most intense narrative turning point. The climatic courtroom drama is graceless; later progress more Christian-inspirational than Dreiser envisioned; nor does the fabled romance chemistry register as it once did. Still, this is a moment in film history: not one of Elizabeth Taylor’s best performances, but the one that secured her status as upmarket bombshell for a generation. Plus it won six Oscars, including Best Director. (2:02) Mechanics’ Institute. (Harvey)

 

On the Cheap Listings

Maria Poblet
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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Jackie Andrews. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 4

Asterisk zine party Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 8pm, free. Celebrate one year of Asterisk, the fabulous print and online magazine highlighting all things San Francisco, with a party catered by Charanga and drinks specials courtesy of Blue Angel Vodka. Plus, the amazing soul group Nick Waterhouse and the Tarots will be performing and Erik Otto art displayed for you to enjoy while DJs get you dancing. There’s so much going on tonight, it’s hard to believe the party is free, but be sure to donate a few bills to benefit Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, the non-profit that does a lot of good things for small business here in the city.

Zyzzyva spring celebration The Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. This art and lit journal (named after the last word in the dictionary, a genus of weevil, but you already know that, right?) has gone through some changes recently. When founder Howard Junker announced he would be stepping down as editor after 25 years, Laura Cogan jumped at the opportunity and has been busy cleaning house in the form of sprucing up the website and adding a blog, among other things. Joining her at tonight’s celebration. Reading selections from their work, will be Robin Ekiss, Tom Barbash, and Vanessa Hua.

THURSDAY 5

Craft bar Museum of Craft and Folk Art, 51 Yerba Buena Lane, SF; www.mocfa.org. 6-8pm, $5, t-shirts and totes are an extra $5. Make Sister Corita-style posters, t-shirts, and tote bags in honor of her messages of love and peace during the social upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s. The museum will have silk screens set up with inks prepared in advance to match her period colors – think day-glo – as well as all of the supplies needed. Also, enjoy a special live performance from Coconuts and free-flowing Trumer Pils courtesy of the Berkeley brewery.

FRIDAY 6

Bikes and Beats Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 10pm-3am, $6-10. Check out this new collaborative that merges Bay Area bike and music scenes at a party that benefits Sunday Streets and the urban sustainability guerrillas known as the Wigg Party. They’ve got bike-themed crafts and screenprinting planned, as well as food vendors, art, fashion, raffle prizes, and more. And it wouldn’t be a party without music, so they went ahead and wisely reserved, not one, but two rooms for DJs, live performances, and video installations.

SATURDAY 7

Mother’s Day book Sale Adobe Books, 3166 16th St, SF; www.adobebooksbackroomgallery.blogspot.com. 11am-5pm, free. Get lost in the organized-by-color bookshelves today at Adobe. This little gem of a bookstore will be selling all of their stock at a discount in honor of mothers everywhere. Books outside are all one dollar while everything inside the store is marked 25 percent off. Plus, check out the current exhibition in the backroom gallery for artwork related to the publication of Berkeley-based Allone Co. Editions’ From the Golden West Notebook, a work inspired by the ACE Double books of the fifties.

El Cerrito city-wide garage sale Various locations, El Cerrito; www.el-cerrito.org. 9am-3pm, free. Holy moly, this event is every collector and spendthrift’s dream come true – 67 garage sales all happening at once, carrying everything from furniture to household items to records and vintage clothing. Plot your route in advance – download the map complete with listings and take it with you on your meticulously planned hunt for one-of-a-kind bargain treasures. Rent a Zip Car – no, rent a U-Haul if you have to – because you’re not gonna want to miss this.

SUNDAY 8

Mother’s Day rose show Hall of Flowers, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.sfrosesociety.com. Noon-12:30-4pm, free. Score some serious bonus points with Mom this year and treat her to a lovely afternoon among the roses. The San Francisco Rose Society continues its annual Mother’s Day tradition of filling Golden Gate Park’s Hall of Flowers with spectacular rose exhibits of all varieties. Stroll along the fragrant and breathtaking paths between noon and 4pm, after which the public is invited to take home free roses!

TUESDAY 10

Emperor Norton history lesson Cafe Royal, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free. Attend this informal history lesson from historian Peter Molan, and learn all about the once celebrated San Francisco character – the self-proclaimed “Emperor of these United States” and later, the “Protector of Mexico”. Though considered insane by his fellow San Franciscans, he was well-loved and his regal decrees often humored. The day after he collapsed and died on a street corner in 1880, 30,000 people packed the streets to mourn his death.

 

 

Thirty years of radical sex, as seen by Michael Rosen

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Thirty years of radical sex, as seen by Michael Rosen

It’s been more than three decades since Michael Rosen began photographing radical sex, giving insight into sexual explorations that ridicule the notion of “mainstream” sexuality. People of all shapes, genders, and lifestyles have come out of their bedrooms to play in front of Rosen’s lens, but today it’s the man behind the camera who is giving it away, free of charge. 

Flesh grinds and bodies mount. Rope-entwined nipples seem ready to burst. A whip cracks on a slave’s bare cheeks. They may be still images, but the scenes Rosen captures aren’t static — they’re merely paused for outside reflection. Eyes dart across the images, consuming every engorged cock and clit while the brain attempts to control the influx of its own desires, inhibitions, and assumptions. Rosen’s work is refreshingly bold; a clear look at real, honest sex.

Rosen has published five books of beautifully lustful photographs throughout his career, but in 2007 he posted the entire collection on his website for free. In the three and a half years since, there have been 25,000 downloads. Rosen, a recently retired software developer, is weeks away from celebrating his 69th birthday and has no plans to start charging for his work. I tell him he’s crazy. 

“Didn’t I already mention that this is what I’m meant to do? Did I mention that I’m changing the world?” Rosen reminds me that we’ve already touched on this subject today, but I’m still in awe at his generosity. 

mrosen

Current work and his “timid” nude landscapes from the 70s

I’ve been hanging out in his studio in the basement of his San Francisco home for nearly two hours, flipping through photographs old and new, and listening to the wild stories behind some of his most favorite shoots. There’s a before and after photo of two transmen, first playing together as women and then years later, reconnecting for another romp with male bodies. There’s a striking photo of a man sucking himself off. Rosen points out the easily overlooked lesions on his body — he was dying from AIDS. Then there’s the story about the badass dominatrix best summarized with a series of nouns: slave, duct tape, funnel, piss, cum. 

mrosen

“Are you sure you can put this image on your site?” 

He stares at me with serious intent and tells me he considers himself a “concerned photographer”, dedicated to making important, original work. This is not pornography, but sexual art that offers insight into the curiosities of passion. Between the sheets, on the kitchen counter, or bound in a dungeon, there’s no such thing as right and wrong, only consensual. He presents me with a carefully planned quote, set to some dramatic classical piano pounding from the radio. 

“Whatever your plumbing and whatever the plumbing of your partner, it’s all good so long as you’re having safe, sane, and consensual fun together.”

mrosen2

A model named Becky photographed in 1975

In the early years Rosen’s subjects were exhibitionists who wanted professional prints. Word of mouth brought all kinds of couples, lovers, and individuals to Rosen’s studio and what they did on camera was their choice. He has never arranged stranger encounters — whether the lovers had already slept together or fantasized about the possibility, the desire has always been real.

Today he pays most of his nudes but the same guidelines apply: “They’re all just doing what they do.” He offers little direction besides offering technical suggestions, asking them “whip at a steady pace” so he can time the shot or reminding people to “come to rest at the base of his dick so you don’t hide it.” 

Rosen’s latest project is a series of contact sheets; his version of a Cubist-style sexual portrait. He’s shot over 50 women from head to toe, zooming in on hands, labias, tattoos, and nipples. The multiple simultaneous views of each lady expresses her individual personality, both clothed and naked. A collection of these photographs will be featured at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival next month and tentatively, this fall they’ll be showing at the SF Center for Sex and Culture. Although the layout veers away from his previous work, that real, tangible intimacy remains. 

“This is real and these are real people,” he looks around the room, scanning over the years of faces and bodies. “For some of these people, it was the first time they had sex and for others it was their last. That’s real life.”

mrosen4

Sexual art and cats dominate Rosen’s home

I ask him what it’s like to be so closely involved with all this steamy sex. The moaning, the orgasms– does he ever get distracted? Excited?  He quotes photographer Jim Duvall. “I’m not a very good photographer with a hard on,” he cracks a small smirk and twiddles his thumbs. “It’s hard sometimes. But it’s ok.” 

 

Land of the undead

Andrew Lam
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Land of the undead

VAMPIRE APOCALYPSE There are no sparkly torsos in Jim Mickle’s Stake Land, a movie that depicts a vampire snacking on a human infant within its first five minutes. After that bold declaration that this is not a film to be fucked with, Stake Land shifts its focus to a ragtag pair of travelers who’ve taken to rural America’s back roads, trying to annihilate as many vamps as possible: teenage Martin (Gossip Girl‘s Connor Paolo), and his gruff mentor, Mister (Nick Damici, who co-wrote the script with Mickle).

As books, films, and comics have taught us, whenever a big chunk of the human race is wiped out (thanks to zombies, an unknown cataclysm, etc.), the remaining population will either be good (heroic, like Mister and Martin, or helpless, like the stragglers they rescue, played by Kelly McGillis and Danielle Harris, among others), or evil — cannibals, rapists, religious nuts, militant survivalists, etc. Stake Land doesn’t throw many curveballs into its end-times narrative, but it’s beautifully shot and doesn’t hold back on the brutality. The film opens at the Roxie on the heels of its local debut at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I recently chatted with up-and-comer Mickle about horror, the Internet, and … well, what else is there, really?

SFBG Stake Land feels very much like a zombie apocalypse film, except for the choice of monster. Why vampires?

Jim Mickle [Co-writer Damici and I] had just done zombies — we had rat zombies in [2006’s] Mulberry Street — but I think we both felt we didn’t get to do everything that we wanted to do there. Yet, also, we didn’t want to do the Romero thing and just do one zombie movie after another. I think we were looking for another monster, and we both liked vampires. They’re human-based, so I think you can treat them like characters and not just monsters, and be able to have them stand in for a lot of different things socially — but also have a lot of fun with them.

SFBG A lot of vampire stories depict the vampires as living secretly among the human race, but in Stake Land, they’ve basically taken over.

JM Originally, we [planned the film as a Web series], and that was how it started. The first 10 pages were always the same, and from there it went to different webisodes, where, for example [the characters] stopped off in New York City and had to fight a hopping vampire in Chinatown. It was all about, “When are people gonna wake up and realize they are surrounded by vampires?” But we were gonna do it very low-budget, and the question was always, like, “Holy shit. How are we gonna pull this off?” When the idea became to make a feature out of it and to sort of merge all these stories together, it just felt like that — a bunch of stories strung together and very chapterized. We wanted to hang onto that, but also give it a backbone and an overriding theme.

SFBG Do you have plans to follow through on the Web series?

JM We did try to keep it going — we have these prequels that have come out [on the iTunes Movie Trailers page at trailers.apple.com]. There are seven total — each character has their own short film, basically, sort of right before we meet them in the movie. We wanted to keep the idea of the serial going. We liked the idea that there are these new ways to release movies, and the online presence really matters for movies now. I still have yet to see a really successful Web series, so we tried to find a way to do that and mix that in [with the prequels]. But we still have all those scripts, you know, and when people talk about sequels and stuff — we still have that material there, and it’ll be interesting to see where it goes.

STAKE LAND opens Fri/29 at the Roxie.

This place

Andrew Lam
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This place

arts@sfbg.com

LIT Begun in part as a series of maps accompanying public lectures, Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (University of California Press, 167 pages, $24.95) is a remarkable act of gathering, one that presents myriad versions and visions of San Francisco and its surrounding areas that can inform a reader’s experience.

Infinite City was recently selected by the Northern California Independent Booksellers as one of its 2011 winners. Duality is a fundamental aspect of the book’s breadth and depth and sense of sharply critical appreciation — structurally, Solnit pairs distinct maps with corresponding chapter-length essays. In keeping with that characteristic, and also with the book’s group spirit (though admittedly on a much smaller and less intensive scale), I asked different Guardian contributors to share appraisals of one, or in most cases two, of the 22 sections. The result provides just a hint of what can be found within Infinite City. (Johnny Ray Huston)

MAP 3. “Cinema City: Muybridge Inventing Movies, Hitchcock Making Vertigo“

The map for this chapter tracks the San Francisco life of Eadweard (sic) Muybridge, alongside landmarks from Alfred Hitchcock’s Bay Area masterpiece Vertigo. In “The Eyes of the Gods,” Solnit, who won the National Book Critics Circle award for her 2003 Muybridge bio River of Shadows, writes of the 19th century artist’s breakthrough high-speed photography, “It was as though the ice of frozen photographic time had broken free into a river of images.”

Many such rivers flowed all over this fair city when Vertigo premiered at the Stage Door Theatre at 420 Mason St. on May 9, 1958. Alas, only 10 of the more than 60 single-screen venues extant that year, all demarcated on Shizue Seigel’s fine map, are still functioning. Solnit rightly describes the shift to watching films on various digital delivery mechanisms as leaving contemporary culture with a “curious imagistic poverty.” As she concisely describes watching Milk and Once Upon a Time in the West on the Castro Theatre’s giant screen, we’re reminded that there is no comparison between enjoying cinema in such a grand setting and staring at a laptop. The great 20th century memoirist and observer Quentin Crisp wrote, “We ought to visit a cinema as we would go to a church. Those of us who wait for films to be made available for television are as deeply suspicious as lost souls who claim to be religious but who boast that they never go to church.”

That applies to you too, Netflix subscribers! The Roxie, Castro, Red Vic, Clay, and a small number of other houses of worship are still in business, so what are you waiting for? (Ben Terrall)

MAP 4. “Right Wing of the Dove: The Bay Area as Conservative/Military Brain Trust”

In “The Sinews of War are Boundless Money and the Brains of War Are in the Bay Area,” Solnit argues that antiwar, green, and left Bay Area hotspots are well known and don’t need to be charted again — unlike military contractors and assorted other forces of reaction in the region.

Solnit notes that many military bases that used to operate in the Bay Area are closed, “but the research, development, and profiteering continue as a dense tangle of civilian and military work, technological innovation, economic muscle, and political maneuvering for both economic and ideological purposes.”

Among the hard-right compounds providing counterevidence for that demonstration chestnut “the people united will never be defeated”: Lawrence Livermore National Labs (birthplace of Star Wars — the Reagan era money pit, not the George Lucas movie); Lockheed Martin, world’s largest “defense” contractor; the Hoover Institution, Stanford’s reactionary think tank; and Northrop Grumman, missile component designer. It’s useful to have so many of them in one place, if queasy-making.

On the lower left of the map sits Sandow Birk’s beautifully warped code of arms, which features the Cicero quote (Nervi belli pecunia infinita) that Solnit cites in her chapter title, under a half eagle/half dove, a rifle-toting soldier, and a scythe-clutching skeleton. It should be on the door of every U.S. military recruiting center. (Terrall)

MAP 6. “Monarchs and Queens: Butterfly Habits and Queer Public Spaces”

“How thoroughly the lexical landscape of gay history is invested with [a] paradigm of emergence,” notes poet Aaron Shurin in “Full Spectrum,” the chapter accompanying Infinite City‘s sixth map. Like one of the dazzlingly-named butterfly species rendered by Mona Caron on the map, Shurin flits gracefully between memoir and historiography as he tracks San Francisco’s ongoing evolution as a locus for queer emergence.

From North Beach to Polk Gulch, from Folsom to Castro, LGBT folk — be they American painted ladies, Satyr angel wings, or Mission blues — have continually migrated to and within the city to shed their cocoons and show their true colors. Local faux-queen Fauxnique traced this metamorphosis at the 2003 Miss Trannyshack Pageant when she climatically emerged as a regal butterfly to Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” (apropos to Shurin’s royalty motif, she won the crown). So too did the late Age of Aquarius painter Chuck Arnett, who often nestled butterfly imagery into his portraits of SoMa’s leather demimonde, and whose murals once adorned some of the many now-extinct bars also denoted by Ben Pease’s cartography. Only more than half a dozen of these “wildlife sanctuaries,” in Shurin’s parlance, have survived, with the Eagle Tavern’s announced closure marking another loss of habitat. Queers, though, are if anything adaptive, and my hope is that the future fluttering tribes of San Francisco will keep alighting on new ground to unfurl their wings. (Matt Sussman)

MAP 7. “Poison/Palate: The Bay Area in Your Body”

“Food is part of the Bay Area you hear about nowadays, exquisite upscale food at famous restaurants and gourmet markets. But it’s so boring we couldn’t stay focused on it in this map.” These refreshing, if rarely uttered words come two-thirds of the way through the chapter that accompanies the “Poison/Palate” map, Rebecca Solnit’s “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Gourmet.”

The phony Tuscany of Napa and the once-orchard-filled, now-EPA-Superfund-site-speckled Silicon Valley are wisely singled out for derision, a convenient duality in both geography and culture and the perfect framework on which to hang a critique of the local culinary community’s smug, myopic self-indulgence, by raising the not-so-elite-specters in Bay Area food history (the It’s It, the Popsicle, the Hangtown Fry, the Rice-a-Roni), and reintroducing the politics of food into the conversation, in the form of the chemical tonnage used to produce wine grapes, food giveaways at community gardens, Diet for a Small Planet, and Black Panther breakfast programs for school-kids. The sprawling topic is almost given too short a shrift, threatening to leap its mutant-mermaid-bedecked map.

Better is the 18th chapter, “How to Get From Ethiopia to Ocean Beach.” Solnit begins by loosely charting the ingredients that go into your cuppa joe: the water from Hetch Hetchy, the milk from West Marin, the coffee that courses through the port of Oakland, and, impishly, the leavings that flow toward the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant. All that’s missing from the equation is the sugar that I need to make the darkest, brandy-and-cherry-tinged brew palatable. SF’s cafe culture is also deservedly lionized — though some might want to hurl china due to the exclusions on the accompanying map: why, for instance, call out Blue Danube Coffee House and not the grungier, more Chinese-populated Java Source? (Kimberly Chun)

MAP 8. “Shipyards and Sounds: The Black Bay Area since World War II”

Though author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro opens this chapter, subtitled “High Tide, Low Ebb,” with an eloquent invocation of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” — penned in Sausalito, by the way — it was the slight mention of Lowell Fulson’s “San Francisco Blues” that most resonated with me. “Ohh, San Francisco,” the lyric goes, “Please make room for me.” The facts presented in “Shipyards and Sounds” record The City’s answer as a genteel and progressive “No nigger.”

Beginning at the start of WWII, when Southern blacks migrated to the Bay Area to build ships in Hunters Point, Jelly-Schapiro points out that the main areas of wartime shipbuilding (Richmond, Hunters Point, Marin City) are “places that today remain centers of black population and of black poverty.” Indicating, to me, that little has changed since the 1940s in some significant ways. Don’t get mad at me, I didn’t say it. Jelly-Schapiro did.

Jelly-Schapiro also shows how terms like “redevelopment” displaced black Fillmore District residents to housing projects they’d been banned from during the war and land-grab euphemisms like “urban renewal” decimated black neighborhoods such as West Oakland. Electoral laws mandating that the SF Board of Supervisors be elected by citywide contests and not by district allowed a city that desegregated its schools and transit system in the 1860s to remain progressive and very, very white.

Jelly-Schapiro’s conclusion contains a critique of Bay Area celebrations when “Negro president” Barack Obama was elected in 2008. What he won’t say is covered in Shizue Seigel’s map. A sidebar shows the dwindling soul of a city, while the headers cover the founding of the Black Panthers and Sylvester’s solo debut at Bimbo’s. (D. Scot Miller)

MAP 9. “Fillmore: Promenading the Boulevard of Gone”

After the damned disheartening facts presented in the previous chapter, it’s both merciful and hopeful that “Little Pieces of Many Wars” — though just as rage-inducing — establishes some kind of equilibrium.

Gent Sturgeon’s incredible Rorschach-inspired artwork opens a thoroughly-researched piece on Fillmore Street and its many incarnations. Mary Ellen Pleasant’s abolitionist work and her eucalyptus trees — which still stand on the corners of Bush and Octavia streets — are a starting point for a leisurely stroll with Solnit, who runs the voodoo down, “The war between the states left its traces here,” she says, “as did the Second World War, and the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the stale and ancient war of racism, and the various forms of freelance violence.”

She remembers San Francisco as an abolitionist headquarters, and Fillmore Street as the first place Allen Ginsberg read “Howl.” Recalling the Fillmore’s rich heritage of jazz, poetry, and art, Solnit takes it even further, adding, “The wealthy sometimes claim to bring civilization to rough neighborhoods, but the Upper Fillmore neighborhood that was so culturally rich when it was the property of poor people in the 1950s is smoothed over in significance now.”

The tragedy of Japanese internment, and the cross-cultural exchange that was demolished by it and redevelopment loom like white sheets over the city to this day. But Solnit closes with an optimistic sense of resurgence, even though Nickie’s has gone Irish.

Ben Pease’s cartography shows the cross-currents of culture of yesterday’s Fillmore Street, but not much else. That’s not a complaint, really. (Miller)

 MAP 13. “The Mission: North of Home, South of Safe”

Two 2009 shootings on 24th Street pop out, in blood red, on the map accompanying Adriana Camarena’s “The Geography of the Unseen,” in much the same way that the spate of shooting deaths the previous year marked my brief time spent living in the Mission. In ’08, I lived in a Victorian flat at Treat and 23rd, distinguished by the fact that it was a favorite hang for the teenaged homies — its steps were slightly tucked back off the street, ideal when it came to hiding out, smoking dope, and snacking out — until my landlords installed a fence, ostensibly to keep the steps free of spit.

We were on the same block as an appliance-loaded junkyard; the last stop of an ancient Mission industrial railroad; and the Parque Niños Unidos, with its swampy, grassy corner, so often cordoned off to keep the tots from wading in the mud, its circling ice cream carts and its de facto refreshment stand, El Gallo Giro taco truck; and the community garden, where the feral kittens tumbled and hid and fresh produce was given away free every Sunday afternoon.

The Parque likely was the last thing 18-year-old poet Jorge Hurtado saw when he was shot and killed on our corner at 1 a.m. that year. I remember waking up that night to what sounded like a cannon boom, only the first of a slew that sweltering, ominous summer — Mark Guardado, president of the SF chapter of the Hells Angels, was killed a little over a week later, down Treat, in front of Dirty Thieves. The tension was thick and gooey in the air — who was next? The beauty of Shizue Seigel’s Mission map lies in how intimate it is, how it’s threaded around the shaggy-dog snatches of yarns Camarena catches among the day laborers waiting at Cesar Chavez and Bayshore, from the long litany of splintered families, time spent in the refuge of gangs at 24th and Shotwell, and then, in Frank Pena’s case, lives cut sadly short farther up 24th at Potrero. The included stories, rarely straying beyond the tellers’ voices and the facts they choose to reveal, stay with you — even if her sources’ internal lives remain, as the chapter’s subtitle goes, “the Geography of the Unseen.” (Chun)


NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS 2011 BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS

 

FICTION

 

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, stories, Yiyun Li (Random House, 240 pages, $25)

Nonfiction

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Mary Roach (W.W. Norton and Company, 336 pages, $15.95)

Honorable Mention: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, (University of California, 760 pages, $34.95)

 

POETRY

Come On All You Ghosts, Matthew Zapruder (Copper Canyon, 96 pages, $16)

Food Writing

My Calabria: Rustic Family Cooking from Italy’s Undiscovered South, Rosetta Costantino, Janet Fletcher, and Shelley Lindgren (W.W. Norton and Company, 416 pages, $35)

Children’s Picture Book

The Quiet Book, Deborah Underwood and Renata Liwska (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 32 pages, $12.95)

Honorable mention: Zero, Kathryn Otoshi (KO Kids, 32 pages, $17.95)

 

TEEN LIT

The Sky is Everywhere, Jandy Nelson (Dial, 288 pages, $17.99)

Honorable mention: The Mockingbirds, Daisy Whitney (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 352 pages, $16.99)

 

REGIONAL TITLE

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, Rebecca Solnit (University of California, 167 pages, $24.95)

Honorable mention: A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California, Laura Cunningham (Heyday, 352 pages, $50)

 

PG&E, AT&T, Recology and Malia Cohen

Zelda Bronstein
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PG&E, AT&T, Recology and Malia Cohen

I got a flyer the other day announcing a District 10 merchants meeting featuring Sup. Malia Cohen — no big deal, district supervisors do this stuff all the time, and they should. The invite (PDF) reads:


The Office of Supervisor Malia Cohen, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and local business and merchant associations are pleased to present the District 10 Neighborhood Business Summit. The event will bring merchants together with their Supervisor and other city officials to discuss local business concerns.


Okay, fine. But down at the bottom are the logos of the sponsors: AT&T, Recology and PG&E.


AT&T is trying to get city permission to build hundreds of cable boxes on city sidewalks and is contesting a ban on the delivery of phones books. Recology is in the middle of a huge, high-stakes fight over its $275 million no-bid garbage contract. PG&E is fighting the city over community choice aggregation.


In other words, all three companies have major deals, involving millions of dollars, coming up at the Board of Supervisors. Cohen will be voting in the next few weeks — that is, pretty much right now — on the garbage and cable boxes and phone books. Isn’t it a little unseemly to have these three corporations sponsoring her event?


I called to ask her and she agreed the timing was “unfortunate.” But since it’s a Chamber of Commerce event, she said, it’s not clear what she could do about it.


Um, supervisor: You’re the boss here. Meeting doesn’t happen without you. The Chamber folks should have told you that three companies that need your vote would be sponsoring the event, and if they didn’t, you ought to have a word with them. Either way, those sponsors have to go.


 

5 Things: April 22, 2011

Andrew Lam
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1
5 Things: April 22, 2011

 

>>BLACK WHEELS Three reasons why African-Americans should ride bicycles, brought to you courtesy of community two-wheeler group Red Bike and Green. One, health: the exercise can counter obesity and chronic disease. Two, economics: why drop all your cash into a car pit when you can put it to brightening your present and future? Three, environment: environmental racism — including pollution in low-income communities — has gone on too long, and you can do you part to change it. Now that we have that out of the way, check out Red Bike and Green’s first “black Critical Mass” of the year in Oakland on Sat/23. Bikes: too many good reasons to ride them.

>>LOCAL BOY DONE GOOD Reynaldo Cayentano Jr. grew up on Sixth Street, and he’s not going anywhere. The City College student and photographer recently opened up gallery space with cohort Chris Beale in the old District Attorney’s office, but the two will be throwing their Sat/23 “Native Taste” party at the House Kombucha factory, where they’ll showcase the work of 13 local artists and the hip-hop stylings of Patience. Speaking of local boys, have you heard the new SF anthem by Equipto and Mike Marshall?

Equipto ft. Mike Marshall, “Heart and Soul”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Fh0dXpuco&feature=player_embedded

>>GOOD & PLENTY CHEAP There’s nothing we like better than good, cheap stuff. Not the cheap, cheap stuff of a Walmart or Kmart, or the good, pricey stuff of a Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdale’s. Good. Cheap. Stuff. And in pursuit of said stuff, we know that many of our fellow city dwellers have checked out a City Car Share car for the express purpose of driving to Serramonte Shopping Center in Daly City and hitting the Daiso store. Put away that gas tank: now we have our own Daiso store, newly opened in Japantown. Since most of the items cost $1.50, a $20 bill will get you a Santa Claus-size bagful of beautiful origami paper, clever lunch boxes, kitchenware, or whatever strikes your fancy from Daiso’s — no jive — selection of 70,000 good, cheap goods.

>>THEY WALK AMONG US It isn’t often that we indulge in a little unabashed fandom when a celebrity comes to our city/ashram. After all, we have our standards (smart, funny, left-leaning, maybe a pot bust or two), which rules out your Biebers, your Gagas, your Cruises ‘n’ Holmeses. We also believe that a man with a three-day stubble muttering to himself as he walks down the street has a right to his private musings. But when that man is Alec Baldwin, well, we have to stop, give him a deep Zen bow, tell him he’s welcome here, and report back. We have no idea why Baldwin is here – a Giants game? No, they’re on the road. SFIFF? No, we would have heard. Filming an episode of 30 Rock, Alcatraz Edition? Possibly –- and truthfully, we don’t care. We will take this no further. No tweets, no nothing. Because we want him to come back -– with Tina Fey.

>>THE GOOD BOOKS A few minutes spent reading a good, cheap book can add some insight and perspective to anyone’s day, and this weekend presents a reason to look for said books. The San Francisco Public Library’s 50th Anniversary Book Sale is going on at the Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion until Sun/24, with everything on sale for three dollars or less. Books, DVDs, CDs, tapes, and other media are available, and on the sale’s final day, nothing will cost more than a dollar.

What to watch

Andrew Lam
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0
What to watch

THURS/21

Beginners (Mike Mills, U.S., 2010) There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Melanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. Thurs/21, 7 p.m., Castro. (Louis Peitzman)

 

FRI/22

The Good Life (Eva Mulvad, Denmark, 2010) Portraits of the formerly wealthy are often guilty of peddling secondhand nostalgia for some ancien regime while simultaneously stoking schadenfreude toward the now-deposed (just ask Vanity Fair). Eva Mulvad’s melancholy character study of 50-something Annemette Beckmann and her aged mother, Mette, avoids both traps even as her subjects — formerly wealthy Danish expats living on the dole in a cramped apartment in a coastal Portuguese town — offer few inroads for sympathy. Narcissistic and petulant, Annemette blames the loss of her family’s wealth on the 1974 nationalization of Portugal’s then-Communist government, and claims that her cosseted upbringing has made it hard to find a job (“Work doesn’t become me,” she gratingly protests at one point). Mette, who is more likeable, is a resigned realist whose sole comfort, aside from the pet dog, seems to be her knowledge that she is not long for this world. Comparisons to Grey Gardens (1975) are inevitable here, but the Beckmanns simply aren’t as interesting or possessed by as idiosyncratic a joie de vivre as the Beales, making The Good Life a tough slog. Fri/22, 3:45 p.m.; April 28, 6:45 p.m.; and May 1, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Matt Sussman)

Hahaha (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2010) Do you remember a time you behaved badly (not horribly, but bad enough that you felt ashamed) but you didn’t really think about it until long after the fact, say, when getting drinks with an old friend? If you can’t, than the latest from South Korean director Hong Sang-soo will probably jog your memory. As with many of Hong’s films, Hahaha’s premise is similar to the above scenario: two 30-something buds get together and reminisce about their recent trips to the same seaside town. Shown in episodic flashbacks, we start to realize that the incidents and players in their separate accounts overlap into one story filled with terrible poetry, domineering mothers, stalker-ish behavior, and poorly made choices. Hong’s films are primers in how not to treat your fellow human beings (straight dudes are usually the culprits), so take notes. Fri/22, 9:15 p.m.; Mon/25, 9 p.m.; and Tues/26, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Sussman)

I’m Glad My Mother is Alive (Claude Miller and Nathan Miller, France, 2009) Codirected with his son Nathan, this latest by veteran French director Claude Miller is an about-face from his acclaimed 2007 period epic A Secret. Viscerally up-to-the-moment in content and handheld-camera style, it’s a small story that builds toward an enormous punch. Thomas (played by Maxime Renard as a child, then Vincent Rottiers) is a lifelong malcontent whose troubles are rooted in his abandonment at age five by an irresponsible mother (Sophie Cattani). Neither the attentions of well-meaning adoptive parents or the influence of his better-adjusted younger brother can quell Thomas’ mix of furious resentment and curiosity toward his mere, whom he finally develops a relationship with as a young adult. As usual, Miller doesn’t “explain” his characters or let them explain themselves, yet everything feels emotionally true — right up to a narrative destination both that feels both shocking and inevitable. Fri/22, 6:45 p.m., and Mon/25, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Dennis Harvey)

Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, U.S., 2010) After three broke down road movies (1994’s River of Grass, 2006’s Old Joy, 2008’s Wendy and Lucy), Kelly Reichardt’s new frontier story tilts decisively toward socially-minded existentialism. It’s 1845 on the choked plains of Oregon, miles from the fertile valley where a wagon train of three families is headed. They’ve hired the rogue guide Meek to show them the way, but he’s got them lost and low on water. When the group captures a Cayeuse Indian, Solomon proposes they keep him on as a compass; Meek thinks it better to hang him and be done with it. The periodic shots of the men deliberating are filmed from a distance — the earshot range of the three women (Michelle Williams, Zoe Kazan, and Shirley Henderson) who set up camp each night. It’s through subtle moves like these that Meek’s Cutoff gives a vivid taste of being subject to fate and, worse still, the likes of Meek. Reichardt winnows away the close-ups, small talk, and music that provided the simple gifts of her earlier work, and the overall effect is suitably austere. Fri/22, 9 p.m., and Mon/25, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Max Goldberg)

Stake Land (Jim Mickle, U.S., 2010) Not gonna lie — the reason I wanted to review this one was because of the film still in the SFIFF catalog. Rotten-faced vampire with a stake through its neck? Yes, please! But while Jim Mickle’s apocalyptic road movie does offer plenty of gore, it’s more introspective than one might expect, following an orphaned teenage boy, Martin (Connor Paolo, Serena’s little bro on Gossip Girl), and his gruff mentor, Mister (Snake Plissken-ish Nick Damici), on their travels through a ravaged America. As books, films, and comics have taught us, whenever a big chunk of the human race is wiped out (thanks to zombies, vampires, an unknown cataclysm, etc.), the remaining population will either be good (heroic, like Mister and Martin, or helpless, like the stragglers they rescue, including a nun played by Kelly McGillis), or evil — cannibals, rapists, religious nuts, militant survivalists, etc. Stake Land doesn’t throw many curveballs into its end-times narrative, but it’s beautifully shot and doesn’t hold back on the brutality. Larry Fessenden (director of 2006’s The Last Winter) produced and has a brief cameo as a helpful bartender. Fri/22, 11:30 p.m., and Mon/25, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Cheryl Eddy)

 

SAT/23

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica, Romania, 2010) Andrei Ujica’s three-hour documentary uses decades of propagandic footage to let the late Romanian dictator — who was overthrown by popular revolt and executed in 1989 — hang himself with his own grandiose image-making. While the populace suffered (off-screen, you might want to bone up on the facts before seeing this ironical, commentary-free portrait), the “great leader” and his wife Elena were constantly seen holding state dances, playing volleyball, hunting bear, and vacationing hither and yon. (We even see them on the Universal Studios tour.) There’s no surprise in seeing them greeted with enormous pageantry in China; but it’s a little shocking to see this tyrant welcome Nixon (in the first-ever U.S. presidential visit to a Communist nation), lauded by Jimmy Cartner, and hobnobbing with Queen Elizabeth. This grotesque parade of self-glorifying public moments has a happy ending, however. Sat/23, 12:45 p.m., Kabuki; Sun/24, 5:15 p.m., New People; May 1, 1:30 p.m., PFA. (Harvey)

Life, Above All (Oliver Schmitz, South Africa/Germany, 2010) It’s tough enough to simply grow up, let alone care for a parent with AIDS and deal with the suspicions and fears of the no-nothing adults all around you. Rising above easy preaching and hand-wringing didacticism, Life, Above All takes as its blueprint the 2004 best-seller by Allan Stratton, Chandra’s Secrets, and makes compelling work of the story of 12-year-old Chandra (Khomotso Manyaka) and her unfortunate family, unable to get effective help amid the thicket of ignorance regarding AIDS in Africa. After her newborn sister dies, Chandra finds her loyalty torn between her bright-eyed best friend Esther (Keaobaka Makanyane), who’s rumored to hooking among the truck drivers in their dusty, sun-scorched rural South African hometown, and her mother (Lerato Mvelase), who listens far too closely to her bourgie friend Mrs. Tafa (an OTT Harriet Manamela), for her own good. Cape Town native director Oliver Schmitz sticks close to the action playing across his actors’ faces, and he’s rewarded, particularly by the graceful Manyaka, in this life-affirmer about little girls forced to shoulder heart-breaking responsibility far too soon. Sat/23, 4 p.m., and April 28, 6 p.m., Kabuki. (Kimberly Chun)

The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, Poland/Sweden, 2010) One of the clichés often told about art is that it is supposed to speak to us. Polish director Lech Majewski’s gorgeous experiment in bringing Flemish Renaissance painter Peter Bruegel’s sprawling 1564 canvas The Procession to Calvary to life attempts to do just that. Majeswki both re-stages Bruegel’s painting — which draws parallels between its depiction of Christ en route to his crucifixion and the persecution of Flemish citizens by the Spanish inquisition’s militia — in stunning tableaux vivant that combine bluescreen technology and stage backdrops, and gives back stories to a dozen or so of its 500 figures. Periodically, Bruegel himself (Rutger Hauer) addresses the camera mid-sketch to dolefully explain the allegorical nature of his work, but these pedantic asides speak less forcefully than Majeswki’s beautifully lighted vignettes of the small joys and many hardships that comprised everyday life in the 16th century. Beguiling yet wholly absorbing, this portrait of a portrait is like nothing else at the festival. Sat/23, 12:30 p.m., SFMOMA, and April 27, 9 p.m., Kabuki. (Sussman)

Mind the Gap Experimental film fans: come for the big names, but don’t miss out on the newcomers. Locals Jay Rosenblatt (melancholy found-footage bio The D Train), Kerry Laitala (psychedelic 3-D brain-dazzler Chromatastic), and Skye Thorstenson (mannequin-horror music video freak out Tourist Trap, featuring the acting and singing stylings of the Guardian’s Johnny Ray Huston) offer strong entries in an overall excellent program. International bigwigs Peter Tscherkassky (the 25-minute Coming Attractions, a layered study of airplanes, Hollywood, and Hollywood airplanes — not for the crash-phobic) and Jonathan Caouette (“Lynchian” has been used to describe the Chloë Sevigny-starring All Flowers In Time, though it contains a scary-faces contest that’d spook even Frank Booth) are also notable. New names for me were Zachary Drucker, whose Lost Lake introduces a transsexual, pervert-huntin’ vigilante for the ages, and my top pick: Kelly Sears’ Once it started it could not end otherwise, a deliciously sinister hidden-history lesson imagined via 1970s high-school yearbooks. Sat/23, 4:45 p.m., and May 1, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Troll Hunter (André Ovredal, Norway, 2010) Yes, The Troll Hunter riffs off The Blair Witch Project (1999) with both whimsy and, um, rabidity. Yes, you may gawk at its humongoid, anatomically correct, three-headed trolls, never to be mistaken for grotesquely cute rubber dolls, Orcs, or garden gnomes again. Yes, you may not believe, but you will find this lampoon of reality TV-style journalism, and an affectionate jab at Norway’s favorite mythical creature, very entertaining. Told that a series of strange attacks could be chalked up to marauding bears, three college students (Glenn Erland Tosterud, Tomas Alf Larsen, and Johanna Morck) strap on their gumshoes and choose instead to pursue a mysterious poacher Hans (Otto Jespersen) who repeatedly rebuffs their interview attempts. Little did the young folk realize that their late-night excursions following the hunter into the woods would lead at least one of them to rue his or her christening day. Ornamenting his yarn with beauty shots of majestic mountains, fjords, and waterfalls, Norwegian director-writer André Ovredal takes the viewer beyond horror-fantasy — handheld camera at the ready — and into a semi-goofy wilderness of dark comedy, populated by rock-eating, fart-blowing trolls and overshadowed by a Scandinavian government cover-up sorta-worthy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009). Sat/23, 11:30 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/25, 6:15 p.m., New People. (Chun)

World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany, 1973) The words “Rainer Werner Fassbinder” and “science fiction film” are enough to get certain film buffs salivating, but the Euro-trashy interior décor is almost reason enough to see this restored print of the New German Cinema master’s cyber thriller. Originally a two-part TV miniseries, World on a Wire is set in an alternate present (then 1973) in which everything seems to be made of concrete, mirror, Lucite, or orange plastic. When the inventor of a supercomputer responsible for generating an artificial world mysteriously disappears, his handsome predecessor must fight against his corporate bosses to find out what really happened, and in the process, stumbles upon a far more shattering secret about the nature of reality itself. Riffing off the understated cool of Godard’s Alphaville (1965) while beating 1999’s The Matrix to the punch by some 25 years, World on a Wire is a stylistically singular entry in Fassbinder’s prolific filmography. Sat/23, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki, and April 30, 2 p.m., PFA. (Sussman) SUN/24

A Cat in Paris (Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli, France/Belgium/Netherlands/Switzerland, 2010) Save your pocket poodles, please: Paris, as cities go, is most decidedly feline. From 1917’s silent serial Les Vampires to its uber-cool 1990s update Irma Vep, cat burglars and the Parisian skyline have gone together like café and au lait. Add actual cats and jazz to the mix for good measure (even Disney saw fit to set its jazzy 1970 Aristocats in the City of Light). At just over an hour long, the animated A Cat in Paris is an enjoyable little amuse-bouche that employs all the standards of the cats-in-Paris meme: Billie Holiday warbling on the soundtrack, a dashingly heroic antihero who scales the rooftops as if he studied parkour under Spider-Man, and the titular untamable black cat who serves as his partner in crime. Complete with a climatic Hitchcockian set piece on the rooftops of Notre Dame Cathedral, A Cat in Paris has a refreshingly angular and graphic, almost cubist, feel. Directors Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli’s work certainly doesn’t rank among that of countryman Sylvain Chomet (2010’s The Illusionist), but this family film is worth checking out if kitties up to no good in Purr-ree simply make you want to le squee. Sun/24, 12:30 p.m., Kabuki, and May 1, 12:30 p.m., New People. (Michelle Devereaux)

 

MON/25

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, U.S., 2010) 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. Mon/25, 7 p.m., and Tues/26, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)

 

TUES/26

Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán, France/Chile/Germany, 2010) 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. Tues/26, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki, and April 28, 6:15 p.m., PFA. (Devereaux)

The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillat, France, 2010) Fairytales are endemically Freudian; perhaps it has something to with their use of subconscious fantasy to mourn — and breathlessly anticipate — the looming loss of childhood. French provocateuse Catherine Breillat’s feminist re-imagining of The Sleeping Beauty carries her hyper-sexualized signature, but now she also has free reign to throw in bizarre and beastly metaphors for feminine and masculine desire in the form of boil-covered, dungeon-dwelling ogres, albino teenage princes, and icy-beautiful snow queens. The story follows Anastasia, a poor little aristocrat, who longs to be a boy (she calls herself “Sir Vladimir”). When her hand is pricked with a yew spindle (more of a phallic impalement, really), Anastasia falls into a 100-year adventurous slumber, eventually awakening as a sexually ripe 16-year-old. It all plays like an anchorless, Brothers Grimm version of Sally Potter’s 1992 Orlando. And while it’s definitely not for the kiddies, it’s hard to believe that many adults would find its overt symbolism and plodding narrative any more than a sporadically entertaining exercise in preciousness. Your own dreams will undoubtedly be more interesting — perhaps you can catch a few zzz’s in a theater screening this movie. Tues/26, 6:15 p.m., and April 27, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Devereaux)

THE 54TH ANNUAL SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs April 21–May 5. Venues are the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; New People, 1746 Post, SF; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third, SF; and Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, SF. For tickets (most shows $13) and complete schedule visit www.sffs.org>.

4/20 fantasy: Ziggy’s new comic book

Andrew Lam
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Attention, WonderCon, Ziggy is missing. Repeat, we are missing Ziggy Marley. But only for a second – turns out the “Love is My Religion” star had only wandered away from the Image Comics booth into the dizzying panorama of the comics convention for a moment to snag his son some of the new Green Lantern toys. “He’s into it,” he tells me, smiling as his fixers and Image staff scramble to set up the seats for our interview.

But to be clear about what exactly we’re doing here: Ziggy Marley is releasing a comic book on 4/20. It’s called Marijuana Man, obviously. 

It’s about a hero (a white guy!) named Sedona, a being from the planet Yelram – like, read it backwards — on Exodus, where the for-real (a.k.a., the weed smoking, freedom-fighting, down) Earthlings are trying their best to defeat the evil, environment-ruining, pill-pushing Pharma-Con. Sample Pharma-Con line: “I want to get this over with so we can get back to the business of selling people chemicals they don’t need.” Hiss.

The book really is gorgeous, illustrated by Jim Mahfood of 40 Oz. Comics, who pretty much has the sexy street art graphic novel on lock. I mean, the guy illustrated Colt 45’s label, for chrissakes.

“There’s quality in the textures,” Marley tells me (still smiling, he’s always smiling because love is his religion). “It’s a collector’s edition.” Some characters’ speak with a smoker’s patois, a lushly-proportioned-yet-badass guerilla named MJ – like, think about it – bonds with Sedona in a ecstatic, abstract sex session also patronized by the Lion of Judah and the crashing wave from Katsushika Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mt. Fuji series. And there’s whizzing, crashing battles between Sedona and a Pharma-Con mercenary on a motorcycle that leaps and murders. 

The Marijuana Man gang

But. Ziggy Marley, you have never once made a comic book before. I had doubts, doubts as to whether this book, with its “Ziggy Marley’s” inscribed over its title, was indeed the work of the genial reggae star in front of me. I put it to him: Ziggy, was Marijuana Man really your idea?

He says: yes. Ziggy uses the royal “we,” which is fine because Bob Marley is his dad.

“We had the idea to create a superhero who gets his powers from a plant.” It seems that royal Ziggy, or team Ziggy (this last probably includes Snoopy, his genial bodyguard who takes photos of Ziggy bonding with childrens in Brazil and later bemoaned to me the fact that Shakira got a helicopter to airlift her to a concert in Argentina that the two headlined, while team Love = My Religion had to proceed on a congested road, which I agree isn’t right) were ready for a superhero that got righteous not through the ingestion of toxic chemicals, or prosthetics, or capitalism, but rather natural medicine. 

So Marley had the original idea for the comic, but then chose a crack team of comic professionals to make it come to fruition. “Jim and Joe [Casey, another big deal-guy who wrote the book] would do their thing, and every once in awhile I’d say ‘what about this.’” 

Basically, there’s a cause involved here, and not least because Marley plans to make Marijuana Man‘s 4/20 release an annual occurrence. “Sedona’s a metaphor for the plant itself. We believe the plant is special, if used properly,” he says, admitting that Marijuana Man carries an additional message. To wit: “to get rid of the stigma and the demonization of the plant.”

“I have a vivid imagination,” he smiiiiles. There is nothing more that I want to do with my day past hang out with this happy, sun-shiney man and his comic book dreams, so I start asking him what comic books he likes.

He likes Jonah Hex, “the weirdest Western hero” who was born to a prostitute mother and a father who sells him to the Apaches, whose respect he earns and then loses at the hands of a jealous chief’s son, who messes up his face with a hot tomahawk. Hex becomes a bounty hunter anti-hero. At some point, Hex is catapulted into 2050. When he dies (card game) his body is stolen, stuffed, and unfairly displayed by a touring circus. I think he is later resurrected, and takes to fighting for and against crime again with the Black Lantern Corps. 

“Jonah Hex, he’s a bad good guy, he’s a good bad guy,” Ziggy says. I wish I could walk around WonderCon all weekend with Ziggy Marley and talk about this, but his next interview is already waiting for him and then he has a big stack of Marijuana Man posters to sign for fans. 

“The thing about comic books, it’s a deep thing. They’re not frivolous, they have meaning,” he tells me. “Music fans who love our philosophies and ideas, I think they can relate to that. They’re art. They’re not just about drawing people, hands, and feet.” 

That man, I swear, love him. To celebrate your holiday with Marijuana Man, here’s a website that’ll point you to the nearest comic book store. 

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