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John Ross: The damaged spine of America

Zelda Bronstein
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John Ross: The damaged spine of America

 

I am on a low-rent book tour with my new cult classic El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption In Mexico City.  For the next three months, I will stumble across this land from sea to stinking sea probing the underbelly of Obama’s America.  The findings will be posted on these pages.


LAS CRUCES N.M. — The snow was already dusting the Organ Mountains fringing this high desert town, promising a hard winter further up the spine of Obama’s America. I ride the Mexican bus (officially doing business as the El Paso-L.A, Limousine Express) when I ply the back roads of the southwest. Greyhound, with its stern rules and regulations and surly drivers who threaten their cargos with summary expulsion for minor infractions, doesn’t much inspire me these days.  

 


With notable exceptions, Greyhound passengers are a harried and haunted bunch, riding the Big Dog from trouble to trouble, often with all their possessions stuffed into plastic garbage bags. In the cruelest of gestures, the Greyhound management has recently banned garbage bags as an instrument of luggage.  Zombie passengers on the Big Dog stare out at the distant horizon submerged in their worries or stab music into their ears to sever all human communication. No one talks to their fellow travelers anymore.

By way of contrast, the Mexican bus bubbles with chatter.  “Platicame!” (“Talk to me!”) my seatmates insist. The chitchat often gravitates towards work — where they have recently toiled, the job towards which they are headed. Wistful nostalgia for their families and pueblos down in Mexico are common ground. Rancheros belch from the speakers and the taste of tamales flavors the ride. It feels like going home.

Bus rides are an opportunity to reinvent oneself. I am usually the only gabacho on these long hauls through the rugged mountains and barren deserts of the southwest, but I speak colloquial, unaccented Mexican and who I really am excites curiosities. These days, my kuffiyah wrapped around my scrawny neck, I pass myself as an Arab from Mexico City hawking books from tank town to tank town, a plausible story — back home, Arabs are often stereotyped as itinerant peddlers.

North of Las Cruces, the Mexican bus is pulled into a Migra shed and the conversation modulates real quick. A blonde woman agent jumps on board and demands to see everyone’s documents. She studies the passports and green cards under the glare of her flashlight and then shines it into the eyes of the passengers to see who will blink first. One young man — he looks like a university student – is pulled off the bus and is never seen again. When the Mexican bus slides out of the shed, the chatter resumes — but with one less voice in the mix.

Clayton, a young Wobbly who used to run a bookshop down by the rail yards in Albuquerque that was mostly frequented by hobos looking for a little warmth in a cold winter world, is now teaching at a troubled middle school. Patrol cars are often parked out front and half the kids – 99.99% of who are “Hispanics” (read Mexicans) – have juvenile police records. Clayton asks me in to talk to the students, who have never seen a real author in the flesh.  

We hunker down in the library and I step into my Grandpa persona and tell tales of the Mexican revolution while Clayton projects portraits of the Great Zapata and Pancho Villa on the audio-visual screen. I recount how the two men met in a rural schoolhouse in Xochimilco, now a borough of Mexico City, in December 1914. For an hour the two sat in frozen silence until Zapata, unable to contain his bitterness, declares that Carranza, their rival, is “un hijo de puta!” The kids fall off their little library chairs in gales of Mexican mirth. Clayton frets for his job but the librarian apparently doesn’t understand Spanish.  

I show the kids my books. Helen, a boisterous tweener, grabs “Iraqigirl” from Clayton’s hand and announces she is taking it home. The next day, she returns it with a review: “this is the best book I have ever read.” Two boys sit at the round reading table with copies of “El Monstruo — Dread & Redemption In Mexico City” and “Murdered by Capitalism — 150 Years of Life & Death on the American Left” spread before them. They pour over the subversive pages all through the lunch hour. When we prompt them that we have to leave, they hide the books under their hoodies.

 “I don’t have it — check me out!” Salvador (not his real name) challenges. The librarian rushes over and promises the boys that she has just ordered the books on line for them. They will be here Monday morning.  “But this is only Thursday,” protests Manuel (not his real name.)  

Garfield middle school is the best stop so far on this monstrous book tour.

Attendance at public events in Albuquerque is sparse. A vegan spread at the Catholic Worker House drums up a dozen hungry souls, a presentation of “Iraqigirl” at the Peace & Justice Center eight, including an Iraqi woman who leaves early. I show “Corazon del Tiempo” (“Heart of Time”), the new Zapatista movie (it was previewed at Sundance) in a small room at the university – Weather veterano Mark Rudd and the remarkable investigator Nelson Valdez and a handful of starry-eyed students (“Corazon” is a love story) show up.  

 

I sorely miss my old pal Tilda Sosaya who fought doggedly for prisoners’ rights in the nearly wholly privatized New Mexico prison system for decades after her son was imprisoned for ten years for some dumb teenage caper. Last March, I wrote Tilda that I had been diagnosed with liver cancer and she wrote back that she had it too. The cancer took her quickly and now she is gone and her son is back in prison. We fight for justice but life in this lane is not very just.

I catch the day train up to Santa Fe to visit with the writer Chellis Glendinning. Chellis has lived for the past 18 years on a tiny plot in Chimayo, the land of miraculous dirt and a key distribution point for black tar heroin from Sinaloa and Nayarit — see her “Chiva – How One New Mexican Town Took On The Global Heroin Trade.” Now she is pulling up stakes and throwing in with Evo Morales. Her jeep flies a Bolivian flag and she is rushing to be in Cochabamba for the tenth anniversary of the landmark struggle against the privatization of that city’s water supply by the Bechtel Corporation. Adios companera — la lucha sigue y sigue y sigue!

I am back on the Mexican bus heading towards Denver. The riders get off at whistlestops like Las Vegas and Durango and Colorado Springs where they will do the dirty work of this country — walloping pots, washing cars, cleaning motel rooms, milking cows, shoveling their manure, keeping Obama’s America spic and span for the next paying customer at minimum wages if indeed they are not cheated out of them by unscrupulous contractors.  

When the guy across the aisle gets curious, I revive my new identity as an Arab peddler. “Donde esta tu mujer?” he asks (“Where is your wife?”) and I lie that she is in Iraq taking care of her people. “The Yanquis invaded her country and bombed her neighborhood…”  “Pobre gente,” he sympathizes.  Santiago (is that his real name?) is from Hidalgo de Parral, Chihuahua and says he is on his way to work the Colorado ski resorts where so many Mexicans slave for Senor Charlie these days. He knows all about exile.  

I am invited to deliver a pair of lectures at Denver University, Condoleezza Rice’s alma mater (her father was provost.)  Doug Vaughn, also a DU grad who went left at an early age, notices that I will be speaking at the same time as Cindy Courville, Condi’s roommate who followed her to the National Security Council and then became U.S. emissary to the African Union.

My talks are programmed for the Josef Korbel Center for International Studies. Josef Korbel was Madeline Albright’s father, to give you some assessment of my chances of winning converts here. Indeed, the students are polite and well-groomed, models of future CIA assets — in tracking down the announcement of Courville’s talk on a Korbel Center bulletin board, Doug encounters a CIA recruitment leaflet. The grad students have been forewarned they will be visited by a representative of the lunatic fringe and busy themselves with their e-mail under the pretext of taking notes.  

Academic acrimony flourishes in the Denver- Boulder axis.  Everywhere else in this land where my father croaked, the trials and tribulations of Ward Churchill and his ill-timed assault on the “little Eichmans” deconstructed in the Twin Towers conflagration went out with the fish wrap the next morning — but here in mile-high city, mention of Ward and Colorado AIM can still start a prairie fire. Although such Churchill accusers as the governor and the Colorado U president have long since resigned due, in fact, to other scandals after successfully silencing Ward, his detractors’ thirst for blood remains unsatiated.

Infused with the venom of the dearly departed Bellencourts (who Churchill once dissed as “Nebraska wigmakers”), Ernesto B. Vigil, author of an action-packed bio of Corky Gonzalez, the Denver-based Xicano founder of the Nation of Aztlan, is still brandishing the long knives. Ward Churchill is a fake Indian, Ernesto obsesses, a white guy whose claim to indigenousness is backed up by white people because white people only listen to white people.  White people think they know everything, he scoffs in a heated e-mail in which he disparages my whiteness a dozen times in as many lines.

Actually, I don’t give a rat’s ass if Ward Churchill is one/sixteenth Cherokee or not (the tribal government recently expelled all its black members) — Churchill remains the most lucid writer on American genocide in this benighted country.

Boulder is said to be the most over-regulated city in North America although white liberal enclaves like Madison Wisconsin and Arcata California could give Boulder a run for its money.  I accompany Joe Richey, a local alternative radio sleuth, to the Boulder dog pound to bail out his black lab “Yanqui” (as in “Yanqui! Go home!) “Yanqui” has been adjudged guilty of illicit dog-like behavior i.e. nuzzling a neighborhood garbage can.  

After Joe pays off the authorities and the mutt is released to his custody and properly admonished, we drive past a local dog park.  In a paroxysm of charitable intent, the Boulder City Council permits the homeless to encamp at night amidst the dog turds but they must be gone by daybreak when the pooches of the city’s housed residents take possession or risk a $100 fine. How the homeless, forced to bed down in dog shit nightly, can afford this astronomical sum is unclear. Such is what passes for compassion on the underbelly of Obama’s Amerikkka.

 

On my final day in Denver, Hank Lamport, a local schoolteacher who favorably reviewed “El Monstruo” for the Post, today the only daily in this formerly two-newspaper town, drives me out to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Rehabilitation Area. Until a few years ago, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal manufactured and stored deadly nerve gas, chiefly Serin — an occasional lost canister still spooks the wildlife.  The displays at the Visitors’ Center feature photos of workers filling “Honest John” missiles with the stuff. Napalm was also cooked up here. I study the glazed eyes of taxidermied foxes and coyotes and bald eagles and hastily bid adieu.

On the way out of town, we stop to worship the victuals in an Aurora, Colorado taco shop. Hank laments that when he first became a devotee of “Tacos y Salsas,” the clientele, uniformly Mexicanos, would greet him with a “buen provecho” (“good appetite” — a universal courtesy in the Spanish-speaking world) but now the customers have become so gringo-ized that the salutation is a lost art. Nonetheless, when we polish off our orders and head for the door, two working stiffs at the next table wish us each “buen provecho.”
  
It warms the cockles of my contused heart to know that such cultural resistance still percolates out here on the damaged spine of Obamalandia.

Next stop: the frozen, melancholy flatlands of the Great Midwest.  

John Ross and “El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption in Mexico City” (“gritty and pulsating” – NY Post) will be visiting Traverse City and Grand Rapids Michigan in the final week of March. You can catch them at the Headland Café in Chicago’s Rogers Park March 31st, Toronto’s Hoggtown April 1st-4th, and St. Louis Mo. April 7th.  

 

 

 

The new War on Fun

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The new War on Fun

news@sfbg.com

For several years, the Guardian has been running regular stories chronicling what we’ve dubbed the Death of Fun, a trend of official crackdowns and shakedowns on people who throw parties and festivals in San Francisco. In the last year, that trend has started to morph into an often brutal War on Fun, with a growing list of atrocities and casualties associated with this overzealous new approach to killing the city’s entertainment industry.

Why this is happening is baffling to those most affected: nightclub owners and workers, party promoters, DJs and VJs, fundraising activists, and people just out to have a good time without being harassed by a cop. But in recent months, we’ve learned much more about what’s happening and who the main perpetrators are.

Two undercover enforcers have been at the center of just about every recent case of nightclubs or private parties being raided without warrants and aggressively shut down, their patrons roughed up (see “Fun under siege,” 4/21/09) and their money, booze, and equipment punitively seized “as evidence” (see “Police seize DJs laptops,” 11/24/09) even though few of these raids result in charges being filed in court.

Officer Larry Bertrand of the San Francisco Police Department’s Southern Station and Michelle Ott, an agent with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, are plainclothes partners who spend their weekends undercover, crashing parties, harassing disfavored nightclubs, brutalizing party-goers, and trying to send the unmistakable message that they’re in charge of San Francisco nightlife. Neither responded to our interview requests.

Isolated incidents of intolerant cops and NIMBY citizens who repeatedly complain about certain clubs or festivals has been a problem for years (see “Death of fun,” 5/24/06 and “Death of fun, the sequel,” 4/24/07). Top city officials have opted to cancel events such as Halloween in the Castro District rather than try to manage them better, and the nightlife community has tried to organize in defense of its interests (see “Fighting for the right to party,” 7/1/08) with mixed results.

But the personal War of Fun by Bertrand and Ott seems to have galvanized and united the nightlife and festival community like never before, leading to the creation of a new California Music and Culture Association and prompting threats of a federal lawsuit alleging the ABC-SFPD collaboration is a racketeering scheme designed to harass, disrupt, and extort people engaged in otherwise lawful activity.

The myriad horror stories associated with Bertrand and Ott have also finally begun to draw attention from the Mayor’s Office, which has quietly pushed the SFPD to rein in Bertrand and change its policies on raiding parties and seizing property. State Sen. Mark Leno also has gotten involved, brokering a March 12 meeting between club owners and Steve Hardy, director of ABC (which, in addition to cracking down on nightclubs — see “Busting bars,” 6/23/09 — has recently announced a campaign against fruit-infused liquor).

“They were going to see how they could unwind this a bit,” Leno told us, adding that he was “infuriated” by stories of abusive treatment of the public. “The fear that it spreads through the community is unacceptable.”

The question now is what Hardy, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Police Chief George Gascón — who has ordered some crackdowns and wants greater authority to discipline problem officers — is going to do about it.

 

CHAOS AT A STUDENT PARTY

It was after midnight on Jan. 31 when Krystal Peak, a journalist with San Francisco State University’s Golden Gate Xpress, received a call from her managing editor. There was a commotion and a swarm of police cars outside a student party at Seventh and Minna streets near her home, and she was asked to investigate.

She came upon the aftermath of a melee between police and partygoers that had taken place after a fundraising event at a SoMa warehouse art space was upended. The benefit was organized to raise legal funds for students who staged a building occupation at the University of California at Berkeley, in defiance of budget cuts.

The event was clearly chaotic, and it’s hard to sort out exactly what happened and when. City officials say the partiers were throwing bottles and firecrackers at the police; people at the event say the cops started it all.

But the tales partygoers tell about the behavior of Bertrand and Ott, the undercover enforcers, are similar to a series of other stories involving the pair, stories published in the Guardian and elsewhere.

There had been multiple arrests by the time Peak arrived on the scene. Numerous witnesses asserted that things were going along without incident until a fire marshal arrived in response to a complaint, and in short order, two officers who’d been there in plainclothes for hours — Bertrand and Ott — began shouting, tackling people, and kicking in doors.

Police Chief George Gascón acknowledged that the department has been targeting underground parties. “We get a lot of resident complaints about it,” he said in a recent Guardian interview. “We’re talking about a lot of the underground parties, or the parties where the promoters are exceeding their authorities to a number of people.”

Several hundred attended this particular party. Of the 11 people arrested, eight were either detained or cited and released. None faced underage drinking or drug charges. At least five were charged with resisting arrest. One individual was charged with vandalism, two were charged with battery on an officer, and two detained for being drunk in public.

Peak began photographing the scene: busted-up chairs, uniformed officers guarding the entrance, police cars everywhere. She zoomed her lens to capture the wreckage inside. None of the uniformed officers seemed to have a problem with her — but when she spotted the undercover officers with exposed badges, that changed.

The cops broke through the door, yelling. “They said, ‘This is an investigation, you’re not allowed to be here.'<0x2009> she said. “We told them we were with the press.” They threatened to arrest her.

Shortly after, the plainclothes officers crossed in front of her to an unmarked car. She took another picture. Bertrand, a tall guy with a shaved head, allegedly turned and grabbed her arm, and both officers shouted at her. “[Ott] said to me, ‘Your flash has impeded my investigation,'” Peak recounted. She was cuffed and arrested on the spot, and her camera was confiscated.

She was cited for obstruction of justice, but the charges were dropped. And she got her camera back — but says the SD memory card, where all the photos were stored — was missing.

“I flipped [the camera] open … and found the SD card was missing,” she said. She asked Bertrand where it was. “He said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,'” Peak recalled. Bertrand, she recalled, then looked around at a group of officers watching the exchange, and announced, “This woman is refusing to leave. I’m going to have to re-arrest her.” Ott appeared, according to Peak, and insisted that there was no evidence the memory card had been in the camera in the first place.

“My camera will not ignite a flash unless there’s a memory card in there,” Peak explained. In the end, she left empty-handed — without photos of the undercover officers.

 

BUSTING DOORS

Earlier, when the party was in full swing, a 24-year-old California State University, Fullerton student visiting from Los Angeles says when the fire marshal entered, Bertrand flashed his badge, yelling at everybody to get out. “It was really aggressive from the get-go,” said the Fullerton student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he had a pending legal case. “It’s very hard for me to describe the intensity to which this guy was busting down doors.”

Later, the young man from L.A. said, he was following people who left in a rush, and ran to catch up. “Shortly after, I felt a blow to the back right of my head,” he said. “My glasses flew off, and I was tackled to the ground. My forehead was being pushed straight into the ground and they were holding my hair. I kept repeating … please, I can’t see — I’m legally blind. I thought three or four officers were on top of me, and they were saying, ‘Fuck you, you little anarchist punk.'<0x2009>”

That’s when he said he felt a sensation like “a bunch of really intense bee stings on my left side, just above my hipbone.” He thought he was Tasered — and photos he showed us depict a skin burn. SFPD officers are not authorized to carry Tasers.

“It sounds like a stun gun, not a Taser gun,” Ken Cooper, a firearms and Taser instructor based in New York, noted when the incident was described to him.

When we shared the photos with SFPD’s media relations department, Lt. Lyn Tomioka noted, “I can tell you that we do not have any tool that would produce the type of wounds shown in the picture that you attached, or produce a stinging sensation.”

The L.A. visitor said he was delivered this explanation from an officer while in the holding cell: “One of your anarchist buddies must’ve had a Taser, ran over to you trying to get one of our officers, got you instead, and ran away.”

Cooper Brislain, a Web developer from Santa Cruz, told us his iMac was destroyed that night. A friend of the owners of the art space, he was there doing video mixing for the party, he explained. After the trouble started, he began carrying his computer and mixing equipment toward the door. “The uniformed officers were going to let me go. I told them, ‘I just came here to perform.’ They seemed OK,” he said. Then he encountered Bertrand.

“He … grabbed me by the collar, led me over toward the wall, and sat me down,” Brislain told us. He says Bertrand and Ott seized his computer. Brislain says no charges were filed against him.

The morning after, he found that his computer had been smashed up. His friends found it in pieces at the bottom of the stairs. To this day, he says he has not been able to retrieve his ID, which was seized that night. “I tried calling [Bertrand] on his extension to leave a message and never heard back,” he says. “They told me he probably wouldn’t return voicemails.” The District Attorney’s Office has a different perspective. D.A. spokesperson Brian Buckelew said the partygoers were drunk and “going nuts on police.” People were throwing firecrackers, he said. “It obviously got out of hand, and people were throwing bottles at police,” he said.

The student from L.A. allegedly shoved a female officer, Buckelew said. According to the report, he said, police officers were taking someone into custody, and he tried to pull them free.

Nevertheless, even Chief Gascón agrees that it’s not okay to destroy someone’s personal property. “If in fact the allegations were proven to be the case that an officer took somebody’s laptop and threw it down the stairs,” Gascón told us, “that would be inappropriate, and that officer would be sanctioned accordingly.” He noted that he met with an attorney from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about a recurring trend of officers — Bertrand in particular — seizing DJ laptops at underground parties. “We’ve met with them and we’ve agreed to actually tighten up the protocols in how this would be handled,” Gascón noted.

 

A RICO SUIT

The list of local nightclub clubs that have been recently targeted by Bertrand and Ott or subjected to ABC sanctions is long. It includes Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, DNA Lounge, Mist, Whisper, the Room, Vessel, Azul, Butter, and Club Caliente (which closed down after its mostly Latino customers were scared away by repeated raids).

“Using the now familiar pattern and ruse of ABC authority, these raids have been without warrant and without probable cause, under the pretext of finding liquor violations,” attorney Mark Webb wrote in a claim against the city, describing the harassment of Caliente owner Maurice Salinas and later adding, “Despite numerous raids, the invading officers [Bertrand and Ott] managed to ‘uncover’ a single infraction: one customer used his brother’s ID card, claiming he was over 21 to gain entry. For this reason, Mr. Salinas was cited and fined, bullied, intimidated, and yelled at on the spot.”

Webb said such behavior isn’t legitimate police work, but unlawful harassment. In fact, this experienced litigator said it’s far closer to the shakedowns and extortion rackets familiar to him from the start of his legal career in the late 1970s prosecuting organized crime cases in New York City.

That’s why he’s threatening to bring a novel lawsuit against the city and ABC under federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, a law designed go after the mob, but which has since been adapted to target entities ranging from the tobacco industry to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Webb told us that interference with legitimate business operations, such as running a nightclub, is the essence of RICO suits. As part of the case, Webb plans to submit a surveillance video that shows Bertrand kneeling on the neck of bartender Javier Magallon from The Room and twisting his arm. Webb gave us a copy of the video.

Another element of making a RICO case is the use of intimidation and retaliation against those who complain — which was central to a March 17 SF Weekly story about promoter Arash Ghanadan being inappropriately singled out for arrest by Bertrand as retaliation for filing a complaint against the officer with the Office of Citizen Complaints.

Webb says he has a strong case that he intends to file soon, but that most of his clients just want the SFPD to rein in Bertrand and stop facilitating ABC actions. “I want to have a sit-down with Gavin Newsom,” Webb said. “I am calling on Mayor Newsom to come in and mediate what would be an expensive, divisive fight that will generate national interest … I think this thing can go way quickly without litigation.”

Newsom press secretary Tony Winnicker, who said Newsom has brought concerns about Bertrand to the chief’s attention, didn’t immediately embrace Webb’s offer. “The mayor would rather leave it to the chief,” Winnicker said.

So the question for Gascón is whether he’s willing to take on the cowboy cops within the SFPD’s ranks. After all, Bertrand is also on the San Francisco Police Officers Association Board of Directors.

The nightlife community is organized like never before and plotting its next move in fighting a war it didn’t initiate and barely understands. Whether that war continues now seems to be a question for the party crashers and their supervisors.

Film listings

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

OPENING

Chloe See "Moore and Less." (1:36) Elmwood, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

Greenberg Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is 40, and you might think he’s going through a midlife crisis — if he hadn’t been in pretty much this same crisis for 15 years or more. Still very edgy and fragile after a nervous breakdown-sparked institutional stay, he’s holing up at the comfortable Hollywood home of a big-deal brother while the latter and family are on vacation in Vietnam. (The implication being that Roger is most welcome here when no one else actually has to endure his prickly, high maintenance company.) While in residence he reconnects with old friends including the ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh) he dumped yet never quite got over — though clearly she did — and the ex-bandmate (Rhys Ifans) he burned by wrecking their one shot at a major-label deal. He also gets involved, kinda-sorta, with big bro’s personal assistant Florence (mumblecore regular Greta Gerwig), whose passivity and low self-esteem make her the rare person who might consider a relationship with someone this impossible. Like all Noah Baumbach films, especially the slightly overrated Squid and the Whale (2005) and vastly underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007), his latest pivots around a pathologically self-absorbed and insensitive protagonist who exasperates anyone unlucky or blind enough to fall into his or her orbit. Working from a story co-conceived by spouse Leigh, Baumbach’s script sports his usual sharp dialogue, penetrating individual scenes, and narrative surprises. But it also gets stuck in dislikable Roger’s rut, finding conflict easily but stubbornly resisting even the smallest useful change. For all its amusing and uncomfortable moments, Greenberg emerges a dual character slice with no real point. Neither Roger or Beth reward long scrutiny (least of all as a hapless potential couple), while the few screen minutes Ifans and Leigh get make you wish their roles had hijacked the focus instead. (1:40) Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Hot Tub Time Machine At last, Crispin Glover returns to his time-travel movie roots! (1:55) California.

How to Train Your Dragon Yet another 3D cartoon for the kiddies. At least this one is about Vikings. (1:38)

*The Sun It may have taken five years for Alexander Sokurov’s The Sun (2005) to reach local theaters, but then the Russian master’s contemplation of Emperor Hirohito’s last days as Godhead is decidedly out of time. Painterly and slow like all Sokurov’s work, the film specifically follows his estranged reconstructions of Hitler’s retreat with Eva Braun (1999’s Moloch) and Lenin’s demise (2000’s Taurus). In August 1945, Hirohito broke with tradition by making a direct appeal to the Japanese people to end military operations; soon thereafter he renounced his divine rights. The Sun‘s elliptical narration intuits the emperor’s paled existence, and Issey Ogata’s lead performance, centering on a fish-out-of-water puckering of the lips, amply conveys the shuttered hours of a man who, in experience if not in fact, is not quite human. The muted use of available light and a disquieting sound design (faraway air-raid sirens yield to the barest brush of a finger) eschew historiography’s harsh glare, instead returning primal scenes of power to a dreamlike state of unknowing. Sokurov’s most hallucinatory effects are reserved for ashen views of firebombed Tokyo which float free from perspective or clear boundary; a brief fantasy in which fish-like warplanes spew apocalyptic destruction suggests the emperor’s childlike imagination and set the stage for his historical date with General MacArthur, realized by Sokurov less as a diplomatic breakthrough than a leaden twilight. (1:50) Shattuck. (Goldberg)

Waking Sleeping Beauty Hollywood history is full of epic rivalries, juicy scandals, multi-million-dollar mistakes, and triumphant comebacks. Sometimes, all of the above and more can be contained within a single studio, or even a single studio division, or even a single studio division during a finite number of years, as illustrated by this insidery peek at Disney’s animation division. The doc gives a bit of background, but focuses its attentions on 1984-1994, a ten-year span that saw the floundering department struggle through post-Walt, identity-crisis blues before blossoming into a rejuvenated powerhouse. Waking Sleeping Beauty director Don Hahn was a producer on the Oscar-nominated Beauty and the Beast (1991), so he’s uniquely positioned to tell the story as it unfolded, using home movies and countless interviews. High points include a glimpse of late composer Howard Ashman introducing his demo for the iconic Little Mermaid (1989) tune "Under the Sea" (it was Ashman’s idea to give the crab character a Jamaican accent), and plenty of dish on the legendary Jeffrey Katzenberg-Michael Eisner feud. (1:26) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

ONGOING

Ajami You may recognize the title of Yaron Shoni and Scandar Copti’s debut collaboration as one of five films nominated for a 2010 Academy Award in the Foreign Category. Though it didn’t bring home the grand prize, Ajami remains a complex and affecting story about desperation and its consequences in a religiously-mixed town in Israel. As we follow the lives of four of Ajami’s residents the narrative shifts perspective almost maddeningly, switching characters seemingly at the height of each story’s action. But once all of the stories fully intersect, the final product has the distinction of feeling both meticulously calculated and completely natural. I was most impressed to learn that Shani and Copti prepared their actors with improvised role-playing rather than scripts. By withholding what was going to happen in a scene before shooting, we are treated to looks of surprise and emotion on actor’s faces that never feel unnatural. Attaining such a level of realism may be Ajami‘s crowning achievement; it can’t have been easy to make a foreign world feel so familiar. (2:00) Shattuck. (Galvin)

Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton’s take on the classic children’s tale met my mediocre expectations exactly, given its months of pre-release hype (in the film world, fashion magazines, and even Sephora, for the love of brightly-colored eyeshadows). Most folks over a certain age will already know the story, and much of the dialogue, before the lights go down and the 3-D glasses go on; it’s up to Burton and his all-star cast (including numerous big-name actors providing voices for animated characters) to make the tale seem newly enthralling. The visuals are nearly as striking as the CG, with Helena Bonham Carter’s big-headed Red Queen a particularly marvelous human-computer creation. But Wonderland suffers from the style-over-substance dilemma that’s plagued Burton before; all that spooky-pretty whimsy can’t disguise the film’s fairly tepid script. Teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) displaying girl-power tendencies is a nice, if not surprising, touch, but Johnny Depp’s grating take on the Mad Hatter will please only those who were able to stomach his interpretation of Willy Wonka. (1:48) Castro, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Art of the Steal How do you put a price on something that’s literally priceless? The Art of the Steal takes an absorbing look at the Barnes Collection, a privately-amassed array of Post-Impressionist paintings (including 181 Renoirs) worth billions — and the many people and corporate interests who schemed to control it. Founder Albert C. Barnes was an singular character who took pride in his outsider status; he housed his art in a specially-constructed gallery far from downtown Philadelphia’s museum scene, and he emphasized education and art appreciation first and foremost. But he had no heirs, and after his death in 1951, opportunists began circling his massive collection; the slippery political and legal dealings that have unfolded since then are nearly as jaw-dropping as Barnes’ prize paintings. Philly documentarian Don Argott has a doozy of a subject here, and his skillful, even suspenseful film does it justice. (1:41) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article "The Ballad of Big Mike" — which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game — nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher — a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) Oaks. (Daniel Alvarez)

Brooklyn’s Finest "Really? I mean, really?" asked the moviegoer beside me as the final freeze-frame of Brooklyn’s Finest slapped our eyeballs. Yes, that’s the sound of letdown, despite the fact that Brooklyn’s Finest initially resembled a promisingly gritty juggling act in the mode of The Wire and Cop Land (1997), Taxi Driver (1976) and Training Day (2001). Bitter irony flows from the title — and from the lives, loves, bad habits, pressure-cooker stress, and unavoidable moral dilemmas of three would-be everyday cops, all occupying several different rungs on a food chain where right and wrong have an unpleasant way of switching sides. Eddie (Richard Gere) is the veteran officer just biding his time till he gets his pension, all while comforting himself with the meager sensuous attentions of hooker Chantel (Shannon Kane). Sal (Ethan Hawke) is the bad detective, stealing from the dealers to fund a dream home for his growing family with Angela (Lili Taylor). Tango (Don Cheadle) is the undercover detective who has cultivated friendships with dealers like Caz (Wesley Snipes) and sacrificed his marriage for a long-promised promotion from his lieutenant (Will Patton) and his superior (Ellen Barkin, in likely the most misogynist portrayal of a lady with a badge to date). You spend most of Brooklyn’s Finest waiting for these cops to collide in the most unfortunate, messiest way possible, but instead the denouement leaves will leave one wondering about unresolved threads and feeling vaguely unsatisfied. In any case, director Antoine Fuqua and company seem to pride themselves on their tough-minded if at times cartoonish take on law enforcement, with Hawke in particular turning in a memorably OTT and anguished performance. (2:13) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Bounty Hunter There’s a real feeling of impotence in reviewing a movie whose ad was pasted on the side of the bus you took to the screening. This thing is determined to be seen, and that’s a true shame. Those who heed the call of the ubiquitous marketing campaign will have to sit through a dull parade of contrivances concerning a bounty hunter (Gerard Butler) whose latest catch is his court-skipping ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston). She’s a hotshot city journalist who’s forced to continue her investigation of a police cover-up while handcuffed to a car door and bickering with her old flame. The trajectory of the plot is obvious enough, but there’s so little chemistry between the two actors that the inevitable reconciliation practically constitutes a twist ending. Aniston saw fit not to whine her way through this role, which is something, but nothing nearly as complimentary can be said about Butler. He emotes in lurches, with the presence of a guy who’s not sure acting is the right direction for his life but still really wants to give it a go. If "This. Is. Sparta!" weren’t burned into my brain I would swear the man had never been in front of a camera before. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Jason Shamai)

The Crazies Disease and anti-government paranoia dovetail in this competent yet overwhelmingly non-essential remake of one of George A. Romero’s second-tier spook shows. In a small Iowa hamlet overseen by a benevolent sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell), who’s also the town doctor, a few odd incidents snowball into all-out chaos when a mysterious, unmarked plane crashes into the local water supply. Before long, the few residents who aren’t acting like homicidal maniacs are rounded up by an uber-aggressive military invasion. Though our heroes convey frantic panic as they try to figure out what the hell is going on, The Crazies never achieves full terror mode. It’s certainly watchable, and even enjoyable at times. But memorable? Not in the slightest. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Crazy Heart "Oh, I love Jeff Bridges!" is the usual response when his name comes up every few years for Best Actor consideration, usually via some underdog movie no one saw, and the realization occurs that he’s never won an Oscar. The oversight is painful because it could be argued that no leading American actor has been more versatile, consistently good, and true to that elusive concept "artistic integrity" than Bridges over the last 40 years. It’s rumored Crazy Heart was slotted for cable or DVD premiere, then thrust into late-year theater release in hopes of attracting Best Actor momentum within a crowded field. Lucky for us, this performance shouldn’t be overlooked. Bridges plays "Bad" Blake, a veteran country star reduced to playing bars with local pickup bands. His slide from grace hasn’t been helped by lingering tastes for smoke and drink, let alone five defunct marriages. He meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), freelance journalist, fan, and single mother. They spark; though burnt by prior relationships, she’s reluctant to take seriously a famous drunk twice her age. Can Bad handle even this much responsibility? Meanwhile, he gets his "comeback" break in the semi-humiliating form of opening for Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) — a contemporary country superstar who was once Bad’s backup boy. Tommy offers a belated shot at commercial redemption; Jean offers redemption of the strictly personal kind. There’s nothing too surprising about the ways in which Crazy Heart both follows and finesses formula. You’ve seen this preordained road from wreckage to redemption before. But actor turned first-time director Scott Cooper’s screenplay honors the flies in the windshield inherited from Thomas Cobb’s novel — as does Bridges, needless to say. (1:51) Piedmont, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Spoiler alert: nothing happens in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. That was OK when it was just a book—author Jeff Kinney’s illustrated novel works due in large part to his whimsical drawings and tongue-in-cheek humor. It’s a kids’ book, but it’s fun for adults, too. The same can’t be said for the film adaptation: Diary of a Wimpy Kid sticks close to its source material without the creativity necessary to make it work on the big screen. As in the book, Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) navigates the treacherous terrain of middle school, struggling to cope with an awkward best friend, a brutal older brother, and parents who just don’t understand. All the actors turn in solid performances — Gordon is a particularly good find. But there’s so little here to work with. The best that can be said about Diary of a Wimpy Kid is that it’s cute and mostly harmless: a pleasant diversion for young’uns, and a tolerable bore for the parents they drag along. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*An Education The pursuit of knowledge — both carnal and cultural — are at the tender core of this end-of-innocence valentine by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig (who first made her well-tempered voice heard with her 2000 Dogme entry, Italian for Beginners), based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Hornby breaks further with his Peter Pan protagonists with this adaptation: no man-boy mopers or misfits here. Rather, 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a good girl and ace student. It’s 1961, and England is only starting to stir from its somber, all-too-sober post-war slumber. The carefully cloistered Jenny is on track for Oxford, though swinging London and its high-style freedoms beckon just around the corner. Ushering in those freedoms — a new, more class-free world disorder — is the charming David (Peter Sarsgaard), stopping to give Jenny and her cello a ride in the rain and soon proffering concerts and late-night suppers in the city. He’s a sweet-faced, feline outsider: cultured, Jewish, and given to playing fast and loose in the margins of society. David can see Jenny for the gem she is and appreciate her innocence with the knowing pleasure of a decadent playing all the angles. The stakes are believably high, thanks to An Education‘s careful attention to time and place and its gently glamored performances. Scherfig revels in the smart, easy-on-eye curb appeal of David and his friends while giving a nod to the college-educated empowerment Jenny risks by skipping class to jet to Paris. And Mulligan lends it all credence by letting all those seduced, abandoned, conflicted, rebellious feelings flicker unbridled across her face. (1:35) Oaks, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski’s never-ending legal woes have inspired endless debates on the interwebs and elsewhere; they also can’t help but add subtext to the 76-year-old’s new film, which is chock full o’ anti-American vibes anyway. It’s also a pretty nifty political thriller about a disgraced former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who’s hanging out in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion with his whip-smart, bitter wife (Olivia Williams) and Joan Holloway-as-ice-queen assistant (Kim Cattrall), plus an eager young biographer (Ewan McGregor) recently hired to ghost-write his memoirs. But as the writer quickly discovers, the politician’s past contains the kinds of secrets that cause strange cars with tinted windows to appear in one’s rearview mirror when driving along deserted country roads. Polanski’s long been an expert when it comes to escalating tension onscreen; he’s also so good at adding offbeat moments that only seem tossed-off (as when the PM’s groundskeeper attempts to rake leaves amid relentless sea breezes) and making the utmost of his top-notch actors (Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach have small, memorable roles). Though I found The Ghost Writer‘s ZOMG! third-act revelation to be a bit corny, I still didn’t think it detracted from the finely crafted film that led up to it. (1:49) California, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo By the time the first of Stieg Larsson’s so-called "Millennium" books had been published anywhere, the series already had an unhappy ending: he died (in 2004). The following year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became a Swedish, then eventually international sensation, its sequels following suit. The books are addicting, to say the least; despite their essential crime-mystery-thriller nature, they don’t require putting your ear for writing of some literary value on sleep mode. Now the first of three adaptive features shot back-to-back has reached U.S. screens. (Sorry to say, yes, a Hollywood remake is already in the works — but let’s hope that’s years away.) Even at two-and-a-half hours, this Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by necessity must do some major truncating to pack in the essentials of a very long, very plotty novel. Still, all but the nitpickingest fans will be fairly satisfied, while virgins will have the benefit of not knowing what’s going to happen and getting scared accordingly. Soon facing jail after losing a libel suit brought against him by a shady corporate tycoon, leftie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) gets a curious private offer to probe the disappearance 40 years earlier of a teenage girl. This entangles him with an eccentric wealthy family and their many closet skeletons (including Nazi sympathies) — as well as dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), androgynous loner, 24-year-old court ward, investigative researcher, and skillful hacker. Director Niels Arden Oplev and his scenarists do a workmanlike job — one more organizational than interpretive, a faithful transcription without much style or personality all its own. Nonetheless, Larsson’s narrative engine kicks in early and hauls you right along to the depot. (2:32) Albany. (Harvey)

Green Zone Titled for the heavily-guarded headquarters of international occupation in Baghdad, Green Zone reunites director Paul "Shaky-Cam" Greengrass with star Matt Damon, the two having previously collaborated on the last two Bourne films. Instead of a super-soldier, this time around Damon just plays a supremely insubordinate one as he attempts to uncover the reason why his military unit can’t find any of Saddam’s WMDs. With the aid of the CIA, a Wall Street Journal reporter and a friendly Iraqi, Damon goes rogue in order to suss out the source of the misinformation. The Iraq War action is decent if scarce, but an overindulgence in (you guessed it) shaky-cam and political jargon cannot hide the fact that Green Zone‘s plot is simplistic and probably light on actual facts. Damon makes a fine cowboy-cum-hero, but the effectiveness of the mix of patriotism and Pentagon paranoia will vary based on your penchant for such things. Still, Green Zone moves fast enough that it remains worth a matinee for conspiracy thriller aficionados. (1:55) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

The Hurt Locker When the leader of a close-knit U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad is killed in action, his subordinates have barely recovered from the shock when they’re introduced to his replacement. In contrast to his predecessor, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) is no standard-procedure-following team player, but a cocky adrenaline junkie who puts himself and others at risk making gonzo gut-instinct decisions in the face of live bombs and insurgent gunfire. This is particularly galling to next-in-command Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). An apolitical war-in-Iraq movie that’s won considerable praise for accuracy so far from vets (scenarist Mark Boal was "embedded" with an EOD unit there for several 2004 weeks), Kathryn Bigelow’s film is arguably you-are-there purist to a fault. While we eventually get to know in the principals, The Hurt Locker is so dominated by its seven lengthy squad-mission setpieces that there’s almost no time or attention left for building character development or a narrative arc. The result is often viscerally intense, yet less impactful than it would have been if we were more emotionally invested. Assured as her technique remains, don’t expect familiar stylistic dazzle from action cult figure Bigelow (1987’s Near Dark, 1989’s Blue Steel, 1991’s Point Break) — this vidcam-era war movie very much hews to the favored current genre approach of pseudo-documentary grainy handheld shaky-cam imagery. (2:11) Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Last Station Most of the buzz around The Last Station has focused on Helen Mirren, who takes the lead as the Countess Sofya, wife of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer). Mirren is indeed impressive — when is she not? — but there’s more to the film than Sofya’s Oscar-worthy outbursts. The Last Station follows Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), hired as Tolstoy’s personal secretary at the end of the writer’s life. Valentin struggles to reconcile his faith in the anarchist Christian Tolstoyan movement with his sympathy for Sofya and his budding feelings for fellow Tolstoyan Masha (Kerry Condon). For the first hour, The Last Station is charming and very funny. Once Tolstoy and Sofya’s relationship reaches its most volatile, however, the tone shifts toward the serious — a trend that continues as Tolstoy falls ill. After all the lighthearted levity, it’s a bit jarring, but the solid script and accomplished cast pull The Last Station together. Paul Giamatti is especially good as Vladimir Chertkov, who battles against Sofya for control of Tolstoy’s will. You’ll never feel guiltier for putting off War and Peace. (1:52) Albany. (Peitzman)

*The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers For many, Daniel Ellsberg is a hero — a savior of American First Amendment rights and one of the most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam war. But as this documentary (recently nominated for an Academy Award) shows, it’s never an an easy decision to take on the U.S. government. Ellsberg himself narrates the film and details his sleepless nights leading up to the leak of the Pentagon Papers — the top secret government study on the Vietnam war — to the public. Though there are few new developments in understanding the particulars of the war or the impact the release of the Papers had on ending the conflict, the film allows audiences to experience the famous case from Ellsberg’s point of view, adding a fresh and poignantly human element to the events; it’s a political documentary that plays more like a character drama. Whether you were there when it happened or new to the story, there is something to be appreciated from this tale of a man who fell out of love with his country and decided to do something about it. (1:34) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

*Mother You can guarantee that a movie titled Mother is not gonna be a love fest, ever. And through the lens of The Host (2006) director-writer Bong Joon-ho, motherly love becomes downright monstrous — though altogether human. Much credit goes to the wonderful lead actress Kim Hye-ja as the titular materfamilias, who’s frantically self-sacrificing, insanely tenacious, quaintly charming, wolfishly fearsome, and wildly guilt-ridden, by turns. On the surface, she’s a sweetly innocuous herbalist and closet acupuncturist — happily, and a wee bit too tightly, tethered to her beloved son Yoon Do-joon (Won Bin). He’s a slow-witted, forgetful, and easily confused mop-top who flies into deadly rages when taunted or called a "’tard." When Do-joon is quickly arrested and charged with the murder of schoolgirl Moon Ah-jung (Mun-hee Na), Mom snaps into action with a panic-stricken, primal ferocity and goes in search of the killer to free her boy. But there’s more to Do-joon, his studly pal Jin-tae (Ku Jin), and Moon Ah-jung than meets the eye, and Mother discovers just how much she’s defined, and twisted, herself in relation to her son. Bong gives this potentially flat and cliched noirish material genuine lyricism, embedding his anti-heroine in a rural South Korean landscape like a penitent wandering in an existential desert, gently echoing filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman and Abbas Kiarostami and beautifully transcending genre. (2:09) Shattuck. (Chun)

Our Family Wedding America Ferrera and Lance Gross play a couple of lovebirds who must jump through some serious family hoops before they get married in the mostly serviceable Our Family Wedding. What begins as a dual Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, with the differences in each family’s traditions forcing complications and compromises, soon loses sight of its matrimonial plot as the focus steers towards a childish rivalry between the fathers. While it’s being marketed as a goofy comedy, the final product seeks a relatively sentimental tone, which makes the few slapstick moments — like a goat trying to rape Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker — seem pretty inappropriate. Still, for some audiences the well-tread plot will act as comfort food: they fight, they make up, and it all ends in a big wedding where we watch the characters dance for damn near ten minutes. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Galvin)

*A Prophet Filmmaker Jacques Audiard has described his new film, A Prophet, as "the anti-Scarface." Yet much like Scarface (1983), A Prophet bottles the heady euphoria that chases the empowerment of the powerless and the rise of the long-shot loner on the margins. In its almost-Dickensian attention to detail, devotion to its own narrative complexity, and passion for cinematic poetry, A Prophet rises above the ordinary and, through the prism of genre, finds its own power. The supremely opportunistic, pragmatically Machiavellian intellectual and spiritual education of a felon is the chief concern of here. Played by Tahar Rahim with guileless, open-faced charisma, Malik is half-Arab and half-Corsican — and distrusted or despised by both camps in the pen. When he lands in jail for his six-year sentence, he’s 19, illiterate, friendless, and vulnerable. His deal with the devil — and means of survival — arrives with Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), temporarily locked up before his testifies against the mob. Corsican boss Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup) wants him dead, and Malik is tagged to penetrate Reyeb’s cell with a blade hidden in mouth. After Malik’s gory rebirth, it turns out that the teenager’s a seer in more ways than one. From his low-dog position, he can eyeball the connections linking the drugs entering the prison to those circulating outside, as well as the machinations intertwining the Arab and Corsican syndicates. It’s no shock that when Cesar finds his power eroding and arranges prison leaves for his multilingual crossover star that Malik serves not only his Corsican master, but also his own interests, and begins to build a drug empire rivaling his teacher’s. Throughout his pupil’s progress, Audiard demonstrates a way with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, and when Malik finally breaks with his Falstaffian patriarch, it makes your heart skip a beat in a move akin to the title of the director’s last film. This Eurozone/Obama-age prophet is all about the profit — but he’s imbued with grace, even while gaming for ill-gotten gain. (2:29) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Remember Me Ominously set in New York City during the summer of 2001, Remember Me, starring Robert Pattinson (of the Twilight series) and Emilie de Ravin (of TV’s Lost), pretty much answers the question of whether it’s still too soon to make the events of September 11 the subject of a date movie. Or rather, not the subject so much as the specter waiting just off-camera for its walk-on while brooding 21-year-old Tyler Hawkins (Pattinson) quotes Gandhi, gets into brawls, gets drunk, writes letters to his dead brother, and otherwise channels despondency and rage into various salubrious outlets. One of these is romancing (under circumstances severely testing the viewer’s credulity) de Ravin’s Ally Craig, grappling somewhat more constructively with her own familial tragedy. Ally is the sort of self-possessed, strong-willed young woman whose instincts, shortly after she’s been backhanded by her drunk father (Chris Cooper), tell her to placate and have sex with her drunk boyfriend when he comes home enraged after battling his own father (Pierce Brosnan). She is there to teach Tyler, through quirky habits like eating dessert first, what director Allen Coulter (2006’s Hollywoodland) wishes to teach us: that time is short and one must fill one’s life with meaningful actions — like throwing a fire extinguisher through a window to convince a classroom of tweens to stop bullying one’s little sister. The film is seeded with allusions to an impending catastrophe that feels less integrated than exploited. And it’s uncomfortable seeing the fall of the towers used to make the ground shake under a sweet, fairly depthless depiction of love and grief. (2:08) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Repo Men If you are considering going to see Repo Men you’ll need to go ahead and turn off your brain first — the guy who wrote it sure did. The script is jam-packed with contrivances and tonal inconsistencies, which is a shame because the plot had potential. In a near future when mechanical replacement organs are a reality, Jude Law plays Remy, an ex-soldier hired by the Union to find recipients that cannot afford their bills and repossess their artificial organs to return to the manufacturer. After a freak accident, Remy needs a replacement organ himself and when he can’t pay, the Union sends his childhood friend and ex-partner Jake (Forest Whitaker) to retrieve it. Repo Men is at its best when it embraces its cartoonishness, when the film is so stupid that it transcends the hodge-podge story and glows with goofy grotesque action. If you can, stick around ’til the climax that includes an Old Boy (2003) homage (rip-off) and one of the more laugh-out-loud ridiculous endings I’ve seen in a long time. But high-art, this ain’t. (1:53) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

The Runaways In Floria Sigismondi’s tale of the rise and fall of a 1970s all-girl band, LA producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) proclaims that the Runaways are going to save rock and roll. It’s hard to gauge the sincerity of this pronouncement, but you can certainly hear, in songs like "Cherry Bomb" and "Queens of Noise," how the band must have brightened a landscape overrun by kings of prog rock. Unfortunately, a handful of teenagers micromanaged by a sleazy, abusive nutcase proved not quite up to the task, though the band did launch the careers of metal guitarist Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and, more famously, Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). Sigismondi’s film entertainingly sketches the Runaways’ beginnings in glam rock fandom and gradual attainment of their own rabid fan base. We get Currie lip-synching Bowie to catcalls at the high school assembly, Jett composing "Cherry Bomb" with Fowley, glamtastic hair-and-wardrobe eye candy, pills-and-Stooges-fueled intra-band fooling around, and five teenage girls sent off sans chaperone on an international tour with substantial quantities of hard drugs in their carry-on luggage. What follows is less pretty: a capsule version of the band’s disintegration after the departure of bottoming-out 16-year-old lead singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). In a film darkened by Currie’s trajectory, Jett’s subsequent success is a feel-good coda, but it’s awkwardly attached and emblematizes one of The Runaways‘ main problems. When the band begins to fall apart, the film doesn’t know which way to turn and ends up telling no one’s story well. (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Rapoport)

She’s Out of My League From the co-writers of the abysmal Sex Drive (2008), She’s Out of My League could be another 90-minute assemblage of gross-out humor, dick jokes, and unabashed homophobia. As it turns out, the latest offering from Sean Anders and John Morris is legitimately funny — far better than the trailer (and that half-assed title) would have you believe. The adorkable Jay Baruchel stars as Kirk, a hapless loser who finds himself dating bonafide hottie Molly (Alice Eve). Once you get past the film’s silly conceit — Kirk’s only "movie ugly," and personality goes a long way — you’re left with a surprisingly charming comedy. The characters are amusing and the wit is sharp. Not to mention the fact that She’s Out of My League offers a downright heartfelt message. There’s a sincerity here that feels genuine instead of just tacked-on: yeah, yeah, it’s about what’s inside that counts, but there’s more to it than that. Ignore the dreadful "jizz in my pants" scene, and the movie’s almost an old-fashioned romcom. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Shutter Island Director Martin Scorsese and muse du jour Leonardo DiCaprio draw from oft-filmed novelist Dennis Lehane (2003’s Mystic River, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone) for this B-movie thriller that, sadly, offers few thrills. DiCaprio’s a 1950s U.S. marshal summoned to a misty island that houses a hospital for the criminally insane, overseen by a doctor (Ben Kingsley) who believes in humane, if experimental, therapy techniques. From the get-go we suspect something’s not right with the G-man’s own mind; as he investigates the case of a missing patient, he experiences frequent flashbacks to his World War II service (during which he helped liberate a concentration camp), and has recurring visions of his spooky dead wife (Michelle Williams). Whether or not you fall for Shutter Island‘s twisty game depends on the gullibility of your own mind. Despite high-quality performances and an effective, if overwrought, tone of certain doom, Shutter Island stumbles into a third act that exposes its inherently flawed and frustrating storytelling structure. If only David Lynch had directed Shutter Island — it could’ve been a classic of mindfuckery run amok. Instead, Scorsese’s psychological drama is sapped of any mystery whatsoever by its stubbornly literal conclusion. (2:18) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Prop 17 discourages going car-free

Sasha Cuttler
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Prop 17 discourages going car-free

Efforts to encourage car-sharing and ways of getting around that don’t involve owning a car would be undermined by Proposition 17, a June ballot measure that I wrote about in this week’s cover story. While I didn’t mention that impact in the story, it is of real concern to people like me who don’t own cars and encourage others to try the car-free lifestyle on for size.

The measure, sponsored by Mercury Insurance, allows companies to substantially increase monthly premiums on customers who haven’t had continuous insurance coverage. That would be one more barrier to people making the leap of faith to give up their cars and rely on bicycles or public transit, a switch that ought to be encouraged in increasingly traffic-congested cities such as San Francisco.

As I wrote about in another cover story last year, I made the decision several years ago to give up my car, although I still sometimes rent cars to visit my children. Consumer advocates say the cost of renting cars or using car-sharing services – particularly locally owned companies that can’t self-insure like the corporate behemoths – could increase and there would be a disincentive to consider trying it.

 “Anyone who has used car sharing (or for that matter rental cars) as their means of transportation would almost certainly not be considered continuously insured and would face the Prop 17 surcharge if they had to go back to private insurance at some point,” Doug Heller, an insurance expert with Consumer Watchdog, told me.

Currently, the law allows insurance companies to issue discounts to those who have maintained continuous policies with them (Prop. 17 would expand that to allow drivers to change companies and keep their discounts, which would be offset by surcharges on customers who were new or had a lapse in their coverage), and those companies use that discount to actively try to discourage people from experimenting with car-free lifestyles.

Brian Smith, who works for an environmental nonprofit in Oakland, recalls getting that kind of hard sell when he made the leap and got rid of his car.

 “When I cancelled my car insurance, AAA warned me not to. They said, ‘We will make it much more expensive when you come back.’ I said, ‘I sold my car, I don’t need car insurance.’ They said ‘We are just giving you a warning, Sir.’ I said, ‘Cancel it you fucking bastards. I’m never coming back.’ That was 10 years ago.’” Smith wrote to me about the issue.

Proponents of the measure say it would save some drivers $250 per year, while opponents (citing data from Mercury) say the surcharges for everyone else would be about $1,000 per year. So for the soldiers who go off to boot camp, the college students who get an internship in a city with good public transit or bikeways, unemployed individuals who need to trim expenses, or people who want to experiment with going car-free, they would all pay for more for insurance if they went back to driving a car than those who continuously maintained a car-dependent existence.

So, add this to the list of good reasons – and there are many of them in this week’s cover story — to oppose Prop. 17. 

Film listings

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

SF INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival runs through Sun/21 at the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Viz Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Camera 12 Cinemas, 201 South Second St, San Jose. Tickets (most shows $12) available at www.asianamericanmedia.org. All times pm.

WED/17

PFA Agrarian Utopia 7. Mundane History 9:20.

Sundance Kabuki "Classic Filipino American Shorts" (shorts program) 4:15. God is D_ad 4:30. "FutureStates" (shorts program) 6:45. Wo Ai Ni Mommy 7. You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting 9:15. Aoki 9:30.

Viz "Memory Vessels and Phantom Traces" (shorts program) 4:45. Ninoy Aquin and the Rise of People Power 7. Dear Doctor 9:15.

THURS/18

PFA Hana, Dul, Sed… 7. Bayan Ko: My Own Country 9.

Sundance Kabuki Mundane History 5. "Wandering, Wondering" (shorts program) 5. "Blueprints for a Generation" (shorts program) 5. Au Revoir Taipei 7. "FutureStates" (shorts program) 7:15.

Viz "Sweet Dreams and Beautiful Nightmare" (shorts program) 5. Tehran Without Borders 7:30.

FRI/19

Camera Au Revoir Taipei 7.

PFA What We Talk About When We… 7. The Forbidden Door 9:10.

SAT/20

Camera Dear Doctor noon. "3rd I South Asian International Shorts" (shorts program) 2:45. Aoki 3. The People I’ve Slept With 4:45. A Village Called Versailles 5:30. Make Yourself at Home 7:15. Like You Know it All 7:45. Prince of Tears 9:15.

PFA Manila in the Claws of Neon 6. About Elly 8:30.

SUN/21

Camera "Wandering, Wondering" (shorts program) noon. Talentime 2. State of Aloha 2:15. Cooking With Stella 4:30. Fog 4:45. In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee 6:45. The Forbidden Door 7. The Message 9.

OPENING

The Bounty Hunter Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston play a formerly married couple who … zzzzz. Huh? Oh, whatever. (1:50)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid The agonies of middle school come to life in this kid-friendly comedy. (2:00)

The Girl on the Train André Téchiné’s beautifully photographed, ripped-from-the-headlines film explores the events that led a young Parisian girl to lie about being the victim of an anti-semitic attack. Téchiné’s dramatization fails as an account of the incident, but the film manages to evoke a powerfully mysterious tone due largely to two stellar performances, by Émilie Dequenne as the 20-something Jeanne and Catherine Deneuve as her persistent mother. Much of the running time follows Jeanne’s experiences before the fabrication, as she falls for (and moves in with) a young wrestler named Franck, before a tragic event causes Jeanne to invent the famous lie. An arty exploration into the psychology of victimization that happens to be anchored by a real-life event, The Girl on the Train may disappoint those looking for easy answers but is undeniable as a showcase for some outstanding acting. (1:42) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Galvin)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo See "Life After Death." (2:32) Albany, Embarcadero.

Mother Bong Joon-ho’s latest is a crime drama about a mentally challenged murder suspect and his formidable mother. See review at www.sfbg.com. (2:09) Clay, Shattuck.

*Neil Young Trunk Show As loose as Jonathan Demme’s prior Neil doc Heart of Gold (2006) was tidy, with a taste for rave-ups where that film emphasized the mellower country-rock side, this neck-deep wade into Young’s four-decade-plus songbook is pretty dang nirvanic. Shot at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA —exactly the kind of funky old midsized venue you’d want to see him at — it’s assembled via camera and editorial choices as seemingly random yet astute as Young’s grab bag of tunes. The latter range from historic hits ("Cinnamon Girl," "Harvest," "Cowgirl in the Sand") to more recent compositions ("The Believer," "No Hidden Path") and some real obscurities from the bottom of that trunk, including a few acoustic heartbreakers. Even shown out of concert order — there’s never any sense just where we are in the audience’s evening — they meld seamlessly, the epic half-hour oceanics of "Path" just as well as something small and plaintive like "Sad Movies." Never in better voice (qualify that as you will) at age 65, surrounded by an assured band of five plus scattered oddball props and one live canvas painter, Young is the eye of this particular hurricane — even if "Like a Hurricane" is the one performance that feels a tad uninspired. If you’re a fan, this will be pretty close to sheer ecstasy. If not … well, frankly, I have absolutely no idea whether
you’ll be converted, mildly entertained, or bored to death. (1:22) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Repo Men Nope, not a sequel to the 1984 cult classic. Jude Law and Forest Whitaker will, however, relieve you of your futuristic mechanical organs if you can’t pay for them post-transplant. (1:53) Shattuck.

The Runaways In Floria Sigismondi’s tale of the rise and fall of a 1970s all-girl band, LA producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) proclaims that the Runaways are going to save rock and roll. It’s hard to gauge the sincerity of this pronouncement, but you can certainly hear, in songs like "Cherry Bomb" and "Queens of Noise," how the band must have brightened a landscape overrun by kings of prog rock. Unfortunately, a handful of teenagers micromanaged by a sleazy, abusive nutcase proved not quite up to the task, though the band did launch the careers of metal guitarist Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and, more famously, Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). Sigismondi’s film entertainingly sketches the Runaways’ beginnings in glam rock fandom and gradual attainment of their own rabid fan base. We get Currie lip-synching Bowie to catcalls at the high school assembly, Jett composing "Cherry Bomb" with Fowley, glamtastic hair-and-wardrobe eye candy, pills-and-Stooges-fueled intra-band fooling around, and five teenage girls sent off sans chaperone on an international tour with substantial quantities of hard drugs in their carry-on luggage. What follows is less pretty: a capsule version of the band’s disintegration after the departure of bottoming-out 16-year-old lead singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). In a film darkened by Currie’s trajectory, Jett’s subsequent success is a feel-good coda, but it’s awkwardly attached and emblematizes one of The Runaways‘ main problems. When the band begins to fall apart, the film doesn’t know which way to turn and ends up telling no one’s story well. (1:42) Bridge. (Rapoport)

ONGOING

Ajami You may recognize the title of Yaron Shoni and Scandar Copti’s debut collaboration as one of five films nominated for a 2010 Academy Award in the Foreign Category. Though it didn’t bring home the grand prize, Ajami remains a complex and affecting story about desperation and its consequences in a religiously-mixed town in Israel. As we follow the lives of four of Ajami’s residents the narrative shifts perspective almost maddeningly, switching characters seemingly at the height of each story’s action. But once all of the stories fully intersect, the final product has the distinction of feeling both meticulously calculated and completely natural. I was most impressed to learn that Shani and Copti prepared their actors with improvised role-playing rather than scripts. By withholding what was going to happen in a scene before shooting, we are treated to looks of surprise and emotion on actor’s faces that never feel unnatural. Attaining such a level of realism may be Ajami‘s crowning achievement; it can’t have been easy to make a foreign world feel so familiar. (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Galvin)

Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton’s take on the classic children’s tale met my mediocre expectations exactly, given its months of pre-release hype (in the film world, fashion magazines, and even Sephora, for the love of brightly-colored eyeshadows). Most folks over a certain age will already know the story, and much of the dialogue, before the lights go down and the 3-D glasses go on; it’s up to Burton and his all-star cast (including numerous big-name actors providing voices for animated characters) to make the tale seem newly enthralling. The visuals are nearly as striking as the CG, with Helena Bonham Carter’s big-headed Red Queen a particularly marvelous human-computer creation. But Wonderland suffers from the style-over-substance dilemma that’s plagued Burton before; all that spooky-pretty whimsy can’t disguise the film’s fairly tepid script. Teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) displaying girl-power tendencies is a nice, if not surprising, touch, but Johnny Depp’s grating take on the Mad Hatter will please only those who were able to stomach his interpretation of Willy Wonka. (1:48) Castro, Cerrito, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Art of the Steal How do you put a price on something that’s literally priceless? The Art of the Steal takes an absorbing look at the Barnes Collection, a privately-amassed array of Post-Impressionist paintings (including 181 Renoirs) worth billions — and the many people and corporate interests who schemed to control it. Founder Albert C. Barnes was an singular character who took pride in his outsider status; he housed his art in a specially-constructed gallery far from downtown Philadelphia’s museum scene, and he emphasized education and art appreciation first and foremost. But he had no heirs, and after his death in 1951, opportunists began circling his massive collection; the slippery political and legal dealings that have unfolded since then are nearly as jaw-dropping as Barnes’ prize paintings. Philly documentarian Don Argott has a doozy of a subject here, and his skillful, even suspenseful film does it justice. (1:41) Elmwood, Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Avatar James Cameron’s Avatar takes place on planet Pandora, where human capitalists are prospecting for precious unobtainium, hampered only by the toxic atmosphere and a profusion of unfriendly wildlife, including the Na’vi, a nine-foot tall race of poorly disguised cliches. When Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine, arrives on the planet, he is recruited into the "Avatar" program, which enables him to cybernetically link with a part-human, part-Na’vi body and go traipsing through Pandora’s psychedelic underbrush. Initially designed for botanical research, these avatars become the only means of diplomatic contact with the bright-blue natives, who live smack on top of all the bling. The special effects are revolutionary, but the story that ensues blends hollow "noble savage" dreck with events borrowed from Dances With Wolves (1990) and FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). When Sully falls in love with a Na’vi princess and undergoes a spirit journey so he can be inducted into the tribe and fight the evil miners, all I could think of was Kevin Bacon getting his belly sliced in The Air Up There (1994). (2:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Richardson)

The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article "The Ballad of Big Mike" — which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game — nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher — a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) Elmwood, Oaks. (Daniel Alvarez)

Brooklyn’s Finest "Really? I mean, really?" asked the moviegoer beside me as the final freeze-frame of Brooklyn’s Finest slapped our eyeballs. Yes, that’s the sound of letdown, despite the fact that Brooklyn’s Finest initially resembled a promisingly gritty juggling act in the mode of The Wire and Cop Land (1997), Taxi Driver (1976) and Training Day (2001). Bitter irony flows from the title — and from the lives, loves, bad habits, pressure-cooker stress, and unavoidable moral dilemmas of three would-be everyday cops, all occupying several different rungs on a food chain where right and wrong have an unpleasant way of switching sides. Eddie (Richard Gere) is the veteran officer just biding his time till he gets his pension, all while comforting himself with the meager sensuous attentions of hooker Chantel (Shannon Kane). Sal (Ethan Hawke) is the bad detective, stealing from the dealers to fund a dream home for his growing family with Angela (Lili Taylor). Tango (Don Cheadle) is the undercover detective who has cultivated friendships with dealers like Caz (Wesley Snipes) and sacrificed his marriage for a long-promised promotion from his lieutenant (Will Patton) and his superior (Ellen Barkin, in likely the most misogynist portrayal of a lady with a badge to date). You spend most of Brooklyn’s Finest waiting for these cops to collide in the most unfortunate, messiest way possible, but instead the denouement leaves will leave one wondering about unresolved threads and feeling vaguely unsatisfied. In any case, director Antoine Fuqua and company seem to pride themselves on their tough-minded if at times cartoonish take on law enforcement, with Hawke in particular turning in a memorably OTT and anguished performance. (2:13) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Crazies Disease and anti-government paranoia dovetail in this competent yet overwhelmingly non-essential remake of one of George A. Romero’s second-tier spook shows. In a small Iowa hamlet overseen by a benevolent sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell), who’s also the town doctor, a few odd incidents snowball into all-out chaos when a mysterious, unmarked plane crashes into the local water supply. Before long, the few residents who aren’t acting like homicidal maniacs are rounded up by an uber-aggressive military invasion. Though our heroes convey frantic panic as they try to figure out what the hell is going on, The Crazies never achieves full terror mode. It’s certainly watchable, and even enjoyable at times. But memorable? Not in the slightest. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Crazy Heart "Oh, I love Jeff Bridges!" is the usual response when his name comes up every few years for Best Actor consideration, usually via some underdog movie no one saw, and the realization occurs that he’s never won an Oscar. The oversight is painful because it could be argued that no leading American actor has been more versatile, consistently good, and true to that elusive concept "artistic integrity" than Bridges over the last 40 years. It’s rumored Crazy Heart was slotted for cable or DVD premiere, then thrust into late-year theater release in hopes of attracting Best Actor momentum within a crowded field. Lucky for us, this performance shouldn’t be overlooked. Bridges plays "Bad" Blake, a veteran country star reduced to playing bars with local pickup bands. His slide from grace hasn’t been helped by lingering tastes for smoke and drink, let alone five defunct marriages. He meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), freelance journalist, fan, and single mother. They spark; though burnt by prior relationships, she’s reluctant to take seriously a famous drunk twice her age. Can Bad handle even this much responsibility? Meanwhile, he gets his "comeback" break in the semi-humiliating form of opening for Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) — a contemporary country superstar who was once Bad’s backup boy. Tommy offers a belated shot at commercial redemption; Jean offers redemption of the strictly personal kind. There’s nothing too surprising about the ways in which Crazy Heart both follows and finesses formula. You’ve seen this preordained road from wreckage to redemption before. But actor turned first-time director Scott Cooper’s screenplay honors the flies in the windshield inherited from Thomas Cobb’s novel — as does Bridges, needless to say. (1:51) Lumiere, Piedmont, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*An Education The pursuit of knowledge — both carnal and cultural — are at the tender core of this end-of-innocence valentine by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig (who first made her well-tempered voice heard with her 2000 Dogme entry, Italian for Beginners), based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Hornby breaks further with his Peter Pan protagonists with this adaptation: no man-boy mopers or misfits here. Rather, 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a good girl and ace student. It’s 1961, and England is only starting to stir from its somber, all-too-sober post-war slumber. The carefully cloistered Jenny is on track for Oxford, though swinging London and its high-style freedoms beckon just around the corner. Ushering in those freedoms — a new, more class-free world disorder — is the charming David (Peter Sarsgaard), stopping to give Jenny and her cello a ride in the rain and soon proffering concerts and late-night suppers in the city. He’s a sweet-faced, feline outsider: cultured, Jewish, and given to playing fast and loose in the margins of society. David can see Jenny for the gem she is and appreciate her innocence with the knowing pleasure of a decadent playing all the angles. The stakes are believably high, thanks to An Education‘s careful attention to time and place and its gently glamored performances. Scherfig revels in the smart, easy-on-eye curb appeal of David and his friends while giving a nod to the college-educated empowerment Jenny risks by skipping class to jet to Paris. And Mulligan lends it all credence by letting all those seduced, abandoned, conflicted, rebellious feelings flicker unbridled across her face. (1:35) Oaks, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski’s never-ending legal woes have inspired endless debates on the interwebs and elsewhere; they also can’t help but add subtext to the 76-year-old’s new film, which is chock full o’ anti-American vibes anyway. It’s also a pretty nifty political thriller about a disgraced former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who’s hanging out in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion with his whip-smart, bitter wife (Olivia Williams) and Joan Holloway-as-ice-queen assistant (Kim Cattrall), plus an eager young biographer (Ewan McGregor) recently hired to ghost-write his memoirs. But as the writer quickly discovers, the politician’s past contains the kinds of secrets that cause strange cars with tinted windows to appear in one’s rearview mirror when driving along deserted country roads. Polanski’s long been an expert when it comes to escalating tension onscreen; he’s also so good at adding offbeat moments that only seem tossed-off (as when the PM’s groundskeeper attempts to rake leaves amid relentless sea breezes) and making the utmost of his top-notch actors (Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach have small, memorable roles). Though I found The Ghost Writer‘s ZOMG! third-act revelation to be a bit corny, I still didn’t think it detracted from the finely crafted film that led up to it. (1:49) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Green Zone Titled for the heavily-guarded headquarters of international occupation in Baghdad, Green Zone reunites director Paul "Shaky-Cam" Greengrass with star Matt Damon, the two having previously collaborated on the last two Bourne films. Instead of a super-soldier, this time around Damon just plays a supremely insubordinate one as he attempts to uncover the reason why his military unit can’t find any of Saddam’s WMDs. With the aid of the CIA, a Wall Street Journal reporter and a friendly Iraqi, Damon goes rogue in order to suss out the source of the misinformation. The Iraq War action is decent if scarce, but an overindulgence in (you guessed it) shaky-cam and political jargon cannot hide the fact that Green Zone‘s plot is simplistic and probably light on actual facts. Damon makes a fine cowboy-cum-hero, but the effectiveness of the mix of patriotism and Pentagon paranoia will vary based on your penchant for such things. Still, Green Zone moves fast enough that it remains worth a matinee for conspiracy thriller aficionados. (1:55) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

The Hurt Locker When the leader of a close-knit U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad is killed in action, his subordinates have barely recovered from the shock when they’re introduced to his replacement. In contrast to his predecessor, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) is no standard-procedure-following team player, but a cocky adrenaline junkie who puts himself and others at risk making gonzo gut-instinct decisions in the face of live bombs and insurgent gunfire. This is particularly galling to next-in-command Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). An apolitical war-in-Iraq movie that’s won considerable praise for accuracy so far from vets (scenarist Mark Boal was "embedded" with an EOD unit there for several 2004 weeks), Kathryn Bigelow’s film is arguably you-are-there purist to a fault. While we eventually get to know in the principals, The Hurt Locker is so dominated by its seven lengthy squad-mission setpieces that there’s almost no time or attention left for building character development or a narrative arc. The result is often viscerally intense, yet less impactful than it would have been if we were more emotionally invested. Assured as her technique remains, don’t expect familiar stylistic dazzle from action cult figure Bigelow (1987’s Near Dark, 1989’s Blue Steel, 1991’s Point Break) — this vidcam-era war movie very much hews to the favored current genre approach of pseudo-documentary grainy handheld shaky-cam imagery. (2:11) Cerrito, Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Last Station Most of the buzz around The Last Station has focused on Helen Mirren, who takes the lead as the Countess Sofya, wife of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer). Mirren is indeed impressive — when is she not? — but there’s more to the film than Sofya’s Oscar-worthy outbursts. The Last Station follows Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), hired as Tolstoy’s personal secretary at the end of the writer’s life. Valentin struggles to reconcile his faith in the anarchist Christian Tolstoyan movement with his sympathy for Sofya and his budding feelings for fellow Tolstoyan Masha (Kerry Condon). For the first hour, The Last Station is charming and very funny. Once Tolstoy and Sofya’s relationship reaches its most volatile, however, the tone shifts toward the serious — a trend that continues as Tolstoy falls ill. After all the lighthearted levity, it’s a bit jarring, but the solid script and accomplished cast pull The Last Station together. Paul Giamatti is especially good as Vladimir Chertkov, who battles against Sofya for control of Tolstoy’s will. You’ll never feel guiltier for putting off War and Peace. (1:52) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Peitzman)

*The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers For many, Daniel Ellsberg is a hero — a savior of American First Amendment rights and one of the most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam war. But as this documentary (recently nominated for an Academy Award) shows, it’s never an an easy decision to take on the U.S. government. Ellsberg himself narrates the film and details his sleepless nights leading up to the leak of the Pentagon Papers — the top secret government study on the Vietnam war — to the public. Though there are few new developments in understanding the particulars of the war or the impact the release of the Papers had on ending the conflict, the film allows audiences to experience the famous case from Ellsberg’s point of view, adding a fresh and poignantly human element to the events; it’s a political documentary that plays more like a character drama. Whether you were there when it happened or new to the story, there is something to be appreciated from this tale of a man who fell out of love with his country and decided to do something about it. (1:34) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

*North Face You’ll never think of outerwear the same way again — and in fact you might be reaching for your fleece and shivering through the more harrowing climbing scenes of this riveting historical adventure based on a true tale. Even those who consider themselves less than avid fans of outdoor survival drama will find their eyes frozen, if you will, on the screen when it comes to this retelling/re-envisioning of this story, legendary among mountaineers, of climbers, urged on by Nazi propaganda, to tackle the last "Alpine problem." At issue: the unclimbed north face of Switzerland’s Eiger, a highly dangerous and unpredictable zone aptly nicknamed "Murder Wall." Two working-class friends, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann of 2008’s Jerichow) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) — here portrayed as climbing fiends driven to reach summits rather than fight for the Nazis — take the challenge. There to document their achievement, or certain death, is childhood friend and Kurz’s onetime sweetheart Luise (Johanna Wokalek, memorable in 2008’s The Baader Meinhof Complex), eager to make her name as a photojournalist while fending off the advances of an editor (Ulrich Tukur) seeking to craft a narrative that positions the contestants as model Aryans. But the climb — and the Eiger, looming like a mythical ogre — is the main attraction here. Filmmaker Philipp Stölzl brings home the sheer heart-pumping exhilaration and terror associated with the sport — and this specific, legendarily tragic climb — by shooting in the mountains with his actors and crew, and the result goes a way in redeeming an adventure long-tainted by its fascist associations. (2:01) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Our Family Wedding America Ferrera and Lance Gross play a couple of lovebirds who must jump through some serious family hoops before they get married in the mostly serviceable Our Family Wedding. What begins as a dual Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, with the differences in each family’s traditions forcing complications and compromises, soon loses sight of its matrimonial plot as the focus steers towards a childish rivalry between the fathers. While it’s being marketed as a goofy comedy, the final product seeks a relatively sentimental tone, which makes the few slapstick moments — like a goat trying to rape Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker — seem pretty inappropriate. Still, for some audiences the well-tread plot will act as comfort food: they fight, they make up, and it all ends in a big wedding where we watch the characters dance for damn near ten minutes. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Galvin)

*Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief It would be easy to dismiss Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief as an unabashed Harry Potter knock-off. Trio of kids with magic powers goes on a quest to save the world in a Chris Columbus adaptation of a popular young adult series — sound familiar? But The Lightning Thief is sharp, witty, and a far cry from Columbus’ joyless adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001). Logan Lerman stars as Percy Jackson, the illegitimate son of Poseidon and Catherine Keener. Once he learns his true identity at Camp Half-Blood, he sets off on a quest with his protector, a satyr named Grover, and potential love interest Annabeth, daughter of Athena. Along the way, they bump into gods and monsters from Greek mythology — with a twist. Think Percy using his iPhone to fight Medusa (Uma Thurman), or a land of the Lotus-Eaters disguised as a Lady Gaga-blasting casino. A worthy successor to Harry Potter? Too soon to say, but The Lightning Thief is at least a well-made diversion. (1:59) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*A Prophet Filmmaker Jacques Audiard has described his new film, A Prophet, as "the anti-Scarface." Yet much like Scarface (1983), A Prophet bottles the heady euphoria that chases the empowerment of the powerless and the rise of the long-shot loner on the margins. In its almost-Dickensian attention to detail, devotion to its own narrative complexity, and passion for cinematic poetry, A Prophet rises above the ordinary and, through the prism of genre, finds its own power. The supremely opportunistic, pragmatically Machiavellian intellectual and spiritual education of a felon is the chief concern of here. Played by Tahar Rahim with guileless, open-faced charisma, Malik is half-Arab and half-Corsican — and distrusted or despised by both camps in the pen. When he lands in jail for his six-year sentence, he’s 19, illiterate, friendless, and vulnerable. His deal with the devil — and means of survival — arrives with Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), temporarily locked up before his testifies against the mob. Corsican boss Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup) wants him dead, and Malik is tagged to penetrate Reyeb’s cell with a blade hidden in mouth. After Malik’s gory rebirth, it turns out that the teenager’s a seer in more ways than one. From his low-dog position, he can eyeball the connections linking the drugs entering the prison to those circulating outside, as well as the machinations intertwining the Arab and Corsican syndicates. It’s no shock that when Cesar finds his power eroding and arranges prison leaves for his multilingual crossover star that Malik serves not only his Corsican master, but also his own interests, and begins to build a drug empire rivaling his teacher’s. Throughout his pupil’s progress, Audiard demonstrates a way with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, and when Malik finally breaks with his Falstaffian patriarch, it makes your heart skip a beat in a move akin to the title of the director’s last film. This Eurozone/Obama-age prophet is all about the profit — but he’s imbued with grace, even while gaming for ill-gotten gain. (2:29) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Remember Me Ominously set in New York City during the summer of 2001, Remember Me, starring Robert Pattinson (of the Twilight series) and Emilie de Ravin (of TV’s Lost), pretty much answers the question of whether it’s still too soon to make the events of September 11 the subject of a date movie. Or rather, not the subject so much as the specter waiting just off-camera for its walk-on while brooding 21-year-old Tyler Hawkins (Pattinson) quotes Gandhi, gets into brawls, gets drunk, writes letters to his dead brother, and otherwise channels despondency and rage into various salubrious outlets. One of these is romancing (under circumstances severely testing the viewer’s credulity) de Ravin’s Ally Craig, grappling somewhat more constructively with her own familial tragedy. Ally is the sort of self-possessed, strong-willed young woman whose instincts, shortly after she’s been backhanded by her drunk father (Chris Cooper), tell her to placate and have sex with her drunk boyfriend when he comes home enraged after battling his own father (Pierce Brosnan). She is there to teach Tyler, through quirky habits like eating dessert first, what director Allen Coulter (2006’s Hollywoodland) wishes to teach us: that time is short and one must fill one’s life with meaningful actions — like throwing a fire extinguisher through a window to convince a classroom of tweens to stop bullying one’s little sister. The film is seeded with allusions to an impending catastrophe that feels less integrated than exploited. And it’s uncomfortable seeing the fall of the towers used to make the ground shake under a sweet, fairly depthless depiction of love and grief. (2:08) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

She’s Out of My League From the co-writers of the abysmal Sex Drive (2008), She’s Out of My League could be another 90-minute assemblage of gross-out humor, dick jokes, and unabashed homophobia. As it turns out, the latest offering from Sean Anders and John Morris is legitimately funny — far better than the trailer (and that half-assed title) would have you believe. The adorkable Jay Baruchel stars as Kirk, a hapless loser who finds himself dating bonafide hottie Molly (Alice Eve). Once you get past the film’s silly conceit — Kirk’s only "movie ugly," and personality goes a long way — you’re left with a surprisingly charming comedy. The characters are amusing and the wit is sharp. Not to mention the fact that She’s Out of My League offers a downright heartfelt message. There’s a sincerity here that feels genuine instead of just tacked-on: yeah, yeah, it’s about what’s inside that counts, but there’s more to it than that. Ignore the dreadful "jizz in my pants" scene, and the movie’s almost an old-fashioned romcom. (1:44) Elmwood, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Shutter Island Director Martin Scorsese and muse du jour Leonardo DiCaprio draw from oft-filmed novelist Dennis Lehane (2003’s Mystic River, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone) for this B-movie thriller that, sadly, offers few thrills. DiCaprio’s a 1950s U.S. marshal summoned to a misty island that houses a hospital for the criminally insane, overseen by a doctor (Ben Kingsley) who believes in humane, if experimental, therapy techniques. From the get-go we suspect something’s not right with the G-man’s own mind; as he investigates the case of a missing patient, he experiences frequent flashbacks to his World War II service (during which he helped liberate a concentration camp), and has recurring visions of his spooky dead wife (Michelle Williams). Whether or not you fall for Shutter Island‘s twisty game depends on the gullibility of your own mind. Despite high-quality performances and an effective, if overwrought, tone of certain doom, Shutter Island stumbles into a third act that exposes its inherently flawed and frustrating storytelling structure. If only David Lynch had directed Shutter Island — it could’ve been a classic of mindfuckery run amok. Instead, Scorsese’s psychological drama is sapped of any mystery whatsoever by its stubbornly literal conclusion. (2:18) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

A Single Man In this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, Colin Firth plays George, a middle-aged gay expat Brit and college professor in 1962 Los Angeles. Months after the accidental death of Jim (Matthew Goode), his lover for 16 years, George still feels worse than bereft; simply waking each morning is agony. So on this particular day he has decided to end it all, first going through a series of meticulous preparations and discreet leave-takings that include teaching one last class and having supper with the onetime paramour (Julianne Moore) turned best friend who’s still stuck on him. The main problem with fashion designer turned film director Tom Ford’s first feature is that he directs it like a fashion designer, fussing over surface style and irrelevant detail in a story whose tight focus on one hard, real-world thing — grief — cries for simplicity. Not pretentious overpackaging, which encompasses the way his camera slavers over the excessively pretty likes of Nicholas Hoult as a student and Jon Kortajarena as a hustler, as if they were models selling product rather than characters, or even actors. (In fact Kortajarena is a male supermodel; the shocker is that Hoult is not, though Hugh Grant’s erstwhile About a Boy co-star is so preening here you’d never guess.) Eventually Ford stops showing off so much, and A Single Man is effective to the precise degree it lets good work by Goode, Moore and especially the reliably excellent Firth unfold without too much of his terribly artistic interference. (1:39) 1000 Van Ness, Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Sweetgrass Recorded between 2001-03 by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, Sweetgrass immerses us in sheep farming before taking off after a pair of latter-day cowboys on a 150-mile drive through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth range — a journey with deep historical roots and no practical future. As its rugged scenery beggars (but ultimately unseats) projections of the pastoral, so too do its mild sheep trigger myriad symbolic associations. Sweetgrass is finally about the relationship between farmhands and their flocks, and in this, it is notably unsentimental. During long takes of shearing and birthing, the correspondent displays of violence and tenderness, much of it erotic and seemingly reflexive, speaks to the human-animal encounter Berger eulogized in 1977. The lonesome cowboys whisper sweet nothings to the dogs and hurl fantastically mismatched streams of curses at the sheep (the absence of women being the common link). Through it all, Castaing-Taylor’s camera is an embodied presence, and hard work at that. Compared with Planet Earth‘s impossible views and spectacular displacements, Sweetgrass has its feet planted on the ground. (1:41) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Goldberg)

REP PICKS

The Female Bunch Al Adamson was the Ed Wood Jr. of the late 60s and 1970s, albeit a version without any delusions of grandeur — in it for the money, he knew his ultra-cheap films were crap. This one, titled to cash in on The Wild Bunch and made the same year (though there were no distribution takers until 1971, two years later), is closer to an unacknowledged, soporific remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ great ’68 She-Devils on Wheels, with the deadly dames on horseback rather than motorcycles. When Sandy (Nesa Renet) is dumped by her faithless Vegas lounge singer boyfriend — and no wonder, since she behaves like a Velcro doormat — her showgirl friend Libby (peroxide-blonde perennial Adamson star and subsequent spouse Regina Carroll) recommends she join a "club" of women on a secret ranch. They smuggle drugs, have soft-core orgies (with Mexican men and each other), abuse the local "wetbacks," and enforce a strict "no men" rule on ranch property whose violation can lead to the poor sod getting branded, dragged to death, or worse. One such unfortunate is Russ Tamblyn, who sure fell hard and fast from being third-billed in Best Picture winner West Side Story just eight years prior; another is pathetic ranch hand Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his last roles, seeming even more pathetic than called for because he was undergoing debilitating cancer treatments at the time. The "she-devil" here is serious man-hater Grace, whose thespian Jennifer Bishop also appeared in such greats as 1970’s Bigfoot (as one of the pretty girls it keeps chained in its cave), 1974’s Impulse (imperiled by William Shatner), 1969’s The Maltese Bippy, and two Hee Haw episodes. The Female Bunch was advertised with slogans including "Hot Pants — and a Fast Draw! They Treat Their Horses Better Than Their Men!" It was partially shot at the Spahn Ranch, also home at the time to Charlie Manson and company. This grade-Z opus is preceded at the Vortex Room by the very big-budget Candy (1968), an abysmal stab at Terry Southern’s porn satire whose all-star cast included everyone from Brando and Burton to Ringo Starr, Sugar Ray Robinson, John Huston, and Anita Pallenberg. Thurs/18, 9 p.m., $5, Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. (Harvey)

Our weekly picks

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WEDNESDAY 10th

DANCE

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater


Today, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is as much Judith Jamison’s company as it was Ailey’s. Having reluctantly taken on the company’s artistic directorship after Ailey’s death, Jamison has led the troupe for the last 20 years with remarkable perspicacity and skill. Jamison may not be a great choreographer, but she is a great company director and dance visionary. This anniversary season sports three Bay Area premieres. Borrowing the title from Jamison’s autobiography, Ronald K. Brown, something of a visionary himself, set his new Dancing Spirit in her honor. Company dancer-choreographer Matthew Rushing’s Uptown looks to the Harlem Renaissance for inspiration. Finally, Jamison contributes Among Us (Private Spaces: Public Places), a series of vignettes set to a jazz score by Eric Lewis. (Rita Felciano)

8 p.m. (through Sat/13), $36–$62

Zellerbach Hall

UC Berkeley campus, Berk.

(510) 642-9988

www.calperformances.org

THURSDAY 11th

VISUAL ART

Pepe Moreno


Exploring the life of one of the most iconic characters in the history of comic books, the new "Batman: Yesterday and Tomorrow" exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum spotlights Bruce Wayne and his crime-fighting alter-ego, starting from his creation by artist Bob Kane and running through his many transformations over the years. Groundbreaking artist Pepe Moreno will be on hand tonight to discuss his revolutionary 1990 graphic novel Batman: Digital Justice, which was written and illustrated using computer hardware and software — one of the first such endeavors undertaken in the comics world. (Sean McCourt)

7 p.m., $5 donation requested

Cartoon Art Museum

655 Mission, SF

(415) 227-8666

www.cartoonart.org

EVENT

Thirsty Bear Beer Tasting


I’m hardly the first person to hop on the eat-everything-organic bandwagon. But when you live in San Francisco, it’s only a matter of time before you start shopping at farmers markets in hopes of finding the perfect toxin-free mango or avocado. Now you can add "organic beer connoisseur" to your list of titles by attending Thirsty Bear’s free organic beer tasting and workshop. You’ll learn all there is to know about sustainable brewing techniques, and get to sample some of the tastiest beers immediate area has to offer. (Elise-Marie Brown)

12-1:30 p.m., free

Green Zebra Environmental Action Center

50 Post, SF

(415) 346.2361

www.thegreenzebra.org

MUSIC

A Sunny Day in Glasgow


A Sunny Day in Glasgow wants you to rethink shoegaze. The Philadelphia trio layers their instruments in a manner that resembles a 21st-century Cocteau Twins, but their wall of sound is never as heavy, aiming instead for a sunny pop atmosphere you wouldn’t expect from the genre. Sometimes the accompanying vocals by Annie Fredrickson and Josh Meakim are maddeningly hard to make out beneath the waves of sound, but then they emerge clearly at just the right moment, like a breath of fresh air. Last year’s sophomore album Ashes Grammar (Mis Ojos Discos) was a sprawling mega-mix of moods, with songs bleeding into songs willy-nilly, and it’s safe to figure that their live show would reflect such a singular aural experience. If the critical reactions to Ashes Grammar are any indication, chances are good A Sunny Day in Glasgow won’t be performing in spaces as tiny as the Hemlock for long. (Peter Galvin)

With the Gold Medalists and Apopka Darkroom

9 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

EVENT/MUSIC

Free Party for Experience Hendrix Tour


Inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s significant contributions to the music world, his father formed Experience Hendrix, a series of tribute concerts. Debuting in 1995 at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival, the show has been on the road ever since. The tour comes to the Warfield tonight with a lineup that includes Band of Gypsys’ original bassist Billy Cox, along with Joe Satriani, Kenny Wayne Shephard, Eric Johnson, Susan Tedeschi, and Jonny Lang. Before the show, Hard Rock Café hosts a party with a raffle for tickets and transportation to the show. (Lilan Kane)

4 p.m., free

Hard Rock Café

Pier 39, SF

(415) 956-2013

www.hardrock.com/sanfrancisco

FRIDAY 12th

MUSIC

The Temper Trap


Although these guys were featured in (500) Days of Summer, don’t let that fool you into thinking they’re strictly light and whimsical. Just reminiscing on the first time I saw them gets me giddy inside. Drumsticks flew everywhere, and Dougy Madagi whaled uncontrollably in the mic as the crowd absorbed every drop of their soaring energy. Let’s just say these guys know how to put on a serious show. Now the Melbourne, Australia rockers are making their second trip here as headliners. (Brown)

9 p.m., $22.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

wwwvenation.com

COMEDY

Dave Attell


You wanna know why you’ve never seen television commercials for Jägermeister? Dave Attell knows a few good reasons. Attell is perhaps best known to mainstream audiences for his stint hosting Comedy Central’s Insomniac, a hilarious late-night, booze-fueled TV program where he explored what to do in various cities while on tour. This weekend the sometimes abrasive but always gut-bustingly funny comedian brings his high-proof standup to the city for the weekend, covering a variety of topics, including the aforementioned elixir and its propensity for instigating debauchery. (McCourt)

8 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. (also Sat/13) , $35.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

DANCE

ODC/Dance


How many modern dance companies do you know with two in-house choreographers? These ensembles usually swim an eclectic rep or feature the work of a single artist. ODC/Dance is very much the exception because of KT Nelson and Brenda Way, two dance-makers who couldn’t be more different in terms of style, artistic temperament, musicality, and sources of inspiration. Every season offers at least one new piece from each. This year, Way is working with composer/performer Pamela Z on Waving Not Drowning (A Guide to Elegance), a response to a 1963 manual on etiquette. Nelson turns to Mozart’s glorious Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor for Labor of Love, in which she explores what she calls "committed adult love" — the stresses and joys experienced by couples in relationships. (Felciano)

March 12/ 7 p.m. (through March 28), $15–$45

Novellus Theater

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-ARTS

www.odcdance.org

SATURDAY 13th

COMEDY

Martin Lawrence


Damn, Gina! Even if he’s fallen off your radar after donning the "Eddie Murphy fat suit" in Big Momma’s House (2000), you have fond memories of Martin Lawrence from such early comedic ventures as the TV series Martin, the host of HBO’s Def Comedy Jam or the tabloid field-day "Running Down Ventura Boulevard Yelling at Cars." In 2010, Lawrence is taking a break from film and returning to his roots with a stand-up tour, where his manic delivery really has room to breathe. Though he often finds himself an easy target, there is no doubt Lawrence is a huge star and these tickets are going to sell out — so get to steppin’! (Galvin)

8 p.m. (also Sun/14), $42.75–$77.50

Paramount Theatre

2025 Broadway, Oakl.

(510) 465-6400

www.paramounttheatre.com

MUSIC

E.C. Scott


E.C. Scott works a crowd, inciting laughter and tears. Atlantic Records’ cofounder Jerry Wexler praised her as "one honest-to-God soul singer." She’s become a major staple in the blues circuit in the Bay Area and beyond. Scott grew up singing in St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church in Oakland and cites gospel as a major influence. She’s shared the stage with Lou Rawls, Ray Charles, Patti Labelle, and John Lee Hooker, and in 1994, signed a multirecord deal with Blind Pig Records that resulted in a Downbeat award and W.C. Handy nomination for Soul/Blues Female Artist of the Year. (Lilan Kane)

8 p.m., $20

401 Mason, SF.

(415) 292-2583

www.biscuitsandblues.com

MUSIC

Youth Brigade


Formed by brothers Adam, Mark, and Shawn Stern in 1980, Youth Brigade made its mark on the early California punk scene with empowering anthems like "Fight to Unite" and DIY action. The trio started the Better Youth Organization to promote shows and put out records for themselves and their friends’ bands. Thirty years later, the group still plays with raw, rebellious energy and spirit. The sprawling new box set Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records chronicles their efforts. (McCourt)

9 p.m., $18

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

SUNDAY 14th

MUSIC

Scarlett Fever


Local fans of punk, rockabilly, hot rods, burlesque, and more join together today for a very special cause — the annual "Scarlett Fever" show, an all-day benefit for Scarlett James, teenage daughter of Rosa and Bob James, who suffers from Rett syndrome, a childhood neurodevelopmental disorder that leads to the loss of many motor skills. The annual event helps pay for her care and raises money for research into the disorder. Her father is a veteran musician (playing in Del Bombers) and each year has enlisted the help of some stellar talent. Today’s event includes Big Sandy and the Fly Rite Boys, Three Bad Jacks, Stigma 13, Ghost Town Hangmen, plus live burlesque — courtesy of Hubba Hubba Revue — and raffles, including one for a new custom motorcycle. (McCourt)

1 p.m., $15

DNA Lounge

375 11th St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

TUESDAY 16th

FILM

Remembering Playland at the Beach


If you haven’t yet met Laffing Sal, it’s time for you to take a trip to (dreaded) Fisherman’s Wharf and the (free) Musée Mécanique. As every self-respecting San Franciscan knows, Sal once presided over the Funhouse at Playland at the Beach, an amusement park along Ocean Beach that had its heyday in the 1910s and ’20s (but didn’t close until 1972). The most famous film to feature Sal’s terrifying cackle is 1948’s The Lady From Shanghai — but no doubt you’ll get an earful in Tom Wyrsch’s brand-new doc, Remembering Playland at the Beach, which is stuffed with archival footage, photographs, and interviews. Appropriately, the film debuts at the Balboa, just blocks from the former site of Playland’s famous midway. (Cheryl Eddy)

7 and 9:15 p.m., $6.50–$9

Balboa Theatre

3630 Balboa, SF

(415) 221-3117

www.balboamovies.com

FILM

Palestine Cinema: A Shorts Program


The Red Vic has partnered with the Arab Film Festival for a tempting "second look" at a series of short works by a new and international generation of Palestinian filmmakers, originally screened as part of AFF 2009. Topping the lineup is Riyad Deis’ Swesh Swesh, set during the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936–39, as a farming family reluctantly harbors a revolutionary fugitive and finds its traditional beliefs challenged in the resulting exchange. The one-night-only program also includes Lesh Sabreen by Bay Area–trained Muayad Alayan (and shot by SF filmmaker Christian Bruno). It focuses on a young couple trapped, literally, between the wall of Israeli occupation and their families’ own conservative mores. (Robert Avila)

7:15 and 9:15 p.m., $6-9

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com

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Film listings

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

SF INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival runs March 11-21 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Viz Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Camera 12 Cinemas, 201 South Second St, San Jose. Tickets (most shows $12) available at www.asianamericanmedia.org. All times pm.

THURS/11

Castro Today’s Special 7.

FRI/12

Clay In the Manner of Cha Jung Hee 6:45. Raspberry Magic 9. The Forbidden Door 11:59.

Pacific Film Archive Independencia 7. The Message 8:40.

Sundance Kabuki Agrarian Utopia 3:45. Talentime 4:30. City of Life and Death 6:30. Fog 7. "Scene/Unseen" (shorts program) 9:15. "Sweet Dreams and Beautiful Nightmares" (shorts program) 9:30.

SAT/13

Clay China Sings! 1:30. "An Afternoon with Aasif Madvi" (on-stage interview) 4. Dear Lemon Lima 6:15. Prince of Tears 8:45.

Pacific Film Archive In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee 3:30. Like You Know it All 5:30. City of Life and Death 8.

Sundance Kabuki "3rd I South Asian International Shorts" (shorts program) noon. State of Aloha 1. A Village Called Versailles 2:15. Insiang 3:15. Ninoy Aquino and the Rise of People Power 4:30. God is D-ad 6. A Moment in Time 7. Agrarian Utopia 8:30. "Wandering, Wondering" (shorts program) 9:15.

Viz "Up Close and Personal with the Asian American Film Industry" (workshop) 1. Aoki 3:30. "Classic Filipino American Shorts" (shorts program) 6. Make Yourself at Home 8:30.

SUN/14

Castro The Housemaid noon. The Message 2:45. The People I’ve Slept With 6. Love Aaj Kal 9.

Clay What We Talk About When We… 1. Lt. Watanda and conversation with director Freida Lee Mock 3:15. Cooking with Stella 6. Like You Know It All 8:45.

Pacific Film Archive Lessons of the Blood 3. Dear Doctor 5:30. Prince of Darkness 8.

Sundance Kabuki "Blueprints for a Generation" (shorts program) 1. Manilatown is in the Heart 2. Wo Ai Ni Mommy 3:30. Independencia 4:30. Take Me Anywhere 6. Tehran Without Permission 6:30. Mundane History 8:15. Talentime 8:30.

Viz Hold the Sun 1:15. The Mountain Thief 6. Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest: Part 4 8:15.

MON/15

Sundance Kabuki Take Me Anywhere 4. Raspberry Magic 4:30. "Memory Vessels and Phantom Traces" (shorts program) 6:45. Manilatown is in the Heart 7. About Elly 9. Dear Lemon Lima 9:15.

Viz Fog 4:30. Hold the Sun 6:45. Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest: Part 5 9.

TUES/16

Pacific Film Archive Tehran Without Permission 7. The People I’ve Slept With 8:45.

Sundance Kabuki "Scene/Unseen" (shorts program) 4:15. A Moment in Time 5. State of Aloha 6:45. Lessons of the Blood 7. The Mountain Theif 9. Hana, Dul, Sed… 9:30.

Viz Make Yourself at Home 4:15. The Bonesetter’s Daughter (work-in-progress) 6:40. A Village Called Versailles 9.

OPENING

Ajami You may recognize the title of Yaron Shoni and Scandar Copti’s debut collaboration as one of five films nominated for a 2010 Academy Award in the Foreign Category. Though it didn’t bring home the grand prize, Ajami remains a complex and affecting story about desperation and its consequences in a religiously-mixed town in Israel. As we follow the lives of four of Ajami’s residents the narrative shifts perspective almost maddeningly, switching characters seemingly at the height of each story’s action. But once all of the stories fully intersect, the final product has the distinction of feeling both meticulously calculated and completely natural. I was most impressed to learn that Shani and Copti prepared their actors with improvised role-playing rather than scripts. By withholding what was going to happen in a scene before shooting, we are treated to looks of surprise and emotion on actor’s faces that never feel unnatural. Attaining such a level of realism may be Ajami‘s crowning achievement; it can’t have been easy to make a foreign world feel so familiar. (2:00) Embarcadero. (Galvin)

*The Art of the Steal How do you put a price on something that’s literally priceless? The Art of the Steal takes an absorbing look at the Barnes Collection, a privately-amassed array of Post-Impressionist paintings (including 181 Renoirs) worth billions — and the many people and corporate interests who schemed to control it. Founder Albert C. Barnes was an singular character who took pride in his outsider status; he housed his art in a specially-constructed gallery far from downtown Philadelphia’s museum scene, and he emphasized education and art appreciation first and foremost. But he had no heirs, and after his death in 1951, opportunists began circling his massive collection; the slippery political and legal dealings that have unfolded since then are nearly as jaw-dropping as Barnes’ prize paintings. Philly documentarian Don Argott has a doozy of a subject here, and his skillful, even suspenseful film does it justice. (1:41) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

*The Good Guy Romantic comedies often have very simple premises predicated on familiarity — you know why you go to see them, and they make sure to deliver. Much of the early goings of The Good Guy feel clichéd, but as it turns out, that’s kind of the point. Tommy (Scott Porter), a charming Wall Street investment banker, has been dating Beth (Alexis Bledel), and they’re taking things slow and sweet. When he loses one of his top sellers to another firm, Tommy decides to be a nice guy and give bumbling temp Daniel (Bryan Greenberg) a chance to shine; he also takes the time to teach him how to dress and pick up girls. But when Daniel decides to use his newfound skills on Beth &ldots; well, you see the triangle coming a mile away. How it all unfolds, however, proves far less obvious. In his writing-directing debut, Julio Depietro delivers what is very much a writer’s film, an experiment in form and expectation. Attempts to capture the culture of a Wall Street investment firm fare less well, but as a skewing of movie archetypes and presumptions, The Good Guy is surprisingly satisfying. It won’t change the rom-com game, but it’s something a little different in a genre that could use a kick in the pants. (1:31) Opera Plaza. (Galvin)

Green Zone Nope, it’s not a new Jason Bourne movie, but it is an action thriller directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matt Damon. (1:55) California, Piedmont.

Our Family Wedding This multi-culti comedy boasts an all-star cast, including Forest Whitaker, America Ferrara, Regina King, Taye Diggs, and Carlos Mencia. (1:41) tk.

Remember Me Robert Pattinson attempts to prove his range beyond suckin’ blood. (2:08) tk.

She’s Out of My League Tale as old as time: beauty and the geek. (1:44) Oaks.

*Sweetgrass See "Wild Yonder." (1:41) Lumiere, Shattuck.

ONGOING

*"Academy Award-Nominated Short Films: Animated" Just because it’s animation doesn’t mean it’s just for kids. Like the live-action Oscar-nominated shorts, this year’s animated selections have got range, from the traditionally child-friendly to downright vulgar. Skewing heavily towards CG fare, the shorts vary from a Looney Tunes-style chase for an elderly woman’s soul (The Lady and the Reaper) to the Wallace and Gromit BBC special, A Matter of Loaf and Death. Most entertaining by far is Logorama, an action-packed tale set in a world populated by familiar trademarked logos. Any film that casts the Michelin man as a garbage-mouthed cop on the case of a renegade Ronald McDonald deserves to win all the awards in the universe. (1:35) Shattuck. (Galvin)

*"Academy Award-Nominated Short Films: Live Action" Aren’t you tired of wondering what all the fuss is about when the Academy awards their Oscar for Best Short? In an effort to give audiences a chance to play along, Shorts International is screening these less-seen works together. Though one or two of the five nominated films threaten to adhere to the Academy’s penchant for either heartbreaking or heartwarming, the majority are surprisingly oddball picks. Perhaps most odd of all is Denmark/U.S. submission The New Tenants. Feeling a tad forced but no less funny for it, Tenants draws on celebrities like Vincent D’Onofrio and comedian Kevin Corrigan to bring life to this surreal adaptation by Anders Thomas Jensen (2006’s After the Wedding). My pick would be Sweden’s gloriously goofy Instead of Abracadabra, which stars a stay-at-home slacker as he puts on a magic show for his father’s birthday. Obviously, some selections are going to be better than others, but hey, they’re shorts. If you don’t like one, just wait 10 minutes and you’ll find yourself somewhere completely different. (1:35) Shattuck. (Galvin)

Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton’s take on the classic children’s tale met my mediocre expectations exactly, given its months of pre-release hype (in the film world, fashion magazines, and even Sephora, for the love of brightly-colored eyeshadows). Most folks over a certain age will already know the story, and much of the dialogue, before the lights go down and the 3-D glasses go on; it’s up to Burton and his all-star cast (including numerous big-name actors providing voices for animated characters) to make the tale seem newly enthralling. The visuals are nearly as striking as the CG, with Helena Bonham Carter’s big-headed Red Queen a particularly marvelous human-computer creation. But Wonderland suffers from the style-over-substance dilemma that’s plagued Burton before; all that spooky-pretty whimsy can’t disguise the film’s fairly tepid script. Teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) displaying girl-power tendencies is a nice, if not surprising, touch, but Johnny Depp’s grating take on the Mad Hatter will please only those who were able to stomach his interpretation of Willy Wonka. (1:48) Castro, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Avatar James Cameron’s Avatar takes place on planet Pandora, where human capitalists are prospecting for precious unobtainium, hampered only by the toxic atmosphere and a profusion of unfriendly wildlife, including the Na’vi, a nine-foot tall race of poorly disguised cliches. When Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine, arrives on the planet, he is recruited into the "Avatar" program, which enables him to cybernetically link with a part-human, part-Na’vi body and go traipsing through Pandora’s psychedelic underbrush. Initially designed for botanical research, these avatars become the only means of diplomatic contact with the bright-blue natives, who live smack on top of all the bling. The special effects are revolutionary, but the story that ensues blends hollow "noble savage" dreck with events borrowed from Dances With Wolves (1990) and FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). When Sully falls in love with a Na’vi princess and undergoes a spirit journey so he can be inducted into the tribe and fight the evil miners, all I could think of was Kevin Bacon getting his belly sliced in The Air Up There (1994). (2:42) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Richardson)

The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article "The Ballad of Big Mike" — which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game — nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher — a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) Oaks. (Daniel Alvarez)

Brooklyn’s Finest "Really? I mean, really?" asked the moviegoer beside me as the final freeze-frame of Brooklyn’s Finest slapped our eyeballs. Yes, that’s the sound of letdown, despite the fact that Brooklyn’s Finest initially resembled a promisingly gritty juggling act in the mode of The Wire and Cop Land (1997), Taxi Driver (1976) and Training Day (2001). Bitter irony flows from the title — and from the lives, loves, bad habits, pressure-cooker stress, and unavoidable moral dilemmas of three would-be everyday cops, all occupying several different rungs on a food chain where right and wrong have an unpleasant way of switching sides. Eddie (Richard Gere) is the veteran officer just biding his time till he gets his pension, all while comforting himself with the meager sensuous attentions of hooker Chantel (Shannon Kane). Sal (Ethan Hawke) is the bad detective, stealing from the dealers to fund a dream home for his growing family with Angela (Lili Taylor). Tango (Don Cheadle) is the undercover detective who has cultivated friendships with dealers like Caz (Wesley Snipes) and sacrificed his marriage for a long-promised promotion from his lieutenant (Will Patton) and his superior (Ellen Barkin, in likely the most misogynist portrayal of a lady with a badge to date). You spend most of Brooklyn’s Finest waiting for these cops to collide in the most unfortunate, messiest way possible, but instead the denouement leaves will leave one wondering about unresolved threads and feeling vaguely unsatisfied. In any case, director Antoine Fuqua and company seem to pride themselves on their tough-minded if at times cartoonish take on law enforcement, with Hawke in particular turning in a memorably OTT and anguished performance. (2:13) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

Cop Out I think there was a plot to Cop Out — something involving a stolen baseball card and a drug ring and Jimmy (Bruce Willis) trying to pay for his daughter’s wedding. Frankly, it’s irrelevant. Kevin Smith’s take on the buddy cop genre, which partners Willis with Tracy Morgan, is more a string of dick jokes and toilet humor than anything else. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Sometimes it’s nice to sit back and turn off your brain, as Morgan’s Paul describes his bowel movements or when hapless thief Dave (Seann William Scott) begins imitating everything our heroes say. At the same time, Cop Out is easily forgettable: Smith directed the film, but writing duties went to the Cullen Brothers of TV’s Las Vegas. All judgments about that series aside, the script lacks Smith’s trademark blend of heart and vulgarity. Even Mallrats (1995) had a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying end. Without Smith as auteur, Cop Out is worth a few laughs but destined for the bargain bin. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

The Crazies Disease and anti-government paranoia dovetail in this competent yet overwhelmingly non-essential remake of one of George A. Romero’s second-tier spook shows. In a small Iowa hamlet overseen by a benevolent sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell), who’s also the town doctor, a few odd incidents snowball into all-out chaos when a mysterious, unmarked plane crashes into the local water supply. Before long, the few residents who aren’t acting like homicidal maniacs are rounded up by an uber-aggressive military invasion. Though our heroes convey frantic panic as they try to figure out what the hell is going on, The Crazies never achieves full terror mode. It’s certainly watchable, and even enjoyable at times. But memorable? Not in the slightest. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Crazy Heart "Oh, I love Jeff Bridges!" is the usual response when his name comes up every few years for Best Actor consideration, usually via some underdog movie no one saw, and the realization occurs that he’s never won an Oscar. The oversight is painful because it could be argued that no leading American actor has been more versatile, consistently good, and true to that elusive concept "artistic integrity" than Bridges over the last 40 years. It’s rumored Crazy Heart was slotted for cable or DVD premiere, then thrust into late-year theater release in hopes of attracting Best Actor momentum within a crowded field. Lucky for us, this performance shouldn’t be overlooked. Bridges plays "Bad" Blake, a veteran country star reduced to playing bars with local pickup bands. His slide from grace hasn’t been helped by lingering tastes for smoke and drink, let alone five defunct marriages. He meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), freelance journalist, fan, and single mother. They spark; though burnt by prior relationships, she’s reluctant to take seriously a famous drunk twice her age. Can Bad handle even this much responsibility? Meanwhile, he gets his "comeback" break in the semi-humiliating form of opening for Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) — a contemporary country superstar who was once Bad’s backup boy. Tommy offers a belated shot at commercial redemption; Jean offers redemption of the strictly personal kind. There’s nothing too surprising about the ways in which Crazy Heart both follows and finesses formula. You’ve seen this preordained road from wreckage to redemption before. But actor turned first-time director Scott Cooper’s screenplay honors the flies in the windshield inherited from Thomas Cobb’s novel — as does Bridges, needless to say. (1:51) Embarcadero, Empire, Piedmont, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*An Education The pursuit of knowledge — both carnal and cultural — are at the tender core of this end-of-innocence valentine by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig (who first made her well-tempered voice heard with her 2000 Dogme entry, Italian for Beginners), based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Hornby breaks further with his Peter Pan protagonists with this adaptation: no man-boy mopers or misfits here. Rather, 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a good girl and ace student. It’s 1961, and England is only starting to stir from its somber, all-too-sober post-war slumber. The carefully cloistered Jenny is on track for Oxford, though swinging London and its high-style freedoms beckon just around the corner. Ushering in those freedoms — a new, more class-free world disorder — is the charming David (Peter Sarsgaard), stopping to give Jenny and her cello a ride in the rain and soon proffering concerts and late-night suppers in the city. He’s a sweet-faced, feline outsider: cultured, Jewish, and given to playing fast and loose in the margins of society. David can see Jenny for the gem she is and appreciate her innocence with the knowing pleasure of a decadent playing all the angles. The stakes are believably high, thanks to An Education‘s careful attention to time and place and its gently glamored performances. Scherfig revels in the smart, easy-on-eye curb appeal of David and his friends while giving a nod to the college-educated empowerment Jenny risks by skipping class to jet to Paris. And Mulligan lends it all credence by letting all those seduced, abandoned, conflicted, rebellious feelings flicker unbridled across her face. (1:35) SF Center, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Formosa Betrayed The turbulent modern history of Taiwan is certainly deserving of increased international attention, but writer-producer Will Tao’s strategy of structuring Formosa Betrayed as a political thriller is too often at odds with imparting facts and information. Set in the early 80s, the film thrusts viewers into an unraveling government conspiracy that has FBI agent Jake Kelly (James Van Der Beek) trailing the suspected murderers of a Chicago professor to Taipei. Initially, selling Dawson’s Creek alum Van Der Beek as an FBI agent seems a strange choice, but undoubtedly his name will fill seats, and Formosa Betrayed is shooting for maximum awareness. There are some scenes of real tension, but just when you are beginning to get wrapped up in the inherent drama of conspiracy and murder, the suspense is interrupted by a long-winded bout of soapboxing. Formosa Betrayed might enlighten some audiences about Taiwan’s controversial history, but it too often does so at the expense of its own watchability. You start to wonder why Tao didn’t just make a documentary. (1:43) SF Center. (Galvin)

*The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski’s never-ending legal woes have inspired endless debates on the interwebs and elsewhere; they also can’t help but add subtext to the 76-year-old’s new film, which is chock full o’ anti-American vibes anyway. It’s also a pretty nifty political thriller about a disgraced former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who’s hanging out in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion with his whip-smart, bitter wife (Olivia Williams) and Joan Holloway-as-ice-queen assistant (Kim Cattrall), plus an eager young biographer (Ewan McGregor) recently hired to ghost-write his memoirs. But as the writer quickly discovers, the politician’s past contains the kinds of secrets that cause strange cars with tinted windows to appear in one’s rearview mirror when driving along deserted country roads. Polanski’s long been an expert when it comes to escalating tension onscreen; he’s also so good at adding offbeat moments that only seem tossed-off (as when the PM’s groundskeeper attempts to rake leaves amid relentless sea breezes) and making the utmost of his top-notch actors (Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach have small, memorable roles). Though I found The Ghost Writer‘s ZOMG! third-act revelation to be a bit corny, I still didn’t think it detracted from the finely crafted film that led up to it. (1:49) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Hurt Locker When the leader of a close-knit U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad is killed in action, his subordinates have barely recovered from the shock when they’re introduced to his replacement. In contrast to his predecessor, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) is no standard-procedure-following team player, but a cocky adrenaline junkie who puts himself and others at risk making gonzo gut-instinct decisions in the face of live bombs and insurgent gunfire. This is particularly galling to next-in-command Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). An apolitical war-in-Iraq movie that’s won considerable praise for accuracy so far from vets (scenarist Mark Boal was "embedded" with an EOD unit there for several 2004 weeks), Kathryn Bigelow’s film is arguably you-are-there purist to a fault. While we eventually get to know in the principals, The Hurt Locker is so dominated by its seven lengthy squad-mission setpieces that there’s almost no time or attention left for building character development or a narrative arc. The result is often viscerally intense, yet less impactful than it would have been if we were more emotionally invested. Assured as her technique remains, don’t expect familiar stylistic dazzle from action cult figure Bigelow (1987’s Near Dark, 1989’s Blue Steel, 1991’s Point Break) — this vidcam-era war movie very much hews to the favored current genre approach of pseudo-documentary grainy handheld shaky-cam imagery. (2:11) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Last Station Most of the buzz around The Last Station has focused on Helen Mirren, who takes the lead as the Countess Sofya, wife of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer). Mirren is indeed impressive — when is she not? — but there’s more to the film than Sofya’s Oscar-worthy outbursts. The Last Station follows Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), hired as Tolstoy’s personal secretary at the end of the writer’s life. Valentin struggles to reconcile his faith in the anarchist Christian Tolstoyan movement with his sympathy for Sofya and his budding feelings for fellow Tolstoyan Masha (Kerry Condon). For the first hour, The Last Station is charming and very funny. Once Tolstoy and Sofya’s relationship reaches its most volatile, however, the tone shifts toward the serious — a trend that continues as Tolstoy falls ill. After all the lighthearted levity, it’s a bit jarring, but the solid script and accomplished cast pull The Last Station together. Paul Giamatti is especially good as Vladimir Chertkov, who battles against Sofya for control of Tolstoy’s will. You’ll never feel guiltier for putting off War and Peace. (1:52) Albany, Empire, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 The dawn of the Me Decade saw the largest-ever music festival to that date —albeit one that was such a logistical, fiscal and hygenic disaster that it basically killed the development of similar events for years. This was the height of "music should be free" sentiments in the counterculture, with the result that many among the estimated six to eight hundred thousand attendees who overwhelmed this small U.K. island showed up without tickets, refused to pay, and protested in ways that included tearing down barrier walls and setting fires. It was a bummer, man. But after five days of starry acts often jeered by an antsy crowd — including everyone from Joni, Hendrix, Dylan, Sly Stone, the Who and the Doors to such odd bedfellows as Miles Davis, Tiny Tim, Voices of East Harlem, Supertramp, and Gilberto Gil — Canadian troubador Cohen appeared at 4 a.m. on a Monday to offer balm. Like director Murray Lerner’s 1995 Message to Love, about the festival as a whole, this footage has been shelved for decades, but it bounces right back from the dead — albeit soothingly. Cohen seems blissed out, pupils like black marbles, his between-song musings are as poetical as those fascinating lyrics, and his voice is suppler than the rasp it would soon become. Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and bandmate Bob Johnson offer reflections 40 years later. But the main attraction is obviously Cohen, who is magnetic even if an hour of (almost) nothing but ballads reveals how stylistically monotone his songwriting could be. (1:04) Roxie. (Harvey)

*The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers For many, Daniel Ellsberg is a hero — a savior of American First Amendment rights and one of the most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam war. But as this documentary (recently nominated for an Academy Award) shows, it’s never an an easy decision to take on the U.S. government. Ellsberg himself narrates the film and details his sleepless nights leading up to the leak of the Pentagon Papers — the top secret government study on the Vietnam war — to the public. Though there are few new developments in understanding the particulars of the war or the impact the release of the Papers had on ending the conflict, the film allows audiences to experience the famous case from Ellsberg’s point of view, adding a fresh and poignantly human element to the events; it’s a political documentary that plays more like a character drama. Whether you were there when it happened or new to the story, there is something to be appreciated from this tale of a man who fell out of love with his country and decided to do something about it. (1:34) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

*North Face You’ll never think of outerwear the same way again — and in fact you might be reaching for your fleece and shivering through the more harrowing climbing scenes of this riveting historical adventure based on a true tale. Even those who consider themselves less than avid fans of outdoor survival drama will find their eyes frozen, if you will, on the screen when it comes to this retelling/re-envisioning of this story, legendary among mountaineers, of climbers, urged on by Nazi propaganda, to tackle the last "Alpine problem." At issue: the unclimbed north face of Switzerland’s Eiger, a highly dangerous and unpredictable zone aptly nicknamed "Murder Wall." Two working-class friends, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann of 2008’s Jerichow) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) — here portrayed as climbing fiends driven to reach summits rather than fight for the Nazis — take the challenge. There to document their achievement, or certain death, is childhood friend and Kurz’s onetime sweetheart Luise (Johanna Wokalek, memorable in 2008’s The Baader Meinhof Complex), eager to make her name as a photojournalist while fending off the advances of an editor (Ulrich Tukur) seeking to craft a narrative that positions the contestants as model Aryans. But the climb — and the Eiger, looming like a mythical ogre — is the main attraction here. Filmmaker Philipp Stölzl brings home the sheer heart-pumping exhilaration and terror associated with the sport — and this specific, legendarily tragic climb — by shooting in the mountains with his actors and crew, and the result goes a way in redeeming an adventure long-tainted by its fascist associations. (2:01) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief It would be easy to dismiss Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief as an unabashed Harry Potter knock-off. Trio of kids with magic powers goes on a quest to save the world in a Chris Columbus adaptation of a popular young adult series — sound familiar? But The Lightning Thief is sharp, witty, and a far cry from Columbus’ joyless adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001). Logan Lerman stars as Percy Jackson, the illegitimate son of Poseidon and Catherine Keener. Once he learns his true identity at Camp Half-Blood, he sets off on a quest with his protector, a satyr named Grover, and potential love interest Annabeth, daughter of Athena. Along the way, they bump into gods and monsters from Greek mythology — with a twist. Think Percy using his iPhone to fight Medusa (Uma Thurman), or a land of the Lotus-Eaters disguised as a Lady Gaga-blasting casino. A worthy successor to Harry Potter? Too soon to say, but The Lightning Thief is at least a well-made diversion. (1:59) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire This gut-wrenching, little-engine-that-could of a film shows the struggles of Precious, an overweight, illiterate 16-year-old girl from Harlem. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe is so believably vigilant that her performance alone could bring together the art-house viewers as well as take the Oscars by storm. But people need to actually go and experience this film. While Precious did win Sundance’s Grand Jury and Audience Award awards this year, there is a sad possibility that filmgoers will follow the current trend of "discussing" films that they’ve actually never seen. The daring casting choices of comedian Mo’Nique (as Precious’ all-too-realistically abusive mother) and Mariah Carey (brilliantly understated as an undaunted and dedicated social counselor) are attempts to attract a wider audience, but cynics can hurdle just about anything these days. What’s most significant about this Dancer in the Dark-esque chronicle is how Damien Paul’s screenplay and director Lee Daniels have taken their time to confront the most difficult moments in Precious’ story –- and if that sounds heavy-handed, so be it. Stop blahging for a moment and let this movie move you. (1:49) Roxie, Shattuck. (Jesse Hawthorne Ficks)

*Prodigal Sons Some of the best documentaries in recent years have been hijacked by their subject — or even by another subject the filmmaker wasn’t planning on. Prodigal Sons was supposed to be Kimberly Reed’s story about a high-school quarterback, basketball captain, class president, and valedictorian born to a family of Montana farmers, returning for a reunion 20 years later — albeit as a fully transitioned male-to-female transgender person attending with her female lover. That would have made for an interesting movie. What makes Sons a fascinating one is that Reed finds the camera focus stolen almost right away by a crisis in progress. Its name is Marc, adopted "problem child" of the McKerrow family (Kimberly changed her surname post-op). It’s not so much that Marc grabs the spotlight out of a jealous need for attention, though that may be a factor. It’s that he’s still trapped in a sibling relationship that for her ceased to exist — at least in its original form — decades ago. Running a gamut from harrowing to miraculous, the remarkable Prodigal Sons grows stranger than fiction when abandoned-at-birth Marc discovers something jaw-dropping about his ancestry. Suffice it to say, this results in a trip to Croatia and biological link to some of Hollywood’s starriest legends. If Kimberly’s story is about repression forcing a mentally healthy transformation, Marc wrests us away from that inspirational self-portrait. He renders Sons a challenging, head-on glimpse of mental illness with no easy answers in sight. (1:26) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*A Prophet Filmmaker Jacques Audiard has described his new film, A Prophet, as "the anti-Scarface." Yet much like Scarface (1983), A Prophet bottles the heady euphoria that chases the empowerment of the powerless and the rise of the long-shot loner on the margins. In its almost-Dickensian attention to detail, devotion to its own narrative complexity, and passion for cinematic poetry, A Prophet rises above the ordinary and, through the prism of genre, finds its own power. The supremely opportunistic, pragmatically Machiavellian intellectual and spiritual education of a felon is the chief concern of here. Played by Tahar Rahim with guileless, open-faced charisma, Malik is half-Arab and half-Corsican — and distrusted or despised by both camps in the pen. When he lands in jail for his six-year sentence, he’s 19, illiterate, friendless, and vulnerable. His deal with the devil — and means of survival — arrives with Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), temporarily locked up before his testifies against the mob. Corsican boss Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup) wants him dead, and Malik is tagged to penetrate Reyeb’s cell with a blade hidden in mouth. After Malik’s gory rebirth, it turns out that the teenager’s a seer in more ways than one. From his low-dog position, he can eyeball the connections linking the drugs entering the prison to those circulating outside, as well as the machinations intertwining the Arab and Corsican syndicates. It’s no shock that when Cesar finds his power eroding and arranges prison leaves for his multilingual crossover star that Malik serves not only his Corsican master, but also his own interests, and begins to build a drug empire rivaling his teacher’s. Throughout his pupil’s progress, Audiard demonstrates a way with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, and when Malik finally breaks with his Falstaffian patriarch, it makes your heart skip a beat in a move akin to the title of the director’s last film. This Eurozone/Obama-age prophet is all about the profit — but he’s imbued with grace, even while gaming for ill-gotten gain. (2:29) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Shutter Island Director Martin Scorsese and muse du jour Leonardo DiCaprio draw from oft-filmed novelist Dennis Lehane (2003’s Mystic River, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone) for this B-movie thriller that, sadly, offers few thrills. DiCaprio’s a 1950s U.S. marshal summoned to a misty island that houses a hospital for the criminally insane, overseen by a doctor (Ben Kingsley) who believes in humane, if experimental, therapy techniques. From the get-go we suspect something’s not right with the G-man’s own mind; as he investigates the case of a missing patient, he experiences frequent flashbacks to his World War II service (during which he helped liberate a concentration camp), and has recurring visions of his spooky dead wife (Michelle Williams). Whether or not you fall for Shutter Island‘s twisty game depends on the gullibility of your own mind. Despite high-quality performances and an effective, if overwrought, tone of certain doom, Shutter Island stumbles into a third act that exposes its inherently flawed and frustrating storytelling structure. If only David Lynch had directed Shutter Island — it could’ve been a classic of mindfuckery run amok. Instead, Scorsese’s psychological drama is sapped of any mystery whatsoever by its stubbornly literal conclusion. (2:18) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

A Single Man In this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, Colin Firth plays George, a middle-aged gay expat Brit and college professor in 1962 Los Angeles. Months after the accidental death of Jim (Matthew Goode), his lover for 16 years, George still feels worse than bereft; simply waking each morning is agony. So on this particular day he has decided to end it all, first going through a series of meticulous preparations and discreet leave-takings that include teaching one last class and having supper with the onetime paramour (Julianne Moore) turned best friend who’s still stuck on him. The main problem with fashion designer turned film director Tom Ford’s first feature is that he directs it like a fashion designer, fussing over surface style and irrelevant detail in a story whose tight focus on one hard, real-world thing — grief — cries for simplicity. Not pretentious overpackaging, which encompasses the way his camera slavers over the excessively pretty likes of Nicholas Hoult as a student and Jon Kortajarena as a hustler, as if they were models selling product rather than characters, or even actors. (In fact Kortajarena is a male supermodel; the shocker is that Hoult is not, though Hugh Grant’s erstwhile About a Boy co-star is so preening here you’d never guess.) Eventually Ford stops showing off so much, and A Single Man is effective to the precise degree it lets good work by Goode, Moore and especially the reliably excellent Firth unfold without too much of his terribly artistic interference. (1:39) Bridge, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Up in the Air After all the soldiers’ stories and the cannibalism canards of late, Up in the Air‘s focus on a corporate ax-man — an everyday everyman sniper in full-throttle downsizing mode — is more than timely; it’s downright eerie. But George Clooney does his best to inject likeable, if not quite soulful, humanity into Ryan Bingham, an all-pro mileage collector who prides himself in laying off employees en masse with as few tears, tantrums, and murder-suicide rages as possible. This terminator’s smooth ride from airport terminal to terminal is interrupted not only by a possible soul mate, fellow smoothie and corporate traveler Alex (Vera Farmiga), but a young tech-savvy upstart, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), who threatens to take the process to new reductionist lows (layoff via Web cam) and downsize Ryan along the way. With Up in the Air, director Jason Reitman, who oversaw Thank You for Smoking (2005) as well as Juno (2007), is threatening to become the bard of office parks, Casual Fridays, khaki-clad happy hours, and fly-over zones. But Up in the Air is no Death of a Salesman, and despite some memorable moments that capture the pain of downsizing and the flatness of real life, instances of snappily screwball dialogue, and some more than solid performances by all (and in particular, Kendrick), he never manages to quite sell us on the existence of Ryan’s soul. (1:49) Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Valentine’s Day Genre moviemaking loves it a gimmick — and nothing gets more greeting-card gimmicky or sell-by-date corny than the technique of linking holidays and those mandatory date nights out. You’re shocked that nobody thought of this chick flick notion sooner. Valentine’s Day is no My Bloody Valentine (1981, 2009) — it aspires to an older, more yupscale lady’s choice-crowd than the screaming teens that are ordinarily sought out by horror flicks. And its A-list-studded cast — including Oscar winners Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, and Kathy Bates as well as seemingly half of That ’70s Show‘s players — is a cut above TV tween starlets’ coming-out slasher slumber parties. It partly succeeds: bringing Valentine’s haters into the game as well as lovers is a smart ploy (although who believes that the chic-cheekbones-and-fulsome-lips crew of Jessica Biel and Jennifer Garner would be dateless on V-Day?), and the first half is obviously structured around the punchlines that punctuate each scene — a winning if contrived device. Juggling multiple storylines with such a whopping cast lends an It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) quality to the Jessica- and Taylor-heavy shenanigans. And some tales get a wee bit more weight than others (the charisma-laden scenes with Bradley Cooper and Roberts cry out for added screentime), creating a strangely lopsided effect that adds unwanted tedium to an affair that should be as here-today-gone-tomorrow as a Whitman’s Sampler. (1:57) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*The White Ribbon In Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, his first German-language film in ten years, violence descends on a small northern German village mired in an atmosphere of feudalism and protestant repression. When, over the course of a year, a spate of unaccountable tragedies strikes almost every prominent figure as well as a powerless family of tenant farmers, the village becomes a crucible for aspersion and unease. Meanwhile, a gang of preternaturally calm village children, led by the eerily intense daughter of the authoritarian pastor, keep appearing coincidentally near the sites of the mysterious crimes, lending this Teutonic morality play an unsettling Children of the Corn undertone. Only the schoolteacher, perhaps by virtue of his outsider status, seems capable of discerning the truth, but his low rank on the social pecking order prevent his suspicions from being made public. A protracted examination on the nature of evil — and the troubling moral absolutism from which it stems. (2:24) Opera Plaza. (Nicole Gluckstern)

The Wolfman Remember 2000’s Hollow Man, an update of 1933’s The Invisible Man so over-the-top that it could only have been brought to you by a post-Starship Troopers (1997) Paul Verhoeven? Fear not, Lon Chaney, Jr. fanclub members — The Wolfman sticks fairly true to its 1941 predecessor, setting its tale of a reluctant lycanthrope in Victorian England, where there are plenty of gypsies, foggy moors, silver bullets, angry villagers, and the like. Benicia Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, who’s given an American childhood backstory to explain his out-of-place stateside accent (and a Mediterranean-looking mother to make up for the fact that he’s supposed to be the son of Anthony Hopkins). Soon after returning to his estranged father’s crumbling manor, Lawrence is chomped by a you-know-what. Next full moon, Lawrence realizes what he’s become; murderous rampages and much angst ensue. (He’s kind of like the Incredible Hulk, except much hairier). Director Joe Johnston (a tech whiz who worked on the original Star Wars movies, and helmed 2001’s Jurassic Park III), doesn’t offer much innovation on the werewolf legend (or any scares, for that matter). But the effects, including transformation scenes and claw-tastic gore, are predictably top-notch. (2:05) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

The Yellow Handkerchief The Yellow Handkerchief is one of those quiet, character-driven dramas that get mistaken for subtle classics. It’s not bad, just bland. In fact, there’s something pleasant about the way the film’s three unlikely friends forge a lasting bond, but the movie as a whole is never quite that cohesive. William Hurt stars as Brett Hanson, an ex-con with a dark past. (The Yellow Handkerchief tries to make this mysterious by way of vague flashbacks, but the audience gets there faster than the film does.) His inadvertent sidekicks are the troubled Martine (Kristen Stewart) and the awkward Gordy (Eddie Redmayne). The talented cast, rounded out by Maria Bello as the wife Brett left behind, does solid work with the material, but no one really stands out enough to elevate The Yellow Handkerchief to greatness. Redmayne is perhaps the most impressive, ditching his British accent to play a character so quirky, he’s almost Rain Man. But after taking a step back, the big picture is muddled. People are fascinating, but what does it all mean? (1:36) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

REP PICKS

*"Ben Russell: Let Each One Go Where He May" See "Wild Yonder." San Francisco Cinematheque.<\!s>

Young people protest school cuts

Sasha Cuttler
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0
Young people protest school cuts

By Brady Welch

The scene was relatively quiet around 1:45 p.m. on March 4—just another sunny afternoon in the Mission District. Fifteen minutes later, things got much louder. Hundreds of Mission High students, accompanied by faculty and staff, poured out upon Dolores Street near the intersection of 18th, banging drums, blowing whistles, chanting, and holding handmade signs reading “Stop Crippling Public Education,” and “DREAM: Act Now.” Cars halted at the intersection honked in support, and the marching students, invariably stoked to have left school almost an hour early, grew louder in response.

It was one of the first actions in the Mission in conjunction with dozens of others across the state in protest against massive budget cuts in public education. The Mission High marchers continued their march south along Valencia Street, eventually converging with numerous other school and civic groups at the 24th and Mission BART station. In preview of the boisterousness that was to follow, a group of students from Cupertino was chanting, “You say cut backs, we say fuck that!”

One of them, Lucas Ho, told me that with the massive budget cuts, “The chances for student success are being limited,” citing rollbacks in honor programs and not hiring tutors. Another student who only gave her name as Stacey, came with about 30 other students from Balboa High School. “Our education is important,” she said emphatically, before our conversation was cut short by more chanting and drumming.

Particularly heartening were the large number of enthusiastic elementary school students, who at many points during the day’s rallies, seemed to be leading the charge. The San Francisco Community School, in particular, seemed to come armed with a number of assertive youngsters, one of whom on the verge of yelling themselves hoarse with crowd-hyping chants over a megaphone.

Fifth-grader Deontay Harper stood by holding a large banner. “We’re protesting for justice and to save our teachers,” he told me with surprising erudition. Without proper funding, “it’s gonna be harder for us to learn.” SF Community School 4th and 5th grade teacher Robin Yorkey concurred. The budget cuts “are going to ruin us,” she told me over the din. “They’re going to make class size huge, and we’re incredibly concerned.” In the background, the aforementioned pint-sized Eugene Debs on the megaphone engaged in the classic call-and-response, “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”

Across the street, 11th grader Moneace Smith came with fellow students and teachers from June Jordan School for Equity. “It is our future money—we need that,” she told me, showing a level of recognition of the cuts’ long-term impact. “We want our education. We want to go to college.”

Police Commission shoots down Tasers

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Police Commission shoots down Tasers

The San Francisco Police Commission came to its senses last night, and — after an immense amount of work by community activists and Commissioner Petra DeJesus — voted 4-3 not to move forward with a plan for giving the cops Tasers.


A lot of the discussion revolved around the safety of the stun guns; zapping someone with 50,000 volts can cause injury and sometimes death. But there’s another issue here, and the pres coverage only touched on it.


When, exactly, would Tasers be used?


From the Chron:


After becoming chief in July, Gascón commissioned a study of officer-involved shootings in San Francisco over five years that found that as many as one-third could have been avoided had police been able to use Tasers.


…


But 38-year SFPD veteran Vince Repetto, who joined a contingent of officers waiting to speak in favor of Tasers, said before the meeting that the Taser proposal is literally “a life-or-death decision.”
“It’s not if, but when, a Taser is used to stop a knife-wielding suspect and a life is saved,” he said. “Then you will see the results of your decision. Let us hope that same suspect is not shot dead because an officer lacked a valuable option to deadly force.”
Okay, so the idea here is that a Taser is a replacement for lethal force? That cops should use Tasers instead of their service pistol in an instance when a shooting would otherwise be justified?


Remember: Under police general orders, it’s only okay to draw and fire a gun when an officer’s life of the life of another person is in imminent danger. That means a suspect has a lethal weapon of his or her own, and is directly threatening someone with it.


Gascon says that there were five instances where a police shooting could have been prevented if the cops had Tasers. As he told my colleague Rebecca Bowe in an interview:


We just did a study of San Francisco police shootings in the last five years. We looked at 15 or 16 shootings, and of those we have determined at least five that, if the officer would’ve had a Taser available, they would have been able to control the situation without having to unload their firearm. And some of those shootings, by the way, resulted in the death of the other individuals. So we believe that even within the deadly force universe if you will, the Tasers sometimes have a very useful place in reducing violence.


What this says to me — since a Taser isn’t considered a substitute for a gun in a case where there’s a real threat — is that there were five cases where the cops shouldn’t have shot someone. Somehow, I can’t see the SF cops using Tasers on people they think are about to kill another person. 


What I do see is officers using their Tasers on people who are just a pain in the ass; it’s way easier to cuff a difficult suspect if you zap him immobile first.


The chief acknowledged to Bowe that Tasers could be misused:


Any time that you have human beings involved  there will be sometimes when they will be involved in aberrant behavior.


Do we have officers that overdrive? We do.


One of the deadliest weapons we have is an automobile, but I don’t hear people saying we should take their cars away and make them walk. It’s a tool, and it it’s a tool that has the potential for being misused. How do you reduce that misuse? Training, discipline and supervision.


The problem is that people in San Francisco — particularly people of color, low-income people and people in some neighborhoods — have had such a bad experience with the SFPD in the past that they aren’t going to trust the department to properly train, discipline and supervise its armed force. I think Gascon needs to rebuild that trust first — and one way to start is by demonstrating that the department is serious about internal discipline. Then we can talk about adding more firepower.


(Oh, and by the way: This entire episode demonstrates the value of having appointments to the Police Commission split between the mayor and the supervisors. The differing perspectives and opinions allowed for some real debate.

Day of Action field reports

Sasha Cuttler
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3

We’re starting to get some field reports from today’s big Strike and Day of Action — which culminates in a 5 p.m. rally in Civic Center Plaza — from some Guardianistas who we have covering various marches. And it sounds like the turnout is big and lively.

Over at SF State, hundreds of protesting students blocked 19th Avenue before being cleared by police. Then, for those students who hadn’t walked out in protest of rising fees and declining class offerings, someone pulled a fire alarm and shut down classes that way.

Meanwhile, in the East Bay, intern Jobert Poblete is with a march that he estimates to be a couple thousand people that has taken Telegraph Avenue and is trying to go all the way from the UC Berkeley campus to downtown Oakland, where they’ll rally in the Frank Ogawa Plaza outside Oakland City Hall this afternoon. So far, they’ve met with little resistance or police activity.

Currently, there are already hundreds of protesters outside Oakland City Hall, which has been locked down, and the crowd is expected to swell to several thousand once the Telegraph protest and other East Bay events converge there. It’s the same story outside San Francisco City Hall, where a rally is now underway with several satellite protests making their way there now.

See Alerts for more on the various marches and check back to this post later for updates and photos.  

2:15 update: Brady Welch reports that around 100 Mission High students have walked off campus together and are now marching up Valencia Streets, banging drums and chanting slogans, with some SFPD squad cars providing an escort. We’ve also heard from various sources through SF and the East Bay that there’s been more than a dozen smaller protests, many of them involving grade school children carrying protest signs. SF Public Press has an interesting report by a former Guardian intern on that phenomenon.

Shot of crowd at East Bay march.

And a couple photos from Brady Welch:

 

This photo (taken from inside Oakland City Hall by my friend, Deputy City Attorney Alix Rosenthal, less than an hour ago) shows a smaller than expected turnout:

Meanwhile, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has issued a statement of support for the Day of Action that begins, ““I join the thousands of students, parents and teachers across California and here in San Francisco today calling for adequate, equitable education funding for our public schools and universities.”

Newsom also opposed the Iraq War but never took part in any of the peace marches (unlike progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, who marched and gave speeches at the events), but I’m headed to the Civic Center rally soon, so I’ll let you know if he makes an appearance. We’ll have more extensive coverage of today’s events and what they mean tomorrow.

UPDATE: Guardian intern Jobert Poblete was among 150-200 people arrested in the East Bay during the Day of Action protests this evening, a group that he says including several journalists. Details are sketchy in the brief messages that we’ve had from him, but most of the arrests reportedly occurred when the protesters briefly blocked Interstate 880. They’ve been taken to Alameda County Jail in Dublin where jail personnel tell us most of those arrested are likely to be cited and released sometime tonight. Meanwhile, a 5 p.m. rally at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco was packed with an exhuberant crowd of several thousand, the largest demonstration there in years. We’ll have a full report of the day’s events tomorrow.

Gamer: “Heavy Rain” review

Sue Vaughan
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0
Gamer: “Heavy Rain” review

By Peter Galvin

Heavy Rain
(Quantic Dream)
PS3

A new game where you wiggle and waggle your controller in time with on-screen prompts? No, it’s not a new Wii game. Heavy Rain for the PS3 is a dark thriller from the people who brought you the sleeper hit Indigo Prophecy. With the technology developers have at their disposal these days, it’s become feasible in many ways for games to truly resemble the cinematic experience of a feature film. Heavy Rain takes that idea one step further by playing out much like an interactive movie.

Players switch among four main characters as they unravel the identity of the “Origami Killer,” a psychopath who has been kidnapping children and drowning them in rainwater. Playing as multiple characters is essential not only in covering the amount of ground the game wants you to experience, but in making the game as choice-based as possible. Developer Quantic Dream boasts that the decisions you make as you play have heavy consequences affecting the game’s outcome. At particular moments, main characters can even die and the game will continue on without them. The killer is almost a MacGuffin for these choices, giving characters a reason to go from place to place and perform tasks.

All that sounds well and good, but whether or not it works is another matter. Despite trumpeting a new-found level of choice and consequence in the gaming world, Heavy Rain is actually not as singular an experience as you are led to believe. Time-based button prompts are the backbone of the gameplay, yet often a missed button prompt will have no real consequence. When I’m speeding down the wrong side of the freeway, dodging cars, and the game tells me to press right to not hit a road worker, I fully expect that messing that up will result in that person’s loss of life. Instead nothing happens. The game continues, as I expect it does for anyone, to the pre-determined conclusion.

How much this loss of choice affects your playing depends on how you approach the title. If you ignore the widely-publicized levels of choice and personalization that the game touts and choose instead to play the game as an interactive movie with Simon Says-style prompts to ramp up the intensity of the action, the game succeeds admirably. The story is intriguing and the many action-oriented scenes are tense and exciting. The on-screen prompts, no matter how simple or arbitrary, do personalize the player’s actions, increasing the unfolding drama — especially when those movements are 1:1. But as a groundbreaking experience about choice and consequence, Heavy Rain is all smoke and mirrors.

Editorial: Where landlords, developers, and cars are king

David Talbot
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1

EDITORIAL Are cars more important than people? Is it OK to evict a tenant just to make space for a garage? Should new garages be designed to preserve on-street parking too? Seems like a no-brainer to us. But legislation by Sup. David Chiu that would put some limits on the expansion of garages — an increasing problem in Chinatown and North Beach — has infuriated some real estate interests, and it’s possible that this eminently reasonable bill might fail.

It’s a sad statement on San Francisco politics, and the implications go way beyond this one planning measure.

The problem has its roots in the Ellis Act, the state law that allows landlords to clear all the tenants out of a building, then sell it to wealthier people who want to buy their units as tenants in common (TICs). The Ellis Act has been responsible for thousands of San Franciscans losing their homes — and a new twist has been developing in Chiu’s district.

In the crowded Chinatown-North Beach area, parking is at a premium and people who are buying TICs want a place to put their cars. So landlords and speculators are throwing out tenants not just for new owners, but to make room for garages.

Chiu’s law — which would apply only in parts of District 3 — would deny building owners a permit to construct a new garage if a tenant was evicted under the Ellis Act in the past 10 years. And it would require a conditional use authorization from the City Planning Department for any new garage construction.

Chiu also wants new rules for curb cuts — the openings in sidewalks that allow cars to drive into garages. The cuts would have to be as small as possible and designed to preserve on-street parking.

On a larger level, the bill would make it easier to construct new housing without parking — a significant change in how San Francisco has handled off-street parking for many years. Instead of mandating garages in new apartment buildings, Chiu wants to discourage them. He’s saying, in essence, that space for people is more important than space for cars.

That’s a logical step in a city that is trying to enforce a transit-first policy. It’s a small piece of a larger political battle to transform a city planning system that for too long has been driven by the needs of the private automobile. It should have passed unanimously and Mayor Newsom should sign it into law.

In fact, the bill passed on first reading Feb. 9, with only Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu voting against it. But Sup. Bevan Dufty now says he has concerns about the measure, and Chiu has agreed to postpone the final vote until March 9.

Dufty’s a key vote, because it’s likely at this point that the mayor will veto the measure. And with Elsbernd and Chu opposed and Michela Alioto-Pier still out with health problems, supporters can’t override a veto without Dufty.

We couldn’t reach Dufty, but supporters of the bill say he wants the measure watered down to eliminate the conditional use requirement — which would force city planners to check and make sure the builder or landlord was following the rules — and replace it with a discretionary review requirement, which would allow the garage construction unless someone objected. That puts the burden on the tenants (who in many cases are low income people whose primary language isn’t English) to protect themselves. And it would undermine much of the power of the bill.

It’s insane for Dufty to oppose a reasonable measure that only applies to a small part of one district, protects vulnerable tenants, and pushes the city away from further automobile dependence. It’s insane that the mayor is expected to veto the bill. It’s insane that it’s even an issue. And if the ordinance fails, it will be a sign that even in San Francisco, in 2010, landlords, developers, and cars are still king.

 

Film listings

David Talbot
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0

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

OPENING

Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton and Johnny Depp go down the 3D rabbit hole. (1:48)

Brooklyn’s Finest "Really? I mean, really?" asked the moviegoer beside me as the final freeze-frame of Brooklyn’s Finest slapped our eyeballs. Yes, that’s the sound of letdown, despite the fact that Brooklyn’s Finest initially resembled a promisingly gritty juggling act in the mode of The Wire and Cop Land (1997), Taxi Driver (1976) and Training Day (2001). Bitter irony flows from the title — and from the lives, loves, bad habits, pressure-cooker stress, and unavoidable moral dilemmas of three would-be everyday cops, all occupying several different rungs on a food chain where right and wrong have an unpleasant way of switching sides. Eddie (Richard Gere) is the veteran officer just biding his time till he gets his pension, all while comforting himself with the meager sensuous attentions of hooker Chantel (Shannon Kane). Sal (Ethan Hawke) is the bad detective, stealing from the dealers to fund a dream home for his growing family with Angela (Lili Taylor). Tango (Don Cheadle) is the undercover detective who has cultivated friendships with dealers like Caz (Wesley Snipes) and sacrificed his marriage for a long-promised promotion from his lieutenant (Will Patton) and his superior (Ellen Barkin, in likely the most misogynist portrayal of a lady with a badge to date). You spend most of Brooklyn’s Finest waiting for these cops to collide in the most unfortunate, messiest way possible, but instead the denouement leaves will leave one wondering about unresolved threads and feeling vaguely unsatisfied. In any case, director Antoine Fuqua and company seem to pride themselves on their tough-minded if at times cartoonish take on law enforcement, with Hawke in particular turning in a memorably OTT and anguished performance. (2:13) Shattuck. (Chun)

*Prodigal Sons See "My Son, My Son." (1:26) Lumiere, Shattuck.

*A Prophet See "Education of a Felon." (2:29) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

The Yellow Handkerchief The Yellow Handkerchief is one of those quiet, character-driven dramas that get mistaken for subtle classics. It’s not bad, just bland. In fact, there’s something pleasant about the way the film’s three unlikely friends forge a lasting bond, but the movie as a whole is never quite that cohesive. William Hurt stars as Brett Hanson, an ex-con with a dark past. (The Yellow Handkerchief tries to make this mysterious by way of vague flashbacks, but the audience gets there faster than the film does.) His inadvertent sidekicks are the troubled Martine (Kristen Stewart) and the awkward Gordy (Eddie Redmayne). The talented cast, rounded out by Maria Bello as the wife Brett left behind, does solid work with the material, but no one really stands out enough to elevate The Yellow Handkerchief to greatness. Redmayne is perhaps the most impressive, ditching his British accent to play a character so quirky, he’s almost Rain Man. But after taking a step back, the big picture is muddled. People are fascinating, but what does it all mean? (1:36) Albany. (Peitzman)

ONGOING

*"Academy Award-Nominated Short Films: Animated" Just because it’s animation doesn’t mean it’s just for kids. Like the live-action Oscar-nominated shorts, this year’s animated selections have got range, from the traditionally child-friendly to downright vulgar. Skewing heavily towards CG fare, the shorts vary from a Looney Tunes-style chase for an elderly woman’s soul (The Lady and the Reaper) to the Wallace and Gromit BBC special, A Matter of Loaf and Death. Most entertaining by far is Logorama, an action-packed tale set in a world populated by familiar trademarked logos. Any film that casts the Michelin man as a garbage-mouthed cop on the case of a renegade Ronald McDonald deserves to win all the awards in the universe. (1:35) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Galvin)

*"Academy Award-Nominated Short Films: Live Action" Aren’t you tired of wondering what all the fuss is about when the Academy awards their Oscar for Best Short? In an effort to give audiences a chance to play along, Shorts International is screening these less-seen works together. Though one or two of the five nominated films threaten to adhere to the Academy’s penchant for either heartbreaking or heartwarming, the majority are surprisingly oddball picks. Perhaps most odd of all is Denmark/U.S. submission The New Tenants. Feeling a tad forced but no less funny for it, Tenants draws on celebrities like Vincent D’Onofrio and comedian Kevin Corrigan to bring life to this surreal adaptation by Anders Thomas Jensen (2006’s After the Wedding). My pick would be Sweden’s gloriously goofy Instead of Abracadabra, which stars a stay-at-home slacker as he puts on a magic show for his father’s birthday. Obviously, some selections are going to be better than others, but hey, they’re shorts. If you don’t like one, just wait 10 minutes and you’ll find yourself somewhere completely different. (1:35) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Galvin)

Avatar James Cameron’s Avatar takes place on planet Pandora, where human capitalists are prospecting for precious unobtainium, hampered only by the toxic atmosphere and a profusion of unfriendly wildlife, including the Na’vi, a nine-foot tall race of poorly disguised cliches. When Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine, arrives on the planet, he is recruited into the "Avatar" program, which enables him to cybernetically link with a part-human, part-Na’vi body and go traipsing through Pandora’s psychedelic underbrush. Initially designed for botanical research, these avatars become the only means of diplomatic contact with the bright-blue natives, who live smack on top of all the bling. The special effects are revolutionary, but the story that ensues blends hollow "noble savage" dreck with events borrowed from Dances With Wolves (1990) and FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). When Sully falls in love with a Na’vi princess and undergoes a spirit journey so he can be inducted into the tribe and fight the evil miners, all I could think of was Kevin Bacon getting his belly sliced in The Air Up There (1994). (2:42) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Richardson)

The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article "The Ballad of Big Mike" — which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game — nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher — a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) Oaks. (Daniel Alvarez)

Broken Embraces Pedro Almodóvar has always dabbled in the Hitchcockian tropes of uxoricide, betrayal, and double-identity, but with Broken Embraces he has attained a polyglot, if slightly mimicking, fluency with the language of Hollywood noir. A story within a story and a movie within a movie, Embraces begins in the present day with middle-aged Catalan Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), a blind screenwriter who takes time between his successful writing career to seduce and bed young women sympathetic to his disability. "Everything’s already happened to me," he explains to his manager, Judit (Blanca Portillo). "All that’s left is to enjoy life." But this life of empty pleasures is brought to a sudden halt when local business magnate Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) has died; soon after, Ernesto Jr. (Rubén Ochandiano), who has renamed himself Ray X, visits Caine with an unusual request. The action retreats 14 years when Caine was a young (and visually abled) director named Mateo Blanco; he encounters a breathtaking femme fatale, Lena (Penelope Cruz) — an actress-turned-prostitute named Severine, turned secretary-turned-trophy wife of Ernesto Martel — when she appears to audition for his latest movie. If all of the narrative intricacies and multiplicitous identities in Broken Embraces appear a bit intimidating at first glance, it is because this is the cinema of Almodóvar taken to a kind of generic extreme. As with all of the director’s post-’00 films, which are often referred to as Almodóvar’s "mature" pictures, there is a microscopic attention to narrative development combined with a frenzied sub-plotting of nearly soap-operatic proportions. But, in Embraces, formalism attains such prominence that one might speculate the director is simply going through the motions. The effect is a purposely loquacious and overly-dramatized performance that pleasures itself as much by setting up the plot as unraveling it. (2:08) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Morse)

Cop Out I think there was a plot to Cop Out — something involving a stolen baseball card and a drug ring and Jimmy (Bruce Willis) trying to pay for his daughter’s wedding. Frankly, it’s irrelevant. Kevin Smith’s take on the buddy cop genre, which partners Willis with Tracy Morgan, is more a string of dick jokes and toilet humor than anything else. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Sometimes it’s nice to sit back and turn off your brain, as Morgan’s Paul describes his bowel movements or when hapless thief Dave (Seann William Scott) begins imitating everything our heroes say. At the same time, Cop Out is easily forgettable: Smith directed the film, but writing duties went to the Cullen Brothers of TV’s Las Vegas. All judgments about that series aside, the script lacks Smith’s trademark blend of heart and vulgarity. Even Mallrats (1995) had a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying end. Without Smith as auteur, Cop Out is worth a few laughs but destined for the bargain bin. (1:50) Oaks, 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

The Crazies Disease and anti-government paranoia dovetail in this competent yet overwhelmingly non-essential remake of one of George A. Romero’s second-tier spook shows. In a small Iowa hamlet overseen by a benevolent sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell), who’s also the town doctor, a few odd incidents snowball into all-out chaos when a mysterious, unmarked plane crashes into the local water supply. Before long, the few residents who aren’t acting like homicidal maniacs are rounded up by an uber-aggressive military invasion. Though our heroes convey frantic panic as they try to figure out what the hell is going on, The Crazies never achieves full terror mode. It’s certainly watchable, and even enjoyable at times. But memorable? Not in the slightest. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Crazy Heart "Oh, I love Jeff Bridges!" is the usual response when his name comes up every few years for Best Actor consideration, usually via some underdog movie no one saw, and the realization occurs that he’s never won an Oscar. The oversight is painful because it could be argued that no leading American actor has been more versatile, consistently good, and true to that elusive concept "artistic integrity" than Bridges over the last 40 years. It’s rumored Crazy Heart was slotted for cable or DVD premiere, then thrust into late-year theater release in hopes of attracting Best Actor momentum within a crowded field. Lucky for us, this performance shouldn’t be overlooked. Bridges plays "Bad" Blake, a veteran country star reduced to playing bars with local pickup bands. His slide from grace hasn’t been helped by lingering tastes for smoke and drink, let alone five defunct marriages. He meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), freelance journalist, fan, and single mother. They spark; though burnt by prior relationships, she’s reluctant to take seriously a famous drunk twice her age. Can Bad handle even this much responsibility? Meanwhile, he gets his "comeback" break in the semi-humiliating form of opening for Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) — a contemporary country superstar who was once Bad’s backup boy. Tommy offers a belated shot at commercial redemption; Jean offers redemption of the strictly personal kind. There’s nothing too surprising about the ways in which Crazy Heart both follows and finesses formula. You’ve seen this preordained road from wreckage to redemption before. But actor turned first-time director Scott Cooper’s screenplay honors the flies in the windshield inherited from Thomas Cobb’s novel — as does Bridges, needless to say. (1:51) California, Embarcadero, Empire, Piedmont, Presidio, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Dear John As long as you know what you’re getting yourself into, Dear John is a solid effort. Not extraordinary by any means, it’s your standard Nicholas Sparks book-turned-film: boy meets girl — drama, angst, and untimely death ensue. Here, Channing Tatum stars at the titular John, a soldier on leave who falls in love with the seemingly perfect Savannah (Amanda Seyfried). Both actors are likable enough that their romance is charming, if not always believable. And Dear John‘s plot turns, while not quite surprising, are at least dynamic enough to keep the audience engaged. But at the end of the day, this is still a Nicholas Sparks movie — even with the accomplished Lasse Hallström taking over directorial responsibilities. There are still plenty of eye-roll moments and, more often than not, Dear John employs the most predictable tearjerking techniques. By the time you realize why the film is set in 2001, it’s September 11. Sad? Surely. Cheap? You betcha. (1:48) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Edge of Darkness (1:57) SF Center.

*An Education The pursuit of knowledge — both carnal and cultural — are at the tender core of this end-of-innocence valentine by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig (who first made her well-tempered voice heard with her 2000 Dogme entry, Italian for Beginners), based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Hornby breaks further with his Peter Pan protagonists with this adaptation: no man-boy mopers or misfits here. Rather, 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a good girl and ace student. It’s 1961, and England is only starting to stir from its somber, all-too-sober post-war slumber. The carefully cloistered Jenny is on track for Oxford, though swinging London and its high-style freedoms beckon just around the corner. Ushering in those freedoms — a new, more class-free world disorder — is the charming David (Peter Sarsgaard), stopping to give Jenny and her cello a ride in the rain and soon proffering concerts and late-night suppers in the city. He’s a sweet-faced, feline outsider: cultured, Jewish, and given to playing fast and loose in the margins of society. David can see Jenny for the gem she is and appreciate her innocence with the knowing pleasure of a decadent playing all the angles. The stakes are believably high, thanks to An Education‘s careful attention to time and place and its gently glamored performances. Scherfig revels in the smart, easy-on-eye curb appeal of David and his friends while giving a nod to the college-educated empowerment Jenny risks by skipping class to jet to Paris. And Mulligan lends it all credence by letting all those seduced, abandoned, conflicted, rebellious feelings flicker unbridled across her face. (1:35) Opera Plaza, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*Fish Tank There’s been a string of movies lately pondering what Britney once called the not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman syndrome, including 2009’s An Education and Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire. Enter Fish Tank, the gritty new drama from British filmmaker Andrea Arnold. Her films (including 2006’s Red Road) are heartbreaking, but in an unforced way that never feels manipulative; her characters, often portrayed by nonactors, feel completely organic. Fish Tank‘s 15-year-old heroine, Mia (played by first-time actor Katie Jarvis), lives with her party-gal single mom and tweenage sister in a public-housing high-rise; all three enjoy drinking, swearing, and shouting. But Mia has a secret passion: hip-hop dancing, which she practices with track-suited determination. When mom’s foxy new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender, from 2008’s Hunger) encourages her talent, it’s initially unclear what Connor’s intentions are. Is he trying to be a cool father figure, or something far more inappropriate? Without giving away too much, it’s hard to fear too much for a girl who headbutts a teenage rival within the film’s first few minutes — though it soon becomes apparent Mia’s hard façade masks a vulnerable core. Her desire to make human connections causes her to drop her guard when she needs it the most. In a movie about coming of age, a young girl’s bumpy emotional journey is expected turf. But Fish Tank earns its poignant moments honestly — most coming courtesy of Jarvis, who has soulfullness to spare. Whether she’s acting out in tough-girl mode or revealing a glimpse of her fragile inner life, Arnold’s camera relays it all, with unglossy matter-of-factness. (2:02) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Formosa Betrayed The turbulent modern history of Taiwan is certainly deserving of increased international attention, but writer-producer Will Tao’s strategy of structuring Formosa Betrayed as a political thriller is too often at odds with imparting facts and information. Set in the early 80s, the film thrusts viewers into an unraveling government conspiracy that has FBI agent Jake Kelly (James Van Der Beek) trailing the suspected murderers of a Chicago professor to Taipei. Initially, selling Dawson’s Creek alum Van Der Beek as an FBI agent seems a strange choice, but undoubtedly his name will fill seats, and Formosa Betrayed is shooting for maximum awareness. There are some scenes of real tension, but just when you are beginning to get wrapped up in the inherent drama of conspiracy and murder, the suspense is interrupted by a long-winded bout of soapboxing. Formosa Betrayed might enlighten some audiences about Taiwan’s controversial history, but it too often does so at the expense of its own watchability. You start to wonder why Tao didn’t just make a documentary. (1:43) SF Center, Shattuck. (Galvin)

From Paris with Love Every so often, I walk out of a film feeling like I’ve been repeatedly buffeted by blows to the face. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) had this effect, and it is now joined by From Paris With Love, a movie so aggressively stupid that the mistaken assumption that it was adapted from a video game could be construed as an insult to video games. John Travolta shows up chrome-domed as Charlie Wax, a loose-cannon CIA operative with a lot of transparently screenwritten machismo and an endless appetite for violence. He is joined by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, sporting a risible American accent, and the two embark on a frantic journey across the French capital that is almost as racist as it is misogynistic. I could fill an entire issue of this newspaper eviscerating this movie —suffice to say, don’t see it. (1:35) SF Center. (Richardson)

*The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski’s never-ending legal woes have inspired endless debates on the interwebs and elsewhere; they also can’t help but add subtext to the 76-year-old’s new film, which is chock full o’ anti-American vibes anyway. It’s also a pretty nifty political thriller about a disgraced former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who’s hanging out in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion with his whip-smart, bitter wife (Olivia Williams) and Joan Holloway-as-ice-queen assistant (Kim Cattrall), plus an eager young biographer (Ewan McGregor) recently hired to ghost-write his memoirs. But as the writer quickly discovers, the politician’s past contains the kinds of secrets that cause strange cars with tinted windows to appear in one’s rearview mirror when driving along deserted country roads. Polanski’s long been an expert when it comes to escalating tension onscreen; he’s also so good at adding offbeat moments that only seem tossed-off (as when the PM’s groundskeeper attempts to rake leaves amid relentless sea breezes) and making the utmost of his top-notch actors (Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach have small, memorable roles). Though I found The Ghost Writer‘s ZOMG! third-act revelation to be a bit corny, I still didn’t think it detracted from the finely crafted film that led up to it. (1:49) California, Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Hurt Locker When the leader of a close-knit U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad is killed in action, his subordinates have barely recovered from the shock when they’re introduced to his replacement. In contrast to his predecessor, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) is no standard-procedure-following team player, but a cocky adrenaline junkie who puts himself and others at risk making gonzo gut-instinct decisions in the face of live bombs and insurgent gunfire. This is particularly galling to next-in-command Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). An apolitical war-in-Iraq movie that’s won considerable praise for accuracy so far from vets (scenarist Mark Boal was "embedded" with an EOD unit there for several 2004 weeks), Kathryn Bigelow’s film is arguably you-are-there purist to a fault. While we eventually get to know in the principals, The Hurt Locker is so dominated by its seven lengthy squad-mission setpieces that there’s almost no time or attention left for building character development or a narrative arc. The result is often viscerally intense, yet less impactful than it would have been if we were more emotionally invested. Assured as her technique remains, don’t expect familiar stylistic dazzle from action cult figure Bigelow (1987’s Near Dark, 1989’s Blue Steel, 1991’s Point Break) — this vidcam-era war movie very much hews to the favored current genre approach of pseudo-documentary grainy handheld shaky-cam imagery. (2:11) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Invictus Elected President of South Africa in 1995 — just five years after his release from nearly three decades’ imprisonment — Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) perceives a chance to forward his message of reconciliation and forgiveness by throwing support behind the low-ranked national rugby team. Trouble is, the Springboks are currently low-ranked, with the World Cup a very faint hope just one year away. Not to mention the fact that despite having one black member, they represent the all-too-recent Apartheid past for the country’s non-white majority. Based on John Carlin’s nonfiction tome, this latest Oscar bait by the indefatigable Clint Eastwood sports his usual plusses and minuses: An impressive scale, solid performances (Matt Damon co-stars as the team’s Afrikaaner captain), deft handling of subplots, and solid craftsmanship on the one hand. A certain dull literal-minded earnestness, lack of style and excitement on the other. Anthony Peckham’s screenplay hits the requisite inspirational notes (sometimes pretty bluntly), but even in the attenuated finals match, Eastwood’s direction is steady as she goes — no peaks, no valleys, no faults but not much inspiration, either. It doesn’t help that Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens contribute a score that’s as rousing as a warm milk bath. This is an entertaining history lesson, but it should have been an exhilarating one. (2:14) Oaks. (Harvey)

*The Last Station Most of the buzz around The Last Station has focused on Helen Mirren, who takes the lead as the Countess Sofya, wife of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer). Mirren is indeed impressive — when is she not? — but there’s more to the film than Sofya’s Oscar-worthy outbursts. The Last Station follows Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), hired as Tolstoy’s personal secretary at the end of the writer’s life. Valentin struggles to reconcile his faith in the anarchist Christian Tolstoyan movement with his sympathy for Sofya and his budding feelings for fellow Tolstoyan Masha (Kerry Condon). For the first hour, The Last Station is charming and very funny. Once Tolstoy and Sofya’s relationship reaches its most volatile, however, the tone shifts toward the serious — a trend that continues as Tolstoy falls ill. After all the lighthearted levity, it’s a bit jarring, but the solid script and accomplished cast pull The Last Station together. Paul Giamatti is especially good as Vladimir Chertkov, who battles against Sofya for control of Tolstoy’s will. You’ll never feel guiltier for putting off War and Peace. (1:52) Albany, Embarcadero, Empire, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 The dawn of the Me Decade saw the largest-ever music festival to that date —albeit one that was such a logistical, fiscal and hygenic disaster that it basically killed the development of similar events for years. This was the height of "music should be free" sentiments in the counterculture, with the result that many among the estimated six to eight hundred thousand attendees who overwhelmed this small U.K. island showed up without tickets, refused to pay, and protested in ways that included tearing down barrier walls and setting fires. It was a bummer, man. But after five days of starry acts often jeered by an antsy crowd — including everyone from Joni, Hendrix, Dylan, Sly Stone, the Who and the Doors to such odd bedfellows as Miles Davis, Tiny Tim, Voices of East Harlem, Supertramp, and Gilberto Gil — Canadian troubador Cohen appeared at 4 a.m. on a Monday to offer balm. Like director Murray Lerner’s 1995 Message to Love, about the festival as a whole, this footage has been shelved for decades, but it bounces right back from the dead — albeit soothingly. Cohen seems blissed out, pupils like black marbles, his between-song musings are as poetical as those fascinating lyrics, and his voice is suppler than the rasp it would soon become. Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and bandmate Bob Johnson offer reflections 40 years later. But the main attraction is obviously Cohen, who is magnetic even if an hour of (almost) nothing but ballads reveals how stylistically monotone his songwriting could be. (1:04) Roxie. (Harvey)

*The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers For many, Daniel Ellsberg is a hero — a savior of American First Amendment rights and one of the most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam war. But as this documentary (recently nominated for an Academy Award) shows, it’s never an an easy decision to take on the U.S. government. Ellsberg himself narrates the film and details his sleepless nights leading up to the leak of the Pentagon Papers — the top secret government study on the Vietnam war — to the public. Though there are few new developments in understanding the particulars of the war or the impact the release of the Papers had on ending the conflict, the film allows audiences to experience the famous case from Ellsberg’s point of view, adding a fresh and poignantly human element to the events; it’s a political documentary that plays more like a character drama. Whether you were there when it happened or new to the story, there is something to be appreciated from this tale of a man who fell out of love with his country and decided to do something about it. (1:34) Bridge, Shattuck. (Galvin)

*North Face You’ll never think of outerwear the same way again — and in fact you might be reaching for your fleece and shivering through the more harrowing climbing scenes of this riveting historical adventure based on a true tale. Even those who consider themselves less than avid fans of outdoor survival drama will find their eyes frozen, if you will, on the screen when it comes to this retelling/re-envisioning of this story, legendary among mountaineers, of climbers, urged on by Nazi propaganda, to tackle the last "Alpine problem." At issue: the unclimbed north face of Switzerland’s Eiger, a highly dangerous and unpredictable zone aptly nicknamed "Murder Wall." Two working-class friends, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann of 2008’s Jerichow) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) — here portrayed as climbing fiends driven to reach summits rather than fight for the Nazis — take the challenge. There to document their achievement, or certain death, is childhood friend and Kurz’s onetime sweetheart Luise (Johanna Wokalek, memorable in 2008’s The Baader Meinhof Complex), eager to make her name as a photojournalist while fending off the advances of an editor (Ulrich Tukur) seeking to craft a narrative that positions the contestants as model Aryans. But the climb — and the Eiger, looming like a mythical ogre — is the main attraction here. Filmmaker Philipp Stölzl brings home the sheer heart-pumping exhilaration and terror associated with the sport — and this specific, legendarily tragic climb — by shooting in the mountains with his actors and crew, and the result goes a way in redeeming an adventure long-tainted by its fascist associations. (2:01) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief It would be easy to dismiss Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief as an unabashed Harry Potter knock-off. Trio of kids with magic powers goes on a quest to save the world in a Chris Columbus adaptation of a popular young adult series — sound familiar? But The Lightning Thief is sharp, witty, and a far cry from Columbus’ joyless adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001). Logan Lerman stars as Percy Jackson, the illegitimate son of Poseidon and Catherine Keener. Once he learns his true identity at Camp Half-Blood, he sets off on a quest with his protector, a satyr named Grover, and potential love interest Annabeth, daughter of Athena. Along the way, they bump into gods and monsters from Greek mythology — with a twist. Think Percy using his iPhone to fight Medusa (Uma Thurman), or a land of the Lotus-Eaters disguised as a Lady Gaga-blasting casino. A worthy successor to Harry Potter? Too soon to say, but The Lightning Thief is at least a well-made diversion. (1:59) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire This gut-wrenching, little-engine-that-could of a film shows the struggles of Precious, an overweight, illiterate 16-year-old girl from Harlem. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe is so believably vigilant that her performance alone could bring together the art-house viewers as well as take the Oscars by storm. But people need to actually go and experience this film. While Precious did win Sundance’s Grand Jury and Audience Award awards this year, there is a sad possibility that filmgoers will follow the current trend of "discussing" films that they’ve actually never seen. The daring casting choices of comedian Mo’Nique (as Precious’ all-too-realistically abusive mother) and Mariah Carey (brilliantly understated as an undaunted and dedicated social counselor) are attempts to attract a wider audience, but cynics can hurdle just about anything these days. What’s most significant about this Dancer in the Dark-esque chronicle is how Damien Paul’s screenplay and director Lee Daniels have taken their time to confront the most difficult moments in Precious’ story –- and if that sounds heavy-handed, so be it. Stop blahging for a moment and let this movie move you. (1:49) Presidio, Roxie, Shattuck. (Jesse Hawthorne Ficks)

*"Red Riding Trilogy" There’s a "wolf" of sorts and several unfortunate little girls, but no fairy tale whimsy whatsoever in this trilogy of features originally made for U.K. broadcast. Based on David Pearce’s literary mystery quartet (the second volume goes unadapted here), it’s a complicated dive into conspiracy, cover-up, and murder in England’s North Country. Directed by Julian Jarrold (2008’s Brideshead Revisited), first installment Red Riding: 1974 centers on ambitious young journalist Eddie (Andrew Garfield), who at first sees a string of abducted, then grotesquely mutilated children as a career-making opportunity. The deeper in he gets, though, the more troubling are the case’s murky connections to police and private-sector corruption. 1980, directed by James Marsh (2008’s Man on Wire), finds a new protagonist in Hunter (Paddy Considine). Now local fears are focused on the "Yorkshire Ripper" a savage (real-life) killer of at least 13 women between 1975 and 1981 whose so-far hapless police investigation Hunter has been assigned to audit. Finally, 1983 (directed by Anand Tucker of 2005’s Shopgirl) divides its attention between Yorkshire chief detective Jobson (David Morrissey) and low-rent lawyer Piggot (Mark Addy). After the first copycat child slaying in years occurs, both become convinced a mentally challenged man (Daniel Mays) was framed for the original murders. The nearly six hours this serpentine tale takes can’t help but impress as a weighty experience (at least on your posterior), and it’s duly won some sky-high critical acclaim ("better than the Godfather trilogy", etc.) Certainly Red Riding is rich in period detail, fine characterizations, and bleak atmospherics. But the cumulative satisfaction expected of a true epic is broken up by the sole ongoing characters being supporting ones — heroes who eventually "know too much" don’t survive long. In each segment (Marsh’s Super-16-shot one being most stylistically distinctive), women deployed as romantic interests seem largely superfluous. The whole fussy, cipherous narrative points toward a heart of jet-black darkness its climactic revelations are at once too banal and implausible to deliver. So, worthwhile? Yes, if you’ve got the time to spare. A hype-justifying masterpiece? No. (1974, 1:45; 1980, 1:36; 1983, 1:44) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Shutter Island Director Martin Scorsese and muse du jour Leonardo DiCaprio draw from oft-filmed novelist Dennis Lehane (2003’s Mystic River, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone) for this B-movie thriller that, sadly, offers few thrills. DiCaprio’s a 1950s U.S. marshal summoned to a misty island that houses a hospital for the criminally insane, overseen by a doctor (Ben Kingsley) who believes in humane, if experimental, therapy techniques. From the get-go we suspect something’s not right with the G-man’s own mind; as he investigates the case of a missing patient, he experiences frequent flashbacks to his World War II service (during which he helped liberate a concentration camp), and has recurring visions of his spooky dead wife (Michelle Williams). Whether or not you fall for Shutter Island‘s twisty game depends on the gullibility of your own mind. Despite high-quality performances and an effective, if overwrought, tone of certain doom, Shutter Island stumbles into a third act that exposes its inherently flawed and frustrating storytelling structure. If only David Lynch had directed Shutter Island — it could’ve been a classic of mindfuckery run amok. Instead, Scorsese’s psychological drama is sapped of any mystery whatsoever by its stubbornly literal conclusion. (2:18) California, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Eddy)

A Single Man In this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, Colin Firth plays George, a middle-aged gay expat Brit and college professor in 1962 Los Angeles. Months after the accidental death of Jim (Matthew Goode), his lover for 16 years, George still feels worse than bereft; simply waking each morning is agony. So on this particular day he has decided to end it all, first going through a series of meticulous preparations and discreet leave-takings that include teaching one last class and having supper with the onetime paramour (Julianne Moore) turned best friend who’s still stuck on him. The main problem with fashion designer turned film director Tom Ford’s first feature is that he directs it like a fashion designer, fussing over surface style and irrelevant detail in a story whose tight focus on one hard, real-world thing — grief — cries for simplicity. Not pretentious overpackaging, which encompasses the way his camera slavers over the excessively pretty likes of Nicholas Hoult as a student and Jon Kortajarena as a hustler, as if they were models selling product rather than characters, or even actors. (In fact Kortajarena is a male supermodel; the shocker is that Hoult is not, though Hugh Grant’s erstwhile About a Boy co-star is so preening here you’d never guess.) Eventually Ford stops showing off so much, and A Single Man is effective to the precise degree it lets good work by Goode, Moore and especially the reliably excellent Firth unfold without too much of his terribly artistic interference. (1:39) Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Terribly Happy The Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (1984) is the obvious corollary for this coolly humorous Danish import, though director/co-writer Henrik Ruben Genz’s firmly dampened-down thriller of sorts is also touched by David Lynch’s parochial surrealism and Aki Kaurismäki’s backwater puckishness. Happy isn’t quite the word for handsome, seemingly upstanding cop Jakob (Robert Hansen), reassigned from the big city of Copenhagen to a tiny village in South Jutland. There he slowly learns that the insular and self-sufficient locals are accustomed to fixing problems on their own and that cows, trucks, and other troubles have a way of conveniently disappearing into the bog. When buxom blonde Ingerlise (Lene Maria Christensen) whispers to him that her husband Jørgen (Kim Bodnia) beats her, Jakob begins to find his moral ground slipping away from him — while his own dark secrets turn out to be not so secret after all. More of a winkingly paranoid, black-hearted comedy about the quicksand nature of provincial community and small-town complicity than a genuine murder mystery, Terribly Happy wears its inspirations on its sleeve, but that doesn’t stop this attractively-shot production from amusing from start to finish, never tarrying too long to make a point that it gets mired in the bog that swallows all else. (1:42) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Up in the Air After all the soldiers’ stories and the cannibalism canards of late, Up in the Air‘s focus on a corporate ax-man — an everyday everyman sniper in full-throttle downsizing mode — is more than timely; it’s downright eerie. But George Clooney does his best to inject likeable, if not quite soulful, humanity into Ryan Bingham, an all-pro mileage collector who prides himself in laying off employees en masse with as few tears, tantrums, and murder-suicide rages as possible. This terminator’s smooth ride from airport terminal to terminal is interrupted not only by a possible soul mate, fellow smoothie and corporate traveler Alex (Vera Farmiga), but a young tech-savvy upstart, Natalie (Anna Kendrick), who threatens to take the process to new reductionist lows (layoff via Web cam) and downsize Ryan along the way. With Up in the Air, director Jason Reitman, who oversaw Thank You for Smoking (2005) as well as Juno (2007), is threatening to become the bard of office parks, Casual Fridays, khaki-clad happy hours, and fly-over zones. But Up in the Air is no Death of a Salesman, and despite some memorable moments that capture the pain of downsizing and the flatness of real life, instances of snappily screwball dialogue, and some more than solid performances by all (and in particular, Kendrick), he never manages to quite sell us on the existence of Ryan’s soul. (1:49) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Valentine’s Day Genre moviemaking loves it a gimmick — and nothing gets more greeting-card gimmicky or sell-by-date corny than the technique of linking holidays and those mandatory date nights out. You’re shocked that nobody thought of this chick flick notion sooner. Valentine’s Day is no My Bloody Valentine (1981, 2009) — it aspires to an older, more yupscale lady’s choice-crowd than the screaming teens that are ordinarily sought out by horror flicks. And its A-list-studded cast — including Oscar winners Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, and Kathy Bates as well as seemingly half of That ’70s Show‘s players — is a cut above TV tween starlets’ coming-out slasher slumber parties. It partly succeeds: bringing Valentine’s haters into the game as well as lovers is a smart ploy (although who believes that the chic-cheekbones-and-fulsome-lips crew of Jessica Biel and Jennifer Garner would be dateless on V-Day?), and the first half is obviously structured around the punchlines that punctuate each scene — a winning if contrived device. Juggling multiple storylines with such a whopping cast lends an It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) quality to the Jessica- and Taylor-heavy shenanigans. And some tales get a wee bit more weight than others (the charisma-laden scenes with Bradley Cooper and Roberts cry out for added screentime), creating a strangely lopsided effect that adds unwanted tedium to an affair that should be as here-today-gone-tomorrow as a Whitman’s Sampler. (1:57) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*The White Ribbon In Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, his first German-language film in ten years, violence descends on a small northern German village mired in an atmosphere of feudalism and protestant repression. When, over the course of a year, a spate of unaccountable tragedies strikes almost every prominent figure as well as a powerless family of tenant farmers, the village becomes a crucible for aspersion and unease. Meanwhile, a gang of preternaturally calm village children, led by the eerily intense daughter of the authoritarian pastor, keep appearing coincidentally near the sites of the mysterious crimes, lending this Teutonic morality play an unsettling Children of the Corn undertone. Only the schoolteacher, perhaps by virtue of his outsider status, seems capable of discerning the truth, but his low rank on the social pecking order prevent his suspicions from being made public. A protracted examination on the nature of evil — and the troubling moral absolutism from which it stems. (2:24) Clay, Shattuck. (Nicole Gluckstern)

The Wolfman Remember 2000’s Hollow Man, an update of 1933’s The Invisible Man so over-the-top that it could only have been brought to you by a post-Starship Troopers (1997) Paul Verhoeven? Fear not, Lon Chaney, Jr. fanclub members — The Wolfman sticks fairly true to its 1941 predecessor, setting its tale of a reluctant lycanthrope in Victorian England, where there are plenty of gypsies, foggy moors, silver bullets, angry villagers, and the like. Benicia Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, who’s given an American childhood backstory to explain his out-of-place stateside accent (and a Mediterranean-looking mother to make up for the fact that he’s supposed to be the son of Anthony Hopkins). Soon after returning to his estranged father’s crumbling manor, Lawrence is chomped by a you-know-what. Next full moon, Lawrence realizes what he’s become; murderous rampages and much angst ensue. (He’s kind of like the Incredible Hulk, except much hairier). Director Joe Johnston (a tech whiz who worked on the original Star Wars movies, and helmed 2001’s Jurassic Park III), doesn’t offer much innovation on the werewolf legend (or any scares, for that matter). But the effects, including transformation scenes and claw-tastic gore, are predictably top-notch. (2:05) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

REP PICKS

*The Hellcats The problem with most old biker movies is that there’s waaaaay too much aimless hog riding occasionally interrupted by repetitious fist and/or chain-fighting. This obscure 1967 entry, however, gets its priorities right: the characters are pretty seldom on the road, for that would leach precious time away from the hilarious quasi-hipster dialogue, fascinating personalities (with names like "Six Pack," "Heinie" and "Zombie"), and complex intrigue. Ross Hagen and Dee Duffy play the military-officer brother and fianceé, respectively, of a freshly assassinated police detective. To investigate they go undercover as the new biker couple in town, infiltrating the Hellcats’ clubhouse where booze, acid ("You ran into a bad cube, man!"), drug-running, and chick-swapping are the usual entertainment. These are hippie bikers, though they talk like Hollywood "beatniks" circa 1959 — which is to say, like no one who ever actually lived. They call each other Mamma, Daddy, and Baby a lot, and it’s presumably this familial spirit that leads both motorcycle gang and undercover pigs to finally join forces in defeating the real bad guys, some big-league mobster types. You know this movie is going to rock from the start, as blobular psychedelic paintings background opening credits to the sound of the lamest Farfisa organ-driven theme song ever. This was the first narrative feature by director Robert F. Slatzer, who for years claimed he was married to Marilyn Monroe for three days in 1952 (and subsequently milked two books out of that tall tale). His second (and last) was the even more ludicrous 1970 Bigfoot, in which bikers rescue pretty girls kidnapped and kept chained in a cave by horny sasquatches. A past Mystery Science Theater fave that requires no snarky commentary to entertain, Hellcats is presented as a double-feature with a better-known wanton-youth nugget, 1964’s Kitten With a Whip, starring a very naughty Ann-Margret. Thurs/4, 9 p.m., $5, Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. (Harvey)

Where landlords, developers, and cars are king

David Talbot
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Where landlords, developers, and cars are king

EDITORIAL Are cars more important than people? Is it okay to evict a tenant just to make space for a garage? Should new garages be designed to preserve on-street parking too? Seems like a no-brainer to us. But legislation by Sup. David Chiu that would put some limits on the expansion of garages — an increasing problem in Chinatown and North Beach — has infuriated some real estate interests, and it’s possible that this eminently reasonable bill might fail.

It’s a sad statement on San Francisco politics, and the implications go way beyond this one planning measure.

The problem has its roots in the Ellis Act, the state law that allows landlords to clear all the tenants out of a building, then sell it to wealthier people who want to buy their units as tenants in common (TICs). The Ellis Act has been responsible for thousands of San Franciscans losing their homes — and a new twist has been developing in Chiu’s district.

In the crowded Chinatown-North Beach area, parking is at a premium and people who are buying TICs want a place to put their cars. So landlords and speculators are throwing out tenants not just for new owners, but to make room for garages.

Chiu’s law — which would apply only in parts of District 3 — would deny building owners a permit to construct a new garage if a tenant was evicted under the Ellis Act in the past 10 years. And it would require a conditional use authorization from the City Planning Department for any new garage construction.

Chiu also wants new rules for curb cuts — the openings in sidewalks that allow cars to drive into garages. The cuts would have to be as small as possible and designed to preserve on-street parking.

On a larger level, the bill would make it easier to construct new housing without parking — a significant change in how San Francisco has handled off-street parking for many years. Instead of mandating garages in new apartment buildings, Chiu wants to discourage them. He’s saying, in essence, that space for people is more important than space for cars.

That’s a logical step in a city that is trying to enforce a transit-first policy. It’s a small piece of a larger political battle to transform a city planning system that for too long has been driven by the needs of the private automobile. It should have passed unanimously and Mayor Newsom should sign it into law.

In fact, the bill passed on first reading Feb. 9, with only Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu voting against it. But Sup. Bevan Dufty now says he has concerns about the measure, and Chiu has agreed to postpone the final vote until March 9.

Dufty’s a key vote, because it’s likely at this point that the mayor will veto the measure. And with Elsbernd and Chu opposed and Michela Alioto-Pier still out with health problems, supporters can’t override a veto without Dufty.

We couldn’t reach Dufty, but supporters of the bill say he wants the measure watered down to eliminate the conditional use requirement — which would force city planners to check and make sure the builder or landlord was following the rules — and replace it with a discretionary review requirement, which would allow the garage construction unless someone objected. That puts the burden on the tenants (who in many cases are low income people whose primary language isn’t English) to protect themselves. And it would undermine much of the power of the bill.

It’s insane for Dufty to oppose a reasonable measure that only applies to a small part of one district, protects vulnerable tenants, and pushes the city away from further automobile dependence. It’s insane that the mayor is expected to veto the bill. It’s insane that it’s even an issue. And if the ordinance fails, it will be a sign that even in San Francisco, in 2010, landlords, developers, and cars are still king.

Taxi turbulence

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Taxi turbulence

By Skyler Swezy

news@sfbg.com

It’s 10:20 p.m. on a recent Saturday night. Cab driver Dorian Lavender picks up a middle-aged couple outside the Gold Club, a strip joint in SoMa.

The couple is sharply dressed for a night out. After requesting the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre as their destination, the man brags to Lavender about having had sex with a stripper in one of the club’s private rooms. His female companion smiles and says nothing.

“This is before I met her,” the man explains. “We’re swingers.”

Minutes later, beneath the theater’s flashing marquee, the man hands the driver a $20 bill for the $10 fare. “Keep the change,” he says.

A few blocks away, a young couple flags the cab from the corner of Bush and Polk streets. They are talkative and entertained as Lavender tells them about the swingers. Ten minutes later, the meter reads $9.86. Apologizing, the young man hands him $11.

Lavender folds the bills into the cash-wad kept in his pocket.

“That’s how it goes with cab driving,” he says. “The nice couple tips 10 percent, the weird swingers tip 100 percent — and they were more interesting to talk to.”

At 25, Lavender considers cab driving a great gig and survives working only three shifts a week. He enjoys the cash, freedom, and unpredictable encounters. He’s even landed a few dates. A lot of career cabbies start driving for the same reasons. But after the excitement wears off, it turns out to be a tough job.

A typical cab driver in San Francisco makes less than $30,000 a year. Before drivers even start a shift, gate fees (covering the rental on the cab and the use of its permit, known here as a medallion), gas, and graft have already set them back close to $100. Bribes are commonplace in the industry, used to ensure weekend shifts, airport fares, and newer cars.

The industry offers no retirement plan or health coverage. In fact, the primary reason some people stay behind the wheel long after the thrill is gone is the promise that at some point, after maybe 15 years, an active driver becomes eligible for his or her own medallion. It costs almost nothing, and offers a tremendous benefit: drivers with medallions no longer pay high gate fees, get better shifts — and can lease out the permit when they’re not working. The lease revenue alone can nearly double a driver’s income.

Since 1978, medallions have been issued only to working drivers, and entirely on the basis of a waiting list that now numbers 3,200 names. New medallions become available when permit-holders retire, die, or are forced by disability to stop driving.

That system — and the entire cab industry — is about to change, profoundly. On Feb. 26, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency agreed to allow some permits to be sold on the open market to help close its huge budget deficit. When the dust settles and the implications of that decision become clear, life for cab drivers and passengers will be very different.

Some say the industry will be better; some say it will be much worse — but the truth is, nobody really knows.

 

PRIVATIZING PERMITS

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s adminstration has talked about allowing the sale of permits for several years, but only in the past few months has Christine Hayashi, SFMTA’s deputy director of taxi services, come up with a detailed plan.

It’s aimed at addressing what some drivers call an unfair and flawed system. Permit-holders by law must drive a minimum number of shifts, and it they get hurt or just get too old to drive, they have to surrender their medallions, leaving them with no source of income.

It will also help SFMTA’s budget — the city could sell unclaimed permits for big money and would get a cut of every other sale.

But critics, including Judge Quentin Kopp, the former San Francisco supervisor who wrote the 1978 law that created the old system, say the medallion holders just want to cash in on something that has always been city property.

The pilot project approved by the SFMTA board allows the city to sell up to 60 medallions directly to drivers and allow about 300 drivers over the age of 70 to sell their medallions to any qualified driver who can come up with the cash. The program aims to set a fixed selling price, but has yet to do so, instead setting a $400,000 limit. It is estimated that medallions will sell for no less than $200,000.

That, of course, will be a huge windfall to the sellers, who paid nothing for their permits.

The pilot program was essentially a done deal even before the Feb. 26 vote. In an e-mail to the Guardian, agency spokesperson Judson True confirmed that $11 million in taxi revenue had been added into the MTA budget before the vote took place.

 

THE GREED FACTOR

Kopp sat behind the desk in his West Portal neighborhood office a week before the MTA vote, bitterly condemning the medallion sales program. “It’s based on greed. It’s based on City Hall greed,” he said. The stentorian 82-year-old occasionally thumped the desk with his fist for emphasis as he launched into the history of Proposition K. Then-Sup. Kopp authored that landmark legislation prohibiting private companies from owning driving permits, instead granting control to drivers.

“This will reverse a system that gave a genuine cab driver the opportunity to obtain a permit and replace it with a system that restores the ability of people with lots of money to buy a permit,” he said.

But Kopp’s bill had some unforeseen consequences. The list has become so long that medallions are being issued to people in their 60s and 70s — and some of those people are driving passengers around town despite failing reflexes, eyesight, and motor skills.

Carl Macmurdo, president of the Medallion Holders Association (MHA), believes that selling medallions will provide an exit plan for geriatric drivers while giving younger cabbies an entry opportunity. At 59, Macmurdo is still a full-time driver and has been in the industry 27 years.

It makes sense that MHA members are generally in favor of the pilot program — they could potentially make a mountain of money. Although only those over the age of 70 are now eligible to sell them, the age limit could be lowered in the future.

 

INDENTURED SERVANTS

The United Taxi Workers (UTW) headquarters consists of a few cramped offices on the fourth floor of an old office building in the Mission District. All the interior trim is painted taxi-yellow. In late January, UTW spokespersons Mark Gruberg and Rua Graffis sat at a large table, fearing the worst.

They predict the sale of medallions will provide large cab companies with the equivalent of indentured servants. They say drivers will need upwards of a $200,000 loan to purchase a medallion, requiring a hefty downpayment.

Few drivers will be able to pay for a permit with savings, so the system will only work if someone is willing to finance those purchases. And drivers who are recent immigrants or have bad credit may not be able to get traditional loans. So they could wind up borrowing from their employers, the cab companies, UTW activists say — and by owning the debt the companies will essentially own the medallion.

“Supposedly there’s going to be a provision that says a cab company can’t lend money to a driver toward purchasing a medallion. But it would be so easy to get around that by hooking up with an outside lender,” Gruberg said.

Another fear is that the pilot program will favor young drivers and punish veterans. “Suppose a 27 year-old is on the list and I’m 63. Which one of us is the bank more likely to lend money to?” Graffis asked.

Under the pilot program, drivers will have the option to purchase according to seniority on the list. But without a lender, that’s little help.

 

WHO’S GETTING SCREWED

At 1 p.m. the day of the SFMTA vote, Bill Mounsey and David Barlow were sitting on a bench outside the hearing room. Both are members of UTW and planned to speak in protest of the pilot program.

Mounsey is 63. He’s been on the list for 13 years and is No. 200. He is part of the group most vulnerable in the medallion reform process — drivers who have already waited more than a decade but still have years to go.

If at any point the board decides to eradicate the list before he receives a medallion, Mounsey’s years of waiting will be wasted. “I would never buy one. I’m 63 years-old, no one would ever give me a loan,” he said.

For now, the wait list survives. Under the pilot program, one medallion will be given away for every one sold until the list is exhausted. However, with only half as many medallions being given out, Mounsey fears the list will move half as fast.

Around 50 people attended the meeting, a small fraction of the city’s cab drivers. At 3:56 p.m. the board passed the pilot program and Prop. K moved a little closer toward death.

Hayashi spent more than 175 hours trying to create a pilot program that provides the city with revenue and benefits the taxi drivers. She has made an effort to engage the taxi community and worked with a group of drivers to draft the proposal. She even plans on getting a taxi license.

After the City Hall meeting, Hayashi explained the challenges facing the pilot program over coffee in a downtown cafe. Before March 30, when the proposal is set for a final SFMTA vote, Hayashi must lock down lenders, create lending programs feasible for drivers, and set a fixed selling price for the medallions.

The blaring problem with the pilot program is a lack of committed lenders ready to finance cab drivers’ loans. Bank of the West has expressed interest, as well as two New York credit unions experienced in medallion loans and two San Francisco credit unions.

But how will those loans be structured? Who will qualify? How much of a downpayment will drivers need? And how, in the end, will this change the experience and qualifications of the drivers — and the quality of cab service in the city?

Hayashi sounds confident. “Good service depends on happy drivers. Our goal is to restore professional pride for the drivers, allow them to feel that taxi driving is a career and a respected profession,” she said.

But a lot — a whole lot — can go wrong with this major change in a complex industry that provides essential service to residents and tourists alike. And once the city moves down the path to private medallions, it’s going to be hard to go back.

Pressure builds to save Muni

Sasha Cuttler
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Pressure builds to save Muni

Widespread frustration with Muni service cuts and fare hikes – passionately expressed by the public on Friday at a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency meeting that continues tomorrow (Tuesday, March 2, starting at noon in City Hall Room 400) – has prompted a surprisingly diverse backlash.

From angry, street-level progressive activists to the downtown-friendly San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), San Franciscans are criticizing the SFMTA’s budget plan (including the 10 percent service cuts approved on Friday, which could be revisited tomorrow) as short-sighted and unnecessarily divisive, prompting the biggest and most diffuse progressive organizing effort in years.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” SFMTA spokesperson Judson True told me as he surveyed the huge, passionate crowd assembled for Friday’s meeting, adding, “It’s clear grassroots organizing is alive and well in San Francisco.”

It’s true that grassroots organizing helped with Friday’s massive turnout, with hundreds of people lined up to give almost five hours worth of public testimony, much of it expressing frustration with poor city leadership (particularly by Mayor Gavin Newsom and his appointed SFMTA board and director) and declining public services.

But these weren’t the talking points of a centrally organized effort, which is what’s so remarkable about this movement. While many progressive groups joined forces under the Transit Not Traffic banner (coordinated by MTA Citizens Advisory Board member Sue Vaughn and others), and there’s a new San Francisco transit riders union (coordinated by transportation activist Dave Synder), the huge turnout on Friday came also from disability rights groups, ethnically identified groups from the Mission and Chinatown, the Senior Action Network, San Francisco Tomorrow, the social justice group POWER, the antiwar ANSWER Coalition, and several other groups, with very little coordination among them.

“We are really seeing a diverse group of people arguing for transit justice,” said Marc Caswell of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which was part of the Transit Not Traffic coalition.

In fact, with Muni fares increasing and services declining since Newsom became mayor, a wide variety of groups seems to have figured out independently that there’s something seriously wrong with Newsom’s no-new-taxes approach to running the city, particularly given declining transit funding from the state and feds.

“These aren’t solutions. They’re just pitting one group against another,” said Frank Lara of the ANSWER Coalition, which opposes a proposal for extended parking meter hours, much to the chagrin of progressive groups who want motorists to help close the budget gap by giving up their free parking on Sundays.

One SPUR proposal also seeks to eliminate this pitting of groups against each other, listing as its biggest dollar proposal the elimination of work orders from the San Francisco Police Department, which would save $12.2 million per year, which the SFPD charges SFMTA for unspecified services that it has yet to document, despite agreeing to as part of last year’s budget deal.

When asked about the work order proposal, Newsom press secretary Tony Winnicker said doing so would make Muni less safe by discouraging officers from riding buses, saying such work orders were a “good accounting practice” rather than the budgetary shell game that progressive supervisors and SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf have called it.

“The gamesmanship with work orders has got to stop,” Metcalf told the Guardian, criticizing the SFMTA for cutting service across the board and raising fares for express bus service and cable cars. “They don’t have to do that and they shouldn’t do that. They just need some political courage right now.”

The next largest SPUR proposals are to charge $300 per year for disabled placards that allow drivers to park for free (which would raise $10 million per year) and to enforce existing city codes that require garages to charge by the hour rather than all day (which would raise $6.85 million), followed by Muni work rule changes that would need union approval.

Winnicker said Newsom was aware of the big turnout on Friday and the anger voiced by the crowd, telling us, “He understands people are concerned and he shares those concerns.” But rather than accepting that many people blame Newsom, Winnicker blamed Muni’s Transportation Workers Union for voting down about $5 million worth of wage concessions and work rule changes. Yet many speakers criticized Newsom’s finger-pointing on Friday, saying he and the SFMTA were too focused on targeting workers rather than the downtown corporations that Newsom has refused to adequately tax.

“There was already a fare increase last year, so for the low-income popular, this is major,” Wing Hoo Leung, vice president of the Community Tenants Association, told me in Mandarin, translated by Tan Chow, an organizer with Chinatown Community Development Center. “In a bad economy, the low-income people can’t get hit again and again. We need to cut from the top.”

Tax measures will be a big part of tomorrow’s SFMTA discussion of the $100 million budget deficit looming for the next two years – such as a parcel tax, downtown transit assessment district, parking tax increase, or local vehicle license fee — and several SFMTA board members agreed with the statement made Friday by Trustee Malcolm Heinicke that, “We need to look for other sources of revenue.”

Even Winnicker said Newsom acknowledges the need to discuss tax measures, even though he philosophically opposes them: “He understands that many things have to be on the table to close next year’s budget gap.”

But he’s far from advocating for any revenue-side solutions.

“The mayor doesn’t think the tax measures will have much public support,” Winnicker said. Yet progressive groups say that’s because Newsom has undermined people’s faith in local government and actively opposed tax increases rather than trying to make the case to the public that they’re needed to present public transit and other vital services.

“Newsom has to be out there fighting, one at the state level, and he needs to show some leadership here,” said Bob Allen of the group Urban Habitat. “I don’t want to hear Gavin Newsom say again that this is a transit-first city if he’s not going to do anything to support it.”

But Allen said that if Newsom and other city leaders made the case for new taxes to support transit and ran a strong campaign, “This city will support a ballot measure to protect Muni and expand it.”

Yet right now, he said one of the things frustrating low-income San Franciscans is there is a basic inequity between motorists and Muni riders: “If parking is going to be free on Sunday, transit should be free on Sunday. If parking is going to be free in the evenings, transit should be free in the evenings.”  

Newsom has long voiced opposition to extended meter hours, only recently softening that position slightly to possibly allow for a small pilot program for Sundays. But his appointed trustees might be willing to go even further, with Bruce Oka saying on Friday, “I know the mayor doesn’t like it, but it has to be tried.”

Transit activists swarm City Hall

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Transit activists swarm City Hall

Hundreds of transit supporters, angrily opposed to the package of Muni fare hikes and service cuts proposed to close a $16.9 million mid-year budget deficit, are now packed into City Hall demanding equity and justice.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Judson True, spokesperson for the SF Municipal Transportation Agency, told me as he surveyed the huge overflow crowd packed into South Light Court, watching the upstairs budget meeting on closed circuit television. “We should all get on buses and go to Sacramento. It’s clear that grassroots organizing is alive and well in San Francisco.”

It may be true that budget cuts and lack of political will to raise taxes in Sacramento helped cause this problem, but this crowd was angry and they directed most of that ire at the MTA board and the man who appointed them, Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Even True wasn’t spared, as college student Glo Pereira laid into him as we spoke: “I’m a person who doesn’t appreciate this,” she glowered.
That was the dominant mood among the wide coalition of groups represented here today, including a strong presence by communities of color, those with disabilities, and social justice groups.

MTA spokesperson Judson True is confronted by activist Glo Pereira

“You folks should resign! You aren’t doing your job and you haven’t done your job,” activist Bob Planthold told the board. “This is an agency run by one man, Gavin Newsom, in the interests of one man, Gavin Newsom.”

That’s a common theme, one of complete exasperperation, with regular calls to tax the rich and lay off the poor, and for more engaged leadership from the Mayor’s Office.

As I write, there’s still lots of public testimony to go before the board deliberates and votes, so check back to this blog post, which I’ll update periodically.

Update: The MTA board seems to have heeded much the public input, voting 6-1 (with Trustee Cameron Beach in dissent) to remove the increases in Fast Pass fares for youth, senior, and the disabled and to approve the rest of the fare increases, which will increase prices for express buses and cable cars. That package was then approved on a 4-3 (with McCray, Lee, and Beach in dissent, although they didn’t make clear the reason for their votes).

Similarly, another 4-3 vote by the same trustees approved a package of service reductions that total about a 10 percent overall cut, although there was a consensus direction for the board to try to spare cuts on the busiest lines, including 14, 49, 30, 38, M, and the Owl, as well as ensuring nightime cuts are minimized. Overall, the results of the vote weren’t entirely clear and the meeting wasn’t formally adjourned, but instead will be recessed until Tuesday when the board will discuss the larger budget picture going into the next fiscal year.

At that time, the board will consider placing a parcel tax or other new revenues measures on the November ballot, something that seemed to have the support of most board members. In addition, Director Malcom Heinicke today outlined his support for a extended parking meter hours, which he would like to see done as a pilot program along five or six selected commercial corridors on Sundays and on a single commercial corridor on weeknights until 10 p.m. Several board members voiced support for the idea.

While today’s vote didn’t close the $16.9 million deficit that was the purpose of this meeting and the public testimony that went for nearly five hours, MTA executive director Nat Ford noted that “there is some softness” in the revenue picture, including the possibility of getting a $7 million from the Board of Supervisors and using a greater portion of the $17 million windfall that the MTA received after the feds decided to discontinue the Oakland airport connector service on operations rather than maintenance, as staff had proposed. In addition, the MTA board is currently discussing a privatization plan for taxi medallions, which could affect the revenue picture.

I’ll try to help sort this out with another post before day’s end, including more testimony from the occassionally raucous meeting, but it appears that this meeting essentially ended with a “To Be Continued,” and the board will pick up where it left off on Tuesday, when the big new revenue proposals (which Mayor Gavin Newsom has resisted supporting) could be at the very center of the debate.

 

Bin 38

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bin 38

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE If we agree that the Marina District is a sort of Castro District for heterosexuals — the het ghetto, or hetto — it should follow that food in the neighborhood’s restaurants is something of an afterthought. Restaurant food in the Castro has long been a swamp of mediocrity (though there are signs of improvement), and restaurants in the Marina have likewise tended to be more about convenience, speed, and affordability — like refueling race cars — than an experience in their own right.

At a glance, Bin 38 would seem to conform to this pattern. The restaurant and wine-beer bar occupies a narrow storefront space on a run of Scott Street between Lombard and Chestnut streets already chockablock with eating places pitched to the young. From outside it looks like a typical box, but once you’re inside the door, you find a dodge-and-weave of rectangles: an entryway with host or hostess, a bar with a nest of intimate tables opposite, a passageway, another dining room rich in alcoves, yet another passageway, and a garden. There is a snug, cave-like quality to the layout — it reminded me of a lost beloved, Rendezvous du Monde, which back in the 1990s occupied a similarly burrow-like abode on Bush Street in which splendid food was served.

I could say that Bin 38’s food is as good as Rendezvous du Monde’s. That’s saying something, and it is as good, but what is most immediately notable about the dishes emerging from head chef Matt Brimer’s kitchen is how gorgeously everything is composed and plated. The designs aren’t so fussy that you feel like a Visigoth trashing the treasures of Rome when you start eating them, but they are striking in their combinations of shape, color, and texture. I hesitate to describe food as art, but I hesitate a little less here.

Color is perhaps the most arresting aspect of food that has yet to be eaten, and winter, the bleakest season, offers surprising possibilities to the color-minded chef. Beets, for instance, of gold, ruby, and rose. Bin 38’s roasted-beet salad (part of a $29, three-course prix-fixe) looked like the contents of a jewel box: an array of richly gleaming disks, arranged on mache with dabs of mild, creamy French feta, and scatterings of equally jewel-like pomegranate seeds. The whole thing is dressed with a citronette, basically a vinaigrette made with lemon juice instead of vinegar. The finishing touch was the platter itself, a long narrow rectangle such as might be used for presenting a sushi roll.

Just as colorful was a wide, shallow bowl of hand-cut tagiolini (also a prix-fixe item), ribbons of pasta a little wider than fettucine, tossed with a colorful mélange of spinach, tomato, baby carrot, turnip, and chunks of braised pork, with flavor amendment provided by olio nuovo and square flaps of Parmesan cheese. What was most remarkable about the sauce was the way in which the various ingredients kept their individual identities while managing, at the same time, to become part of a greater whole.

If I mark down the winter salad — again, prix-fixe — a bit, it’s mainly because the color scheme wasn’t quite as intense: Belgian endive (white with hints of green), fennel shreds (white with even fewer hints of green), sprigs of watercress (green but small), sections of blood and mandarin orange (gorgeous), and pink peppercorns (too small to add much visually). The arrangement was appealing, though, with the leaves of endive neatly lined up along the platter like canoes tied up in the marina of a summer camp. Dressing: cherry vinaigrette.

Bin 38 enters the burger derby with the BIN burger ($13), a well-seasoned disk of ground beef enhanced with smoked gouda and mayonnaise, served on an English muffin and presented with a heap of sliced cornichons. You have to order fries separately, which isn’t the worst thing. You might want a small bowl of spiced nuts ($3) instead — better for you — though they’re at least as sweet as spicy. Or you might want neither, if you opened with wild Gulf prawns ($12), served sizzling on a fajitas-like cast-iron platter with chile arbol oil, very spicy, and garlic, and levain slices for mopping up.

Desserts are also arty. A toasted almond panna cotta arrives as little hemispheres that resemble white-chocolate truffles, topped with chunks of strudel, interspersed with blood-orange segments, and bathed with a reduced hibiscus tea that looks as if it leaked out of a joint of beef. Chocolate pudding cake is distinguished mainly by the pat of brown-butter gelato on the side, tasting rather caramely. Hetto heaven!

BIN 38

Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 5:30–10:30 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.; Sun., 5:30–9 p.m.

3232 Scott, SF

(415) 567-3838

www.bin38.com

Beer and wine

AE/DS/MC/V

Wheelchair accessible

Our weekly picks

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WEDNESDAY (24th)

MUSIC

Noise Pop: The Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger

Noise Pop is in full effect, and Sean Lennon manages to pull double duty with the most important ladies in his life, performing with Plastic Ono Band as well as a group that includes his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhr. The latter project, dubbed Ghost of a Saber Toothed Tiger, presents lavish folk songs not too far-flung from Lennon’s solo output, including a few spaced-out covers of that material. But Muhl’s harmonies lend a new depth and tone to the sublime psych gems. Performing under the pseudonyms Amatla and Zargifon, the duo is joined at this performance by members of Cornelius’s band (Keigo Oyamada, Shimmy Hirotaka Shimizu, Yuko Araki), adding to the full sound. (Peter Galvin)

With If By Yes (Petra Hayden and Yuka Honda)

8 p.m., $20

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

MUSIC

Noise Pop: Harlem, Young Prisms

Best party of Noise Pop probably has to be the Harlem show. The Bay Area isn’t trifling when it comes to garage rock, but the Texan trio can hang with the best of them (and in fact, they have some ties to them). They’ve got the best rock ‘n’ roll invocation of Caspar the Friendly Ghost since fellow Austin boy Daniel Johnston, and a handsome guitar sound. And yeah, they have a song called “Psychedelic Tits” that Jayne Mansfield would be proud to dance to regardless of whether Frank Tashlin was watching. They can write about unhappily blasting ABBA in the rain in the South of France and make it sound like the best time. Opening for them are Mexican Summer signees Young Prisms, one of the best new bands in San Francisco. (Johnny Ray Huston)

With Best Coast, the Sandwitches

8 p.m., $12

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

MUSIC

Jimmy Scott and the Jazz Expressions

There is nothing quite like Jimmy Scott singing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” I’ve seen Scott testify when singing this song — even at 85 years old, he grabs hold of it with ferocity. That’s how it is when a song tells the story of your life, and Scott, well he’s the kind of singer who turns a song into a story. Back in the ’60s, Scott brought fearless singing on songs such as “Day By Day.” In recent years, his takes on standards like “All of Me” have had an increased sense of mischievous humor. If you haven’t seen Jimmy Scott live, you should, because there is no one quite like him, and no document of a concert in Tokyo, no matter how enjoyable, can match the experience. (Huston)

8 p.m., $18

Yoshi’s San Francisco

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

THURSDAY (25th)

FOOD/SPOKEN WORD

“In the Defense of Food”

Food. It’s one thing that can bring people together, create tears of joy, make mouths water, and conjure dreams. Although many of us try to fight the temptation to indulge in delectable bites, we are, in fact a society obsessed with savory morsels that bring us to our knees, and keep us begging for more. So let’s talk about it. Poetri, the star of the original Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, will unleash his inner love for food, and top spoken word artists from the Bay Area will also spend the evening praising unforgettable treats. And yes, food sampling and wine tasting are on the menu. (Elise-Marie Brown)

6 p.m., $20 (RSVP required)

Museum of the African Diaspora

685 Mission, SF

(415) 358-7200

www.moadsf.org

DANCE

Robert Moses’ Kin: The Cinderella Principle

When Robert Moses formed his dance company 15 years ago, he called it Robert Moses’ Kin. Moses knows that families today no longer just run along bloodlines. Nontraditional, blended, interracial, same-sex, single parent, no-kids families have become common. Hence The Cinderella Principle: Try These On to See If They Fit, an hour-long, full company work for which he collaborated with playwright Anne Galfour. The choreographic impetus came from interviews with people who are engaged in redefining kinship. Since dance companies often refer to themselves as family, Cinderella seems a particularly appropriate subject for a choreographer to undertake. The live music by Todd Reynolds includes beat boxer Kid Beyond. Cinderella will be joined by two works from 2008, Toward September and Hush. (Rita Felciano)

8 p.m (also Fri/26-Sat/27), $20-35.

Yerba. Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

VISUAL ART

Jill Storthz: Woodcuts

San Francisco has a lot of artists, but how many artists have San Francisco in heart and mind? Jill Storthz does — she’s written about the city’s influence on her work’s “splintered ramshackle quality entwined with colored light, earth, and space. Points for use of the word ramshackle, no doubt, but Storthz’s woodcuts have a lightness and grace to them, and the piece on the postcard for her latest show is rich with color in a manner that doesn’t listlessly parrot Mission School motifs. Storthz doesn’t draw within the lines of color theory — in other words, her art is distinct, not derivative. (Huston)

5:30–7 p.m. (through March), free

The Grotto

490 2nd St, SF

www.jillstorthz.com

www.sfgrotto.org

FRIDAY (26th)

ART/PHOTOGRAPHY

Third Annual International Juried Plastic Camera Show

What happened to the days when a basic point-and-shoot camera with film could make life exciting? We didn’t have the option of viewing photos instantly — instead, we had to march over to the one-hour photo and wait as our roll of film was developed. Whether the pictures came out in focus or not, the whole point was to document a moment in time when something worthy of a photo took place. At the Juried Plastic Camera Show, renowned photographers will showcase their work with the use of low-grade cameras — sans all the fancy equipment — and unveil beautiful pieces at that. (Brown)

6 p.m., free

RayKo Photo Center

428 Third St., SF

(415) 495-3773

www.raykophoto.com

MUSIC

Noise Pop: Atlas Sound

Buffalo Springfield died so that we might have Neil Young, and Peter Gabriel gave up the ghost with Genesis so his angelic 1980s pipes could blast from the boombox of an adolescent John Cusack. Sometimes branching off is a good idea. So it is with the music of Atlas Sound, the more-than-side project of Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox. The group’s recent album Logos (Kranky/4AD, 2009) is a hodgepodge of druggy, reverbed, and blissed-out beauty recorded whenever, wherever, and with whatever from 2007 to 2009. (Brady Welch)

With Geographer, Magic Wands, Nice Nice

8 p.m., $16-18

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.noisepop.com

FILM

Downstream

As recent entries The Book of Eli, The Road (2009), and I Am Legend (2007) have demonstrated, it’s easy to nuke a fascinating sci-fi genre into ponderous, sentimental meh-ness. (Not every postapocalyptic film can be as cool as 1979’s Mad Max.) Self-distributed Downstream avoids the heart-tugging route, for the most part: after his scientist father is killed, a boy grows up to be a straggly-haired drifter in a ravaged world where there’s no gas and very few women (thanks to cancers caused by genetically altered food). His one hope is of finding a rumored city kept civilized by clean energy. Its over-reliance on split-screen can be distracting, but Downstream deserves props for approaching dystopia from an intriguingly green perspective. (Cheryl Eddy)

Fri/26-Sat/27, 8 p.m.; Sun/28, 7 p.m.; $12

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

(415) 863-7576

www.downstreamthemovie.com

MUSIC

Brian McKnight, Lalah Hathaway

Tonight, two respected R&B singers come together in one of the most soulful towns. Brian McKnight has made an imprint with his singing and songwriting on such hits as “Back at One” and “Anytime.” He also plays nine instruments. His timeless voice is an inspiration to several of today’s R&B singers. Opening for McKnight is Lalah Hathaway, daughter of the legendary Donny Hathaway. Her buttery alto tone is reminiscent of her father’s voice, but she injects her own timbre and control into every note. (Lilan Kane)

8pm, $50–$75

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 302-2277

www.thefoxoakland.com

SATURDAY (27th)

EVENT

Monster Jam

A stampede of horsepower comes thundering into the Bay Area today as the Monster Jam series of monster truck races and events hits Oakland, featuring ground-shaking custom creations such as “Iron Man,” “Donkey Kong,” “Maximum Destruction,” and the long-running fan favorite “Grave Digger.” Spectators will be treated to both races and full-on “freestyle” events — where the 10,000 pound muscle machines fly through the air at distances up to 130 feet and reach heights up to 35 feet in the air — not to mention crushing cars aplenty. Get in touch with your inner gear-head and speed on over to the Coliseum early, where a pit party precedes the night’s main events, allowing fans to get up close and personal with the burly beasts. (Sean McCourt)

3 p.m. pit party, 7 p.m. main event; $7.50–$30 ($125 for an all access pass)

Oakland Coliseum

7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl.

(800) 745-3000

www.monsterjam.com

MUSIC

California Honeydrops

It’s cold season, so if you are experiencing a sore throat, grab some California Honeydrops. Their music makes you feel good. Originating in the Oakland subway stations in 2007, California Honeydrops has played worldwide. Led by vocalist and trumpeter Lech Wierzynski, the band embraces roots, blues, and New Orleans-style horn lines to create a modern sound with a traditional influences. The playful rhythm section includes Chris Burns on the keys, drummer Ben Malament, and bassist Seth Ford-Young, with spicy shouts from saxophonist Johnny Bones. Bring your dancing shoes. (Kane)

$10–$15, 7:30 and 9 p.m.

Red Poppy Art House

2698 Folsom, SF

(415) 826-2402

www.redpoppyarthouse.org

ART/FILM

Cartune Xprez: 2010 Future Television

Combine images of old Sunday morning cartoons, live video theater, and psychedelic colors and shapes into a cosmic video and you’ve got Cartune Xprez: an out-of-body dream sequence come to life. Many of the directors will be on hand to explain the concepts for their work, so don’t be scared if you misinterpret their tour de force. Artists who have presented at Cartune Xprez in the past include Shana Moulton, Day-Glo maniacs Paper Rad, and collage visionary Martha Colburn. (Brown)

8 p.m., $5

LoBot Gallery

1800 Campbell, Oakl.

www.lobotgallery.com

SUNDAY (28th)

EVENT/LIT

“Meet Ann Bannon: Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction”

Pulp fiction isn’t just Tarantino kitsch. For pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian writers, the creation of pulp titles with something more — a way to forge community, share desires, and spark imagination. For some, if not all, this meant pulp was a political act. It would be difficult to find a better representative of lesbian pulp fiction than Ann Bannon, whose five-volume Beebo Brinker Chronicles has seen numerous reprints and recently inspired a stage play. In conjunction with the West Coast premiere of the stage version of Beebo Brinker, Bannon is coming to town for a tea party. Heat it up and add honey. (Huston)

1 p.m., $20–$40

Brava Theater Center

2789 24th St., SF

(415) 641-7657

www.brava.org The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Brick by brick

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Brick by brick

TOY-NAMATION Denmark has given us so much. In the past few decades alone it has gifted the world with live-sex club acts, Brigitte Nielsen, breakfast pastries, and Lars “Antichrist” von Trier. In 1969 it became the first country to legalize pornography, and two decades later did likewise for same-sex marriage. It is also currently designated the least corrupt nation on earth, with the greatest income equality.

But predating all these wonders was that cultural juggernaut we call Lego. Toymaker Ole Kirk Christiansen named his company that in 1934; 15 years later, he began producing interlocking plastic bricks, though it was not until 1958 that the perfected current design debuted. (Thus, 52-year-old blocks remain compatible with ones you could buy today.) In 1988, Lego Group’s last patent on its fortune’s literal building block expired, resulting in a rash of cheap imitations, most manufactured in (surprise) China. But a Lego is a Lego is a Lego. Like Kleenex, it is a brand name more familiar than the object’s literal description. What five-year-old wants his “interlocking plastic brick”?

This week sees the (direct-to-DVD) release of the first feature-length Lego movie. The first thing you notice about Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers is that there’s been some heinous error: how can this not be stop-motion animation, but CGI?! What’s the point if we’re not seeing actual crazy Legos-constructed figures moving around an all Lego-landscape?

That said, it does sport a certain blocky design theme, and the early-1980s Cars-type songs with handclaps and synths seem just right. Clutch is an all-American, thrill-seeking, planet-saving blowhard who learns the value of teamwork by being forced to cooperate with a girl (plucky!), musclehead (jerky!), and egghead (German!) on an intergalactic voyage to defeat an evil wizard and his army of skeleton warriors. There’s a little Indiana Jones here, a little Shrek there, a lotta Lord of the Rings hither and yon.

But these 82 innocuous minutes are just a blip in the ever-widening Lego cosmos, which includes umpteen subsidiary toy franchises, clothes, video games, books, theme parks, “Lego Serious Play” (for business consensus-building!), and independent uses that run from elaborate Lego reconstructions of live action movies to epic online biblical illustration The Brick Testament.

Legos are timeless and cool. The company is laudable, not just for inviting action and imagination from kids, but for being a good global citizen. Lego’s corporate responsibility bylaws regarding environmental impact, charitable contributions, and treatment of workers are the sort of “socialist” stuff that would be lobbied out of existence here in five seconds. Oh, those Scandinavians — when will they realize all their prosperity, public benefits, and high overall happiness index is really a living hell in sheep’s clothing? Surely they need an angry Tea Party movement to protest a society that actually takes care of its own. 

www.legoclutchpowers.com

The war on suburbs? Huh?

Zelda Bronstein
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The war on suburbs? Huh?

Joel Kotkin, the author and urban scholar, was on KQED’s Forum this morning talking about what he called “the war on the suburbs.” He’s got a new book out, called The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, and he’s arguing, among other things, that the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts signals that the Democratic Party and progressives in America have lost touch with the suburbs and are being mean to the poor suburbanites.


He talked, for example, about Tracy, California, and noted that a suburbanite living in Tracy doesn’t want to pay taxes because he doesn’t see what he’s getting for his money. Kotkin sugggestes that the state ought to go back to the Pat Brown era, and focus on spending money on infrastructure, instead of on “state employee pensions.”


Never mind that when Pat Brown was governor, the population of California was less than half what it is today — and the state was far less diverse, had far fewer immigrants, far fewer residents whose primary language is not English and, frankly, was a lot more tolerant of poverty.


That was also before the passage of Prop. 13, so the state didn’t have to spend money on schools and local government; local property taxes covered those things.


In fact, I think what’s going on is just the opposite of what Kotkin is talking about. (He, by the way, says that suburbs are going to be more and more sustainable as more jobs relocate and we start using natural gas in our cars.) I realize that suburban voters can easily shift to the Republican party if the Democrats aren’t careful, but I also think that what’s happening in the United States today is not a war on suburbs but a war on cities.


The state and federal governments have systematically defunded urban America for more than 30 years now, and we’re paying the price. The hypothetical suburbanite in Tracy may think he’s not getting his money’s worth, but the truth is just the opposite; the suburbs — typically, not always but typically — have better-funded schools, better maintained streets, better sewage systems, less crime … and less of an income gap among residents.


Cities are, and will remain, America’s future, and we ignore that at our peril.  


 

Rambling Jerry Brown speech raises fear among Dems

Sasha Cuttler
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Rambling Jerry Brown speech raises fear among Dems

If Jerry Brown’s keynote speech last night to a gala environmentalist dinner is any indication, the Democratic Party faces an uphill battle to win this year’s governor’s race. The rambling, alternately vague and academic, and often pointless address did little to inspire or excite a large, sympathetic crowd that was loaded with top Democrats. In fact, some party luminaries were openly aghast at the poor performance, with one making this succinct (if off-the-record) assessment: “We’re fucked.”

Brown has never been a dynamic speaker, but the unscripted, half-hour speech – given at the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter’s David Brower Dinner in San Francisco, a $250 per head affair that drew top Bay Area Democrats – illustrates the danger of letting a primary be decided by legend and money rather than political persuasion.

Brown’s fundraising prowess and strong poll numbers chased Gavin Newsom and other potential rivals out of the Democratic Party gubernatorial primary, even though Brown hasn’t really outlined his political vision for California, given many extended speeches since being discussed as a candidate for governor, or even officially declared his candidacy (he and others have until March 12 to do so).

“This thing is really daunting,” Brown said of the governor’s race toward the end of the speech, seemingly unsure that he was ready to run, but saying he would make an announcement sometime in the next couple weeks.

Brown started his speech by telling the crowd that he didn’t know what he was going to talk about, so when he arrived (late) for the speech, he asked San Francisco Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin what he should say, and Peskin told him to talk about how there were more salmon in the streams and better overall environmental health back when Brown was governor in the ‘70s.

But rather than taking that advice and giving a forceful call to strengthen environmental regulation or conjure up California’s better days, Brown meandered around and mused on that and other topics, feeding fears that the 71-year-old candidate might come off as a nostalgic, slightly senile former-Governor Moonbeam rather than an effective agent of needed change.

“During that period when I was governor, I’m not going to call it the golden age because some people think I’m in the golden age, so I don’t want to get people confused. That’s why I don’t want to talk about way back then, because there are a number of people I can see weren’t even born then, so it gets a little embarrassing and I like to pretend it was just yesterday. But in that period, California created almost twice as many jobs as the nation did. We created jobs at about 24 percent over eight years and the nation grew jobs at 13 percent, so almost twice as much. And then Deukmejian did pretty good, he had about the same, maybe half a percent more,” Brown rambled, ticking off statistics, hedging his point by noting how little governors can really do to create jobs, before working up to a decent line that was flatly delivered: “It was a time when the environment got its biggest boost, as far as public policy.”

Nobody applauded, so he continued. “I was thinking tonight, I was trying to figure out that if I did announce, what the hell would I say? And so I decided to go back and read my first announcement, January 24, 1974. I was 35 then, it was another time, I’m now a little older than that. But I talked about clean air, I talked about the energy crisis and getting new sources of energy. I talked about statewide land use planning” – that last item drawing some applause – “and I talked about jobs. And I was thinking, wow, we still got a jobs problem, we got an energy problem, we have a land use problem that feeds into the energy problem, and while the air is cleaner in many respects, it’s not clean enough, or it isn’t healthy enough.”

On substance, Brown had his moments. But even on the need for better statewide land use planning, he went off on a tangent, saying he didn’t even know what that meant when he filled out a Sierra Club questionnaire back in the ‘70s, and he’s not sure how to accomplish it now. 

“You have to make it easier to live closer to where you work,” Brown said in what of his few lines of the night that drew applause, although he didn’t begin to explain how he might achieve this goal. And on a controversial subject that is easily attacked by the right – big government wants more control over private property – Brown’s lackadaisical discussion of the issue was disconcerting.

He even rankled a few Sierra Club members by vaguely criticizing East Bay growth controls designed to reduce sprawl, which the Attorney General’s Office is seeking to overturn: “Pleasanton wants to create 50,000 jobs, but they have a housing cap – for all I know, Sierra Club probably supported that housing cap, so I want to just rub your nose in the housing cap for just a minute – the trouble with the housing cap is they want to create all these jobs.”

Brown tried to argue that allowing more housing in Pleasanton is a strategy for combating global warming because there are jobs there and it would reduce commutes, but he’s going to need to be more on his game than he is right now to win that argument. Instead, we get his fairly dismissive summary of this important issue: “Land use is a big deal, it’s difficult, lots to do on that.”

Against businesswoman Meg Whitman, the Republican gubernatorial primary frontrunner, there is real potential in Brown’s basic belief that markets need to be regulated and that running the government isn’t just like running a business. And somehow, Brown will need to find a way to better distill and deliver that message to counter the right’s pro-business sound bites. 

“There are people saying business knows best,” Brown said, meandering off about companies and widgets for a minute before continuing his point. “But when you look at what we really have to deal with, it’s not just about economics and the market. It’s also about ecology and morality, and morality is about customs, it’s about traditions, it’s about our deepest patterns of how we all relate to one another and that can’t just be assimilated into market incentives. The market assumes honesty, you meet your promises, and also assumes there’s a framework, because things can just run off the cliff and that’s exactly what’s happening. As you add more people, you have more cars, and when you have more cars, they burn fossil fuel and what’s happening in California is you have cars reproducing faster than people…That’s the real challenge here, that we’re trying to get the idea out that we’re trying to save the future.”

Nerdcore rising: Mc Frontalot represents

John Elberling
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Nerdcore rising: Mc Frontalot represents

By Nima Maghame

They say hip-hop is about who you represent. Gangster rap glorifies cheap women and expensive cars. But rapper MC Frontalot, who performs Mon/15 at Cafe du Nord, represents an entirely different group of people who are more into computer software and Internet jokes then cash and hoes.

Originally from San Francisco, the former software programmer has been carving his own niche of rap with a movement he dubs “nerdcore.” And he’s not alone when it comes to spitting rhymes about geek life. Over the past decade, nerdcore has been rising; MC Chris, MC Lars and Ytcracker (who will be performing on Feb 21st at Bottom of the Hill), Jesse Dangerously, Futuristic Sex Robots and a host of other nerd lyricists have posted mp3s of songs with topics ranging from Star Wars characters to role-playing games.

While the Internet has embraced the artists, mainstream audiences are finding it hard to relate. Swinging back and forth from depicting geek fantasies to humorous self-deprecation, rappers like MC Frontalot speak to a generation plugged-in. His corky flow bounces up and down to instrumentals that sample sounds from all over the musical map. The upbeat music moves naturally with the MC’s thesaurus-filled rhymes. Fans understand the meaning to words like Fap, MMPOG and Mud cards, but Frontalot has been persistent in getting nerdcore heard by new ears. He is releasing his fourth album, Zero Day, in April. The first single “Your Friend Wil” — about Star Trek star and Just a Geek author Wil Wheaton — is already available for download.

“I really felt like coming back to nerdcore-as-a-movement on this one, which I feel I’ve gone away from in past albums,” says Frontalot, who includes a slew of featured nerd rappers on Zero Day.

San Francisco is one stop on a countrywide tour for Frontalot, and he has a documentary out, Nerdcore Rising, which chronicles his first album release. Time will tell if that title stays true.

 

MC FRONT A LOT

8 p.m., $10

Cafe du Nord

2174 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

MC LARS, YTCRACKER

With k. flay

Sun/21, 10 p.m., $10-12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th, SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

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