Castro

The four men in “The Iron Mask”

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When The Iron Mask screens at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, four disparate cinematic personalities will merge – three in spirit and one in the flesh.

Now 68, Kevin Brownlow made his first feature film, 1966’s It Happened Here, while in his 20s and subsequently published two books, one (How It Happened Here) on the making of that movie and another (The Parade’s Gone By) featuring interviews with silent-era filmmakers and stars. At that time, the silent era was almost like a technical glitch to be overcome and forgotten. But Brownlow would soon help immortalize great early works through his interviews and his pioneering skills as a restorer.

At the Castro Theatre, Brownlow (the recipient of the SF Film Society’s Mel Novikoff Award, whose latest movie, Cecil B. DeMille: American Epic, also screens at this year’s festival) will present 1929’s The Iron Mask. That movie’s star, Douglas Fairbanks, had an effortlessly cheery, energetic onscreen persona, performing his own, Jackie Chan-like stunts. He also ran a tight ship offscreen, controlling nearly every aspect of his business empire. When Fairbanks began planning his extravagant 1922 film Robin Hood, with its record million-dollar budget, director Allan Dwan landed in the driver’s seat. A crackerjack action man, Dwan could keep up with Fairbanks and move things at a brisk pace; Dwan would go on to direct about 400 films, most of them considerably cheaper.

Fairbanks hired Dwan once again for The Iron Mask, a follow-up to 1921’s The Three Musketeers in which Fairbanks would reprise his role as D’Artagnan. The film is not without its breezy, exciting moments, but by this time Fairbanks was 46 and beginning to slow down. He seemed to understand that his antics no longer coincided with the times; his D’Artagnan is a bit long in the tooth and meets a less heroic ending than does the typical Fairbanks hero. Concurrently, talkies had begun to draw the curtain on silent pictures. Fairbanks recorded two talking interludes for the film, which only add to its heartbreaking, elegiac nature. When The Iron Mask was restored, the great modern composer Carl Davis, whose work currently graces a number of silent movies on DVD, recorded a 42-piece orchestral score worthy of the film’s energy and its melancholy. Fortunately, as Brownlow will no doubt demonstrate, it’s possible to see the film with new eyes. In that, there’s no reason to be sad. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

CECIL B. DEMILLE: AMERICAN EPIC Sat/28, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

THE IRON MASK: AN AFTERNOON WITH KEVIN BROWNLOW Sat/28, 2 p.m., Castro. $9-$12

KEVIN BROWNLOW: AN INTRODUCTION TO SILENTS Sun/29, 5:30 p.m., PFA

Do you remember your first time?

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Of the hundreds of thousands of feature movies made in the past century, how many were spectacular debuts? Maybe 30? Reason decrees that we can’t expect the 11 first features that make up this year’s SKYY Prize nominees to be brilliant; frankly, they’re not. Yet it was little more than a handful of years ago that the San Francisco International Film Festival’s SKYY jury awarded its prize to Jia Zhang-ke’s Xiao Wu, a debut that marked the beginning of one of the most masterful filmmaking careers in the world today.

Two of this year’s nominees, Kim Rossi Stuart’s Along the Ridge, from Italy, and Pavel Giroud’s The Silly Age, from Cuba, owe a debt to one of the great debut films, Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Truffaut’s look at boyhood gone awry has secured the template for a half century of coming-of-age films, but like the biopics that overtake screens and vie for awards at the end of each year, such efforts have become too familiar. Aren’t personal stories supposed to be one of a kind, like snowflakes? Perhaps if you’ve seen one snowflake, you’ve seen ’em all.

Nominating Horace Ahmad Shansab’s Zolykha’s Secret, from Afghanistan, was probably some big-hearted gesture of goodwill, but by Western standards, it’s a painfully clumsy affair. Similarly, Xiaolu Guo’s How Is Your Fish Today?, from China, and John Barker’s Bunny Chow, from South Africa, go nowhere fast.

Bay Area native and Golden Horse Award winner Daniel Wu has turned from acting to a comedic directing debut, The Heavenly Kings. Though he treads on sacred Spinal Tap territory with his phony rockumentary idea, he and his friends Conroy Chan Chi-Chung, Andrew Lin, and Terence Yin actually went through with the indignity of being in a boy band called Alive, recording and performing to conjure up material for this film. Only one of them can sing, and none of them can dance, but that doesn’t matter in today’s music industry, which relies on stylists, choreographers, and hired fans – not to mention Internet scandals – for success. The Heavenly Kings is certainly scathing, even if it’s only sporadically funny. (The best line involves African rainforests.)

I suspect that Marwan Hamed’s The Yacoubian Building, from Egypt, is also trying to be funny, but it tries to be too many other things as well. Based on a beloved novel by Alaa’ al-Aswany and sprawling to almost three hours, it’s stuck between pleasing the novel’s fans and appealing to new audiences, an impasse that results in heavy exposition and a kind of middling pace that makes time crawl. But it’s also full of sweeping crane and dolly shots, and as with films such as The English Patient, its gargantuan scale will impress some viewers. Jean-Pascal Hattu’s 7 Years, from France, is a bit more daring in its depiction of a woman who falls in love with her incarcerated husband’s prison warden. But it dabbles in Bressonian artificiality without achieving a Bressonian sense of grace.

In surveying this year’s SKYY Prize nominees, perhaps it’s best to search for glimpses of genius or inspiration that could possibly lead to more interesting follow-ups. Joachim Trier’s Reprise, from Norway, has many such glimpses, thanks to frenetic flashbacks that recall everything from Run Lola Run to Snatch and Human Traffic and also due to its discriminating taste in vintage punk music. But when the film’s narrative returns to the present, it begins to wallow in a kind of maudlin, navel-gazing dopiness that kills the initial buzz. Tariq Teguia’s Rome Rather Than You, shot in Algeria, couples startling cinematic brilliance with highly irritating patches of indulgence. Its tale of an Algerian pizza chef who applies for a visa to move to Italy is like a tantalizing mystery house with long, winding passages that lead nowhere. Unfortunately, even Teguia appears to get confused from time to time.

Finally, on the very crest of the much-discussed Mexican new wave, Francisco Vargas outplays all first-time peers with his magnificent The Violin, set in the 1970s. Violinist Don Plutarco (Don Angel Tavira) can only play by strapping his bow to his handless stump. As his guerrilla son fights a secret battle against the ruling military regime, Plutarco winds up serenading a sensitive (but still sinister) captain. Vargas shoots in luscious black-and-white, switching between handheld camera for tense moments and static shots during rest periods that still manage to be breathtaking. In one amazing sequence, Plutarco sits by a campfire and explains the origin of war to his grandson while Vargas slowly, slowly tracks over smoldering coals. But it’s Tavira’s gaping, withered face that gives the movie its mileage. He’s 81, and it’s his first acting job. How’s that for a debut? (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

ALONG THE RIDGE (Kim Rossi Stuart, Italy, 2006). May 5, 4:15 p.m., Clay. Also May 7, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 9 p.m., Kabuki

BUNNY CHOW (John Barker, South Africa, 2006). Sat/28, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/29, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki

THE HEAVENLY KINGS (Daniel Wu, Hong Kong, 2006). Fri/27, 9:45 p.m., Castro. Also Sun/29, 6 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 5 p.m., Kabuki

HOW IS YOUR FISH TODAY? (Xiaolu Guo, China/UK, 2007). Sun/29, 8:15 p.m., PFA. Also May 5, 12:30 p.m., SFMOMA; May 7, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki

REPRISE (Joachim Trier, Norway, 2006). Fri/27, 5 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 6, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 9 p.m., Clay; May 8, 9:30 p.m., Aquarius

ROME RATHER THAN YOU (Tariq Teguia, Algeria/France/Germany, 2006). Fri/27, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 5, 2 p.m., Kabuki; May 6, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 6:30 p.m., Aquarius

7 YEARS (Jean-Pascal Hattu, France, 2006). May 5, 9:30 p.m., Clay. Also May 7, 7 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 1 p.m., Kabuki

THE SILLY AGE (Pavel Giroud, Cuba/Spain/Venezuela, 2006). Sun/29, 8:15 p.m., SFMOMA. Also May 2, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 3, 1 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki

THE VIOLIN (Francisco Vargas, Mexico, 2006). May 4, 3:15 p.m., Clay. Also May 6, 6 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki

THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING (Marwan Hamed, Egypt, 2006). May 6, 2 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 9, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 10, 7 p.m., Kabuki

ZOLYKHA’S SECRET (Horace Ahmad Shansab, Afghanistan, 2006). May 5, 5:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 8, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki; May 6, 5 p.m., SFMOMA

On tone’s tail

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> a&eletters@sfbg.com

With that inimitable San Franciscan condescension toward anything too popular, various eyes rolled skyward when the SF Film Society announced the tributees at the 50th SF International Film Festival would include the two most famous Hollywood-type people who live hereabouts, George Lucas and Robin Williams. Like a canyon-echoed foghorn, bass exhalations of "borrrrrr-ing" filled select pockets of local airspace. But really, wouldn’t those same naysayers be wondering aloud whether the fest lacked sufficient clout if it hadn’t pulled such big guns for its 50th anniversary?

Intellectual purists might think fondly of the SFIFF’s 1987 tribute to Hungarian Gyorgy Szomjas or of 2004’s ahead-of-the-cusp Malaysian cinema showcase, but the festival has always courted and attracted celebrities. If inventors could perfect a time machine, there’d be a huge queue to revisit some of its earliest stellar events.

World cinema giants passed through the SFIFF’s gates from its beginning in 1957, when it was local theater owner Bud Levin’s all-volunteer baby and veteran Hollywood star Franchot Tone played the role of MC. But the press was naturally always more intrigued by visiting stars, nubile starlets, and what designer couture socialites wore to gala events. Indeed, as the ’60s evolved, fashion and the bountiful femininity it decreasingly cloaked often overshadowed public discussion of Luis Bunuel, Jean-Luc Godard, and John Cassavetes. A near-topless North Beach dancer known as Exotica riveted attention in 1964, the same year several Playmates of the Month attended. Actress Carroll Baker’s see-through ensemble did the trick in 1966, while the suicidally plunging neckline of uninvited guest Jayne Mansfield meant she was asked to leave. The same year, festival chairperson Shirley Temple Black quit to protest the inclusion of the Swedish feature Night Games, which she considered pornographic.

In 1965 the late SFIFF program director Albert Johnson commenced an extraordinary series of epic afternoon tributes to Hollywood legends. No one else was doing such events, so he got the cream of the back-harvested crop: Gene Kelly, Lillian Gish, Howard Hawks, Henry Fonda, Rita Hayworth, Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, John Huston, Frank Capra, and more. Soon everyone began imitating Johnson’s clips-and-chat template.

But the SFIFF was hardly done with lassoing big names both nostalgic and current. The 1975 festival featured the strange-bedfellow roll call of Shelley Winters, Dyan Cannon, Natalie Wood, Jack Nicholson, Robert Evans, Burt Lancaster, Roger Vadim, Gale Sondergaard, and Merv Griffin. In 1979, Sir Alec Guinness, still basking in Lucas-bestowed glory, was honored in the festival’s first (and last, to date) opening-night tribute. Among the glittering attendees were O.J. Simpson and then-girlfriend Nicole Brown. How sweet.

Due in part to an increasingly cutthroat festival landscape, in recent years the SFIFF has tilted toward sober rather than silly celebrity visitors. Tabloid types now need it even less than it needs them. Still, there have been felicitous highlights among latter-day tributes: Fillmore resident Winona Ryder’s refreshing public dis of one local print gossip hound as "a parasite"; Clint Eastwood’s lovely penchant for crediting collaborators whenever he was faced with a direct compliment; Annette Bening shouting anecdote prompts to onstage spouse Warren Beatty; Geena Davis admitting that unlike most self-conscious actors, she loves to watch herself onscreen.

Less ingratiating moments are often memorable for what they reveal about a beloved (or not) figure. Dustin Hoffman’s bizarre ramblings in 2003 reminded me of the tribute to a ditzy Elizabeth Taylor that I’d witnessed at a festival in Taos, NM, a couple years earlier. I’ve never felt such pained sympathy for an interviewer as during Harvey Keitel’s curt cutoff of every respectful Q&A path during a 1996 event. Then there was the time Sean Penn’s ever-so-rebellious cussin’ before a full house at the Kabuki Cinema sent Robin Wright storming out with kids in tow just minutes into his 1999 tribute.

The SFIFF is never going to be the kind of festival Paris Hilton feels she need attend. But even the talented are capable of charmingly awkward – and just awkward – moments. The SFIFF’s awards often cast unexpected light on professionals we’d hitherto identified by their roles; this can make for lurid fun. Still, I prefer it when talents I admire keep their personality flaws off my windshield. Once those bugs get embedded, it’s hard to enjoy a clear view again. *

FILM SOCIETY AWARDS NIGHT May 3, 7:30 p.m., $500-$25,000. Westin St. Francis Hotel. 335 Powell, SF. (415) 551-5190

FILM SOCIETY DIRECTING AWARD: AN EVENING WITH SPIKE LEE May 2, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25. Castro

FIVE-O: STORIES AND IMAGES FROM 50 YEARS OF THE SF INTERNATIONAL May 8, 6:30 p.m., $9-$12. Kabuki

FOG CITY MAVERICKS With George Lucas and others. Sun/29, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25. Castro

PETER J. OWENS AWARD: AN EVENING WITH ROBIN WILLIAMS May 4, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25. Castro

Magic stoned

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> kimberly@sfbg.com

Dream catchers and rainbows. Stately dragons that soar the starry skies as majestically as a space station and more Marshall stacks than you can shake a pewter warlock wand at. Lone wolves and lynx meeting under snowy boughs in untamed, magical communion. Daggers with serpentine handles morphing gently into stalactites and snowflakes. Wizards solemnly lifting crystal balls aloft in triumph, taking a Festival Viking cruise past jagged pink quartz reefs. Look out for a metal band with feathered hair and quasi-KISS face paint rising over the mountain of gold coins.

No, it’s not an old Heart music video but the cheese-coated language of so-called crystal power – and the kitsch iconography that video artist Kelly Sears works with in her 2004 animated short, Crucial Crystal, one of three she will show as part of "Notes to a Toon Underground." Xiu Xiu, Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, William Winant, Tommy Guerrero, Marc Capelle, and Guardian contributor Devin Hoff are among those providing the live musical accompaniment and original scores to 15 animated works by Sears, Jim Trainor, Wladyslaw Starewicz, David Russo, and Emily and Georgia Hubley.

The pieces originate from anywhere between 1912 and 2005, though some such as Crucial Crystal mine a high-low quarry that’s both timeless (power chords are forever) and already dated in rapid-cycling retro-hipster circles (truck stop lone-wolf imagery naturally begat those interminable wolf band names). It’s done to comic effect, propping up and sending up its subject simultaneously. "When you take a sampling of crystals, black metal, Marshall stacks in the snow, dream catchers, and New Age and nu metal imagery like that and collect them into one big fantasyscape in some impossible universe, it reads as superdated," Sears says over the phone from Pitzer College in Claremont, where she works as the director of production in intercollegiate media studies. "If it was made now, it would have a whole new crop of contemporary pop images that would go in it: a lot of ’70s recycled stuff and a lot of hair."

Hard-rocked and rainbow-hued, Crucial Crystal broke off from a band project, Sexy MIDI, that found Sears making videos to accompany her orchestra pit-style re-creations of MIDI covers gathered online. She culled her crystal fantasia from similar free-source locales: "It was about getting really democratic, finding those images," the 29-year-old animator says, laughing brightly. "The philosophy was, if Google image search doesn’t have it, I don’t want it!"

That hunting-gathering impulse also informs the other Sears works in "Notes": Devil’s Canyon (2005), a wryly surreal and unexpectedly poetic ode to America’s cowboy romance with expansionism and industry, which Sears describes as a "completely fantastical, dystopic manifest-destiny story of the West," and The Joy of Sex (2003), a hilariously solemn animation of the sex manual’s 1991 update.

She found the tossed tome while she was working on her MFA at UC San Diego and liked the idea of animating the book’s images of a conservatively coiffed post-Reagan-era couple in the throes of damped-down passion, using restrained, minute motions accompanied by a flattened MIDI cover of "I Want to Know What Love Is" (it will be given a new score at "Notes"). "I’m really about saving things that got thrown away," she says. "That’s why I look for imagery in thrift stores and garage sales. I really like the idea that the story told by this imagery isn’t functioning anymore and has been cast aside. It’s ready to be picked up and transformed into some sort of new story that could possibly be more relevant now."

Sears’s aesthetic may radically shape-shift from video to video, but her skill at juggling pop wit with postmodern smarts remains the same. "Kelly comes out of nowhere, but you are reminded of a specific ‘somewhere’ because her signifiers seem universal: appropriated pop and illustrations, a cult following-in-the-making," e-mails Darin Klein, who recently curated a show at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles that included a collaboration between Sears and choreographer Ryan Heffington. "Her sincerity, her technicality, and the thoroughness of her execution hint at a woman who tunes in and never turns off or drops out."

Sears’s fascination with found images emerged from her distaste for the look of digital video and her sensory appreciation of the texture and beauty of old books, National Geographics, and encyclopedias from the ’60s and ’70s. Currently, working on narratives about orgone boxes and men who modify their bodies into machines, she describes her process as "completely time-consuming": it involves scanning hundreds of images, digitally cutting each out, breaking each still into planes that will eventually move, and then working on the images in After Effects and Final Cut. Still, the time and toil appear to be worth it. "It just seems like a really great way to open up some form of culture or history that’s been produced," she says, "and get your two cents in by rearranging the signifiers in a different way." *

NOTES TO A TOON UNDERGROUND May 5, 8:30 p.m., Castro

Bubblegum bandits

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> cheryl@sfbg.com

I’m only a little bit ashamed to admit that I loved Making the Band. No, not the acceptably addictive, Diddy-produced Danity Kane version. I’m talking about the one that birthed O-Town, baby – the quintet of preppy dudes united by boy-band Svengali Lou Pearlmen for three seasons of semi-emotive crooning, thrusting choreography, manufactured drama, and all the *NSYNC coattail riding instant fame could buy. But in the long run, O-Town wasn’t meant to be – how can anyone walk away from a song called "Liquid Dreams" with dignity intact?

The boy-band phenomenon of the early millennium has thankfully faded, but there’s still parody meat enough for Hong Kong heartthrob (and San Francisco native) Daniel Wu, who makes his writing and directing debut with Heavenly Kings. A mock doc that takes itself a bit more seriously than Christopher Guest’s oeuvre (which is to say, there are fewer laughs), Heavenly Kings follows Wu and fellow HK actors Conroy Chan Chi-Chung, Andrew Lin, and Terence Yin as they spontaneously form Alive, a Backstreet Boys-ish singing group. There’s plenty of comedy in the film’s first half, including encounters with a knob-twiddling studio whiz charged with correcting off-key vocals ("I realized they were fucking shit," he says) and Alive’s sneaky strategy of putting their first (and apparently only) single online – then drumming up media attention by pretending to be mystified and outraged by the leak.

How much of Heavenly Kings is real, and how much is fake? Like the 2004 doc Czech Dream, which followed a pair of prankster filmmakers who launched a huge ad campaign for the opening of a supermarket that didn’t actually exist, the members of Alive are pulling the wool over certain eyes (the actors’ fans who attend Alive concerts) but not others (there’s a scene with a tacky, maybe-too-fey clothing designer that’s clearly a scripted affair). Reality is further blurred by interviews with real HK recording stars, who voice concerns about their industry’s lack of integrity. There is, they explain, a discouraging emphasis on superficiality over legitimate art and talent. (Sounds just like America’s idols, don’t it?)

So while there’s a dose of O-Town-style schadenfreude at work in Heavenly Kings – especially when the friendships between the guys break down amid power struggles, malaise, and boozing – the film is also trying to make a salient point about the music biz. Whether or not there’s room for serious commentary in a film top-loaded with goofy montages, animated sequences, and the band’s oft-repeated frothy ditty ("Adam’s Choice" – coming to a karaoke bar near you!) is never really resolved. But Wu and his cohorts get props for sending up their dreamy images in a film that’ll prove most entertaining to folks who’re in on the joke.

THE HEAVENLY KINGS (Daniel Wu, Hong Kong, 2006). Fri/27, 9:45 p.m., Castro. Also Sun/29, 6 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 5 p.m., Kabuki

The silver screen turns gold

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The oldest film festival in the United States and Canada, the San Francisco International Film Festival reaches its golden anniversary this year. Click below for our picks and previews.

Choice words about image culture as the SF International Film Festival hits 50

Take 50: Our picks for the fest

A brief history of star wars and star awards at the SFIFF

This year’s debut fiction features

Better than sex, worse than violence: new French extremism

Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth digs up life amid the ruins

HK hottie Daniel Wu spoofs boy bands (and himself) in The Heavenly Kings

Kelly Sears’s animated shorts crystallize pop-cult preoccupations

The four men in The Iron Mask

Otar, Otar, how does your Garden grow?

50 great movies that have yet to hit the Bay

The 50th annual San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 26-May 10 at Sundance Cinemas Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, SF; Landmark’s Aquarius Theatre, 430 Emerson, Palo Alto; Landmark’s Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore, SF; SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF; McBean Theater, Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF; and El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. For tickets (most regular programs $8-$12) and additional information, go to www.sffs.org.

Take 50

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TAKE 50: SF INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

THURS/26

*Golden Door (Emanuele Crialese, Italy/France, 2006). Epic in scope, playful in its stylistic shifts and tonal splices, and sumptuous in its painterly framing and use of light, Golden Door looks on an age-old American saga – an immigrant family’s crossing from the Old World to the new – with startlingly fresh, impassioned eyes. Director Emanuele Crialese (Respiro) turns his sometimes wry, sometimes tender focus on a band of illiterate Sicilian peasants drawn from their dirt-poor village by pre-Photoshop pictures of giant chickens and trees laden with enormous gold coins. Led by an intrepid yet ignorant patriarch (Respiro‘s Vincenzo Amato) and a comical spiritual fixer of a grandmother (Aurora Quattrocchi), the group is joined in steerage by a cryptic gentlewoman (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Ellis Island and its proto-eugenic experiments await – along with dream sequences that fluidly transmit the otherworldly magic of the villagers’ forthcoming American mystery tour. (Kimberly Chun)

7 p.m., Castro. Opening night film and party at City Hall, $85-$125

FRI/27

Black Sheep (Jonathan King, New Zealand, 2006). Something is going baaaaaad in Lord of the Rings country. The usual science experiment-gone-wrong results in the usual creature rampage, as sheep go George Romero on humans at a rural New Zealand ranch. This jolly, diverting, ultimately too-silly horror comedy from neophyte writer-director Jonathan King is duly funny. Still, it overstays its one-joke welcome by a bleat or three. (Dennis Harvey)

10:45 p.m., Kabuki

*A Few Days Later … (Niki Karimi, Iran, 2006). Already a star from her appearances in Tahmineh Milani’s overwrought – but much beloved – melodramas, Iranian actress Niki Karimi looked to the grand master, Abbas Kiarostami, for directing inspiration. In this, her second feature, she beautifully captures a specific brand of avoidance and understatement. She plays Shahrzad, a mousy graphic designer who becomes distracted at work. At home her answering machine constantly squawks about her family’s health and well-being, and her annoying neighbor (Behzad Dorani, from Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us) keeps parking his giant SUV in her space. To her credit, Karimi never shows the expected hospital scenes, tearful good-byes, or tense confrontations that seem to be looming. Instead, she retreats inside the character’s head and brings the film to a stunningly private conclusion. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

7:15 p.m., PFA. Also Sun/29, 12:15 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/30, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki

Murch (David and Edie Ichioka, England/US, 2006). Codirector Edie Ichioka is a disciple of legendary film and sound editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient), so you know this doc will be nothing less than a glowing portrait. But instead of a simple glorification, it is more an embellished interview (complete with jump cuts during the talking head portions), with Murch using an astounding array of metaphors – besides the obvious "editing is like putting together a puzzle," he also works in painters, sock puppets, kidney transplants, and dream therapy, among others – to explain his approach to his craft. As Murch proves, a talented editor can make a good film great and a great film a masterpiece; it all comes down to an intangible combination of technical skill, sense of rhythm, and artistic instinct. (Cheryl Eddy)

9 p.m., SFMOMA. Also Sun/29, 4:15 p.m., Castro; Tues/1, 1 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 3:30 p.m., PFA

*Slumming (Michael Glawogger, Austria/Switzerland, 2006). Two arrogant yuppie pranksters (August Diehl and Michael Ostrowski) cruise around verbally pigeonholing others, making playthings of them. Meanwhile, a drunken, derelict poet (Paulus Manker) wanders the streets alternately cajoling and ranting at people. When the pranksters find the poet passed out on a bus station bench, they decide to transport him to a similar spot across the border, without a passport. Director Michael Glawogger (Workingman’s Death) and cowriter Barbara Albert achieve a pleasurable quirky quality with their black comedy, carefully guiding it between the precious and the preachy; they sometimes amusingly present a joke’s payoff before the setup. The film passes easily between immaculate cafes and slush-covered highways, but at its center is Manker’s wonderfully cantankerous performance. (Anderson)

9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/28, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 8:30 p.m., SFMOMA; May 7, 6:30 p.m., Aquarius

SAT/28

*All in This Tea (Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht, US, 2006). Tea still has an effete connotation in this country, but David Lee Hoffman is an adventurer of the old order. An unabashed partisan of the fair drink, he regularly travels to China to ferret out farmers and distributors, sampling and savoring the Old World leaves. His dedication is total; we’re hardly surprised when Werner Herzog drops by Hoffman’s Marin home for a spot of tea, because the director is a connoisseur of aficionados, explorers, and cranks. Hoffman is capably eccentric but also unassuming, making All in This Tea a friendly primer. Codirectors Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht bring their usual ethnographic grace to this 10-years-in-the-making project. (Goldberg)

1:30 p.m., PFA. Also Sun/29, 4:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 2, 4 p.m., Kabuki

*At the Edge: New Experimental Cinema (various). Experimental showcases are always an Achilles heel for film festivals big on narrative. They’re often shoehorned with tepid concessions to so-called innovation, although sometimes they yield moments of genuine surprise. This showcase has a bit of both. Paul Clipson’s Super 8 trip of blurred urban lightscapes looks through Stan Brakhage’s kaleidoscope but can’t see beyond it. On the other hand, the sleep of reason produces monsters (slavery, social Darwinism) and some beautiful animation in Atlantis Unbound, in which Lori Hiris morphs her black-and-white charcoal sketches – evoking the mystical art of William Blake or Austin Osman Spare – of 19th-century scientists into slaves, merfolk, and other beings from beyond the pale of the Enlightenment. The banality of evil is also evoked in Xavier Lukomski’s static shots of the serene Drina River Bridge, where, as the voice-over informs us, Bosnians dredged up the victims of genocide. When viewed through a long shot, the horrors of history become more pronounced, given their calm surroundings. (Matt Sussman)

8:30 p.m., PFA. Also Tues/1, 6:15 p.m., Kabuki

*Carved Out of Pavement: The Work of Rob Nilsson On the brink of 70, longtime SF filmmaker Rob Nilsson is astonishingly prolific. No less than four work-in-progress features will be excerpted in this tribute program, including some from the nearly completed "9@Night" series of interwoven fictions made with the Tenderloin Action Group. For all his invention and industry in production, Nilsson hasn’t exactly worked overtime getting his movies seen – except at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where you can count on one or two premiering each fall. The MVFF is copresenting this special show, which will have the filmmaker reviewing a career that stretches back to the mid-’70s SF CineAction collective and 1979’s Cannes Camera d’Or-winning Northern Lights, as well as discussing latter-day digital projects with numerous current collaborators, also present. Excerpts from "9@Night" will also be projected on the SFIFF’s Justin Herman Plaza outdoor screen May 1 to 3. (Harvey)

7 p.m., Kabuki

Fabricating Tom Ze (Decio Matos Jr., Brazil, 2006). Though typically grouped with the explosive Brazilian Tropicalismo movement, Tom Ze has always been too much of an eccentric to fall properly into line. It’s a point made abundantly clear in Fabricating Tom Ze (I still haven’t figured out the title), a generally awestruck doc that makes up for its thin content with plenty of Ze’s indefatigable, abundant speech. Between the interruptions, self-mythologizing, and creative suggestions for the film’s director (all of which Decio Matos Jr. takes), Ze spills over with quixotic, brilliant epigrams on creativity and authenticity. "I have to make a small invention every time I have an idea worthy of becoming music," he reports – as if there were any doubting his inventiveness. (Goldberg)

1 p.m., SFMOMA. Also Tues/1, 8;30 p.m., El Rio; May 6, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 9, 6:30 p.m., Aquarius

*Hana (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2006). Hirokazu Kore-eda’s gentle deconstruction of that venerable institution of Japanese film the samurai movie isn’t too much of a departure from his previous features. Hana also focuses on the small, unexpected sense of community that arises out of idiosyncratic responses to tragedy or, in this case, the public’s hunger for it. It’s 1702, and like other underemployed samurai during peacetime, Sozaemon Aoki (Okada Junichi) is restless, as is the general population, which gorges itself on violent revenge plays and romanticized notions of honor. The pensive Sozaemon is bent on carrying out his duty to avenge his father’s death, even if he seems more at home tutoring the kids in the hardscrabble but lively tenement where he lives. His neighbors, who initially tease him about his lack of guts, eventually rally round his failures – and their own lowly status – and celebrate the humble resolve. To paraphrase resident dimwit Mago (Kimura Yuichi), when life gives you shit, make rice cakes. (Sussman)

4:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 6:45 p.m.; and May 5, 5:45 p.m., PFA

*The Island (Pavel Lounguine, Russia, 2006). Not to be confused with Michael Bay’s jiggly, blow-’em-up, organ-harvesting gesture toward Logan’s Run. If Andrei Tarkovsky’s movies were lit by God, then The Island sets God to work creating an austere black-and-white landscape of unforgiving snow, rocky shores, hills of coal, and blighted driftwood. By all appearances a mad monk but in this reality a truth-talking, faith-healing saint of sorts, Father Anatoly is doing penance on the island for a wartime act that most reasonable deities would excuse. No such luck for this Russian Orthodox overseer – wearisome monastery politics and the teary negotiations of the sick and injured occupy the sooty savant in this elegantly wrought parable, which puts cheesy stateside Biblesploitation big-budgeters such as The Reckoning to shame. (Chun)

4:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 3, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki

Once (John Carney, Ireland, 2006). A genuine sleeper at Sundance, this small Irish indie charmer will be spoiled only if you swallow all advance hype about its purported brilliance. Sometimes nice is quite enough. Real-life singer-songwriters Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova play struggling Dublin musicians, one a native busker still living above Da’s vacuum repair shop, the other a Czech emigre supporting her family by selling flowers on the street. Their slow-burning romance is more musical than carnal, climaxing in a studio recording session. Writer-director John Carney’s film manages to play like a full-blown musical without anyone ever bursting into song. Instead, the appealing original folk rock tunes played and sound-tracked here come off as vivid commentary on a platonic (yet frissony) central relationship. (Harvey)

7:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 6, 9:30 p.m., Clay

Protagonist (Jessica Yu, US, 2006). Jessica Yu, the Oscar-winning director of the 1996 short documentary Breathing Lessons (she also made 2004’s In the Realms of the Unreal, a haunting look at outsider artist Henry Darger), returns with Protagonist, an initially confusing but ultimately fascinating doc about four men who couldn’t be more dissimilar on the surface. How can the themes of classical Greek tragedy link a Mexican bank robber, a German terrorist, a reluctantly gay Christian, and an aggro martial artist? Yu uses puppet interludes, revealing interviews, and a keen eye for detail as she traces their shared stages of provocation, rage, doubt, catharsis, and so on – proving the journey of an antihero has little to do with setting, be it ancient or modern. (Eddy)

6:15 p.m., SFMOMA. Also Mon/30, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/1, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

*Strange Culture (Lynn Hershman Leeson, US, 2006). The duly strange, as yet unresolved case of SUNY Buffalo art professor Steve Kurtz has spurred local filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s best feature to date, a documentary-dramatization hybrid. With the man himself still legally restrained from discussing his circumstances, Thomas Jay Ryan plays Kurtz, who as a founding member of the multimedia Critical Art Ensemble had long made work focusing on social justice issues and the intersection between science and government. To create an exhibition on biotechnology, he acquired for carefully safety-measured display some bacteria samples readily available online. When wife of 27 years Hope (played by Tilda Swinton) unexpectedly died of heart failure in her sleep, emergency medical personnel grew suspicious of these unusual art supplies. Soon FBI personnel evicted the distraught widower from his home, quarantined the entire block, and accused him of possessing bioterrorist weapons of mass destruction during an incredibly cloddish investigation. Kurtz’s real-life colleagues and friends were interviewed in a free-ranging yet pointed feature whose actors also step out of character to articulate their concern about the government’s post-9/11 crackdown on dissent, even the rarefied gallery kind. (Harvey)

6 p.m., Castro. Also May 4, 8: 45 p.m., SFMOMA; May 8, 7 p.m., PFA

SUN/29

The End and the Beginning (Eduardo Coutinho, Brazil, 2006). Picking a small town at random and making a film about its residents can be brave filmmaking. It can also be plain lazy, as is the case with Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho’s directionless profile of rural Aracas, in the state of Paraiba. Unsurprisingly, people being people, he finds great interview subjects, but he doesn’t bother to connect them to one another or to the town. Only their highly region-specific Catholicism provides any unifying thread. And though Coutinho’s not exactly condescending (beyond some slight Kids Say the Darndest Things baiting of his loonier interviewees), there’s an unspoken mandate to keep things simple: his response to one woman’s enticing hint at her failed law practice is to ask about her sewing. (Jason Shamai)

7:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Tues/1, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 3, 4 p.m., Kabuki

*Singapore Dreaming (Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh, Singapore, 2006). With their second feature, Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh have their hearts in the right place while their eyes are on the prize of capturing a postcolonial city-state clutching at the global economy. The gently humorous, humanist realism of Edward Yang comes to mind while watching this husband-and-wife directorial team’s warm, witty depiction of the everyday lives of a working-class Singapore family who live, dream, bicker in pidgin English and Mandarin, and inhale vast quantities of herbal tea in their high-rise project. Pops buys lottery tickets, hoping to move into a slick new condo. Back from his studies in the States, the pampered son is discovering that in go-go Singapore his degree isn’t quite as covetable as it once was, and the beleaguered daughter is in her final trimester, coping with a demanding yuppie boss and a slacker hubby who yearns to be in a carefree rock band and pees in his father-in-law’s elevator. When disaster strikes, no one is thinking about the matriarch, whose only seeming desire is to properly feed and water her brood, but she ends up providing some unexpected feminist substance, rather than sustenance, under the movie’s wise gaze. (Chun)

8:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 4, 1 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 3 p.m., Kabuki

12 Labors (Ricardo Elias, Brazil, 2006). Part Black Orpheus, part 400 Blows, 12 Labors is a Brazilian feature that revisits the myth of Hercules through the story of a motorcycle messenger’s rehabilitation. A kid from a rough part of Sao Paulo, Heracles gets out of juvie and tries to start a new life. To land a job as a motorcycle messenger, he has a trial day with (you guessed it) a dozen jobs to complete. An artist who never knew his father, he also writes origin stories in comic book form, which mystify his coworkers. Though Heracles’s experiences seem tinted with divinity, he inspires worry on the part of the viewer. Since all good myths have moral purpose, this one finally addresses the very current social issue of juvenile delinquency and rehabilitation in urban Brazil. (Sara Schieron)

9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/30, 7 p.m., Kabuki; May 5, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 7, 9:15 p.m., Aquarius

MON/30

*Broken English (Zoe Cassavetes, USA, 2006). "I don’t think Hollywood knows what to do with me," Parker Posey recently opined, despite having a prominent role in Superman Returns. Fortunately for us, Amerindie cinema does still know what to do with her. The SFIFF is hosting a double bill of the pushing-40 actor’s latest, reprising the title figure in Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool sequel Fay Grim and starring in Zoe Cassavetes’s feature debut. Posey is perfect as director-scenarist Cassavetes’s superficially cheery but highly insecure NYC hotelier. Some may think this low-key seriocomedy paces pat single-gal-searching paths – from Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl to Sex and the City – but in its thoughtful nature and serious treatment of a clinical-depression interlude it roams well outside stock terrain. Even if the fade-out waxes a tad improbably happily-ever-after, Posey’s nuanced performance will make you root for it. (Harvey)

6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 2 p.m., Kabuki

Fay Grim (Hal Hartley, USA/Germany, 2006). A decade ago Hal Hartley made his best movie, the practically epic – by this miniaturist’s standards – Henry Fool. By most estimates it’s been downhill ever since. They love him in France – but perhaps he should never have left Long Island. So it was heartening news to hear he was returning to the world of Henry Fool, better still to know the sequel would revolve around the title character’s scrappy, vulnerable abandoned wife, Fay, who provided one of Parker Posey’s finest hours. She’s still good here, natch, but Fay Grim is all over the map – literally. The convoluted story line journeys from a mild farcical take on espionage thrillers to a murkily serious commentary on world politics. It’s watchable, but once again one gets the sense that with Hartley, the wider his focus, the blurrier it gets. (Harvey)

9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 3, 9:10 p.m., PFA

TUES/1

Congorama (Philippe Falardeau, Canada/Belgium/France, 2006). Quebec writer-director Philippe Falardeau’s story of a revolutionary electric car and a sticky-fingered inventor is part of that ever-widening army of films that plant fairly obvious and poorly integrated details into the first act so that later, when the story is retold from another perspective, they reappear with more context to click Aha!-ingly into place. Though some of the big, unwieldy reveals are a lot of fun in a Lost sort of way, they distract from the more prosaic but more satisfying concerns of the film’s smartly drawn characters. The inventor, for instance, is a not particularly likable person who still has a believably loving, humor-filled relationship with his family. Now talk about a novel concept! (Shamai)

6 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 9:15 p.m., PFA; May 6, 6:30 p.m., Aquarius

Private Fears in Public Places (Alain Resnais, France/Italy, 2006). Alain Resnais’s 17th feature is dreamy and sometimes enchanting, though it doesn’t warrant comparison to the knife-sharp moral plays made during his prime, such as Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad. Adapted from a play by Alain Ayckbourn (the two previously collaborated on Smoking and No Smoking), Private Fears in Public Places weaves the love(less) stories of a half dozen Parisians; plotlines intersect, but in light brushes rather than the solemn collisions of Babel and Crash). The artifice Resnais imposes on his film is poetic in miniature – the camera, for example, periodically floats above the set, filming actors as if they were in a dollhouse – but the sum total is stultifying, unhinging an already-adrift narration and making Private Fears in Public Places seem needlessly opaque. (Goldberg)

7 p.m., PFA. Also May 3, 6:15 p.m., Kabuki; May 7, 4 p.m., Kabuki

*Rocket Science (Jeffrey Blitz, USA, 2006). Promising to be the next best coming-of-age cultie with its sure-handed, sharp performances and Freaks and Geeks-like sobriety, Rocket Science finds new agony and indie rock-laced ecstasy in one miserable adolescent’s progress. Or to be specific, one stuttering, 98-pound weakling’s marked, often laugh-out-loud funny lack of progress. The high school years for Hal Hefner (compulsively watchable frail cutie-pie Reece Thompson) seem to be going from bad to sexy once he gets recruited for the school debate team by scarily driven, Tracy Flick-esque champ Ginny (Anna Kendrick). But his travails never quite end even as he attempts to extract nerd revenge and literally find his voice, accompanied by vintage Violent Femmes and hand-clapping quirk pop by Eef Barzelay of Clem Snide. Tapping memories connected to a speech impediment, Spellbound codirector Jeffrey Blitz turns tongue-tied prince Hal’s articulation struggles into the perfect metaphor for every awkward teen’s gropes toward individuation. (Chun)

4 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 4, 6:15 p.m., Clay

Halloween on the Pier

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By Sarah Phelan

Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. Bevan Dufty are apparently speaking again, or at least speaking together to other people. We say this because they just issued a press release saying that they’ve “asked the Port Director to explore the feasibility of having a no-alcohol entertainment event at Piers 30-32 for Wednesday, October 31, 2007.” All of which is City goobledegook, which, roughly translated, means, ‘We want to hold Halloween on the waterfront, but no, you won’t be able to have a stiff drink to take the chilly edge off. ‘

Dang! It’s enough to make a partier want to head inland and hit up a bar in the warm and fuzzy Castro, instead.

Yeah, we know, it’s too early in the process to rain on anyone’s Halloween Parade, and maybe the pier will be fabulous and we can all dress up as Pirates and have friends dressed as the Parrots of Telegraph Hill clinging on our shoulders, yelling “Pretty Polly!” and “Walk the Plank!”, (along with unprintable expletives about how cold they are.) And there’s enough ghosts along the waterfront–sunken ships, dead fishing industries, and the souls of the workers who died building the Bay Bridge–to spook out the whole darn City. Hey, wonder what costume the Gavsta will be wearing this year?

Writing the book on cinematic sound

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Where to start with the work of Ennio Morricone? The composer and musician has scored more than 400 films, so the task for the curious listener, let alone for the intrepid film curator, can be daunting. His most famous soundtracks have become a kind of enduring synecdoche, capable of summoning not just a particular title but an entire genre — think of the evocative power of the ocarina flourish in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Countless others, unearthed from the vaults every few years, are often the only artifacts we have of titles — mostly sexy thrillers and low-budget police procedurals — long since forgotten (see Dagored’s impressive reissue catalog of Morricone’s more obscure Italian scores). The Castro Theatre has assembled a decent pocket guide — Il Maestro for Dummies, if you will — which includes chestnuts such as 1986’s The Mission (his biggest Oscar snub and crossover success) and the more rarely screened and heard, such as Sam Fuller’s 1982 tale of a racist canine, White Dog.

Morricone first garnered international attention for his collaborations with Sergio Leone, in which he underscored the rugged beauty of the director’s lawless western mesas by adding ethereal choirs, noble strings, lilting harpsichord, and fuzz guitars that dart like rattlesnakes across the landscape. It’s an approach perhaps best encapsulated in his gorgeous theme for 1968’s Once upon a Time in the West, also included in the Castro’s lineup.

By that time Morricone had already proven himself to be a protean asset to directors regardless of genre, given his ear for unusual timbres and sensitivity to emotional coloring. He could sum up the tragic cost of liberation in a simple martial tattoo, as he did in Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966), or use his extensive compositional training to achieve twisted, discordant ends, as heard in his score for the 1968 psychological thriller A Quiet Day in the Country.

It is the darker, freakier side of Morricone, deliciously showcased on the 2005 Mike Patton–curated compilation Crime and Dissonance (Ipecac), that has most consistently entranced this listener and could provide enough entries for its own film festival. The Doors-esque theme for Dario Argento’s 1971 giallo Four Flies on Grey Velvet — kicked off with a chaotic drum roll worthy of the Muppets’ Animal — only hints at the bleating, echo-laden trumpet (often played by Morricone himself), cackling snippets of wah-wah guitar, frantic free jazz drumming, and creaking gongs that would later accompany the supernatural goings-on and criminal activities in films such as The Antichrist (1974) and The Cold Eyes of Fear (1971). The score for the latter was the only one Morricone ever performed with his avant-garde orchestral ensemble, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.

His work on these pulpy flicks, like his celebrated spaghetti western scores, are only one facet of the embarrassment of riches constituting Morricone’s oeuvre. To call the honorary Oscar he received at this year’s Academy Awards long overdue is a gross understatement. Hollywood’s acknowledgement seemed almost too little too late for someone who has so profoundly shaped how we hear, and in turn how we see, movies. *

LEGENDARY COMPOSER: ENNIO MORRICONE

April 20–25

See Rep Clock for show info

$6–$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

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Dr. Jang for mayor!

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drjang.jpg

By Tim Redmond

You’ve seen the late-night cable-TV ads. You’ve seen the drag queens portraying him on Halloween in the Castro. He fixes my teeth (well, one of his associates does, but I’ve met The Man.) And now Beth Spotswood wants him to run for mayor!.

I love her candidates list: Brian Boitano, Cheech Marin (“you know what the mayor’s office is missing? A bong”), and — of course — George Clooney (“he’s already broken up with Jennifer Siebel.”) But I’m voting for Dr. Jang.

Hook, line, and Lypsinka

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LIP SERVICE "Why are gay men fascinated with Joan Crawford?" John Epperson, a.k.a. Lypsinka, asks contemplatively over the phone from New York. "One reason I’m drawn to her is because of her face, which is so graphic — beautiful and scary and ridiculous at the same time. It became even more so in the 1950s, and then in the ’60s and the ’70s, it softened somehow."

All alone in a hallowed spot somewhere above great female impersonators from the past who lack a feminist consciousness and contemporary drag queens who don’t know how to act, one finds Lypsinka, the role of a lifetime for Epperson, who translates cinematic gestures to the stage like no other performer. Lypsinka’s new show, The Passion of the Crawford, portrays the great movie star through a different avenue than that used by most post–Mommie Dearest drag queens. The show’s source material is Joan Crawford Live at Town Hall, an onstage interview with Crawford late in her career. "When I moved to New York in 1978," Epperson says, "I remember that across the street from Radio City Music Hall there was a whole window in the Sam Goody store promoting the vinyl recording of Live at Town Hall. It had this multiple Andy Warhol–like image of her, and of course I had to have it."

The Crawford captured on Town Hall is more than a little tipsy. A recent bootleg CD reissue has fun with her awkward asides about planes flying through thunderheads and her many portentous declarations, ending with a remix that splices her comments for maximum comedy: "I wish I were Duke Wayne, really. Barbara Stanwyck feels the same way." Considering Lypsinka’s incredible offstage talent for editing dialogue, it’s safe to assume that The Passion of the Crawford won’t play things straight either.

But in sticking to a thorough portrait of Crawford rather than using dialogue from dozens of movies to form the ultimate movie megadiva, The Passion of the Crawford marks a departure for the peerless Lypsinka, whose visits to San Francisco’s Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint in the ’90s might be the last peaks of an era when there was art instead of just commerce in the Castro. This show returns for its second run at the downtown cabaret mainstay the Plush Room, which is fitting since Epperson mentions the celebrated cabaret return of 75-year-old Marilyn Maye as one recent inspiration.

There’s a fun irony to a phone chat with Epperson, the real voice behind the lip-synching star of some of the most hilarious phone call scenes ever staged, and by the end of our interview, we’re as tipsy as Crawford at Town Hall. But in this case, we’re drunk on camp, whether discussing Pauline Kael’s rave review of Brian de Palma’s The Fury ("She totally got it," Epperson says), an After Dark review of Little Edie Bouvier Beale’s post–Grey Gardens cabaret show ("Did it talk about the eye patch she wore over her eye with the flower attached to it?" he asks), or the many splendors of Dario Argento’s Suspiria ("I love it when Joan Bennett says, ‘We’ve got to kill that bitch of an American girl,’ " he declares, doing a perfect Bennett impression). Of course, a mention of Suspiria-era Bennett can only lead to her Dark Shadows costar Grayson Hall. I tell Epperson that I have a biography about Hall titled A Hard Act to Follow. "A hard actress to follow," he retorts.

During a recent Washington, DC, engagement of The Passion of the Crawford, Epperson used his time offstage to dig through the Library of Congress’s film collection and see movies such as 1971’s Pretty Maids All in a Row, directed by Roger Vadim and starring Rock Hudson and Angie Dickinson. "Roddy McDowell and Keenan Wynne are also in it," Epperson says. "And an actress called Joy Bang. Have you ever heard of Joy Bang?

"What else can I tell you?" (Johnny Ray Huston)

THE PASSION OF THE CRAWFORD

Through April 22

Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; $42.50–$47.50

Plush Room

940 Sutter, SF

1-866-468-3399

www.lypsinka.com

For a Q&A with John Epperson, a.k.a. Lypsinka, go to www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

FEAST: 9 hidden gems

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What the heck is a hidden gem, anyway? The phrase rises from the mist of culinary cliché, a cheery, primordial beast eager to swallow any eye-opening San Francisco dining experience that wanders unchained out of our delicious quotidian. So precious! So unexpected! It’s hard to lift a fork around here without poking it into something tasty and unique, be it handmade sushi in a Tenderloin liquor store or home-style Polish in West Portal. So why draw a line? This is a city of hidden gems by design — opening a Sizzler in SF limits would be front-page food news — and even those establishments that receive the most press would be labeled "kooky food" by puzzled Midwesterners. Good for them. Below is a handful of my personal hidden gems, called that for whatever reason — and to be a foodie show-off. (Marke B.)

CAFE ANDREE


A superb and tiny (26 seats only) gourmet nook in Nob Hill’s Hotel Rex. It’s a literal nook: the location is a former bookstore, and shelves still line the walls, making for clever service stations. Executive chef Evan Crandall’s menu is heady and romantic — maple grilled pork chops, lobster mashed potatoes, and a fantastic beet Napoleon that’ll have you swooning to the root.

Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF. (415) 217-4001

EIJI


No Name Sushi down the block may trump this little Japanese joint near the Castro for scruffy hipster appeal (although reservations here are getting harder to come by), but Eiji holds all the cards when it comes to the house specialty: oboro, or handmade tofu, dutifully stirred to order and served at the table like a steaming custard. It’s sweet and creamy, a cloud in a tureen. Specials such as whelk with uni powder and crunchy dried abalone also abound for the adventurous.

317 Sanchez, SF. (415) 558-8149

IL BORGO


Hidden in plain sight, Il Borgo is a kitschy-looking Italian place at the corner of Fell and Laguna that most people speed past on their way to the more boutique tastes of Hayes Valley. Ah, what they’re missing: Northern Italian home-style cooking, heavy on the white beans; mind-blowing pastas (I still dream about the lobster ravioli); and extremely motherly service. Nothing here will be on your diet, but you can wiggle your hips to the awesome Italian pop music on the stereo and burn off a carb or two.

500 Fell, SF. (415) 255-9108

KATHMANDU CAFE


A Himalayan hot spot in the Western Addition — just the kind of multiculti mix that makes SF dining great. There’s no yak, alas, but the butter chicken and dal ko jhol (lentil soup) will have you searching Orbitz for a night flight to Nepal. Also especially good: the momos (steamed Nepalese dumplings) and machha, a curry with fish cubes that melt in your mouth.

1279 Fulton, SF. (415) 567-5100

BASQUE CULTURAL CENTER


Northern California has a huge Basque population, which relocated here for the shepherding opportunities, and Basque cuisine — if you can get past all the x‘s, z‘s, and k‘s on the menu — is as hearty and satisfying as befits an ancient mountain people. The cultural center serves delicious rabbit stew and beef tongue, but it’s the delectable traditional soups that really scale the heights.

599 Railroad, South SF. (415) 583-8091

BAMBOO VILLAGE


Quality Indonesian food is getting easier to come by — Borobudur in the Tenderloin is an excellent example — but Bamboo Village has the best, and the shaggy, cozy ambience of this sort-of Inner Richmond spot perfectly balances its menu’s exoticism. A selection of dog-eared Indonesian fashion magazines makes perfect reading while you dive into the ikan balado (deep-fried Pompano fish), Kangkung water spinach hot pot, and earthy oxtail stew.

3015 Geary, SF. (415) 751-8006

CHEZ MAMAN


This teensy bistro is pretty well known, I admit, but it often gets overshadowed by Chez Papa, its expansive (and more expensive) husband. That’s almost sexist! Brie-smothered hamburgers and some spiffy seafood dishes come with a side of French satisfaction — and the house-made panini sandwiches and warm goat cheese salad, plus a glass of wine or three, make it perfect for lunch. If you can squeeze in, that is.

1453 18th St., SF. (415) 824-7166; 2223 Union, SF. (415) 771-7771. www.chezmamansf.com</B>

EGGETTES


Who doesn’t hanker for a Taiwanese snack after hiking the scenic wonder of Glen Park Canyon? Intriguingly known as a Hong Kong waffle, an eggette is an addictive cross between a sugar cone and a cheap truffle, with rich fillings in a variety of flavors ironed into oval pockets between two crispy layers. Eggettes the place also has an astounding menu of tapioca bubble drinks and the best selection of plastic-toy vending machines this side of Taipei.

2810 Diamond, SF. (415) 839-5282, www.eggettes.com

SECRET GARDEN TEA HOUSE


This place really freaked me out when I first saw it — it’s like Little Lord Fauntleroy exploded all over Marie Antoinette. You want frills? It’s got ’em. But sleek modern teahouses are all the rage these days, and this fairy-princess wonderland is a delightful antidote. The tea service is exquisite (with Devonshire cream, even!), and the zesty preserves and doll-size sandwiches blow a bracing British breeze up my pinafore.

721 Lincoln Way, SF. (415) 566-8834, www.secretgardenteahouse.net *

Join the Josh Wolf vigil during mediation starting at 8 a.m. Monday at the federal building in San Francico

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Josh’s mother asks that people turn out this morning (Monday, April 2) from 8 to 9 a.m. when Josh Wolf will be brought from his federal prison cell in Dublin to another round of mediation between Josh’s attorneys and the federal prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office.

Liz Wolf-Spada writes to her growing email list of Josh supporters, “It would be a great show of support for Josh if we could turn out a big crowd tomorrow morning outside the federal building. At the last mediation, as Josh was being driven into the basement car entrance, he spotted a supporter holding a sign out front and it meant a great deal to him.

“A large presence of supporters would also show the feds and the press that Josh’s support is broad and that we are determined to see him released immediately. As Josh’s lawyers are under orders not to speak about the mediation process, we know very little about what will take place tomorrow, but it is certainly an opportune moment to visibly demonstrate our support for Josh and demand once again that the federal government release him from his unjust imprisonment.”

She also reports that Josh’s father has begun an ongoing vigil that will continue until Josh is released. The vigil will start each morning between 8 and 9 a.m., outside the Philip Burton federal building in San Francisco, and will be held each week day until about 6 p.m.

I plan to drop by the vigil as often as I can and I hope you do too. My wife Jean and I have just returned from the mid-year meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in Cartagena, Colombia, where we were successful in getting this influential and highly respected free press organization to condemn Josh’s imprisonment and demand his release from jail. (See my previous blog item).

South of the border, the journalists are up against regimes that tolerate the murder and imprisonment of journalists on a regular basis. To deal with this situation, IAPA issues strong resolutions, sends in missions to investigate and protest and seek to get the prisoners released from jail. In the case of murdered journalists, it has a successful impunity program where it sends in missions to investigate, turn the evidence over to government prosecutors, and then beat on the government until the murderers are successfully prosecuted.

I told IAPA delegates, who have fought Peron in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, Castro in Cuba, Chavez in Venezuela, and narco forces in Columbia, that I never thought I would see a journalist imprisoned for so long in the U.S. for such a ridiculously unjust crime: Josh’s refusal on journalistic principle to refuse to release videotapes he took at a 2005 demonstration in San Francisco.

Josh’s alleged “crime” was a local issue, involving a play by the local cops and Police Officers Association, to circumvent the state shield law and take the phony case to the Bush Attorney General in Washington. To the Bushies, the case was red meat: they could send a “don’t mess with us or else” message to San Francisco, center of anti-war dissent and protest, and to journalists throughout the land. The Bush/Rove/Gonzales firing of the eight U.S. attorneys general for political reasons only makes the point in 96 point Tempo Bold that Josh is a victim of the Bush law of intended political consequences. For more on IAPA, go to its website at IAPA.com.

I think we need an IPI-type mission to free Josh Wolf. Meanwhile, join the vigil and join the Liz email tree: liz_wolf_spada@yahoo.com. B3

WHAT: Vigil for Josh during mediation

WHERE: Phillip Burton Federal Building , 450 Golden Gate Avenue, in the San Francisco Civic Center

WHEN: Vigil starts around 8 a.m. and will continue through the day.

WHAT: Daily vigil for Josh

WHERE: Phillip Burton Federal Building, 450 Golden
Gate Avenue

WHEN: Begins around 9 a.m. each weekday until Josh is released

Dine Listings

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Welcome to our dining listings, a detailed guide by neighborhood of some great places to grab a bite, hang out with friends, or impress the ones you love with thorough knowledge of this delectable city. Restaurants are reviewed by Paul Reidinger (PR) or staff. All area codes are 415, and all restaurants are wheelchair accessible, except where noted.

B Breakfast

BR Saturday and/or Sunday brunch

L Lunch

D Dinner

AE American Express

DC Diners Club

DISC Discover

MC MasterCard

V Visa

¢ less than $7 per entrée

$ $7–$12

$$ $13–$20

$$$ more than $20

DOWNTOWN/EMBARCADERO

Boulevard runs with ethereal smoothness — you are cosseted as if at a chic private party — but despite much fame the place retains its brasserie trappings and joyous energy. (Staff) 1 Mission, SF. 543-6084. American, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Brindisi Cucina di Mare cooks seafood the south Italian way, and that means many, many ways, with many, many sorts of seafood. (PR, 4/04) 88 Belden Place, SF. 593-8000. Italian/seafood, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Bushi-tei melds East and West, old and new, with sublime elegance. Chef Seiji Wakabayashi is fluent in many of the culinary dialects of East Asia as well as the lofty idiom of France, and the result is cooking that develops its own integrity. The setting — of glass, candles, and ancient lumber — shimmers with enchantment. (PR, 3/06) 1638 Post, SF. 440-4959. Fusion, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

Café Claude is a hidden treasure of the city center. There is an excellent menu of traditional, discreetly citified French dishes, a youthful energy, and a romantic setting on a narrow, car-free lane reminiscent of the Marais. (PR, 10/06) 7 Claude Lane, SF. 392-3515. French, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Chaya Brasserie brings a taste of LA’s preen-and-be-seen culture to the waterfront. The Japanese-influenced food is mostly French, and very expensive. (Staff) 132 Embarcadero, SF. 777-8688. Fusion, D, $$$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Cortez has a Scandinavian Designs-on-acid look — lots of heavy, weird multicolored mobiles — but Pascal Rigo’s Mediterranean-influenced small plates will quickly make you forget you’re eating in a hotel. (Staff) 550 Geary (in the Hotel Adagio), SF. 292-6360. Mediterranean, B/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Cosmopolitan Cafe seems like a huge Pullman car. The New American menu emphasizes heartiness. (Staff) 121 Spear, SF. 543-4001. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

NORTH BEACH/CHINATOWN

Maykadeh Persian Cuisine is a great date restaurant, classy but not too pricey, and there are lots of veggie options both for appetizers and entrées. Khoresht bademjan was a delectable, deep red stew of tomato and eggplant with a rich, sweet, almost chocolatey undertone. (Staff) 470 Green, SF. 362-8286. Persian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Michelangelo Cafe There’s always a line outside this quintessential North Beach restaurant, but it’s well worth the sidewalk time for Michelangelo’s excellent Italian, served in a bustling, family-style atmosphere. The seafood dishes are recommended; approach the postprandial Gummi Bears at your own risk. (Staff) 597 Columbus, SF. 986-4058. Italian, D, $$.

Moose’s is famous for the Mooseburger, but the rest of the menu is comfortably sophisticated. The crowd is moneyed but not showy and definitely not nouveau. (Staff) 1652 Stockton, SF. 989-7800. American, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Pena Pacha Mama offers organic Bolivian cuisine as well as weekly performances of Andean song and dance. Dine on crusted lamb and yucca frita while watching a genuine flamenco performance in this intimate setting. (Staff) 1630 Powell, SF. 646-0018. Bolivian, BR/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Rico’s touts its salsas, and they are good, but so is almost everything else on the mainstream Mexican menu. (Staff) 943 Columbus, SF. 928-5404. Mexican, L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.

SOMA

AsiaSF Priscilla, Queen of the Desert meets Asian-influenced tapas at this amusingly surreal lounge. The drag queen burlesque spectacle draws a varied audience that’s a show in itself. (Staff) 201 Ninth St, SF. 255-2742. Fusion, D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Bacar means "wine goblet," and its wine menu is extensive — and affordable. Chef Arnold Wong’s eclectic American-global food plays along nicely. (Staff) 448 Brannan, SF. 904-4100. American, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Basil A serene, upscale oasis amid the industrial supply warehouses, Basil offers California-influenced Thai cuisine that’s lively and creative. (Staff) 1175 Folsom, SF. 552-8999. Thai, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Big Nate’s Barbecue is pretty stark inside — mostly linoleum arranged around a pair of massive brick ovens. But the hot sauce will make you sneeze. (Staff) 1665 Folsom, SF. 861-4242. Barbecue, L/D, $, MC/V.

Butler and the Chef brings a taste of Parisian café society — complete with pâtés, cornichons, and croques monsieurs — to sunny South Park. (PR, 5/04) 155A South Park, SF. French, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

NOB HILL/RUSSIAN HILL

Crustacean is famous for its roast Dungeness crab; the rest of the "Euro/Asian" menu is refreshingly Asian in emphasis. (Staff) 1475 Polk, SF. 776-2722. Fusion, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

East Coast West Delicatessen doesn’t look like a New York deli (too much space, air, light), but the huge, fattily satisfying Reubens, platters of meat loaf, black-and-white cookies, and all the other standards compare commendably to their East Coast cousins. (Staff) 1725 Polk, SF. 563-3542. Deli, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

La Folie could be a neighborhood spot or a destination or both, but either way or both ways it is sensational: an exercise in haute cuisine leavened with a West Coast sense of informality and playfulness. There is a full vegetarian menu and an ample selection of wines by the half bottle. (PR, 2/06) 2316 Polk, SF. 776-5577. French, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Grubstake might look like your typical Polk Gulch diner — sandwiches and burgers, open very late — but the kitchen also turns out some good mom-style Portuguese dishes, replete with olives, salt cod, and linguica. If you crave caldo verde at 3 a.m., this is the place. (Staff) 1525 Pine, SF. 673-8268. Portuguese/American, B/L/D, ¢, cash only.

*Matterhorn Restaurant offers dishes that aren’t fondue, but fondue (especially with beef) is the big deal and the answer to big appetites. For dessert: chocolate fondue! (Staff) 2323 Van Ness, SF. 885-6116. Swiss, $$, D, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

CIVIC CENTER/TENDERLOIN

Mekong Restaurant serves the foods of the Mekong River basin. There is a distinct Thai presence but also dishes with Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and even Chinese accents. (PR, 1/06) 791 O’Farrell, SF. 928-2772. Pan-Asian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Olive might look like a tapas bar, but what you want are the thin-crust pizzas, the simpler the toppings the better. The small plates offer eclectic pleasures, especially the Tuscan pâté and beef satay with peanut sauce. (Staff) 743 Larkin, SF. 776-9814. Pizza/eclectic, D, $, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Pagolac For $10.95 a person you and two or more of your favorite beef eaters can dive into Pagolac’s specialty: seven-flavor beef. Less carnivorous types can try the cold spring rolls, shrimp on sugarcane, or lemongrass tofu. (Staff) 655 Larkin, SF. 776-3234. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢.

*Saha serves "Arabic fusion cuisine" — a blend of the Middle East and California — in a cool, spare setting behind the concierge’s desk at the Hotel Carlton. One senses the imminence of young rock stars, drawn perhaps by the lovely chocolate fondue. (PR, 9/04) 1075 Sutter, SF. 345-9547. Arabic/fusion, B/BR/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

HAYES VALLEY

Frjtz serves first-rate Belgian fries, beer, crepes, and sandwiches in an art-house atmosphere. If the noise overwhelms, take refuge in the lovely rear garden. (Staff) 579 Hayes, SF. 864-7654; also at Ghirardelli Square, SF. 928-3886. Belgian, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Hayes Street Grill started more than a quarter century ago as an emulation of the city’s old seafood houses, and now it’s an institution itself. The original formula — immaculate seafood simply prepared, with choice of sauce and French fries — still beats vibrantly at the heart of the menu. Service is impeccable, the setting one of relaxed grace. (PR, 7/06) 816 Folsom, SF. 863-5545. Seafood, L/D, $$$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Sauce enjoys the services of chef Ben Paula, whose uninhibited California cooking is as easy to like as a good pop song. (PR, 5/05) 131 Gough, SF. 252-1369. California, D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Suppenküche has a Busvan for Bargains, butcher-block look that gives context to its German cuisine. If you like schnitzel, brats, roasted potatoes, eggs, cheese, cucumber salad, cold cuts, and cold beer, you’ll love it here. (Staff) 601 Hayes, SF. 252-9289. German, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.

*Zuni Cafe is one of the most celebrated — and durable — restaurants in town, perhaps because its kitchen has honored the rustic country cooking of France and Italy for the better part of two decades. (PR, 2/05) 1658 Market, SF. 552-2522. California, B/L/D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

CASTRO/NOE VALLEY/GLEN PARK

La Ciccia offers the distinct cuisine of Sardinia — Italian yet not quite — in an appealingly subdued storefront setting in outer Noe Valley. Pizzas are excellent, and the food is notably meaty, though with some lovely maritime twists. A unique and riveting wine list. (PR, 6/06) 291 30th St., SF. 550-8114. Sardinian/Italian, D, $$, MC/V.

Côté Sud brings a stylish breath of Provence to the Castro. The cooking reflects an unfussy elegance; service is as crisp as a neatly folded linen napkin. Nota bene: you must climb a set of steps to reach the place. (Staff) 4238 18th St, SF. 255-6565. French, D, $$, MC/V.

Eric’s Dig into the likes of mango shrimp, hoisin green beans, and spicy eggplant with chicken in this bright, airy space. (Staff) 1500 Church, SF. 282-0919. Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.

Eureka Restaurant and Lounge combines, in the old Neon Chicken space, a classic Castro sensibility (mirrors everywhere, fancy sparkling water) with a stylish all-American menu that reflects Boulevard and Chenery Park bloodlines. Prices are high. (PR, 12/06) 4063 18th St. SF. 431-6000. American, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

*Firefly remains an exemplar of the neighborhood restaurant in San Francisco: it is homey and classy, hip and friendly, serving an American menu — deftly inflected with ethnic and vegetarian touches — that’s the match of any in the city. (PR, 9/04) 4288 24th St, SF. 821-7652. American, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

HAIGHT/COLE VALLEY/WESTERN ADDITION

Metro Cafe brings the earthy chic of Paris’s 11th arrondissement to the Lower Haight, prix fixe and all. (Staff) 311 Divisadero, SF. 552-0903. French, B/BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

New Ganges Restaurant is short on style — it is as if the upmarket revolution in vegetarian restaurants never happened — but there is a homemade freshness to the food you won’t find at many other places. (Staff) 775 Frederick, SF. 681-4355. Vegetarian/Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Raja Cuisine of India serves up decent renditions of Indian standards in an unassuming, even spare, setting. Low prices. (Staff) 500 Haight, SF. 255-6000. Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Rotee isn’t the fanciest south Asian restaurant in the neighborhood, but it is certainly one of the most fragrant, and its bright oranges and yellows (food, walls) do bring good cheer. Excellent tandoori fish. (PR, 12/04) 400 Haight, SF. 552-8309. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, $, MC/V.

Tsunami Sushi and Sake Bar brings hip Japanese-style seafood to the already hip Café Abir complex. Skull-capped sushi chefs, hefty and innovative rolls. (Staff) 1306 Fulton, SF. 567-7664. Japanese/sushi, D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Zazie is one of the best, possibly the very best, of the city’s neighborhood French bistros. The excellent food is fairly priced and the service well-honed; even diners in the open-air garden at the rear of the restaurant will feel coddled. (PR, 1/07) 941 Cole, SF. 564-5332. French, B/BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

Ziryab brings a touch of eastern Med class to a slightly sketchy block of Divisadero in the Western Addition. The menu graciously innovates Middle Eastern standards while adding a California twist or two for fun. Faux stonework lends a Vegas air to the setting. (PR, 3/07) 528 Divisadero, SF. 269-5430. Middle Eastern, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Zoya takes some finding — it is in the little turret of the Days Inn Motor Lodge at Grove and Gough — but the view over the street’s treetops is bucolic, and the cooking is simple, seasonal, direct, and ingredient driven. (PR, 12/05) 465 Grove, SF. 626-9692. California, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

MISSION/BERNAL HEIGHTS/POTRERO HILL

Cafe Phoenix looks like a junior-high cafeteria, but the California-deli food is fresh, tasty, and honest, and the people making it are part of a program to help the emotionally troubled return to employability. (Staff) 1234 Indiana, SF. 282-9675, ext. 239. California, B/L, ¢, MC/V.

Caffe Cozzolino Get it to go: everything’s about two to four bucks more if you eat it there. (Staff) 300 Precita, SF. 285-6005. Italian, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Caffe d’Melanio is the place to go if you want your pound of coffee beans roasted while you enjoy an Argentine-Italian dinner of pasta, milanesa, and chimichurri sauce. During the day the café offers a more typically Cal-American menu of better-than-average quality. First-rate coffee beans. (PR, 10/04) 1314 Ocean, SF. 333-3665. Italian/Argentine, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Il Cantuccio strikingly evokes that little trattoria you found near the Ponte Vecchio on your last trip to Florence. (Staff) 3228 16th St, SF. 861-3899. Italian, D, $, MC/V.

Chez Papa Bistrot sits like a beret atop Potrero Hill. The food is good, the staff’s French accents authentic, the crowd a lively cross section, but the place needs a few more scuffs and quirks before it can start feeling real. (Staff) 1401 18th St, SF. 824-8210. French, BR/L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Circolo Restaurant and Lounge brings Peruvian- and Asian-influenced cooking into a stylishly barnlike urban space where dot-commers gathered of old. Some of the dishes are overwrought, but the food is splendid on the whole. (PR, 6/04) 500 Florida, SF. 553-8560. Nuevo Latino/Asian, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Couleur Café reminds us that French food need be neither fancy nor insular. The kitchen playfully deploys a world of influences — the duck-confit quesadilla is fabulous — and service is precise and attentive despite the modest setting at the foot of Potrero Hill. (PR, 2/06) 300 De Haro, SF. 255-1021. French, BR/L/D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.

*Delfina has grown from a neighborhood restaurant to an event, but an expanded dining room has brought the noise under control, and as always, the food — intense variations on a theme of Tuscany — could not be better. (PR, 2/04) 3621 18th St, SF. 552-4055. California, D, $$, MC/V.

Dosa serves dosas, the south Indian crepes, along with a wealth of other, and generally quite spicy, dishes from the south of the subcontinent. The cooking tends toward a natural meatlessness; the crowds are intense, like hordes of passengers inquiring about a delayed international flight. (PR, 1/06) 995 Valencia, SF. 642-3672. South Indian, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Double Play sits across the street from what once was Seals Stadium, but while the field and team are gone, the restaurant persists as an authentic sports bar with a solidly masculine aura — mitts on the walls, lots of dark wood, et cetera. The all-American food (soups, sandwiches, pastas, meat dishes, lots of fries) is outstanding. (Staff) 2401 16th St, SF. 621-9859. American, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack offers a tasty, inexpensive, late-night alternative to Pasta Pomodoro. The touch of human hands is everywhere evident. (Staff) 18 Virginia, SF. 206-2086. Italian, D, $, cash only.

Foreign Cinema serves some fine New American food in a spare setting of concrete and glass that warms up romantically once the sun goes down. (Staff) 2534 Mission, SF. 648-7600. California, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Front Porch mixes a cheerfully homey setting (with a front porch of sorts), a hipster crowd, and a Caribbean-inflected comfort menu into a distinctive urban cocktail. The best dishes, such as a white polenta porridge with crab, are Range-worthy, and nothing on the menu is much more than $10. (PR, 10/06) 65A 29th St, SF. 695-7800. American/Caribbean, BR/D, $, MC/V.

Herbivore is adorned in the immaculate-architect style: angular blond-wood surfaces and precise cubbyholes abound. (Staff) 983 Valencia, SF. 826-5657; 531 Divisadero (at Fell), SF. 885-7133. Vegetarian, L/D, $, MC/V.

MARINA/PACIFIC HEIGHTS/LAUREL HEIGHTS

*Quince doesn’t much resemble its precursor, the Meetinghouse: the setting is more overtly luxurious, the food a pristine Franco-Cal-Ital variant rather than hearty New American. Still, it’s an appealing place to meet. (PR, 7/04) 1701 Octavia, SF. 775-8500. California, D, $$$, AE/MC/V.

Rigolo combines the best of Pascal Rigo’s boulangeries — including the spectacular breads — with some of the simpler elements (such as roast chicken) of his higher-end places. The result is excellent value in a bustling setting. (PR, 1/05) 3465 California, SF. 876-7777. California/Mediterranean, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Rose’s Cafe has a flexible, all-day menu that starts with breakfast sandwiches; moves into bruschettas, salads, and pizzas; and finishes with grilled dinner specials such as salmon, chicken, and flat-iron steak. (Staff) 2298 Union, SF. 775-2200. California, B/L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Rosti Getting half a chicken along with roasted potatoes and an assortment of vegetables for $7.95 in the Marina is cause for celebration in itself. (Staff) 2060 Chestnut, SF. 929-9300. Italian, L/D, $, AE/DISC/V.

Saji Japanese Cuisine Sit at the sushi bar and ask the resident sushi makers what’s particularly good that day. As for the hot dishes, seafood yosenabe, served in a clay pot, is a virtual Discovery Channel of finned and scaly beasts, all tasty and fresh. (Staff) 3232 Scott, SF. 931-0563. Japanese, D, $, AE/DC/MC/V.

Sociale serves first-rate Cal-Ital food in bewitching surroundings — a heated courtyard, a beautifully upholstered interior — that will remind you of some hidden square in some city of Mediterranean Europe. (Staff) 3665 Sacramento, SF. 921-3200. Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Sushi Groove is easily as cool as its name. Behind wasabi green velvet curtains, salads can be inconsistent, but the sushi is impeccable, especially the silky salmon and special white tuna nigiri. (Staff) 1916 Hyde, SF. 440-1905. Japanese, D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

SUNSET

Sea Breeze Cafe looks like a dive, but the California cooking is elevated, literally and figuratively. Lots of witty salads, a rum-rich crème brûlée. (Staff) 3940 Judah, SF. 242-6022. California, BR/L/D, $$, MC/V.

So Restaurant brings the heat, in the form of huge soup and noodle — and soupy noodle — dishes, many of them liberally laced with hot peppers and chiles. The pot stickers are homemade and exceptional, the crowd young and noisy. Cheap. (PR, 10/06) 2240 Irving, SF. 731-3143. Chinese/noodles, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Tasty Curry still shows traces of an earlier life as a Korean hibachi restaurant (i.e., venting hoods above most of the tables), but the South Asian food is cheap, fresh, and packs a strong kick. (PR, 1/04) 1375 Ninth Ave, SF. 753-5122. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Tennessee Grill could as easily be called the Topeka Grill, since its atmosphere is redolent of Middle America. Belly up to the salad bar for huge helpings of the basics to accompany your meat loaf or calf’s liver. (Staff) 1128 Taraval, SF. 664-7834. American, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Thai Cottage isn’t really a cottage, but it is small in the homey way, and its Thai menu is sharp and vivid in the home-cooking way. Cheap, and the N train stops practically at the front door. (PR, 8/04) 4041 Judah, SF. 566-5311. Thai, L/D, $, MC/V.

*Xiao Loong elevates the neighborhood Chinese restaurant experience to one of fine dining, with immaculate ingredients and skillful preparation in a calm architectural setting. (PR, 8/05) 250 West Portal, SF. 753-5678. Chinese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Yum Yum Fish is basically a fish store: three or four little tables with fish-print tablecloths under glass, fish-chart art along the wall, and fish-price signs all over the place. (Staff) 2181 Irving, SF. 566-6433. Sushi, L/D, ¢.

RICHMOND

*Pizzetta 211 practices the art of the pizza in a glowing little storefront space. Thin crusts, unusual combinations, a few side dishes of the highest quality. (PR, 2/04) 211 23rd Ave, SF. 379-9880. Pizza/Italian, L/D, $.

Q rocks, both American-diner-food-wise and noisy-music-wise. Servings of such gratifyingly tasty dishes as barbecued ribs, fish tacos, and rosemary croquettes are huge. (Staff) 225 Clement, SF. 752-2298. American, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

RoHan Lounge serves a variety of soju cocktails to help wash down all those Asian tapas. Beware the kimchee. Lovely curvaceous banquettes. (Staff) 3809 Geary, SF. 221-5095. Asian, D, $, AE/MC/V.

Singapore Malaysian Restaurant eschews decor for cheap, tasty plates, where you’ll find flavors ranging from Indian to Dutch colonial to Thai. Seafood predominates in curries, soups, grills, and plenty of rice and noodle dishes. (Staff) 836 Clement, SF. 750-9518. Malaysian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Spices! has an exclamation point for a reason: its Chinese food, mainly Szechuan and Taiwanese, with an oasis of Shanghai-style dishes, is fabulously hot. Big young crowds, pulsing house music, a shocking orange and yellow paint scheme. Go prepared, leave happy. (Staff) 294 Eighth Ave, SF. 752-8884. Szechuan/Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.

BAYVIEW/HUNTERS POINT/SOUTH

Bella Vista Continental Restaurant commands a gorgeous view of the Peninsula and South Bay from its sylvan perch on Skyline Boulevard, and the continental food, though a little stately, is quite good. The look is rustic-stylish (exposed wood beams, servers in dinner jackets), and the tone one of informal horse-country wealth. (PR, 3/07) 13451 Skyline Blvd., Woodside. (650) 851-1229. Continental, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Cable Car Coffee Shop Atmospherically speaking, you’re looking at your basic downtown South San Francisco old-style joint, one that serves a great Pacific Scramble for $4.95 and the most perfectest hash browns to be tasted. (Staff) 423 Grand, South SF. (650) 952-9533. American, B/BR/L, ¢.

Cliff’s Bar-B-Q and Seafood Some things Cliff’s got going for him: excellent mustard greens, just drenched in flavorfulness, and barbecued you name it. Brisket. Rib tips. Hot links. Pork ribs. Beef ribs. Baby backs. And then there are fried chickens and, by way of health food, fried fishes. (Staff) 2177 Bayshore, SF. 330-0736. Barbecue, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/MC/V.

BERKELEY/EMERYVILLE/NORTH

Café de la Paz Specialties include African-Brazilian "xim xim" curries, Venezuelan corn pancakes, and heavenly blackened seacakes served with orange-onion yogurt. (Staff) 1600 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-0662. Latin American, BR/L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Cafe Rouge All the red meat here comes from highly regarded Niman Ranch, and all charcuterie are made in-house. (Staff) 1782 Fourth St, Berk. (510) 525-1440. American, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

César You’ll be tempted to nibble for hours from Chez Panisse-related César’s Spanish-inspired tapas — unless you can’t get past the addictive sage-and-rosemary-flecked fried potatoes. (Staff) 1515 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 883-0222. Spanish, D, $, DISC/MC/V.

OAKLAND/ALAMEDA

Mama’s Royal Cafe Breakfast is the draw here — even just-coffee-for-me types might succumb when confronted with waffles, French toast, pancakes, tofu scrambles, huevos rancheros, and 20 different omelets. (Staff) 4012 Broadway, Oakl. (510) 547-7600. American, B/L, ¢.

La Mexicana has a 40-year tradition of stuffing its customers with delicious, simply prepared staples (enchiladas, tacos, tamales, chile rellenos, menudo) and specials (carnitas, chicken mole), all served in generous portions at moderate prices. (Staff) 3930 E 14th St, Oakl. (510) 533-8818. Mexican, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Nan Yang offers too many great dishes — ginger salad, spicy fried potato cakes, coconut chicken noodle soup, garlic noodles, succulent lamb curry that melts in your mouth — to experience in one visit. (Staff) 6048 College, Oakl. (510) 655-3298. Burmese, L/D, $, MC/V. *

Innervisions

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but cinema’s eternal enfant terrible Jean-Luc Godard did direct Contempt, Band of Outsiders, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, Masculine-Feminine, Two or Three Things I Know about Her, and Weekend (and a few others too) in the four years leading up to the political explosions of 1968. These trenchant, tenacious films are as good a record as any we have of an era when light-speed changes in culture and politics only seemed to make history grind to a halt. Each represents a blast of here-and-now consciousness.

Given the feverish tenor of this output, the relative quietude of 1967’s Two or Three Things I Know about Her (playing at the Castro Theatre in a striking new 35mm print from Rialto Pictures) comes as something of a surprise 40 years on. Sandwiched between the hyperventiutf8g back-and-forth of Masculine-Feminine and Weekend ‘s apocalyptic moan, the film is the eye of the storm of Godard’s ’60s, that crucial moment between impact and explosion. The director supposedly got the idea for Two or Three Things from reading a news piece on the phenomenon of middle-class Parisian women working as prostitutes to pay for their bourgeois accoutrement. This loaded role comes to life in Juliette, introduced to us twice, via a typically Brechtian flourish, as both character and actress (Marina Vlady).

Her life’s arrangement is not a story so much as a situation for Godard, and correspondingly, the film isn’t a narrative but rather a study. The Summer of Love notwithstanding, Two or Three Things isn’t concerned with Juliette’s sexuality (any sensuousness is incidental to Raoul Coutard’s color-mad cinematography) or psychology (something that Godard never has much use for, especially when it comes to his female characters); a poster for Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu is the only evidence of female suffering here. For Godard, prostitution is simply an apt metaphor for the dreary life of the new, amorphous Paris to which the "her" of the title refers: the Paris of the outer rings, then being settled by a disassociated middle class and recently set ablaze by more indignant communities.

So then, will the real belle du jour please stand up? It’s Juliette who tends to occupy the frame, sleepwalking through boutiques and barren apartment spaces (like Woody Allen’s, Godard’s film style often seems a matter of real estate), but Two or Three Things‘ most intimate presence isn’t visualized at all. Throughout the film Godard himself interrupts with a whispered, reflective voice-over: an existential director’s commentary track 30 years before DVD technology made this kind of authorial expressivity standard-issue.

No one Godard film is any more "Godard" than another, though Two or Three Things does feel unusually direct in its peripatetic meditations. Conversations, when they occur, are still tête-à-tête volleys (talk never flows with Godard), but more often than not it seems the characters are simply verbalizing their own reveries on life in the pseudocity. The maestro reserves the most powerfully searching musings for his own voice: in particular, the famous "clouds in my coffee" sequence, in which he parses the irresolvable tension between "crushing" objectivity and "isoutf8g" subjectivity amid extreme, lyrical close-ups of a coffee’s swirl, bubbles bursting and shades swallowed by the closeness of his voice.

As with most things Godard, there are multiple meanings to this series of shots, which simultaneously emphasize existential dread and a remarkable capacity for abstraction. It’s direct contact with an imagination on fire, reveling in the difference between thought and expression. Of course, a film built entirely on asides — in addition to Godard’s and Juliette’s reflections, we get many landscapes surveying Paris under construction and the usual café dialogues — is as likely to be a soporific as a revelation; reverie and sleepiness are frequent bedfellows in the movie theater and never more so than here. Certainly, Two or Three Things lacks the pop frisson of Masculine-Feminine or Weekend, but it’s also, in many ways, a more palatable work — not least of all for a toning down of the toxic sexism that mars Godard’s best, angriest work.

Two or Three Things will always be thought of as a stepping stone, though the film’s beauty lies in its singularity. In another, less famous but no less profound voice-over sequence, Godard contemplates the nature of his representations of reality ("Should I have talked about Juliette or the leaves?") while Juliette has her car washed. As the car (lollipop red, of course) shuttles from station to station, so too does Godard’s mind lurch from idea to idea before settling on an underlying truth: the necessity for an indefatigable "passion for expression." The world can be anything he wishes to make it. It’s a beautiful, surprisingly hopeful idea, and for a moment all that followed Two or Three Things slips away, leaving us only this unwieldy, pregnant now. *

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER

March 30–April 5

Mon.–Wed. and Fri.–Sun., 7 and 9 p.m. (also Wed. and Sat.–Sun., 1, 3, and 5 p.m.), $6–$9

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

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The Inter American Press Association calls for the immediate release of Josh Wolf from prison

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Cartagena, Colombia March l9–The Inter American Press Association has condemned the U.S. government for jailing Josh Wolf and called for his immediate release from federal prison.

IAPA, at its annual mid-year meeting in Cartagena, noted that Wolf “remains in jail for refusing to turn over his videos and has now been in jail for refusing to comply with a subpoena for longer than any journalist in U.S. history.”

IAPA said that “numerous journalists in the United States have been subpoenaed by prosecutors and required to testify in state and federal court, including the requirement that they name their confidential sources.”
It noted that San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams faced l8 months in prison until their confidential source recently came forward.”

IAPA relied on principle 4 of the Declaration of Chapultepec, the organization’s version of the First Amendment,
that states, “Freedom of expression and of the press are severely limited by murder, terrorism, kidnapping, intimidation, the unjust imprisonment of journalists, the destruction of facilities, violence of any kind and impunity for perpetrators. Such acts must be investigated promptly and punished harshly.”

IAPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending freedom of expression and of the press throughout the Americas. It has a membership of more than l,300 representing newspapers and magazines, with a combined circulation of 43,353,762, from Patagonia to Alaska.

In other action, IAPA found that six journalists were killed and one disappeared in the last six months in Mexico, and another was killed in Haiti. “The assassinated journalists were all victims of drug and gang wars, reflecting how throughout the region organized crime was a bigger physical threat to journalists than old-fashioned political differences,” IAPA said. “There were nearly two dozen more cases of reported death threats, in Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Peru,Venezuela, and Brazil, some related to the reporting of corruption.”

IAPA said that Cuba and Venezuela were the worst countries in terms of government pressure on the press.
President Hugo Chavez threatens to shut down the country’s leading television network, Radio CaracasTelevision, by not renewing its license. And in Cuba, after Fidel Castro replaced himself with his brother Raul as the president, repression has escalated against independent journalists and foreign correspondents.

IAPA reported 47 acts of harassment of journalists (police threats, interrogations, ‘acts of repudiation’ organized by the government, public beatings, temporary arrests, fines for disobedience, raids of people’s homes, evictions, seizures of money and personal items, firings, and restrictions on travel within Cuba). Three foreign correspondents were expelled from Cuba on the grounds that “their approach to the situation in Cuba is not in the best interests of the Cuban government.” In an attack on news sources, four people are being prosecuted for manufacturing or repairing satellite television equipment and may go to prison for three years. Meanwhile, IAPA said, 28 journalists remain behind bars, serving sentences of up to 27 years.

Cuba is now extending its repression to internet users. No Cuban may access the internet freely. Ramiro Valdes, the minister of computers and communications, ahs announced the government’s intention to tame the “wild horse” of new technologies, which it describes as “one of the most horrible means of global extermination ever invented.”

Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Bolivia had “lesser but still worrying” tensions between their governments and the media. In Argentina, the government continued to “arbitrarily classify journalists and media outlets as friends and enemies, and use the placing of official advertising to support the one and punish the other. B3

http://www.sipiapa.com/pulications/informe_usa2007ca.cfm

Tale of two Valley Girls

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THE ORIGINAL It starts as a joke, but it rarely ends well. You pick up a piece of slang to make fun of it and then, at some point far too late down the line, realize you are physically incapable of putting it down. Who knew — I didn’t in seventh grade, when I first started using the word “like” as an irritating placeholder for nothing in particular — that Moon Unit Zappa and her dad’s joke, a song mimicking a youthful subculture’s garbled tongue, was also on me and my friends, 3,000 miles distant from Sherman Oaks, or that 24 years later I would still sound vaguely like a character from Martha Coolidge’s film Valley Girl?

My community of incoherents is a large one. The syntax has stuck around, and so has the film at least partly responsible for it — not to mention the threads sported on both sides of the film’s Hollyweird-Valley divide, which have now cycled back into fashion at least twice in the past decade. The streets of San Francisco are filled with stripy-shirted hipsters, Valley Girl is still being paid tribute at events such as Midnites for Maniacs at the Castro, and now the admirers who packed that house can even troop down to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for a screening that pairs OG VG with a low-budget homage directed by Michele O’Marah.

If you’ve seen the original, and I’m so sure you have, you know exactly why a crazed fan would undertake such an endeavor. Starring Deborah Foreman as Julie, the titular Valley girl, and Nicolas Cage as Randy, her tubular, dreamy-eyed swain from the wrong side of the Hollywood Hills, Valley Girl managed to gently send up a vapid ’80s mall culture while at the same time treating its viewers to a torrid new-romantic love story fueled by worlds colliding, the Plimsouls, and a song about getting it on mid–nuclear holocaust (Modern English’s “I Melt with You”).

Building on the can’t-fail tale of R+J, the film cruises the Hollywood club scene and sneaks into the tract homes of Tarzana and Van Nuys, coolly siding against a brand of teen robotics and materialism epitomized by middle-class girls running loose in the Galleria with their parents’ credit cards — yet admitting that they look “truly dazzling” in their string bikinis at the beach. Fittingly, or fitting-roomly, a shopping montage supplies the footage for the opening credits. But if shopping’s not your bag, try the “I Melt with You” montage, or the Randy-stalking-Julie montage, or lines like Randy’s “Well, fuck you! No, fuck off, for sure! Like, totally!” — an utterance whose consummate blend of anguish and hilarity never fails to secure viewer forgiveness for the admittedly shocking sight, early on, of Cage’s saltwater-slicked V-shaped chest hair. (Lynn Rapoport)

THE REMAKE When she was a teenager, Michele O’Marah’s favorite movie was Valley Girl — reason enough, as an adult, to mount a remake of what’s probably the most popular teen love story of the 1980s (non–John Hughes division). Or was affection the only reason? According to an August 2006 interview O’Marah did with the Web site Austinist, she created her homage as “a serious piece of artwork to be viewed in a gallery” addressing the film’s “serious issues — how a teenage girl thinks about herself, and how she thinks about men and how they should treat her.”

Whether or not this intention comes through is debatable. Fact is, the audience that goes to see a Valley Girl remake (even when it’s showing in a museum) is going to be largely composed of Valley Girl fans, who might let things like O’Marah’s charmingly homemade sets slide but will mutter among themselves when key details are altered. Why didn’t O’Marah direct the guy playing Tommy to make that crazy arm gesture after he knocks back a drink at Suzi’s party? Why are certain crucial lines jumbled beyond recognition?

The disconnects are all the more puzzling when you consider all that O’Marah gets exactly right. Her tweaks can be incredibly winning: Julie’s dad’s broken sandals — the “Water Buffalos” — are made of cardboard; a bewigged Plimsouls cover band offers excellent coverage during the Hollywood bar scenes.

O’Marah was clearly operating with a budget one-zillionth the size of the original’s, itself a cheap film by Hollywood standards. But if her lo-fi Valley Girl is to be taken as serious artwork, it raises a serious question: why remake something you love only to emphasize subtext over joy? In the 1980s a group of junior high kids devoted endless summers to a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. They had the same flagrant disregard for copyright laws as O’Marah but no pretensions whatsoever. Their product may have been technically rough, but it was also energetic and enjoyable. Thing is, when you start putting quote marks around quote marks, fun becomes work. To the max. (Cheryl Eddy)

FIDELITY AND BETRAYAL: VARIATIONS ON THE REMAKE — VALLEY GIRL

Thurs/22, 6:30 p.m. Valley Girl (Michele O’Marah) and 8:30 p.m. Valley Girl (Martha Coolidge)

Sun/25, 2 p.m. Valley Girl (O’Marah) and 4 p.m. Valley Girl (Coolidge)

$5–$7

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Phyllis Wattis Theater

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

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SFIAAFF: Got fangs?

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

What a difference an indie blockbuster makes. The last time I spoke to Better Luck Tomorrow writer and director Justin Lin, he was energetically doing the grassroots festival rounds, beating the shrubbery on the importance of Asian Americans making Asian Pacific Islander films with empowered, complex characters. Yet judging from the craft, ideas, humor, and humanity that went into Lin’s compelling final product, luck was only one part of it. Rather, it was a game of wit, tenacity, and persuasion that archetypal overachiever Lin excelled at (he’d already made one indie, 1997’s Shopping for Fangs). It probably seemed like gravy, with rice noodles on the side, when the MTV Films–released Better Luck Tomorrow broke new ground during its 2003 opening weekend, earning almost $400,000 in 13 theaters, averaging $30,650 per screen and thus beating the averages of other MTV releases such as Jackass: The Movie.

Now, five years after I first talked to Lin, he has paid off the quarter-mil credit card debt he’d accrued in financing Better Luck Tomorrow and parlayed his success into studio work: 2006’s Annapolis and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, a sequel that attempted to correct the damage done by the first film’s rewrite of Asian car culture. Lin is still one of the only API faces behind the camera in Hollywood ("At directors guild meetings you definitely stick out," he confesses with a chuckle), but in the process of gaming the studio system, he’s been able to return to what he calls "passion projects." In fact, earlier in the day of our interview, he’d just completed Finishing the Game — his imagined retelling of the making of Bruce Lee’s posthumous cash-in deathsploitation flick, Game of Death — a comic take on Asian American masculinity, Hollywood, and the stories we tell ourselves to make it through the next scene.

SFBG How did Finishing the Game come to pass?

JUSTIN LIN The idea has been with me since I was a kid. It’s funny because as a filmmaker, there’s the journey you kind of dream up, and there’s the reality that hits you. You take out 10 credit cards and are in six-figure debt — it does affect your choices. I was fortunate. Better Luck Tomorrow opened up avenues, and one of those was to make studio movies. In reality, not many people get those opportunities, and it’s a whole different set of challenges and rules. It’s insane. Walking on set on a big Hollywood action movie, I would think, "$250,000 was the budget of Better Luck Tomorrow — here you spend that buying lunch."

SFBG Is it harder to get films with Asian American narratives and Asian American characters made?

JL Yeah, even for a $250,000 budget movie — that’s still tons of money, as far as Asian American film goes, and it’s all about gross profits and getting the films out, distribution and exhibition.

It’s funny — when I get into the studio world, I go to marketing meetings and meetings that most people don’t get into, and I’ve learned it’s all about numbers. Better Luck Tomorrow proved there was an audience, and it crossed over. But with Finishing the Game, the conversation always went back to Better Luck Tomorrow, because as far as Asian American films go, that’s the only thing they have to refer to, and it’s a challenge to prove it’s a valid business model for investors. I hope to conquer that with Finishing the Game — you can’t be treating these films as if they’re big-event blockbusters. Hopefully we are building our community with shared experiences.

SFBG You made Finishing the Game independently?

JL I approached studios early on. But I could see them wanting to develop it into a kung fu movie. Right now, the Asians on film have to exist for Asian reasons. Usually when you see Asian faces they’re Asian for a reason, whether they’re tourists or kung fu masters.

I don’t think it’s racism. That’s just the mind-set that exists in these rooms — the reality of it is, when you go in these casting offices and when they cast, it’s usually black and white. I think it’s going to take filmmakers to go in and say, "I want the casting to be color-blind." Even getting Asian American actors in to meet heads of casting is important — you may not get the job, but they can see your work. These are little baby steps. No one talks about it or knows about it.

SFBG How do you feel about Bruce Lee?

JL As a kid, I had a push-pull relationship with Bruce Lee, who was empowered, sexy, and cool and everything wrapped into one. At the same time, you’re walking down the street, and they’re expecting you to know kung fu and doing his yell at you.

But his screen presence and fearlessness made him so great. At the time I was totally confused — I saw Game of Death and didn’t know the backstory that 80 percent of it was made with a fake stand-in. As the idea evolved, all these other issues came up. There’s a made-up scenario of a casting process to replace him and, especially in the last five years, issues of identity and what it means to be in the film industry and society as a whole and the politics and agendas that go into it. In Asian American cinema too, I think it’s time for us to laugh — at ourselves, even.

FINISHING THE GAME

Thurs/15, 7 p.m., $40 opening night gala screening, $60 screening and Asian Art Museum reception

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 865-1588

www.asianamericanmedia.org

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SFIAAFF: 25 Alive: SF International Asian American Film Festival

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SFIAAFF Extras:

Kim Chun on director Justin Lim

Cheryl Eddy on this year’s crop of war docs

Matt Sussman on the films of Hong Sang-soo

Air Guitar Nation (Alexandra Lipsitz, US, 2006). Considering the so-called sport of air guitar consists of one-minute spates of cheesy posturing by proudly self-identified poseurs whose musical chops (and instruments) are a figment of the imagination, mockumentarian Alexandra Lipsitz manages to squeeze plenty of drama, one-liners, self-importance, and rock ‘n’ roll chutzpah out of her spot-on material. Brooklyn actor David Jung — in the kimonoed, Hello Kitty–breastplated air guitarist guise of C-Diddy — is the reason Air Guitar Nation is Asian and American: Lipsitz follows Jung as he hams his way into the US air guitar crown, doing battle with stubborn arch nemesis Björn Türoque (Nous Non Plus–Les Sans Culottes bassist-vocalist Dan Crane), and then travels to Finland to compete in the world championship against Euros who take their air guitar very seriously. Seriously. Regardless, Jung is the real reason this doc rocks, guitar or no guitar. For his good humor, over-the-top buffoonery, and ready wisecracks, I give him at least a 5.8. (Kimberly Chun)

Sun/18, 7:15 p.m., 1000 Van Ness; March 24, 7:15 p.m., Camera 12 Cinemas

Do Over (Cheng Yu-Chieh, Taiwan, 2006). Hopefully, you’ve got a little room left in your heart for one more movie of interlocking stories with connections to each other that aren’t immediately apparent (patent pending). Taiwanese director Cheng Yu-Chieh’s first feature film follows the events in the lives of five people on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as they spiral downward into compelling, if improbably concurrent, personal crises. You may leave the theater having forgotten a plot point or two, but you will certainly remember the satisfyingly disorienting fight scene shot from a behind-the-shoulder perspective, or the image of four people with their ears to a table listening for lottery numbers being announced in the room below. (Jason Shamai)

Mon/19, 6:45 p.m., 1000 Van Ness; March 23, 8:45 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; March 25, 4 p.m., Camera 12 Cinemas

The Great Happiness Space: Tales of an Osaka Love Thief (Jake Clennell, US, 2006). On any given night in downtown Osaka’s neon jungle, one can see handsome young men — uniformed in designer suits, their meticulous Rod Stewart shags in various shades of bottled blond — incessantly chat up nearly every passing woman in sight. These would-be suitors are actually hosts, male drinking companions who are, as host club boss Issei explains, "in the business of selling dreams" to female clients with empty hearts and deep pockets. The sad irony that the majority of these women support themselves doing "night work," whether as hostesses themselves or prostitutes, is lost on neither director Jake Clennell nor his subjects, the employees and customers at popular host bar Rakkyo. The thoughtful candor with which the hosts and their regulars speak of their investment in "fake love" only underscores the financial and emotional costs demanded by such a fantasy. But beneath the bankrupt surfaces, Clennell finds a stronger desire for connection that’s tended to in, as one host poetically describes it, this "space to rest your heart." (Matt Sussman)

Sun/18, 9:30 p.m., Van Ness 1000; March 23, 7 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; March 25, noon, Camera 12 Cinemas

In Between Days (So Yong Kim, South Korea/US/Canada, 2006) Fighting a world as cold as a city freeway overpass and as lonely as the reverb in a karaoke box for one, In Between Days is closer to a contemporary South Korean feature — formed from an individual, female point of view — than anything belched forth from Sundance’s labs. The film’s friction between South Korean and North American identities lives and breathes within Aimie (Jiseon Kim), who resentfully semi-inhabits a Toronto block apartment. So Yong Kim’s camerawork holds Aimie close even as she’s dismissive of a boy she likes and cruel to her divorced live-in mother, whom she keeps on the periphery. Impulsive actions with permanent results — be they skipped classes or homemade tattoos — are at the fore of this past-haunted tale of first sorta-love gone wrong. Waking up with Aimie each morning and more than once watching her looking at something painful just around the corner, Kim is as attuned to intimate frustration and revelation as Gina Kim (Invisible Light, Never Forever). Together, they’re two of the top young feature directors in the United States today. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Fri/16, 7 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; Sat/17, 2:30 p.m., Van Ness

It’s Only Talk (Ryuichi Hiroki, Japan, 2005). Like Sofia Coppola with a sense of humanity, Ryuichi Hiroki takes his bored and aimless female characters seriously. This film — like his lovely 2004 road movie Vibrator — features an unwell woman with more time on her hands than is probably good for her. Last time the trouble was bulimia; this time it’s manic depression. Yuko (the impossible to dislike Shinobu Terajima) has been living off the insurance money from her parents’ deaths for several years and has just moved to the outskirts of Tokyo, where she spends her more chemically balanced days snapping pictures and smiling beatifically. Horny as the next girl, she further occupies herself with a series of relationships that range from the involuntarily platonic to the incestuous. Hiroki makes truly therapeutic films, the kind that dispense with pat resolutions in favor of a general reassurance that life can be beautiful even when it sucks. (Shamai)

Sat/17, 6 p.m., Pacific Film Archive; Tues/20, 9:15 p.m., Van Ness; March 22, 6:45 p.m., Van Ness

King and the Clown (Lee Jun-ik, South Korea, 2005). The world’s but a stage, and we are merely players — either playing or being played — in this loving, gender-twisting tribute to entertainers of the Chosun Dynasty in the 1500s. On the road to Seoul, a pair of actors — enterprising scruffster Jang-seng (Karm Woo-sung) and beauteous cross-dresser Gong-gil (Lee Joon-gi) — discovers the key to the kingdom and possible fortune in poking dangerous fun at their regent and his courtesan. But in the process of tweaking authority, the companions find themselves straying a little too close to ugly reality while clowning for their lives and triggering a bloody burst of truth telling, along with some unexpected guffaws from imperial quarters. (Chun)

Sun/18, 2:45 p.m., Castro; March 24, 2 p.m., Camera 12 Cinemas

Pavement Butterfly (Richard Eichberg, Germany/UK, 1929). Roland Barthes may have rhapsodized over Greta Garbo’s face, but Anna May Wong’s eyes in Pavement Butterfly belong no less to "that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy." At times they are narrow slits through which flicker sparks of vindictiveness. At others they open to seemingly inhuman proportions, tremulous moons that drip rivulets of tears. Like the similarly coiffed Louise Brooks, Wong did some of her greatest work with European directors. Here, Richard Eichberg casts Wong as a circus fan dancer on the lam after being framed for murder. Given her namesake, strains of Giacomo Puccini (as well as a blackmailer) trail behind this butterfly’s fateful climb from Paris’s bohemian demimonde to the scaffold of high society. While the narrative damns her to the gutter, Wong’s optical pyrotechnics alone confirm her rightful place in that empyrean of stars Hollywood so stubbornly refused her. (Sussman)

Sun/18, 12:30 p.m., Castro

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WEDNESDAY

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March 7

FILM

Altman Tribute: McCabe and Mrs. Miller and 3 Women

This installment of the Castro Theatre’s Robert Altman tribute features two epics centering on the feminine mystique. McCabe and Mrs. Miller, from 1971, is a messy, unmelodramatic revision of the western. Similarly fixated on abstractions and identity, 1977’s 3 Women is dreamlike and hard to hold, with its title characters reutf8g in ineffable and sometimes mythic emotional situations. (Sara Schieron)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 2:15 and 7 p.m.
3 Women, 4:35 and 9:20 p.m.
$9 for double feature
Castro Theatre
429 Castro, SF
(415) 621-5288
www.castrotheatre.com

EVENT

Ellen Forney

Gritty, hilarious, incisive as the business end of a rapidograph, Ellen Forney makes cartooning seem as gloriously easy and fun as, well, scribbling in the margins of your college-ruled notebook during a heinously boring high school lecture. Whether she’s teaming with Dan Savage or simply waxing poetic — riotously — on the perfect music to die by in her new comics anthology, I Love Led Zeppelin, Forney is always beautifully perceptive about the pop-rockin’ alterna-culture she bolts from. I’m sure she’ll spring a few life lessons when she gives a multimedia performance promoting the volume. (Kimberly Chun)

7 p.m., free
Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
(415) 863-8688
www.booksmith.com

TUESDAY

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March 6

MUSIC

Danava

I’m such a total badass. Example? How about Portland’s wailing ambassadors of psychedelic prog metal Danava? They’re always good for some afternoon living-room bedlam, methinks. One spin of last year’s self-titled Kemado Records debut, and this quartet’s furious throttling of the common ground between Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Killing Joke, and King Crimson can guide you too down the path from dorkdom to serious ass-kicking virtuosity. (Todd Lavoie)

9 p.m., $7
12 Galaxies
2565 Mission, SF
(415) 970-9777
www.12galaxies.com

FILM

The Thing and Strange Behavior

“This thing doesn’t want to show itself – it wants to hide inside an imitation,” says Kurt Russell as Dr. J.R. MacReady, describing the ever-morphing enemy that’s making shaved ice of the crew of his Antarctic research base. The same could be said of John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of the ’50s drive-in classic The Thing, only Carpenter has nothing to hide. He improves on the original, brilliantly condensing its cold war paranoia into an icy psychological thriller that doesn’t skimp on the gore or quotable one-liners. (Matt Sussman)

7 and 9:20 p.m., $9
Castro Theatre
429 Castro, SF
(415) 621-6120
www.thecastrotheater.com

Does it have to be a bloodbath?

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By Tim Redmond

Already, I’m hearing whistpers from both sides of the Leno-Migden contest, and already, they’re getting nasty. Mark Leno told me this week that he will run an upbeat campaign, and that any negative attacks on Midgen “won’t come from me.” I suspect I will hear the same from Migden. But it’s common in campaigns for elected officials to try to take the high road and let others — their allies and suppoerters — do the dirty work.

So queer/labor activist Robert Haaland is asking not only the candidates, but their supporters in the queer and progressive communities, to pledge to keep this fight out of the gutter. Here’s a piece he sent me; I think everyone ought to read it, take it seriously, and sign on.

Our community was divided. Our LGBT clubs were separated. The streets of the Castro were full of opposing forces and consternation. During the 2001-2002 campaign for the 13th Assembly District seat, we were split and it was a difficult time.

Following that election campaign, we made a decision to begin the process of healing those divisions. The leaders of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, and the leaders of the campaigns, met together to salve these wounds and form a new alliance. This was not easy. It took years and much work within each to heal, listen, understand, and move forward together.

In the years since that election, our community has been in a renaissance. Our two LGBT Democratic Clubs have worked together like never before. We have seen tremendous and amazing accomplishments through those efforts. Our coordinated efforts as a community in opposition to the statewide Special Election in 2005 are an astounding example of what we can do when we work together.

Additionally, as efforts have moved forward in the LGBT community on issues such as marriage equality on the stairs of our City Hall, opposing racial discrimination in the Castro, speaking out against anti-LGBT commentary from the news media about our LGBT families, supporting statewide efforts for the advancement of our LGBT rights, and stopping attacks from the right-wing on our community, we have been able to work side-by-side in a way that was unthinkable during the 2001-2002 campaign.

This newfound coordination and organization between our Clubs and within our community has been crucial in working for the betterment and strength of our community as a whole. And we will not allow this community to be torn asunder again. Our friendships are too strong now. Our knowledge of the power of our coordinated efforts and their success is too deep. And our realization that we can move beyond minor disagreements and continue forward as friends and colleagues and community brothers and sisters is definite.

As our community begins the process of working on the upcoming state Senate campaign for June of 2008, we will not allow this to break our bonds. We demand that the candidates in the race do the following:

–Pledge that there will be no negative campaigning, against each other or supporters on any side
–Pledge that they individually will work to strengthen our community’s ties with one another
–Pledge that they will not work to form wedges and divisions among us as a community
–Pledge that they will regularly form bonds with all sides in the campaign
–Pledge respect, honor, decency, and above all, civility, towards all parties

We also urge our community’s leaders to pledge that they do the same. Regardless of anyone’s personal affiliations during this campaign, we will continue to form our alliances and friendships and move this community forward together. We are not going back. We have too much to gain by moving forward together.

FRIDAY

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March 2

film

Bugsy Malone

The year 1976 was special for Jodie Foster. When she wasn’t filming other movies, she and Chachi were making cinema history with Bugsy Malone, an all-kids gangster musical in which tommy guns fire custard bullets. Watching the film, directed by Alan Parker of Fame fame and with music by Paul Williams, should be nothing less than religious. The movie’s being shown as part of a “Midnites for Maniacs” underage Jodie Foster triple feature. Freaky Friday and Foxes precede it. (Jason Shamai)

11:59 p.m., $10
Castro Theatre
429 Castro, SF
(415) 621-6120
www.castrotheatre.com

event

WonderCon

Stressful work and family commitments have virtually killed our childlike sense of wonder. So as WonderCon, the Bay Area’s premiere comics convention, returns for the 21st year, feel free to be a kid again. Go on, spend your macchiato money on new comics, gush over your favorite artists, and catch new Frank Miller adaptation 300 and the related panel with director Zack Snyder. (Joshua Rotter)

Through Sun/4
Noon–7 p.m., $8–$15 (three-day pass, $20–$40)
Moscone Center South
747 Howard, SF
(415) 974-4000
www.comic-con.org

SUNDAY

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Feb. 25

EVENT

Pablo Heising Memorial

Even though the unofficial mayor of Haight Street, Paul “Pablo” Heising, had to move away from his beloved neighborhood due to rent increases, you could still find him daily at Café Cole. Cofounder of the 34-year-old Castro Street Fair, the 30-year-old Haight Ashbury Street Fair, and the three-year-old Asian Heritage Street Celebration, Heising has a legacy that goes beyond mural preservation, and his unexpected death Dec. 20, 2006, was widely mourned. Join his surviving family and friends, Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Tom Ammiano, and performers in re-creating an indoor minifair to celebrate the man. (Nicole Gluckstern)

1 p.m., free
Kezar Pavilion
455 Stanyan, SF
www.haightashburystreetfair.org

EVENT

Chinese New Year Celebration

Facts is facts: it isn’t Chinese New Year without a ton of firecrackers and lion dancing. Which isn’t exactly relaxing. However, the folks at the ACTCM have got you covered, because their event also features massage and acupuncture treatments, Tai chi and qigong workshops, and lectures on Chinese medicine. Not to mention refreshments – probably some soothing tea to work on that headache. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

Noon-5 p.m., free
American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine
555 DeHaro, SF
(415) 282-7600

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