Conservative

Redmond traded for Nevius in mid-season shocker

Sasha Cuttler
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Redmond traded for Nevius in mid-season shocker

Bay Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond has been traded to the San Francisco Chronicle for columnist C.W. Nevius and a right-wing associate editor to be named later, it was announced today.

As part of the deal, the Chronicle will pick up the remainder of Redmond’s $25.3 million contract. In addition to a future editor, the Chron will pay the Guardian an undisclosed amount of money “just to get Nevius the fuck out of here,” Chronicle Editor Ward Bushee said.

“We respect all that Chuck has done for us, but when we realized he couldn’t even get a hippie recycling center evicted by the deadline, we knew it was time to make a change. This is the big leagues, boyo.”

Former Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, one of the many die-hard Nevius fans who has become disillusioned of late, was more harsh. “Nobody pays any attention to his shit anymore,” she said.

Nevius, a former sportswriter, has been struggling lately with the transition to a political position. His Column Effectiveness Percentage has dropped to .212 and his embarrassing play on the Haight Asbury Neighborhood Council Recycling Center and the Park Merced development have spurred calls for his removal.

Redmond has been struggling, too, and is widely considered to be grossly overpaid. His CEP fell below .300 for the first time this year, a problem he has blamed on age and brain damage. He recently cut his hair in an effort to clear some of the heat from his leftist political rhetoric, but his last four pieces on tax policy have been complete failures – not one politician has held a hearing, made a statement or done anything but quietly murmur that Redmond “has gone off the deep end.” He has refused repeated calls to open up his stance.

Redmond insists that none of his problems are his own fault, and suggested that his lack of effectiveness is due to some sort of shadowy “juice” at City Hall. “David Chiu and Jane Kim can’t possibly be throwing curve balls like that on their own,” he said.

Under the terms of the deal, Nevius will immediately take over Redmond’s job and Redmond will become the Chron’s Conservative Suburban Twit.

Redmond announced that he will be selling his house in Bernal Heights and moving to a gated community in the East Bay. “If I’m going to trash San Francisco every day, I need to be living in a place where there’s no music and the cops shoot homeless people on sight,” he said. “If I’m going to become a conservative, it’s important to eliminate any actual connection to the people I’m writing about.”

April Fool’s.

The Guardian endorses: Jello Biafra for Mayor!

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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On every level, the San Francisco mayor’s race is critical. San Franciscans will decide whether a fiscally conservative candidate backed by downtown interests will continue Gavin Newsom’s legacy of gutting critical services while refusing to raise taxes, or if a progressive will lead the city into a new era.

San Francisco needs a mayor who is motivated not by campaign donations from corporate fat cats, but by true San Francisco values. The city needs some one who is ready to fight the war on fun, by boldly having more fun than the warmongers can possibly stand.

What San Francisco needs is Jello Biafra. In a rare early endorsement, the Guardian has thrown its support behind Biafra for mayor. Formerly the lead singer of legendary punk rock group the Dead Kennedys, he is now the front man of Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. In 1979, Biafra ran for mayor against former Mayor Dianne Feinstein and former state Sen. Quentin Kopp. His campaign motto was There’s Always Room for Jello.

“I am honored,” Biafra said when he was notified that he had received the Guardian’s endorsement for mayor. “After all, how could I be any worse than the last elected mayor, who turned out to be a horrible Frankenstein of Dianne Feinstein, Gray Davis and Tom Cruise?”

Biafra went on to talk about his campaign platform. “I would immediately reverse all [Newsom’s] mean-spirited, bigoted, anti-homeless laws, and instead hire all the panhandlers to work for the city on a 50 percent commission to help balance the budget,” he said.

Biafra said San Francisco could take a cue from Austin, Texas for another revenue-generating measure. “I would … declare the outlying strip on 11th and Folsom to be a music district, like they did on Sixth Street in Austin Texas, instead of having the police harass them and shut them down. This has brought in a huge amount of tax revenue for Austin, by the way.”

As part of this plan, the city could “use the revenue to buy back KUSF for the people of the city,” he added.

Biafra has a refreshing approach to ending police misconduct and promoting reform within the San Francisco Police Department. “Police officers should be an elected position,” he told the Guardian. “Every four years, you run for election, voted on by the district you patrol. You couldn’t just run off and hide in Novato after beating and shooting people anymore.”

An honest mayoral candidate, Biafra doesn’t pull any punches – not even when it comes to criticizing the Guardian, which has been the only publication to endorse his campaign so far. “I think the Guardian blew it when they came out against the initiative to rename our sewage plant after George W. Bush,” he said. “I think that would be a great idea. I’ll bring that one back, too.”
Rather than minimum wage, Biafra would like to implement a maximum wage, which has been proposed by the California Green Party.

“What should the wage be? Let’s be generous: Two hundred grand, and then you’re done,” Biafra decided. “You can live really well on that kind of money. Everything else goes back to the public purse, and you’ve got schools, you’ve got health care for everybody, transportation for everybody, people can even go to law school on the public’s dime – and why not? I mean, what about just giving some of that money back to people who didn’t make the $200,000 and guarantee people income, instead of talking about welfare cheats?”

When he ran for mayor in 1979, Biafra generated a great deal of attention with his proposal to require businessmen to wear clown suits between the hours of nine and five. But he said this required some explanation: “This is only in downtown,” he noted, “because this is a response to Feinstein’s campaign to clean up Market Street. She meant the Tenderloin, I meant downtown where Chevron and Bechtel and Bank of America and the other looters hold court.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPhfUOsT71c&feature=related

Biafra said he also planned to bring back another proposal from his first mayoral bid: “Create a board of bribery, to set fair standards and public rates for liquor licenses, building code exemptions, police protection, and most importantly, protection from the police,” he explained.

As for the re-naming of Candlestick Park, Biafra had a flash of inspiration during his endorsement interview. “Isn’t there those little bags of junk food under the brand Emperor Norton for, you know, dried bread chips and stuff? How about, if they’re going to sell off the name Candlestick Park — or for that matter, finally name our baseball stadium after something other than a phone company — how about Emperor Norton Park?” Biafra suggested.

Vote for Jello Biafra for Mayor of San Francisco. After all, as he told us, “I would definitely be better than the last elected mayor. Then again, so would a cockroach.”

Vote early, vote often, and vote like your city depended on it!

P.S.: If Jello Biafra doesn’t win, we’ll kill ourselves.

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine will launch their latest album, Enhanced Methods of Questioning, at Slim’s on June 4.

April Fool’s. Kinda.

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Calling for painful spending cuts, it turns out, is the easy part. Calling for relatively painless tax increases requires real political courage.

— The New York Times, March 13

The Times is hardly a crazy socialist rag; it’s always been the voice of the establishment, more Democrat than Republican but never even close to radical. The Gray Lady certainly can’t be accused of fomenting class warfare.

But in a calm, measured tone this week, the paper made the exact point about New York State that some of us whose politics lean a bit more to the left have been making about San Francisco.

The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has presented the state Legislature with an all-cuts budget. The Times suggests that the wealthier residents of the state should share just a small amount of the economic pain. Extending a surtax on high earners would be more than tolerable, the paper notes:

“A couple with $350,000 in taxable income would simply continue to pay an extra $3,500; a couple with taxable income of $1.5 million would continue to pay $31,800 more. Those payments would be more than offset by the federal tax breaks those same taxpayers got with the recent renewal of the Bush-era tax cuts.”

Of course, in New York, as here, those state tax payments are deductible from the already-too-low federal income taxes the rich are paying.

It’s too much to ask that the San Francisco Chronicle pick up that line; the Chron, out here on the Left Coast, is far more conservative than the stodgy old Times. But you’d think that in a city where Republican voter registration is below 10 percent, that local officials — including a mayor who calls himself “progressive” — would be able to go at least as far as a moderate national newspaper.

Because the argument is pretty simple and basic.

Cuts in public services fall hardest on the poor and middle class. Families that can afford to join a private club don’t have to worry when hours at the city pools are cut back; their kids learn to swim anyway. People with good health insurance can try to ignore the conditions at San Francisco General Hospital. Private school parents think the size of classrooms in the public schools isn’t a big factor in their lives.

But it all comes back to haunt us, every one of us, in this city. When the number of beds in General’s psych ward is cut from 80 to 20, more people with severe mental illness are out on the streets. Cutting public schools not only makes class divisions more deeply entrenched, it damages the city’s economy.

As the Times says, painful cuts are easy. Taxing the rich never seems to be on the table

Rand Paul’s baby talk

Zelda Bronstein
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Rand Paul’s baby talk

Last week, Rand Paul (R-KY) — man, there’s a double entendre just waiting to happen — went shithouse ballistic (pun intended) over what he sees as one of the most pressing issue in the nation today — low-flush toilets.

At a hearing while grilling a lower level Obama Administration Energy department spokesperson, Paul was in full fury.

 

“Frankly, the toilets don’t work in my house,” Paul said. “And I blame you, and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house, what I can do.”

 

Be it low flush crappers nouveau, newer and costlier and more energy efficient light bulbs, recycling (the new House leadership got rid of biodegradables in the House caff as a remnant of the despised Pelosi era), the angry and seething Libertarian and his followers are a bizarre variation on the Patrick Henry ethos that could have only sprung from the lunacy of our era–“Give me the liberty to waste the planet’s resources frivolously or give me…well, all of us are draft-dodging chicken-hawks anyway, so death may be extreme, let’s just say we’re gonna whine loudly about it.”

One would think that “conservatism” (Paul claims to be conservative) would include the classical definition, like prudence and caution and recognition that the finite resources of the planet have to be, well, conserved. Instead, he and his ilk rail about “treehuggers” and “environazis” and their mouthpieces mock people accustomed to husbanding their resources as silly.

 

But this is not conservatism. It is, as any parent whose ever seen a fou- year-old in action, the mindlessly childish defiance of anyone that dares impose anything for one’s own good, even when it makes complete sense to do so–this is not a drug or alcohol law of a prohibitionary stripe, nor a ban on the salacious, nor even an actual imposition–today’s “conservative” gets irate over any restriction, because, how dare you tell me what I can or can’t purchase even if it will make future generations (ie, the “unborn” that they claim to care about so much) miserable.

 

In other words, baby talk. This is kiddie shit–”I will stand up to those who would see me as a child because I, well, am being childish.” Defiance over not only the trivial, but the desire to make other people miserable by one’s own lack of sense and control. No wonder the American Right uses the expression “nanny state” so much–they are stuck in perpetual infanthood and see even the most modest measures to cut down on resource overuse as a kind of totalitarian, grown-up imposed austerity.

 

It isn’t a sacrifice to have less water in your john, Rand. It isn’t an imposition to put in them curly lightbulbs or to haul your own bags to the Safeway or to put recyclables in a different colored barrel. It’s called “accepting reality.” Which is probably why Senator Paul wouldn’t recognize it if it bit him on his toupeed ass.

 

Johnny Angel Wendell is a talk show host in LA at KTLK AM1150 and here on SFBG.com, as well as a musician  and actor

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 29th SFIAAFF runs through Sun/20 at the Camera 12, 201 S. Second St., San Jose; Pacific Film Archive, 2776 Bancroft, Berk.; Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post; and Viz Cinema, New People, 1746 Post, SF. For tickets (most shows $12) and additional program information, visit www.caamedia.org. All times pm.

WED/16

Kabuki “Futurestates” (shorts program) 4. One Voice 4:45. Made in India 6:45. Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words with “Slaying the Dragon Reloaded” 7:15. Dance Town 9:15. Affliction 9:30.

PFA M/F Remix 7. Sampaguita, National Flower 9.

Viz “Living Life Large” (shorts program) 4. Dog Sweat 6:45. Peace 9:15.

THURS/17

Kabuki Living in Seduced Circumstances 4:20. “Tainted Love” (shorts program) 5:15. “Silent Rituals and Hovering Proxies” (shorts program) 6:45. Surrogate Valentine 7. Bi, Don’t Be Afraid! 7:30.

PFA Dance Town 7. Nang Nak 9:20.

Viz “Life Interrupted” (shorts program) 5. “Futurestates” (shorts program) 7:30.

FRI/18

PFA Passion 7. The Taqwacores 8:45.

SAT/19

Camera Amin 12:15. Piano in a Factory 1. Saigon Electric 3:15. “Life, Interrupted” (shorts program) 3:30. Almost Perfect 6. Made in India 6. Emir 8:30. When Love Comes 9.

PFA Bend It Like Beckham 4. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! 6:10. Histeria 8.

SUN/20

Camera “3rd I South Asian International Shorts” noon. The Fourth Portrait 1. One Voice 2:15. Surrogate Valentine 3:30. Abraxas 4:45. Bi, Don’t Be Afraid! 6. It’s a Wonderful Afterlife 7:30. Break Up Club 8.

 

OPENING

Certified Copy See “Looking Glass Love.” (1:46) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

*Heartbeats See “Xavier University.” (1:35) Lumiere.

*The Human Resources Manager What happens when a nameless, faceless “human resource” begin to resolve into a palpably real being with hopes, fears, loved ones, a hometown, a past? The harried Human Resources Manager of a big Jerusalem bakery finds out when one of his employer’s foreign workers is killed in a suicide bombing. After her body remains unclaimed in a city morgue, his employer is tagged with callous indifference, and it’s up to the beleaguered HR Manager (Mark Ivanir) — already suffering from something of an existential crisis — to undertake damage control. That task turns out to be absurdly above and beyond the ordinary when he retraces his late charge’s footsteps and tracks down her family in Romania, dogged by a meddling reporter (Guri Alfi). Back in the bleak old country, “neither east nor west,” as he’s constantly reminded, the HR Manager encounters a suitably salty, strange array of characters — the earthy Consul (Rozina Cambos) and the deceased’s divorced husband (Reymond Amsalem) and her feral son (Noah Silver) — though who can actually claim the lady’s remains? The troublesome chore turns into a journey about reconnecting with the people the HR Manager stopped seeing as full-fledged, complicated beings. Working from A.B. Yehoshua’s 2006 novel, A Woman in Jerusalem, director Eran Riklis deigns to give his characters names, apart from the dead, and instead focuses on crafting a carefully balanced, altogether enjoyable and accessible black comedy, rendering it all with a delicate touch that Anton Chekhov might have approved of. (1:43) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

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

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

The Lincoln Lawyer Matthew McConaughey stars as an unconventional lawyer who takes on a controversial client (Ryan Phillippe). (1:59)

The Music Never Stopped Based on a Dr. Oliver Sacks case history, this neurological wild-ride focuses on the generation gap in extremis: after a ’60s teenage son rebels against his parents, staying incommunicado in the interim, he resurfaces over two decades later as a disoriented, possibly homeless patient they’re called to identify at a hospital. He’s had a benign brain tumor removed — yet it had grown so large before surgery that it damaged gray-matter areas including those handling recent memory. As a result, Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci) relates to Mr. (J.K. Simmons) and Mrs. Sawyer (a terrific but underutilized Cara Seymour) as if they were still his upstate NY domestic keepers. A radiant Julia Ormond plays the music therapist who convinces them Gabe might respond to music, which had helped serially glue and sever the father-son bond decades earlier. This is an inherently fascinating psychological study. But director Jim Kohlberg and his scenarists render it placidly inspirational, with too little character nuance, scant period atmosphere (somewhat due to budgetary limitations), and weak homage to the Grateful Dead (ditto) rendering an unusual narrative oddly formulaic. (1:45) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Paul Across the aisle from the alien-shoot-em-up Battle: Los Angeles is its amiable, nerdy opposite: Paul, with its sweet geeks Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), off on a post-Comic-Con pilgrimage to all the US sites of alien visitation. Naturally the buddies get a close encounter of their very own, with a very down-to-earth every-dude of a schwa named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), given to scratching his balls, spreading galactic wisdom, utilizing Christ-like healing powers, and cracking wise when the situation calls for it (as when fear of anal probes escalates). Despite a Pegg-and-Frost-penned script riddled with allusions to Hollywood’s biggest extraterrestrial flicks and much 12-year-old-level humor concerning testicles and farts, the humor onslaught usually attached to the two lead actors — considered Lewis and Martin for pop-smart Anglophiles — seems to have lost some of its steam, and teeth, with the absence of former director and co-writer Edgar Wright (who took last year’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to the next level instead). Call it a “soft R” for language and an alien sans pants. (1:44) California. (Chun)

*Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune When Phil Ochs was at his peak, he was one of the finest polemical folksingers to come out of the ’60s, and when he tumbled from those heights, the fall was terrible: he lost more than friends and fame — he appeared to completely lose himself, to substance abuse and mental illness. Director Kenneth Bowser does the singer-songwriter justice with this documentary, threading to-the-ramparts tunes like “Hazard, Kentucky,” questioning numbers a la “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” and achingly beautiful songs such as “Jim Dean of Indiana” throughout political events of the day, scenes from a protest movement that were inextricably entangled with Ochs’ oeuvre. Along with the many clips of Ochs in performance are interviews with the artist’s many friends, cohorts, and fans including Van Dyke Parks (who is becoming a Thurston Moore-like go-to for a generation’s damaged voices), brother (and music archivist) Michael Ochs, Joan Baez, Tom Hayden, Peter Yarrow, Billy Bragg, daughter Meegan Ochs, and Ed Sanders. Expect an education in Ochs’ art, but also, perhaps more importantly (to the singer-songwriter), a glimpse into a time and place that both fed, fueled and bestowed meaning on his songs. Bowser succeeds in paints the portrait of a performer that was both idealistic and careerist, driven to fight injustice yet also propelled to explore new creative avenues (like recording with local musicians in Africa). Did Ochs fall — by way of drink, drugs, and mental illness — or was he pushed, as the artist claimed when he accused CIA thugs of destroying his vocal chords? The filmmaker steps back respectfully, allowing us to draw our own conclusion about this life lived fully. (1:38) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

You Won’t Miss Me Look at this fucking hipster: dour, aimless Shelly (Stella Schnabel, daughter of Julian) has her own New York City apartment (plus access to a country home, the ability to travel to Atlantic City on a whim, etc.) despite having no apparent source of income. Shelly drifts, going on auditions to further her as-yet unsuccessful acting career; leaving monotone voice mails for her mother; visiting her therapist; hooking up with assorted unwashed dudes; and hanging out with her insipid friends, one of whom helps our hapless 21st century protagonist set up her very first email account. That Shelly is depressed is a given; why anyone would choose to watch this drag of a film is a mystery. Director Ry Russo-Young aims to break up the angst by deploying an array of formats — from Super 8 to Flip — but no amount of artsy quirks (or cameos recognizable only to mumblecore enthusiasts) can make up for You Won’t Miss Me‘s uninvolving plot and unsympathetic characters. For a less painful (though by no means pain-free) experience, seek out last year’s similar Tiny Furniture instead. (1:21) Roxie. (Eddy)

ONGOING

The Adjustment Bureau As far as sci-fi romantic thrillers go, The Adjustment Bureau is pretty standard. But since that’s not an altogether common genre mash-up, I guess the film deserves some points for creativity. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau takes place in a world where all of our fates are predetermined. Political hotshot David Norris (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness — but not if he lets a romantic dalliance with dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) take precedence. And in order to make sure he stays on track, the titular Adjustment Bureau (including Anthony Mackie and Mad Men‘s John Slattery) are there to push him in the right direction. While the film’s concept is intriguing, the execution is sloppy. The Adjustment Bureau suffers from flaws in internal logic, allowing the story to skip over crucial plot points with heavy exposition and a deus ex machina you’ve got to see to believe. Couldn’t the screenwriter have planned ahead? (1:39) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Battle: Los Angeles Michael Bay is likely writhing with envy over Battle: Los Angeles; his Transformers flicks take a more, erm, nuanced view of alien-on-human violence. But they’re not all such bad guys after all; these days, as District 9 (2009) demonstrated, alien invasions are more hazardous to the brothers and sisters from another planet than those trigger-happy humanoids ready to defend terra firma. So Battle arrives like an anomaly — a war-is-good action movie aimed at faceless space invaders who resemble the Alien (1979) mother more than the wide-eyed lost souls of District 9. Still reeling from his last tour of duty, Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is ready to retire, until he’s pulled back in by a world invasion, staged by thirsty aliens. In approximating D-Day off the beach of Santa Monica, director Jonathan Liebesman manages to combine the visceral force of Saving Private Ryan (1998) with the what-the-fuck hand-held verite rush of Cloverfield (2008) while crafting tiny portraits of all his Marines, including Michelle Rodriguez, Ne-Yo, and True Blood‘s Jim Parrack. A few moments of requisite flag-waving are your only distractions from the almost nonstop white-knuckle tension fueling Battle: Los Angeles. (1:57) California, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Beastly The problem with a title like Beastly is that it’s difficult to avoid the obvious line: the movie lives up to its name. But indeed, this modernized take on the Beauty and the Beast tale is wretched on all fronts — a laughable script, endless plot holes, and the kind of wooden acting that makes you long for the glory days of Twilight (2008). New “It Boy” Alex Pettyfer stars as Kyle, a vapid popular kid who is cursed to look like a slightly less attractive version of himself by a vengeful witch (Mary-Kate Olsen). Only the love of kind-hearted Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) can cure him of his fate. There is so much wrong with Beastly, it’s hard to zone in on its individual faults: this is a film in which the opening scene has Kyle telling his ugly classmates to “embrace the suck”—and then getting elected to student government anyway. Embrace Beastly‘s suck if you can’t live without Pettyfer’s washboard abs, but you’re far better off rewatching the Disney or Cocteau versions. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

Biutiful Uxbal (Javier Bardem) has problems. To name but a few: he is raising two young children alone in a poor, crime-beset Barcelona hood. He is making occasional attempts to rope back in their bipolar, substance-abusive mother (Maricel Álvarez), a mission without much hope. He is trying to stay afloat by various not-quite legal means while hopefully doing the right thing by the illegals — African street drug dealers and Chinese sweatshop workers — he acts as middleman to, standing between them and much less sympathetically-inclined bossmen. He’s got a ne’er-do-well brother (Eduard Fernandez) to cope with. Needless to say, with all this going on (and more), he isn’t getting much rest. But when he wearily checks in with a doc, the proverbial last straw is stacked on his camelback: surprise, you have terminal cancer. With umpteen odds already stacked against him in everyday life, Uxbal must now put all affairs in order before he is no longer part of the equation. This is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s first feature since an acrimonious creative split with scenarist Guillermo Arriaga. Their films together (2006’s Babel, 2003’s 21 Grams, 2000’s Amores Perros) have been criticized for arbitrarily slamming together separate baleful storylines in an attempt at universal profundity. But they worked better than Biutiful, which takes the opposite tact of trying to fit several stand-alone stories’ worth of hardship into one continuous narrative — worse, onto the bowed shoulders of one character. Bardem is excellent as usual, but for all their assured craftsmanship and intense moments, these two and a half hours collapse from the weight of so much contrived suffering. Rather than making a universal statement about humanity in crisis, Iñárritu has made a high-end soap opera teetering on the verge of empathy porn. (2:18) Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Black Swan “Lose yourself,” ballet company head Thomas (Vincent Cassel) whispers to his leading lady, Nina (Natalie Portman), moments before she takes the stage. But Nina is already consumed with trying to find herself, and rarely has a journey of self-discovery been so unsettling. Set in New York City’s catty, competitive ballet world, Black Swan samples from earlier dance films (notably 1948’s The Red Shoes, but also 1977’s Suspiria, with a smidgen of 1995’s Showgirls), though director Darren Aronofsky is nothing if not his own visionary. Black Swan resembles his 2008 The Wrestler somewhat thematically, with its focus on the anguish of an athlete under ten tons of pressure, but it’s a stylistic 180. Gone is the gritty, stripped-down aesthetic used to depict a sad-sack strongman. Like Dario Argento’s 1977 horror fantasy, the gory, elegantly choreographed Black Swan is set in a hyper-constructed world, with stabbingly obvious color palettes (literally, white = good; black = evil) and dozens of mirrors emphasizing (over and over again) the film’s doppelgänger obsession. As Nina, Portman gives her most dynamic performance to date. In addition to the thespian fireworks required while playing a goin’-batshit character, she also nails the role’s considerable athletic demands. (1:50) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*Cedar Rapids What if The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) got so Parks and Rec‘d at The Office party that he ended up with a killer Hangover (2009)? Just maybe the morning-after baby would be Cedar Rapids. Director Miguel Arteta (2009’s Youth in Revolt) wrings sweet-natured chuckles from his banal, intensely beige wall-to-wall convention center biosphere, spurring such ponderings as, should John C. Reilly snatch comedy’s real-guy MVP tiara away from Seth Rogen? Consider Tim Lippe (Ed Helms of The Hangover), the polar opposite of George Clooney’s ultracompetent, complacent ax-wielder in Up in the Air (2009). He’s the naive manchild-cum-corporate wannabe who never quite graduated from Timmyville into adulthood. But it’s up to Lippe to hold onto his firm’s coveted two-star rating at an annual convention in Cedar Rapids. Life conspires against him, however, and despite his heartfelt belief in insurance as a heroic profession, Lippe immediately gets sucked into the oh-so-distracting drama, stirred up by the dangerously subversive “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly), whom our naif is warned against as a no-good poacher. Temptations lie around every PowerPoint and potato skin; as Deanzie warns Lippe’s Candide, “I’ve got tiger scratches all over my back. If you want to survive in this business, you gotta daaance with the tiger.” How do you do that? Cue lewd, boozy undulations — a potbelly lightly bouncing in the air-conditioned breeze. “You’ve got to show him a little teat.” Fortunately Arteta shows us plenty of that, equipped with a script by Wisconsin native Phil Johnston, written for Helms — and the latter does not disappoint. (1:26) California, Empire, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Even the Rain It feels wrong to criticize an “issues movie” — particularly when the issues addressed are long overdue for discussion. Even the Rain takes on the privatization of water in Bolivia, but it does so in such an obvious, artless way that the ultimate message is muddled. The film follows a crew shooting an on-location movie about Christopher Columbus. The film-within-a-film is a less-than-flattering portrait of the explorer: if you’ve guessed that the exploitation of the native people will play a role in both narratives, you’d be right. The problem here is that Even the Rain rests on our collective outrage, doing little to explain the situation or even develop the characters. Case in point: Sebastian (Gael García Bernal), who shifts allegiances at will throughout the film. There’s an interesting link to be made between the time of Columbus and current injustice, but it’s not properly drawn here, and in the end, the few poignant moments get lost in the shuffle. (1:44) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

The Fighter Once enough of a contenda to have fought Sugar Ray Leonard — and won, though there are lingering questions about that verdict’s justice — Dicky (Christian Bale) is now a washed-up, crack-addicted mess whose hopes for a comeback seem just another expression of empty braggadocio. Ergo it has fallen to the younger brother he’s supposedly “training,” Micky (Mark Wahlberg), to endure the “managerial” expertise of their smothering-bullying ma (Melissa Leo) and float their large girl gang family of trigger-tempered sisters. That’s made even worse by the fact that they’ve gotten him nothing but chump fights in which he’s matched someone above his weight and skill class in order to boost the other boxer’s ranking. When Micky meets Charlene (Amy Adams), an ambitious type despite her current job as a bartender, this hardboiled new girlfriend insists the only way he can really get ahead is by ditching bad influences — meaning mom and Dicky, who take this shutout as a declaration of war. The fact-based script and David O. Russell’s direction do a good job lending grit and humor to what’s essentially a 1930s Warner Brothers melodrama — the kind that might have had Pat O’Brien as the “good” brother and James Cagney as the ne’er-do-well one who redeems himself by fadeout. Even if things do get increasingly formulaic (less 1980’s Raging Bull and more 1976’s Rocky), the memorable performances by Bale (going skeletal once again), Wahlberg (a limited actor ideally cast) and Leo (excellent as usual in an atypically brassy role) make this more than worthwhile. As for Adams, she’s just fine — but by now it’s hard to forget the too many cutesy parts she’s been typecast in since 2005’s Junebug. (1:54) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Harvey)

Gnomeo and Juliet If you willingly see a movie titled Gnomeo and Juliet, you probably have a keen sense of what you’re in for. And as long as that’s the case, it’s hard not to get sucked into the film’s 3D gnome-infested world. Believe it or not, this is actually a serviceable adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic — minus the whole double-suicide downer ending. But at least the movie is conscious of its source material, throwing in several references to other Shakespeare plays and even having the Bard himself (or, OK, a bronze statue) comment on the proceedings. It helps that the cast is populated by actors who could hold their own in a more traditional Shakespearean context: James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Maggie Smith, and Michael Caine. But Gnomeo and Juliet isn’t perfect — not because of its outlandish concept, but due to a serious overabundance of Elton John. The film’s songwriter and producer couldn’t resist inserting himself into every other scene. Aside from the final “Crocodile Rock” dance number, it’s actually pretty distracting. (1:24) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

Hall Pass There are some constants when it comes to a Farrelly Brothers movie: lewd humor, full-frontal male nudity, and at least one shot of explosive diarrhea. Hall Pass does not disappoint on the gross-out front, but it’s a letdown in almost every other way. Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are married men obsessed with the idea of reliving their glory days. Lucky for them, wives Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) decide to give them a week-long “hall pass” from marriage. Of course, once Rick and Fred are able to go out and snag any women they want, they realize most women aren’t interested in being snagged by dopey fortysomethings. On paper, Hall Pass has the potential to be a sharp, anti-bro comedy. Instead, it wallows in recycled toilet humor that’s no longer edgy enough to make us squirm. At least there are still moments of misogyny to provide that familiar feeling of discomfort. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

Happythankyoumoreplease Director, writer, and star Josh Radnor gets the prize for most unwieldy, hard-to-remember title in a while — and a tiny gold star for revealing the most heart within one so-called hipster. In this indie feel-gooder, writer Sam (Radnor) is lost at sea, completely adrift at the close of his twenties and unable to sell his novel. The aimlessness is beginning to seem less than cute to the random ladies that pass in the night and chums like Annie (Malin Akerman), who happens to have Alopecia and whose merry outlook is battling with her lack of self-confidence, and Mary Catherine (Zoe Kazan), who is puzzling whether to follow her boyfriend Charlie (Pablo Schreiber) to LA or to retain her life as a an artist in NYC. It takes a lost little boy, Rasheen (Michael Algieri), to bring out the selfless nurturer in Sam’s self-conscious man-child, giving him the courage to approach the local hottie-slash-waitress-slash-cabaret-singer Mississippi (Kate Mara). Radnor — who resembles a likable, every-guy Ben Affleck, though he’s hindered with an expressiveness that ranges from bemused to bemused — himself points to the similarities between Woody Allen’s hymns to Manhattan intelligentsia-bohemia and his own aria to NYC singles on the brink of hooking up with adulthood. Waxing cute rather than critical, Happythankyoumoreplease lacks Allen’s early bite, but its guileless sweetness just might do the trick and satisfy some. (1:40) Lumiere. (Chun)

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

I Am Number Four Do you like Twilight? Do you think aliens are just as sexy — if not sexier! — than vampires? I Am Number Four isn’t a rip-off of Stephenie Meyer’s supernatural saga, but the YA novel turned film is similar enough to draw in that coveted tween audience. John (Alex Pettyfer) is a teenage alien with extraordinary powers who falls in love with a human girl Sarah (Dianna Agron). But they’re from two different worlds! To be fair, star-crossed romance isn’t the issue here: the real problem is I Am Number Four‘s “first in a series” status. Rather than working to establish itself as a film in its own right, the movie sets the stage for what’s to come next, a bold presumption for something this mediocre. It lazily drops some exposition, then launches into big, loud battles without pausing to catch its breath. I Am Number Four only really works if it gets a sequel, and we all know how well that turned out for The Golden Compass (2007). (1:44) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

I Saw the Devil This latest by South Korean wunderkind Kim Ji-woon (2008’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird; 2003’s A Tale of Two Sisters) aims to push serial-killer thriller conventions to new extremes in intensity, violent set-piece bravado, and sheer length. Intelligence agent Joo-yeong (Lee Byung-hun) is inconsolably horrified when his fiancée — a police chief’s daughter — is abducted, tortured and murdered by giddily remorseless Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik). The latter is a rural schoolbus driver who stalks his prey on and off the job, hauling them to a rigged-up shack where he enjoys their protracted final writhings. Once our hero tracks down this grotesque villain, he demonstrates a perverse, obsessive side by letting the “devil” loose again — each time after serious physical punishment — so that he can live in terror of his avenger. The trouble with that concept is that our upright, fanatical hero thus allows remorseless Kyung-chul to abuse new victims every time he’s let loose, which simply doesn’t make psychological sense. I Saw the Devil has some dazzling action set-pieces and outre content. But the dependency on slasher genre-style harm toward pretty young women sounds a sour, conventional note. And while it reserves a delicious irony or two for the end, this glorified horror flick simply goes on way too long. (2:21) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*The Illusionist Now you see Jacques Tati and now you don’t. With The Illusionist, aficionados yearning for another gem from Tati will get a sweet, satisfying taste of the maestro’s sensibility, inextricably blended with the distinctively hand-drawn animation of Sylvain Chomet (2004’s The Triplets of Belleville). Tati wrote the script between 1956 and 1959 — a loving sendoff from a father to a daughter heading toward selfhood — and after reading it in 2003 Chomet decided to adapt it, bringing the essentially silent film to life with 2D animation that’s as old school as Tati’s ambivalent longing for bygone days. The title character should be familiar to fans of Monsieur Hulot: the illusionist is a bemused artifact of another age, soon to be phased out with the rise of rock ‘n’ rollers. He drags his ornery rabbit and worn bag of tricks from one ragged hall to another, each more far-flung than the last, until he meets a little cleaning girl on a remote Scottish island. Enthralled by his tricks and grateful for his kindness, she follows him to Edinburgh and keeps house while the magician works the local theater and takes on odd jobs in an attempt to keep her in pretty clothes, until she discovers life beyond their small circle of fading vaudevillians. Chomet hews closely to bittersweet tone of Tati’s films — and though some controversy has dogged the production (Tati’s illegitimate, estranged daughter Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel claimed to be the true inspiration for The Illusionist, rather than daughter and cinematic collaborator Sophie Tatischeff) and Chomet neglects to fully detail a few plot turns, the dialogue-free script does add an intriguing ambiguity to the illusionist and his charge’s relationship — are they playing at being father and daughter or husband and wife? — and an otherwise straightforward, albeit poignant tale. (1:20) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Inside Job Inside Job is director Charles Ferguson’s second investigative documentary after his 2007 analysis of the Iraq War, No End in Sight, but it feels more like the follow-up to Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005). Keeping with the law of sequels, more shit blows up the second time around. As with No End in Sight, Ferguson adeptly packages a broad overview of complex events in two hours, respecting the audience’s intelligence while making sure to explain securities exchanges, derivatives, and leveraging laws in clear English (doubly important when so many Wall Street executives hide behind the intricacy of markets). The revolving door between banks, government, and academia is the key to Inside Job‘s account of financial deregulation. At times borrowing heist-film conventions (it is called Inside Job, after all), Ferguson keeps the primary players in view throughout his history so that the eventual meltdown seems anything but an accident. The filmmaker’s relentless focus on the insiders isn’t foolproof; tarring Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and Timothy Geithner as “made” guys, for example, isn’t a substitute for evaluating their varied performances over the last two years. Inside Job makes it seem that the entire crisis was caused by the financial sector’s bad behavior, and this too is reductive. Furthermore, Ferguson does not come to terms with the politicized nature of the economic fallout. In Inside Job, there are only two kinds of people: those who get it and those who refuse to. The political reality is considerably more contentious. (2:00) Bridge. (Goldberg)

The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Albany, Embarcadero, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Last Lions It’s hard being a single mom. Particularly when you are a lioness in the Botswana wetlands, your territory invaded and mate killed by an invading pride forced out of their own by encroaching humanity. Add buffalo herds (tasty yes, but with sharp horns they’re not afraid to use) and crocodiles (no upside there), and our heroine is hard-pressed to keep herself alive, let alone her three small cubs. Derek Joubert’s spectacular nature documentary, narrated by Jeremy Irons (in plummiest Lion King vocal form) manages a mind-boggling intimacy observing all these predators. Shot over several years, while seeming to depict just a few weeks or months’ events, it no doubt fudges facts a bit to achieve a stronger narrative, but you’ll be too gripped to care. Warning: those kitties sure are cute, but this sometimes harsh depiction of life (and death) in the wild is not suitable for younger children. (1:28) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Mars Needs Moms (1:28) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Nora’s Will There’s certainly something to be said for the uniqueness of Nora’s Will: I can’t think of any other Mexican-Jewish movies that cover suicide, Passover, and cooking with equal attention. But while it sounds like the film is overloaded, Nora’s Will is actually too subtle for its own good. It meanders along, telling the story of the depressed Nora, her conflicted ex-husband, and the family she left behind. When the movie focuses on the clash between Judaism and Mexican culture, the results are dynamic, but more often that not, it simply crawls along. It’s not that Nora’s Will is boring: it’s just easily forgettable, which is surprising given its subject matter. Meanwhile, it walks that fine line between comedy and drama, never bringing the laughs or the emotional catharsis it wants to offer. The only real reaction it inspires is hunger, particularly if the idea of a Mexican-Jewish feast sounds appealing. Turns out “gefilte fish” is the same in every language. (1:32) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

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

Rango (1:47) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

Red Riding Hood In order to appreciate a movie like Red Riding Hood, you have to be familiar with the teen supernatural romance genre. Catherine Hardwicke’s sexy reinterpretation of the fairy tale is not high art: the script is often laughable, the acting flat, and the werewolf CGI embarrassing. But there’s something undeniably enjoyable about Red Riding Hood, especially in the wake of the duller, more sexually repressed Twilight series. Amanda Seyfried stars as Valerie, a young woman living in a village of werewolf cannon fodder. She’s torn between love and duty — or, more accurately, Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) and Henry (Max Irons). Meanwhile, a vicious werewolf hunter (Gary Oldman) has arrived to overact his way into killing the beast. It’s a silly story with plenty of hamfisted references to the original fairy tale, but if you can embrace the camp factor and the striking visuals, Red Riding Hood is actually quite fun. Though, to be fair, it might help if you suffer through Beastly first. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Take Me Home Tonight Just because lame teen comedies existed in the ’80s doesn’t mean that they need to be updated for the ’10s. Nary an Eddie Money song disgraces the soundtrack of this unselfconscious puerile, pining sex farce — the type one assumes moviemakers have grown out of with the advent of smarty-pants a la Apatow and Farrell. Take Me Home Tonight would rather find its feeble kicks in major hair, big bags of coke, polo shirts with upturned collars, and “greed is good” affluenza. Matt (Topher Grace) is an MIT grad who’s refused to embrace the engineer within and is instead biding his time as a clerk at the local Suncoast video store when he stumbles on his old high school crush Tori (Teresa Palmer), a budding banker. In an effort to impress, he tells her he works for Goldman Sachs and trails after her to the rip-roaring last-hooray-before adulthood bash. Pal Barry (Dan Fogler) gets to play the Belushi-like buffoon when he swipes a Mercedes from the dealership he just got fired from, and ends up with a face full of powder in the arms of a kinky ex-supermodel (Angie Everhart). Despite cameos by comedians like Demetri Martin and a trailer and poster that make it all seem a bit cooler than it really is, Take Me Home Tonight doesn’t really touch the coattails of Jonathan Demme or even Cameron Crowe — in the hands of director Michael Dowse, it feels nowhere near as heartfelt, rock ‘n’ roll, or at the very least, cinematically competent. (1:37) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*True Grit Jeff Bridges fans, resist the urge to see your Dude in computer-trippy 3D and make True Grit your holiday movie of choice. Directors Ethan and Joel Coen revisit (with characteristic oddball touches) the 1968 Charles Portis novel that already spawned a now-classic 1969 film, which earned John Wayne an Oscar for his turn as gruff U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn. (The all-star cast also included Dennis Hopper, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, and Strother Martin.) Into Wayne’s ten-gallon shoes steps an exceptionally crusty Bridges, whose banter with rival bounty hunter La Boeuf (a spot-on Matt Damon) and relationship with young Mattie Ross (poised newcomer Hailee Steinfeld) — who hires him to find the man who killed her father — likely won’t win the recently Oscar’d actor another statuette, but that doesn’t mean True Grit isn’t thoroughly entertaining. Josh Brolin and a barely-recognizable Barry Pepper round out a cast that’s fully committed to honoring two timeless American genres: Western and Coen. (1:50) SF Center. (Eddy)

“2011 Academy Award-Nominated Short Films, Live-Action and Animated” (Live-action, 1:50; animated, 1:25) Red Vic.

Unknown Everything is blue skies as Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) flies to Germany for a biotech conference, accompanied by lovely wife Elizabeth (January Jones in full Betty Draper mode). Landing in Berlin things quickly become grey, as he’s separated from his wife and ends up in a coma. Waking in a hospital room, Harris experiences memory loss, but like Harrison Ford he’s getting frantic with an urgent need to find his wife. Luckily she’s at the hotel. Unluckily, so is another man, who she and everyone else claims is the real Dr. Harris. What follows is a by-the-numbers thriller, with car chases and fist fights, that manages to entertain as long as the existential question is unanswered. Once it’s revealed to be a knock-off of a successful franchise, the details of Unknown‘s dated Cold War plot don’t quite make sense. On the heels of 2008’s Taken, Neeson again proves capable in action-star mode. Bruno Ganz amuses briefly as an ex-Stasi detective, but the vacant parsing by bad actress Jones, appropriate for her role on Mad Men, only frustrates here. (1:49) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Ryan Prendiville)

*William S. Burroughs: A Man Within William S. Burroughs, as director John Waters puts it in this long-overdue documentary, became famous before any of his peers, “for all the things you were supposed to hide: he was gay; he was a junkie; he shot his wife.” Of course, that isn’t the entire story. Examining the cultural forces and tragic biographical events that shaped The Naked Lunch author, director Yony Lesler attempts with varying degrees of success to separate the intensely private man from the countercultural raconteur in the gray flannel suit Burroughs would become later in his life. Combining interviews with a who’s who of famous associates, friends, and admirers, rare and never-before seen archival footage, and clips from Burroughs’ own experimental films and later home movies, Lesler makes a convincing case for Burroughs as a perennial outsider, even to himself. His Harvard education and wealthy pedigree set him apart from his crunchier Beat compatriots and he openly disdained the label of “gay revolutionary” even as his writing boldly envisioned same-sex desire as something truly queer. And although his dour mien and conservative dress would later become personal trademarks, he in fact privately mourned the death of his wife, Joan Vollmer, who he shot in Mexico playing a drunken round of William Tell (he was never tried), and his estranged son, Bill Burroughs Jr., who died attempting to approximate his father’s former junkie lifestyle. The film’s talking heads variously credit Burroughs with everything from punk rock to performance art, but the sad, all-too-human story behind the hagiography is what’s most compelling here. (1:38) Roxie. (Sussman)

REP PICK

*In the Dust of the Stars This goofy 1976 science-fiction opus would certainly have some cult cache in the West if it hadn’t been an East Germany-Romania coproduction whose exposure was pretty well limited to nations behind the Iron Curtain. A spaceship from planet Cynro captained by Akala (Jana Brejchova) arrives on Tem 4, having answered a call asking for help. It is disconcerting when the Temians try to make them crash during landing, then incongruously welcome them with open arms and cocktails — well, actually, flavored inhalers — while claiming no distress signal was sent. When our protagonists remain skeptical, they are further plied with a lavish party involving much interpretive dancing, snakes slithering among the smorgasbord (which no one seems to mind, or notice), screaming women bouncing on circus nets, and a game in which men and women alike catch little balls with their cleavage. The guests are brainwashed by these vaguely orgiastic goings-on, but one who’d stayed behind on the ship suspects something amiss, soon discovering Tem 4’s big secret: its ruling class are invaders who have enslaved the actual natives, who toil in the mines or serve as frequently slapped waiters. Its supreme leader, apparently named “Boss,” likes to get his hair painted different colors and wear a bathrobe at all times. Things bog down at times as we wait for the proletariat to achieve nonviolent revolutionary overthrow of their capitalist oppressors, but how can you dislike any movie in which people wear futuristic pastel disco track suits and red leather jumpsuits? Let alone one that alternately recalls everything from 1930s Flash Gordon and 1950s mega-kitsch like Queen of Outer Space (1958) to Barbarella (1968) and Space: 1999. This is part of Goethe Institut’s “From the Wild West to Outer Space: East German Genre Films” series, which concludes March 31 with the 1968 youth pop musical Hot Summer. (1:35) Thurs/17, 7 p.m., $7, Goethe-Institut, 530 Bush, SF; www.goethe.de. (Harvey)

 

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

An agenda as clear as 1, 2, 3

Sasha Cuttler
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16

Downtown hates democracy. Entities like the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and San Francisco Chronicle prefer elections with well-financed frontrunners willing to do their bidding. They don’t like messy democratic exercises like this year’s mayoral elections, in which the crowded field of solid, evenly matched candidates will be looking for support from progressives as part of their ranked-choice voting strategies and any of several candidates could win.

That’s why the Chamber/Chronicle are hyperventilating about the ranked-choice voting system, which resulted in a candidate from outside the acceptable establishment becoming mayor of Oakland, a result they fear might also happen here. The latest attacks come in a pair of misleading stories in today’s Chronicle, based on a loaded Chamber poll.

The main story ran front page above the fold, the big headline calling the seven-year-old voting system “a mystery” because the poll found many voters didn’t know precise details about how votes are tabulated. And even though the poll found “voters evenly split on whether they prefer the current system or a runoff,” according to the story, columnist CW Nevius writes that the poll shows voters “would prefer a two-candidate runoff.”

No, Chuck, you and your fearful downtown cronies prefer elections like that: costly, low-turnout elections in which the better financed and more conservative candidate wins every time. But most people are content with the current system, and they have a strong record of knowing how to use it and how it basically works, which why the paper reluctantly admits at the end of the story that voters preferred this system more than 2-1 in a 2009 poll.

Even without knowing how the Chamber asked the question (we’re still waiting for a response to our request to review the poll questions and data) in the current poll, and even in a newspaper with a consistent record of wanting to repeal this voting system along with other progressive reform like district election and public financing, as many respondents to this obviously leading poll said they preferred this system as did those who don’t like it.

But you better believe that the Chronicle/Chamber are going to do everything they can to scare and confuse voters into losing confidence in ranked-choice voting. Spotting these thinly veiled Chronicle/Chamber crusades is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

UPDATE: The Chamber did forward us its poll questions, including this one: “As far as you know, in an election that uses ranked choice voting, if your first choice, second choice and third choice candidates are all eliminated when the votes are tallied, what happens …. (ROTATE) is your vote counted or is your vote not counted … (READ LAST) or are you unsure?”

The results: 55 percent unsure, 29 percent “your vote is counted,” 15 percent “your vote is not counted.” And this confusing question is the basis for the Chron’s conclusion that “a majority of voters don’t know how the system works.” Actually, voters seem to understand just fine that they get three choices, that they ranks them in order of preference, and that there is a system for reassigning their votes as their top choices are eliminated. In this question, one might argue that the voters whose top three candidates were eliminated had their votes counted three times. Or you could say it wasn’t counted. It’s basically a philosophical question that was clearly intended to confuse respondents, and it worked. But they only way that would justify the screamer headline and high play for this story is if the Chron/Chamber was pushing an agenda.

The end?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The end?

DANCE Looking at the magnificent and elegant Merce Cunningham dancers perform Pond Way (1998), Antic Meet (1958) and Sounddance (1975) in the by no means sold-out Zellerbach Hall on March 3 made me sad. Each of these works showed such skill, beauty, and intelligence. Yet they left me pessimistic about the future of a precious repertoire.

So this was it. This was end of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which has appeared at UC Berkeley since 1962. Some people there this past weekend have been watching them since year one. I am not one of them. It took me a quite while to realize the difference between “connection” and “coexistence” of movement, music, and design. But I finally understood that connections happened between these elements — not as a result of planning, but simply by together at a particular moment. And once I apprehended Cunningham’s multifocused — rather than front- and center-oriented — stage picture, a wondrous world opened up.

Now it’s finished. Shortly before his death, the choreographer decided the company would go on a two-year “Legacy Tour” around the world and then disband. Following the Balanchine model, Cunningham set up a foundation that can license the pieces to companies that want to perform them. That’s the rub.

Who can do them? The company’s early quintets or septets are one thing, but his big, companywide choreographies, which still don’t make for easy viewing, are another. We don’t have a tradition of repertory modern dance companies; they are driven by their founder-choreographers. So who can do justice to Cunningham?

Ballet companies would seem the logical choice, since Cunningham’s technique — though exceedingly specific — relies heavily on ballet-trained dancers. But would these ensembles invest the amount of rehearsal that a Cunningham piece would require, especially at a time when choreographers are given as little as two weeks to create a new piece on a company? And what about their conservative base of support?

The serenely lyrical Pond Way has been described as one of Cunningham’s nature pieces. To be sure, Brian Eno’s sound score includes some howling monkeys and barking dogs, and if you want, you can see loping gazelles and hoping frogs in the choreography. But the work, with the ensemble dressed by Suzanne Gallo in tunic-like tops and wide pants, suggests a crowded Elysian fields — assuming one knows what that looks like — where the inhabitants are engaged in some kind of praise dancing.

Maybe Roy Lichtenstein’s barely perceivable ship on the backdrop had brought them there. Brandon Collwes, his hair bleached the whitest of blonds, magisterially streaked through the unisons, only to join them. An upstage quintet for women seemed inspired by Greek vase paintings. And then there was Marcie Munnerly, who for the longest period stood frozen in a running position, oblivious to the guys who tried to get her attention. She finally whipped herself into a solo that pulled her into the wings.

The recently-reconstructed Antic Meet, with Robert Rauschenberg’s design, is a rarity. A mashup of vaudeville and silent movie pratfalls, it’s a full-blown comedy. It takes on the oh-so-serious attempts of (old school) modern dancers to squeeze meaning out of every gesture. The dancers strained, pushed, pulled, then hopelessly collapsed into a muddle. Four of them, dressed in fluttering parachutes, flopped and hopped and surrounded their “heroine.” They looked as much like Edward Gorey characters as Martha Graham acolytes. Curiously, John Cage’s score sounded very much of its time, but the wittily-danced choreography looked as fresh as ever.

In this context, the sweet Sounddance felt like a farewell. Robert Swinston, the ensemble’s rehearsal director and a company member since 1980, stepped into the Cunningham role. As heavy baroque curtains seemed to spit out the dancers one by one, he tried to keep an eye on the multiple actions — four men manipulating Andrea Weber; evanescent couples and line dancing; Rashaun Mitchell enclosing everyone in a magic circle. In the end, the dancers and Swinston/Cunningham disappeared back into the curtains. It seemed very final.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 29th SFIAAFF runs March 10-20 at the Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2776 Bancroft, Berk.; Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post; and Viz Cinema, New People, 1746 Post, SF. For tickets (most shows $12) and additional program information, visit www.caamedia.org. All times pm.

THURS/10

Castro West Is West 7.

FRI/11

Clay The Learning 6. When Love Comes 9. Histeria 11:30.

Kabuki Dooman River 4:30. One Kine Day 6:30. The House of Suh 9:15. “Life, Interrupted” 9:30.

PFA Abrazas 7. Break Up Club 9:20.

Viz Summer Pasture 6:30. “Chicken Proof” (shorts program) 9:30.

SAT/12

Clay It’s a Wonderful Afterlife 12:15. The Fourth Portrait 3. The Taqwacores 5:30. I Wish I Knew 8.

Kabuki Gold and Copper 12:15. Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words with “Slaying the Dragon Reloaded” 12:45. Stepping Forward 2. Saigon Electric 3:15. Open Season 5:30. Dog Sweat 6. Resident Aliens with “Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol” 7:30. “Living Life Large” (shorts program) 8:30. Nang Nak 9:30.

PFA Summer Pasture 4. Piano in a Factory 6:30. Living in Seduced Circumstances 9.

Viz M/F Remix 4. “Tainted Love” (shorts program) 8:45.

SUN/13

Castro The Man From Nowhere noon. Emir 3. Clash 6:30. Raavanan 9:30.

Clay Almost Perfect 1. Bend It Like Beckham 4. One Voice 6:45. Break Up Club 9.

Kabuki Peace noon. “3rd I South Asian International Shorts” (shorts program) 1:15. The House of Suh 2. Passion 4. “Play/House” (shorts program) 4:30. Made in India 6. Piano in a Factory 8:30. Sampaguita, National Flower 9:15.

PFA Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words with “Slaying the Dragon Reloaded” 2:30. Charlie Chan at the Olympics 6. Bi, Don’t Be Afraid! 8.

Viz “Silent Rituals and Hovering Proxies” (shorts program) 2:15. Tales of the Waria 5. Gold and Copper 7. Living in Seduced Circumstances 9:30.

MON/14

Kabuki “Chicken Proof” (shorts program) 4. Summer Pasture 4:30. Sampaguita, National Flower 6:30. Abraxas 6:45. Saigon Electric 8:30. Dooman River 9:30.

Viz One Kine Day 4. “Suite Suite Chinatown” (shorts program) 7. Affliction 9.

TUES/15

Kabuki “3rd I South Asian International Shorts” (shorts program) 4:15. Tales of the Waria 4:45. Almost Perfect 6:45. Open Season 7. M/F Remix 9. “Play/House” (shorts program) 9:30.

PFA I Wish I Knew 7.

Viz Resident Aliens with “Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol” 4:15. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! 6:30. Amin 9.

OPENING

Battle: Los Angeles Aliens invade L.A. and Will Smith isn’t involved? SoCal is doomed. (1:57) California.

Carbon Nation This polished, surprisingly optimistic doc from director Peter Byck (1996’s Garbage) takes on the world’s current over-reliance on carbon-based energy — with a focus on the greediest “Carbon Nation” around, the U.S. — and lays out several logical and seemingly do-able scenarios and solutions that just might help slow the rapidly changing climate. Though Carbon Nation reality-checks itself on more than one occasion (noting the reluctance of politicians and corporations to help mainstream the green movement), this doc is unerringly hopeful, and it entertains with an array of real-life characters: a good ol’ boy Texas wind farmer, a quirky Alaskan geothermal expert, a former rock n’ roller who turned to recycling refrigerators after a near-death experience, and charismatic Bay Area activist Van Jones. Carbon Nation‘s droll narration and snappy graphics at times suggest the film is aimed at lowest-common-denominator types who don’t even recycle their soda cans — but really, isn’t that the type of person who most deserves a clean-energy wake-up call? (1:22) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Happythankyoumoreplease Director, writer, and star Josh Radnor gets the prize for most unwieldy, hard-to-remember title in a while — and a tiny gold star for revealing the most heart within one so-called hipster. In this indie feel-gooder, writer Sam (Radnor) is lost at sea, completely adrift at the close of his twenties and unable to sell his novel. The aimlessness is beginning to seem less than cute to the random ladies that pass in the night and chums like Annie (Malin Akerman), who happens to have Alopecia and whose merry outlook is battling with her lack of self-confidence, and Mary Catherine (Zoe Kazan), who is puzzling whether to follow her boyfriend Charlie (Pablo Schreiber) to LA or to retain her life as a an artist in NYC. It takes a lost little boy, Rasheen (Michael Algieri), to bring out the selfless nurturer in Sam’s self-conscious man-child, giving him the courage to approach the local hottie-slash-waitress-slash-cabaret-singer Mississippi (Kate Mara). Radnor — who resembles a likable, every-guy Ben Affleck, though he’s hindered with an expressiveness that ranges from bemused to bemused — himself points to the similarities between Woody Allen’s hymns to Manhattan intelligentsia-bohemia and his own aria to NYC singles on the brink of hooking up with adulthood. Waxing cute rather than critical, Happythankyoumoreplease lacks Allen’s early bite, but its guileless sweetness just might do the trick and satisfy some. (1:40) Embarcadero. (Chun)

I Saw the Devil This latest by South Korean wunderkind Kim Ji-woon (2008’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird; 2003’s A Tale of Two Sisters) aims to push serial-killer thriller conventions to new extremes in intensity, violent set-piece bravado, and sheer length. Intelligence agent Joo-yeong (Lee Byung-hun) is inconsolably horrified when his fiancée — a police chief’s daughter — is abducted, tortured and murdered by giddily remorseless Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik). The latter is a rural schoolbus driver who stalks his prey on and off the job, hauling them to a rigged-up shack where he enjoys their protracted final writhings. Once our hero tracks down this grotesque villain, he demonstrates a perverse, obsessive side by letting the “devil” loose again — each time after serious physical punishment — so that he can live in terror of his avenger. The trouble with that concept is that our upright, fanatical hero thus allows remorseless Kyung-chul to abuse new victims every time he’s let loose, which simply doesn’t make psychological sense. I Saw the Devil has some dazzling action set-pieces and outre content. But the dependency on slasher genre-style harm toward pretty young women sounds a sour, conventional note. And while it reserves a delicious irony or two for the end, this glorified horror flick simply goes on way too long. (2:21) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Mars Needs Moms A young boy must fight to save his kidnapped-by-aliens mother in this 3D animated Disney comedy. (1:28)

Red Riding Hood Amanda Seyfried stars in Catherine Hardwicke’s edgy (i.e., the Big Bad Wolf is now a werewolf) fairy-tale update. (1:38) Shattuck.

*William S. Burroughs: A Man Within William S. Burroughs, as director John Waters puts it in this long-overdue documentary, became famous before any of his peers, “for all the things you were supposed to hide: he was gay; he was a junkie; he shot his wife.” Of course, that isn’t the entire story. Examining the cultural forces and tragic biographical events that shaped The Naked Lunch author, director Yony Lesler attempts with varying degrees of success to separate the intensely private man from the countercultural raconteur in the gray flannel suit Burroughs would become later in his life. Combining interviews with a who’s who of famous associates, friends, and admirers, rare and never-before seen archival footage, and clips from Burroughs’ own experimental films and later home movies, Lesler makes a convincing case for Burroughs as a perennial outsider, even to himself. His Harvard education and wealthy pedigree set him apart from his crunchier Beat compatriots and he openly disdained the label of “gay revolutionary” even as his writing boldly envisioned same-sex desire as something truly queer. And although his dour mien and conservative dress would later become personal trademarks, he in fact privately mourned the death of his wife, Joan Vollmer, who he shot in Mexico playing a drunken round of William Tell (he was never tried), and his estranged son, Bill Burroughs Jr., who died attempting to approximate his father’s former junkie lifestyle. The film’s talking heads variously credit Burroughs with everything from punk rock to performance art, but the sad, all-too-human story behind the hagiography is what’s most compelling here. (1:38) Roxie. (Sussman)

ONGOING

The Adjustment Bureau As far as sci-fi romantic thrillers go, The Adjustment Bureau is pretty standard. But since that’s not an altogether common genre mash-up, I guess the film deserves some points for creativity. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau takes place in a world where all of our fates are predetermined. Political hotshot David Norris (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness — but not if he lets a romantic dalliance with dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) take precedence. And in order to make sure he stays on track, the titular Adjustment Bureau (including Anthony Mackie and Mad Men‘s John Slattery) are there to push him in the right direction. While the film’s concept is intriguing, the execution is sloppy. The Adjustment Bureau suffers from flaws in internal logic, allowing the story to skip over crucial plot points with heavy exposition and a deus ex machina you’ve got to see to believe. Couldn’t the screenwriter have planned ahead? (1:39) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Another Year Mike Leigh’s latest represents a particularly affecting entry among his many improv-based, lives-of-everyday-Brits films. More loosely structured than 2008’s Happy-Go-Lucky, which featured a clear lead character with a well-defined storyline, the aptly-titled Another Year follows a year in the life of a group of friends and acquaintances, anchored by married couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). Tom and Gerri are happily settled into middle-class middle age, with a grown son (Oliver Maltman) who adores them. So far, doesn’t really sound like there’ll be much Leigh-style heightened emotion spewing off the screen, traumatizing all in attendance, right? Well, you haven’t met the rest of the ensemble: there’s a sad-sack small-town widower, a sad-sack overweight drunk, a near-suicidal wife and mother (embodied in one perfect, bitter scene by Imelda Staunton), and Gerri’s work colleague Mary, played with a breathtaking lack of vanity by Lesley Manville. At first Mary seems to be a particularly shrill take on the clichéd unlucky-in-love fiftysomething woman — think an unglamorous Sex in the City gal, except with a few more years and far less disposable income. But Manville adds layers of depth to the pitiful, fragile, blundering Mary; she seems real, which makes her hard to watch at times. That said, anyone would be hard-pressed to look away from Manville’s wrenching performance. (2:09) Shattuck. (Eddy)

Barney’s Version The charm of this shambling take on Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel lies almost completely in the hang-dog peepers of star Paul Giamatti. Where would Barney’s Version be without him and his warts-and-all portrayal of lovable, fallible striver Barney Panofsky — son of a cop (Dustin Hoffman), cheesy TV man, romantic prone to falling in love on his wedding day, curmudgeon given to tying on a few at a bar appropriately named Grumpy’s, and friend and benefactor to the hard-partying and pseudo-talented Boogie (Scott Speedman). So much depends on the many nuances of feeling flickering across Giamatti’s pale, moon-like visage. Otherwise Barney’s Version sprawls, carries on, and stumbles over the many cute characters we don’t give a damn about — from Minnie Driver’s borderline-offensive JAP of a Panofsky second wife to Bruce Greenwood’s romantic rival for Barney’s third wife Miriam (Rosamund Pike). A mini-who’s who of Canadian directors surface in cameos — including Denys Arcand, David Cronenberg, and Atom Egoyan — as a testament to the respect Richler commands. Too bad director Richard J. Lewis didn’t get a few tips on dramatic rigor from Cronenberg or intelligent editing from Egoyan — as hard as it tries, Barney’s Version never rises from a mawkish middle ground. (2:12) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Beastly The problem with a title like Beastly is that it’s difficult to avoid the obvious line: the movie lives up to its name. But indeed, this modernized take on the Beauty and the Beast tale is wretched on all fronts — a laughable script, endless plot holes, and the kind of wooden acting that makes you long for the glory days of Twilight (2008). New “It Boy” Alex Pettyfer stars as Kyle, a vapid popular kid who is cursed to look like a slightly less attractive version of himself by a vengeful witch (Mary-Kate Olsen). Only the love of kind-hearted Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens) can cure him of his fate. There is so much wrong with Beastly, it’s hard to zone in on its individual faults: this is a film in which the opening scene has Kyle telling his ugly classmates to “embrace the suck”—and then getting elected to student government anyway. Embrace Beastly‘s suck if you can’t live without Pettyfer’s washboard abs, but you’re far better off rewatching the Disney or Cocteau versions. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

Biutiful Uxbal (Javier Bardem) has problems. To name but a few: he is raising two young children alone in a poor, crime-beset Barcelona hood. He is making occasional attempts to rope back in their bipolar, substance-abusive mother (Maricel Álvarez), a mission without much hope. He is trying to stay afloat by various not-quite legal means while hopefully doing the right thing by the illegals — African street drug dealers and Chinese sweatshop workers — he acts as middleman to, standing between them and much less sympathetically-inclined bossmen. He’s got a ne’er-do-well brother (Eduard Fernandez) to cope with. Needless to say, with all this going on (and more), he isn’t getting much rest. But when he wearily checks in with a doc, the proverbial last straw is stacked on his camelback: surprise, you have terminal cancer. With umpteen odds already stacked against him in everyday life, Uxbal must now put all affairs in order before he is no longer part of the equation. This is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s first feature since an acrimonious creative split with scenarist Guillermo Arriaga. Their films together (2006’s Babel, 2003’s 21 Grams, 2000’s Amores Perros) have been criticized for arbitrarily slamming together separate baleful storylines in an attempt at universal profundity. But they worked better than Biutiful, which takes the opposite tact of trying to fit several stand-alone stories’ worth of hardship into one continuous narrative — worse, onto the bowed shoulders of one character. Bardem is excellent as usual, but for all their assured craftsmanship and intense moments, these two and a half hours collapse from the weight of so much contrived suffering. Rather than making a universal statement about humanity in crisis, Iñárritu has made a high-end soap opera teetering on the verge of empathy porn. (2:18) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Black Swan “Lose yourself,” ballet company head Thomas (Vincent Cassel) whispers to his leading lady, Nina (Natalie Portman), moments before she takes the stage. But Nina is already consumed with trying to find herself, and rarely has a journey of self-discovery been so unsettling. Set in New York City’s catty, competitive ballet world, Black Swan samples from earlier dance films (notably 1948’s The Red Shoes, but also 1977’s Suspiria, with a smidgen of 1995’s Showgirls), though director Darren Aronofsky is nothing if not his own visionary. Black Swan resembles his 2008 The Wrestler somewhat thematically, with its focus on the anguish of an athlete under ten tons of pressure, but it’s a stylistic 180. Gone is the gritty, stripped-down aesthetic used to depict a sad-sack strongman. Like Dario Argento’s 1977 horror fantasy, the gory, elegantly choreographed Black Swan is set in a hyper-constructed world, with stabbingly obvious color palettes (literally, white = good; black = evil) and dozens of mirrors emphasizing (over and over again) the film’s doppelgänger obsession. As Nina, Portman gives her most dynamic performance to date. In addition to the thespian fireworks required while playing a goin’-batshit character, she also nails the role’s considerable athletic demands. (1:50) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Carmen in 3D (2:55) SF Center.

*Cedar Rapids What if The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) got so Parks and Rec‘d at The Office party that he ended up with a killer Hangover (2009)? Just maybe the morning-after baby would be Cedar Rapids. Director Miguel Arteta (2009’s Youth in Revolt) wrings sweet-natured chuckles from his banal, intensely beige wall-to-wall convention center biosphere, spurring such ponderings as, should John C. Reilly snatch comedy’s real-guy MVP tiara away from Seth Rogen? Consider Tim Lippe (Ed Helms of The Hangover), the polar opposite of George Clooney’s ultracompetent, complacent ax-wielder in Up in the Air (2009). He’s the naive manchild-cum-corporate wannabe who never quite graduated from Timmyville into adulthood. But it’s up to Lippe to hold onto his firm’s coveted two-star rating at an annual convention in Cedar Rapids. Life conspires against him, however, and despite his heartfelt belief in insurance as a heroic profession, Lippe immediately gets sucked into the oh-so-distracting drama, stirred up by the dangerously subversive “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly), whom our naif is warned against as a no-good poacher. Temptations lie around every PowerPoint and potato skin; as Deanzie warns Lippe’s Candide, “I’ve got tiger scratches all over my back. If you want to survive in this business, you gotta daaance with the tiger.” How do you do that? Cue lewd, boozy undulations — a potbelly lightly bouncing in the air-conditioned breeze. “You’ve got to show him a little teat.” Fortunately Arteta shows us plenty of that, equipped with a script by Wisconsin native Phil Johnston, written for Helms — and the latter does not disappoint. (1:26) California, Empire, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Drive Angry 3D It says something about the sad state of Nicolas Cage’s cinematic choices when the killer-B, grindhouse-ready Drive Angry 3D is the finest proud-piece-o-trash he’s carried since The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), which doesn’t say much — the guy works a lot. Here, in his quest to become the paycheck-happy late-Brando of comic book, sci-fi, and fantasy flicks, Cage gets to work that anguished hound-dog mien, while meting out the punishment against grotty Satanists, in this cross between Constantine (2005), bible comics, and Shoot ‘Em Up (2007). Out for blood and sprung from the deepest, darkest hole a bad boy can find himself in, vengeful grandpa Milton (Cage) — a sop for Paradise Lost readers — is determined to rescue his infant granddaughter. She’s in the hands of Jonah King (Billy Burke), a devil-worshipping cult leader with a detestable soul patch who killed Milton’s daughter and carries her femur around as a souvenir. Along for the ride is the hot-pants-clad hottie Piper (Amber Heard), who’s as handy with her fists as she is randy with the busboys (she drives home from work, singing along to Peaches’ “Fuck the Pain Away” — ‘nuf said), and trailing Milton is the mysterious Accountant (William Fichtner). Gore, boobs, fast cars, undead gunfighters, and cheese galore — it’s a fanboy’s fantasy land, as handed down via the tenets of our fathers Tarantino and Rodriguez — and though the 3D seems somewhat extraneous, it does come in, ahem, handy during the opening salvo. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Even the Rain It feels wrong to criticize an “issues movie” — particularly when the issues addressed are long overdue for discussion. Even the Rain takes on the privatization of water in Bolivia, but it does so in such an obvious, artless way that the ultimate message is muddled. The film follows a crew shooting an on-location movie about Christopher Columbus. The film-within-a-film is a less-than-flattering portrait of the explorer: if you’ve guessed that the exploitation of the native people will play a role in both narratives, you’d be right. The problem here is that Even the Rain rests on our collective outrage, doing little to explain the situation or even develop the characters. Case in point: Sebastian (Gael García Bernal), who shifts allegiances at will throughout the film. There’s an interesting link to be made between the time of Columbus and current injustice, but it’s not properly drawn here, and in the end, the few poignant moments get lost in the shuffle. (1:44) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

The Fighter Once enough of a contenda to have fought Sugar Ray Leonard — and won, though there are lingering questions about that verdict’s justice — Dicky (Christian Bale) is now a washed-up, crack-addicted mess whose hopes for a comeback seem just another expression of empty braggadocio. Ergo it has fallen to the younger brother he’s supposedly “training,” Micky (Mark Wahlberg), to endure the “managerial” expertise of their smothering-bullying ma (Melissa Leo) and float their large girl gang family of trigger-tempered sisters. That’s made even worse by the fact that they’ve gotten him nothing but chump fights in which he’s matched someone above his weight and skill class in order to boost the other boxer’s ranking. When Micky meets Charlene (Amy Adams), an ambitious type despite her current job as a bartender, this hardboiled new girlfriend insists the only way he can really get ahead is by ditching bad influences — meaning mom and Dicky, who take this shutout as a declaration of war. The fact-based script and David O. Russell’s direction do a good job lending grit and humor to what’s essentially a 1930s Warner Brothers melodrama — the kind that might have had Pat O’Brien as the “good” brother and James Cagney as the ne’er-do-well one who redeems himself by fadeout. Even if things do get increasingly formulaic (less 1980’s Raging Bull and more 1976’s Rocky), the memorable performances by Bale (going skeletal once again), Wahlberg (a limited actor ideally cast) and Leo (excellent as usual in an atypically brassy role) make this more than worthwhile. As for Adams, she’s just fine — but by now it’s hard to forget the too many cutesy parts she’s been typecast in since 2005’s Junebug. (1:54) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Gnomeo and Juliet If you willingly see a movie titled Gnomeo and Juliet, you probably have a keen sense of what you’re in for. And as long as that’s the case, it’s hard not to get sucked into the film’s 3D gnome-infested world. Believe it or not, this is actually a serviceable adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic — minus the whole double-suicide downer ending. But at least the movie is conscious of its source material, throwing in several references to other Shakespeare plays and even having the Bard himself (or, OK, a bronze statue) comment on the proceedings. It helps that the cast is populated by actors who could hold their own in a more traditional Shakespearean context: James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Maggie Smith, and Michael Caine. But Gnomeo and Juliet isn’t perfect — not because of its outlandish concept, but due to a serious overabundance of Elton John. The film’s songwriter and producer couldn’t resist inserting himself into every other scene. Aside from the final “Crocodile Rock” dance number, it’s actually pretty distracting. (1:24) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Hall Pass There are some constants when it comes to a Farrelly Brothers movie: lewd humor, full-frontal male nudity, and at least one shot of explosive diarrhea. Hall Pass does not disappoint on the gross-out front, but it’s a letdown in almost every other way. Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are married men obsessed with the idea of reliving their glory days. Lucky for them, wives Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) decide to give them a week-long “hall pass” from marriage. Of course, once Rick and Fred are able to go out and snag any women they want, they realize most women aren’t interested in being snagged by dopey fortysomethings. On paper, Hall Pass has the potential to be a sharp, anti-bro comedy. Instead, it wallows in recycled toilet humor that’s no longer edgy enough to make us squirm. At least there are still moments of misogyny to provide that familiar feeling of discomfort. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

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

I Am Number Four Do you like Twilight? Do you think aliens are just as sexy — if not sexier! — than vampires? I Am Number Four isn’t a rip-off of Stephenie Meyer’s supernatural saga, but the YA novel turned film is similar enough to draw in that coveted tween audience. John (Alex Pettyfer) is a teenage alien with extraordinary powers who falls in love with a human girl Sarah (Dianna Agron). But they’re from two different worlds! To be fair, star-crossed romance isn’t the issue here: the real problem is I Am Number Four‘s “first in a series” status. Rather than working to establish itself as a film in its own right, the movie sets the stage for what’s to come next, a bold presumption for something this mediocre. It lazily drops some exposition, then launches into big, loud battles without pausing to catch its breath. I Am Number Four only really works if it gets a sequel, and we all know how well that turned out for The Golden Compass (2007). (1:44) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*The Illusionist Now you see Jacques Tati and now you don’t. With The Illusionist, aficionados yearning for another gem from Tati will get a sweet, satisfying taste of the maestro’s sensibility, inextricably blended with the distinctively hand-drawn animation of Sylvain Chomet (2004’s The Triplets of Belleville). Tati wrote the script between 1956 and 1959 — a loving sendoff from a father to a daughter heading toward selfhood — and after reading it in 2003 Chomet decided to adapt it, bringing the essentially silent film to life with 2D animation that’s as old school as Tati’s ambivalent longing for bygone days. The title character should be familiar to fans of Monsieur Hulot: the illusionist is a bemused artifact of another age, soon to be phased out with the rise of rock ‘n’ rollers. He drags his ornery rabbit and worn bag of tricks from one ragged hall to another, each more far-flung than the last, until he meets a little cleaning girl on a remote Scottish island. Enthralled by his tricks and grateful for his kindness, she follows him to Edinburgh and keeps house while the magician works the local theater and takes on odd jobs in an attempt to keep her in pretty clothes, until she discovers life beyond their small circle of fading vaudevillians. Chomet hews closely to bittersweet tone of Tati’s films — and though some controversy has dogged the production (Tati’s illegitimate, estranged daughter Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel claimed to be the true inspiration for The Illusionist, rather than daughter and cinematic collaborator Sophie Tatischeff) and Chomet neglects to fully detail a few plot turns, the dialogue-free script does add an intriguing ambiguity to the illusionist and his charge’s relationship — are they playing at being father and daughter or husband and wife? — and an otherwise straightforward, albeit poignant tale. (1:20) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Inside Job Inside Job is director Charles Ferguson’s second investigative documentary after his 2007 analysis of the Iraq War, No End in Sight, but it feels more like the follow-up to Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005). Keeping with the law of sequels, more shit blows up the second time around. As with No End in Sight, Ferguson adeptly packages a broad overview of complex events in two hours, respecting the audience’s intelligence while making sure to explain securities exchanges, derivatives, and leveraging laws in clear English (doubly important when so many Wall Street executives hide behind the intricacy of markets). The revolving door between banks, government, and academia is the key to Inside Job‘s account of financial deregulation. At times borrowing heist-film conventions (it is called Inside Job, after all), Ferguson keeps the primary players in view throughout his history so that the eventual meltdown seems anything but an accident. The filmmaker’s relentless focus on the insiders isn’t foolproof; tarring Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and Timothy Geithner as “made” guys, for example, isn’t a substitute for evaluating their varied performances over the last two years. Inside Job makes it seem that the entire crisis was caused by the financial sector’s bad behavior, and this too is reductive. Furthermore, Ferguson does not come to terms with the politicized nature of the economic fallout. In Inside Job, there are only two kinds of people: those who get it and those who refuse to. The political reality is considerably more contentious. (2:00) Bridge. (Goldberg)

The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Albany, Embarcadero, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Last Lions It’s hard being a single mom. Particularly when you are a lioness in the Botswana wetlands, your territory invaded and mate killed by an invading pride forced out of their own by encroaching humanity. Add buffalo herds (tasty yes, but with sharp horns they’re not afraid to use) and crocodiles (no upside there), and our heroine is hard-pressed to keep herself alive, let alone her three small cubs. Derek Joubert’s spectacular nature documentary, narrated by Jeremy Irons (in plummiest Lion King vocal form) manages a mind-boggling intimacy observing all these predators. Shot over several years, while seeming to depict just a few weeks or months’ events, it no doubt fudges facts a bit to achieve a stronger narrative, but you’ll be too gripped to care. Warning: those kitties sure are cute, but this sometimes harsh depiction of life (and death) in the wild is not suitable for younger children. (1:28) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Machotaildrop Every once in a while you see the Best Film Ever Made. Meaning, the movie that is indisputably the best film ever made at least for the length of time you’re watching it. Illustrative examples include Dr. Seuss musical The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953), Superstar (Todd Haynes’ 1987 Barbie biopic about Karen Carpenter), Nina Paley’s 2008 animation Sita Sings the Blues, several Buster Keaton vehicles, and Paul Robeson sightings — anything that delights unceasingly. Now there is Machotaildrop, which the Roxie had the excellent sense to book for an extended run after its local debut at SF IndieFest, a year and a half after its premiere at Toronto mystifyingly failed to set the entire world on fire. Corey Adams and Alex Craig’s debut takes place in a gently alternative universe where pro skateboarders play pro skateboarders who aspire to belonging in the media kingdom and island fiefdom of ex-tightrope-walking corporate titan the Baron (James Faulkner). Such is the lucky fate of gormless small-town lad Walter (Anthony Amedori), though naturally there proves to be something sinister going on here to kinda drive the kinda-plot along. When that disruption of skating paradise takes central focus after about an hour, what was hitherto something of pure joy — a genial, laid-back surrealist joke without identifiable cinematic precedent — becomes just a wee more conventional. But Machotaildrop still offers fun on a level so high it’s seldom legal. (1:31) Roxie. (Harvey)

Nora’s Will There’s certainly something to be said for the uniqueness of Nora’s Will: I can’t think of any other Mexican-Jewish movies that cover suicide, Passover, and cooking with equal attention. But while it sounds like the film is overloaded, Nora’s Will is actually too subtle for its own good. It meanders along, telling the story of the depressed Nora, her conflicted ex-husband, and the family she left behind. When the movie focuses on the clash between Judaism and Mexican culture, the results are dynamic, but more often that not, it simply crawls along. It’s not that Nora’s Will is boring: it’s just easily forgettable, which is surprising given its subject matter. Meanwhile, it walks that fine line between comedy and drama, never bringing the laughs or the emotional catharsis it wants to offer. The only real reaction it inspires is hunger, particularly if the idea of a Mexican-Jewish feast sounds appealing. Turns out “gefilte fish” is the same in every language. (1:32) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

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

127 Hours After the large-scale, Oscar-draped triumph of 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours might seem starkly minimalist — if director Danny Boyle weren’t allergic to such terms. Based on Aron Ralston’s memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place, it’s a tale defined by tight quarters, minimal “action,” and maximum peril: man gets pinned by rock in the middle of nowhere, must somehow free himself or die. More precisely, in 2003 experienced trekker Ralston biked and hiked into Utah’s Blue John Canyon, falling into a crevasse when a boulder gave way under his feet. He landed unharmed … save a right arm pinioned by a rock too securely wedged, solid, and heavy to budge. He’d told no one where he’d gone for the weekend; dehydration death was far more likely than being found. For those few who haven’t heard how he escaped this predicament, suffice it to say the solution was uniquely unpleasant enough to make the national news (and launch a motivational-speaking career). Opinions vary about the book. It’s well written, an undeniably amazing story, but some folks just don’t like him. Still, subject and interpreter match up better than one might expect, mostly because there are lengthy periods when the film simply has to let James Franco, as Ralston, command our full attention. This actor, who has reached the verge of major stardom as a chameleon rather than a personality, has no trouble making Ralston’s plight sympathetic, alarming, poignant, and funny by turns. His protagonist is good-natured, self-deprecating, not tangibly deep but incredibly resourceful. Probably just like the real-life Ralston, only a tad more appealing, less legend-in-his-own-mind — a typical movie cheat to be grateful for here. (1:30) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Rango (1:47) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

Take Me Home Tonight Just because lame teen comedies existed in the ’80s doesn’t mean that they need to be updated for the ’10s. Nary an Eddie Money song disgraces the soundtrack of this unselfconscious puerile, pining sex farce — the type one assumes moviemakers have grown out of with the advent of smarty-pants a la Apatow and Farrell. Take Me Home Tonight would rather find its feeble kicks in major hair, big bags of coke, polo shirts with upturned collars, and “greed is good” affluenza. Matt (Topher Grace) is an MIT grad who’s refused to embrace the engineer within and is instead biding his time as a clerk at the local Suncoast video store when he stumbles on his old high school crush Tori (Teresa Palmer), a budding banker. In an effort to impress, he tells her he works for Goldman Sachs and trails after her to the rip-roaring last-hooray-before adulthood bash. Pal Barry (Dan Fogler) gets to play the Belushi-like buffoon when he swipes a Mercedes from the dealership he just got fired from, and ends up with a face full of powder in the arms of a kinky ex-supermodel (Angie Everhart). Despite cameos by comedians like Demetri Martin and a trailer and poster that make it all seem a bit cooler than it really is, Take Me Home Tonight doesn’t really touch the coattails of Jonathan Demme or even Cameron Crowe — in the hands of director Michael Dowse, it feels nowhere near as heartfelt, rock ‘n’ roll, or at the very least, cinematically competent. (1:37) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

*True Grit Jeff Bridges fans, resist the urge to see your Dude in computer-trippy 3D and make True Grit your holiday movie of choice. Directors Ethan and Joel Coen revisit (with characteristic oddball touches) the 1968 Charles Portis novel that already spawned a now-classic 1969 film, which earned John Wayne an Oscar for his turn as gruff U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn. (The all-star cast also included Dennis Hopper, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, and Strother Martin.) Into Wayne’s ten-gallon shoes steps an exceptionally crusty Bridges, whose banter with rival bounty hunter La Boeuf (a spot-on Matt Damon) and relationship with young Mattie Ross (poised newcomer Hailee Steinfeld) — who hires him to find the man who killed her father — likely won’t win the recently Oscar’d actor another statuette, but that doesn’t mean True Grit isn’t thoroughly entertaining. Josh Brolin and a barely-recognizable Barry Pepper round out a cast that’s fully committed to honoring two timeless American genres: Western and Coen. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

“2011 Academy Award-Nominated Short Films, Live-Action and Animated” (Live-action, 1:50; animated, 1:25) Opera Plaza.

*Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives There are very few contemporary filmmakers who grasp narrative as an expressive instrument in itself, and even among them Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2000’s Mysterious Object at Noon, 2004’s Tropical Malady) seems special. For those yet convinced, it’s important to note that while Apichatpong is sometimes pegged as a critic’s darling, he’s also highly esteemed by other filmmakers. I think this is because he entrusts the immersive qualities of sound and image and the intuitive processes of narrative. Like animals, his films change form as they move. Their regenerative story structures and sensuous beauty betray a motivating curiosity about the nature of perception as filtered through memory, desire, landscape, spirituality and social ties. All of Apichatpong’s films have a science-fiction flavor — the imaginative leap made to invent parallel worlds which resemble our reality but don’t quite behave — but Uncle Boonmee is the first to dress the part. That the film won the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival was instantly claimed as a triumph for film culture (which it was), but Uncle Boonmee has something to say to those interested in Buddhism, installation art, Jung, astrophysics, experimental music, animism … I could go on. If that list makes it sound a very San Francisco-appropriate movie, that’s not wrong either. (1:53) Sundance Kabuki. (Goldberg)

Unknown Everything is blue skies as Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) flies to Germany for a biotech conference, accompanied by lovely wife Elizabeth (January Jones in full Betty Draper mode). Landing in Berlin things quickly become grey, as he’s separated from his wife and ends up in a coma. Waking in a hospital room, Harris experiences memory loss, but like Harrison Ford he’s getting frantic with an urgent need to find his wife. Luckily she’s at the hotel. Unluckily, so is another man, who she and everyone else claims is the real Dr. Harris. What follows is a by-the-numbers thriller, with car chases and fist fights, that manages to entertain as long as the existential question is unanswered. Once it’s revealed to be a knock-off of a successful franchise, the details of Unknown‘s dated Cold War plot don’t quite make sense. On the heels of 2008’s Taken, Neeson again proves capable in action-star mode. Bruno Ganz amuses briefly as an ex-Stasi detective, but the vacant parsing by bad actress Jones, appropriate for her role on Mad Men, only frustrates here. (1:49) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Ryan Prendiville)

*We Were Here Reagan isn’t mentioned in David Weissman’s important and moving new documentary about San Francisco’s early response to the AIDS epidemic, We Were Here — although his communications director Pat Buchanan and Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell get split-second references. We Were Here isn’t a political polemic about the lack of governmental support that greeted the onset of the disease. Nor is it a kind of cinematic And the Band Played On that exhaustively lays out all the historical and medical minutiae of HIV’s dawn. (See PBS Frontline’s engrossing 2006 The Age of AIDS for that.) And you’ll find virtually nothing about the infected world outside the United States. A satisfying 90-minute documentary couldn’t possibly cover all the aspects of AIDS, of course, even the local ones. Instead, Weissman’s film, codirected with Bill Weber, concentrates mostly on AIDS in the 1980s and tells a more personal and, in its way, more controversial story. What happened in San Francisco when gay people started mysteriously wasting away? And how did the epidemic change the people who lived through it? The tales are well told and expertly woven together, as in Weissman’s earlier doc The Cockettes. But where We Were Here really hits home is in its foregrounding of many unspoken or buried truths about AIDS. The film will affect viewers on a deep level, perhaps allowing many to weep openly about what happened for the first time. But it’s a testimony as well to the absolute craziness of life, and the strange places it can take you — if you survive it. (1:30) Castro. (Marke B.)

*The Woman Chaser First widely noted as Elaine’s emotionally deaf boyfriend on Seinfield, in recent years Patrick Warburton has starred in successful network sitcoms Rules of Engagement and Less than Perfect. They followed The Tick, a shortlived Fox superhero parody series everyone loved but the viewing public. He’s voiced various characters on Family Guy (a man’s gotta work), as well as endearing villain Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove (2000). That latter reunited him with Eartha Kitt, also a co-star in his screen debut: 1987’s campsterpiece Mandingo (1975) rip-off Dragonard, which he played a race traitor Scottish hunk on an 18th century Caribbean slaving isle also populated by such punishing extroverts as boozy Oliver Reed, chesty Claudia Uddy, and creaky Pink Panther boss Herbert Lom. These days, Warburton is promoting a past project he’d rather remember: 1999’s The Woman Chaser, billed as his leading-role debut. It was definitely the first feature for Robinson Devor (2005’s Police Beat, 2007’s Zoo), one of the most stubbornly idiosyncratic and independent American directors to emerge in recent years. Derived from nihilist pulp master’s Charles Willeford 1960 novel, this perfect B&W retro-noir miniature sets Warburton’s antihero to swaggering across vintage L.A. cityscapes. Sloughing off an incestuously available mother and other bullet-bra’d she cats, his eye on one bizarre personal ambition, he’s a vintage man’s man bobbing obliviously in a sea of delicious, droll irony. (1:30) Roxie. (Harvey)

 

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

Keep David Crane away from your government

Sasha Cuttler
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24

Sen. Leland Yee continues to strongly push his case against confirming San Francisco venture capitalist David Crane to the UC Board of Regents, finding allies among labor unions and Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), chair of the Senate Labor Committee, but failing so far to win over legislative leaders that Yee has alienated himself from with his quixotic budget stands of recent years.

It’s a sign of just how bad things have gotten for public employee unions that Crane, a last minute appointment by former Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger, wasn’t immediately rejected by Legislature after writing an op-ed siding with right-wing attacks on public employees in Wisconsin and calling for an end to public employee union’s collective bargaining rights in California.

After all, Crane – while he considers himself a Democrat – is little more than a right-wing shill wielding misleading data to justify his thinly veiled contempt for the public sector. He didn’t return my call about the latest controversy, but I did interview him a few years ago as he and Arnold tried to torpedo the California high-speed rail project before voters could approve it.

I didn’t expect much from a corporate Democrat who was working for a Republican governor, but I was still fairly astounded by his arrogant condemnation of public officials and agencies and his indignation at being challenged in his basic belief in the infallibility of capitalists. Simply put, the guy was a world-class jerk (an opinion that’s widely shared) who has no business working for government agencies because his only interest in them seems to be to weaken or destroy them.

George W. Bush loved to put guys like this in charge of government agencies, which is why Halliburton fleeced taxpayers, FEMA utterly failed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, oil companies ran dangerously amuck, and on and on. But in California under Gov. Jerry Brown and a big Democratic majority in the Legislature, someone like David Crane should have the door to government quickly slammed in his face if there’s any integrity left to the political system.

UPDATE: Crane just returned my call, but he did little to forthrightly answer my questions, instead referring me to his interview with KGO’s Ronn Owens last week. When I asked whether he thinks it’s fair that his critics are calling him hostile to the public sector, he told me to read his op-ed. And when I said that I did and the he seemed to be siding with the Republican governor of Wisconsin, he said disdainfully, “That’s an interesting interpretation.”

That seemed to be the clear intention of his piece, to tell readers that they’re simply wrong in seeing Wisconsin (and then Ohio, and other states that might eventually include California) as a right-wing attack on public employee unions, which is itself part of a long-running attack on the public sector by conservative capitalists like Crane. As Crane wrote in his first sentence, “The battle in Wisconsin is not over collective bargaining rights generally but rather the appropriateness of those rights in the public sector.”

Sure, this former attorney tries to couch his narrow, convoluted argument in legalisms and distorted history lessons, but the message seems clear, even if he acts as people just aren’t smart enough to understand his wise point (one that he didn’t use the opportunity of our interview to clarify). And when I noted that he has a history of anti-government animus, including trying to derail the high-speed rail project, he said indignantly, “I’m responsible for that thing making the ballot.”

By which he probably means that after trying and failing to delay the vote, he led the effort to require more detailed financial analysis of the project’s fiscal challenges, which he helped execute — and which had nothing to do with voters approving a measure that the Legislature had placed on the ballot years earlier, only to go along with Arnold’s efforts to delay it twice.

Or maybe I’m wrong and this self-described libertarian really just wants to make government stronger and more efficient. What do you think?

Divergent views on Chiu’s challenge

Sasha Cuttler
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86
Divergent views on Chiu’s challenge

The political season is definitely upon us, and despite all the sunny statements coming from mayoral hopefuls, I predict is going to get ugly. One gauge was the split reactions to my stories on David Chiu getting into the mayor race and how his belief that “there’s always common ground” to be attained on big issues will be tested this year.

Some in his camp were mad at how I characterized the problems progressives have with Chiu, believing it was unfair to blame two years worth of bad budget compromises and aborted progressive initiatives on him (indeed, some of his progressive colleagues did go along with some of those decisions). Then again, Green Party activist Eric Brooks was outraged that I went too easy on Chiu, writing in an online comment that Chiu has “totally betrayed and stabbed in the back the progressives who got him elected.”

As for Chiu, he was a little more circumspect about his role, and he basically agreed with the premise of my article that he’s uniquely positioned to prove or disprove his theory on governance as the board wrestles with some big issues this year.

“We have a lot of decisions coming up before us at the board on which I’ll be working with our colleagues to see if we can bridge differences and address everyone’s concerns,” Chiu told me, citing the upcoming debates over pension reform and the CPMC and ParkMerced projects as examples that will test his consensus-building approach.

An even earlier test will be the mid-Market tax breaks that he’s pushing with Sup. Jane Kim and the Mayor’s Office. All three entities have been trying to cast that vote as an unavoidable fait accompli, but many progressives and union activists are gearing up for a fight when that measure is heard by a board committee, probably on March 16.

In his campaign kickoff speech on Monday, Chiu alternatively sounded progressive themes and those of the fiscally conservative corporate Democrats. “We need to stop being a bedroom community for Silicon Valley and actually compete with Silicon Valley,” Chiu said.

Now, if competition means getting into a bidding war over which cities can offer tech companies the lowest taxes and most taxpayer-subsidized benefits, Chiu’s problems with progressives are only going to get worse. But if he’d like to address the “bedroom community” problem by building more affordable housing that working class San Franciscans can afford – rather than all the luxury condos favored by the Google set – that’s something progressives could get behind.

But Chiu’s actions this year will speak far louder than his words. And with lots of chatter still rippling through progressive circles about someone else jumping into the mayor’s race – a play that would probably come in mid-to-late summer – the clock is running for Chiu or someone else to win over the left.

The future of the San Francisco left

Zelda Bronstein
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72
The future of the San Francisco left

That, at least, was the title of the Milk Club forum March 1. Quite a panel, too: Sups. Avalos, Campos, Chiu, Kim and Mar. Tim Paulson from the Labor Council. Former Milk Club Prez Jef Sheehy. Tiny from Poor Magazine. And me.


I told the assembled that it was worth reminding ourselves how far we’ve come — when I started in this business, in 1982, Dianne Feinstein was mayor, there was exactly one reliable progressive on the Board of Supervisors (Harry Britt) and it was impossible for grassroots types without big gobs of money to get elected to high office. I’ve lived through Feinstein, Agnos, Jordan and Brown, all (until the end of the Brown Era) with at-large boards. It was awful trying to get anything good done; all we could do was fight to prevent the truly horrible from happening. Under Brown, as Sheehy noted, San Francisco politics was locked down, tight; the machine ruled, the Democratic Party was not a force for progressive issues and only a few exceptional leaders, like Tom Ammiano, kept the spirit alive.


Today, the very fact that five supervisors showed up at a Milk Club event to talk about progressive politics shows how district elections has transformed the city and how far we’ve come.


That said, we’ve still failed to make much progress on the most important issue of the day — the gap between the rich and the poor, the fact that this city has great povery and great wealth and the utterly unsustainable economic and tax system that has made us the most socially unequal society in the industrialized world.


Sheehy talked about the schools (both he and are are parents of kids in the public schools). Good schools, he said, are one of the most important socialequalizers; with a good education, poor kids have a chance. But while our local billionaires enjoy nice tax breaks, we’re starving the schools.


Kim talked abou the need for summer school and longer school years (I would add longer school days). These are things San Francisco can do — if we’re willing. “We’re talking about taxes,” Sheehy said, and he’s right.


In the past five years, I think we’ve cut about a billion dollars out of the General Fund, labor has given back more than $300 million — and we’ve raised $90 million in new taxes. Not good enough, not even close.


Yes, the bad economy is to blame for our fiscal problems, but so is the fact that we have a tax structure that systematically underfunds the public sector. (And yes, my conservative friends, cops shouldn’t retire with $250,000 a year pensions. Got it.)


Tiny made a strong statement about the essential problem facing the city when she asked, “who isn’t here?” She didn’t just mean that there were too many white people in the room (althought that was true); she meant that there were were too many working-class and poor people who can no longer live in San Francisco.


Sheehy was even more blunt: “In five years,” he said, looking out at the room, “none of us are going to be here.”
And my essential message to the crowd (and the elected officials on the panel) was: We don’t have to accept that. These are problmes we can address, right here in San Francisco. If we want to, we can shift the burden of paying the costs of society at least a little bit off the backs of the poor and middle class and onto the rich.


Nobody directly disagreed with me. In fact, Chiu announced that “income inequality is something all of us care about.”
How agressively he and others try to turn that concern into legislation will tell us something.


Two other interesting moments:


1. Every single person on the panel talked about how important Tom Ammiano was to the modern progressive movement. One by one, every panelists described the 1999 Ammiano for Mayor campaign as a defining moment in their lives and in the emergence of today’s progressive politics. Good to see the guy get the recognition he so richly deserves.


2. Campos, who was sitting next to Chiu, made a point of saying that there’s no longer a progressive majority on the board, and he pointed to the committee assignments that gave conservatives control of some key panels. Chiu responded: “At the end of the day, we have a progressive majority on the board that will serve as a backstop” to anything bad that comes out of committees.


It was curious; it sounded almost as if Chiu was disappointed in his own assignments. Why would you need a “backstop” if the committees were good in the first place?


So I called him the next day and asked him about it. First he said he thought the commitees were balanced and it was all going to be fine. But when I asked him directly — why not appoint progressive majorities on the key committees? — he responded:


“I wish the board presidency vote hadn’t turned out the way it did.”


In other words: If the progressives had all voted for Chiu, he wouldn’t have appointed conservatives to key posts of power. Instead, some progressives voted for Avalos, and Chiu won with the votes of Carmen Chu, Scott Wiener, Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell (along with Kim and Mar). The payback, the deal, the whatever you want to call it, means that bad decisions will be made at Land Use and Rules and maybe in the Budget Committee, and Chiu as much as admitted that the progressive majority will have to go to unusual lengths to undo them.


I know how politics works; I know you have to dance with the ones that brung you and all that. But it would be nice if every now and then someone would do something just because it was the right thing to do, and to hell with the political consequences.


I suppose that’s too much to ask.


 

Who’s next?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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39
Who’s next?

steve@sfbg.com and tredmond@sfbg.com

The seven serious candidates who have announced plans to run for mayor extends from moderate to conservative at this point, but it’s an unusual field for San Francisco: there is no clear progressive standard-bearer, and no clear downtown candidate.

But it probably won’t stay that way. Sources say others are likely to join the lackluster race in the coming months, and there’s a strong likelihood that some progressive candidate will decide to the take plunge.

Also unlike the last few mayor’s races, there appears to be no clear frontrunner — either in fundraising or in having a clear constituency base — a new dynamic that creates an unpredictability that will be exacerbated because this is the first contested mayor’s race using the ranked-choice voting system and public financing of candidates.

There was a weak field of challengers to Gavin Newsom in 2007 and no one qualified for public financing or presented a strong threat. But this time City Attorney Dennis Herrera and former Sup. Bevan Dufty already have indicated they will take public financing, and others are expected to follow suit.

In addition to Herrera and Dufty, the field includes Sen. Leland Yee, Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, venture capitalist Joanna Rees, and former Sups. Tony Hall and Michela Alioto-Pier. Those close to Board President David Chiu also say he is “seriously considering” jumping into the race and talking to friends and supporters about that possibility now.

But so far none come from the progressive political community that has controlled the Board of Supervisors for the past decade. Although Chiu is the only candidate in the field to self-identify as a progressive, he has adopted a more moderate governing style that has frustrated many progressive activists and supervisors. So that leaves voters on the left without a candidate right now.

“If a credible progressive candidate doesn’t get into the race, then we’ll see the top-tier candidates — which so far Leland Yee and Dennis Herrera — try to make friends with progressive San Francisco. And it would appear they have a lot of work to do,” Aaron Peskin, the former board president who chairs the San Francisco Democratic Party, told us.

Both Yee and Herrera have taken some progressive positions, and Yee has consistently endorsed more progressive candidates than anyone else in the mayoral field, but they have also taken many positions that have alienated them from progressives. And both have been taking in lots of campaign cash from interests hostile to the progressive base of renters, environmentalists, and advocates for social and economic justice.

“Nobody who has put their hats in the ring is really exciting anyone, so there is plenty of room for new entrants,” Peskin said, noting the progressives are actively discussing who should run. Peskin wouldn’t identify whom they’re courting, but some of the names being dropped are Sups. John Avalos, Ross Mirkarimi, and David Campos, as well as former Sup. Chris Daly and Peskin.

But Mirkarimi shifted some of that talk this week when he announced that he intends to run to replace the retiring Mike Hennessey as sheriff.

Political consultant Jim Stearns, who is representing Yee, also expects others to get into the race. “I don’t think the field is complete yet. Historically, the strong self-identified progressive candidate has come in late or surged late, like [Tom] Ammiano and [Matt] Gonzalez,” Stearns said.

Ammiano launched his write-in mayoral bid in September 1999 and Gonzalez jumped into the race just before the filing deadline in August 2003, so there’s plenty of time for progressive candidates to get in. “It’s never too late in San Francisco,” Stearns said. And unlike those two races when the upstarts were seriously outspent by the well-heeled frontrunners, Stearns said this year’s field will likely be on a fairly even financial footing.

“It’s likely every candidate will have $1.5 million to $2 million to spend,” he said. That means the keys to the race are likely to be name ID with voters and “which campaign can do the most with the least dollars,” Stearns said.

Already, some of the candidates who will be running to the center are looking for progressive support. Yee, for example, has given substantial amounts of money to progressive groups and candidates and has endorsed progressives for office.

Yee told us he’s positioning himself as “the candidate of the regular folks of San Francisco — the people who are trying to raise their families and live in this city.” He added: “To the extent that the progressive agenda fits that, we’ll be part of it.”

But he already has the endorsement of the Building Trades Council, which has often been at war with progressives, particularly over development issues.

Yee said he hasn’t yet weighed in on the local budget, but he agreed that new revenue “shouldn’t be off the table.” He said he thinks the current pension reform discussions at City Hall, involving Mayor Ed Lee, Sup. Sean Elsbernd, financier Warren Hellman, and union representatives are “the right way to go.”

Herrera said he’s going to run on his record — which includes a long list of progressive legal actions (along with his gang injunctions, which a lot of progressives question). He also told us that he’s involved in the pension reform discussions but thinks that new revenue absolutely ought to be a part of the budget debate.

Dick Meister: Shades of the Thirties

Maria Poblet
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4

Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.

By now, there’s can be no doubting it: What’s happening in Wisconsin is one
of the most important labor developments in decades. It’s of major
importance to unions and their members, of major importance to working
people generally ­ of major importance to us all.

In  many ways, it’s the 1930s again. Just as then, workers and their
political allies and other  supporters are demonstrating, picketing,
marching, striking and otherwise forcefully demanding the basic civil right
of collective bargaining ­ the unfettered right for workers’ representatives
to negotiate with employers on setting their wages, hours and working
conditions.

Eventually, workers and their millions of supporters won the 1930s struggle.
Congress, acting closely with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, granted the
legal right of collective bargaining to most workers. Farm workers,
domestics and a few other groups were excluded from the law, but all others
finally had that vital right.

The 1930s struggle arose primarily because of the economic pressures of the
Great Depression that led to massive protests, just as today’s struggle can
be traced to the pressures of the Great Recession that also have led to
massive protests.

There are key differences between then and now, however. In the thirties,
the struggle was to win union rights for workers in the face of strong
opposition from large financial interests, powerful conservative politicians
and other anti-labor forces. Today, the struggle is to keep union rights
from being taken away from workers by today’s anti-union forces. Their main
targets are public employees and the pensions and other benefits they won in
past bargaining with their government employers.

The governments’ aim, of course, is to use the savings from that to make up
for budget shortfalls resulting from the recession and, in many cases, from
poor government management.

But there’s another important reason: Public employees have become the
vanguard of the labor movement. Their numbers and the percentage of them
belonging to unions have been growing steadily, while the number and
percentage of unionized workers in private employment have been shrinking.
That’s caused anti-union forces to shift their major efforts into attempting
to curb the escalating spread of unionization among public employees.

Which explains what’s happening in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott
Walker has moved to all but eliminate the bargaining rights of most state
employees.
Walker is pushing bills through the GOP-controlled Legislature that would
bar state employees from bargaining on anything except their pay, and limit
any pay increases to the level of Consumer Price Index increases.

Employees would have no say in determining  their benefits or working
conditions, although most would have to increase their contributions to
pension and health care funds by up to 50 percent. What’s more, their
contracts would have to be re-negotiated yearly, and union dues could no
longer be deducted from employee paychecks.  It’s hard to imagine a union
surviving under such restraints.

The pay and benefits of Wisconsin state workers may be too high, or too low,
depending on who’s measuring. But that could be addressed through
negotiations between Gov. Walker and union representatives. But like some
petty dictator, Walker insists, “I don’t have anything to negotiate.”

Peaceful negotiations are how it’s done in civil societies, but that’s not
the style of union-busting Walker and his cohorts.  And if anyone doesn’t
like Walker’s approach, look out! He’s alerted the National Guard to be
armed and ready should Wisconsin state workers strike, disrupt state
services or otherwise rise in protest.

Shades, again, of the 1930s. In fact, the last time the Guard was called out
to quell a labor dispute in Wisconsin was during a United Auto Workers
strike in 1934.

Workers eventually won that and many other struggles of the thirties, thanks
to their courage and fierce determination and the broad public support they
inspired. And that’s precisely what it will take to overcome today’s
anti-worker onslaught by Walker and others like him.

The good news ­ and it’s very good news ­ is that such help is here and
growing fast. Crowds of as many as 70,000 labor supporters have been
gathering daily outside the Wisconsin State Capital in Madison to demand
that Walker and his fellow reactionaries return to the 21st century.

But give Walker this: Like the anti-labor politicians of the 1930s, he has
aroused public outrage that has brought important new strength and
solidarity to the cause of working people and their unions nationwide.

Certainly they’ll need all the strength they can muster, with major efforts
similar to Walker’s in Wisconsin underway in at least 17 other states.  In
more than a dozen. , Republican anger over labor’s strong support for
Democrats in last year’s elections have led directly to measures curbing
union political activities.

President Obama is correct. There is indeed a nationwide “assault on
unions.” But as the assaults increase, so will the public outrage that’s
winning unions the broad support they so badly need ­ and so richly deserve.

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based columnist who has covered labor and
politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator.
Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com

To the bone

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
To the bone

DANCE/MUSIC There are a lot of interesting things in Brontez Purnell’s room. Giant self-made posters of Josephine Baker (“The most famous black party kid ever,” he says), Arthur Evans’ Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, and the legendary Harlem Renaissance publication Fire!!. An arrangement of Polaroid Instamatic nude shots of old flames and interview subjects from his zine, Fag School. A few more Instamatic shots – of him and his mom and grandmother. A framed letter from Kathleen Hanna. An autographed copy of the Go-Go’s’ Talk Show. A typewriter. Effects pedals. On a window ledge, a CD by his uncle, the late blues guitarist J.J. Malone. On his bed, a well-worn paperback of Lady Sings the Blues, next to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pillow. But the most interesting presence in the room is Brontez himself.

“I grew up with a strong Southern Baptist influence,” Brontez says, when I ask about the role of ritual in his dance projects. “These days I’m not as likely to disregard what that did to me and how it set my way of thinking about the world into motion. I talk to my mom, who is a devout Christian and also totally wild-ass, every day. But for the first 15 years of my life, I was at a place where, every Sunday, the most conservative people could scream their heads off. It wasn’t pretentious, it was to the bone. It’s part of the reason I’ve never had trouble dancing at [rock] shows or getting into the energy of the moment.”

Long before Brontez burned up the stage as a key member of Gravy Train!!!!, he was the talk of the Bay Area rock scene because of his uninhibited energy. “Sometimes, in Gravy Train!!!!, or especially when I was younger, people would sexualize me in this way that was weird to me,” he recalls. “I just felt like I was being more punk than sexy. Sometimes I’d jump in the crowd and people would finger me, or rip off my underwear, and I was put off or taken aback. I felt like I was this baby with whiplash.”

No longer a baby with whiplash, the Brontez of today is still punk rock, but also well-read – and a dancer. This Friday, he’s debuting a trio of live dance pieces, and a trio of dance films (The Beats are Falling Down, Itxel, and Free Jazz) made with Gary Gregerson, as part of a Berkeley Art Museum program curated by Betty Nguyen. Shot in black-and-white and kindred in spirit with works by Yvonne Rainer (“Her ideas about task-oriented choreography, and choreography that deals with the everyday, are so fact-based,” he says), the movies are a natural extension from the dynamic dance video that Irwin Swirnoff made for “Sha-Boo Lee,” by Brontez’s band, Younger Lovers. They’ve got an electric charge — they’re inspiring.

“What I like about Gary [Gregerson] and Irwin [Swirnoff] is that there is always a sense of naturalness with them,” says Brontez. “In the Bay Area, there can be this cult of clutter – everyone has their Cockette thing going, and everything has to be splattered with glitter and fuzzy purple rhinestones. With the art I make, there isn’t a lot of high concept and high camp going on. I’m literally trying to tell a story that I want to let breathe. Both Gary and Irwin are respectful of that.”

This directness is present in Rock Flawless (Bachelor), the latest Younger Lovers album, which features contributions from Bare Wires’ Matthew Melton and drummer Taaji Malik (who is also present in Gregerson’s films), as well as bandmate Mateo Corona. Recorded next door to Aunt Charlie’s Lounge at a studio on the corner of Turk and Taylor in SF, Rock Flawless trades the vagaries of romance for the truth. “When I wrote about a boy on [2008’s] Newest Romantic, it was ‘la la la’ and flowery, but on Rock Flawless I’ll write about a specific boy, in a specific neighborhood – like the Lower Haight – that fucked me over.”

Brontez also throws in a killer cover, of “Heartbroken,” by T2 featuring Jodie Aysha. He’s typically candid about its inspiration. “I first heard [the song] during this Adam4Adam trick,” he says. “I went to this guy’s house and he was a total freak. He had this way-too-close relationship with his dog. I hugged him and the dog ran off the bed and he said, ‘She hates when you take my energy away like that.’ We were fucking and he had on his Pandora and that song came on, and I was like, ‘What is this? This is what’s up!’”

What’s up for Brontez today? For starters, his neighborhood in West Oakland, where warehouse spaces like Sugar Mountain, Ghost Town, and Copland are putting on shows. “On the weekend, you see so many white kids it’s like Woodstock,” he laughs. “What’s happening here isn’t going on in San Francisco. But during the weekdays, you see the nice cars that drive by to get heroin and crack, and the regular neighborhood people.”  

What’s also going on is a strong dedication to making things happen, and making dance. “My biological clock is ticking, ticking, going ‘What have you done, girl?’,” Brontez jokes. “It’s nice to sit around waiting on boys to love you, but in the meantime…” In the meantime, he’s reading up on Rainer, Katherine Dunham, and Martha Graham. He’s watching AXIS Dance Company rehearsals. He’s drawing on his studies with choreographers Eric Kupers and Nina Haft. He’s getting set to act with Jesse Hewit and others in a film by Travis Mathews. He’s leading dance workshops. And he’s giving any “fucking squares” in dance a loving “a kick in the ass,” flyering shows punk rock-style, and choreographing pieces involving witch dancers and preachers, with titles like Whenever I Hit the Floor, I’m Like a Fucking Hurricane.

“Thank god I also read a lot of rock ‘n’ roll autobiographies,” Brontez says. “Because all of my favorite artists say the same thing: ‘They did not love me enough.’ This year, I’m going to find out who my brothers and sisters are, so we can start doing shows together.”

L@TE FRIDAY NIGHTS AT BAM/PFA: BRONTEZ WITH BRILLIANT COLORS
7:30 p.m. (DJ Myles Cooper at 6:30 p.m.), $7
Berkeley Art Museum, Gallery B
2626 Bancroft, Berk.
(510) 642-0808

bampfa.berkeley.edu

Dick Meister: Black Porters Led the Way

Maria Poblet
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0

Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.


February is Black History Month, a good time to honor the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the most important yet too often overlooked leaders in the long struggle for racial equality.

The union, the first to be founded by African Americans, was involved deeply in political as well as economic activity. It joined with the NAACP to serve as the major political vehicle of African Americans from the late 1930s through the 1950s.

Together, the two organizations led the drives in those years against racial discrimination in employment, housing, education and other areas, and in doing so, laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The need for a porters’ union was painfully obvious. Porters commonly worked 12 or more hours a day on the Pullman Company’s sleeping car coaches for less than $100 a month. And out of that, they had to pay for their meals, uniforms, even the polish they used to shine passengers’ shoes. They got no fringe benefits, although they could ride the trains for half-fare on their days off – providing they were among the very few with the time and money to do so. And providing they didn’t ride a Pullman coach.

In order to meet their basic living expenses, porters had to draw on the equally meager earnings of their wives, who were almost invariably employed as domestics.
 
It was a marginal and humiliating experience for porters. They were rightly proud of their work, a pride that showed in their smiling, dignified bearing. But porters knew that no matter how well they performed, they would never be promoted to higher-paying conductors’ jobs. Those jobs were reserved for white men.

Porters knew most of all that their white passengers and white employers controlled everything. It was they alone who decided what the porters must do and what they’d get for doing it.

When a passenger pulled the bell cord, porters were to answer swiftly and cheerfully. Just do what the passengers asked – or demanded. Shine their shoes, fetch them drinks, make their beds, empty their cuspidors. And more. No questions, no complaints, no protests. No rights. Nothing better epitomized the vast distance between black and white in American society.

Hundreds of porters who challenged the status quo by daring to engage in union activity or other concerted action were fired. But finally, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt granted workers, black and white, the legal right to unionize. And finally, in 1937, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters won a union contract from Pullman.

The contract was signed exactly 12 years after union president and founder A. Philip Randolph had called the union’s first organizing meeting in New York City. It was a long arduous struggle, but it brought the porters out of poverty. It won them pay at least equal to that of unionized workers in many other fields , a standard workweek, and full range of fringe benefits. Most important, porters won the right to continue to bargain collectively with Pullman on those and other vital matters.

Union President Randolph and Vice President C.L. Dellums, who succeeded Randolph in 1968, led the drive that pressured President Roosevelt into several important actions against discrimination, including the creation of a Fair Employment Practices Commission in housing as well as employment. FDR agreed to set up the commission – a model for several state commissions – and take other anti-discrimination steps only after Randolph and Dellums threatened to lead a march on Washington by more than 100,000 black workers  and others who were demanding federal action against discrimination.

Dellums and Randolph struggled as hard against discrimination inside the labor movement, particularly against the practice of unions setting up segregated locals, one for white members, one for black members.

Randolph, elected in 1957 as the AFL-CIO’s first African-American vice president, long was known as the civil rights conscience of the labor movement, often prodding federation President George Meany and other conservative AFL-CIO leaders to take stands against racial discrimination.

The sleeping car coaches that once were the height of travel luxury have long since disappeared, and there are very few sleeping car porters in this era of less-than-luxurious train travel. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is gone, too. But before the union disappeared, it had reached goals as important as any ever sought by an American union – or by any other organization anywhere.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Brown goes nonpartisan while Obama stays the course

Sasha Cuttler
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6

Gov. Jerry Brown gave a brilliant State of the State speech this evening, validating those who hoped that he would have the wisdom, courage, and candor to properly frame this difficult political moment. And it was great because he abandoned tired calls for bipartisanship and opted to go straight to the people, even citing Egypt and Tunisia as cautionary examples of the peril and potential of real democracy.
Contrast that with President Barack Obama, whose White House today indicated it would plow forward with a health care reform package – crafted entirely by politicians and corporate lobbyists – that nobody really likes even after another federal judge ruled its central tenet unconstitutional and House Republicans have threatened jihad over.

Liberals never did buy into this reform after Obama abandoned single payer and even the public option compromise, and its seems conservatives and teabaggers have been whipped up into a froth over its real and imagined provisions. So Obama has some pretty thin backing to fight through the fairly reasonable ruling that the federal government can’t make it a crime not to want to be health insurance company customers.

Both Brown and Obama correctly gauge that “something is profoundly wrong,” as Brown put it. “They see that their leaders are divided when they should be decisive and acting with clear purpose.”

Obama’s solution is bipartisanship, even though Republicans seem incapable of dealing with him or the public in good faith these days. So he makes attempts at bland compromises that please nobody – from escalating war in Afghanistan with a fake exit strategy to extending jobless benefits and billionaire tax cuts – feeding the public perception that both major parties are hopelessly corrupt and ineffective.
Brown is taking a different tact: nonpartisanship. He’s crafted a bold effort at compromise that neither political party likes, but one that will probably prove reasonable to most people if sold properly (unless we are indeed incapable of self-governance at this point, a possibility the I allow and which would require solutions like breaking California up into multiple states or accepting anarchy). And hopefully creative progressive legislators will even give multiple options to the people, including increasing taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to lessen the cuts even more, as long as we’re placing our faith in the people. Hell, I don’t even mind putting a conservative package of deep cuts to government on the ballot as well, just so we can show them how unpopular the right-wing stance really is in California.
Brown doesn’t preclude the future possibilities of bipartisanship, but he also correctly says that the political gridlock is just too strong in Sacramento right now. After punting the budget to the people, maybe they can start doing old-fashioned governance again.

“But let’s not forget that Job Number 1 – make no mistake about it – is fixing our state budget and getting our spending in line with our revenue. Once we do that, the rest will be easy—at least easier because we will have learned to work together and earned back the respect and trust of the people we serve,” he closed. “I look forward to working with all of you.”

Obama can’t “win” the future

Zelda Bronstein
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5
Obama can’t “win” the future

 


Most of the pundits in the center, like the New York Times, liked Obama’s State of the Union Speech. And for good reason: It was a centrist, cautious speech that promised lower corporate taxes, conservative education policy, lots of money for the military and cuts for everyone else. Two things, thought, that stood out for me:


1. Obama still believes in government. He made it very clear that he thinks the public sector has an important role to play, not just in regulation but in spurring and stimulating economic growth. He’s going about it all wrong, but he did remind people that government — the public sector — won the space race, gave birth to the internet, built the interstate highway system and in the process created tens of millions of jobs. The GOP is already going batshit about it; they got the message.


2. The crux of the speech, the “Sputnik Moment,” was this line: “To win the future, we’ll have to take on challenges that have been decades in the making.” Win the future. In fact, over and over, all night, we heard about “winning the future.”


But since when was the future a war, something to be fought with an enemy? To “win” the space race we had to “beat” the Soviets, which we did (ha ha, we got to the moon first). To “win” the future, do we have to beat someone else? The Russians aren’t up for winning much of anything these days, but Obama seems concerned about competing with China; do the Chinese have to “lose” the future for us to “win?”


It wasn’t a random choice of words. The White House speechwriters take this stuff very seriously. “Winning the future” is a catchphrase that the Obama administration wants to be attached to. And it’s a bad one.


The future of the planet can’t be about winning. When you look at the serious crisis facing the world — climate change that’s going to transform agriculture, put the homes of hundreds of millions of people under water and alter the way every single human being lives — beating China isn’t really relevant. Thomas Friedman says the world is flat, and he’s got a point — if Obama were able to articulate a message of cooperation, of seeking peace and working together with other nations, it would have been a remarkable speech.


Instead: Winning the future. What a loser.


 


 

Republicans worry about their “brand”

Zelda Bronstein
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12
Republicans worry about their “brand”

Like every political junkie in this state, I was fascinated to hear that Republican operatives think there’s a problem with their “brand.” It’s simple: Even when the state’s voters approve horrible right-wing anti-tax measures, they don’t seem willing to vote for Republicans. The way the operatives discuss the situation, it’s all about messaging; I think Robert Cruickshank at Calitics has a better analysis: “The CAGOP has made itself unelectable by being a white man’s party.”


It runs even deeper, though. In order to win a statewide GOP primary, you have to:


1. Oppose all taxes


2. Oppose gun control, even to the point of insanity


3. Support harsh crackdowns, bordering on open racism, on immigration and immigrants


4. Either be rich or toady up to the rich


And those positions aren’t winners in a statewide race.


The Democratic Party, for better or for worse (often for worse) has no such litmus tests. Yeah, it’s hard to get elected without labor support, but the Demos are much more of a “big tent” these days. Jerry Brown is more of a fiscal conservative than a lot of Republicans (who love to cut waste as long as it doesn’t hurt their rich supporters), but the tax-and-spend types like me all voted for him. Our senior senator, who happens to be the most popular politician in California in poll after poll, is only barely to the left of Joe Lieberman.


As long as the far right controls the part in what’s very much a centrist kind of state, the GOP isn’t going anywhere. Brand or no brand. 

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