Crime Archives — Page 41 of 58 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Film Listings

February 3, 2010

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

SF INDIEFEST

The 12th San Francisco Independent Film Festival runs Feb. 4-18 at the Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF. For tickets (most shows $11), visit www.sfindie.com. For commentary, see “Hollywouldn’t” and “Double Vision.” All times pm.

THURS/4

Wah Do Dem 7:15, 9:30.

FRI/5

Limbo Lounge 7:15. Less Adolescent 7:15. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead 9:30. Beyond the Pole 9:30.

SAT/6

“Games of Telephone” (shorts program) 2:45. Less Adolescent 2:45. West of Pluto 5. “The End is Not the End” (shorts program) 5. City Island 7:15. A + D 7:15. My Movie Girl 9:30. Lilli and Secure Space 9:30.

SUN/7

“Life NorCal-Style” (shorts program) 2:45. Beyond the Pole 2:45. “None of the Above” (shorts program) 5. Bonecrusher 5. Oh My God! It’s Harrod Blank! 7:15. “You’re Not the Only, Lonely” (shorts program) 7:15. The Blood of Rebirth 9:30. Point Traverse 9:30.

MON/8

“You’re Not the Only, Lonely” (shorts program) 7:15. Bonecrusher 7:15. Point Traverse 9:30. “Life NorCal-Style” (shorts program) 9:30.

TUES/9

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead 7:15. Lilli and Secure Space 7:15. A + D 9:30. “The End is Not the End” (shorts program) 9:30.

OPENING

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

District 13: Ultimatum The sequel to 2004’s French action hit District 13 promises even more insane fights and high-flying stunts. (1:41) Lumiere, Shattuck.

44 Inch Chest You couldn’t ask for a much better cast than the one 44 Inch Chest offers. The film’s a veritable who’s who of veteran British actors: Tom Wilkinson, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Ian McShane. The story’s a bit less exceptional, though kudos to director Malcolm Venville and co-writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto for subverting expectations. While the movie’s poster suggests a gritty crime thriller, 44 Inch Chest is actually a somewhat subtle character drama. Winstone stars as Colin, a man devastated after his wife Liz (Joanna Whalley) leaves him for a younger man. His mobster friends encourage him to kidnap her new squeeze, nicknamed Loverboy (Melvil Poupaud), as revenge. But don’t expect any Tarantino-esque torture scenes: 44 Inch Chest spends most of its time revealing what’s going on in Colin’s head while he struggles to make sense of his friends’ conflicting philosophies. Hurt’s Old Man Peanut is the obvious standout, but McShane should also be commended for playing a character who is suave and confident, despite being a gay man named Meredith. (1:34) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

From Paris with Love John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers star as secret agents in this Luc Besson-produced thriller. (1:35)

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

ONGOING

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

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

The Book of Eli The Book of Eli isn’t likely to win many prizes, but it could eventually be up for a lifetime achievement award in the “most sentimental movie to ever feature multiple decapitations by machete” category. Denzel Washington plays the titular hero, displaying scant charisma as a post-apocalyptic drifter with a beatific personality and talent for dismemberment. Eli squares off against an evil but urbane kleptocrat named Carnegie (Gary Oldman phoning in a familiar “loathsome reptile” performance). Convinced that possession of Eli’s book will place humanity’s few survivors in his thrall, Carnegie will do anything to get it, even pimping out the daughter (Mila Kunis, utterly unconvincing) of his blind girlfriend (Jennifer Beals, who should stick to playing people who can see). The two slumming lead actors chase each other down the highway, pausing for some spiritual hogwash and an exchange of gunfire before limping towards an execrable twist ending. At least there’s a Tom Waits cameo. (1:58) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Richardson)

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

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

Creation Critically drubbed in its high-profile slot as the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival’s opening-night film, this handsome costume drama isn’t all that bad — but neither is it very good. Offscreen married couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly play Mr. and Mrs. Darwin in the mid-1850s, just as he’s about to incite a still-active public firestorm with The Origin of the Species. Charles is hardly in any shape to face such controversy, as the death of favorite daughter Annie (Martha West) has had a grave impact on both his psychological and physical health. That event has only strengthened wife Emma’s Christian faith, while destroying his own. Also arguing against the evolutionary tract’s publication is their close friend Reverend Innes (Jeremy Northam); contrarily urging Darwin to go ahead and “kill God” are fellow scientitific enthusiasts played by Toby Jones and Benedict Cumberbatch. Director Jon Amiel lends considerable visual panache, but Creation ultimately misses the rare chance to meaningfully scrutinize rationalism vs. religious belief perhaps the industrial era’s most importantly divisive issue — in favor of conventional dramatic dwelling on grief over a child’s loss. The appealing Bettany is somewhat straitjacketed by a character that verges on being a sickly bore, while Connolly is, as usual, a humorless one. (1:58) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Edge of Darkness (1:57) California, Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

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

Extraordinary Measures It’s probably to early to name the worst movie of 2010, but Extraordinary Measures is surely the first serious contender. This would-be inspirational semi-true story focuses on John Crowley (a puffy Brendan Fraser), who employs Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford) to find a cure for his ailing children. The script is flat from start to finish, reducing this potentially powerful tearjerker to Lifetime Movie of the Week. The acting is just as misguided, which given the talent of the performers likely speaks to Tom Vaughan’s directorial choices. While Fraser blubbers endlessly, Ford spends the entire film yelling. The only difference between Extraordinary Measures and Ford’s other missteps is that here he’s shouting on behalf of someone else’s kids. It’s hard to say how this film got made: it doesn’t even look all that appealing on paper. There may have been potential at some point, but the finished product is downright unendurable — even with its heart in the right place. (1:52) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

*Fantastic Mr. Fox A lot of people have been busting filmmaker Wes Anderson’s proverbial chops lately, lambasting him for recent cinematic self-indulgences hewing dangerously close to self-parody (and in the case of 2007’s Darjeeling Limited, I’m one of them). Maybe he’s been listening. Either way, his new animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, should keep the naysayer wolves at bay for a while — it’s nothing short of a rollicking, deadpan-hilarious case study in artistic renewal. A kind of man-imal inversion of Anderson’s other heist movie, his debut feature Bottle Rocket (1996), his latest revels in ramshackle spontaneity and childlike charm without sacrificing his adult preoccupations. Based on Roald Dahl’s beloved 1970 book, Mr. Fox captures the essence of the source material but is still full of Anderson trademarks: meticulously staged mise en scène, bisected dollhouse-like sets, eccentric dysfunctional families coming to grips with their talent and success (or lack thereof).(1:27) SF Center. (Devereaux)

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

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

*The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus From the title to the plot to the execution, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is the kind of movie you’re told not to see sober. This is a film in which Tom Waits plays the Devil, in which characters’ faces change repeatedly, in which Austin Powers‘ Verne Troyer makes his triumphant big-screen return. The story is your basic battle between good and evil, with Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) struggling to save souls from Mr. Nick (Waits) in order to protect his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole). Meanwhile, Valentina is wooed by the mysterious Tony, played by Heath Ledger in his final film role — along with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell. There are plenty of big important themes to be analyzed here, but it’s honestly more fun to simply get lost in Doctor Parnassus’ Imaginarium. Director and co-writer Terry Gilliam has created a world and a mythology that probably takes more than one viewing to fully comprehend. Might as well let yourself get distracted by all the shiny colors instead. (2:02) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Inglourious Basterds With Inglourious Basterds Quentin Tarantino pulls off something that seemed not only impossible, but undesirable, and surely unnecessary: making yet another of his in-jokey movies about other movies, albeit one that also happens to be kinda about the Holocaust — or at least Jews getting their own back on the Nazis during World War II — and (the kicker) is not inherently repulsive. As Rube Goldbergian achievements go, this is up there. Nonetheless, Basterds is more fun, with less guilt, than it has any right to be. The “basterds” are Tennessee moonshiner Pvt. Brad Pitt’s unit of Jewish soldiers committed to infuriating Der Fuhrer by literally scalping all the uniformed Nazis they can bag. Meanwhile a survivor (Mélanie Laurent) of one of insidious SS “Jew Hunter” Christoph Waltz’s raids, now passing as racially “pure” and operating a Paris cinema (imagine the cineaste name-dropping possibilities!) finds her venue hosting a Third Reich hoedown that provides an opportunity to nuke Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Goering in one swoop. Tactically, Tarantino’s movies have always been about the ventriloquizing of that yadadada-yadadada whose self-consciousness is bearable because the cleverness is actual; brief eruptions of lasciviously enjoyed violence aside, Basterds too almost entirely consists of lengthy dialogues or near-monologues in which characters pitch and receive tasty palaver amid lethal danger. Still, even if he’s practically writing theatre now, Tarantino does understand the language of cinema. There isn’t a pin-sharp edit, actor’s raised eyebrow, artful design excess, or musical incongruity here that isn’t just the business. (2:30) Oaks. (Harvey)

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

It’s Complicated Allow me to spoil one line in It’s Complicated, because I believe it sums up — better than I ever could — everything right and wrong with this movie: “I prefer a lot of semen.” Bet you never thought you’d hear Meryl Streep say that. The thrill of movies like It’s Complicated (see also: Nancy Meyer’s 2003 senior romance Something’s Gotta Give) is in seeing actors of a certain age get down and dirty. There is something fascinating (and for audiences of that same age, encouraging) about watching Alec Baldwin inadvertently flash a webcam or Streep and Steve Martin making croissants while stoned. Once the novelty wears off, however, It’s Complicated is a fairly run-of-the-mill romcom. Sure, the story’s a bit more unusual: 10 years after their divorce, Jane (Streep) and Jake (Baldwin) begin having an affair. But the execution is full of the same clichés you’ve come to expect from the genre, including plenty of slapstick, miscommunication, and raunchy humor. It’s delightful to see such talented actors in a film together. Less delightful when they’re shotgunning weed and saying “oh em gee.” (2:00) Castro, Empire, Four Star, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Legion (1:40) 1000 Van Ness.

The Lovely Bones There comes a point when the boy with every toy should have some taken away, in order to improve focusing skills. Ergo, it seemed like a good idea when Peter Jackson became attached to The Lovely Bones. A (relatively) “small” story mixing real-world emotions with the otherworldly à la 1994’s Heavenly Creatures? Perfect. His taste for the grotesque would surely toughen up the hugely popular novel’s more gelatinous aspects. But no: these Bones heighten every mush-headed weakness in the book, sprinkling CGI sugar on top. Alice Sebold’s tale of a 1970s suburban teenager murdered by a neighbor is one of those occasional books that becomes a sensation by wrapping real-world horror (i.e. the brutal, unsolved loss of a child) in the warm gingerbread odor of spiritual comfort food. Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan of 2007’s Atonement) narrates from a soft-focus wish-fulfillment afterlife in which she can watch (and occasionally be seen by) those left behind. Bones is sentimentally exploitative in an ingenious way: it uses the protagonist’s violent victimization to stir a vague New Age narcissism in the reader. Susie is, yes, an “ordinary” girl, but she (and we) are of course so loved and special that all heavenly rules must be suspended just for her. Ultimately, divine justice is wrought upon her killer (Stanley Tucci, whose appropriately creepy scenes are the film’s best) — but why didn’t it intervene in time to save his prior victims? Guess they weren’t special enough. This is specious material — powerful in outline, woozy in specifics — that needed a grounding touch. But Jackson directs as if his inspirations were the worst of coproducer Steven Spielberg (i.e., those mawkish last reels) and Baz Luhrmann (in empty kitsch pictorialism). Seriously, after a while I was surprised no unicorns jumped o’er rainbows. (2:15) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Misconceptions This indie comedy starts out shrilly, relying overmuch on easy stereotyping of both born-agains and guppies. Small-town Georgia evangelicals Miranda (A.J. Cook) and Parker (David Sutcliffe) maintain a facade of nuclear-family-values perfection. But she’s desperate for a child and he seems strangely evasive of the act which usually leads to one. She experiences an epiphany watching a TV program in which Boston gay couple Terry (Orlando Jones) and Sandy (David Moscow) express their own so-far-frustrated desire to raise a child. She abruptly decides it’s God’s will for her to play surrogate to the sperm-donating duo, even though their status as “godless atheistic Sodomites” would seem to contract her beliefs in a pretty big way. Annoyingly broad at first, the film’s decent performances, good heart, and a few effective plot developments eventually make a pleasing impression. (1:35) Roxie. (Harvey)

Nine Though it has a terrific concept — translating Fellini’s 1963 autobiographical fantasia 8 1/2 into musical terms — this Broadway entity owed its success to celebrity, not artistry. The 1982 edition starred Raul Julia and a host of stage-famed glamazons; the 2003 revival featured Antonio Banderas and ditto. Why did Rob Marshall choose it to follow up his celebrated-if-overrated film of 2002’s Chicago (overlooking his underwhelming 2005 Memoirs of a Geisha)? Perhaps because it provided even greater opportunity for lingerie-clad post-Fosse gyrations, starry casting, and production numbers framed as mind’s-eye fantasies just like his Chicago. (Today’s audiences purportedly don’t like characters simply bursting

into song — though doesn’t the High School Musical series disprove that?) Daniel Day-Lewis plays Guido, an internationally famed, scandalous Italian film director who in 1965 is commencing production on his latest fantastical epic. But with crew and financiers breathing down his neck, he’s creatively blocked — haunted by prior successes, recent flops, and a gallery of past and present muses. They include Marion Cotillard (long-suffering wife), Penélope Cruz (mercurial mistress), Nicole Kidman (his usual star), Judi Dench (costume designer-mother figure), Sophia Loren (his actual mamma), Fergie (his first putana), and Kate Hudson (a Vogue reporter). All can sing, pretty much, though Nine‘s trouble has always been Maury

Weston’s generic songs. This is splashy entertainment, intelligently conceived (not least by Michael Tolkin and the late Anthony Minghella’s screenplay, which heightens the structural complexity of Arthur Kopit’s original book) and staged. But despite taking place almost entirely in its protagonist’s head, psychological depth is strictly two-dimensional. One longs for the suggestive intellectual nuance Marcello Mastroianni originally brought to Fellini’s non-singing Guido — something Nine doesn’t permit the estimable Day-Lewis. (2:00) Oaks. (Harvey)

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

*Sherlock Holmes There is some perfunctory ass-kicking in director Guy Ritchie’s big-ticket adaptation of the venerable franchise, but old-school Holmes fans will be pleased to learn that the fisticuffs soon give way to a more traditional detective adventure. For all his foibles, Ritchie is well-versed in the art of free-wheeling, entertaining, London-based crime capers. And though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary characters have been freshened up for a contemporary audience, the film has a comfortingly traditional feel to it. The director is lucky to have an actor as talented as Robert Downey Jr. in the title role, and the pair make good use of the American’s talents to create a Holmes resplendent in diffident, pipe-smoking, idiosyncratic glory. Though the film takes liberal creative license with the literary character’s offhand reference to martial prowess, it’s all very English, very Victorian (flying bowler hats, walking sticks, and bare-knuckle boxing), and more or less grounded in the century or so of lore that has sprung up around the world’s greatest detective. Jude Law’s John Watson is a more charismatic character this time around, defying the franchise’s tradition, and the byzantine dynamics of the pair’s close friendship are perfectly calibrated. The script, by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg, suffers a little by borrowing from other Victorian crime fictions better left untouched, but they get the title character’s inimitable “science of deduction” down pat, and the plot is rife with twists, turns, and inscrutable skullduggery. (2:20) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Richardson)

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

The Spy Next Door (1:32) 1000 Van Ness.

Tooth Fairy (1:41) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*Trimpin: The Sound of Invention The titular German-raised composer/inventor, who goes by just his last name, is a Seattle-based innovator whose mixings of avant-garde art and hands-on technology re-awaken a sense of the marvelous in both pricey concert and family museum-goers. He emigrated because he “couldn’t believe what high junk you had here.” Since then (1979) he’s made rusty old machine parts and other detritus into original instruments and spectacular sculptural installations (which also play music in a combination of digital/acoustic design). The through-line to Peter Esmonde’s documentary is Trimpin’s collaboration with the Kronos Quartet on a multimedia performance that stretches even those veteran avant-gardists’ ability to roll with idiosyncratic minds. Like the treasured Rivers and Tides (2001) about equally unclassifiable artist Andy Goldsworthy, this lovely documentary manages to capture the intoxicating excitement and originality of an artist whose work by any rights should/could be best appreciated live. (1:19) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*A Town Called Panic A Town Called Panic is that rare movie for everybody — or at least those old enough to read subtitles and not too wrong-headedly “grown-up” to snub a cartoon. It’s a feature expansion of a Belgian “puppetoon” series originating in a film-school project in 1991; a decade later, fellow graduates Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar decided to turn it into a series of five-minute shorts that wound up on TV networks worldwide. The titular town is an idyllic patch of cartoon countryside whose primary stop-motion residents are a couple of households on adjacent hills. On one abides tantrum-prone Farmer Stephen, his wife Jeanine, and their livestock. The other houses our real protagonists, Cheval (a.k.a. Horse), Indian, and Cowboy. All look like the kinds of not-so-high-action figures kids possessed in the first half of the 20th century, before TV commercials made the toy market explode. Of course they’re animate, albeit in the most endearingly klutzy fashion imaginable — though A Town Called Panic the movie is, like 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, a significant visual upgrade from the broadcast version that nonetheless retains the air of cheerful crudity on which the concept’s charm largely rests. (1:15) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

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

Watercolors Picked-on, arty gayboy Danny (Tye Olson), who comes complete with fag-hag friend, finds his domestic horizons suddenly changed when mom’s AA-met new boyfriend introduces her own teen son. Rebellious, broody Carter (Kyle Clare) proves willing to indulge Danny’s ill-hidden desires to a surprising degree, but not be his friend at school, as he’s a champion swimmer already at odds with his homophobic teammates. The sensitive lad’s formative crush on dreamboat jock is pretty hoary gay-cinema stuff, and writer-director David Oliveras’ feature recycles all the expected clichés without any originality, irony, or lightness of touch. Despite Greg Louganis and Karen Black in support roles, plus a few unintentional laughs, Watercolors is too ponderous even to be so-bad-it’s-good. (1:54) Roxie. (Harvey)

When in Rome From the esteemed director of Ghost Rider (2007) and Daredevil (2003) comes a romantic comedy about a New York workaholic (Kristen Bell) who drunkenly takes magic coins from a fountain of love while on a trip to Rome. She soon finds herself pursued by a gaggle of goons keen on winning her affection, incited by the ancient Roman magic. With a supporting cast that includes Danny DeVito, Will Arnett, and That Guy From Napoleon Dynamite, there’s way too much going on for anyone to get a decent amount of screen time to strut their stuff. The budding relationship between Bell and charming sports reporter Nick (Josh Duhamel) is largely predictable fluff but pleasant enough for those of you who like that sort of thing. However, if you’re looking for a romantic pre-Valentine’s Day date movie, be warned that When in Rome is generally more interested in slapstick than sweetness. (1:31) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Galvin)

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

The Young Victoria Those who envision the Victorian Age as one of restraint and repression will likely be surprised by The Young Victoria, which places a vibrant Emily Blunt in the title role. Her Queen Victoria is headstrong and romantic — driven not only by her desire to stand tall against the men who would control her, but also by her love for the dashing Prince Albert (Rupert Friend). To be honest, the story itself is nothing spectacular, even for those who have imagined a different portrait of the queen. But The Young Victoria is still a spectacle to behold: the opulent palaces, the stunning gowns, and the flawless Blunt going regal. Her performance is rich and nuanced — and her chemistry with Prince Albert makes the film. No, it doesn’t leave quite the impression that 1998’s Elizabeth did, but it’s a memorable costume drama and romance, worthy of at least a moderate reign in theaters. (1:40) Shattuck. (Peitzman)

Youth in Revolt At first glance, Youth in Revolt‘s tragically misunderstood teenage protagonist Nick Twisp is typical of actor Michael Cera’s repertoire of lovesick, dryly funny, impossibly sensitive and meek characters, although his particularly miserable family life does ratchet up the pathos. The Sinatra-worshipping Nick spends his time being shuttled between his bitter, oversexed divorced parents (Jean Smart and Steve Buscemi), who generally view him as an afterthought. When Nick meets Sheeni Saunders (newcomer Portia Doubleday), a Francophile femme fatale in training, she instructs him to “be bad.” Desperately in lust, he readily complies, developing a malevolent, supremely confident alter ego, François Dillinger. With his bad teenage moustache, crisp white yachting ensemble, and slow-burn swagger, François conjures notions of a pubescent Patricia Highsmith villain crossed with a dose of James Spader circa Pretty in Pink. While the film itself is tonally wobbly (whimsical Juno-esque animated sequences don’t really mesh with a guy surreptitiously drugging his girlfriend), Cera’s startlingly self-assured, deadpan-funny performance saves it from devolving into smarmy camp. In an added bonus, his split-personality character plays like an ironic commentary on Cera’s career so far — imagine Arrested Development‘s George-Michael Bluth setting fire to a large swath of downtown Berkeley instead of the family banana stand. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Devereaux)

Sitting boundaries

February 3, 2010

Aggressive lobbying efforts by the San Francisco Police Department and some of its allies who are pushing a proposed sit/lie ordinance have irked some current and former members of the Board of Supervisors.

The legislation was privately created by new Police Chief George Gascón and then played up in the mainstream media. It would make it illegal to sit or lie down on public sidewalks. Supporters say it would make it easier for cops to target people who harass neighborhood residents.

But in other cities where similar laws have been passed, protests have erupted from homeless-advocacy organizations and civil liberties groups, which say criminalizing this behavior unfairly (and unconstitutionally) targets homeless people who have nowhere else to go.

In Portland, Ore., a similar law was enacted then overturned by the courts. In Los Angeles, an ordinance against sleeping on the sidewalk was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, resulting in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2006 that unless adequate shelter is available for homeless people in L.A., arresting them for sleeping on the sidewalk amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

But an e-mail action alert included in SFPD Central Station Capt. Anna Brown’s monthly community newsletter encouraged people to contact the mayor and the Board of Supervisors to support the creation of a sit/lie ordinance. “Naturally, there is resistance from the left-leaning Board of Supervisors who feel this is an attack on the homeless population,” it noted.

That unusually overt political plea caught the eye of Aaron Peskin, former president of the Board of Supervisors and current chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, who called it “funky.” Peskin told us he’d never seen an advocacy pitch like this go out in a captain’s newsletter before, and he questioned whether this was an appropriate use of city resources.

But the City Attorney’s Office says this doesn’t fall under city laws banning electioneering by city employees, who are barred from using government resources to endorse a candidate or ballot initiative, or from doing any campaign-related work on city property.

Yet this kind of pitch “is not considered political activity,” Jack Song, a spokesperson for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, told the Guardian.

But Sup. David Campos, a former police commissioner, frowned upon it nonetheless. “Something like this is not really helpful to the Board of Supervisors and the Police Department working together,” Campos said.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi took a similar view. At a recent Board of Supervisors meeting, he requested a hearing about the ordinance because he said the media-driven public debate had occurred without formal discussion. Anti-loitering and public nuisance laws are already on the books, Mirkarimi pointed out.

“What makes those laws inadequate?” he asked. “How would the proposed law augment what is already in effect?”

The alert wasn’t actually written by Capt. Brown, who included it in her newsletter. It was drafted by the Community Leadership Alliance, an organization headed by David Villa-Lobos, a longtime resident of the Tenderloin and a candidate for the District 6 Supervisor seat.

Since Gascón floated the idea of creating a sit/lie ordinance, CLA has kicked into high gear to mobilize support, most recently issuing its action alert e-mail to 8,000 recipients. Police captains were included in the e-mail blast, Villa-Lobos told us, but each captain decides independently what to include in his or her newsletter.

People sitting and lying on sidewalks is “a really, really big problem, especially in the crime-ridden areas,” Villa-Lobos said. “God bless the homeless, but it’s a big problem there too.” Several years ago, his organization tried to mount a campaign for a sit/lie ordinance, but it didn’t go anywhere. “People came out and said we were trying to violate civil rights,” he said.

The Community Leadership Alliance is active in the Tenderloin, SoMa, and the mid-Market Street area, and the group occasionally holds monthly meetings at the Infusion Lounge, an upscale nightclub owned by Scott Caroen, the chair of the organization.

Gascón worked with deputy city attorneys to draft the ordinance and all district police stations have submitted to their commanders a list of areas that they feel could benefit from the law, according to a Tenderloin district newsletter. Mirkarimi told the Guardian that some supervisors were kept in the dark for weeks about the fact that an ordinance had been drafted. “This wasn’t collaborative at all,” Mirkarimi told us. “We never received it until we demanded to see it.”

The Haight-Ashbury, where residents and visitors have been complaining about harassment from wayward traveling youth, has been ground zero for discussion about a sit/lie ordinance. A small group of irate residents there and the Park Station Capt. Teresa Barrett have rallied in support of the law, saying it would give police a new tool to target these disruptive street kids.

But it’s clear that the ordinance’s supporters want to see it applied broadly and to be used to roust the homeless in neighborhoods throughout the city.

“CLA feels that our sidewalks should be enjoyable and a place of social gathering, and that the ordinance could go a long way in helping our neighborhoods feel safer,” reads the Community Leadership Alliance alert that was included in the police captain’s newsletter. “It may also reduce the overall homeless population in San Francisco by discouraging people from coming to the city to beg for money.”

Hollywouldn’t

February 3, 2010

FILM In its 12th year, is the San Francisco Independent Film Festival entering awkward adolescence? One sign of growing pains, or maybe just a hankering to rebel, is its inaugural Winter Music Fest, which wraps up a week of shows Thurs/4, the same day films begin unspooling. Its lineup of variably notable local bands probably appealed to fans of the Mission Creek Music Festival and Noise Pop. But I gotta ask: doesn’t this town already have enough indie-rock festivals?

It sure has enough film festivals. IndieFest, for example, umbrellas over the summertime Another Hole in the Head horror fest (named, ironically, to mock the overabundance of fests in SF) and the autumn DocFest. I can see the need, I suppose — there’s a lotta independent horror that’s worthy of notice (IndieFest 2008 was one of the first platforms for Paranormal Activity, a micro-budget effort that became a huge mainstream hit in 2009.) Last year’s DocFest unleashed Cropsey, one of the best (if least-seen) true-crime tales in recent memory. In a time when even Hollywood is struggling, outlets like IndieFest provide crucial exposure for work made outside the system, often by first-time filmmakers working with meager funds. This year all the films screen at the Roxie, hardly a flashy venue. Seeking gloss at IndieFest? Maybe someone’ll dress up in Maude’s Viking fantasywear at the annual Big Lebowski party.

So, it’s a low-key festival, infused with DIY spirit, created by film lovers for film lovers. And they’ve been at it for over a decade. I dig that. Usually, I can find a handful of films to pimp in fest-preview articles like this, but to be truthful, 2010 proved a little challenging. (Give Godspeed a pass, for instance.) Closing-night film Harmony and Me, directed by Bob Byington, stars Justin Rice (who’s in indie-rock band Bishop Allen, and who I quite liked in Andrew Bujalski’s 2005 Mutual Appreciation). It reminded me of a lo-fi, quirkier, less art-directed (500) Days of Summer (2009), with its emotionally clueless lead character and breakup theme. It also inspired a breakup of my own: mumblecore, I wanted to like you. I’ll always embrace Bujalski’s films, especially 2002’s Funny Ha Ha. But it’s over. (Please don’t make a stridently poignant, chatty, self-consciously witty movie about our relationship.)

Exponentially more inspiring is local documentary Corner Store, Katherine Bruens’ portrait of Yousef Elhaj, who runs a liquor store at 15th and Church streets in the “Mistro” (as one neighborhood interviewee dubs it, because it’s neither Castro nor Mission). For 10 years, Elhaj, a Palestinian Christian, has lived at his store, carefully tidying the aisles and charming all who enter. He’s patiently saving money and waiting out the incredibly long paperwork process, first of getting his own green card, then of arranging for his family to come to San Francisco. Much of Bruens’ film takes place in Bethlehem, where Elhaj travels to visit his family (including a teenage son who’s not sold on the idea of uprooting to America). More than just a one-man story, Corner Store uses Elhaj’s journey to explore life in modern-day Palestine, leaving both grim and joyful impressions.

Also worth checking out: The Art of the Steal, Philadelphia documentarian Don Argott’s absorbing look at the Barnes Collection, a privately-amassed array of post-Impressionist paintings (including 181 Renoirs) worth billions — and the many people and corporate interests that schemed to control it. This film opens theatrically in March, justifiably. Fans of The Class (2008) shouldn’t miss West of Pluto, a Quebec-set, semi-improvised peek into the secret lives of teenagers. And surely there are more winners that my jaded ass hasn’t managed to see yet. Isn’t that always the fun of IndieFest — digging up those sparklers in the rough?

SAN FRANCISCO INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL

Feb 4–19, most shows $11

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.sfindie.com

Miami plays itself

January 27, 2010

ESSAY On opening night of Art Basel, N. Miami Avenue was a sort of Potemkin museum, every storefront packed with art, free wine and cheese, and the usually sleepy street clogged with taxis and limos. Ordinarily no one walks in muggy Miami, but tonight the cracked and littered sidewalks were deep with art patrons dressed in their Midtown Manhattan finery, looking out of place, as if passengers on a private jet that had made an emergency landing on a tropical Caribbean island. Wynwood is an area hard-hit by foreclosures. Up and down N. Miami Avenue, printed signs reading “Cash For Your Warhol” were nailed to the burned-out and boarded-up storefronts that remained untouched by Art Basel, a witty parody of the “Cash For Your Home” signs now popping up all over America’s inner cities.

Off the main drag on the dim side-streets, locals hustled cars into parking places in empty lots. With cheerful yet menacing Dade Country bravado, they ran the classic Miami scam of offering to “watch your car so that nothing happens to it” for $10. Just before Art Basel, newly released FBI crime statistics showed Miami had leapt to the fourth most violent city in the U.S., up from last year’s number 13. As I watched women in expensive heels stepping around a pair of scruffy, tan stray dogs, I reflected on some comments Craig Robins had made to me. When I asked the art mogul about the importance of Miami Vice to the redevelopment of Miami, he told me the 1980s TV show had “transformed the horror of the cocaine cowboy era, which was very real, into the fantasy of the cocaine cowboys, which was about sex appeal and fashion.” Miami’s brand name has always meant third world squalor skillfully repackaged as gritty charm.

“STREET,” “ART,” AND FAIREY TALES

Fittingly, much of the big-name art that served as the backdrop for Art Basel’s week-long street party in Wynwood was ephemeral street art that developer Tony Goldman and Deitch Projects commissioned for the outdoor exhibit, “Wynwood Walls.” Goldman, the famed developer of SoHo, was an early partner with a young and untested Robins in the ’80s and ’90s on South Beach. In 2005, Goldman bought 19 properties in Wynwood. Now, for Art Basel, in collaboration with Deitch, he was turning his warehouse exteriors into “a group of outdoor murals by the best artists in the field that will become an international street art museum.” Participating artists included the Brazilian twins Os Gemeos, SWOON, and most notably, Shepard Fairey of Andre the Giant/Obama Hope poster fame, who contributed an enormous piece on a wall in an empty lot on NW Second Avenue. SF artist Barry McGee also came to Miami to paint a tripped-out, fluorescent pattern of diamonds on an abandoned building farther down the block. Perhaps self-conscious of changing the neighborhood’s look too much, McGee added a wrecked, overturned car in the parking lot as part of the installation.

More “Wynwood Walls” murals by Kenny Scharf, AIKO, Clare Rojas, Jim Drain, and others could be found inside of a sort-of mural park made by opening a metal gate between two of Goldman’s warehouses. I spotted Goldman and Jeffrey Deitch standing together and grinning through the bars at the crowd inside, so I went up to talk to them. The two were something of an odd couple — Goldman relaxed and rumpled, Miami-in-December casual in shirtsleeves and ball cap; Deitch, his usual immaculate suit-and-tie self. Yet they seemed giddy and finished each other’s sentences like a couple in young love. I asked if there were plans to bring the graffiti museum indoors. “Who knows? “Right now — ” Deitch began, and Goldman waved his arm with a flourish and said, ” — we’re just happy to sit back and enjoy tonight.”

The murals on the streets and in the courtyard looked great. Yet, as visually arresting as many of these murals were, there was something about their appearance here in Miami that echoed the hollowness of the “pop-up” bar, Max Fish, that had come down from New York for the week. The Lower East Side bar had recreated an exact replica of itself in a previously abandoned storefront in Overtown just for the week of Art Basel. Similarly, “Wynwood Walls” was a “pop up” event that obscured the fact that the neighborhood had already long been famed for its illegal graffiti walls. Local graff heroes like CROME and CROOK had faced serious prison time for their art. Earlier in the year, a member of the notorious Miami graffiti crew the MSG Cartel died when he fell off a sign onto Highway I-95 while throwing up a tag. In this context, the new murals were corporate street art.

The cynical bait-and-switch in Miami’s stated goal to improve the city’s fortunes through hosting international art fairs was embodied neatly in Fairey’s work in Miami during Art Basel. His wall on NW 2nd Avenue was protected by an armed guard, 24 hours a day. I caught up with Fairey while he worked on another mural on N. Miami Avenue. He stood on a bucket and applied wheat paste while he held forth on the moral purity of street art. “People from Miami who have never seen my work before will be able to check this out,” he told me. “People aren’t intimidated by street art. They don’t need to go to a museum or have the right credentials for interpreting art to view it. If they don’t like it, they can just go up and tag it!”

“So why does your new mural have its own armed guard?”

Fairey stopped what he was doing, got down off the bucket, and looked me in the eye. “Look,” he said. “That wasn’t my idea. That’s Deitch’s [Deich Projects’] thing. If it was up to me, you’d just leave it up. If people tag it, you clean it off. But the mural is on panels, and Deitch wants to keep it clean because they’re going to move it later on.”

In other words, Fairey’s public street art for “Wynwood Walls” wasn’t really public at all. It only appeared to be public. But after the fair was over and the art world public had gone home, it would be moved indoors, possibly to a new graffiti museum, where it would be kept permanently or perhaps even sold.

SUSHI AND SHANTYTOWNS

Art Basel’s quest to absorb Miami’s street authenticity into its vortex continued a couple of blocks away in the middle of Midtown Miami Center, where New York/Miami/Tokyo Brazilian-Japanese fusion restaurant SushiSamba had spent $130,000 to install its own graffiti art show, Graffiti Gone Global.

Midtown Miami Center is a classic failed Miami real estate venture, at two years old an already fading outdoor mall. Its newly-built condos remain nearly half-empty, and many of the storefronts have never been occupied. (For Art Basel, Photo Miami hosted its photography exhibit in the storefront left vacant by the departure of Circuit City). “Graffiti Gone Global” reimagined an enormous, empty retail space by adding a shambling 25-foot-tall replica of a favela, a Brazilian shantytown – what the catalog called, “the infamous self-constructed housing units of the mountainsides in Brazil.” The towering model favela, covered in graffiti pieces, was surrounded by a two-dimensional cityscape of panels with photos of old Brooklyn storefronts, upon which the graffiti artists had also painted. Oddly, this fusion of fake New York and Latin American slums most evoked the feel of the temporary art fair outside on the real Miami streets. The program explained happily that “the favela installation will not only be used as a backdrop for works of art to be installed, but will also be sold as separate units — some even bearing a signature graffiti piece … allowing the viewer to see graffiti in its more natural setting.”

It was quite possible for the viewer to see actual favelas in their natural setting during Art Basel, too. Everyday during the art fair, thousands of art patrons taking the most direct route from the Miami Beach Convention Center to the art fairs of Miami via the Julia Tuttle Causeway drove past a sprawling tent city on the shores of Biscayne Bay just as you enter Miami. After leaving the SushiSamba show, I decided to pull over on the side of the road and check it out.

I counted 12 tents, seven cars, and a sturdy, and a handful of homemade wooden shacks arranged under palm trees along the shore. A long extension cord ran out of a tent toward a generator that sat in a clearing. At the end of the path, there was a café table with chairs around it, set up in the shade about six feet from shore, where I met Luis and Antonio. They told me there were about 100 men in the camp — almost all registered sex offenders who were unable to live anywhere else in Miami because of a strict new law prohibiting sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school. In its fourth or fifth year, the camp has quasi-official government sanction — men are paroled out of prison directly to the camp and some even list “123 Julia Tuttle Causeway” as their address on their driver’s licenses. There was no water source or toilets, though the city came by once a month to pick up the collected garbage residents neatly stacked in bags by the causeway.

I did some mental calculation: the camp was certainly within 2,500 feet of SushiSamba’s fake shantytown. As I drove off, I say the camp in the rearview mirror, dwarfed by the silhouettes of new and half-empty condos in the distance, and I thought about another thing Robins had said about Miami: “It’s America’s city of the future.”

By Saturday, Dec. 5, the last gala night of Art Basel, it was clear that sales had rebounded from the previous year and that the art world was surviving the global economic collapse. Perhaps fittingly, the blue chip sale of the fair was Andy Warhol’s iconic screen print of that old cultural revolutionary, Mao, for $2.2 million by Van De Weghe Gallery. The message of the fair was clear: the market can absorb anything. It will prevail.

This same aura of indestructibility makes Art Basel seem impervious to cultural critique as well, though every year some artists still try. This year’s most notable attempt was “Littlest Sister,” an exhibit at Spinello Gallery. Modeled after the layout of the convention center floor, it turned the tiny Wynwood gallery into a series of booths, using Art Basel Miami Beach’s official gray-and-pink color scheme. Pieces in this “sister” fair, like Pachi Giustinian’s amusing Valve, poked fun at Art Basel or the art world itself. Valve was simply a compressor air-hose nozzle sticking out of the gallery wall — perfect for blowing up balloons of art fair hype. The enervating Art Forum Accident 2005 by Kristofer Paetau demonstrated the difficulty, though, of taking on the hot air of the large art fairs. The video depicted Paetau making himself projectile vomit on the floor of the 2005 Art Forum Fair in Berlin, among the world’s foremost galleries. The movement of the art dealers around Paetau freezes — but just for seconds. By the time one of them has led him to a chair and covered the puke with a couple sheets of paper, his action has been completely forgotten. The film ends with Paetau dry heaving, completely ignored by eager art buyers.

But the most provocative element in the exhibit was “Window Shopping Series,” a group of eight color photo portraits of Miami prostitutes taken on the streets. Artist Zach Balber told me that he intended the photos as a commentary on how artists are exploited by galleries. Balber paid each of them women $10 to pose, with the condition that if their portrait sold in the show, Balber would split the money with the woman and her pimp. “I wanted to flip the script on the collectors because I feel prostituted as an artist.”

Seen in this context, the photos were something of a cheap, sexist, juvenile prank. It would be impossible for any viewer to equate the 26-year-old white artist’s privileged suffering at the hands of art galleries to the degradation of life on the streets faced by the gaunt, toothless, and likely drug-addicted women Balber photographed. But the photos had a life of their own beyond the artist’s limited conception. They were perhaps the most haunting artwork I saw during the entire art fair. Balber had inadvertently invited the real world of Miami’s streets — the real favela — into the city of art. Despite their haggard appearance, the women had composed themselves with a certain quiet dignity for the camera, and the effect was to transfer the sense of voyeuristic shame that Balber should have felt onto the viewer, presumably a collector, who is roaming Miami’s shantytown streets only for the weekend. As they stared into the camera and, in turn, into Balber’s eyes, I saw the city of Miami itself looking back at the art world and asking, “Who really benefits from all this?”

In the end, artists that attempt to subvert Art Basel often simply add to its spectacle. On the last night of the fair, Brooklyn-based artist Molly Crabapple staged a hit-and-run event that promised “a guerilla live-drawing insurrection in South Beach”. Her Twitter communiqué announced a bold takeover of the Art Basel streets. “At exactly 8 p.m., a limo will disgorge a cavalcade of depraved performers — burlesque queens, dominatrixes, midgets — on the streets for you to draw.”

Crabapple is the accomplished illustrator and performer behind the highly successful Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, a series of live events/drawing classes usually held in bars or clubs, where burlesque dancers perform and are drawn by the audience. When I met up with her that night around 6 p.m. at the Art Whino fair, though, Crabapple was distraught and texting. Several of the performers had already canceled, and she was looking for a new location in Wynwood, having decided against taking on the upscale art world on South Beach. Finally, Crabapple rounded up four burlesque performers in colorful, spangle-y underwear, big wigs, and six-inch heels. They were joined by a dreadlocked fire dancer and the promised midget, who — with his cut-off sleeves, black hair hanging over his eyes, and excessive eye makeup — looked like a tiny Alice Cooper. The unlikely team looked like something out of an ’80s hair metal or wrestling video. Sadly, at the last minute, they were unable to rent a limo and had to settle for a rented SUV to take them to the event.

The SUV pulled over and blocked traffic around 8:15 on a side street in front of the Miami Aqua art fair. Crabapple paced around the car, calling out to the crowd that this street takeover was a performance of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. The chauffer took pictures with his cell phone from the driver’s seat, while the four dancers and the midget assumed their first pose in the street in front of the car. With an audible “whoosh!” the fire dancer whipped his flaming torches on chains through the air, inches from the audience members’ faces. A crowd started to gather in a circle around the flames and the posing performers. The girls and the midget would stand absolutely still until Crabapple commanded, “Change!” and then would assume a new pose. When the notebooks were distributed through the crowd, the event at last made a bit of sense. It was actually pretty fun. My deformed stick figure drawing of the midget’s rugged pout, as seen through a veil of flames, serves now to remind me of the night when the fair drew to a close. When I see it, it is as if the camera is pulling back and the credits are starting to roll.

VANISHING POINT

Later that same night, I found myself at Max Fish. The fake bar had been hosting packed shows with live bands all week, and their Web site had posted notice of a Saturday-only “top-secret show tonight!” As the bar grew crowded, there was spirited debate about whether the top-secret guest would be Miami local Iggy Pop, last year’s Art Basel hit No Age, or someone else. I reflected that Max Fish the art installation had reached the height of its masterful success. This crowd was drinking in a bar that wasn’t even real, that wouldn’t be around the very next day, waiting to see a fantasy band that existed only in their mind.

Sometime after midnight the whole scene turned back into a pumpkin for me, though, when it became clear there was not going to be a show at all. As I walked back to Wynwood, the Overtown locals were still frantically hustling the last couple of trickle-down dollars out of the art fair tourists. I thought of the staring eyes of the women in Balber’s photos and wondered where they were tonight. I passed a construction site where a condo stood half-built or perhaps half-destroyed. It looked like art. Someone had nailed a “Cash For Your Warhol” sign to it.

On 22nd Street, as a stray dog trotted amiably past SWOON’s still-unfinished mural, I flashed back to Crabapple’s event and to the image that seemed to sum up the entire Art Basel week: four glamorous models and a rocker midget posing as if time had stopped, in front of a group of maybe 10 people trying with great concentration to draw them while they, too, were orbited by a much larger ring of perhaps 50 people taking photos of the people drawing the performers.

Half the mortgages in the state were underwater. Perhaps in a generation or two, due to rising sea levels, Miami would be too. From sandbar to paradise and back to sandbar in a century-long hallucination, a perfect work of art. What were the last words of the historians of Atlantis? I thought of Molly Crabapple’s parting words to the crowd that had gathered. As the girls and the midget got back into the SUV, promptly at 8:30, she waved her arm dramatically to the crowd and said, “Now we will vanish like a puff of smoke!”

Why foot patrols make sense

January 20, 2010

By Tim Redmond

I had lunch with the chief of police yesterday. George Gascon is far sharper than the past few people to occupy that office, and seems to understand the need to reach out to the news media and to people who don’t agree with him. He’s actually a pretty skilled politician — which is a bit scary to folks who think he’s going in the wrong direction

And on a lot of things, I think he is.

We talked a lot about the sit-lie law that he’s been pushing, which I wrote about this week. Gascon insisted that he doesn’t want to use the law as a way to sweep homeless people off the streets; in fact, he told me, he doesn’t want to put anyone in jail, not at first, anyway. He’s rather use the law as a tool to get the young bullies and thugs (who are, by the way, a real problem on Haight St.) into the criminal justice system, where they might get access to services that could help them change their behavior.

I don’t see it working. What I see is either (a) the troublemakers will simply stand up when the cops arrive and walk to another part of the street or (b) some will get arrested, released, arrested, released, etc. — rejecting or ignoring all possible services — then ultimately, on the fourth or fifth offense, wind up in jail.

And all of of those arrests and court hearings are expensive.

In fact, Gascon and I agreed on two central points: (1) Putting two cops on foot patrol on Haight Street, between Buena Vista Park and Golden Gate Park, 13 hours a day, would end the problem pretty quickly and (2) the cost of doing that, which he put at close to $1 million a year (a bit high, I think), is probably lower than the cost of arresting, prosecuting, defending and incarcerating the Haight bullies.

This is something to look at.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi wants to hold a hearing on the issue, and I think he ought to ask the controller or the budget analyst to examiner the real costs: What’s the price tag of foot patrols in the Haight? What’s the cost to the district attorney, the public defender, the courts and the Sheriff’s Office of implementing a sit-lie law? And could the foot patrols be a cheaper way of solving this problem?

And whatever Gascon says about his intent, once you pass a law like this — a law making it a crime to sit or lie on the sidewalk — it’s there, on the books, ripe for abuse. Gascon won’t be the chief forever. And he has to answer to the mayor, who may want to use the law a little differently.

So before we go that route, why not try foot patrols? According to Gascon, the department can’t afford it; with a huge budget deficit and cuts on the way for every agency, spending a million bucks on Haight Street doesn’t make sense. But the supervisors should look at this citywide; spending $1 million on preventing crime with foot patrols (if that’s what it would really cost) may be a lot more cost-effective than spending $2 million arresting, prosecuting, defending, sentencing and incarcerating people.

It’s at least worth a try.

Prison report: The early release scare

January 20, 2010

By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy was recently released after serving a sentence in a California state prison. He continues to comment on law-enforcement and public-safety issues.

Here we continue with the anti-release rhetoric, saying that all the people are “dangerous criminals” and the releases will cause a spike in crime.

Here’s Los Angeles Police Protection League President Paul M. Weber:

“We can expect crime to go up as a result of this massive release, considering California has the highest recidivism rate in the nation, with seven out of ten parolees reoffending then returning to the prison system.”

Of course you can expect an increase in crime — most of the people sent to county jails and prisons (especially county jails) have been given absolutely no rehabilitative programs. What is the real reason that seven out of 10 parolees return to jail, though? Is it from new crimes or parole violations? Why does California have the highest recidivism rate?

Maybe it’s because, for a long time now, parolees have been violated and sent back to prison for “technical violations” like leaving the county without permission or having contact with their significant other when they weren’t supposed to.

While it is certainly each individual’s responsibility to abide by the rules of parole, some of the things that parolees get violated for the first time are overwhelmingly ridiculous. Personally, I believe that parole should be eradicated except for truly violent offenders; parole is really a joke anyway, and it has never stopped someone that has the intention of committing new crimes from doing so. You think some parolee is going tell his/her parole officer, “I am going to go use drugs today and burglarize someone.” And, do you think all the cops know every parolee on their beat now? Give me a break.

Let’s talk about parole anyway. What is it? Really, it’s just an extension of your sentence. If you are sentenced to 4 years in prison for possession of drugs (or anything else), it’s really a seven year sentence. You could do all four years, be released and still have three years of parole and if you get violated and sent back you can wind up doing, on the installment plan, 3 more years in prison/jail.

Now, I don’t see parole as particularly difficult (just annoying) if you are really trying to get your shit together, but most people that are released on parole get out with significantly less than they went in with — i.e. no to live, no job, and a worse attitude. Then, they are released to 10% unemployment, have no real job training or life skills, have been tainted by the California Penal System and are ripe to come back. What difference does it make if they get out now or later? They’re all getting out eventually.

When are you Californians going to get tired of spending more on prisons than your kid’s higher education? But this is the progressive state that voted against gay marriage…

Finally, why don’t you seriously consider amending three strikes? There are people that were sentenced to 25 to life for possession of miniscule amounts of drugs and their previous offenses were many, years prior. Guys sentenced to life for stealing a pizza or a bike; that’s a reality.

And you want to reduce prison spending? Legalize drugs. Period.

Editor’s Notes

January 20, 2010

I was in the Haight the other day, and saw something that would have made Police Chief George Gascón and Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius apoplectic. A group of young people, mostly men, were sitting right in the middle of the sidewalk. The scofflaws weren’t blocking my path since I was on Haight and they were a ways up Ashbury. But if I had wanted to walk in that direction, they would have been in the way. Which means they were already breaking the law, and if I’d complained and a cop had come along, they probably would have stood up and walked away. I can’t imagine they would have been arrested. In fact, if a beat officer had been walking Haight Street, they wouldn’t have been sitting there in the first place.

Gascón and Nevius are beating the drums for a “sit-lie” law, which would make it a crime to sit or lie on a public sidewalk. Since young thugs hassling residents, tourists, and shoppers in the Haight have become a problem, the sit-lie thing has legs; it could become this year’s version of Care Not Cash, the utterly bogus but politically catchy slogan that put Gavin Newsom in the Mayor’s Office.

There’s a populist anger about the poor behavior of a relatively small number of losers who are making life difficult for the generally upscale residents of the Haight, and progressives can’t ignore it. Frustration over decades of failed homeless policies made Newsom’s tough-love measure attractive. Explaining that it would never work, that it wasn’t a rational policy response, didn’t get the left anywhere.

That’s what we’re dealing with here. I can tell you, after watching Haight Street and its various generations of problems for more than 25 years, that a sit-lie law won’t solve anything. I can tell you that as soon as an officer approaches the troublemakers sitting on the street, they’ll do what any sane small-time crook would do: they’ll stand up. Then they’ll walk a few blocks away. If it keeps up, they’ll stop sitting down altogether. You can threaten, bully, and hassle people just as easily from a standing position.

And if they do get arrested, they’ll be released quickly (the city’s overcrowded jails, packed to the gills with the folks Gascón has rounded up in his Tenderloin sweeps, has no room for people charged with a minor crime like sitting on the sidewalk). Then they’ll be back.

I can tell you that the cost of arresting, charging, prosecuting, defending, and incarcerating these jerks would be way higher than the cost of having two cops walk up and down Haight Street all day, in uniform — a move that would absolutely solve the problem.

But this isn’t about rationality — it’s about emotion. Gascón has done a brilliant job, with the help of the Chron, of framing this as hard-headed law enforcement against the liberal supervisors.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, no fan of street crime, wants a hearing on the issue, to get some rational facts on the table. That’s a good start — but we need an alternative proposal. How about a test: try having two cops walk the beat every day for three months, a visible community policing presence on Haight Street. If that doesn’t work, we can always try something else.

Mirkarimi’s mandatory foot patrols ballot measure

January 19, 2010

Text by Sarah Phelan

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, along with Sups. Eric Mar, David Chiu, John Avalos and David Campos, submitted a ballot initiative today that asks voters to require the San Francisco Police Department to implement community-based foot/ beat and MUNI patrols.

The legislation would require the Captain of each district police station, in consultation with neighbors, merchants and community stakeholders, to establish and assign officers to foot/beat patrols within their station’s
jurisdiction.

The measure would also require station commanders to coordinate with adjacent stations for the efficient policing of distressed MUNI lines.

“Foot/beat patrols work very well in deterring crime and building trust with the community – it’s proven throughout the United States,” Mirkarimi said in a press release. “Walking or bicycling police beats or riding Muni should not be a luxury for the one of the best funded per capita police departments in the nation.”

The measure, Mirkarimi said, would provide substantial discretion to the SFPD command staff and the City’s district stations to define and modify beats in response to crime statistics, community input and evolving realities on the street.

Mirkarimi also submittied a hearing request on the implementation of an “Anti-Sit/Lie” law.

“There has been a great deal of misinformation on how this law works – completely absent from the public
discussion is both the District Attorney and City Attorney to substantiate any of the presumed effects,” Mirkarimi stated. “There are questions that remain unanswered as to why current anti-loitering and
nuisance laws aren’t being enforced.”

The SF Weekly still gets it wrong

January 6, 2010

By Tim Redmond

I found it somewhat amusing that the SF Weekly’s writers, Benjamin Wachs and Joe Eskenazi, were really worried about whether we would be “professional” in responding to an inaccurate story about city finance:

We appreciate that the Guardian was kind enough to send us its letter prior to running its article, likely this week. Communications from the paper’s reporter have been thoughtful and professional — so we hold out hope that this may be an article that could do more than simply obscure San Francisco’s gaping weaknesses with analytical smokescreens. On the other hand, it may yet be a hit piece written for the benefit of the city political bodies the Guardian openly aligns itself with and shills for — and who are responsible for some of the misgovernment highlighted in our story

And then go on to respond to us with a piece that’s mostly snark – snark being the refuge of reporters who don’t really have facts to lean on.

I’m going on KQED’s Forum show Friday morning to debate the Weekly guys about this, which will be fun, but in the meantime I have to set something straight.

From the Weekly story:

The Guardian gets to break its own rules and compare San Francisco’s budget to L.A.’s and Chicago’s by “add[ing] to the L.A. and Chicago city budgets a percentage of the L.A. County and Cook County spending equal to each city’s percentage of the county population.”

This would make perfect sense — if it didn’t make no goddamn sense. You can’t just determine overlapping city and county budgets via long division; cities are cities and counties are counties because they have differing, separate services. L.A. City and County each have their own Departments of Public Works, Building Inspection Departments, road crews, parks departments, you name it. Cities pay for their own services because they usually don’t use the counties’. Simply adding a lump sum of county costs on to city costs makes about as much sense as multiplying the city numbers by Planck’s Constant.

Whoa – Planck’s Constant. Dude – you musta gone to college or something.

The fact is that you not only CAN compare SF to Los Angeles and Chicago by accounting for both city and county spending – you HAVE TO.

A little lesson in public finance here, since that’s one college class the Weekly boys apparently slept through.

Most communities in the U.S. have four basic levels of government – federal, state, county, and city (or township, or town). Some have even more (village etc.) and some have fewer (Connecticut abolished county-level government many years ago). And there are special districts, like BART and AC Transit and school districts and mosquito abatement districts and lots more.

But for this particular argument, we’re looking at state, county and city government. That’s what you get in California.

The counties, as operating arms of the state, provide many, many services – expensive services – to people who live in cities. In Los Angeles, for example, there’s a city police department that handles law enforcement. But after someone’s arrested by the LAPD, the COUNTY district attorney, the COUNTY public defender, and the COUNTY courts system take over. And if the perp is guilty, the COUNTY sheriff takes custody (or else the state does).

Los Angeles COUNTY provides much of the welfare money for poor residents of Los Angeles CITY. Los Angeles COUNTY runs the system that counts the ballots for Los Angeles CITY elections.

You get the point.

So if you want to compare spending in the city of Los Angeles to spending in the CITY AND COUNTY of San Francisco, you have to either (a) eliminate all of the functions that count as county services in San Francisco or (b) much simpler, estimate what percentage of the L.A. county budget goes to services in L.A. city.

We took a rational approach – take the population of L.A. city and the population of L.A. County, and apportion to L.A. city a percentage of the county budget equivalent to the proportion of county residents who live in the city. That’s probably a low estimate of county spending in L.A. city, since more of the crime and welfare needs of the county are situated in that one city than in any other part of the vast county.

But whatever, we’ll take the lowball number.

Not magic, not physics, not chemistry, just basic common-sense and a basic understanding of how finance works in American cities.

Is this perfect? No. What you really need to do is analyze exactly how much government money – state, federal, city, county, special district etc. – is spent in every city you want to compare. That’s a bigger task than either the Weekly or the Guardian has taken on so far.

And I admit – we may be wrong by a few percent one way or the other. But we aren’t the ones trying to claim that the city spends vastly more money than anyone else who compares to us.

Oh, and as for this:

On the other hand, it may yet be a hit piece written for the benefit of the city political bodies the Guardian openly aligns itself with and shills for — and who are responsible for some of the misgovernment highlighted in our story

Let me point out that most of the problems the Weekly points to are management issues that properly belong in the office of the Mayor of San Francisco.

And I don’t know in what possible universe – other than a Weekly hallucination – anyone could argue that Gavin Newsom is someone the Guardian is, or has ever been, aligned with.

Prison report: The other side of the story

January 4, 2010

By Just A Guy

Editor’s note: Just A Guy was recently released from a California state prison. He continues to report and comment on corrections and law-enforcement issues. You can read his most recent post here.

I want to be clear about something: I don’t hate corrections officers or staff members that work for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and are trying to make a living. I don’t really hate anyone; it’s a tremendous waste of time and energy and harms me more than the person being hated.

I truly believe that most COs and administrators are just people trying to get by in this world, and my intention has never been to condemn anyone. My intention with this blog has always been to reveal the truth from MY PERSPECTIVE. To talk about things that don’t get talked about, to represent the under-represented. While there are certainly groups that represent inmates, they are the minority and their voices are like someone calling for help from the middle of the ocean at a rescue plane passing overhead.

A favorite adage of mine is, “Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything” – Alexander Hamilton. Not that my priority in life is to stand for inmates, but to stand for reason.

This blog is dedicated to all the COs out there that are doing their jobs, that aren’t corrupt, that aren’t apathetic haters. You have a hard job; I wouldn’t want to do it. You have a necessary job. Unfortunately, it’s never the good ones that stand out, but the bad. Just as you rarely hear two sides of the story with an inmate accused of something in prison, you rarely hear the COs side of the story that when one of them is allegedly bringing in contraband or has “assaulted” an inmate. That’s the way it is. The public doesn’t want to hear everything; people just want to hear the dirt, it’s more entertaining.

The unfortunate side of the whole process for both inmates and guards is the “wall of silence.” Just as an inmate can’t inform on his fellow inmates without severe repercussions, a guard can’t report another guard’s misconduct without being ostracized (or worse) by his fellows. It’s a real catch 22 across the board. I am not justifying when guards cover things up, but saying I understand why they do, just as I understand why inmates don’t inform. The Us vs. Them mentality has been instilled upon both groups. It takes a huge amount of courage to break beyond that mentality, and, quite frankly, from both perspectives (I think), the consequences may not be worth the act. An inmate puts his life on the line by informing and a guard (though it shouldn’t be this way) his/her livelihood. Can you imagine going into work every day and having all your fellow workers looking at you with derision? That would be very uncomfortable, and I imagine that’s why many CDCR employees keep their mouths shut in the face of what they would really like to do or say.

One of my desires, with this blog, is to open up a dialogue between inmates (ex or not), CDCR staff, and the general public that reveals the truth from individual perspectives. I don’t want people to read my blog and immediately go into a defensive posture. I would like for people to read Prison Report and question the state of criminal justice/prison policy in California and the rest of the country. Idealistic, sure. But idealism is what founded this country.

We have all been given an opportunity by the San Francisco Bay Guardian to speak freely and anonymously; shall we not take advantage of it in 2010 to air OUR truth?

Early releases are going to happen. Crime will continue. Parole will be, essentially, eradicated. The foibles of CDCR will continue. The foibles of felons most certainly will too. But changing the way people think about things begins with one voice — is it yours?

Best of the Bay 2009: Sports and Outdoors

January 4, 2010

Best of the Bay 2009: City Living

January 4, 2010

Editorial: Sitting on the sidewalk is no crime

December 28, 2009

Passing the new law might make the supervisors look tough on crime–but it’s not going to make Haight Street any safer

EDITORIAL The recent San Francisco Police Department crackdown on street kids in the Haight Ashbury conclusively proves two things:

1. Chief George Gascón is a media hound who will shift policy and priorities in an instant in response to a couple of newspaper stories, and

2. There’s no need for any new law against sitting on the sidewalk.

Even before the ink was dry on a column by the Chronicle’s C.W. Nevius, who lives in the East Bay suburbs, decrying the “aggressive punks” in the Haight, the Park Station had stepped up foot patrols in the neighborhood. Cops walking beats began making arrests, targeting young people who allegedly had threatened shoppers and residents.

And the crackdown has had an impact. “It proves exactly what I’ve been saying,” Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who represents the district, told us. “When you put cops out on the streets, walking beats on foot, you get results.”

One of the reasons you get results is simple deterrence: Beat cops may not be able to stop every gangland shooting in the Western Addition or the Mission or Bayview. But when you’ve got enough uniformed officers walking up and down Haight Street, life becomes a lot more unpleasant for small-time thugs. And while not every case will get prosecuted, not every case has to — this isn’t murder we’re talking about. It’s bad behavior by a group of people that will continue only as long as it’s tolerated.

Haight Street has attracted more than its share of social problems over the years, and neighborhood organizing has helped address many of them. Community leaders, merchants, and residents worked with the cops in the 1970s to drive heroin dealers out. A decade or so later, neo-Nazi skinheads met the same fate. In no case has the problem been solved by long jail sentences or tougher laws.

Yet with Nevius pushing the issue, there’s a call for a ban on sitting and lying on the sidewalk — a move to criminalize behavior that, for the most part, over many years, has not been a serious law-enforcement problem. We’ve seen this siren song before — in the early 1980s, when Dianne Feinstein was mayor, San Francisco police began conducting massive sweeps, arresting homeless people who congregated on the sidewalk and charging them with violating a law that banned blocking a thoroughfare. The ACLU took the city to court, the Guardian wrote several stories about it, homeless advocates complained loudly — and while the courts ultimately upheld the law, the sweeps came to an end.

And the misdirected law-enforcement did nothing to address the problem of homelessness. It didn’t make the streets safer — or put one more person in an affordable housing unit.

A law banning sitting on the sidewalk would have similar problems. “It gives the police a way to arrest people based entirely on the way they look,” said Alan Schlosser, legal director for the ACLU of Northern California. Homeless people, people who have no intention of doing anything violent or dangerous — anyone who happens to be sitting in the wrong place could be swept up and charged with a crime.

Passing a new law might make the supervisors look tough on crime — but it’s not going to make Haight Street any safer. There’s no reason to outlaw the nonviolent, non-threatening act of sitting on a public sidewalk — particularly when simply enforcing existing laws against harassment, assault, threats, and other violent behavior is a lot more effective. The supervisors should resist any move to pass a “sit/lie” law that will be hard to enforce, ripe for abuse, and probably won’t survive the inevitable (expensive) court challenge.

Watching the detective

December 21, 2009

FILM Like many movies to come before it, and surely many to come after, Sherlock Holmes is completely misrepresented by its trailer. The producers were understandably eager to get butts in the seats on Christmas, and for modern audiences, butts in the seats means fists in the face during commercial breaks.

There is some perfunctory ass-kicking in director Guy Ritchie’s big-ticket adaptation of the venerable franchise, but old-school Holmes fans will be pleased to learn that the fisticuffs soon give way to a more traditional detective adventure. For all his foibles, Ritchie is well-versed in the art of free-wheeling, entertaining, London-based crime capers. And though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary characters have been freshened up for a contemporary audience, the film has a comfortingly traditional feel to it.

Ritchie is lucky to have an actor as talented as Robert Downey Jr. in the title role, and the pair make good use of the American’s talents to create a Holmes resplendent in diffident, pipe-smoking, idiosyncratic glory. Though the film takes liberal creative license with the literary character’s offhand reference to martial prowess, it’s all very English, very Victorian (flying bowler hats, walking sticks, and bare-knuckle boxing), and more or less grounded in the century or so of lore that has sprung up around the world’s greatest detective.

Jude Law’s John Watson is a more charismatic character this time around, defying the franchise’s tradition, and the byzantine dynamics of the pair’s close friendship are perfectly calibrated. Holmes and Watson join forces with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a Yankee femme fatale who has also been fleshed out from between the lines, and take on the sinister Lord Blackwood, played menacingly by Ritchie veteran Mark Strong.

The script, by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg, suffers a little by borrowing from other Victorian crime fictions better left untouched, but they get the title character’s inimitable “science of deduction” down pat, and the plot is rife with twists, turns, and inscrutable skullduggery. Holmesians have suffered since the death of Jeremy Brett (whose portrayal of the sleuth Downey can rival, but never outstrip), and it is a pleasure to inform them, along with the rest of the nation’s holiday moviegoers, that the game is once again afoot.

SHERLOCK HOLMES opens Fri/25 in Bay Area theaters.

Some kind of mastodon

December 16, 2009

Guardian illustration of Mastodon’s Brent Hinds, Dimebag Darrell, and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich by Matt Furie and Aiyana Udesen

DECADE IN MUSIC When Limp Bizkit took the stage at Woodstock ’99, its sophomore album, Significant Other (Interscope/MCA), had been in stores for a month, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard charts. For a group whose previous apex was the metaphorical perfection of its "band emerges from giant toilet" set design at the ’98 Ozzfest, this was a huge accomplishment. The album would go on to sell more than 16 million copies.

Despite this gargantuan haul, something changed forever that night in Rome, N.Y. Having whipped the crowd into a frenzy while performing the band’s hit single "Break Stuff," Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst bore the brunt of the criticism in the aftermath of a concert that devolved into chaos, arson, and rape. The justice of these allegations was dubious, but the damage had been done. The red-capped rap-rocker and his band never recovered, and a new decade began, one that had no time for Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (Interscope), or the entire genre of "nü metal," which had begun an inescapable demise, coughing out System of a Down’s bizarre masterpiece Toxicity (American) in 2001 like the final contrition of a dying sinner.

Having survived the deteriorated septums of the 1980s and the deteriorated JNCO hemlines of the 1990s, metal was finally afforded a fresh start. There was an explosion of post-hardcore and "screamo" artists, of varying quality. European imports that had weathered the U.S.’s fallow period enjoyed new-found appreciation; the Gothenburg death metal sound stormed across the Atlantic, though it was soon to be done to, well, death by a crop of Second World imitators. Seeds were also sown in these early years for two trends that would suffuse the decade to come. The release in 2002 of Isis’ Oceanic (Ipecac) and Killswitch Engage’s The End of Heartache (Roadrunner) fomented an explosion of glacial, Neurosis-inspired instrumental "post-metal" on the one hand, and mall-friendly, screaming-to-crooning metalcore on the other.

Tragedy struck in 2004, and metal fans reeled as they learned that Damageplan guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott had been shot and killed while performing at a Columbus, Ohio, nightclub. The Texan’s groundbreaking sounds had given many a headbanger hope during the nü metal years. And though the breakup of Abbott’s band Pantera in 2003 had been a heavy blow, the senseless crime perpetrated by schizophrenic ex-Marine Nathan Gale (who killed four in total) threw an entire musical community into mourning. The untimely death of one of the genre’s true geniuses will be a unmistakable blot on the decade when the historical long view is taken.

While the wounds of a recent passing were still healing, multi-putf8um Bay Area thrashers Metallica picked at older scars, releasing the introspective documentary Some Kind of Monster (2004), to critical acclaim. An unfettered look at a band with more than 20 years of emotional baggage to work through, the film was unswervingly painful to watch. Nevertheless, the publicly humiliating therapy proved effective, and Metallica emerged with more purpose than it had mustered in years. It is matched in its renewed vigor by a growing crop of classic metal bands that have staggered out of the ’90s with new tours, new albums, reunited lineups, and a new generation of fans, including their Bay Area peers Testament, Exodus, and Death Angel.

These graying warriors have been introduced to younger audiences by a proliferation of national package tours, which bundle large stables of artists to appeal to the widest possible audiences, leading in turn to widespread temporal and subgeneric cross-pollination. The venerable Ozzfest franchise led the charge before succumbing to economic privation, though not before a 2005 spat between the members of Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne’s wife-cum-manager Sharon culminated in the indefatigable Irons being hassled onstage by her egg-throwing minions.

The release of Guitar Hero II (Harmonix/RedOctane/Activision) in 2006 was similarly instrumental in the revitalization of metal and guitar-driven music more generally. Though the first installment sold well, it was the sequel that ushered in the phenomenon as we know it today, and an unimpeachable track list opened the ears of the video-gaming public to a world of distorted possibility. It was as adept at resurrecting older artists as it was at breaking younger ones, and metal mainstays like Mastodon and the Sword owe the tastemakers at Harmonix a debt of thanks.

Mastodon’s rise to prominence as America’s premier young metal band marks a fitting end to this decade of destruction. Raised on ’70s prog, ’80s thrash, and the hardscrabble underground music of the ’90s, its music is as aggressively technical and high-brow as Limp Bizkit’s was simple and mookish. 2003’s Leviathan (Relapse) and follow-ups Blood Mountain (Relapse, 2006) and Crack the Skye (Relapse, 2009) encapsulate an era hungry for music that is simultaneously heavy, challenging, and as ambitious as the output of metal’s resurrected masters. Now we must await the riffs of this century’s teenage years.

Prison report: Finally, some truth

December 15, 2009

By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just a guy was recently released from a California state prison. For the past year, he covered the prison system from the inside, and continues to comment on prisons, crime and law-enforcement issues.

Kudos to the Orange County Register for writing a piece not completely marred with negativity toward prisoners and for taking an objective view of the fucking mess in California.

I think it’s refreshing that a more mainstream media outlet has actually put out a piece that doesn’t label every prisoner in California (or the country) as an incorrigible ingrate with no future.

What is it going to take for the rest of the state to pick up pieces like this one? Where are the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Diego Union/Tribune? Why is it only small papers or independents and weeklies are telling the truth?

The writers of the OC Register article put the numbers out there for all to see — come on, California spends more than double that of Illinois per inmate. DOUBLE. There is no conclusive proof that this spending is doing shit. Well, it’s definitely doing shit, just not good shit! Lining someone’s pockets somewhere.

Quotes like this in the article crack me up: “Only four guards are assigned to the gymnasium at any given time; they watch from an elevated platform at one end of the floor. Traveling between the bunks, especially at the end of the gym, you are putting your life into the hands of bored criminals. The inmates are so close you can smell their sweat and stale breath.”

I guess the guards are all fresh and rosy and don’t have odors, kind of like when they stopped allowing visits because the swine flu outbreak was just occurring — but didn’t stop anything else, as if the only people that could get the swine flu were the inmates and their families.

Losing hope

December 9, 2009

news@sfbg.com

In the back room of Tommy’s Joynt, more than a dozen members of the antiwar group Code Pink gathered Dec. 1 to watch television coverage of President Barack Obama’s speech announcing that 30,000 more U.S. troops would be sent to fight in Afghanistan, his second major escalation of that war this year.

“This is not the hope you voted for!” read a flyer distributed at the event.

Yet even among Code Pink’s militant members, reactions ranged from feeling disappointed and betrayed to feeling validated in never believing Obama was the agent of change that he pretended to be.

Jennifer Teguia seemed an example of former, while Cecile Pineda embodied the latter. “Right down the line, it’s been the corporate line,” Pineda told us, citing as examples Obama’s support for Wall Street bailouts and insiders and his abandonment of single-payer health reform in favor of an insurance-based system. “For serious politicos, hope is a fantasy.”

Throughout the speech, Pineda let out audible groans at Obama lines such as “We did not ask for this fight” and “A place that had known decades of fear now has reason to hope.” When the president promised a quick exit date, Pineda labeled it “the old in and out.” And when Obama made one too many references to 9/11, she blurted out, “Ha! 9/11!” and “He sounds just like Bush!”

But Teguia just looked saddened by the speech, and maybe a little weary that after nearly eight years of fruitlessly fighting Bush’s wars, the movement will now need to reignite to resist Obama’s escalation, which will put more U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush ever deployed.

“People are feeling tired and overwhelmed. We’ve been doing this year after year, and it’s endless. People are feeling dispirited,” Teguia told me just before the speech began.

She and other Obama supporters were willing to be patient and hopeful that Obama would eventually make good on his progressive campaign rhetoric. “But people are starting to feel like this window is closing,” Teguia said. “Now it’s at the tipping point.”

Obama has always tried to walk a fine line between his progressive ideals and his more pragmatic, centrist governing style. But in a conservative and often jingoistic country, Obama’s “center” isn’t where the antiwar movement thinks it ought to be.

“Obama is trying to unite the establishment instead of uniting the people against the establishment,” Teguia said.

That grim perspective was voiced by everyone in the room.

“Not only is he not clearing up the mess in Iraq, he’s escautf8g in Afghanistan,” said Rae Abileah, a Code Pink staff member who coordinates local campaigns. “I think people are outraged and frustrated and they’ve had enough.”

Perhaps, but the antiwar movement just isn’t what it was in 2003, when it shut down San Francisco on the first full day of war in Iraq. And the fact that Obama is a Democrat who opposed the Iraq War presents a real challenge for those who don’t support his Afghanistan policy and fear that it will be a disaster.

Democratic dilemma

Obama’s announcement — more then anything Bush ever said or did — is dividing the Democratic Party establishment, and the epicenter of that division is in San Francisco.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House, second in command of the Democratic Party, essentially the person most responsible for the success or failure of a Democratic president’s agenda in Congress. She also represents a city where antiwar sentiment is among the strongest in the nation — and many of her Bay Area Democratic colleagues have already spoken out strongly against the Afghanistan troop surge.

Lynn Woolsey, the Marin Democrat who chairs the Progressive Caucus, issued a statement immediately following Obama’s speech in which she minced no words: “I remain opposed to sending more combat troops because I just don’t see that there is a military solution to the situation in Afghanistan,” she said, adding that “This is no surprise to me at all. I knew [Obama] was a moderate politician. I’ve known it all along.”

Woolsey told the Contra Costa Times that she thinks a majority of Democrats will oppose funding the troop increase — and that it will pass the House only because Republicans will vote for it.

Barbara Lee, (D-Oakland), the only member of Congress to vote against sending troops to Afghanistan eight years ago, has already introduced a bill, HR 3699, that would cut off funding for any expanded military presence there.

George Miller, (D-Martinez), has been harsh in his criticism. “We need an honest national government in Afghanistan,” Miller said in a statement. “We don’t have one. We need substantial help from our allies in the region, like Russia, China, India, and Iran. We are not getting it. We need Pakistan to be a credible ally in our efforts. It is not. We need a substantial commitment of resources and troops from NATO and our allies. While NATO is expected to add a small number of new troops, other troops have announced they are leaving. We need a large Afghan police force and army that is trained and ready to defend their country. We don’t have it.”

So where’s Pelosi? Hard to tell. At this point, she’s refused to say whether she supports the president’s plan. We called her office and were referred to her only formal statement on the issue, which says: “Tonight, the president articulated a way out of this war with the mission of defeating Al Qaeda and preventing terrorists from using Afghanistan and Pakistan as safe havens to again launch attacks against the United States and our allies. The president has offered President Karzai a chance to prove that he is a reliable partner. The American people and the Congress will now have an opportunity to fully examine this strategy.”

That sounds a lot like the position of someone who is prepared to support Obama. And that might not play well in her hometown.

The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee has been vocal about criticizing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on July 22, 2009, the committee passed a resolution demanding an Afghanistan exit strategy. There’s a good chance someone on the committee will submit a resolution urging Pelosi to join Woolsey, Lee, and Miller in opposition to the Obama surge. “I’ve been thinking about it,” committee member Michael Goldstein, who authored the July resolution, told us.

That sort of thing tends to infuriate Pelosi, who doesn’t like getting pushed from the left. And since there are already the beginnings of an organized effort by centrist Democrats and downtown forces to run a slate that would challenge progressive control of the local Democratic Party, offending Pelosi (and encouraging her to put money into the downtown slate) would be risky.

Still, Goldstein said, “she’ll probably do that anyway.”

And it would leave the more moderate Democrats on the Central Committee — who typically support Pelosi — in a bind. Will they vote against a measure calling for a withdrawal from Afghanistan? Could that be an issue in the DCCC campaign in June 2010 — and potentially, in the supervisors’ races in the fall?

In at least one key supervisorial district — eight — the role of the DCCC and the record of its members will be relevant, since three of the leading candidates in that district — Rafael Mandleman, Scott Wiener, and Laura Spanjian — are all committee members.

Tom Gallagher, president of the Bernal Heights Democratic Club and author of past antiwar resolutions at the DCCC, acknowledged what an uphill battle antiwar Democrats face.

“The antiwar movement today is a bunch of beleaguered people, half of whom have very bad judgment,” he said. “I’m afraid a lot of people have just given up.”

On the streets

The day after Obama’s speech, Code Pink, the ANSWER Coalition, and four other antiwar groups sponsored a San Francisco rally opposing the Afghanistan decision — the first indication of whether Bay Area residents were motivated to march against Obama.

ANSWER’s regional director Richard Becker told us the day before, “I think we’re going to get a big turnout. The tension has really been building. We may see a revival.”

But on the streets, there wasn’t much sign of an antiwar revival, at least not yet. Only about 100 people were gathered at the intersection of Market and Powell streets when the rally begun, and that built up to maybe a few hundred by the time they marched.

“I’m wondering about the despair people are feeling,” Barry Hermanson, who has run for Congress and other offices as a member of the Green Party, told us at the event. He considered Obama’s decision “a betrayal,” adding that “it’s not going to stop me from working for peace. There is no other alternative.”

As Becker led the crowd in a half-hearted chant, “Occupation is a crime, Afghanistan to Palestine,” Frank Scafani carried a sign that read, “Democrats and Republicans. Same shit, different assholes.”

He called Obama a “smooth-talking flim-flam man” not worthy of progressive hopes, but acknowledged that it will be difficult to get people back into the streets, even though polls show most Americans oppose the Afghanistan escalation.

“I just think people are burned out after nine years of this. Nobody in Washington listens,” Scafani said. “Why walk around in circles on a Saturday or Sunday? It doesn’t do anything.”

Yet he and others were still out there.

“I think people are a little apathetic now. Their focus in on the economy,” said Frank Briones, an unemployed former property manager. He voted for Obama and still supports him in many areas, “but this war is a bad idea,” he said.

Yet he said people are demoralized after opposing the preventable war in Iraq and having their bleak predictions about its prospects proven true. “Our frustration was that government ignored us,” he said. “And they’ll probably do the same thing now.”

But antiwar activists say they just need to keep fighting and hope the movement comes alive again.

“We don’t really know what it is ahead of time that motivates large numbers of people to change their lives and become politically active,” Becker told us after the march, citing as examples the massive mobilizations against the Iraq War in 2003, in favor of immigrants rights in 2006, and against Prop. 8 in 2008. “So we’re not discouraged. We don’t have control over all the factors here, and neither do those in power.”

Antiwar groups will be holding an organizing meeting Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. at Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia, SF. Among the topics is planning a large rally for March 20, the anniversary of the Iraq War. All are welcome.

Film listings

December 8, 2009

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

OPENING

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

Me and Orson Welles See “Citizen Welles.” (1:54)

*The Princess and the Frog Expectations run high for The Princess and the Frog: it’s the first Disney film to feature an African American princess, the first 2D Disney cartoon since the regrettable Home on the Range (2004), and the latest entry from the writing-directing team responsible for The Little Mermaid (1989) and Aladdin (1992). Here’s the real surprise The Princess and the Frog not only meets those expectations, it exceeds them. After years of disappointment, many of us have given up hope on another classic entry into the Disney 2D animation canon. And yet, The Princess and the Frog is up there with the greats, full of catchy songs, gorgeous animation, and memorable characters. Set in New Orleans, the story is a take off on the Frog Prince fairy tale. Here, the voodoo-cursed Prince Naveen kisses waitress Tiana instead transferring his froggy plight to her as well. A fun twist, and a positive message: wishing is great, but it takes hard work to make your dreams come true. For those of us raised on classic Disney, The Princess and the Frog is almost too good to believe. (1:37) Shattuck. (Peitzman)

*The Private Lives of Pippa Lee See “Life Out of Balance.” (1:40) Albany, Bridge, Smith Rafael.

A Single Man Tom Ford directs Colin Firth and Julianne Moore in this 1960s-set tale of a man mourning the death of his longtime partner. (1:39) Sundance Kabuki.

Uncertainty A knocked-up girl (Lynn Collins) and a guy with a coin in his pocket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) stand on the Brooklyn Bridge, circle the issue, flip the coin, then bolt in opposite directions. The coin was clearly purchased in some dusty, mysterious Chinatown magic shop from a loopy-seeming octogenarian codger, because at each end of the bridge, the pair reunite for two 24-hour bouts of the title’s psychological state that unspool side by side in time but diverge in mood and pace and genre: on the Brooklyn side, we get a slow-paced family drama; in Manhattan, a pulse-raising action-thriller. In other words, a monument, a monumental decision, and a premise spun out of such pure and visible artifice that it seems unlikely to translate into absorbing filmmaking. It does, though, somehow, in the hands of writer-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel (2005’s Bee Season, 2001’s The Deep End), who adroitly move Uncertainty’s central characters through familial scenes weighted down by quiet grief, strife, love, and worry and through the more heightened anxiety of chase and gunplay and ceaseless surveillance. While the framework remains a distracting fact, something constructed while we watched and then imposed on us, the film, heavily improvised, is carefully edited to guide us without tripping between the two threads of story. And in each in what is becoming a pleasurable habit we watch Gordon-Levitt bring texture and depth to the smallest moments in a conversation or scene. (1:45) Roxie. (Rapoport)

ONGOING

Armored (1:28) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

*Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Consider that ridiculous title. Though its poster and imdb entry eliminate the initial article, it appears onscreen as The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. That’s the bad lieutenant, not to be confused with Abel Ferrara’s 1992 Bad Lieutenant. The bad lieutenant has a name: Terence McDonagh, and he’s a police officer of similarly wobbly moral fiber. McDonagh’s tale inspired by Ferrara and scripted by William Finkelstein, but perhaps more important, filmed by Werner Herzog and interpreted by Nicolas Cage opens with a snake slithering through a post-Hurricane Katrina flood. A prisoner has been forgotten in a basement jail. McDonagh and fellow cop Stevie Pruit (Val Kilmer) taunt the man, taking bets on how long it’ll take him to drown in the rising waters. An act of cruelty seems all but certain until McDonagh, who’s quickly been established as a righteous asshole, suddenly dives in for the rescue. Unpredictability, and quite a bit of instability, reigns thereafter. Every scene holds the possibility of careening to heights both campy and terrifying, and Cage proves an inspired casting choice. At this point in his career, he has nothing to lose, and his take on Lt. McDonagh is as haywire as it gets. McDonagh snorts coke before reporting to a crime scene; he threatens the elderly; he hauls his star teenage witness along when he confronts a john who’s mistreated his prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes); he cackles like a maniac; he lurches around like a hunchback on crack. Not knowing what McDonagh will do next is as entertaining as knowing it’ll likely be completely insane. (2:01) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article “The Ballad of Big Mike” which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Daniel Alvarez)

Brothers There’s nothing particularly original about Brothers first, because it’s based on a Danish film of the same name, and second, because sibling rivalry is one of the oldest stories in the book. The story is fairly straightforward: good brother (Tobey Maguire) goes AWOL in Afghanistan, bad brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) comforts his sister-in law (Natalie Portman), attraction develops, but then and here’s where things get awkward good brother comes home. Throughout much of Brothers, the script is surprisingly restrained, holding the film back from Movie of the Week territory. Those moments of subtlety are the movie’s strongest, but by the end they’ve given way to giant, maudlin explosions of angst, which aren’t nearly as impressive. Still, the acting is consistently strong. Maguire is especially good as Captain Sam Cahill in a performance that runs the gamut from doting father to terrifyingly unbalanced. It’s unfortunate that the quiet scenes, in which all the actors excel, are overshadowed by the big, plate-smashing ones. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Capitalism: A Love Story Gun control. The Bush administration. Healthcare. Over the past decade, Michael Moore has tackled some of the most contentious issues with his trademark blend of humor and liberal rage. In Capitalism: A Love Story, he sets his sights on an even grander subject. Where to begin when you’re talking about an economic system that has defined this nation? Predictably, Moore’s focus is on all those times capitalism has failed. By this point, his tactics are familiar, but he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. As with Sicko (2007), Moore proves he can restrain himself he gets plenty of screen time, but he spends more time than ever behind the camera. This isn’t about Moore; it’s about the United States. When he steps out of the limelight, he’s ultimately more effective, crafting a film that’s bipartisan in nature, not just in name. No, he’s not likely to please all, but for every Glenn Beck, there’s a sane moderate wondering where all the money has gone. (2:07) Roxie. (Peitzman)

Christmas with Walt Disney Specially made for the Presidio’s recently opened Walt Disney Family Museum, this nearly hour-long compilation of vintage Yuletide-themed moments from throughout the studio’s history (up to Walt’s 1966 death) is more interesting than you might expect. The engine is eldest daughter Diane Disney Miller’s narrating reminiscences, often accompanied by excerpts from an apparently voluminous library of high-quality home movies. Otherwise, the clips are drawn from a mix of short and full-length animations, live-action features (like 1960’s Swiss Family Robinson), TV shows Wonderful World of Disney and Mickey Mouse Club, plus public events like Disneyland’s annual Christmas Parade and Disney’s orchestration of the 1960 Winter Olympics’ pageantry. If anything, this documentary is a little too rushed - it certainly could have idled a little longer with some of the less familiar cartoon material. But especially for those who who grew up with Disney product only in its post-founder era, it will be striking to realize what a large figure Walt himself once cut in American culture, not just as a brand but as an on-screen personality. The film screens Nov 27-Jan 2; for additional information, visit http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/index.html. (:59) Walt Disney Family Museum. (Harvey)

*Collapse Michael Ruppert is a onetime LAPD narcotics detective and Republican whose radicalization started with the discovery (and exposure) of CIA drug trafficking operations in the late 70s. More recently he’s been known as an author agitator focusing on political coverups of many types, his ideas getting him branded as a factually unreliable conspiracy theorist by some (including some left voices like Norman Solomon) and a prophet by others (particularly himself). This documentary by Chris Smith (American Movie) gives him 82 minutes to weave together various concepts about peak oil, bailouts, the stock market, archaic governmental systems, the end of local food-production sustainability, et al. toward a frightening vision of near-future apocalypse. It’s “the greatest preventable holocaust in the history of planet Earth, our own suicide,” as tapped-out resources and fragile national infrastructures trigger a collapse in global industrialized civilization. This will force “the greatest age in human evolution that’s ever taken place,” necessitating entirely new (or perhaps very old, pre-industrial) community models for our species’ survival. Ruppert is passionate, earnest and rather brilliant. He also comes off at times as sad, angry, and eccentric, bridling whenever Smith raises questions about his methodologies. Essentially a lecture with some clever illustrative materials inserted (notably vintage educational cartoons), Collapse is, as alarmist screeds go, pretty dang alarming. It’s certainly food for thought, and would make a great viewing addendum to concurrent post-apocalyptic fiction The Road. (1:22) Shattuck. (Harvey)

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2:38) Smith Rafael.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (1:36) 1000 Van Ness.

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

The End of Poverty? (1:46) Four Star.

Everybody’s Fine Robert De Niro works somewhere between serious De Niro and funny De Niro in this portrait of a family in muffled crisis, a remake of the 1991 Italian film Stanno Tutti Bene. The American version tracks the comings and goings of Frank (De Niro), a recently widowed retiree who fills his solitary hours working in the garden and talking to strangers about his children, who’ve flung themselves across the country in pursuit of various dreams and now send home overpolished reports of their achievements. Disappointed by his offspring’s collective failure to show up for a family get-together, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey to connect with each in turn. Writer-director Kirk Jones (1998’s Waking Ned Devine) effectively underscores Frank’s loneliness with shots of him steering his cart through empty grocery stores, interacting only with the occasional stock clerk, and De Niro projects a sense of drifting disconnection with poignant restraint. But Jones also litters the film with a string of uninspired, autopilot comic moments, and manifold shots of telephone wires as Frank’s children (Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore, and Sam Rockwell) whisper across the miles behind their father’s back his former vocation, manufacturing the telephone wires’ plastic coating, funded his kids’ more-ambitious aims feel like glancing blows to the head. A vaguely miraculous third-act exposition of everything they’ve been withholding to protect both him and themselves is handled with equal subtlety and the help of gratingly precocious child actors. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

*Everything Strange and New In Frazer Bradshaw’s Everything Strange and New, Wayne (Jerry McDaniel), wears overalls too large and a look of pained, dazed acquiescence. It’s as if not just his clothes but his life were given to the wrong person and there’s a no-exchange policy. He loves wife Reneé (the writer Beth Lisick) and their kids. But those two unplanned pregnancies mean she’s got to stay home; daycare would cost more than she’d earn. So every day Wayne returns from his dead-end construction job to the home whose mortgage holds them hostage; and every time Reneé can be heard screaming at their not-yet-school-age boys, at the end of her tether. Sometimes he silently just turns around to commiserate over beer with buddies likewise married with children, but doing no better. Wayne’s voiceover narration endlessly ponders how things got this way more or less as they should be, yet subtly wrong. He might be willing (or at least able) to let go of the idea of happiness. But Reneé’s inarticulate fury at her stifling domestication keeps striking at any nearby punching bag, himself (especially) included. Something’s got to change. But can it? Veteran local experimentalist and cinematographer Bradshaw’s first feature, which he also wrote, never stoops to narrative cliché. Or to stylistic ones, either there’s a spectral poetry to the way he photographs the Oakland flats. (1:24) Roxie. (Harvey)

*Fantastic Mr. Fox A lot of people have been busting filmmaker Wes Anderson’s proverbial chops lately, lambasting him for recent cinematic self-indulgences hewing dangerously close to self-parody (and in the case of 2007’s Darjeeling Limited, I’m one of them). Maybe he’s been listening. Either way, his new animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, should keep the naysayer wolves at bay for a while it’s nothing short of a rollicking, deadpan-hilarious case study in artistic renewal. A kind of man-imal inversion of Anderson’s other heist movie, his debut feature Bottle Rocket (1996), his latest revels in ramshackle spontaneity and childlike charm without sacrificing his adult preoccupations. Based on Roald Dahl’s beloved 1970 book, Mr. Fox captures the essence of the source material but is still full of Anderson trademarks: meticulously staged mise en scène, bisected dollhouse-like sets, eccentric dysfunctional families coming to grips with their talent and success (or lack thereof).(1:27) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Devereaux)

The Maid In an upper-middle class subdivision of Santiago, 40-year-old maid Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), perpetually stony and indignant, operates a rigorous dawn-to-dusk routine for the Valdez family. Although Raquel rarely behaves as an intimate of her longtime hosts, she remains convinced that love, not labor, bonds them. (Whether the family shares Raquel’s feelings of devotion is highly dubious.) When a rotating cast of interlopers is hired to assist her, she stoops to machinations most vile to scare them away until the arrival of Lucy (Mariana Loyola), whose unpredictable influence over Raquel sets the narrative of The Maid on a very different psychological trajectory, from moody chamber piece to eccentric slice-of-life. If writer-director Sebastián Silva’s film taunts the viewer with the possibility of a horrific climax, either as a result of its titular counterpart Jean Genet’s 1946 stage drama The Maids, about two servants’ homicidal revenge or from the unnerving “mugshot” of Saavedra on the movie poster, it is neither self-destructive nor Grand Guignol. Rather, it it is much more prosaic in execution. Sergio Armstrong’s fidgety hand-held camera captures Raquel’s claustrophobic routine as it accentuates her Sisyphean conundrum: although she completely rules the inner workings of the house, she remains forever a guest. But her character’s motivations often evoke as much confusion as wonder. In the absence of some much needed exposition, The Maid’s heavy-handed silences, plaintive gazes, and inexplicable eruptions of laughter feel oddly sterile, and a contrived preciousness begins to creep over the film like an effluvial whitewash. Its abundance makes you aware there is a shabbiness hiding beneath the dramatic facade the various stains and holes of an unrealized third act. (1:35) Shattuck. (Erik Morse)

The Men Who Stare at Goats No! The Men Who Stare at Goats was such an awesome book (by British journalist Jon Ronson) and the movie boasts such a terrific cast (George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor). How in the hell did it turn out to be such a lame, unfunny movie? Clooney gives it his all as Lyn Cassady, a retired “supersolider” who peers through his third eye and realizes the naïve reporter (McGregor) he meets in Kuwait is destined to accompany him on a cross-Iraq journey of self-discovery; said journey is filled with flashbacks to the reporter’s failed marriage (irrelevant) and Cassady’s training with a hippie military leader (Bridges) hellbent on integrating New Age thinking into combat situations. Had I the psychic powers of a supersoldier, I’d use some kind of mind-control technique to convince everyone within my brain-wave radius to skip this movie at all costs. Since I’m merely human, I’ll just say this: seriously, read the book instead. (1:28) Shattuck. (Eddy)

*The Messenger Ben Foster cut his teeth playing unhinged villains in Alpha Dog (2006) and 3:10 to Yuma (2007), but he cements his reputation as a promising young actor with a moving, sympathetic performance in director Oren Moverman’s The Messenger. Moverman (who also co-authored the script) is a four-year veteran of the Israeli army, and he draws on his military experience to create an intermittently harrowing portrayal of two soldiers assigned to the U.S. Army’s Casualty Notification Service. Will Montgomery (Foster) is still recovering from the physical and psychological trauma of combat when he is paired with Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a by-the-book Captain whose gruff demeanor and good-old-boy gallows humor belie the complicated soul inside. Gut-wrenching encounters with the families of dead soldiers combine with stark, honest scenes that capture two men trying to come to grips with the mundane horrors of their world, and Samantha Morton completes a trio of fine acting turns as a serene Army widow. (1:45) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Richardson)

Ninja Assassin Let’s face it: it’d be nigh impossible to live up to a title as awesome as Ninja Assassin - and this second flick from V for Vendetta (2005) director James McTeigue doesn’t quite do it. Anyone who’s seen a martial arts movie will find the tale of hero Raizo overly familiar: a student (played by the single-named Rain) breaks violently with his teacher; revenge on both sides ensues. That the art form in question is contemporary ninja-ing adds a certain amount of interest, though after a killer ninja vs. yakuza opening scene (by far the film’s best), and a flashback or two of ninja vs. political targets, the rest of the flick is concerned mostly with either ninja vs. ninja or ninja vs. military guys. (As ninjas come “from the shadows,” most of these battles are presented in action-masking darkness.) There’s also an American forensic researcher (Noemie Harris) who starts poking around the ninja underground, a subplot that further saps the fun out of a movie that already takes itself way too seriously. (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Old Dogs John Travolta and Robin Williams play lifelong friends, business partners, and happily child-free bachelors whose lives change when the latter is forced to care for the 7-year-old twins (Conner Rayburn, Ella Bleu Travolta) he didn’t know he’d sired. You know what this will be like going in, and that’s what you get: a predictable mix of the broadly comedic and maudlin, with a screenplay that feels half-baked by committee, and direction (by Walt Becker, who’s also responsible for 2007’s Wild Hogs) that tries to compensate via frantic over-editing of setpieces that end before they’ve gotten started. The coasting stars seem to be enjoying themselves, but the momentary cheering effect made by each subsidiary familiar face - including Seth Green, Bernie Mac, Matt Dillon, Ann-Margret, Amy Sedaris, Dax Shepard, Justin Long, and Luis Guzman, some in unbilled cameos - sours as you realize almost none of them will get anything worthwhile to do. (1:28) 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

Pirate Radio I wanted to like Pirate Radio, a.k.a., The Boat That Rocked - really, I did. The raging, stormy sounds of the British Invasion - sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and all that rot. Pirate radio outlaw sexiness, writ large, influential, and mind-blowingly popular. This shaggy-dog of a comedy about the boat-bound, rollicking Radio Rock is based loosely on the history of Radio Caroline, which blasted transgressive rock ‘n’ roll (back when it was still subversive) and got around stuffy BBC dominance by broadcasting from a ship off British waters. Alas, despite the music and the attempts by filmmaker Richard Curtis to inject life, laughs, and girls into the mix (by way of increasingly absurd scenes of imagined listeners creaming themselves over Radio Rock’s programming), Pirate Radio will be a major disappointment for smart music fans in search of period accuracy (are we in the mid- or late ’60s or early or mid-’70s - tough to tell judging from the time-traveling getups on the DJs, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Darby, among others?) and lame writing that fails to rise above the paint-by-the-numbers narrative buttressing, irksome literalness (yes, a betrayal by a lass named Marianne is followed by “So Long, Marianne”), and easy sexist jabs at all those slutty birds. Still, there’s a reason why so many artists - from Leonard Cohen to the Stones - have lent their songs to this shaky project, and though it never quite gets its sea legs, Pirate Radio has its heart in the right place - it just lost its brains somewhere along the way down to its crotch. (2:00) Oaks, Piedmont, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Planet 51 (1:31) Oaks, 1000 Van Ness.

*Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire This gut-wrenching, little-engine-that-could of a film shows the struggles of Precious, an overweight, illiterate 16-year-old girl from Harlem. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe is so believably vigilant (she was only 15 at the time of filming) that her performance alone could bring together the art-house viewers as well as take the Oscars by storm. But people need to actually go and experience this film. While Precious did win Sundance’s Grand Jury and Audience Award awards this year, there is a sad possibility that filmgoers will follow the current trend of “discussing” films that they’ve actually never seen. The daring casting choices of comedian Mo’Nique (as Precious’ all-too-realistically abusive mother) and Mariah Carey (brilliantly understated as an undaunted and dedicated social counselor) are attempts to attract a wider audience, but cynics can hurdle just about anything these days. What’s most significant about this Dancer in the Dark-esque chronicle is how Damien Paul’s screenplay and director Lee Daniels have taken their time to confront the most difficult moments in Precious’ story - and if that sounds heavy-handed, so be it. Stop blahging for a moment and let this movie move you. (1:49) SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Jesse Hawthorne Ficks)

Red Cliff All Chinese directors must try their hands at a historical epic of the swords and (arrow) shafts variety, and who can blame them: the spectacle, the combat, the sheer scale of carnage. With Red Cliff, John Woo appears to top the more operatic Chen Kaige and a more camp Zhang Yimou in the especially latter department. The body count in this lavishly CGI-appointed (by the Bay Area’s Orphanage), good-looking war film is on the high end of the Commando/Rambo scale. The endless, intricately choreographed battle scenes are the primary allure of this slash-’em-up, whittled-down version of the Chinese blockbuster, which was released in Asia as a four-hour two-parter. Yet despite some notably handsome cinematography that rivals that of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in its painterliness, seething performances by players like Tony Leung and Fengyi Zhang, and recognizable Woo leitmotifs (a male bonding-attraction that’s particularly pronounced during Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro’s zither shred-fests, fluttering doves, a climactic Mexican standoff, the added jeopardy of a baby amid the battle), the labyrinthian complexity of the story and its multitude of characters threaten to lose the Western viewer - or anyone less than familiar with Chinese history - before strenuous pleasures of Woo’s action machine kick in. The completely OTT finale will either have you rolling your eyes its absurdity or laughing aloud at its contrived showmanship. Despite Woo’s lip service to the virtues of peace and harmony, is there really any other way, apart from the warrior’s, in his world? (2:28) Shattuck. (Chun)

The Road After an apocalypse of unspecified origin, the U.S. - and presumably the world - is depleted of wildlife and agriculture. Social structures have collapsed. All that’s left is a grim survivalism in which father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (whimpery Kodi Smit-McPhee) try to find food sources and avoid fellow humans, since most of the latter are now cannibals. Flashbacks reveal their past with the wife and mother (Charlize Theron) who couldn’t bear soldiering on in this ruined future. Scenarist Joe Penhall (a playwright) and director John Hillcoat (2005’s The Proposition) have adapted Cormac McCarthy’s novel with painstaking fidelity. Their Road is slow, bleak, grungy and occasionally brutal. All qualities in synch with the source material - but something is lacking. One can appreciate Hillcoat and company’s efforts without feeling the deep empathy, let alone terror, that should charge this story of extreme faith and sacrifice. The film just sits there - chastening yet flat, impact unamplified by familiar faces (Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker) road-grimed past recognition. (1:53) California, Piedmont. (Harvey)

*A Serious Man You don’t have to be Jewish to like A Serious Man or to identify with beleaguered physics professor Larry Gopnik (the grandly aggrieved Michael Stuhlbarg), the well-meaning nebbishly center unable to hold onto a world quickly falling apart and looking for spiritual answers. It’s a coming of age for father and son, spurred by the small loss of a radio and a 20-dollar bill. Larry’s about-to-be-bar-mitzvahed son is listening to Jefferson Airplane instead of his Hebrew school teachers and beginning to chafe against authority. His daughter has commandeered the family bathroom for epic hair-washing sessions. His wife is leaving him for a silkily presumptuous family friend and has exiled Larry to the Jolly Roger Motel. His failure-to-launch brother is a closeted mathematical genius and has set up housekeeping on his couch. Larry’s chances of tenure could be spoiled by either an anonymous poison-pen writer or a disgruntled student intent on bribing him into a passing grade. One gun-toting neighbor vaguely menaces the borders of his property; the other sultry nude sunbather tempts with “new freedoms” and high times. What’s a mild-mannered prof to do, except envy Schrodinger’s Cat and approach three rungs of rabbis in his quest for answers to life’s most befuddling proofs? Reaching for a heightened, touched-by-advertising style that recalls Mad Men in look and Barton Fink (1991) in narrative and stooping for the subtle jokes as well as the ones branded “wide load” the Coen Brothers seem to be turning over, examining, and flirting with personally meaningful, serious narrative, though their Looney Tunes sense of humor can’t help but throw a surrealistic wrench into the works. (1:45) California, Piedmont. (Chun)

2012 I don’t need to give you reasons to see this movie. You don’t care about the clumsy, hastily dished-out pseudo scientific hoo-ha that explains this whole mess. You don’t care about John Cusack or Woody Harrelson or whoever else signed on for this embarrassing notch in their IMDB entry. You don’t care about Mayan mysteries, how hard it is for single dads, and that Danny Glover and Chiwetel Ejiofor jointly stand in for Obama (always so on the zeitgeist, that Roland Emmerich). You already know what you’re in store for: the most jaw-dropping depictions of humankind’s near-complete destruction that director Emmerich - who has a flair for such things - has ever come up with. All the time, creative energy, and money James Cameron has spent perfecting the CGI pores of his characters in Avatar is so much hokum compared to what Emmerich and his Spartan army of computer animators dish out: the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy emerging through a cloud of toxic dust like some Mary Celeste of the military-industrial complex, born aloft on a massive tidal wave that pulverizes the White House; the dome of St. Paul’s flattening the opium-doped masses like a steamroller; Hawaii returned to its original volcanic state; and oodles more scenes in which we are allowed to register terror, but not horror, at the gorgeous destruction that is unfurled before us as the world ends (again) but no one really dies. Get this man a bigger budget. (2:40) Empire, California, 1000 Van Ness. (Sussman)

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Oh my God, you guys, it’s that time of the year: another Twilight chapter hits theaters. New Moon reunites useless cipher Bella (Kristen Steward) and Edward (Robert Pattinson), everyone’s favorite sparkly creature of darkness. Because this is a teen wangstfest, the course of true love is kind of bumpy. This time around, there’s a heavy Romeo and Juliet subplot and some interference from perpetually shirtless werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Chances are you know this already, as you’ve either devoured Stephenie Meyer’s book series or you were one of the record-breaking numbers in attendance for the film’s opening weekend. And for those non-Twilight fanatics is there any reason to see New Moon? Yes and no. Like the 2008’s Twilight, New Moon is reasonably entertaining, with plenty of underage sexual tension, supernatural slugfests, and laughable line readings. But there’s something off this time around: New Moon is fun but flat. For diehard fans, it’s another excuse to shriek at the screen. For anyone else, it’s a soulless diversion. (2:10) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

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

*William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe A middle-class suburban lawyer radicalized by the Civil Rights era, Kunstler became a hero of the left for his fiery defenses of the draft-card-burning Catonsville Nine, the Black Panthers, the Chicago Twelve, and the Attica prisoners rioting for improved conditions, and Native American protestors at Wounded Knee in 1973. But after these “glory days,” Kunstler’s judgment seemed to cloud while his thirst for “judicial theatre” and the media spotlight. Later clients included terrorists, organized-crime figures, a cop-killing drug dealer, and a suspect in the notorious Central Park “wilding” gang rape of a female jogger - unpopular causes, to say the least. “Dad’s clients gave us nightmares. He told us that everyone deserves a lawyer, but sometimes we didn’t understand why that lawyer had to be our father” says Emily Kunstler, who along with sister Sarah directed this engrossing documentary about their late father. Growing up under the shadow of this larger-than-life “self-hating Jew” and “hypocrite” - as he was called by those frequently picketing their house - wasn’t easy. Confronting this sometimes bewildering behemoth in the family, Disturbing the Universe considers his legacy to be a brave crusader’s one overall - even if the superhero in question occasionally made all Gotham City and beyond cringe at his latest antics. (1:30) Roxie. (Harvey)

Prison report: Rescued, not arrested

December 7, 2009

By Just a Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy was until recently an inmate in a California state prison. He was released in November and continues to comment on criminal justice issues.

Gary Dickson is the publisher and editor of the Lake County Record-Bee. On Dec. 4th, he wrote he wrote this moronic opinion piece.

You can contact him at gdickson@record-bee.com or 263-5636, ext. 24.

I don’t disagree with a couple of things that Dickson says, but the following excerpt makes me cringe:

“I do believe in the concept of parole when the terms of the program are dictated at the time of the sentencing, as long as the earliest date for parole comes after the prisoner has spent enough time behind bars for the crime committed.”

What is enough time behind bars? Come on — all those guys doing life terms for victimless crimes, when is enough time for them? For that matter, anyone doing time for victimless crimes! What about the lifers who have reached well past their minimums? When have they spent “enough” time behind bars?

He also says:

“I don’t believe in pardons, commutations and early releases for three basic reasons. They are too subjective, they make a mockery of the judicial system and they are unfair. What I mean by subjective is that a president or governor will release someone because they know them or know of their situation, while there are thousands of others who might actually offer more to society after a pardon.“

This brings me to the lifer issue again. You think that parole boards are fair? That they are totally objective? You’re kidding me, right?

According to Dickson, Mike Huckabee must have known Maurice Clemmons (or of his situation), that’s why he commuted his sentence. The statement in and of itself is ludicrous, “because they…know of their situation.” Dumbass, of course the pardoner knows of their situation, how else would he or she be able to grant a pardon? Jeez. Another thing, how is granting a pardon mocking the judicial system? Isn’t the system supposedly built around the idea of justice? Can there justice without forgiveness?

Dickson goes on to write,

“what message is sent, concerning our system of laws and the penalties for violation of those laws, when inmates are allowed to go free before paying their full debt to society for their transgression(s)?”

Gary, what message is sent to who? The rest of the world — and a good portion of the rest of the United States — already thinks that California is filled with a bunch of self-serving idiots too afraid of their political futures to do the right thing. There are nearly 170,000 people in prison in California, about 20% are in for crimes that don’t have a victim. Another chunk is filled with people (lifers) who have reached well past their minimum terms, but are being refused parole (I guess parole boards are completely objective in your world, Gary).

Unfair to the victim? My paperwork said my victim was the State of California because I possessed a little bit of cocaine. Unfair huh — like it would really be hurting the State’s feelings if I got out early.

There are lots of people in prison for crimes that do have victims, but don’t go around playing victim’s advocate as if everyone in prison actually has a victim. And how is it fair that crimes people committed 20 or 30 years ago are used against them today? People get life sentences for things like possession that had absolutely nothing to do with a crime they were convicted of 15 years ago — a crime that’s not even violent (let alone a crime).

The thing Dickson failed to point out is that all the people they are talking about letting out are getting out anyway. Is it really going to matter if they get out 6 months or a year early? Do you think that some person is not going to reoffend if they do 3.2 years vs. 2.8 years? Is it even considered that the meager amount of money spent on rehabilitation might have something to do with recidivism?

The solution is simple, always has been always will be: legalize drugs. Of course, there are many who will say that it won’t help blah, blah, blah…but look at the other industrialized nations where there drug laws make sense and compare their prison populations to ours. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

California in particular is like the worst kind of addict/alcoholic because they admit they have a problem, but are so far gone into their addiction they can’t do anything about it. Just like the addict that can’t stop, California is not being arrested by the Three Judge Panel, but being rescued.

Russoniello to Herrera: No Way. Kinda.

December 3, 2009

Text and photos by Sarah Phelan

The City Attorney’s office has been trying to smoke out Russoniello for weeks on the city’s sanctuary ordinance.

And finally, US Attorney Joe Russoniello has replied in writing to City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s Nov. 10 request that Russoniello provide “reasonable assurance” that his office won’t prosecute local officials who follow the city’s new sanctuary policy.

And it seems that Russoniello’s answer is “no way,” though it’s qualified by conditions that suggest that the feds are only interested in deporting convicted juvenile felons, even as their policies rip innocent kids from their families.

“I have no authority, discretionary or otherwise, to grant amnesty from federal prosecution to anyone who follows the protocol set out in the referenced ordinance,” Russoniello wrote in his Dec. 3 letter to Herrera.

Meanwhile, a group of community advocates shared their concerns that the sanctuary legislation be duly enacted with City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey (left) today. (See end of this post for further details.)

“We present a case for indictment when there is a reasonable basis for believing that a federal crime has been committed and a conviction can be obtained,” Russoniello wrote, noting that, ”not every case that meets this test is necessarily brought.”

“A number of factors may come into play… including, as you correctly referenced with respect to so-called ‘medical marijuana’ cases, our need to prioritize cases, given our limited resources,” Russoniello stated.

Under the city’s new sanctuary policy, juveniles will get their day in court before being referred to federal immigration authorities in an effort to prevent needless deportations.

This new policy, which takes effect Dec. 10, gives the city’s Juvenile Probation Department 60 days (Feb. 8, 2010) to figure out how to implement the new legislation.

But Mayor Gavin Newsom has said he intends to ignore the policy, claiming it violates federal law, as has Gabe Calvillo, president of the city’s probation officers union. They also cite a federal Grand Jury that Russoniello convened last year to investigate the actions of Juvenile Probation Department officers, who tried to repatriate Honduran teenagers accused of selling drugs, instead of referring them to the feds forl deportation.

City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey listens as community advocates express frustration over Newsom’s comments that he intends to ignore the sanctuary legislation, even as Herrera has promised to aggressively defend the policy.

Russoniello has claimed that JPD’s former activities were tantamount to “harboring.” But that procedure was discontinued last year, and it won’t be reinstated, when the city’s amended policy kicks in, in February.

But while Sup. David Campos has repeatedly stated that his sanctuary policy amendments won’t shield anyone found guilty of a felony, Russoniello claims the new policy violates federal law, even as he admits that cases are typically prosecuted by his office in the belief that a conviction can be obtained, and on a priority basis.

Dorsey (second right) listens as Cynthia Muñoz-Ramos of the St. Peter’s Housing Committee (far right) requests that Herrera provide the local community with written assurances that the new sanctuary policy will be duly implemented.

They were expendable

December 2, 2009

“Camera movement” doesn’t even begin to describe the orchestral coordination of tracks, pans, tilts, zooms, and compositional dimensionality comprising Miklós Jancsó’s boldly vertiginous 10-minute takes. The Pacific Film Archive screens a quartet of the Hungarian director’s influential but rarely shown films from the late 1960s and early ’70s, each a kinesthetic rumination on the awful coordinates of martial law — and perhaps the closest cinema has ever come to the epic poetry of The Iliad.
Raymond Durgnat’s account of Jancsó’s “calligraphic” camerawork helps distinguish the director’s style from formalist theorizations of the long take. From Touch of Evil (1958) to Children of Men (2006), thrilling tracking shots have come to stand as the summit of cinema’s realist plenitude. With Janscó, like Stanley Kubrick, omniscience itself is held in doubt. In The Round-Up (1966), a distressing parable of interrogation set during an 1848 campaign against insurgent outlaws, Jancsó’s free-floating camera paradoxically registers the blinkered confusion of imprisonment. The volatility of view calls attention to the partiality of witnessing. Simultaneously, the repetitive movements of degradation and violence signal a repertoire of human evil surpassing any single individual, nation, or war.
In Jancsó’s dialectical form, a Marxist apprehension of the enduring structures of power jostles against the individual’s frightened namelessness. As with Jean Renoir, the long take is not at odds with montage’s multiplication of meaning. Take the first scene after the opening titles of The Red and the White (1967). The camera glides after two Bolsheviks in flight from the counterrevolutionaries — slowly, as if in foreknowledge of the coming reversal. As they wade into a narrow river (the geography of the scene bears curious resemblance to one in 2007’s No Country for Old Men), the composition opens up terrain where another band of cavalrymen are mounting a charge. The two men beat a retreat, and now the recessing camera leads them on. One man hides behind a tree, becoming a surrogate for our own position; the other is not so lucky. An ushanka-clad counterrevolutionary soldier bullies the Bolshevik into the shallow water. The shot cues the man’s final movement: like a felled tree he topples into the drink, the first of many searing images worthy of Goya’s The Disasters of War.
Unlike most combat films, time does not bend to the casualties of war in this scene. The shot proceeds after the man is shot, the seconds flowing over crime and banality alike. You can watch one of these films a dozen times having only seen it once.
Jancsó’s durational use of Cinemascope means that actors cover a lot of physical ground in his shots. The cracked Martian expanse of the Hungarian steppe is their mortal stage, a no-place that pictorially undoes the idea of historical setting. Jancsó’s early films are often linked to the crushed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, but in truth they offer no such comfort of specificity. To the contrary, the films demonstrate how state-sanctioned violence vanquishes particularization, making them more relevant to our Guantanamo-Abu Ghraib era than anything coming to a theater near you.
It was only while watching Red Psalm (1972) that I realized the utopic possibilities of Jancsó’s reanimation of historical space. The film, composed of 28 shots in Van Gogh color, stages a late 19th century confrontation between peasant socialists and nationalist conservatives as a series of concentric rings in which the Marxist call for an alternative course of history is richly imagined, if still damned. Twelve-minute takes notwithstanding, any talk of “real time” in such film is preposterous. Serge Bozon’s 2007 film La France broached a similarly musical vision of armed struggle, but Jancsó’s swirling analysis of fate, theatre, ritual, song, idealism, God, grain, and horror is something uniquely sublime.

FOUR BY HUNGARIAN MASTER MIKLÓS JANCSÓ
Dec. 5–18, $5.50–$9.50
Pacific Film Archive
2757 Bancroft, Berk.
(510) 642-5249
www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

SF cops shouldn’t seize DJs’ laptops

November 27, 2009

By Steven T. Jones

Going into another weekend, I find myself thinking about our story on San Francisco Police officers seizing DJs’ laptops as they raid house parties. The SF Weekly got on the story about the same time we did, but their music columnist got it into the paper a week before us. We furthered her reporting by naming the main cop culprit and showing the Chief’s Office knows about it, but it’s frustrating that the policy isn’t being addressed more directly, given the level of concern. Our story is getting a few comments and I’d love to hear others weigh in here on a tactic that seems punitive and perhaps unconstitutional.

That’s what I called it when SFPD spokesperson Lyn Tomioka wrote an e-mail to me defending the practice (I was the editor for our story, which was written by freelancer Joshua Emerson Smith). She wrote: “Our primary focus is always public safety. In the past we have seen over crowed [sic] events that the Fire Department would not have been able to rescue all of the people, in the event a fire broke out. Under age drinking is another concern and the serious issues that have been associated with that. There are other public safety issues that concern us.”

To which I responded: “I understand your concerns about fire and underaged drinking, but I’m still not clear what those things have to do with laptop computers or how their seizure proves anything. Playing music is not a crime, nor is having it on your computer. Frankly, the policy seems punitive and perhaps unconstitutional. We hope the SFPD will review this tactic, allow the public to weigh in on it, and consider modifying or rescinding it.”

What do you think?

Police seize DJs’ laptops

November 24, 2009

news@sfbg.com

San Francisco Police Department officers have added a controversial tactic to their aggressive raids on house parties (see "Fun under siege," 4/22/09): they’re seizing laptop computers from DJs at the events.

While SFPD officials deny the laptop seizures is a new policy, they admit it has been condoned by Police Chief George Gascón, who took over in August and last month told the Guardian‘s editorial board he wants to make the SFPD more transparent and accountable to the public (see "New coach, new approach," 10/14/09).

"The police chief is aware that officers are being proactive in gathering evidence," Sgt. Lyn Tomioka told the Guardian when asked about a string of laptop seizures by undercover cops over the last 10 months, most of them in cases in which the DJs weren’t even charged with a crime.

Many of the raids have occurred in SoMa, and were spearheaded by undercover officers who penetrated the parties and were followed by uniformed officers. San Francisco Entertainment Commission member Terrance Alan called the crackdown a "disappointing and dangerous trend."

Tomioka said it’s a judgment call for officers to seize laptops as evidence of an illegal party, but Alan said the tactic is a punitive measure that proves nothing: "Taking laptops [is] not necessary to prove the underlying crime, and in many cases damages people’s ability to earn a living."

One of the most recent raids happened on Halloween. It was about 2:30 a.m. and music was pumping out of a warehouse party on Sixth Street. The people throwing the party had hired a doorman, and attendee Eric Dunn was standing in line waiting to get in.

"We were right at the front of the line," Dunn told the Guardian, when, he said, two plainclothes officers drove up on the sidewalk, jumped out of an unmarked car, and rushed up to the doorman. "[The officers] pretty much started demanding entry right away. The doorman was really polite. He basically told them that you have to know somebody to get into the party."

Dunn said the officers waited until an exiting guest opened the door from the inside and then made their move. "One guy barged in, and the other guy followed. They never asked permission or received permission to enter the building," Dunn said.

Inside, the two undercover officers immediately shut down the event. Justin Miller, a DJ at the event, said she remembers it very clearly. "The cops at that point were telling everybody to leave the party, telling me to turn the music off. I turned the music off. Everyone was quietly leaving."

But Miller said it didn’t stop there. One of the undercover officers approached her and asked if she had a laptop. She said she did. "I was a little confused at this point because I didn’t know what my laptop had to do with anything. I was playing CDs." She said she pulled her computer out from underneath a table and unzipped it from a case. The officer then "grabbed it from me."

The undercover police officer — later identified by witnesses and the evidence receipt as Larry Bertrand — instructed Miller to follow him down to the street to get a property receipt for her laptop.

At this point there were uniformed officers on the scene as well. Miller started to cry. "I begged him. I said, ‘This is my livelihood. You’re talking my laptop. This is my livelihood. I hope you realize that.’ He said, ‘This is how you’re going to learn then, I guess.’"

Miller said Bertrand (who did not return Guardian calls for comment) then told her he was "going to take it upon himself to shut down every illegal party in San Francisco."

She said he then opened the trunk of his car, revealing several other laptops. A person at the party pointed out that one of the laptops belonged to a friend of his, and asked if he could get the property receipt for the laptop. Miller said Bertrand turned to the inquiring person and said, "You will never see this laptop again."

She continued: "He then looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to make sure your paperwork gets so tied up that maybe you won’t see this laptop until December, January, February, who knows when.’ I felt so violated."

Miller has been working as a DJ in the Bay Area, under the name DJ Justincredible, for more than 10 years. She says she’s never had any of her equipment confiscated by the police before. But at that party, three DJs had their laptops confiscated, even though none were charged with a crime.

Shortly after the Halloween incident, Miller and the two other DJs who were at the party contacted the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group specializing in technology and privacy issues. Jennifer Granick, a civil liberties lawyer with EFF, said most people haven’t heard about this because few of these DJs, if any, ever get convicted of a crime.

"DJs and the police department know that sound equipment and laptops are being unlawfully seized. But the public and the courts haven’t heard much about it because every time a DJ asks for a hearing, the cops just give them their property back rather than show up and defend the practice in open court before a judge," she said.

Sean Evans has been working as a DJ in San Francisco, under the name DJ 7, for more than 10 years. He said that over the summer he had his laptop seized by police during an after-hours party in SoMa. He was given no property receipt, and his case was dismissed. But it took him three months to get his computer back.

"To lose our sole means of income, it’s a huge setback. It puts us out of work. In this recession, we’re struggling, and we need our laptops to get by," he said. Evans grew up in the Bay Area and he said has never had anything like this happen to him before.

Granick argued it is illegal for police to seize property without issuing citations or arrests. She also said there are serious privacy issues at stake. "If we were to find out that the police were doing something else with the laptops, like searching through them or copying the data, we would definitely go to court," she said.

SFPD Sgt. Wilfred Williams said he could not say what was currently being done with the laptops. In general, he said, private events that emit "extraordinary amounts of sound" need permits. And if they don’t have the proper permits, he said, property can be seized as evidence, "be it the speakers, be it the laptops, be it a mixer."

Both Tomioka and Williams say the seizures aren’t a new policy. "If you look back in time, laptops haven’t been used for music," Williams said. "There used to be old types of equipment that was taken in the past. But now laptops are being used. So yes, today, laptops [are] being seized."

Entertainment advocates have called on Mayor Gavin Newsom and Gascón to come forward with an explicit policy concerning these raids and seizures. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to Guardian inquiries. Critics of the policy say it’s having a chilling effect on nightlife in San Francisco.

Police and prosecutor payback?

November 24, 2009

news@sfbg.com

When officers of the San Francisco Police Department’s Gang Task Force put prominent private investigator Steve Vender in handcuffs the evening of Nov. 19, it marked the crescendo of a years-old rivalry between Vender and the authorities.

But Vender’s indictment for trying to dissuade attempted murder victim Ladarius Greer from coming to court has raised the hackles of some in San Francisco’s community of defense attorneys, including Eric Safire, a frequent employer of Vender who came close to being indicted for witness intimidation himself, and Stuart Hanlon, a prominent local attorney who is representing Safire.

They and others believe Vender’s prosecution is meant to intimidate defense lawyers. Hanlon called the case against Vender "a political move," and said he doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that District Attorney Kamala Harris, who’s running for state attorney general, got an endorsement from new SFPD Chief George Gascón the day after the Nov. 17 indictment.

"You don’t sell lawyers and investigators to get political support," Hanlon told the Guardian. "I have a lot of respect for Kamala Harris … but I don’t support what she’s doing here."

SFPD spokesperson Lyn Tomioka told us there is "absolutely no truth" to the suggestion that Gascón’s endorsement had to do with the Vender case, calling the chief and prosecutor "partners in crime fighting." DA spokesperson Brian Buckelew called the allegation a "false and malicious insinuation" meant to distract from Vender’s transgression: telling Greer in a voicemail that there was a warrant issued for him in Solano County and that it was a good time to visit the "Fresno Riviera."

Vender didn’t tell Greer that he would be arrested if he came to court; nor did he tell him not to testify against Phil Pitney, the man accused of shooting Greer in the head in the Western Addition in April, according to a transcript of the voicemail. But he did seem to insinuate that the case would crumble if Greer didn’t show.

"The last day they have to bring Pitney to trial is Oct. 13," Vender said. "They can dismiss and refile again, and start the whole process all over. But they can only do that one time."

Greer skipped the trial, but Pitney, represented by Safire, still got convicted for attempted murder and other charges and faces a lengthy prison term. Then, on Nov. 10, DA gang unit chief Wade Chow began presenting evidence of Vender’s alleged witness tampering to a grand jury, which indicted him a week later.

Vender declined to comment publicly, but both Hanlon and Safire say he didn’t do anything wrong. Hanlon said Vender was just being friendly to a key witness, like any investigator. "It was banter …," he said. "These kids have no place to go. They don’t leave."

But it might’ve been Vender’s and Safire’s history of zealous criminal defense that precipitated the indictment. Vender’s sparring with SFPD dates back to 2006, when reputed Oakdale Mobster Daniel Dennard walked away from a murder prosecution after the star witness was killed. Vender told SF Weekly that the authorities, lacking evidence, "talked shit, talked shit, talked, and in the end they couldn’t prove anything."

Then there was Jaime Gutierrez, acquitted of murder in back-to-back 2008 trials on self-defense grounds after allegedly blowing away Abraham Guerra, a man Vender discovered was a police informant. Recently prosecutors had to dismiss an attempted murder case against another man, Steven Campbell, in part because Vender dug up dirt on the victim and his girlfriend, a key witness.

Cops also question Safire’s tactics and his close relationships with the reputed Western Addition gang-bangers he sometimes represents. (When police arrested rapper Ronnie "Ron Ruger" Louvier shortly after the 2008 murder of Marquise Washington, for which Louvier was recently convicted, they found him wiping down his tricked-out car with a "Safire for Judge" T-shirt).

More recently, Safire orchestrated the theatrical courtroom appearance of seven men wearing gold grills on their teeth who were meant to resemble his client, murder defendant Charles "Cheese" Heard. When a key witness was asked to identify Heard, all the men stood up, ostensibly to test the witness’s memory, throwing the courtroom into disorder.

Vender, who posted a $75,000 bail the night of his arrest, was arraigned Nov. 23 and will return to court Dec. 7. Hanlon said he thinks Vender will be acquitted: "This is gonna go to trial, I’m sure of that."

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