Dance

The Performant: The mundane sublime

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Park(ing) and Fold {Live} were far from humdrum

It’s the little things. The things we do over and over again—the automatic, the routine, the de rigueur, the rote—that we need to find ways to celebrate above all, because every moment past could be a moment wasted, or a moment redeemed. But as with conceptual artist Kate Pocrass’ long-running Mundane Journeys project, sometimes the moment needs to be curated in order to be illuminated. That principle got some play over the past weekend with Park(ing) Day and Surabhi Suraf’s “Fold {Live}” installation, two very different projects which nonetheless served to turn the most banal of routines into conscious acts.

On Friday, the mundane act of feeding the meter was celebrated with the now-worldwide annual tradition of Park(ing) Day. Though it was occasionally difficult to tell Parks from Parklets, the Valencia corridor was a hopping Park(ing) Day hotspot, with hay bales and a live sheep parked out front Ritual Coffee, a proto-type vertical garden in front of Range, and a green-roofed doghouse in front of Thrifttown. My favorite concept was a little more scaled back yet more performative: a fundraiser for the Prison Yoga Project spearheaded by Mariah Rooney, whose streetside yoga lessons provided both visual and physical stimulation for passerby. Thank goodness for yoga mats, because there wasn’t much else protecting participants from the asphalt jungle, but there was no sign of discomfort marring the serene faces of the stretchers. Down wiggle way, aka Fell Street, the Wigg Party had set out cushions and camp chairs, and were plying people with tea and books of esoterica from founder Morgan Fitzgibbons’ collection. There was still plenty of traffic, and one bargain hunter who wanted to browse the selection of cushions, but the Wigg party’s little oasis of tranquility held strong though the day, despite the wind and uncomprehending cars rushing past.

Sunday at four p.m., a small group gathered expectantly in front of the Federal Building on the corner of Seventh and Mission to bear witness to the second of four “Fold {Live}” performances, conceptualized and choreographed by recent transplant Surabhi Saraf. Based on her 2010 video project Fold, “Fold {Live}” took the familiar act of folding the laundry and turned it into a group meditation. In silence, nine participants entered the staging ground, collapsible laundry totes in hand, and sat streetside on the round cement “stumps” built as if with this very performance in mind. Carefully, fluidly, each took from their tote a black shirt and began to fold them, in unison, with methodical care. A pair of inside-out jeans followed, which each performer first pulled rightside-out with slow, steady motions, and then gently folded them into little squares. Gradually, particularly in the case of colorful, billowing scarves which made a couple of appearances, the work took on an aesthetic cast which solitary laundry-folding rarely seems to embody, but essentially could.

Like any mundane moment, there is always the potential to turn it into something more meaningful. The hows and whys are up to us.

San Francisco Smut Map

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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San Francisco Smut Map

culture@sfbg.com

SEX ISSUE 2011 In 1969, San Francisco became the first city in the country to permit the exhibition and sale of hardcore pornography. Although “permit” isn’t exactly right. The city’s vice squad (with the help of Supervisor Dianne Feinstein) fought it every step of the way. But by the time a rag-tag band of hippies with cameras began harnessing the Free Speech movement to challenge obscenity laws, San Francisco had already become, in the words of the New York Times, “a sort of Smut Capital of the United States.”

Earlier this year, director Ben Leon and I produced Smut Capital of America, a documentary short about San Francisco’s flesh-filled reign as the center of U.S. hardcore. (The skin flick industry didn’t move down to San Fernando Valley until the 1980s, when VHS took over and Los Angeles stopped arresting filmmakers.) The film industry itself may have been shaved and plucked, but San Francisco never lost its filthy patina, thank god.

Here are a few of the filthy great places, classic and new, that any self-respecting San Francisco pervert and/or fan might want to map.

1. The Condor Club

560 Broadway

The first topless dance took place in 1964 at the Condor when Carol Doda took to the stage in designer Rudi Gernreich’s revolutionary “monokini.” The bathing suit never really caught on, but topless dancing became an export that would become synonymous with San Francisco.

2. The Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre

895 O’Farrell

The good ol’ boys from Antioch made a fortune with movies like Behind the Green Door, but when obscenity busts began taking their toll, they moved to live shows. The place still give a great lap dance, but the days when you could eat a girl out for a dollar are long gone.

3. The Strand

1127 Market

I once heard it referred to as a stop on the underground gay railroad — and for good reason. While this theater showed big Hollywood movies and noir retrospectives, the balcony was the cruisiest, bleachiest-smelling place in town.

4. The Magazine

920 Larkin

This still-operational vintage magazine shop has never shied away from porn. And since few museums find it palatable to save smut, it’s a living archive of the sexual revolution, balls, and all.

5. The Screening Room

220 Jones

In 1970, the Screening Room became the first theater in America to show hardcore pornography, with a law-skirting documentary about the free-loving Danes called Pornography in Denmark. Director Alex deRenzy set off a cinematic revolution, and earned a profile in Time magazine. Perhaps fittingly, it’s now the Power Exchange sex club.

6. The Roxie and the New Follies

3117 16th Street and 2961 16th Street

Long before it was an indie movie rep house, the Roxie showed soft-and hardcore 16mm loops shot by the Mitchell Brothers, then just out of college. The New Follies, just down the street on then smut-filled 16th Street (it’s now the Victoria), pioneered bottomless dancing, and later, live sex shows.

7. The Sutter Theatre

369 Sutter

Arlene Elster and Lowell Pickett plotted the International Erotic Film Festival at their theater off Union Square in 1970, when the area was still known as the downtown Tenderloin. The films themselves screened at the prestigious Presidio Theater in the Marina with a red carpet covered by KPIX. Even smut-opponent Dianne Feinstin showed up to rant against the duo’s “very depraved wares.”

8. Le Salon

1118 Polk Street.

“There out to be a plaque on the building,” says Bay Area Reporter porn critic John Karr, who went to this bookstore to cruise and flip through dirty magazines. Store owner Roland Boudreaux eventually opened a non-smut operation next door with a connecting doorway so that customers could leave and enter without attracting stares from high-society queens.

9. The Lusty Lady

1033 Kearny

The original Lusty Lady showed 16mm films, but by the early ’80s this North Beach smut center had live dancers as well. In 1997, the dancers organized an Exotic Dancers Union to make it the first unionized sex club business in the United States. In 2003, they bought the business, making it a worker-owned cooperative.

10. The Gordon Getty Mansion

2050 Jackson

During the ’80s and ’90s, this Pacific Heights mansion was the home of smut merchant and Falcon Studios honcho Chuck Holmes, whose name now graces the LGBT community center on Market Street. In the afternoons, he shot gay porn in the basement. In the evenings, he hosted spectacular galas to raise money for visiting politicians.

11. The Armory

1800 Mission Street

Does anyone not realize that this former munitions warehouse now houses an arsenal of dildo-equipped robots and that the National Guard training hall is used to film “Wired Pussy” episodes? Thanks, Kink.com for making sure San Francisco is still known as the Smut Capital of America.

From an epic, a classic

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
From an epic, a classic

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE What makes watching the Mark Morris Dance Group’s Dido and Aeneas such a satisfying — and ultimately profound — experience? It’s really simple: give a story of love and war to a poet, who creates a rhythmically and imagistically suggestive libretto, which then gets into the hands of a genius composer, and finally ends up with Mark Morris, who just happens to be a great choreographer and company director. That’s it.

Morris created Dido in Brussels in 1989, where the Opera de la Monnaie had everything he needed: a budget for production, support for a large group of dancers, and the freedom do what he wanted. That experience decisively shaped the 33-year-old choreographer and put him on the world stage to which the controversy surrounding the premiere probably did its part.

By casting the Sorceress as Dido’s darker side — and having the characters interpreted by the same dancer — Morris injected an intriguing Freudian note, though it added little to the tragedy. However, it gave Morris, a superb dancer, the role of his life. He did the part until 2000. In his company’s performance at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall Sept. 16-18, he put his stamp on the production by conducting the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale (performing Henry Purcell’s 17th century score) in the pit. He did it well — not surprising, since he’s renowned for his musicality.

In this incarnation of Dido and Aeneas, Amber Star Merkens dances the double role convincingly, making it her own, though she doesn’t have Morris’ solid physique and bone-deep expressivity. You couldn’t help but see Morris in the jaunty lift of her chin and the way she placed her hands. As a Sorceress, throwing her arms up in mock desperation at the antics of her fellow witches, Merkens becomes every inch the aging Madam in a roadside whorehouse.

Opposite Merkens, Domingo Estrada Jr. gave Aeneas just a touch of vanity and self-involvement. He seemed very young.

But it’s not only the leads who need to switch emotional gears back and forth; the ensemble of courtiers, witches, and soldiers has to follow suit. Despite some initial hiccups, Morris’ dancers did themselves proud.

What continues to surprise in this remarkable work — certainly one of Morris’ finest, if not his greatest — is the economy of means with which he weaves this tale, drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid, of the outsized passion and grief of Dido, Queen of Carthage and Aeneas, Founder of Rome. The dancers wear black tops and skirts except for Aeneas, who is topless. Robert Bordo’s set consists of two benches and a washed-out curtain that looks like it might have belonged to a traveling theater group.

Though Morris’ vocabulary includes some of his more literal responses to the music that (as a more mature choreographer) he now pretty much foregoes, the depth of his imagination is breathtaking. He plants the legs even as the arms fly out as far as the body can reach. He draws on Martha Graham’s use of the ground, Irish folk dancing, and ballet’s toe work, and makes them his own. The dances, whether in strict unisons or opposing and interlocking patterns, are stenciled into space.

Most unusual is the way Morris infuses Dido with a sense of absence, of negation. We see the dancers in half-profile or with their backs to us. Even the witches cover their eyes. When Aeneas arrives, Dido turns away. In their love duet, he holds her hand, yet looks over his other outstretched hand across the ocean. It is as if the passion and pain were too much for us to witness.

Much like a Greek tragedy, Dido proclaims a sense of order and restraint that is disturbed but ultimately restored. But at what price. At the end of her lament — Purcell at his most lyrical — Dido, with her arms outstretched, lies on the bench that became her bier. Her retinue processes out two-by-two except for the Second Woman (Rita Donahue). She looks at Belinda (Maile Okamura), her lover and Dido’s faithful confidante. Then she turns and leaves. Alone. At that moment the heroic and the human became one.

Because Princess says so

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Because Princess says so

caitlin@sfbg.com

SEX ISSUE 2011 I saw Donna Dolore for the first time at a Hard French queer soul dance party at El Rio. I remember because she took my drink so authoritatively that I had no choice but to be okay with it. She sipped it, handed it back, and strode away. Can I get a thank you? Throughout the whole, sloppy afternoon, I noticed it was kind of her theme.

But no one seemed to care. Part of it was obvious: Dolore is a Sophia Loren with wider eyes, maybe a little taller, with the same generous tendencies towards sharing glimpses of the bust line. Only — I reflected, shortly before falling back into cheap-beer-and-go-go-dancer melee — that attitude. Who the hell is this woman?

Weeks later, I’m telling her the story in person in the cavernous break room at Kink.com’s headquarters in the San Francisco Armory (everything at the Armory is cavernous). It turns out that Dolore is in fact, a pretty big deal. Just ask her legions of heavy-breathing fans who know her as Princess Donna, the Kink.com director and star queer dominatrix.

“Oh my gosh, I did that?” At the office from where she plans shoots for the three Kink websites she heads, Dolore is a less formidable figure. She’s not wearing any makeup. Her black outfit makes her look like she’s about to take off for a light jog around the Mission.

But she might just be being coy. After all, I’d stalked her up good before our appointment and had come across this gem in a video interview she did a few years back: “I’m pretty true to form — Princess Donna acts a lot like I do.”

Dolore double majored at New York University, perfectly enough, in gender and sexuality studies and photography. She became a stripper while at school, and then on a tip from a coworker, got into professional BDSM shoots. Although she had been to some BDSM play parties, the work was the first time she’d ever been tied up.

“I was immediately into the challenge of being in a really stressful position — being flogged or caned, total sensory overload,” she remembers. “I would leave a shoot feeling really invigorated, a stronger person. It made me want to see what my body was capable of.”

Nowadays, Princess Donna sits — utterly sexily, usually in a short skirt and fuck-me heels — atop the Internet BDSM porn puppy pile.

At Kink she is the mind behind no less than three sites. For “Public Disgrace,” Dolore makes trips around the world to supervise the stripping-down, feeling-up, and penetration of beautiful women in town squares and busy bars. On “Wired Pussy,” she plays with electrical equipment, inducing screaming orgasms in her female partners.

In her latest endeavor, “Bound Gang Bang,” Dolore supervises teams of horny men and one or two women in fantasy-type shoots: high school nerds get their revenge on the bitchy mean girls, a prison warden drops her key and winds up giving head to inmates through a chain link fence. She has guest-starred in many of Kink’s different sites, usually as a top, sometimes as a bottom.

“I get stressed out because we have so much content to produce,” says Dolore, who works on one or two shoots a week. “But it’s a challenge that I enjoy.” One gets the sense that at Kink, Dolore has found a place that can nurture her talent for perversion.

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

Like most of Kink’s offerings, Dolore’s sites are unapologetically brutal. Women are dominated, wind up covered in ejaculate and with bound breasts that are agonizing to look at (well, at least for the BDSM newbie).

This is exactly the kind of stuff that sends shivers — the bad kind — up the spines of anti-porn feminists. But Dolore is a feminist too. As articulate as she is and as prominent she is and as wild as her porns are, she’s often called on to defend BDSM’s treatment and portrayal of women.

“I think the exact opposite of the people that think that BDSM would promote violence against women,” she says. That tired question — “is porn degrading to women?” — is something that Dolore finds degrading. Why, she asks, don’t the anti-porn musketeers ask the same of men in the industry?

“What is going on in our society that we continue to see sex as something that is put on women that they don’t desire? Why can’t we fathom it being a dream job for a woman?”

Kink is doing its part to raise awareness about the sexual pleasure that can be experienced by submissive actors. Before and after each shoot, the man or woman who you’ve watched screaming, a cattle prod or vibrator pressed against their genitals, is interviewed. That familiar dazed after-sex look is all over their faces, and their endorphin-heavy perk is really all you need to know what Dolore says is true: the models at Kink really, really love their job.

Delore contests the notion that only people who have been sexual abused take pleasure in pain, although she says you’ll find abuse victims in porn studios, just like any other workplace.

“Unfortunately, you could look to any profession and say a lot of them were abused as kids. You could look at secretaries and say that. Personally, I wasn’t sexually abused.” She smiles. “I’m just a natural pervert.”

Delore’s a regular on the queer party circuit — this week, you can catch her stealing drinks at Sunday’s “Deviants” Folsom Street Fair closing party. Her exuberance in exploring the outer realms of sexuality haven’t gone unnoticed in the San Francisco sex community. Kelly Lovemonster, editor of the queer quarterly sexuality zine [SSEX BBOX] is a close friend of Dolore, and calls her a “super heroine.”

“Even when she is portraying a submissive bottom, being cattle prodded, nipples clamped down and attached to electric cords, you can tell she is absolutely in control,” says Lovemonster. “She shows us that our dirtiest, scariest, and wildest sexual fantasies can come true through healthy communication and BDSM play. She rescues us all from a world where sexuality is suppressed and made shameful.”

This, according to Dolore, is a big part of why what Kink produces is important. The website puts BDSM urges out there, lets people that get turned on by being slapped across the face know that they’re not the only ones.

For the dis-empowered and isolated BDSM fan, that can be heady stuff. “You can explore your rape fantasy in a way that the woman is in control of what’s happening to their body — it’s a way to relive a situation where you had no control and relive it in a way in which you do have control,” says Dolore.

In a direct repudiation of the claims that abuse victims fall into BDSM for unsavory reasons. Dolore says she’s seen rough sex and power play rehabilitate partners whose sexuality seems terminally fucked. “I’m not a therapist but I feel like I am sometimes.”

But when I ask her if she considers herself an activist, she says no.

“When I think of the word activist, I think of people who are more outspoken than I am. I do my thing on my website, and people can come watch it if they want to.”

Which is not to say that the forward girl at Hard French doesn’t think she’s affecting change. Says the princess: “I’m just happy that I can help people be honest about what they want in bed.” 

DEVIANTS: OFFICIAL FOLSOM STREET FAIR CLOSING PARTY

Sun/25 4 p.m.-3 a.m., $20-30

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.publicsf.com

 

Our Weekly Picks: September 21-27

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 21

Veronica Falls CANCELLED

Apparently, this UK indie rock band found its relaxed retro pop sound right from the get-go. Singles “Found Love in a Graveyard” and “Beachy Head” combined jangly, propulsive rhythms with light, morbid lyrics for a result that could easily find an anachronistic home in the recent remake of Brighton Rock (and not just because every video for the band looks like it was ran through a Hipstamatic app.) Now with a self-titled debut album on Slumberland Records, Veronica Falls is scheduled to tour in support of the Drums and Dum Dum Girls next month. This will be their West Coast record release show. (Ryan Prendiville)

With The Mantles, Brilliant Colors

9 p.m., $13

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

 

THURSDAY 22

Teengirl Fantasy at Icee Hot

They put something in the water over at Oberlin. Beach House, Blondes, Teengirl Fantasy. Now at work in the real world, which includes opening for Crystal Castles, Teengirl Fantasy has found a style that’s just as likely to draw from the pop charts as it is from their academic pedigree. A little Lil Jon on one track, a little Raymond Scott on the next. With cooled, slo-mo beats and hyped up MCs turned down, the result is an aural muscle relaxant, allowing you to focus on making bedroom eyes across the dance floor. Teengirl Fantasy comes our way to play monthly party Icee Hot. (Prendiville)

With Total Freedom, Magic Touch (Damon Palermo), Shawn Reynaldo, and Rollie Fingers

10 p.m., $5-10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

FRIDAY 23

Smuin Ballet

The late Michael Smuin was not one of my favorite choreographers. But he left behind a substantial inheritance that had gained him respectable audiences. Smuin choreographed one his most serious pieces, “Stabat Mater” — Dvorak’s response to the death of his infant daughter — in the aftermath of 9/11. He also loved to play with pop eroticism; “The Eternal Idol” — you can see its inspiration at the Legion of Honor — and “Tango Palace” showcase that propensity. Amy Seiwert premieres what she calls her “most “Smuinesque” piece yet — to Patsy Cline. Not the least of the company’s attractions these days is the quality of its dancers. Parking around the Palace — because of the Doyle Drive reconstruction — is somewhat restricted, so plan for extra time. Muni 43 goes there as well. (Rita Felciano)

9/23-Oct.1

$25-62

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco

(415) 556-5000

www.smuinballet.org

 

FRIDAY 23

“Hong Kong Cinema”

Though this is the San Francisco Film Society’s first-ever Hong Kong Cinema mini-fest, there’s no shortage of HK film fanatics in this town, what with the SF International Asian American Film Festival, the programming at Frank Lee’s Four Star Theatre, and even the occasional HK flick that arrives via Hollywood. If you dug Benny Chan’s now-at-the-Four-Star Shaolin, you won’t want to miss his City Under Siege, about bank-robbing, superpowered circus performers. Also on tap: another superhero action comedy, Vincent Kok’s (Pixar-inspired?) Mr. and Mrs. Incredible; Clement Chan and Yan Yan Mak’s multigenerational drama Merry-Go-Round; All About Love, from Ann Hui (her latest, A Simple Life, has been tearing up the international fest circuit); Law Wing-cheong’s kidnap thriller Punished (starring Anthony Wong, always full of win); Alex Law’s coming-of-age drama Echoes of the Rainbow; and rom-com Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, a genre departure for action man Johnnie To. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/25, $13–$20

San Francisco Film Society New People Cinema

1746 Post, SF

www.sffs.org


FRIDAY 23

SF Cocktail Week: Barbary Coast Bazaar

San Franciscans have long enjoyed a romance with alcohol — from the debauchery of the Barbary Coast era, to the modern renaissance of the artisan cocktail, the city knows how to knock ’em back. Celebrate this high-proof history with SF Cocktail Week, which features a variety of tastings, dinners, seminars, and parties, including “Barbary Coast Bazaar,” a huge fete inside the Old Mint. Expect a roaring 1920s themed party, with vintage circus acts such as stilt walkers, jugglers, contortionists, magicians, and carnival games, along with food, and of course, a wide variety of tasty cocktails. (Sean McCourt)

SF Cocktail Week events run through 9/25, pricing varies

Barbary Coast Bazaar, 9/23

8-11 p.m., $85–$95

The Old Mint

88 5th St., SF

www.sfcocktailweek.com


SATURDAY 24

Moving Planet Worldwide Rally Day

You can make yourself sick thinking about it: what are you going to tell your kids (or — hey sexy single! — the neighbor’s kids) when they ask you what you did to stop climate change back when we still had a chance and the Bayview-Sunset commute didn’t call for a rowboat? Are we creeping you out? Then let us recommend Moving Planet Day. A worldwide rally for sustainability, it’s sponsored by 350.org and will include Sept. 24 actions from Buenos Aires to Nairobi. In SF, a march of self-propelled peoples on foot, bike, and skate will trek from Justin Herman Plaza to the Civic Center, where an afternoon of speakers, music, and other events awaits. (Caitlin Donohue)

10-a.m.-6 p.m., free

March starts at Justin Herman Plaza, SF

Afternoon activities at Civic Center Plaza, SF

www.moving-planet.org


Hank 3

The grandson of country music royalty, Hank Williams III, or as he’s now known, Hank 3, continues to hone his own brand of diverse music, releasing not one, but four brand new albums this month: Ghost to a Ghost/Guttertown, a double record in a country vein, Attention Deficient Domination, with more of a “hellbilly” feeling, and Cattle Callin, which is more on the metal side of things. The modern torch bearer of outlaw country is promising that this tour will touch on all of them, which he released through his own label, Hank 3 Records, and that fans can expect a two-and-a-half to thee-hour set at each barn burning show. (McCourt)

8:30 p.m., $26

The Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com


SATURDAY 24

Celsius 7

The superchill but often splendidly goofy Bay rapper, a former member of the Psychokinetics crew, hails from one of the golden ages of local hip-hop — that late ’90s-early ’00s period when earnest showmanship and a healthy dose of good humor trumped aggro attention-seeking, niche genre overload, and crass product placement. Cel’s kept himself busy through Bay rap’s recent twists and turns, though, traveling the world and dropping some ace tracks, all the while staying true to his roots. This release party for his poppin’ second solo album, Life Well Spent (which features a nice roster of collaborators including Dirt Nasty, iLL MEDiA, and Baby Jaymes) will showcase his grin-inducing verbal dexterity, be loaded with special guest appearances, and serve as a convention of true school heads. (Marke B.)

9 p.m., $10 (includes copy of album)

Shattuck Downlow

2284 Shattuck, Berk.

(415) 455-4735

www.shattuckdownlow.com


SUNDAY 25

Chinatown Music Festival

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has an exhibit going on called “Daily Lives,” a group showing by local Asian American artists that takes prosaic trinkets and uses them to express the psychic winds that ruffle our insides. This weekend, “Daily Lives” is taking this exploration of the private, public. Put on your dark glasses and check out the sidewalk art exhibit in Chinatown — where your ambling will be soundtracked by a day of rad live music; traditional tunes from the SF Guzheng Society and pianist Jon Jang (who will be sharing his recently-penned homage to the Xinhai Revolution of 1911), plus more modern grooves by the grown-up local kids in Jest Jammin’ and the SF Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble. (Donohue)

1-7 p.m., free

Portsmouth Square Kearny between Clay and Washington, SF

www.apiculturalcenter.org


SUNDAY 25

Ladytron

Given the harder direction that Ladytron has gone in over the last few albums — even touring with Nine Inch Nails — I was not expecting what I heard on Gravity the Seducer: ABBA. Whether or not they were invoking the Swedish gods of pop on purpose, the opener “White Elephant” sets a tone for a lighter album. Not simply a step backwards to the sounds of Ladytron’s early albums, it’s its most synthetically dreamy, spaced out record yet. Of course, harder and softer are relative terms with the band, which has generally stuck to a distinctive sound, becoming electronic pop mainstays and developing a cult following in the process. (Prendiville)

With SONOIO, Polaris at Noon, and DJ Omar

8 p.m., $25

The Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(800) 745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

MONDAY 26

Dr Ruth

We all fondly recall Dr. Ruth Westheimer as the funny, entertaining, and educational “sexpert” that hit the mainstream media in the 1980s and 90s, but did you know her amazing background before she was a household name? Born in 1928 in Germany, she lost her parents in the Holocaust, and actually fought (and was wounded) as a sniper during Israel’s war of independence. The icon will be touching on all these subjects, along with her new book, Heavenly Sex: Sexuality in the Jewish Tradition, at tonight’s special event. (McCourt)

7 p.m., $20–$35

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

3200 California St., SF

(415) 292-1200

www.jccsf.org


TUESDAY 27

Tony Bennett Night

As San Francisco Giants fans know, whenever the team wins a game here at home, the crowd exits the ballpark to the sounds of the legendary crooner Tony Bennett’s signature song “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.” The 85-year-old icon performed the song live at last year’s World Series, and the team is honoring him with this special event where he will be celebrated in a pre-game ceremony. He also will perform a short set, and fans will receive a “Tony Bennett” bobblehead that has a sound chip that plays his beloved ode to our city by the bay. (McCourt)

Game starts at 7:15 p.m.; arrive early for pre-game events. Pricing varies; see website for current availability.

AT&T Park

24 Willie Mays Plaza, SF

(415) 972-2000

www.sfgiants.com/specialevents


TUESDAY 27

Nurses

If you listened to Nurses’ earliest album, you might not recognize the groovy melodic rock trio that stands before you today, presenting 2011’s Dracula (Dead Oceans). In the past five years, the harmonic freak-folk band — with a penchant for toy instruments and pianos — has gone through lineup changes, sound modifications, and location shifts. The two Nurses mainstays, singer-guitarist Aaron Chapman and singer-keyboardist John Bowers, have lived in the sweet sunshine of San Diego, close quarters during cold winters — the tour van in Chicago — and finally, settled in the dewy DIY spirit of Portland, Oreg., where they gained drummer James Mitchell, and further developed their technique. But that’s the test of a true musician, isn’t it? The ability to roll with the punches, to grow, to evolve. (Emily Savage)

With Dominant Legs

9 p.m., $12

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

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Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

OPENING

Abduction A teenager (Taylor Lautner) sets out to find his true identity (duh, dude, everyone knows you’re a werewolf) in John Singleton’s action thriller. (1:46)

*The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 Cinematic crate-diggers have plenty to celebrate, checking the results of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. Swedish documentarian Göran Hugo Olsson had heard whispers for years that Swedish television archives possessed more archival footage of the Black Panthers than anyone in the states — while poring through film for a doc on Philly soul, he discovered the rumors were dead-on. With this lyrical film, coproduced by the Bay Area’s Danny Glover, Olsson has assembled an elegant snapshot of black activists and urban life in America, relying on the vivid, startlingly crisp images of figures such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton at their peak, while staying true to the wide-open, refreshingly nonjudgmental lens of the Swedish camera crews. Questlove of the Roots and Om’Mas Keith provide the haunting score for the film, beautifully historicized with shots of Oakland in the 1960s and Harlem in the ’70s. It’s made indelible thanks to footage of proto-Panther school kids singing songs about grabbing their guns, and an unforgettable interview with a fiery Angela Davis talking about the uses of violence, from behind bars and from the place of personally knowing the girls who died in the infamous Birmingham, Ala., church bombing of 1963. (1:36) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Chun)

City of Life and Death There have been a number of recent works about the “rape of Nanking,” but perhaps none tackles the brutal nature of Nanjing’s fall with as much beauty as City of Life and Death. Shot in striking black and white, the film depicts the invasion of China’s capital by Japanese forces from a number of points of view, including that of a Japanese soldier. It can be difficult at times to become emotionally attached to characters within such a restless narrative, but the structure goes a long way toward keeping the proceedings balanced. The stunningly elaborate sets and cinematography alone are worth the price of admission, and it’s amazing that such detail was achieved with a budge of less than $12 million. But it is the unflinching catalog of the some 300,000 murders and rapes that took place between 1937 and 1938 in Nanjing that will remain with you long after watching. (2:13) Opera Plaza. (Peter Galvin)

Dolphin Tale A wayward dolphin with an injured tail is rescued by marine biologists, befriends a little boy and his single mother (Ashley Judd), and somehow Kris Kristofferson and Morgan Freeman are involved. Admit it, you’re weeping already. (1:53) Presidio.

Farmageddon First-time director Kristin Canty embarked on this documentary after discovering the healing power of raw milk in helping her child’s allergies. And it shows. Farmaggedon really should have been titled A Raw Deal for Raw Milk, considering its primary focus on several small family-operated dairies and the souring treatment they have received from government bureaucrats, spurring Canty’s activist act of making this movie. Larry and Linda Failace of Three Shephard’s Cheese in Vermont (the latter wrote her own book, 2007’s Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA’s War on a Family Farm) seem to have suffered the most, driven out of business when the sheep they brought over legally, with all the required quarantines, were seized and destroyed by the government agents on the pretext that the animals might spread “mad cow” disease. The sight of Linda Failace breaking into tears reading her daughter’s words about how the sheep were like her brothers and sisters is heart-breaking. Undermining such powerful, outrageous material are Canty’s textbook missteps: the director has major problems organizing her seemingly scattershot, lopsided material into a coherent and, er, organic whole, and lets her many sources drone on without a strong narrative through-line. All of this makes Farmaggedon a bit of a struggle to watch, although the dirt Canty digs up is likely to justifiably raise the hackles of progressive foodies. (1:30) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*Killer Elite Jason Statham has a lot going on, in addition to devastatingly attractive male-pattern balding: along with fellow Brit Daniel Craig, he’s one of the most believable action heroes in the cineplex today. This continent-hopping, Bourne-ish exercise, kitted out with piercingly loud sound design, comes chock-full of promise in the form of Statham, Robert De Niro, and Clive Owen, wielding endless firearms and finding new deadly uses for bathroom tile — you don’t want to be caught solo in anger management class with these specialists in cinematic rageaholism. Mercenary assassin Danny (Statham) wants out of the game after a traumatic killing involving way too much eye contact with a small child. Killer coworker Hunter (De Niro) pulled him out of that tight spot, so when the aging gunman is held hostage, Danny must emerge from hiding in rural Australia and take on a seemingly impossible case: avenge the deaths of a dying sheik’s sons, who were gunned down by assorted highly trained British military hotshots, get them to confess, and make it all look like an accident. Oh, yes, and try to make sure his own loved ones aren’t killed in the process. Dancing backwards as fast as he can is those retired Brits’ guardian angel-of-sorts, Spike (Owen), another intense, dangerous fellow with too much time on his hands. Throw in my favorite Oz evil-doer Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Danny and Hunter’s boss, some welcome been-there twinkle from De Niro, as well as a host of riveting fight scenes (and that ’00s cliché: sudden death by bus/truck/semi), and you have diverting popcorn killer. (1:40) Presidio. (Chun)

Moneyball As fun as it is to watch Brad Pitt listen to the radio, work out, hang out with his cute kid, and drive down I-80 over and over again, it doesn’t quite translate into compelling cinema for the casual baseball fan. A wholesale buy-in to the cult of personality — be it A’s manager Billy Beane or the actor who plays him — is at the center of Moneyball‘s issues. Beane (Pitt) is facing the sad, inevitable fate of having to replace his star players, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, once they command the cash from the more-moneyed teams. He’s gotta think outside of the corporate box, and he finds a few key answers in Peter Brand (a.k.a. Paul DePodesta, played by Jonah Hill), who’s working with the sabermetric ideas of Bill James: scout the undervalued players that get on base to work against better-funded big-hitters. Similarly, against popular thought, Moneyball works best when director Bennett Miller (2005’s Capote) strays from the slightly flattening sunniness of its lead actor and plunges into the number crunching — attempting to visualize the abstract and tapping into the David Fincher network, as it were (in a related note, Aaron Sorkin co-wrote Moneyball‘s screenplay) — though the funny anti-chemistry between Pitt and Hill is at times capable of pulling Moneyball out of its slump. (2:13) Marina. (Chun)

*My Afternoons with Margueritte There’s just one moment in this tender French dramedy that touches on star Gerard Depardieu’s real life: his quasi-literate salt-of-the-earth character, Germain, rushes to save his depressed friend from possible suicide only to have his pretentious pal pee on the ground in front of him. Perhaps Depardieu’s recent urinary run-in, on the floor of an airline cabin, was an inspired reference to this moment. In any case, My Afternoons With Margueritte offers a hope of the most humanist sort, for all those bumblers and sad cases that are usually shuttled to the side in the desperate ’00s, as Depardieu demonstrates that he’s fully capable of carrying a film with sheer life force, rotund gut and straw-mop ‘do and all. In fact he’s almost daring you to hate on his aging, bumptious current incarnation: Germain is the 50-something who never quite grew up or left home. The vegetable farmer is treated poorly by his doddering tramp of a mother and is widely considered the village idiot, the butt of all the jokes down at the cafe, though contrary to most assumptions, he manages to score a beautiful, bus-driving girlfriend (Sophie Guillemin). However the true love of his life might be the empathetic, intelligent older woman, Margueritte (Gisele Casadesus), that he meets in the park while counting pigeons. There’s a wee bit of Maude to Germain’s Harold, though Jean Becker’s chaste love story is content to remain within the wholesome confines of small-town life — not a bad thing when it comes to looking for grace in a rough world. (1:22) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

Restless See “Twee of Life.” (1:35) Lumiere, Shattuck.

*3 The press literature for 3, Tom Tykwer’s latest, throws around references to classic Hollywood screwball comedies, but this romantic drama is far too self-conscious, serious, and almost pretentious to ever completely ape the mercury lightness of that genre. Apart from one slightly jarring fantasy sequence or two, this polyamorous love story is all about contemporary Berlin bohemia, from hero Hanna’s (Sophie Rois) immersion in the worlds of science and art, to her increasingly plastic relationship with partner Simon (Sebastian Schipper). On the edge of their 20th anniversary, the smart, stylish 40-ish bohos are still in love, though a younger, perpetually amused-looking doctor Adam (Devid Striesow) threatens to turn their two-decade itch into something much more involved. Tykwer kicks off his high-minded romp with a pas de trois, sprinkling split-screen interludes into the program as he goes, but such devices fall away — sucking the viewer into its heady, seductive undertow — beneath the sheer eroticism of these sexual empiricists’ couplings, particularly in the humid, Cat People-like scenes set in a Badeschiff pool, which comes to resemble a carnally charged hothouse as envisioned by Olafur Eliasson. (1:59) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

ONGOING

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (1:36) 1000 Van Ness.

Circumstance Thirteen (2003) goes to Tehran? The world of sex, drugs, and underground nightclubs in Iran provides the backdrop for writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s lusty, dreamy take on the passionate teenagers behind the hijabs. Risking jail and worse are the sassy, privileged Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and the beautiful, orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), who, much like young women anywhere, just want to be free — to swim, sing, dance, test boundaries, lose, and then find themselves. The difference here is that they’re under constant, unnerving surveillance, in a country where more than 70 percent of the population is less than 30 years old. Nevertheless, within their mansion walls and without, beneath graffitied walls and undulating at intoxicating house parties, the two girls begin to fall in love with each other, as Atafeh’s handsome, albeit creepy older brother Mehran (Palo Alto-bred Reza Sixo Safai) gazes on. The onetime musical talent’s back from rehab, has returned to the mosque with all the zeal of the prodigal, and has hooked up with the Morality Police that enforces the nation’s cultural laws. Filmed underground in Beirut, with layers that permit both pleasure and protest (wait for the hilarious moment when 2008’s Milk is dubbed in Farsi), Circumstance viscerally transmits the realities and fantasies of Iranian young women on the verge. (1:45) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Cold Fish Did you love (or find yourself baffled by) Sion Sono’s Love Exposure during its Roxie run? Sono’s Cold Fish is similarly occupied with indoctrination, masochism, and extreme behavior. However, it’s also somewhat better able to sustain a tone of hysteria escalating toward dementia. An unhappy family (father Mitsuru Fukikoshi, daughter Hikari Kajiwara, stepmother Megumi Kagurazaka) is yanked into the orbit of a tropical-fish tycoon (Denden) who at first seems a boisterous benefactor providing shock therapy to their depressed lives out of simple altruism. But he and his bombshell wife (Asuka Kurosawa) soon reveal sides not just sinister but psychopathic, ensnaring all three in diabolical doings that encompass murder, rape, grisly corpse disposals, and more. Structured like Love Exposure as one long countdown to a transformative moment, Cold Fish pushes black comedy way beyond the bounds of taste with an oddly neutralizing good cheer. It’s a manic Grand Guignol set to the soothing kitsch strains of retro Hawaiian-flavored lounge music. (2:24) Roxie. (Harvey)

Colombiana (1:47) 1000 Van Ness.

*Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death, and Technology Local filmmaker Tiffany Shlain (founder of the Webby Awards) takes a look at 21st century connections, both technological and personal, in this documentary. And the film gets very personal at times; constructed mostly as a video collage (using animation, stock footage, etc.), its few original clips come from Shlain family movies, which become more poignant when it’s revealed that the filmmaker’s beloved father, an author and brain surgeon, is dying of brain cancer. Shlain’s film draws some of its themes from her father’s 1999 book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, a study of literacy’s effect on male-female dynamics over history, and the film is dedicated to him. But though the Shlain family’s struggles with loss and life (the filmmaker was pregnant when her father died) form Connected‘s thru line, the film’s probing, lively exploration of links (on- and offline) is universally relatable, and ultimately quite thought-provoking. (1:20) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*Contagion Tasked with such panic-inducing material, one has to appreciate director Steven Soderbergh’s cool head and hand with Contagion. Some might even dub this epic thriller (of sorts) cold, clinical, and completely lacking in bedside manner. Still, for those who’d rather be in the hands of a doctor who refuses to talk down to the patient, Contagion comes on like a refreshingly smart, somewhat melodrama-free clean room, a clear-eyed response to a messy, terrifying subject. A deadly virus is spreading swiftly — sans cure, vaccine, or sense — starting with a few unlikely suspects: globe-trotting corporate exec Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), a waiter, a European tourist, and a Japanese businessman. The chase is on to track the disease’s genesis and find a way to combat it, from the halls of the San Francisco Chronicle and blog posts of citizen activist-journalist Alan (Jude Law), to the emergency hospital in the Midwest set up by intrepid Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet), to a tiny village in China with a World Health investigator (Marion Cotillard). Soderbergh’s brisk, businesslike storytelling approach nicely counterpoints the hysteria going off on the ground, as looting and anarchy breaks out around Beth’s immune widower Mitch (Matt Damon), and draws you in — though the tact of making this disease’s Typhoid Mary a sexually profligate woman is unsettling and borderline offensive, as is the predictable blame-it-on-the-Chinese origin coda. (1:42) California, Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2:02) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*The Future Dreams and drawings, cats and fantasies, ambition and aimlessness, and the mild-mannered yet mortifying games people play, all wind their way into Miranda July’s The Future. The future’s a scary place, as many of us fully realize, even if you hide from it well into your 30s, losing yourself in the everyday. But you can’t duck July’s collection of moments, objects, and small gestures transformed into something strangely slanted and enchanted, both weird and terrifying, when viewed through July’s looking glass. Care and commitment — to oneself and others — are two vivid threads running through The Future. Cute couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) — unsettling look-alikes with their curly crops — appear at first to be sailing contently, aimlessly toward an undemanding unknown: Jason works from home as a customer-service operator, and Sophie attempts to herd kiddies as a children’s dance instructor. But enormous, frightening demands beckon — namely the oncoming adoption of a special-needs feline named Paw-Paw (voiced by July as if it’s a traumatized, innocent child). Lickety-splitsville, they must be all they can be before Paw-Paw’s arrival. The weirdness of the familiar, and the kindness of strangers, become ways into fantasy and escape when the couple bumps up against the limits of their imagination. This ultra-low-key horror movie of the banal is obviously remote territory for July (2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know). The Future is her best film to date and finds her tumbling into a kind of magical realism or plastic fantastic, embodied by a talking cat that becomes the conscience of the movie. (1:31) Roxie. (Chun)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) Lumiere, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Hedgehog You needn’t possess the rough, everyday refinement of the characters of The Hedgehog to appreciate this debut feature by director-screenwriter Mona Achache — just an appreciation for a delicate touch and a tender heart. Eleven-year-old Paloma (the wonderful Garance Le Guillermic) is too smart for her own good, bored, neglected by her parents, and left to fend for herself with only her considerable imagination and a camcorder. She drifts around her fishbowl of privilege, a deluxe art nouveau-style apartment building in Paris, leveling her all-too-wise gaze on its denizens and plotting certain suicide on her 12th birthday — that is until a new resident appears in her viewfinder: a kindly Japanese gentleman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He has as much of a connoisseur’s eye as Paloma — the proof is in his unlikely focus of attention, the building’s concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko, resembling a burly Gertrude Stein), who hides her cultured and bookish inclinations behind a gruff, drab exterior. They recognize in each other a reverence for an almost monkish life of the mind, the austere elegance of wabi-sabi, and the transient beauty of rough-hewn imperfection, even in the sleek, well-heeled heart of the City of Light. To the credit of Achache, working with Muriel Barbery’s novel, these unlikely fragile friendships between outsiders take hold in a way that sidesteps preciousness and stays with you long after its pages have turned. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

I Don’t Know How She Does It I don’t know how a likable comedian like Sarah Jessica Parker does it — meaning, such mediocre material as this mom-com. Parker may have parlayed her Sex and the City fame into a fashion, fragrance, and spin-off franchises, but she still hasn’t quite found her stride away from Carrie Bradshaw, though her Lucille Ball-esque physical comedy here — pulling down her skirt in mid-mommy-frazzle in front of her high-powered client — can be cute. Kate (Parker) just might be the busiest mom in the world: she’s juggling two kids, a hubby whose own career is on the rise (Greg Kinnear), and a major fund idea, which she has to sell to an attractive banking bigwig (Pierce Brosnan). Poor, poor privileged mom — in the trenches of the still-unadorable field of banking, with her obviously sizable salary, enviable Boston duplex, flaky-nice nanny, and bubbly single-mom friend (Christina Hendricks)! The biggest assist comes from her careerist aide, played by Olivia Munn, who grabs the biggest laughs with her deadpan delivery. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Lion King 3D (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Albany, Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Mary Lou A musical fable for fans of Glee, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and Bollywood, the latest from Eytan Fox (2002’s Yossi and Jagger) is a drag-flavored dramedy (Israel’s first?) Originally a hit miniseries in its home country, Mary Lou screens at the Castro in one big chunk jammed with singing, dancing, and a dreamy cast. Pouty Ido Rosenberg stars as Meir, a gay boy obsessed with finding the mother who left him when he was 10. After a disastrous graduation party, Meir flees his homophobic high school for the worldly environs of Tel Aviv, where he soon becomes a drag star named Mary Lou, after his mother’s favorite song. Love, loss, friendship, tragedy, joy, coming-of-age, and quite a few elaborate musical numbers soon transpire — the plot is not without clichés, to be sure, but it’s hard to hate on anything possessed of such sparkly energy. Not familiar with Svika Pick, the Israeli legend whose music provides much of the soundtrack? It matters not, especially if you’re a fan of deliriously corny pop tunes. (2:30) Castro. (Eddy)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Harvey)

Mozart’s Sister Pity the talented sister of a world-shaking prodigy. Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart, who may have had just as much promise as a composer as her younger brother, according to Rene Féret’s Mozart’s Sister. A scant five years older, enlisted in the traveling family band led by father-teacher Leopold (Marc Barbe), yet forced to hide her music, being female and forbidden to play violin and compose, Nannerl (Marie Féret, the filmmaker’s daughter) tours the courts of Europe and is acclaimed as a keyboardist and vocalist but is expected to share little of her brother’s brilliant future. Following a chance carriage breakdown near a French monastery, Nannerl befriends one of its precious inhabitants, a daughter of Louis XV (Lisa Féret, another offspring), which leads her to Versailles, into a cross-dressing guise of a boy, and puts her into the sights of the Dauphin (Clovis Fouin, who could easily find a spot in the Cullen vampire clan). He’s seduced by her music and likewise charms Nannerl with his power and feline good looks — what’s a humble court minstrel to do? The conceit of casting one’s daughters in a narrative hinging on unjustly neglected female progeny — shades of Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III (1990)! — almost capsizes this otherwise thoughtful re-imagination of Maria Anna’s thwarted life; despite the fact Féret has inserted his children in his films in the past, both girls offer little emotional depth to their roles. Nevertheless, as a feminist rediscovery pic akin to Camille Claudel (1988), Mozart’s Sister instructs on yet another tragically quashed woman artist and might inspire some righteous indignation. (2:00) Bridge, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*One Day Why do romantic comedies get such a bad rap? Blame it on the lame set-up, the contrived hurdles artificially buttressed by the obligatory chorus of BFFs, the superficial something-for-every-demographic-with-ADD multinarrative, and the implausible resolutions topped by something as simple as a kiss or as conventional as marriage, but often no deeper, more crafted, or heartfelt than an application of lip gloss. Yet the lite-as-froyo pleasures of the genre don’t daunt Danish director Lone Scherfig, best known for her deft touch with a woman’s story that cuts closer to the bone, with 2009’s An Education. Her new film, One Day, based on the best-selling novel by David Nicholls, flirts with the rom-com form — from the kitsch associations with Same Time, Next Year (1978) to the trailer that hangs its love story on a crush — but musters emotional heft through its accumulation of period details, a latticework of flashbacks, and collection of encounters between its charming protagonists: upper-crusty TV presenter Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working-class aspiring writer Emma (Anne Hathaway). Their quickie university friendship slowly unfolds, as they meet every St. Swithin’s Day, July 15, over a span of years, into the most important relationship of their lives. Despite the blue-collar female lead and UK backdrop that it shares with An Education, One Day feels like a departure for Scherfig, who first found international attention for her award-winning Dogme 95-affiliated Italian for Beginners (2000). (1:48) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont. (Chun)

*Our Idiot Brother If you thought 1998’s The Big Lebowski had eked all the humor that it could from the Dude, well, screenwriter (and Vanity Fair contributor) Evgenia Peretz, her not-so-idiotic brother (director Jesse Peretz), and star Paul Rudd would differ. They correctly guessed that there are still laughs to be wrung from a shaggy stoner in floral jams, only this time with less fuuuck-s and more benevolent, idiot-savant good vibrations. Dazed and confused broheim 2.0 (Rudd) is glimpsed through the jaded, harried prism of his three dysfunctional, supposedly normal sisters: frumpadelic mom Liz (Emily Mortimer), queen-bitch Vanity Fair writer Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), and slatternly would-be comedian Natalie (Zooey Deschanel). A good-hearted naïf who’s easily entrapped by a uniformed police officer claiming to need some pity doobage, Ned has just emerged from the joint and is now couch-surfing among his sibs, exposing the hypocrisies of bourgie-hipster Brooklyn, as well as the infidelities and vanities of family, friends, and partners (Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, and Hugh Dancy) as he goes, in his own good-natured, aw-shucks way. As innocuous (and desexualized) as Andy Griffith beneath the hippie trappings, this dude-with-a-little-d knows where his real family is — with his dog, Willie Nelson, who loves him just as unconditionally. Beastie besties have never seemed so innocent as they are in this proudly feel-good comedy, and despite a cringe-y, saccharine soundtrack and lackadaisical pacing, Rudd’s charismatic sunny slacker and some pointed jabs at the follies of the cooler-than-thou save this indie-that-could. (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42) Four Star, Opera Plaza.

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

Straw Dogs Never could I have predicted there would be a day when the violent finale of Straw Dogs would be met with raucous cheers. The original 1971 film was produced within a morally ambiguous social climate and remains one of director Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial efforts; contemporary audiences trained to applaud a payoff of blood and gore are likely in the wrong headspace for a film like this. The remake, which sends a good-natured screenwriter (James Marsden) on a retreat in his wife’s (Kate Bosworth) sweaty Southern hometown where they find themselves at odds with a group of good ol’ boys, remains powerful and just as uncomfortable and mean as Peckinpah’s version, but it’s in service of a moral outcome that’s more in line with its commercial placement: ultimately it takes the road of “man becomes protector” over “man becomes monster.” If you have no interest in the original, you will find a fair bit of talent in this remake, but without the cynical attitude it can be hard to separate Straw Dogs from any other horror-movie-of-the-week. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Galvin)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) California, Lumiere. (Harvey)

*Warrior Those wondering why the mixed martial arts scene has captured the imagination of so many can finally understand what the fuss is all about, now that it comes filtered through a melodramatic narrative akin to The Fighter (2010). Warrior‘s mis-en-scene is immediately recognizable: a prodigal returns, in the form of Tom Conlon (Tom Hardy). Once a talented teenage wrestler, the now-battered man is the damaged youngest son of alcoholic ex-boxer Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte). Tom wants his father to train him for a major mixed martial arts tournament with a multimillion-dollar purse, though the two obviously still have a deadly hold on each other — the repentant Paddy is on the wagon and the emotionally bruised Tom harbors secrets he won’t reveal — and battle with cutting comments rather than fists. Tom isn’t the only prodigal in the house: Paddy has lost the trust of Tom’s bro, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former fighter and present-day physics high school teacher who’s struggling to make ends meet with an underwater mortgage. Though Warrior is no Raging Bull (1980), it almost outdukes The Fighter in terms of its brutal bouts, conveying the swift, no-holds-barred action of MMA in the ring, while giving actors plenty of drama to wrap their jowls ’round — particularly in Nolte’s case. His tore-up turn as an all-excuses patriarch is as heartbreaking as a solid kick to the jaw. (2:19) California, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

 

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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THEATER

OPENING

Alice Down the Rwong Wrabbit Whole Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF; (415) 500-2323, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Opens Fri/23, 9pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 9pm. Through Oct 15. Karen Light and Edna Barrón perform their new comedy based on Alice in Wonderland.

Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $15-35. Previews Sun/25, 3pm; Mon/26-Tues/27 and Sept 29, 8pm. Opens Sept 30, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 5. Boxcar Theatre performs Pauls Vogel’s dark comedy, inspired by the three female characters from Shakespeare’s Othello.

Killing My Lobster Conquers the Galaxy The Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida, SF; www.killingmylobster.com. $10-20. Opens Thurs/22, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat-Sun, 7pm (also Sat, 10pm). Through Oct 9. The sketch comedy troupe returns with a sci-fi show.

Once in a Lifetime American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-85. Previews Thurs/22-Sat/24 and Tues/27, 8pm (also Sat/24, 2pm). Opens Sept 28, 8pm. Runs Tues-Sat, 8pm (Oct 7 performance at 7pm); Wed and Sat-Sun, 2pm (no matinees Sun/25 or Sept 28; additional performance Oct 2 at 7pm). Through Oct 16. ACT performs a revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s 1939 Hollywood satire.

“Shocktoberfest 12: Fear Over Frisco” Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $25-35. Previews Fri/23-Sat/24, 8pm. Opens Sept 29, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. The Thrillpeddlers’ 12th annual Grand Guignol fest features three “noir-horror” plays by noted noir expert Eddie Muller.

BAY AREA

Phaedra Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $17-26. Previews Wed/21-Thurs/22, 7pm; Fri/23, 8pm. Opens Sat/24, 8pm. Runs Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (starting Oct 5, also runs Wed, 7pm). Through Oct 23. Shotgun Players perform Adam Bock’s modern adaptation of the Racine classic.

The Taming of the Shrew Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Wy, Orinda; (510) 809-3290, www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Previews Wed/21-Fri/23, 8pm. Opens Sat/24, 8pm. Runs Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Oct 1, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through Oct 16. California Shakespeare Theatre’s last show of the season is a high-fashion, pop-art take on Shakespeare’s battle of the sexes.

ONGOING

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Oct 20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

All Atheists Are Muslim Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 517-3581, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. On the TV, CNN carries the dismal thumping of the Bush gang for more war. In the living room, a father and daughter are in a standoff over a proposed live-in boyfriend. It’s 2005, and a clash of generations, as Zahra tries to convince her immigrant Iranian American Muslim father that her white infidel boyfriend Duncan would make an ideal roommate. For her Muslim father, “the Duncan” has plenty of acceptable virtues — even his professed atheism is hardly an insurmountable obstacle to dad, who doesn’t seem to recognize the word but is sure it translates into a wishy-washy approach to the divine through an enthusiastic appreciation for gravity. But moving in together is a different story. How it plays out is the heart of comedian and solo performer Zahra Noorbakhsh’s uneven but charming and funny take on a familiar American family dynamic whose particular ethnic flavor includes a mild but timely geopolitical aroma. Playing herself as well as her loving mother, her bounding and big-hearted father (with his priceless Persian accent), and her good-natured but recalcitrant boyfriend, Noorbakhsh celebrates the immigrant experience while beating back the age’s pernicious appeal to stereotype and xenophobia with the far more realistic metaphor of a nice, crazy family dinner. (Avila)

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm (no show Thurs/22). Extended through Oct 8. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

Cymbeline Parade Ground Lawn, Main Post, Presidio (between Graham and Keyes), SF; www.sfshakes.org. Free. Sat/24, 7:30pm; Sun/25, 2:30pm. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival presents its annual “Free Shakespeare in the Park” performance.

Hunter’s Point St. Boniface Church Theater, 175 Golden Gate, SF; www.strangeangelstheater.org. $15-25 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Fri/23-Sat/24 and Sept 28-Oct 1, 7pm (also Fri/23, 2pm). Strange Angels Theater in collaboration with Jump! Theatre performs Elizabeth Gjelten’s musical drama about homelessness.

Joy With Wings: A Daughter’s Tale Alcove Theater, 415 Mason, Fifth Flr, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $32-50. Wed-Thurs, 8pm. Through Oct 6. Chaucer Theater performs Becky Parker’s drama about a mother’s love.

Night Over Erzinga South Side Theatre, Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 345-7575, www.goldenthread.org. $20-100. Thurs, 8:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 9. Golden Thread Productions’ season opener is the result of its first-ever Middle East America new play initiative (co-presented with Chicago’s Silk Road Theatre Project and New York’s Lark Play Development Center): playwright Adriana Sevahn Nichols’ story of three generations in an Armenian American family struggling with a history of violence, dispossession, and the tensions between individual and collective destiny in the modern world. The play begins at an overly dramatic pitch as a young woman (Sarita Ocón) summons the spirits of her grandparents. Director Hafiz Karmali’s staging is deliberately spare and sensible throughout, though this initial action feels alternately stiff and shuffling, and the recorded music can be overbearing, as the roots of a family saga are laid immediately before and after the 1915 genocide. But the second act settles into a surer and more engaging mode and tempo, as Ava (a sharp Juliet Tanner in a nicely shaded performance), rebellious American daughter of two Armenian exiles (Terry Lamb and Neva Marie Hutchinson), pursues a career as a popular dancer and singer and ends up estranged from her father for years (her mother, sole survivor of a massacred Armenian family, spends her latter years in a mental institution). Wooed by a charming Dominican crooner (an adept, appealing Brian Trybom), Ava starts a family of her own. While pregnant with daughter Estrella (the young, spirited Natalie Amanian), she re-establishes a shaky relationship with her repentant father. Old wounds and buried histories insure reconciliation won’t be easy, but the truth alone shows the way back to a sense of connection and communion for a family severed by injustice and unmoored in the drift of immigrant America. (Avila)

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 23. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Her narrative careens wildly from character-filled childhood memories (the earliest traumas on down) and stand-up-like shtick that turns over well-worn subject matter like babies with freshly piquant musings (idea for an “it get better” campaign for infants: you’ll be able to wipe yourself and chew your own food). There’s even something like wisdom, or anyway historical curiosity, in her skewed nostalgia for such childhood ephemera as Freedomland, a doomed Bronx-based Disneyland alternative Gomez is old enough to remember visiting. Needless to say, she looks and acts very good for her age, whatever it is exactly (there are, typically, no straight answers here).

The Odyssey Aboard Alma, Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, SF; www.weplayers.org. $160. Oct 1, 28-29, Nov 4-6, 11-12, and 18, 12:30pm. This “full afternoon adventure” (12:30-5pm) includes a sailing performance of tales from Homer by We Players (aboard an 1891 scow schooner), plus a light meal.

*Patience Worth Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; (415) 456-8892, www.symmetrytheatre.com. $20-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 2. In the second decade of the 20th century, a young new St. Louis bride named Pearl Curran (Megan Trout), looking to rise above her humble Ozarks upbringing yet with hopeless aspirations to be a singer, suddenly began channeling the spirit of a 16th-century woman named Patience Worth. The rest was literary history, here uncovered and subtly examined by playwright Michelle Carter in Symmetry Theatre Company’s thoughtful, gradually stirring world premiere, its second production after last year’s strong debut (with Anthony Clarvoe’s Show and Tell). Introduced to Patience by Emily Hutchings (Elena Wright) and her Ouija board, Pearl soon displaces the chagrined Hutchings — who has literary aspirations of her own she pedals doggedly to the leading publisher of the day (Warren David Keith) — and inverts the patriarchal order as her much older husband (Keith) plays stenographer to the virtuosic verbosity of the spirit. When she adopts a child for Patience whome she names Patience Wee (Alona Bach), she drives the desperately lonely young girl into the arms of her equally isolated mother (Jessica Powell) toward an unexpected and terrible inspiration. Director Erika Chong Shuch sets her able cast (headed by Trout’s sure take on a complex figure) atop an area rug backed by a line of trees and strewn over the bare earth, like a floating island of bourgeois respectability amid a wild and mysterious sea of natural and supernatural impulses, in a complex tale of female liberation that intersects with questions of fame, status, self-invention, ventriloquism, and a dark bargain with destiny that has something quintessentially American about it. (Avila)

Show Ho New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $20-32. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Oct 9, 2pm. Through Oct 9. Sara Moore performs her multi-character story about a clown in a low-rent circus.

Turandot War Memorial Opera House, 201 Van Ness, SF; (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. $21-389. Thurs/22 and Oct 4, 7:30pm; Sun/25, 2pm; Oct 1, 8pm. The San Francisco Opera performs Puccini’s classic in conjunction with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

BAY AREA

*A Delicate Balance Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-48. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Extended through Oct 16. Aurora Theatre performs Edward Albee’s comedy of manners.

Madhouse Rhythm Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs, 7:30pm. Extended through Oct 6. Joshua Walters performs his hip-hop-infused autobiographical show about his experiences with bipolar disorder.

Of Dice and Men La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. Impact Theatre performs Cameron McNary’s comedy about a group of adult Dungeons and Dragons players.

*Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues-Sun, showtimes vary. Through Oct 30. The life of stage and screen legend Rita Moreno is a subject that has no trouble filling two swift and varied acts, especially as related in anecdote, song, comedy, and dance by the serene multiple–award-winning performer and Berkeley resident herself. Indeed, that so much material gets covered so succinctly but rarely abruptly is a real achievement of this attractively adorned autobiographical solo show crafted with playwright and Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone. (Avila)

 

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

Portland scene clocked by Time Based Arts Festival

Sue Vaughan
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Portland scene clocked by Time Based Arts Festival

Just up the coast, the contemporary art binge that is Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s (PICA) ninth Time Based Art Festival (TBA) bubbled with fluidity and openness as the resounding spirit. From September 8-18 that fluidity and openness occurred between contemporary art practices, between the city and the art, between performers and audience members, between onstage and offstage. Not only addressing current global issues, the festival embraced the increasingly porous walls between art disciplines and outside fields, collapsing the container for presenting art experiences.

Under the direction of Cathy Edwards (also the Director of Performance Programs at New Haven’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas and formerly of Dance Theater Workshop and Movement Research), TBA employs a nomadic citywide platform requiring attendees to explore nooks and crannies with eleven main venues spread throughout the four quadrants of Portland. PICA headquarters the festival at the closed Washington High School called “The Works,” a hub for the round-the-clock possibilities including morning workshops with the TBA artists, noontime salons, afternoon happenings, evening performances and late night activity with a beer garden for gathering, digesting and discussing. The clear nights, lush nature, industrial pockets, culinary delights and bike-friendliness that accompany the festival indeed dovetail with the tastes of many San Francisco residents, and help make TBA a ten-day utopia for art lovers.

“The TBA Festival future-forecasts important aesthetic developments,” writes Edwards in the program, and the performances do, in fact, ripple out, with a handful of the TBA artists appearing recently and upcoming in San Francisco. On the opening day of the festival, Shantala Shivalingappa performed solos by her mentors Ushio Amagatsu (of Sankai Juku) and Pina Bausch. Catch her in San Francisco with a Kuchipudi program at the Herbst Theater November 1, presented by San Francisco Performances.

Also coming to town this season, the Portland-based company tEEth appears at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Left Coast Leaning Festival, December 1-3. Directed by choreographer Angelle Herbert and composer Phillip Kraft, tEEth performed Home Made at TBA, an intimate work with live-feed video, haunting vocals, and plenty of nudity. In the push-pull between hostility and tenderness, hostility dominated the stage for the majority of the work, demonstrating missed connections and relationship struggle with silent and amplified screams, as well as quick-morphing theatrical expressions.

Kyle Abraham, who appeared in San Francisco during the 2011 Black Choreographers Festival with his work-in-process Live! The Realest MC, brought a further developed version of that solo, as well as his full-length work The Radio Show to the festival with his company Abraham.In.Motion. His technique, illuminated during a TBA Institute class, unfolded as a fast-moving mashup of postmodern movement, incorporating influences from New York teacher Kevin Wynn, Merce Cunningham and, naturally, the swift and luscious language of Abraham’s own body.

Taylor Mac, having recently completed his San Francisco run of the epic The Lily’s Revenge, performed his first cabaret at the festival, Comparison is Violence or Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook. Highlighting the human tendencies to bring an agenda to the theater and resist audience participation, Mac interrupted himself for a dramatic song here, a David Bowie story there, and, in the end, had the audience on their feet for a mime routine dancing in imaginary bubblegum bubbles.

These are just a handful of the performances that occurred during the ten days in Portland. Augmented by the evening’s natural fade from light to darkness, the Offsite Dance Project, in three parts by Japanese choreographers, immersed witnesses in the playful with Mika Arashiki and Mari Fukutome, the complex with Yukio Suzuki and the disorienting with Yoko Higashino. A train actually ran through the site-specific work, featuring the dance of the city. The program used sites in Southeast Portland’s industrial district for fresh remix of the surroundings.

Austin’s Rude Mechs performed The Method Gun, a theater work based on A Streetcar Named Desire, and gave a talk at the TBA Institute discussing the consensus necessary to create devised work with their group of thirty artists. Additionally, Malina Rodriguez’s Dance Truck – a mobile project that uses the back of a rental truck as a stage – made an appearance from Atlanta. Participatory games by artist Michael Groisman stirred the crowds at Washington High several afternoons. Andrew Dinwiddle’s Get Mad at Sin revisited a 1971 Alabama sermon by Pentecostal preacher Jimmy Swaggart performed in a tent at dusk. Add to that a 24-hour monologue by Mike Daisey, an installation and performance by Seattle-based Zoe|Juniper, and visit from French choreographer Rachid Ouramdance L’A, and you get a sense of the possibilities at TBA.

This year marked a leadership transition for the festival as Cathy Edwards ends her three-year tenure as guest artistic director, passing the torch to San Francisco export and former Yerba Buena Center for the Arts performing arts curator, Angela Mattox. Mattox will remain in Portland year-round (unlike previous directors) expanding PICA’s performing arts programming. While the dates for next year’s TBA are, well, TBA, San Francisco art lovers should plan a jaunt up the coast next September – just a quick flight or ride-share away.

Fighting to be free

Andrew Lam
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0
Fighting to be free

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE This past weekend, an unlikely double bill once again proved how fertile the Bay Area soil is for dancers’ imaginations. FACT/SF’s Pretonically Oriented v.3 was steeped in critical theory yet physically grounded. Drawing on local history, Lenora Lee Dance’s Reflections offered a window into self-assertion. While employing Asian American images — martial arts and lion dancing — the work resonated beyond its specific cultural context. Both works were developed during summer residencies at CounterPULSE.

“Pretonic,” a program note explained, refers to the unstressed (“pre”) syllable which precedes a stressed one (“tonic) in a word. Charles Slender used this linguistic precept to fold his rehearsal process into the actual piece. While his trio of exceptionally focused dancers — James Graham, Erin Kraemer, and Catherine Newman — performed variations of material they had accessed through free-writing, we also watched and listened to streamed videos, including Slender at his most slyly professorial, of the rehearsal material that had gone into the making of Pretonically. These layers of information sometimes looked as solid as what happened in real time, sometimes as evanescent as memory floating by.

The idea of conjoining process and product is intriguing. Pretonically could prove utterly absorbing. Watching the trio in one corner of the stage in front of videos taken in exactly the same spot (but depicting different movements) suggested a fascinating sense of simultaneity. Listening to Slender’s voice while his face on the wall clearly spoke different words created a disconnect between two modes of communication.

Toward the end, just as the work seemed to have run its course, the dancers returned and went into a retrograde mode, performing some of their material backwards. It looked as if someone had pushed the reverse button, and they had joined their own selves in a different reality.

At 40 minutes, however, Pretonically could not sustain itself. Once you understood the complex structure, the piece needed to communicate beyond what it became. Like so much conceptual art, the idea behind it often proved more intriguing than its physical realization.

Having said that, the dancers were mesmerizing by the sheer force of their presence. Moving glacially, they inexorably focused on something ungraspable. Perhaps Kraemer’s energy originated from the bottom of her spine, Graham lived off percussive lines, and, though ground-hogging, Newman fixated on the above. Slender is lucky to have dancers as excellent as these; they could run circles around most Butoh practitioners.

Lee’s fine Reflections also benefited from excellent dancers. Translating to the stage the difficulties of retaining or creating one’s identity in an unwelcoming environment is a theme that runs through much of contemporary dance and theater. Lee has previously examined the topic with her Chinese American background in mind; she based 2010’s Passages on her grandmother’s life. In Reflections she strikes a fiercer note as she examines the ferocious, even brutal strength required for self-assertion. A male narrator’s voice movingly personalized the struggle of escaping the bondage of being “the good son.”

Lee made a brilliant choice in enlisting two martial arts group, Kei Lun Martial Arts and Enshin Karate, South San Francisco Dojo. They were the warriors who fought each other in the “cold streets of Chinatown,” but also embodied the ongoing struggle within. Raymond Fong, who is as fine an actor as he is at practicing karate, became Reflections’ everyman. Lee’s mixing of her own choreography with pure martial arts worked well; seeing the real thing onstage (and not often-vacuous “martial arts inspired moves”) was thrilling. At the same these performers looked more nuanced than they might otherwise. Weakest was the choreography for the two women characters, Marina Fukushima as the unattainable dream and Lee herself as a compassionate woman warrior.

Making fine use of a lion dance, including bamboo lion heads that imprisoned, Lee strung together the work’s seven scenes rather straightforwardly. Weaving them more tightly together and including better transitions might strengthen Reflections‘ backbone in future performances.

It’s people!

Andrew Lam
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0
It’s people!

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Last Thursday afternoon, the floor before the stage at Z Space was strewn with dollar-store paraphernalia, neon-colored wigs, and the odd piece of kitchenware. On the stage itself, near the front, ran a long makeshift video screen about four-and-a-half feet high. Immediately behind that, at regular intervals, four small video cameras on thin stands faced the back of the stage. Caden Manson, New York–based Big Art Group’s artistic director, had been leading a workshop all week in performance media techniques for about 15 locals (most of them active in the dance-performance scene) but today they were crafting something that would actually be a part of this week’s much anticipated Big Art Group premiere, The People: San Francisco.

To that end, performers picked through the detritus on the floor and fashioned neo-classical costumes for themselves: a broom brush for a centurion’s plume, pot lids for shields, a colander for a battle helmet, a table cloth for a toga, an incongruous toy gun, a festive pair of streamers on sticks, a black cap with beaded veil, swords, plastic flowers, and other pop neo-classical accoutrement. “If anybody wants a Molotov cocktail, there’s four of them right there,” offers one of the group’s members helpfully.

By the time they had assembled themselves on stage they had become a strikingly photogenic band of miscreants and martyrs, like the crew of the Bad Ship Lollipop. Manson, a 40ish blond with an equanimous mien and contrastingly subdued in black coat and blue sneakers, announces they have ten minutes to produce a narrative tableau in an epic vein. Maybe because most of these folks — among them Evan Johnson, Ben Randle, Honey McMoney, Maryam Rostami, Laura Arrington, Rachael Dichter, and Sara Kraft — have worked together before, this all happens surprisingly on schedule.

Manson — who with a few directorial adjustments soon has them all grandly and neatly materializing on the video screen at the front of the stage — explains to me that the pop-up tableau of civil strife the performers have just concocted will act as one of several backdrops to passages from the Oresteia, the ancient trilogy of plays by Aeschylus, which itself acts as counterpoint to the series of contemporary interviews of random Bay Area citizens that forms a key component of The People.

The results you can see for yourself this weekend, as Florida Street outside Z Space (formerly Theater Artaud) becomes a re-imagined public square where a localized discussion of democracy gets played out in a big way, through massive video projections, personal perspectives, and live performance in a dazzlingly intricate and thought-provoking merger of bodies and images, the epic and the mundane, the spectacular and the quotidian.

Big Art Group’s last appearance in the Bay Area was 2009’s deft and rowdy “action media performance,” SOS, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Founded and led by Manson and executive director and writer Jemma Nelson, Big Art’s distinctive, highly integrated blend of theater and media into something it calls “real-time film” was the basis then for a rousing camp send-up and critique of this culture’s media-immersive materialism and its social ramifications.

The People: San Francisco takes Big Art’s fundamental approach to performance and democratizes it. The fourth installment of a serial project begun in 2007 in Polverigi, Italy (before moving onto Halle, Germany and Salzburg, Austria), The People was designed with two goals in mind, according to Manson. One was to craft a collaborative project that might allow Manson and Nelson greater contact with the communities they’ve been regularly traveling through on Big Art’s annual performance tours. The tradeoff would be some of the precision and expertise on display in shows like SOS for an immediate and interactive bead on a specific locale. In the Bay Area, this contact was managed through three host organizations: Marin’s Headlands Center for the Arts (where Manson and Nelson were in residency a few months ago), YBCA, and Z Space. Through this relationship, the project gathered some 40 hours of taped interviews with 42 subjects (including this writer) who were asked an identical set of questions about terrorism, justice, democracy, and war. (Manson was last week still carefully whittling down those 40 hours to a manageable 16 minutes, but notes the remainder will be archived online).

The other goal was related but more specific and immediate: “At the time we started this, in 2007, Bush was in office and he was always talking about promoting democracy,” explains Manson. “We were touring all over Europe at this time, and we’re wondering: What exactly does that mean, democracy? So we started asking. It’s the first time we’ve asked here, in the United States.”

The timing, coming just after the 10th anniversary of 9/11, is auspicious (if coincidental). As a localized act of public discussion of words like terrorism, justice, democracy, and war, The People reclaims from the centers of power and their diffuse mouthpieces the shibboleths and catchwords that normally act as so many parade floats leading us all down blind alleys, if not over cliffs. Wasn’t this the real discussion we should have had ten years ago? Some did; some tried and were shouted down. This weekend, at least, the conversation continues. 

THE PEOPLE: SAN FRANCISCO

Fri/16-Sat/17, 8 p.m., $10

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

Our Weekly Picks: September 14-20

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 14

MUSIC

Fake Your Own Death

A few years back, local indie rockers Elephone received an infusion of new life via a teenage singer. Unfortunately, the procedure didn’t stick and the band met its demise. But if someone has to die, let it be the group. At least then the members can go on to new lives like the Downer Party and Kill Moi. Elephone guitarist Terry Ashkinos has found a survivor’s group in Fake Your Own Death. “Open my mouth to speak, but it’s old technology. Fake your own death, watch it on TV,” the band sings on one listless, sonorous track recalling the National. Dying is easy, what comes after is harder. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Bruises, Excuses for Skipping, DJ Neil Martinson (SMiLE!)

9:30 p.m., $10

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com


MUSIC

Kylesa

Set your head to banging as Kylesa returns to San Francisco. The Savannah, Ga. double-drummed metal titans have taken music to its heaviest extremes, defying genre boundaries in favor of sheer crushing aggression. Formed by members of 90s sludge innovators Damad, Kylesa obliterates the boundaries between punk and metal, drawing fans of loud and heavy from all over the spectrum — its Pushead-designed logo is practically required adornment on black denim vests worn by crusties and longhairs alike. Last year’s Spiral Shadow, the band’s fifth full length album, proves that Kylesa shows no sign of mellowing out, even as they explore new horizons and incorporate increasingly psychedelic twists to their booming Southern sound. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

With Deafheaven and Castle

8 p.m., $15

859 O’Farrel, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com


THURSDAY 15

DANCE

“Extinction Burst: a dance of lost movement”

How refreshing! For once we don’t have to feel guilty about contributing to the extinction of so many threatened species. Think those bottom-of-the-ocean crawlers who will be gone before we have even discovered them. Thank you, Chris Black. Her latest five-person dance installation, “Extinction Burst: a dance of lost movement” brings back to life — sort of — animals who are gone. She is a smart, experienced choreographer who can peek below of just about anything and twist her findings into dance theater that smiles as it informs. (Rita Felciano)

7:30 p.m., $10–$12

California Academy of Sciences

55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF

(415) 379-8000

www.calacademy.org


EVENT

Bonny Doon Press Club

Attention local oenophiles! As part of Press Club’s Visiting Vintner Series, Randall Grahm, the founder of Bonny Doon Vineyards (located just to our south in Santa Cruz County) will be on hand tonight for a meet and greet — and to lead tastings of his outstanding wines. The independent owner and author of Been Doon So Long (University of California Press, 2009) has gained a well-earned reputation for innovative ideas in several areas of his business, including the introduction of screw cap bottles and unique labels. His delicious wines, however, remain the real reason for his success, and he’ll be bringing along several limited production varieties for aficionados to enjoy. (Sean McCourt)

6-9 p.m, free admission, tasting flight $21

Press Club

20 Yerba Buena Lane, SF

(415) 744-5000

www.pressclubsf.com


MUSIC

Part Time

Part Time, San Francisco’s lo-fi darling of the moment, is a visitor from another time, a dimension in which the early 80s never soured and the party lived on forever. The debut album What Would You Say?, released by Mexican Summer earlier this year, plays like some fabled bedroom pop gem, thought lost for decades until rediscovered one sunny day at a flea market, wedged between a Barbra Streisand Christmas album and The Return of Bruno. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just a novelty band, though. The vintage aesthetic belies Part Time’s innovation on a retro template and the captivating pop goodness it crafts — danceable tunes that sound like home recorded Prince demos with a teenage goth edge. (Berkmoyer)

With Pamela, Surf Club, and Permanent Collection

9 p.m., $5

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com


DANCE

Project Bandaloop A vertical dance floor ain’t no thing for Project Bandaloop. They’ve been soaring across mountains, skyscrapers, and other breathtaking sites for two decades with work inspired by the possibilities of climbing and rappelling. For the group’s 20th anniversary season, it will take on the Great Wall of Oakland in Bound(less), a multimedia event, synthesizing years of creativity under the direction of Amelia Rudolph. The free performance features a live band in addition to fearless physicality and grace. After years of interacting with environments and audiences around the world, Project Bandaloop’s aerial dance brings a daring artistic edge to the notion of climbing as the vertical ballet. (Julie Potter)

Thurs/15-Sat/17, 8:30 p.m., free

The Great Wall

West Grand Ave. at Broadway, Oakl.

(415) 421-5667

www.projectbandaloop.com


FRIDAY 16

MUSIC

 

Bayonics

On a cold San Francisco summer night in a Bayview recording studio, Bayonics were talking about when they knew they’d made it big. It happened on Craigslist actually. Members of the Latin-hip-hop-soul-funk-reggae-country (yeah, it goes there) big band spotted an ad from an SF high school bandleader that was looking for new musicians “with a Bayonics-style sound.” Such a tale could only come from a crew with a strong sense of place — and the group (which shares tonight’s bill with Samoa-via-Compton island reggae smoothie J. Boog) sure enough struts its Bay cred during its live shows. Guaranteed to be an ass-shaker, the long-awaited release party for the new album Mission Statement celebrates urban SF sound. (Caitlin Donohue)

With J. Boog 9 p.m., $25

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com


SATURDAY 17

EVENT

Rock Make Street Festival

There are so few things in this life that are truly good and free without some sort of hitch. The Rock Make Street Festival — now in its fourth year — is a genuinely fun (and free) outdoor party in the Mission, presented by the Bay Bridged blog, the band Tartufi, and accessory makers Cookie and the Dude. Live bands this year include mainstay Tartufi, along with Birds & Batteries, Bare Wires, Battlehooch, Cannons & Clouds, and more ampersand-less acts. There also will be not-free food truck eats and crafts made by local merchants. True story: I bought my brother a heather gray shirt with a huge California screen-print at the first Rock Make Street Festival and he’s worn that thing into the ground — it’s nearly threadbare. (Emily Savage)

Noon-7 p.m., free

Treat at 18th St., SF

www.rockmake.com


MUSIC

Bring Your Own Queer

You can either load your favorite rainbow-flavored, gender-hopping, sexually transgressive buddy into your bright red Radio Flyer wagon and haul zhim down to this wild free daytime outdoor dance party and arts festival at the Golden Gate Park bandshell — or you can just polish the unicorn horn on your own inner Q until it becomes a blinding beacon and go mingle with a planetload of other fabulosities. (Say, is “Planet Unicorn” retro yet?) In any case: come here, be queer, get shoes for it. DJs Juanita More, the Honey Soundsystem queens, and very special person DJ Bus Station John will provide diverse sounds. Appearances by Adonisaurus, Chica Boom, Philip Huang, the Vagine Regime from Bay Area Derby Girls, and Titland will surely tickle. There will be a fashion forest OMG hi. (Marke B.)

Noon-6 p.m., free

Golden Gate Park Music Concourse

50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr., SF

www.byoq.org


MUSIC

Peter Hook and the Light performing Closer

The odd thing about New Order’s disintegration in 2007, with Peter Hook leaving seemingly for good, is that he would tour on Joy Division material. Perhaps it’s simply a commentary on the state of affairs: Hook has attributed illegal downloading to shrinking royalties and live performance are the way to work the back catalog. In any case, his band will perform Joy Division’s final album Closer, a highly acclaimed, darker work that appears on t-shirts less often than Unknown Pleasures, which he played to a packed crowd last year. Obviously, it’s no more Joy Division than upcoming New Order dates without Hook will be New Order, but it will be a showcase for the man’s influential bass style. (Prendiville)

With Oona, DJ Tomas Diablo (Strangelove) 9 p.m., $22

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com


MUSIC

Basscenter III

Tempo-mashing electronic artist Bassnectar returns to the Bay Area for the first time since last year’s sold out show at the Fox Theater. This time, however, he’s bringing his Basscenter event started in 2010, previously held in Broomfield, Colo. and Asheville, NC. Bass-ically it’s a three ring circus (no really — the Vau de Vire Society will be performing) with an eclectic lineup of support. With a more straightforward electro sound, it should be interesting to hear how Wolfgang Gartner works the crowd. And while I don’t generally think of wobbly bass when I think of Dan Deacon, his Tim and Eric musical aesthetic brings a certain ADHD liveliness that only the headliner can match. (Prendiville)

With Bassnectar, Big Gigantic, Wolfgang Gartner, Dan Deacon 7 p.m., $40

Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

99 Grove, SF

www.apeconcerts.com


SUNDAY 18

MUSIC

Rorschach

Listening to Rorschach is like being held down and methodically punched in the face. The powerviolence progenitor from New Jersey paved the way for the last two decades of hardcore, alternating between breakneck blast-beat assaults and almost unbearably heavy breakdowns. The 1991 Rorschach/Neanderthal split is a classic of the genre: four songs in under five minutes that helped launch the race to make the meanest music in the world. Although Rorschach called it quits in 1993 after only four years, the band’s varied catalogue has remained an important influence in both the punk and metal scenes; after jumpstarting 90s hardcore, Rorschach went on to lay the foundations of metalcore. Reformed in 2009 for a short East Coast tour, Rorschach is making its way to the bay for what’s sure to be a memorable, if brutal, night. (Berkmoyer)

With Early Graves, Kowloon Walled City, and Kicker

9 p.m., $10

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com


TUESDAY 20

MUSIC

Laudanum

Laudanum is the East Bay king of doom and gloom, a four piece of the most crushing proportions that features members of Asunder, the other heaviest band in the bay, as well as the now defunct Graves at Sea. If a regent of hell ever enslaved the earth, or a zombie monarch rose to reclaim its throne, it would make sense for Laudanum to compose the coronation march. The slow atmospheric drone is notably more sinister sounding that most contemporaries, drawing black metal influences into the rigor of stoner metal with tortured vocals and dissonant progressions. It’s what an evil bearded wizard riding on the shoulders of a club wielding giant puts on his iPod to jam out to as he lays waste to his enemies and slaughters the innocent. Or, ya’ know, it could be a Zune: evil wizards don’t have brand loyalty. (Berkmoyer)

With the Body and Braveyoung

9 p.m., $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

No shushing

Andrew Lam
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0
No shushing

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Something unexpectedly noisy is happening in the museums of San Francisco. There are two shows taking place in the next couple of weeks that will defy expectations of appropriate gallery sound levels.

The idea for one event was born when artist-quilter Ben Venom wrote a proposal to bring heavy metal music to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Venom’s massive heavy metal quilt, See You on the Other Side, is currently on display in between two motorcycle gang-inspired jackets as part of the ongoing BAN6 exhibition.

The Bay Area metal scene is woven into the fabric of See You on the Other Side. Shirts donated to Venom from local bands such as Hightower, Black Cobra, and Walken — along with old tees for his own collection — were cut up and sewn into his most ambitious design yet: a skull with seven Medusa-style snakes with slithering tongues, multiple pyramids, and lightning bolts.

Venom sewed four other (smaller) heavy metal quilts in the past, so his own collection of vintage shirts has nearly run dry. Along with his friends’ bands, acts such as Gwar, Kylesa, and Red Fang have approached Venom, offering support for his vision or their own collections of shirts to include in future quilts. So far, the only criticisms Venom has faced are from those pissed off that he’s cutting up classic shirts — some of which, like his vintage Testament shirt, can sell for upwards of $80 on Ebay. But he doesn’t see it as destroying something, he’s sees it as giving shirts a new life, a new function. “At the very end of the day, even the beasts of metal need a warm blanket,” he says smiling.

Likely very warm at 13×15-feet, See You on the Other Side includes more than 125 repurposed shirts with vivid and macabre imagery; the red of the snakes’ tongues popping against the white bulls-eye quilting pattern.

The Mission resident takes inspiration from his life growing up in deeply religious, creative family in Southern Georgia, conversely citing heavy metal, the occult, and alchemy imagery as similarly over-the-top exalting. “The way I look at my work is a collision of the outrageous stage antics of Ozzy Osborne collided together with the domestic nature of crafts,” says Venom, arms folded, peering at his work on the high-ceilinged wall.

Another artistic collision of sorts will take place in a few weeks to compliment Venom’s pieces: three local heavy metal bands will play in the sculpture garden at YBCA on Sept. 22, just outside the gallery where Venom’s work hangs.

Venom came up with the event idea when the curator sent out a query to the artists involved in the BAN6 exhibition, to see if anyone wanted to tack on a lecture or performance. “It totally ties into what I’m doing. It’s like, heavy metal at the museum — that’s a little weird,” Venom chuckles. “I contacted Hightower, Black Cobra, and Walken and they were all super amped on it.”

Those three bands are also represented with imagery in the quilt, having donated shirts to Venom, something that the artist notes as meaningful to the spirit of the piece. “I’m hosting the event, but the bands are playing — it’s their night.”

There will be a uniquely different live rock show in a nearby museum this month. The formerly San Franciscan foursome, Deerhoof, is flying in from across the country (New York City, Portland, Oreg., Albuquerque, N.M) to play in the main lobby of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this Thursday, Sept. 15, as part of the SFMOMA: Now Playing series.

Deerhoof — Greg Saunier, John Dieterich, Ed Rodriguez and Satomi Matsuzaki — was documented by filmmaker Adam Pendelton for his video installation, BAND, a reinterpretation of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1968 film Sympathy for the Devil. Godard’s original included scenes of the Rolling Stones working on the track from Beggar’s Banquet, interlaced with clips of the Black Panthers. Pendelton’s three channel video installation, shot in 2009 while Deerhoof was working on its most recent record Deerhoof vs. Evil, includes beautiful close-ups of the avant-garde musicians working on a song, mixed with audio footage of a day in the life of a politically conscious teenager.

The eight-hour shoot caught the band’s first tinkering with “I Did Crimes For You,” a deceptively upbeat, repetitious pop track that kicks off with clean guitar, hand-clapping, and Matsuzaki’s recognizably high girlish vocals explaining: this is a stick-up/this is a stick-up/smash the windows.

“I don’t know what other bands are like when they’re working on music, but it can be pretty high tension,” says Dieterich, from his new home in Albuquerque, “It’s not like we’re in a war zone or something, but at the time it can pretty nerve-wracking.”

Despite the nerves and early unfounded fears about being filmed, Dieterich says the band ended up enjoying the experience. “It’s good to do things like that, to force yourself to be transparent…to be able to operate under any circumstance.” Deerhoof does have a track record of flexibility, whether it be taking risks with new tones or equipment, switching instruments during live shows, or reaching out beyond the traditional album-concert rock band format. The band created and performed an original score to Harry Smith’s silent film Heaven and Earth Magic during the San Francisco International Film Festival a few years back, and its album Milk Man was turned into a piece of modern dance theater by schoolchildren who performed it in Maine.

The SFMOMA event will include Deerhoof’s performance along with a screening of BAND. There also will be a projection of a different Pendelton project; footage of David Hilliard (former chief of staff of the Black Panther Party) touring landmark Black Panther Party sites in Oakland, and an onstage interview with Hilliard.

Deerhoof hasn’t performed in conjunction with Pendelton’s film since the premiere in New York City last year; Dieterich says he’s looking forward to taking it to the museum. “We’re going to be playing in this big entryway, I don’t know acoustically what that room is like — just thinking from a sound perspective, it will have its own strong character.” 

 

DEERHOOF

Thurs/15, 6 p.m., free with admission

San Francisco Museum of Modern Artist

151 Third St., SF

www.sfmoma.org

 

BLACK COBRA, WALKEN, AND HIGHTOWER

Sept. 22, 6 p.m., free with admission

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 701 Mission, SF (415) 978-2787 www.ybca.org

Miami sound machine

Andrew Lam
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1
Miami sound machine

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Michael John “MJ” Hancock is in a silly mood. Out on the road with his band ANR (which stands for Awesome New Republic), the drummer-singer picks up my call and says, “Awesome New Republic answering service.” I give pause, waiting a tick for the beep, assuming this was an answering machine. But he was there, in the van in Grand Rapids, Mich., on the phone after a “long, deep night drive.” Flustered from the confusion, I chattily ask about the current tour.

“It’s going very well,” he says. “We’re all getting along swimmingly aside from the 50 percent of the time when we’re yelling at each other. Most of the yelling is just passionate arguments about important sociopolitical issues though — the way a good American tour should go.”

His curious mood might be due to the odd freak accident that happened to ANR a few days before they left for tour. While filming a music video in the band’s Miami home base for the song “It’s All Around You” off the deluxe version of its album Stay Kids, keyboardist-effects pedal charmer Brian Robertson was trying his hand at some modern dance choreography and ended up breaking his foot on the hard cement floor. “[The song] is about hurricanes and earthquakes pummeling the East Coast — which coincidentally has been happening — and he was spinning a girl around in a conceptual imitation of a hurricane,” explains Hancock.

Now here’s where you need to bring in the suspension of disbelief. This story could be bogus, the modern dance, the hurricane imitation, it all just sounds too darkly comedic to be true. And yet, I choose to believe. And that goes for the music ANR makes as well. The songs off Stay Kids — and the deluxe version released this week — are about the magnificent and horrifying scope of natural disasters, and yet, thanks to the synthy-pyschadelic pop tones, they exude futuristic glee. It’s less ha-ha funny, more thought-provoking amusing. A black comedy.

The duo enlisted a friend to come on tour and help with the things Robertson cannot do with his injury — set up equipment, lift heavy machinery, drive the van. “Brian just sits on a nice golden stool and tells us what to do,” Hancock says. But he can still press the effects pedals with his booted foot.

Hancock may be in a mirthful mood, but he takes his work seriously. The band’s next couple of releases sound as divergent as their sound stretches; one is a live instrumentation rock record influenced by violence around the world, the other an electronic R&B and pop record they’ve been recording in motel rooms along the tour. Along with playing three keyboards and a Moog, Robertson also mixes and masters all their albums.

Hancock and his partner in psychedelic pop crime, Robertson, met and began creating beat-heavy music with soulful melodies after both relocated to South Florida a decade ago to attend the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. In between then and now the duo has released a smattering of well-received records and EPs, toured heavily, and opened for Animal Collective, Neon Indian, and No Age. They got a mention in a New York Times article a few years back about the rise of the Miami indie scene, and have recently been mentioned in the same breath with fellow Miami up-and-comers Jacuzzi Boys.

This tour takes ANR to San Francisco proper for the first time (there was an Oakland show three or so years ago) this Thursday, Sept.15. “Hopefully we’ll make it,” Hancock jokes. “You’ve got a lot of hills and our van doesn’t go up hills very well — I guess we’re playing Bottom of the Hill, so we’ll be okay.” Pause, “If you see three guys pushing a big white creepy stalker van up a hill, you know, that’s us.”

Despite the constant touring and songwriting, the duo says it hasn’t changed all that much in the past eight years. “It’s only really evolved as far as our ability to record better, and lyrically, it’s evolved,” says Hancock. “It used to be a lot more intentionally funny — I guess some people still think we’re pretty funny. But we’re not joking, we’re serious now,” he says with a laugh. Got it, ANR is no laughing matter. *

 

ANR

With We Barbarians, Strange Vine

Thurs/15, 9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

THEATER

OPENING

Hunter’s Point St. Boniface Church Theater, 175 Golden Gate, SF; www.strangeangelstheater.org. $15-25 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Opens Fri/16, 7pm. Runs Sat/17, Sept 23-24, and Sept 28-Oct 1, 7pm (also Sept 23, 2pm). Strange Angels Theater in collaboration with Jump! Theatre performs Elizabeth Gjelten’s musical drama about homelessness.

Night Over Erzinga South Side Theatre, Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 345-7575, www.goldenthread.org. $20-100. Previews Thurs/15, 8:30pm; Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm. Opens Sun/18, 5pm. Runs Thurs, 8:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 9. Golden Thread Productions premieres Adriana Sevahn Nichols’ story about the immigrant experience in the United States, set just after the Armenian Genocide.

The Odyssey Aboard Alma, Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, SF; www.weplayers.org. $160. Opens Sat/17, 12:30pm. Runs Sun/18, Oct 1, 28-29, Nov 4-6, 11-12, and 18, 12:30pm. This “full afternoon adventure” (12:30-5pm) includes a sailing performance of tales from Homer by We Players (aboard an 1891 scow schooner), plus a light meal.

ONGOING

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Oct 20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

All Atheists Are Muslim Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 517-3581, www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. On the TV, CNN carries the dismal thumping of the Bush gang for more war. In the living room, a father and daughter are in a standoff over a proposed live-in boyfriend. It’s 2005, and a clash of generations, as Zahra tries to convince her immigrant Iranian American Muslim father that her white infidel boyfriend Duncan would make an ideal roommate. For her Muslim father, “the Duncan” has plenty of acceptable virtues — even his professed atheism is hardly an insurmountable obstacle to dad, who doesn’t seem to recognize the word but is sure it translates into a wishy-washy approach to the divine through an enthusiastic appreciation for gravity. But moving in together is a different story. How it plays out is the heart of comedian and solo performer Zahra Noorbakhsh’s uneven but charming and funny take on a familiar American family dynamic whose particular ethnic flavor includes a mild but timely geopolitical aroma. Playing herself as well as her loving mother, her bounding and big-hearted father (with his priceless Persian accent), and her good-natured but recalcitrant boyfriend, Noorbakhsh celebrates the immigrant experience while beating back the age’s pernicious appeal to stereotype and xenophobia with the far more realistic metaphor of a nice, crazy family dinner. (Avila)

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm (no show Sept 22). Extended through Oct 8. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

Cymbeline Parade Ground Lawn, Main Post, Presidio (between Graham and Keyes), SF; www.sfshakes.org. Free. Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Sept 25. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival presents its annual “Free Shakespeare in the Park” performance.

Exit, Pursued By a Bear Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Wed/14-Sat/17, 8pm. Crowded Fire performs Lauren Gunderson’s new play, a feminist revenge comedy.

Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055. $25-100. Thurs/15, 8pm; Sat/17-Sun/18, 5pm. Geoff Hoyle returns to the Marsh with his acclaimed solo show.

Joy With Wings: A Daughter’s Tale Alcove Theater, 415 Mason, Fifth Flr, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $32-50. Wed-Thurs, 8pm. Through Oct 6. Chaucer Theater performs Becky Parker’s drama about a mother’s love.

King Henry the Sixth Boxcar Studios, 125a Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $12-15. Thurs/15-Sat/17, 8pm. Do It Live Productions debuts with a contemporary Shakespeare adaptation.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Phoenix Theatere, 414 Mason, Sixth flr, SF; (415) 509-8656. $10-20. Thurs/15-Sat/17, 8pm (also Sat/17, 3pm). Ninjaz of Drama and Divinity Productions Presents Rey Carolino’s contemporary staging of the Bard’s classic.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 23. Marga Gomez performs her comedy about “lies, vanity, and the good old days.”

*Patience Worth Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; (415) 456-8892, www.symmetrytheatre.com. $20-30. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Oct 2. In the second decade of the 20th century, a young new St. Louis bride named Pearl Curran (Megan Trout), looking to rise above her humble Ozarks upbringing yet with hopeless aspirations to be a singer, suddenly began channeling the spirit of a 16th-century woman named Patience Worth. The rest was literary history, here uncovered and subtly examined by playwright Michelle Carter in Symmetry Theatre Company’s thoughtful, gradually stirring world premiere, its second production after last year’s strong debut (with Anthony Clarvoe’s Show and Tell). Introduced to Patience by Emily Hutchings (Elena Wright) and her Ouija board, Pearl soon displaces the chagrined Hutchings — who has literary aspirations of her own she pedals doggedly to the leading publisher of the day (Warren David Keith) — and inverts the patriarchal order as her much older husband (Keith) plays stenographer to the virtuosic verbosity of the spirit. When she adopts a child for Patience whome she names Patience Wee (Alona Bach), she drives the desperately lonely young girl into the arms of her equally isolated mother (Jessica Powell) toward an unexpected and terrible inspiration. Director Erika Chong Shuch sets her able cast (headed by Trout’s sure take on a complex figure) atop an area rug backed by a line of trees and strewn over the bare earth, like a floating island of bourgeois respectability amid a wild and mysterious sea of natural and supernatural impulses, in a complex tale of female liberation that intersects with questions of fame, status, self-invention, ventriloquism, and a dark bargain with destiny that has something quintessentially American about it. (Avila)

“San Francisco Fringe Festival” Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.sffringe.org. $7-10 (passes, $40-75). Through Sun/18. The 20th annual fest contains over 40 shows highlighting unique indie theater.

Show Ho New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; (415) 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $20-32. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Oct 9, 2pm. Through Oct 9. Sara Moore performs her multi-character story about a clown in a low-rent circus.

“3 Guys in Drag Selling Their Stuff” Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm. Edward Crosby Wells’ bawdy comedy is about a trio of friends who host an unusual yard sale.

True West NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.truewestsf.com. $10-28. Wed/14-Sat/17, 8pm. Expression Productions presents Sam Shepard’s tale of two brothers.

Turandot War Memorial Opera House, 201 Van Ness, SF; (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. $21-389. Wed/14, Sept 22, and Oct 4, 7:30pm; Sat/17 and Oct 1, 8pm; Sept 25, 2pm. The San Francisco Opera performs Puccini’s classic in conjunction with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Unveiled Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Thurs/15-Sat/17, 3pm. Brava Theater presents Rohina Malik’s solo show about five Muslim women in the post-9/11 world.

Waiting for Giovanni Decker Theater, New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-36. Wed/14-Sat/17, 8pm; Sun/18, 2pm. This world-premiere play by Jewelle Gomez in collaboration with Harry Waters Jr. imagines a split-second of indecision in the mind of author James Baldwin.

BAY AREA

The Complete History of America (abridged) Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Adam Lon, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor’s three-person romp through American history.

*A Delicate Balance Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-48. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 9. Aurora Theatre performs Edward Albee’s comedy of manners.

Madhouse Rhythm Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs, 7:30pm. Extended through Oct 6. Joshua Walters performs his hip-hop-infused autobiographical show about his experiences with bipolar disorder.

The Merry Wives of Windsor Old Mill Park, 375 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; www.curtaintheatre.org. Free. Sat/17-Sun/18, 2pm. Curtain Theatre performs Shakespeare’s Falstaff-centric comedy.

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 5pm (also Sept 22, 7:30pm). Through Sept 24. This is it: the final extension of Brian Copeland’s solo show about growing up in (nearly) all-white San Leandro.

Of Dice and Men La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 1. Impact Theatre performs Cameron McNary’s comedy about a group of adult Dungeons and Dragons players.

*Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues-Sun, showtimes vary. Through Oct 30. The life of stage and screen legend Rita Moreno is a subject that has no trouble filling two swift and varied acts, especially as related in anecdote, song, comedy, and dance by the serene multiple–award-winning performer and Berkeley resident herself. Indeed, that so much material gets covered so succinctly but rarely abruptly is a real achievement of this attractively adorned autobiographical solo show crafted with playwright and Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone. Director David Galligan even finds room for a couple of smart musical routines, including an expertly comic salute to Moreno’s Googie Gomez in The Ritz (routines and more nicely supported by dancers Ray Garcia and Salvatore Vassallo, and a live band under musical director César Cancino). Part immigrant’s tale, part insider memoir of Hollywood and Broadway — not to mention her tenure on PBS’s The Electric Company, basis of an especially winning sequence here — Moreno’s career as a Puerto Rican woman reared by an indomitable mother in Spanish Harlem tenements as well as the image-making entertainment industry resonates with the great historical-political themes of class, gender, and skin color. But it all remains perfectly, manageably circumscribed by an intriguing personal story of vacillating private and professional fortunes and the humble but vital roots that have afforded Moreno the rare achievement and accrued wisdom of a passionate life. (Avila)

Sense and Sensibility Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Extended through Sept 25. TheatreWorks performs Roger Parsley and Andy Graham’s adaptation of the Jane Austen novel.

The Tempest Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept 25. Marin Shakespeare Company presents Shakespeare’s romance with a steampunk twist.

2012: The Musical! This week: Courthouse Square, 2200 Broadway, SF; www.sfmt.org. Free. Wed/14, 7pm. Also Sat/17-Sun/18, 2pm, Frances Willard/Ho Chi Minh Park, Hillegrass at Derby, Berk; and Mon/19, 7:30pm, Sebastiani Theatre on the Plaza, 476 First St., Sonoma. Continues through Sept 25 at various Bay Area venues. San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts their annual summer musical; this year’s show is about a political theater company torn between selling out and staying true to its anti-corporate roots.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Bare Bones Crow” Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed-Thurs, 8pm, $10-20. Evangel King presents the premiere of a new “shape-shifting performance.”

“Extinction Burst: A Dance of Lost Movement” California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr, SF; (415) 379-8000, www.calacademy.org. Thurs/15 and Sept 22, 27, 7:30pm; Tues/20 and Sept 29, 11am. Choreographer Chris Black presents a dance installation that pays homage to extinct species.

“Feast of Words: A Literary Potluck” SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; feastofwords.somarts.org. Tues, 7pm. $12. “Schoolhouse Rocks” is the theme of this dinner party for writers and foodies, with youth literary and culinary guests from 826 Valencia and Old Skool Café.

“4 Mercy: Friendly Fires” Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. $20. Southern Railroad Theatre Company performs four new short plays by Susan Jackson.

“Janaki: Daughter of the Dirt” Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF; www.brownpapertickets.con, Fri-Sat, 7pm; Sun, 3pm. $20-45. Siren Theatre Project presents Virali Gokaldas’ reinterpretation of the Ramayana.

“A Night of Rejection” Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF; www.cartoonart.org. Tues, 7pm. $10-85. Cartoonists discuss works rejected by the New Yorker.

“The People: San Francisco” Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.ybca.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm. $10. Big Art Group performs an outdoor live theater and real-time video event inspired by interviews with San Francisco residents.

“PianoFight’s Monday Night ForePlays” Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; www.pianofight.com. Mon, 8pm, Through Oct 24. $20-30. Original comedic sketches written, directed, and performed by women.

Lea Salonga Venetian Room, Fairmount San Francisco, 950 Mason, SF; www.bayareacabaret.org. Sat, 5pm, $50. The Tony-winning performer performs as part of the Bay Area Cabaret concert series.

“San Francisco’s Comedy Day” Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.comedyday.com. Sun, noon-5pm. Free. The 31st annual incarnation of the free comedy festival features 40 performers, plus the chance of A-list celebrity cameos.

“Stand Up for the Tender Gender” Punch Line Comedy Club, 444 Battery, SF; petalsfundraiser.eventbee.com. Mon, 7pm. $25-50. Female comedians perform to raise money for Petals in the Dust: India’s Missing Girls, a documentary about female genocide in India.

“What a Swell Party! The Cole Porter Salon” Alcazar Theater, 650 Geary, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. Thurs, 7pm. $70. Musical theater company 42nd Street Moon kicks off its 2011-2012 season with a salute to Porter.

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

OPENING

*All She Can Muscle Milkers and protein powderheads might want to bottle the ferocity of Texas-small-town teen Luz Garcia (Corina Calderon): it’s all heat, marathon-level work ethic, and can-do pigheaded mettle — hold the heavy metals. Instead, Luz presses, or rather lifts, really heavy metal — her opportunity to rise above her Mexican American family’s working-class lot is to attend University of Texas at Austin on a scholarship pegged on winning the state power lifting championships. Unfortunately, there’s a gauntlet of obstacles facing the teenager: her family is struggling with the burden of debt, boyfriend Raynaldo (Jeremy Ray Valdez) is tempting her with performance-enhancement drugs, and Luz has a bit of an anger-management issue, so much so that her abuela (Julia Vera) is rubbing eggs on her and taking her to a bruja to exorcise her demons. In Luz’s favor, however, is filmmaker Amy Wendel, who has an empathetic, attentive eye for the petite blue-collar powerhouse who can dead lift 280 pounds yet must struggle to find her balance in the world. Screening as part of the Maya Indie Film Series. (1:36) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Aurora Critics have been divided over Cristi Puiu’s Aurora since its 2010 Cannes debut. It’s not hard to see why: even filmgoers who loved Puiu’s 2005 The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, or are obsessed with Romania’s newly thriving film industry, or even enjoy films that are deliberately slow-moving and enigmatic (like 1975’s Jeanne Dielman) still may want to give Aurora a pass. For three hours, a man (played by Puiu) putters, drives around, spies, and has a series of increasingly frustrating and futile encounters (with neighbors, relatives, co-workers, and strangers). When a firearm appears around 45 minutes in, it seems that something might finally happen, but it’s no spoiler to reveal that the motivation behind what does happen is barely explained, and also that the events unfold in inscrutable long shots. It’s clear by the film’s extreme length that Puiu wants viewers to feel mind-numbed by his deconstructed genre film (its working title was the perhaps too-literal Scenes from a Crime). The artistic effort is admirable, but be warned: there’s a fine line between “challenging” and “boring.” (3:01) SFFS New People Cinema. (Eddy)

*Cold Fish Did you love (or find yourself baffled by) Sion Sono’s Love Exposure during its Roxie run? Sono’s Cold Fish is similarly occupied with indoctrination, masochism, and extreme behavior. However, it’s also somewhat better able to sustain a tone of hysteria escalating toward dementia. An unhappy family (father Mitsuru Fukikoshi, daughter Hikari Kajiwara, stepmother Megumi Kagurazaka) is yanked into the orbit of a tropical-fish tycoon (Denden) who at first seems a boisterous benefactor providing shock therapy to their depressed lives out of simple altruism. But he and his bombshell wife (Asuka Kurosawa) soon reveal sides not just sinister but psychopathic, ensnaring all three in diabolical doings that encompass murder, rape, grisly corpse disposals, and more. Structured like Love Exposure as one long countdown to a transformative moment, Cold Fish pushes black comedy way beyond the bounds of taste with an oddly neutralizing good cheer. It’s a manic Grand Guignol set to the soothing kitsch strains of retro Hawaiian-flavored lounge music. (2:24) Roxie. (Harvey)

*Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death, and Technology Local filmmaker Tiffany Shlain (founder of the Webby Awards) takes a look at 21st century connections, both technological and personal, in this documentary. And the film gets very personal at times; constructed mostly as a video collage (using animation, stock footage, etc.), its few original clips come from Shlain family movies, which become more poignant when it’s revealed that the filmmaker’s beloved father, an author and brain surgeon, is dying of brain cancer. Shlain’s film draws some of its themes from her father’s 1999 book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, a study of literacy’s effect on male-female dynamics over history, and the film is dedicated to him. But though the Shlain family’s struggles with loss and life (the filmmaker was pregnant when her father died) form Connected‘s thru line, the film’s probing, lively exploration of links (on- and offline) is universally relatable, and ultimately quite thought-provoking. (1:20) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame Tsui Hark directs this period epic starring Andy Lau and featuring fight choreography by Sammo Hung. (2:02) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) Presidio. (Chun)

Forged Strong performances mark the wintry, fateful indie Forged, which at times almost threatens to swallow up its players in its sooty, steel-town ambience. Two lives run in tandem: homeless teen Machito (David Castro) is scraping out a life alone, haunted by horrific memories, while father Chuco (Manny Perez) has just emerged from prison, released on good behavior and far from eager to return to his criminal past. Much stands between the father and son — Chuco murdered Machito’s mother in front of him, and has much to make up for. Dysfunctional grandmother Dianne (Margo Martindale) is little help. Will viewers care about these blighted figures, bundled up in the cold and attempting to thaw from the inside out? Director William Wedig dances with clichés, but the actors, particularly Perez, are critical in making us care about the outcome, positioned somewhere between Scranton, Penn., and oblivion. Screening as part of the Maya Indie Film Series.

(1:17) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

I Don’t Know How She Does It Sarah Jessica Parker stars in this comedy about a woman who struggles to balance her career, family, and (no doubt) fabulous wardrobe. (1:35) Presidio.

The Lion King 3D Hakuna matata — in your face! (1:29) Shattuck.

Mary Lou A musical fable for fans of Glee, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and Bollywood, the latest from Eytan Fox (2002’s Yossi and Jagger) is a drag-flavored dramedy (Israel’s first?) Originally a hit miniseries in its home country, Mary Lou screens at the Castro in one big chunk jammed with singing, dancing, and a dreamy cast. Pouty Ido Rosenberg stars as Meir, a gay boy obsessed with finding the mother who left him when he was 10. After a disastrous graduation party, Meir flees his homophobic high school for the worldly environs of Tel Aviv, where he soon becomes a drag star named Mary Lou, after his mother’s favorite song. Love, loss, friendship, tragedy, joy, coming-of-age, and quite a few elaborate musical numbers soon transpire — the plot is not without clichés, to be sure, but it’s hard to hate on anything possessed of such sparkly energy. Not familiar with Svika Pick, the Israeli legend whose music provides much of the soundtrack? It matters not, especially if you’re a fan of deliriously corny pop tunes. (2:30) Castro. (Eddy)

Mozart’s Sister Pity the talented sister of a world-shaking prodigy. Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart, who may have had just as much promise as a composer as her younger brother, according to Rene Féret’s Mozart’s Sister. A scant five years older, enlisted in the traveling family band led by father-teacher Leopold (Marc Barbe), yet forced to hide her music, being female and forbidden to play violin and compose, Nannerl (Marie Féret, the filmmaker’s daughter) tours the courts of Europe and is acclaimed as a keyboardist and vocalist but is expected to share little of her brother’s brilliant future. Following a chance carriage breakdown near a French monastery, Nannerl befriends one of its precious inhabitants, a daughter of Louis XV (Lisa Féret, another offspring), which leads her to Versailles, into a cross-dressing guise of a boy, and puts her into the sights of the Dauphin (Clovis Fouin, who could easily find a spot in the Cullen vampire clan). He’s seduced by her music and likewise charms Nannerl with his power and feline good looks — what’s a humble court minstrel to do? The conceit of casting one’s daughters in a narrative hinging on unjustly neglected female progeny — shades of Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III (1990)! — almost capsizes this otherwise thoughtful re-imagination of Maria Anna’s thwarted life; despite the fact Féret has inserted his children in his films in the past, both girls offer little emotional depth to their roles. Nevertheless, as a feminist rediscovery pic akin to Camille Claudel (1988), Mozart’s Sister instructs on yet another tragically quashed woman artist and might inspire some righteous indignation. (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Straw Dogs Which is worse: a pointless remake of a classic movie, or a re-release of a classic movie with 3D slapped all over it? Discuss. (1:50) Shattuck.

ONGOING

Apollo 18 (1:26) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*Bellflower Picture Two Lane Blacktop (1971) drifters armed with “dude”-centric vocabulary and an obsession with The Road Warrior (1981) and its apocalypse-wow survivalist chic. There are so many pleasures in this janky, so-very-DIY, heavy-on-the-sunblasted-atmosphere indie that you’re almost willing to overlook the clichés, the dead zones, and the annoying characters. Seeming every-dudes Woodrow (director-writer-producer Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are far too obsessed with tricking out their cars and building a flamethrower for their own good — the misfits must force themselves out of the metal shop of the mind to meet women. So when Woodrow goes up against Milly (Jessie Wiseman) in a cricket-eating contest at a bar, it’s love at first bite. Their meet-gross morphs into a road trip and eventually a relationship, while the flamethrower nags, unexplained, in the background, like an unfired gun — or an unconsummated, not-funny bromance. These manifestations of male fantasy — muscle cars, weapons, and tough chicks — are cast in a dreamy, saturated, and burnt-at-the-edges light, as Glodell and company weave together barely articulated reveries and bad-new-west imagery with a kind of fuck-all intelligence, culminating in a finale that will either haunt you with its scattershot machismo-romanticism or leave you scratching your noggin wondering what just happened. (1:46) Roxie. (Chun)

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (1:36) 1000 Van Ness.

Captain America: The First Avenger OK, Marvel. I could get behind 2008’s Iron Man (last year’s Iron Man 2, not so much), but after Thor and now Captain America, I’m starting to get cynical about this multi-year build-up to the full-on Avengers movie, due in May 2012. Can even a superhero-stuffed movie directed by Joss Whedon live up to all this hype? There’s plenty of time to ponder, and maybe worry a little, with Captain America’s backstory-explaining picture now in theaters. Chris Evans stars as the 90-pound weakling who morphs into a supersoldier, thanks to the World War II-era tinkerings of a scientist (Stanley Tucci) and an inventor (Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man’s dad). The original plan for the musclebound shield-bearer (fighting Nazis, natch) gets waylaid a bit when the newly famous Captain America becomes a PR prop for the U.S. government; it’s abandoned entirely when a worse-than-Hitler foe, in the guise of power-obsessed Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), threatens the world. Directed by Spielberg cohort Joe Johnston, Captain America is gee-whiz enjoyable enough, but it’s very nearly the same movie as Thor, which no amount of Tommy Lee Jones (as a sarcastic army colonel) wisecracks can conceal. And here’s an anti-spoiler: there’s no post-credits surprise in this one, so you can bolt as soon as they start to roll. (2:09) SF Center. (Eddy)

Chasing Madoff Bernie Madoff was a cold-blooded Ponzi schemer who ripped off billions from rich folks, average folks, little old ladies, children, charities, and so on, ruining lives while stoking the fire of the still-robust financial crisis. But he isn’t the only villain in Jeff Prosserman’s doc — there’s plenty of haterade left over to be (deservedly) dumped on the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which (willfully?) looked the other way for nearly a decade despite warnings about Madoff’s growing misdeeds. Chasing Madoff champions the few who dared speak up, chiefly fraud investigator Harry Markopolos, who badgered the SEC and the press for years and was eventually outed as the “Madoff whistleblower,” despite the fact that Madoff’s downfall came, more or less, when the man simply ran out of money. It was only after the fact that Markopolos gained fame by shaming the SEC with what must have been a deeply satisfying I-told-you-so testimony before Congress. Madoff’s crimes are so recent and notorious that anyone who watches this doc will already know what happens in the end; still, Chasing Madoff tries quite hard to build suspense. (As a result Markopolos comes off a bit paranoid — sure, Madoff may have had underworld connections, but do we really a re-enactment of Markopolos at the gun range, or groping ‘neath his minivan to check for car bombs?) Despite his ultimate triumph, Markopolos is reluctant to agree with anyone who calls him a hero, pointing out that because his findings were ignored, he wasn’t able to prevent Madoff from preying on more victims. The suicides associated with the Madoff collapse add an even sadder coda to the story. (1:31) Metreon. (Eddy)

Circumstance Thirteen (2003) goes to Tehran? The world of sex, drugs, and underground nightclubs in Iran provides the backdrop for writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s lusty, dreamy take on the passionate teenagers behind the hijabs. Risking jail and worse are the sassy, privileged Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and the beautiful, orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), who, much like young women anywhere, just want to be free — to swim, sing, dance, test boundaries, lose, and then find themselves. The difference here is that they’re under constant, unnerving surveillance, in a country where more than 70 percent of the population is less than 30 years old. Nevertheless, within their mansion walls and without, beneath graffitied walls and undulating at intoxicating house parties, the two girls begin to fall in love with each other, as Atafeh’s handsome, albeit creepy older brother Mehran (Palo Alto-bred Reza Sixo Safai) gazes on. The onetime musical talent’s back from rehab, has returned to the mosque with all the zeal of the prodigal, and has hooked up with the Morality Police that enforces the nation’s cultural laws. Filmed underground in Beirut, with layers that permit both pleasure and protest (wait for the hilarious moment when 2008’s Milk is dubbed in Farsi), Circumstance viscerally transmits the realities and fantasies of Iranian young women on the verge. (1:45) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

Colombiana (1:47) 1000 Van Ness.

*Contagion Tasked with such panic-inducing material, one has to appreciate director Steven Soderbergh’s cool head and hand with Contagion. Some might even dub this epic thriller (of sorts) cold, clinical, and completely lacking in bedside manner. Still, for those who’d rather be in the hands of a doctor who refuses to talk down to the patient, Contagion comes on like a refreshingly smart, somewhat melodrama-free clean room, a clear-eyed response to a messy, terrifying subject. A deadly virus is spreading swiftly — sans cure, vaccine, or sense — starting with a few unlikely suspects: globe-trotting corporate exec Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), a waiter, a European tourist, and a Japanese businessman. The chase is on to track the disease’s genesis and find a way to combat it, from the halls of the San Francisco Chronicle and blog posts of citizen activist-journalist Alan (Jude Law), to the emergency hospital in the Midwest set up by intrepid Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet), to a tiny village in China with a World Health investigator (Marion Cotillard). Soderbergh’s brisk, businesslike storytelling approach nicely counterpoints the hysteria going off on the ground, as looting and anarchy breaks out around Beth’s immune widower Mitch (Matt Damon), and draws you in — though the tact of making this disease’s Typhoid Mary a sexually profligate woman is unsettling and borderline offensive, as is the predictable blame-it-on-the-Chinese origin coda. (1:42) Balboa, California, Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark If you’re expecting a traditional haunted house story, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark might be a disappointment. The film, which was co-written by Guillermo del Toro, has a lot in common with his Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) — both movies are more dark fairy tale than horror. They follow a young girl who discovers a mystical world around her, much to the disbelief of the adults around her. It’s worth noting that Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is lighter fare: despite all the peril involved, it’s actually pretty fun. Young Bailee Madison, who made such an impression in 2009’s Brothers, is a charming lead, precocious but believable. And Katie Holmes is surprisingly sympathetic in her role as the caring stepmother, a nice switch from the standard fairy tale trope. As with Fright Night, the ad campaign for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is misleading, so here’s hoping audience members looking for a gory slasher will appreciate a whimsical fable instead. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Chances are you aren’t going to jump into the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. So while the movie is probably the best Harry Potter film yet, it’s more a fitting conclusion than a standalone film. For fans of the books, there are no real surprises — this is a close adaptation. And for those Harry Potter movie fans who haven’t read the books, shame on you, and kudos if you managed to not get spoiled. It’s hard for me to offer a serious critical analysis of Part 2, because it represents the end of a long and very emotional journey. (Everyone in that audience was crying. Everyone.) I will say that, as was the case in the book, there are a few overdone, schmaltzy moments that aren’t really necessary. But in the context of the series, they’re forgivable — this may not be the great cinematic event of our generation, but Harry Potter as a whole is sure to be one of our most enduring cultural icons. (2:10) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*The Hedgehog You needn’t possess the rough, everyday refinement of the characters of The Hedgehog to appreciate this debut feature by director-screenwriter Mona Achache — just an appreciation for a delicate touch and a tender heart. Eleven-year-old Paloma (the wonderful Garance Le Guillermic) is too smart for her own good, bored, neglected by her parents, and left to fend for herself with only her considerable imagination and a camcorder. She drifts around her fishbowl of privilege, a deluxe art nouveau-style apartment building in Paris, leveling her all-too-wise gaze on its denizens and plotting certain suicide on her 12th birthday — that is until a new resident appears in her viewfinder: a kindly Japanese gentleman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He has as much of a connoisseur’s eye as Paloma — the proof is in his unlikely focus of attention, the building’s concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko, resembling a burly Gertrude Stein), who hides her cultured and bookish inclinations behind a gruff, drab exterior. They recognize in each other a reverence for an almost monkish life of the mind, the austere elegance of wabi-sabi, and the transient beauty of rough-hewn imperfection, even in the sleek, well-heeled heart of the City of Light. To the credit of Achache, working with Muriel Barbery’s novel, these unlikely fragile friendships between outsiders take hold in a way that sidesteps preciousness and stays with you long after its pages have turned. (1:40) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Higher Ground Higher Ground does not bite off more than it can chew. I guess that should go without saying, but it’s striking how comfortably Vera Farmiga (in her directorial debut) tackles this story of devotion and doubt. Based on the memoirs of Carolyn S. Briggs, who co-wrote the screenplay, this deeply personal film follows Corrine Walker (Vera Farmiga) from her adolescence through the trials of youth and middle age, her marriage to high school sweetheart Ethan (Joshua Leonard), and their lives as members of a small hippie Christian community. Although religion serves as a backdrop for Higher Ground, it doesn’t suffocate the human element of the story; it’s less a film about Christianity than it is about the challenges one woman faces as she tries to find room for herself amidst faith. Farmiga treats her subjects with empathy and humor and crafts a thoughtful, tender slice of sixties Midwest Americana. (1:49) Opera Plaza, Sundance Kabuki. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*The Interrupters With concern from society and government as a whole at low ebb, communities at greater risk of violence from within than ever have had to come up with their own peace-making solutions. The Interrupters, the latest documentary by Steve James (1994’s Hoop Dreams), shows dedicated efforts to help one of the nation’s worst centers of such bloodshed: Chicago. “Violence is like the great infectious diseases of all history,” says epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, in that it can be stopped from spreading to epidemic proportions by numerous “initial interruption(s) of transmission” at its source. He translated that perspective into the founding of CeaseFire, an organization that doesn’t aim to summarily end the existence of gangs and drug trade. Instead, its plain but hardly simple mission is to stop the shootings, stabbings, etc. which are exacerbated by unemployment, broken families, and other sources of stress whose cumulative effect can rapidly escalate a casual dis to a mortal confrontation. Under CeaseFire’s auspices, Tio Hardiman created the Violence Interrupters program, which drafts people from the community — many former gangbangers themselves — as mediators wading into conflicts to defuse them before things get out of hand. It takes considerable will and nerves of steel; “interrupters” have been shot at, and during the course of this documentary’s year-long span one volunteer lands in the hospital for his trouble. But The Interrupters makes a powerful case against the inevitability of hopelessness turning into violence. (2:05) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Little Rock When the rental car driven by Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka) and Rintaro Sakamato (Rintaro Sawamoto) breaks down in nowheresville, California (actually, a small town called Little Rock), an air of disillusion hangs between the siblings, on vacation to “see America.” Holed up in a motel room, their disappointment is palpable, until a chance encounter with some locals sucks the pair into exurban American life. By the time their car is again roadworthy, Atsuko can’t bear to leave and decides to stay behind as her brother, the only one of the two who speaks a word of English, continues ahead without her. Communication is the driving force behind Little Rock and the language barrier somehow never gets stale; it certainly allows Okatsuka the opportunity for some superb acting. Despite some directorial flourishes (by Mike Ott), however, the story doesn’t really hold many surprises, and its inevitable conclusion is glimpsed long before it’s reached. (1:25) Roxie. (Berkmoyer)

*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Albany, Clay, Piedmont, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Presidio. (Harvey)

*The Names of Love Arthur (Jacques Gamblin) is a 40-ish scientist being interviewed about the threat of a bird flu epidemic when his radio broadcast is interrupted by 20-something Baya (Sara Forestier), who denounces him on-air as a “fascist” for frightening the public. But then, Baya tends to use that label rather indiscriminately, applying it to anyone who might conceivably have views to the right of the dial — and Arthur is in fact a solid liberal, which means she can bed him for love. As opposed to the many, many other men she beds as a self-described “political whore,” seeking out conservative types in order to seduce them and hopefully induce an idealogical shift by whispering sweet nothings (“Not all Arabs are thieves,” etc.) as they orgasm. Raised by parents whose emotions are so tightly wound his mother won’t acknowledge her parents were Jews killed at Auschwitz, Arthur has a hard time adjusting to a relationship with a lover who is faithful emotionally but sees promiscuity as her propagandic gift to the world. Meanwhile Baya’s largely Algerian family treats garrulous political argument as the very air they breathe. This odd-couple story written by Baya Kasmi and director Michel Leclerc deals with serious issues in both humorous and respectful fashion, making for one of the more novel, delightful and depthed French romantic comedies in a long time. Added plus: lots of antic gratuitous nudity. (1:42) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*One Day Why do romantic comedies get such a bad rap? Blame it on the lame set-up, the contrived hurdles artificially buttressed by the obligatory chorus of BFFs, the superficial something-for-every-demographic-with-ADD multinarrative, and the implausible resolutions topped by something as simple as a kiss or as conventional as marriage, but often no deeper, more crafted, or heartfelt than an application of lip gloss. Yet the lite-as-froyo pleasures of the genre don’t daunt Danish director Lone Scherfig, best known for her deft touch with a woman’s story that cuts closer to the bone, with 2009’s An Education. Her new film, One Day, based on the best-selling novel by David Nicholls, flirts with the rom-com form — from the kitsch associations with Same Time, Next Year (1978) to the trailer that hangs its love story on a crush — but musters emotional heft through its accumulation of period details, a latticework of flashbacks, and collection of encounters between its charming protagonists: upper-crusty TV presenter Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working-class aspiring writer Emma (Anne Hathaway). Their quickie university friendship slowly unfolds, as they meet every St. Swithin’s Day, July 15, over a span of years, into the most important relationship of their lives. Despite the blue-collar female lead and UK backdrop that it shares with An Education, One Day feels like a departure for Scherfig, who first found international attention for her award-winning Dogme 95-affiliated Italian for Beginners (2000). (1:48) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont. (Chun)

*Our Idiot Brother If you thought 1998’s The Big Lebowski had eked all the humor that it could from the Dude, well, screenwriter (and Vanity Fair contributor) Evgenia Peretz, her not-so-idiotic brother (director Jesse Peretz), and star Paul Rudd would differ. They correctly guessed that there are still laughs to be wrung from a shaggy stoner in floral jams, only this time with less fuuuck-s and more benevolent, idiot-savant good vibrations. Dazed and confused broheim 2.0 (Rudd) is glimpsed through the jaded, harried prism of his three dysfunctional, supposedly normal sisters: frumpadelic mom Liz (Emily Mortimer), queen-bitch Vanity Fair writer Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), and slatternly would-be comedian Natalie (Zooey Deschanel). A good-hearted naïf who’s easily entrapped by a uniformed police officer claiming to need some pity doobage, Ned has just emerged from the joint and is now couch-surfing among his sibs, exposing the hypocrisies of bourgie-hipster Brooklyn, as well as the infidelities and vanities of family, friends, and partners (Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, and Hugh Dancy) as he goes, in his own good-natured, aw-shucks way. As innocuous (and desexualized) as Andy Griffith beneath the hippie trappings, this dude-with-a-little-d knows where his real family is — with his dog, Willie Nelson, who loves him just as unconditionally. Beastie besties have never seemed so innocent as they are in this proudly feel-good comedy, and despite a cringe-y, saccharine soundtrack and lackadaisical pacing, Rudd’s charismatic sunny slacker and some pointed jabs at the follies of the cooler-than-thou save this indie-that-could. (1:36) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) Lumiere. (Chun)

*Puzzle Careful as she does it: director Natalia Smirnoff displays a deft hand with a woman’s portrait in her debut feature, Puzzle. Argentinian middle-aged housewife and mother Maria (Maria Onetto) is so busy taking care of others and running her household, down to baking her own 50th birthday cake, that she’s lost touch with herself, her own pleasures, and her own sense of accomplishment. After reassembling a shattered plate, she discovers an aptitude for puzzle solving, leading her to sign up for a competition. Her partner is a wealthy, worldly man (Arturo Goetz) she meets after answering an ad at a puzzle store. It’s the minutiae, the little things, that matter in Puzzle — namely watching Maria pierce together her identity, along with her puzzles, via handheld shots bathed in a gentle golden light — adding up to pure satisfaction. (1:29) SFFS New People Cinema. (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42) Four Star, Opera Plaza.

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Balboa, Lumiere, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Berkmoyer)

*Shaolin There’s a lot to like about Shaolin, from Andy Lau, as a warlord turned passionate monk, to the return of Jackie Chan, as a stir-frying Shaolin, to its overall Buddhistic message (by way of heaps of chopsocky, blood-spitting violence), to its many action scenes, complete with mucho ax-throwing and horsing around with out-of-control carriages. We’re at the dawn of China’s republic, and the warlords are squabbling over the country’s spoils. General Hou Jie (Lau) appears to be the most ruthless of them all, following his second in command Cao Man (Nicholas Tse) into the Shaolin Temple to pursue an enemy with a golden secret and arrogantly leaving his mark on the sanctuary signage. But tragedy turns Hou around and sends him in the temple once more, where he finds real brotherhood with the good-hearted monks. Lau has reteamed here with director Benny Chan, and the results effectively recast the star, sometimes too easily pictured as a villain with his hawkish looks, as a hero once again, all while foregrounding Buddhism and giving it to the white devils at the end — an anti-imperialism message that has become rote in recent years, little wonder considering China’s growing might and the hardening of positions on the front lines of the global economy. (2:11) Four Star. (Chun)

Shark Night 3D (1:31) 1000 Van Ness.

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness This documentary cuts to the chase right at the beginning: yeah, Sholem Aleichem was the guy who wrote the Tevye stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. But filmmaker Joseph Dorman isn’t trying to make Fiddler: Behind the Musical. Instead, he takes an in-depth look at the life, writing career, and cultural significance of “one of the great modern Jewish writers — and our greatest Yiddish writer,” per the film’s press notes. Fans of Jewish lit will be particularly engaged by Sholem Aleichem’s tale; raised in a shtetl in what’s now the Ukraine, he moved around Europe and to the United States pursuing various careers, but always writing the popular stories that addressed not just Jewish life, but broader issues facing turn-of-the-last-century Jews, including the cross-generational conflicts that make up much of Fiddler‘s plot and humor. That said, this film does rely an awful lot on PBS-style slow pans over black-and-white photos and intellectual talking heads; one suspects the subject himself (so devoted was he to entertaining the regular folk who gobbled up his tales) would’ve preferred his life story to unfold in a livelier fashion. (1:33) Balboa. (Eddy)

*Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure Once upon a time (1987 to be exact), two young men moved to San Francisco from the Midwest. Eddie Lee “Sausage” and Mitchell “Mitch D” Deprey wound up living in a somewhat derelict apartment in the Lower Haight. The paint was peeling and the walls were thin, but the rent was cheap. What Eddie and Mitch didn’t count on was having Peter J. Haskett and Raymond Huffman as their neighbors. “You blind cocksucker. You wanna fuck with me? You try to touch me and I will kill you in a fucking minute.” “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up little man!” The insults, tantrum throwing, and threats of violence coming from next door were constant. Eddie and Mitch started to lose sleep; after one failed attempt at complaining to Raymond’s face (he threatened death), they started tape-recording the endless geyser of vitriol — first, as possible future evidence, but also out of a growing voyeuristic fascination with these two seniors who had to be the world’s oddest and angriest odd couple. The rest is history. Mitch and Eddie started including snippets of Peter and Ray’s bickering on mix tapes for friends. Somehow, the editor of the now-defunct SF noise music zine Bananafish heard a snippet and approached Mitch and Eddie about distributing compilations of the recordings to a large network of found sound fans. Gradually “Peter and Raymond” became known and much-beloved characters. Their warped repartee inspired several theatrical adaptations, short animated films, pages of comic book panels by artists such as Dan Clowes, and even a one-off single from Devo side project the Wipeouters. Matthew Bate’s documentary Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure is much an attempt to comprehensively recount the above long, strange trip from start to finish; it is also the newest chapter in the now 20-year saga of Peter, Raymond, Mitch, and Eddie. (1:30) Roxie. (Sussman)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Warrior Those wondering why the mixed martial arts scene has captured the imagination of so many can finally understand what the fuss is all about, now that it comes filtered through a melodramatic narrative akin to The Fighter (2010). Warrior‘s mis-en-scene is immediately recognizable: a prodigal returns, in the form of Tom Conlon (Tom Hardy). Once a talented teenage wrestler, the now-battered man is the damaged youngest son of alcoholic ex-boxer Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte). Tom wants his father to train him for a major mixed martial arts tournament with a multimillion-dollar purse, though the two obviously still have a deadly hold on each other — the repentant Paddy is on the wagon and the emotionally bruised Tom harbors secrets he won’t reveal — and battle with cutting comments rather than fists. Tom isn’t the only prodigal in the house: Paddy has lost the trust of Tom’s bro, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former fighter and present-day physics high school teacher who’s struggling to make ends meet with an underwater mortgage. Though Warrior is no Raging Bull (1980), it almost outdukes The Fighter in terms of its brutal bouts, conveying the swift, no-holds-barred action of MMA in the ring, while giving actors plenty of drama to wrap their jowls ’round — particularly in Nolte’s case. His tore-up turn as an all-excuses patriarch is as heartbreaking as a solid kick to the jaw. (2:19) California, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

The Whistleblower (1:58) Smith Rafael.

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

Localized Appreesh: The Jaunting Martyrs

Tony Robles
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Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. Each week a band/music-maker with a show, album release, or general good news during those seven days is highlighted and spotlit. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

The Jaunting Martyrs were chosen for Localized Appreesh because the seven-piece band has a great, thoroughly San Franciscan in spirit, show this week and it could use your attention: Kimo’s tonight (Tuesday) with Fierce Bad Rabbit, Wesley Woo, Halftime Heros.

Plus, have you heard its music? It’s like an Eastern European circus took a folky Appalachian holiday.  It’s both quiet, classical bedtime story and traveling, rambling, carnival party.  The song “Surfin Tzigane” off last year’s self-titled EP is probably the most telling. With initially delicate Spanish-style strumming, it leads eventually to rowdy wet reverb –  not out of place within a true-blue American surf rock Dick Dale track – and, laid over that, Bulgarian drumming and Turkish horn. It’s world traveling from the ground-pillow comfort of your own intimate local music venue.

Year and location of origin: 2008, San Francisco, Calif.
Band name origin: Originally, it began as the random name of the track of space music Justine was sending off in the mail when she met Brendan on the BART train, but has come to mean something deeper, communicated in some of the characters in our songs, such as Mickey, Lila, and Bonnie Blue. Basically, A Jaunting Martyr is one who has moved past anger and angst into acceptance of their plight, and is able to laugh and dance in the face of hopelessness.
Band motto: “Never mind the baby faces, this is a savage band.”
Description of sound in 10 words or less: A sound that tells a story, fluttering from intimate to intense.
Instrumentation: Electric guitar, bass, banjo, mandolin, trumpet, tapan (Bulgarian drum), fiddle, charango, kaval.
Most recent release: A self-titled self-released, self-mixed self-published EP.
Best part about life as a Bay Area band: This is simply the most beautiful, spiritually powerful place in the world. We are all natives here, we all consider it home. (Except for Ivan, he’s from Bulgaria, which I’m sure he digs as well).
Worst part about life as a Bay Area band: Those folks with the tightly crossed arms at shows.
First record/cassette tape/or CD ever purchased: The Mermen – A Glorious Lethal Euphoria.
Most recent record/cassette tape/CD/or Mp3 purchased/borrowed from the Web: Spirits of The Red City – Hunter Moon.
Favorite local eatery and dish: Lucca Foods on Irving and 20th.  Best deli in SF, baby. Get the Billy Filly. (You can only get it when Billy’s working).

With Fierce Bad Rabbit, Wesley Woo, Halftime Heros
Tues/13, 9 p.m., $6
Kimo’s
1351 Polk, SF
www.kimosbarsf.com

Try not to fall in love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOC31u1GzxU&feature=related

The Performant: Space cadets

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Cosmic San Francisco mainstays Audium and Planet Booty shoot us to the moon.

Some only-in-San-Francisco adventures are subtler than others — they’re you-have-to-know-they’re-there treasures, unencumbered by a surfeit of fanfare or weight of fickle expectation.

Audium, a continually-morphing collaboration in sound design between composer Stan Shaff and electronics “architect” Douglas McEachern, definitely counts as one of these.

Beginning in 1960 with a single performance involving eight speakers and a four-channel board, Shaff and McEachern have spent decades perfecting their singular brainchild—a custom-built performance space where the structural relationships of sound and space can be fully explored.
       
Walking into the intimate theatre is a small adventure in and of itself, feet shuffling along a path of illuminated glow tape arrows leading the opposite direction, as ripples of sound bounce along the barely lit passage. Beneath a mothership portal of speakers arranged in concentric circles, three fairy rings of chairs encircle a large multi-directional speaker positioned in the very center of the room. More speakers discreetly line the walls and crouch beneath chairs, 176 in all. Once all are seated, the lights fade from dim to black to the sounds of waves crashing along a sandy shore, and the immersive Audium experience begins.

As with any musical composition, there is a set order in which the vast catalogue of field recordings is played, but Shaff manipulates the trajectory and emphasis of each at every performance: both conductor and orchestra of one. In addition to water sounds of all varieties are numerous birdsongs, snatches of children’s voices, galloping horses, thunder, laughter, drumrolls, horns, strings, West African polyphony, a pipe organ, and synthesized electronica zinging from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, ear to ear. Without benefit of sight, the body’s capacity to trace the actual physical curve of each sound as it travels from speaker to speaker becomes enhanced, and the occasional rustling of listening bodies adds a subtle layer of improv to the piece, a connection that Shaff strives to enhance with every performance. Upon exiting, the sole visual component of the work—a video projection of flowing water—allows each visitor a brief moment to reintegrate sight and sound before heading off into the multi-dimensional night.

A completely different iteration of “Space” music landed Sunday on the Peace Pagoda of Japantown as part of the newly-established Convergence Fest, dedicated to alternative music and art. Planet Booty, a hyper-active ensemble of post-funkadelic bass lines and warp-speed retro remixes livened up the stage along with the theatrical antics of frontman Dylan Germick, whose self-assured commitment to booty-bouncing caused him to literally split his pants about a minute into the rollicking set. More dance moves courtesy of poker-faced Lady Emasita, rap vox and occasional trombone by Josh Cantero, drumming from Max Reed, and electronic manipulations by Nathan Germick rounded out the “stripped-down” festival day ensemble, who normally number eight. And though they couldn’t quite inspire the entire crowd of lazy-afternoon onlookers to bounce along, the good denizens of Planet Booty did fulfill their roles as ambassadors for their rump-shaking cause, which will undoubtedly be fully realized at their upcoming September 10 show at Bottom of the Hill.

Instant replaya

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Instant replaya

SUPER EGO Dear burners,

I am absolutely NOT BITTER that I couldn’t join you this year. And I certainly DID NOT wrap myself in a hot-pink bedsheet, spin around until I saw Ganesh, puke up 23 packets of Tasty Bites, and throw a fistful of chickpea flour in my roommate’s face, screaming “Rites of passage, bitch!” so that I could virtually burn. And then I didn’t fist-pump to vintage Bassnectar, nor construct a 12-foot flashing Alexander Wang Summer 2011 fun-fur ankle strap high-heeled sandal in our foyer out of wire hangers, chicken bones, old Dell motherboards, and tuck tape.

Does anyone have a couch I could crash on? Preferably one of those big red lips-shaped ones?

In a sort-of pathetic attempt to even things out a bit, here’s what you missed: a gaggle of the hottest nerds in the world cruising Zinefest; the best Bloody Mary ever at my new-old favorite bar, Little Shamrock; Optimo DJs blowing minds at Public Works by dropping one of the first industrial tracks, Liasons Dangereuses’ “Los Niños del Parque”; German frenzy-whipper Matthias Tanzmann slaying with Maxwell-sampling summer smash “Entrance Song” by Eats Everything at Mighty, the supernova heat-explosion of Oakland Pride … and I’m not even on Sunday evening yet. So, you know, nyah.

ARAABMUZIK AND DJ FUNK

Young Rhode Islander Abraham Orellano, a.k.a. Araabmuzik, is actually of Dominican-Guatemalan descent – his crew dubbed him Araab when he was a teen. (Why? Because he’s so fine like the rest of us Arab brothers?) But beyond the Google-gold moniker, Araab’s emblematic of a neat trend right now in our frantic niche-crossover times: he’s a hip-hop beatmaker (Cam’ron, Duke Da God) with a touching love for poppy old dance music, using his genius manual dexterity with big-buttoned, retro-looking Music Production Center devices in his live act to melt dance floors into stunned lumps of woah.

This year’s Electronic Dreams album subtly warps goofball “Night at the Roxbury”-type ’90s dance anthems like Future Breeze’s “Why Don’t You Dance With Me” and Starchaser’s “So High” – and even gabber-house noise-blast “Underground Stream” by Nosferatu – into haunting documents of a young man’s often-lonely street life. Araab’s polishing songs I spent a good part of my life running in terror from into weird mirrors of interiority, fusing futuristic bedroom-producer headspace with retro big-room boom. And the dude’s just getting started.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeJcUz7nSYk

Also headlining this month’s Lights Down Low party is DJ Funk, a Chicago booty-bass legend who pioneered the “ghetto house” sound that still holds the Midwest underground in its filthy, rump-slapping grip. Funk’ll get the panties wet; up to you to rip ’em off.

Fri/9, 9:30 p.m.-3 a.m., $15. SOM, 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com

VIRGO FOUR

The word “timeless” sure gets thrown around a lot in this retro-minded era. And I’m fine with that, as long as the hype keeps fuelling comebacks like Virgo Four’s. At the moment, timeless, in techno terms, is almost a spatial distinction – and records like the Chicago duo’s wonderful “Vision” from 1989 really do sound like something that steps swiftly out of the distant past and into tomorrow’s speakers.

Merwyn Sanders and Eric Lewis expertly stroked the house-techno-acid nexis of the time with a series of releases that now serve as a few vinyl collectors’ 401ks. They’ve been relatively silent in the 20-odd years since, but from what I’ve heard on the virtual grapevine, their reunion DJ sets are deep and smoking. Honey Soundsystem and the No Way Back boys are pairing up to present this one, so the party should be mixed-crowd, no-attitude bliss.

Fri/9, 10 p.m.-4 a.m., $15. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

TRUCK RELAUNCH WITH CHRISTEENE

One of San Francisco’s cutest macho gay bars is having a makeover-do-over, with new co-owner Matt Bearracuda from the West Coast’s insane Bearracuda bear dance parties joining already-owner Paul Miller at the helm. Apparently, a new menu, new parties, new faces are in store (and I bet a lot of those faces will be fuzzy in a good way).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkL9Fpp1FF4

First up, the actually insane trash drag rapper r&b clown-whore Christeene (www.christeene.org) performs some “opening” numbers. I don’t really “get” her, which just might be an endorsement!

Sat/10, 8 p.m., free. 1900 Folsom, SF. www.trucksf.com

Team Avalos

Andrew Lam
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Team Avalos

When Supervisor John Avalos chaired the Budget & Finance Committee in 2009 and 2010, his office became a bustling place in the thick of the budget process. To gain insight on the real-life effects of the mayor’s proposed spending cuts, Avalos and his City Hall staff played host to neighborhood service providers, youth workers, homeless advocates, labor leaders, and other San Franciscans who stood to be directly impacted by the axe that would fall when the final budget was approved. They camped out in City Hall together for hours, puzzling over which items they could live without, and which required a steadfast demand for funding restoration.

“One year, we even brought them into the mayor’s office,” for an eleventh-hour negotiating session held in the wee morning hours, recounted Avalos’ legislative aide, Raquel Redondiez. That move came much to the dismay of Steve Kawa, mayoral chief of staff.

Avalos, the 47-year-old District 11 supervisor, exudes a down-to-earth vibe that’s rare in politicians, and tends to display a balanced temperament even in the heat of high-stakes political clashes. He travels to and from mayoral debates by bicycle. He quotes classic song lyrics during full board meetings, keeps a record player and vinyl collection in his office, and recently showed up at the Mission dive bar El Rio to judge a dance competition for the wildly popular Hard French dance party.

Yet casual observers may not be as familiar with the style Avalos brings to conducting day-to-day business at City Hall, an approach exemplified that summer night in 2010 when he showed up to the mayor’s office flanked by grassroots advocates bent on preserving key programs.

“My role is, I’m an insider, … but it’s really been about bringing in the outside to have a voice on the inside,” Avalos said in a recent interview. “People have always been camped out in my office. These are people who represent constituencies — seniors, recipients of mental health care, unions, people concerned about violence. It’s how we change things in City Hall. It’s making government more effective at promoting opportunities, justice, and greater livelihood.” Part of the thrust behind his candidacy, he added, is this: “We want to be able to have a campaign that’s about a movement.”

That makes Avalos different from the other candidates — but it also raises a crucial question. Some of the most important advances in progressive politics in San Francisco have come not just from electoral victories, but from losing campaigns that galvanized the left. Tom Ammiano in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez in 2003 played that role. Can Avalos mount both a winning campaign — and one that, win or lose, will have a lasting impact on the city?

Workers and families

No budget with such deep spending cuts could have left all stakeholders happy once the dust settled, but Avalos and other progressive supervisors did manage to siphon some funding away from the city’s robust police and fire departments in order to restore key programs in a highly controversial move.

“There’s a Johnny Cash song I really like, written by Tom Petty, called ‘I Won’t Back Down.’ I sang it during that time, because I didn’t back down,” Avalos said at an Aug. 30 mayoral forum hosted by the Potrero Hill Democratic Club. “We made … a symbolic cut, showing that there was a real inequity about how we were doing our budgets. Without impacting public safety services, we were able to get $6 million from the Fire Department. A lot of that went into Rec & Park, and health care programs, and to education programs, and we were able to … find more fat in the Police Department budget than anybody had ever found before, about $3 million.”

Last November, Avalos placed a successful measure on the ballot to increase the city’s real-estate transfer tax, which so far has amassed around $45 million in new revenue for city coffers, softening the blow to critical programs in the latest round of budget negotiations. “Without these measures that community groups, residents, and labor organizations worked for, Mayor Ed Lee would not have been able to balance the budget,” Avalos said.

More recently, he emerged as a champion of the city’s Local Hire Ordinance, designed as a tool for job creation that requires employers at new construction projects to select San Francisco residents for half their work crews, to be phased in over the next several years. That landmark legislation was a year in the making, Redondiez said, describing how union representatives, workers, contractors, unemployed residents of Chinatown and the Bayview, and others cycled through Avalos’ City Hall office to provide input.

His collaborative style stems in part from his background. Avalos formerly worked for Service Employees International Union Local 1877, where he organized janitors, and served as political director for Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth. He was also a legislative aide to former District 6 Sup. Chris Daly, who remains a lightning rod in the San Francisco political landscape.

Before wading into the fray of San Francisco politics, Avalos earned a masters degree in social work from San Francisco State University. But when he first arrived in the city in 1989, with few connections and barely any money to his name, he took a gig at a coffee cart. He was a Latino kid originally from Wilmington, Calif. whose dad was a longshoreman and whose mom was an office worker, and he’d endured a climate of discrimination throughout his teenage years at Andover High in Andover, Mass.

Roughly a decade ago, Avalos and a group of youth advocates were arrested in Oakland following a protest against Proposition 21, which increased criminal penalties for crimes committed by youth. Booked into custody along with him was his wife, Karen Zapata, whom he married around the same time. She is now a public school teacher in San Francisco and the mother of their two children, ages 6 and 9, both enrolled in public schools.

“John has consistently been a voice for disenfranchised populations in this city,” said Sharen Hewitt, who’s known Avalos for more than a decade and serves as executive director of The Community Leadership Academy & Emergency Response Project (CLAER), an organization formed to respond to a rash of homicides and alleviate violence. “He understands that San Francisco is at a major turning point in terms of its ability to keep families and low-income communities housed. With the local hiring ordinance, most of us who have been working around violence prevention agree — at the core of this horrible set of symptoms are root causes, stemming from economic disparity.”

Asked about his top priorities, Avalos will invariably express his desire to keep working families rooted in San Francisco. District 11, which spans the Excelsior, Ingleside, and other southeastern neighborhoods, encompasses multiracial neighborhoods made up of single-family homes — and many have been blunted with foreclosure since the onset of the economic crisis.

“Our motto for building housing in San Francisco is we build all this luxury housing — it’s a form of voodoo economics,” Avalos told a small group of supporters at a recent campaign stop in Bernal Heights. “I want to have a new model for how we build housing in San Francisco. How can we help [working-class homeowners] modify their loans to make if more flexible, so they can stay here?” He’s floated the idea of creating an affordable housing bond to aid in the construction of new affordable housing units as well as loan modifications to prevent foreclosures.

“That’s what is the biggest threat to San Francisco, is losing the working-class,” said community activist Giuliana Milanese, who previously worked with Avalos at Coleman Advocates for Youth and has volunteered for his campaign. “And he’s the best fighter. Basically, economic justice is his bottom line.”

Tenants Union director Ted Gullicksen gave Avalos his seal of approval when contacted by the Guardian, saying he has “a 100 percent voting record for tenants,” despite having fewer tenants in his district than some of his colleagues. “David Chiu, had he not voted for Parkmerced, could have been competitive with John,” Gullicksen said. “But the Parkmerced thing was huge, so now it’s very difficult to even have David in same ballpark. Dennis [Herrera] has always taken the right positions — but he’s never had to vote on anything,” he said. “After that, nobody comes close.”

Cash poor, community rich

There’s no question: The Avalos for Mayor campaign faces an uphill climb. Recent poll figures offering an early snapshot of the crowded field peg him at roughly 4 percent, trailing behind candidates with stronger citywide name recognition like City Attorney Dennis Herrera or the incumbent, Mayor Ed Lee, who hasn’t accepted public financing and stands to benefit from deep-pocketed backers with ties to big business.

Yet as Assembly Member Tom Ammiano phrased it, “he’s actually given progressives a place to roost. He doesn’t pussy-foot around on the issues that are important,” making him a natural choice for San Francisco voters who care more about stemming the tides of privatization and gentrification than, say, rolling out the red carpet for hi-tech companies.

One of Avalos’ greatest challenges is that he lacks a pile of campaign cash, having received less than $90,000 in contributions as of June 30, according to an Ethics Commission filing. “He can’t call in the big checks,” said Julian Davis, board president of Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, “because he hasn’t been doing the bidding of big business interests.” A roster of financial contributions filed with the Ethics Commission shows that his donor base is comprised mainly of teachers, nonprofit employees, health-care workers, tenant advocates, and other similar groups, with almost no representatives of real-estate development interests or major corporations.

Despite being strapped for cash, he’s collected endorsements ranging from the Democratic County Central Committee, to the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, to the city’s largest labor union, SEIU 1021; he’s also won the backing of quintessential San Francisco characters such as renowned author Rebecca Solnit; San Francisco’s radical bohemian poet laureate, Diane di Prima; and countercultural icon Diamond Dave.

While some of Avalos’ core supporters describe his campaign as “historic,” other longtime political observers have voiced a sort of disenchantment with his candidacy, saying it doesn’t measure up to the sweeping mobilizations that galvanized around Gonzalez or Ammiano. Ammiano has strongly endorsed Avalos, but Gonzalez — who now works for Public Defender (and mayoral candidate) Jeff Adachi — has remained tepid about his candidacy, stating publicly in an interview on Fog City Journal, “I like [Green Party candidate Terrie Baum] and John fine. I just don’t believe in them.”

Ironically, Sup. Sean Elsbernd, often Avalos’ political opposite on board votes, had kinder words for him. “John is intelligent, John is honest, and John has integrity,” Elsbernd told the Guardian. “I don’t think he knows the city well enough to serve as chief executive … but I’ve seen the good work he’s done in his district.”

Meanwhile, Avalos is still grappling with the fallout from the spending cut he initiated against the police and fire departments in 2009. Whereas those unions sent sound trucks rolling through his neighborhood clamoring for his recall from office during that budget fight, the San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA), the San Francisco Fire Fighters union, and the plumbers’ union, Local 38, have teamed up now that Avalos is running for mayor to form an independent expenditure committee targeting him and Public Defender Jeff Adachi, a latecomer to the race.

“We’ll make sure we do everything we can to make sure he never sees Room 200,” SFPOA President Gary Delagnes told the Guardian. “I would spend as much money as I could possibly summon to make sure neither ever takes office.” Delagnes added that he believes the political makeup of San Francisco is shifting in a more moderate direction, to Avalos’ disadvantage. “People spend a lot of money to live here,” he said, “and they don’t want to be walking over 15 homeless people, or having people ask them for money.”

If it’s true that the flanks of the left in San Francisco have already been supplanted with wealthy residents whose primary concern is that they are annoyed by the sight of destitute people, then more has already been lost for the progressive movement than it stands to lose under the scenario of an Avalos defeat.

The great progressive hope?

Despite these looming challenges, the Avalos campaign has amassed a volunteer base that’s more than 1,000 strong, in many cases drawing from grassroots networks already engaged in efforts to defend tenant rights, advance workplace protections for non-union employees, create youth programs that aim to prevent violence in low-income communities, and advance opportunities for immigrants. According to some volunteers, linking these myriad grassroots efforts is part of the point. Aside from the obvious goal of electing Avalos for mayor, his supporters say they hope his campaign will be a force to re-energize and redefine progressive politics in San Francisco.

“All the candidates that are running are trying to appeal to the progressive base,” Avalos said. But what does it really mean? To him, being progressive “is a commitment to a cause that’s greater,” he offered. “It’s about how to alter the relationship of power in San Francisco. My vision of progressivism is more inclusive, and more accountable to real concerns.”

N’Tanya Lee, former executive director of Coleman Advocates, was among the people Avalos consulted when he was considering a run for mayor. “The real progressives in San Francisco are the folks on the ground every day, like the moms working for public schools … everyday families, individual people, often people of color, who are doing the work without fanfare. They are the unsung heroes … and the rising progressive leaders of our city,” she said. “John represents the best of what’s to come. It’s not just about race or class. It’s about people standing for solutions.”

When deciding whether to run, Avalos also turned to his wife, Zapata, who has held leadership positions in the San Francisco teacher’s union in the past. She suggested rounding up community leaders and talking it through. “The campaign needed to be a movement campaign,” Zapata told the Guardian. “John Avalos was not running because he thought John Avalos was the most important person in the world to do this job. Our question was, if John were to do this, how would it help people most affected by economic injustice?”

Hewitt, the executive director of CLAER, also weighed in. “My concern is that he has been painted as a leftist, rooted in some outdated ideology,” she said. “I think [that characterization] is one-dimensional, and I think he’s broader than that. My perception of John is that he’s a pragmatist — rooted in listening, and attempting to respond.”

Others echoed this characterization. “He doesn’t need to be the great progressive hope,” said Rafael Mandelman, an attorney who ran as a progressive in District 8 last year. “If people are looking for the next Matt Gonzalez, I’m not sure that’s what John is about. He’s about the communities he’s representing.”

As to whether or not he has a shot at victory, Mandelman said, “It’s a very wide field, and I think John is going to have a very strong base. I think he will get enough first-choice votes to be one of the top contenders. And with ranked choice voting, anything can happen.”

 

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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OPENING

The Apparition Genre-movie vets Ashley Greene and Tom Felton star in this supernatural thriller set on a college campus. (runtime not available)

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star Comedian Nick Swardson stars as a wannabe porn star in this comedy from the director of The Hot Chick (2002). (runtime not available)

Chasing Madoff Doc about the investigators who brought down the notorious Ponzi scammer. (1:31)

Circumstance Thirteen (2003) goes to Tehran? The world of sex, drugs, and underground nightclubs in Iran provides the backdrop for writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s lusty, dreamy take on the passionate teenagers behind the hijabs. Risking jail and worse are the sassy, privileged Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and the beautiful, orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), who, much like young women anywhere, just want to be free — to swim, sing, dance, test boundaries, lose, and then find themselves. The difference here is that they’re under constant, unnerving surveillance, in a country where more than 70 percent of the population is less than 30 years old. Nevertheless, within their mansion walls and without, beneath graffitied walls and undulating at intoxicating house parties, the two girls begin to fall in love with each other, as Atafeh’s handsome, albeit creepy older brother Mehran (Palo Alto-bred Reza Sixo Safai) gazes on. The onetime musical talent’s back from rehab, has returned to the mosque with all the zeal of the prodigal, and has hooked up with the Morality Police that enforces the nation’s cultural laws. Filmed underground in Beirut, with layers that permit both pleasure and protest (wait for the hilarious moment when 2008’s Milk is dubbed in Farsi), Circumstance viscerally transmits the realities and fantasies of Iranian young women on the verge. (1:45) (Chun)

Contagion Steven Soderbergh directs every movie star on the planet (Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, and about 67 others) in this thriller about a worldwide disease epidemic. (1:42)

Creature From Wikipedia: “The group decides to stop at a roadside convenience store owned by Chopper (Sid Haig), who tells them the tale of Lockjaw, a fabled god-like creature who is half-man, half-alligator.” Ergo, this is either gonna be terrible or the greatest movie ever made. (1:33)

Little Rock When the rental car driven by Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka) and Rintaro Sakamato (Rintaro Sawamoto) breaks down in nowheresville, California (actually, a small town called Little Rock), an air of disillusion hangs between the siblings, on vacation to “see America.” Holed up in a motel room, their disappointment is palpable, until a chance encounter with some locals sucks the pair into exurban American life. By the time their car is again roadworthy, Atsuko can’t bear to leave and decides to stay behind as her brother, the only one of the two who speaks a word of English, continues ahead without her. Communication is the driving force behind Little Rock and the language barrier somehow never gets stale; it certainly allows Okatsuka the opportunity for some superb acting. Despite some directorial flourishes (by Mike Ott), however, the story doesn’t really hold many surprises, and its inevitable conclusion is glimpsed long before it’s reached. (1:25) Roxie. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*Love Crime See “Original Sin.” (1:46)

*The Man Who Fell To Earth See “Roeg, Warrior.” (2:19)

Puzzle A middle-aged housewife finds herself through jigsaw competitions in this Argentina-France co-production. (1:29) SFFS New People Cinema.

Shaolin Jackie Chan and Andy Lau star in Benny Chan’s historical kung fu extravaganza. (2:11) Four Star.

*Warrior Those wondering why the mixed martial arts scene has captured the imagination of so many can finally understand what the fuss is all about, now that it comes filtered through a melodramatic narrative akin to The Fighter (2010). Warrior‘s mis-en-scene is immediately recognizable: a prodigal returns, in the form of Tom Conlon (Tom Hardy). Once a talented teenage wrestler, the now-battered man is the damaged youngest son of alcoholic ex-boxer Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte). Tom wants his father to train him for a major mixed martial arts tournament with a multimillion-dollar purse, though the two obviously still have a deadly hold on each other — the repentant Paddy is on the wagon and the emotionally bruised Tom harbors secrets he won’t reveal — and battle with cutting comments rather than fists. Tom isn’t the only prodigal in the house: Paddy has lost the trust of Tom’s bro, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former fighter and present-day physics high school teacher who’s struggling to make ends meet with an underwater mortgage. Though Warrior is no Raging Bull (1980), it almost outdukes The Fighter in terms of its brutal bouts, conveying the swift, no-holds-barred action of MMA in the ring, while giving actors plenty of drama to wrap their jowls ’round — particularly in Nolte’s case. His tore-up turn as an all-excuses patriarch is as heartbreaking as a solid kick to the jaw. (2:19) (Chun)

ONGOING

Apollo 18 (1:26)

*Beginners There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Mélanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. (1:44) (Peitzman)

*Bellflower Picture Two Lane Blacktop (1971) drifters armed with “dude”-centric vocabulary and an obsession with The Road Warrior (1981) and its apocalypse-wow survivalist chic. There are so many pleasures in this janky, so-very-DIY, heavy-on-the-sunblasted-atmosphere indie that you’re almost willing to overlook the clichés, the dead zones, and the annoying characters. Seeming every-dudes Woodrow (director-writer-producer Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are far too obsessed with tricking out their cars and building a flamethrower for their own good — the misfits must force themselves out of the metal shop of the mind to meet women. So when Woodrow goes up against Milly (Jessie Wiseman) in a cricket-eating contest at a bar, it’s love at first bite. Their meet-gross morphs into a road trip and eventually a relationship, while the flamethrower nags, unexplained, in the background, like an unfired gun — or an unconsummated, not-funny bromance. These manifestations of male fantasy — muscle cars, weapons, and tough chicks — are cast in a dreamy, saturated, and burnt-at-the-edges light, as Glodell and company weave together barely articulated reveries and bad-new-west imagery with a kind of fuck-all intelligence, culminating in a finale that will either haunt you with its scattershot machismo-romanticism or leave you scratching your noggin wondering what just happened. (1:46) (Chun)

Brighton Rock Writer Rowan Joffe (2010’s The American) moves into the director’s chair for this Graham Greene adaptation, previously filmed in 1947 with an early-career star turn by Richard Attenborough. Joffe’s version updates Greene’s 1938 story to 1964, allowing the brutal actions of small-time hood Pinkie Brown to unfold as Britain’s mods vs. rockers youth riots boil in the background. Don’t get too excited, though — despite a cool premise and even cooler setting, and the presence of veterans Helen Mirren and John Hurt in supporting roles, Brighton Rock rages without a rudder. Pinkie is played by Sam Riley (so good as Ian Curtis in 2007’s Control), who snarls like a sociopathic James Dean and is so transparently hateful it’s hard to root for anything other than his hastened demise. Brighton Rock‘s most memorable element is probably Andrea Riseborough, an on-the-verge young Brit who’s being touted as the next Carey Mulligan. She has the thankless (yet showy) role of Rose, a naïve waitress who becomes entangled in Pinkie’s web after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A far-from-storybook ending awaits, and you’ll experience little enjoyment watching the characters claw their way there. (1:51) (Eddy)

Buck This documentary paints a portrait of horse trainer Buck Brannaman as a sort of modern-day sage, a sentimental cowboy who helps “horses with people problems.” Brannaman has transcended a background of hardship and abuse to become a happy family man who makes a difference for horses and their owners all over the country with his unconventional, humane colt-starting clinics. Though he doesn’t actually whisper to horses, he served as an advisor and inspiration for Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998). Director Cindy Meehl focuses generously on her saintly subject’s bits of wisdom in and out of a horse-training setting — e.g. “Everything you do with a horse is a dance” — as well as heartfelt commentary from friends and colleagues. In the harrowing final act of the film, Brannaman deals with a particularly unruly horse and his troubled owner, highlighting the dire and disturbing consequences of improper horse rearing. (1:28) (Sam Stander)

Captain America: The First Avenger OK, Marvel. I could get behind 2008’s Iron Man (last year’s Iron Man 2, not so much), but after Thor and now Captain America, I’m starting to get cynical about this multi-year build-up to the full-on Avengers movie, due in May 2012. Can even a superhero-stuffed movie directed by Joss Whedon live up to all this hype? There’s plenty of time to ponder, and maybe worry a little, with Captain America’s backstory-explaining picture now in theaters. Chris Evans stars as the 90-pound weakling who morphs into a supersoldier, thanks to the World War II-era tinkerings of a scientist (Stanley Tucci) and an inventor (Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man’s dad). The original plan for the musclebound shield-bearer (fighting Nazis, natch) gets waylaid a bit when the newly famous Captain America becomes a PR prop for the U.S. government; it’s abandoned entirely when a worse-than-Hitler foe, in the guise of power-obsessed Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), threatens the world. Directed by Spielberg cohort Joe Johnston, Captain America is gee-whiz enjoyable enough, but it’s very nearly the same movie as Thor, which no amount of Tommy Lee Jones (as a sarcastic army colonel) wisecracks can conceal. And here’s an anti-spoiler: there’s no post-credits surprise in this one, so you can bolt as soon as they start to roll. (2:09) (Eddy)

Colombiana (1:47)

Conan the Barbarian Neither 3D (unnecessary) nor Game of Thrones‘ Jason Momoa (beefcake-y) are enough to make this Conan the Barbarian competition for the 1982 Schwarzenegger classic. This new take is a barely adequate adventure movie helped along by Rose McGowan’s leering turn as an evil witch with Freddy Krueger claws. Would that everyone involved (including frequent remake director Marcus Nispel) had McGowan’s razor-sharp grasp of tone; as a whole, the film is never quite sure if it’s a camp-tastic voyage (the prologue, containing Conan’s birth and much Ron Perlman nostril-flaring, suggests what might have been) or a semi-straightforward fantasy actioner. A totally forgettable female lead (Rachel Nichols), a he-was-scarier-in-Avatar villain (Stephen Lang), a blah mixture of two tired plots (revenge + “chosen one”) — there’s just not a lot here, aside from a few hilarious lines of dialogue and Momoa’s muscles. He was so great in Game of Thrones, though, I suspect this dud won’t keep his career from skyrocketing. (1:42) (Eddy)

Cowboys and Aliens Here ’tis in a nutshell: the movie’s called Cowboys and Aliens — and that’s exactly, entirely what you’ll get. Director Jon Favreau may never best 2008’s Iron Man (actor Jon Favreau will prob never top 1996’s Swingers, but that’s a debate for another time), but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a good time trying. Cowboys is a genre mash-up in the most literal sense; as the title suggests, it pits Wild West gunslingers (Harrison Ford as a crabby cattleman, Daniel Craig as an amnesiac outlaw) against gold-seeking space invaders who also delight in kidnapping and torturing humans. As stupidly entertaining as it is, this is a textbook example of a pretty OK movie that could have been so much better … if only. If only the alien characters had a little bit more District 9-style personality. If only the story had a shred of suspense — look ye not here for “spooky” and “mysterious;” this shit is 100 percent full-on explosions. If only Craig’s comically fine-tooled physique didn’t outshine his wooden acting. And so forth. (1:58) (Eddy)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) (Chun)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) (Peitzman)

The Devil’s Double Say hello to my little friend, again— and rest assured, it’s not a dream and you’re seeing double. New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori gets back to his potboiler roots with this campy, claustrophobic look back at the House of Saddam Hussein, based on a true story and designed to win over fans of Scarface (1983) with its portrait of mad excess and deca-dancey ’80s-ish soundtrack. The craziest poseur of all is Hussein’s son Uday (Dominic Cooper), a petty dictator-in-the-making — and, according to this film, a full-fledged murderous pedophile — who chomps cigars and wraps his jaws around schoolgirls while Cooper happily chews scenery. Uday needs a double to sidestep all those troublesome assassination attempts, so he enlists look-alike childhood friend Latif (also Cooper) to get the surgery, pop in the overbite, bray like a madman, make appearances in his stead, and function as a kind of pet human. Never mind Ludivine Sagnier, glassy-eyed and absurd in the role of Uday’s favorite sex kitten Sarrab — Double is completely Cooper’s, who seizes the moment, investing the morally upstanding Latif with a serious sincerity with just his eyes and body language and infusing evil odd job Uday with a dangerous, comic-book unpredictability. To his credit, Cooper imbues such cult-ready, blow-the-doors-off lines as “I love cunt! I love cunt more than god!” with, erm, believability, even as the denouement rings somewhat false. (1:48) (Chun)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark If you’re expecting a traditional haunted house story, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark might be a disappointment. The film, which was co-written by Guillermo del Toro, has a lot in common with his Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) — both movies are more dark fairy tale than horror. They follow a young girl who discovers a mystical world around her, much to the disbelief of the adults around her. It’s worth noting that Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is lighter fare: despite all the peril involved, it’s actually pretty fun. Young Bailee Madison, who made such an impression in 2009’s Brothers, is a charming lead, precocious but believable. And Katie Holmes is surprisingly sympathetic in her role as the caring stepmother, a nice switch from the standard fairy tale trope. As with Fright Night, the ad campaign for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is misleading, so here’s hoping audience members looking for a gory slasher will appreciate a whimsical fable instead. (1:40) (Peitzman)

Fright Night Don’t let the spooky trailer fool you: the Fright Night remake is almost as silly as the original. In fact, it follows the 1985 film closely, as young Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) comes to realize that his neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire. The biggest change is a smart one — this Fright Night transforms late-night TV host Peter Vincent into Criss Angel-type illusionist Peter Vincent (David Tennant). The casting is spot on all-around, and frankly, Farrell is a lot more believable than Chris Sarandon as the seductive bad boy. The only real problem with the new Fright Night — other than the unnecessary 3D — is that it never fully commits to camp the way the original did. There’s a bit too much back-and-forth between serious scares and goofy blood splatters. Luckily, it’s still an entertaining remake that doesn’t crap all over a classic. It’s also a great reminder that vampires don’t have to be moody — remember, they used to be fun. (2:00) (Peitzman)

*The Future Dreams and drawings, cats and fantasies, ambition and aimlessness, and the mild-mannered yet mortifying games people play, all wind their way into Miranda July’s The Future. The future’s a scary place, as many of us fully realize, even if you hide from it well into your 30s, losing yourself in the everyday. But you can’t duck July’s collection of moments, objects, and small gestures transformed into something strangely slanted and enchanted, both weird and terrifying, when viewed through July’s looking glass. Care and commitment — to oneself and others — are two vivid threads running through The Future. Cute couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) — unsettling look-alikes with their curly crops — appear at first to be sailing contently, aimlessly toward an undemanding unknown: Jason works from home as a customer-service operator, and Sophie attempts to herd kiddies as a children’s dance instructor. But enormous, frightening demands beckon — namely the oncoming adoption of a special-needs feline named Paw-Paw (voiced by July as if it’s a traumatized, innocent child). Lickety-splitsville, they must be all they can be before Paw-Paw’s arrival. The weirdness of the familiar, and the kindness of strangers, become ways into fantasy and escape when the couple bumps up against the limits of their imagination. This ultra-low-key horror movie of the banal is obviously remote territory for July (2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know). The Future is her best film to date and finds her tumbling into a kind of magical realism or plastic fantastic, embodied by a talking cat that becomes the conscience of the movie. (1:31) (Chun)

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (1:35)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) (Eddy)

Gun Hill Road Though the visibility of gays and lesbians in cinema remains (largely) confined to independent film, Rashaad Ernesto Green, in his debut feature Gun Hill Road, uses the creative freedom afforded by that closeting to explore issues of race and confused sexuality amid the Latino population of the Bronx. Esai Morales is Enrique, a former drug dealer returning from prison to his wife Angela (Judy Reyes) and teenage son Michael (Harmony Santana). But everyone seems to have moved on with their lives. Angela is having an affair, and Michael has created a new persona, Vanessa. Green’s film focuses on the relationship between the damaged Enrique and Michael, whose cross-dressing and budding transsexuality puts the family members at odds. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and an entry in this year’s Frameline Film Festival, Gun Hill Road is one in a recent spate of films that deals with coming out in an urban setting. Like Green’s film, Peter Bratt’s La Mission (2009) offered a picture of homophobia in the Latino community. But Gun Hill Road, despite its bulging dramatic heft, shirks the after-school-special formula of La Mission by imagining complex characters rather than hewing them from instantly recognizable, sympathetic archetypes. (1:28) (Ryan Lattanzio)

*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Chances are you aren’t going to jump into the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. So while the movie is probably the best Harry Potter film yet, it’s more a fitting conclusion than a standalone film. For fans of the books, there are no real surprises — this is a close adaptation. And for those Harry Potter movie fans who haven’t read the books, shame on you, and kudos if you managed to not get spoiled. It’s hard for me to offer a serious critical analysis of Part 2, because it represents the end of a long and very emotional journey. (Everyone in that audience was crying. Everyone.) I will say that, as was the case in the book, there are a few overdone, schmaltzy moments that aren’t really necessary. But in the context of the series, they’re forgivable — this may not be the great cinematic event of our generation, but Harry Potter as a whole is sure to be one of our most enduring cultural icons. (2:10) (Peitzman)

*The Hedgehog You needn’t possess the rough, everyday refinement of the characters of The Hedgehog to appreciate this debut feature by director-screenwriter Mona Achache — just an appreciation for a delicate touch and a tender heart. Eleven-year-old Paloma (the wonderful Garance Le Guillermic) is too smart for her own good, bored, neglected by her parents, and left to fend for herself with only her considerable imagination and a camcorder. She drifts around her fishbowl of privilege, a deluxe art nouveau-style apartment building in Paris, leveling her all-too-wise gaze on its denizens and plotting certain suicide on her 12th birthday — that is until a new resident appears in her viewfinder: a kindly Japanese gentleman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He has as much of a connoisseur’s eye as Paloma — the proof is in his unlikely focus of attention, the building’s concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko, resembling a burly Gertrude Stein), who hides her cultured and bookish inclinations behind a gruff, drab exterior. They recognize in each other a reverence for an almost monkish life of the mind, the austere elegance of wabi-sabi, and the transient beauty of rough-hewn imperfection, even in the sleek, well-heeled heart of the City of Light. To the credit of Achache, working with Muriel Barbery’s novel, these unlikely fragile friendships between outsiders take hold in a way that sidesteps preciousness and stays with you long after its pages have turned. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) (Chun)

*Higher Ground Higher Ground does not bite off more than it can chew. I guess that should go without saying, but it’s striking how comfortably Vera Farmiga (in her directorial debut) tackles this story of devotion and doubt. Based on the memoirs of Carolyn S. Briggs, who co-wrote the screenplay, this deeply personal film follows Corrine Walker (Vera Farmiga) from her adolescence through the trials of youth and middle age, her marriage to high school sweetheart Ethan (Joshua Leonard), and their lives as members of a small hippie Christian community. Although religion serves as a backdrop for Higher Ground, it doesn’t suffocate the human element of the story; it’s less a film about Christianity than it is about the challenges one woman faces as she tries to find room for herself amidst faith. Farmiga treats her subjects with empathy and humor and crafts a thoughtful, tender slice of sixties Midwest Americana. (1:49) (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*The Interrupters With concern from society and government as a whole at low ebb, communities at greater risk of violence from within than ever have had to come up with their own peace-making solutions. The Interrupters, the latest documentary by Steve James (1994’s Hoop Dreams), shows dedicated efforts to help one of the nation’s worst centers of such bloodshed: Chicago. “Violence is like the great infectious diseases of all history,” says epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, in that it can be stopped from spreading to epidemic proportions by numerous “initial interruption(s) of transmission” at its source. He translated that perspective into the founding of CeaseFire, an organization that doesn’t aim to summarily end the existence of gangs and drug trade. Instead, its plain but hardly simple mission is to stop the shootings, stabbings, etc. which are exacerbated by unemployment, broken families, and other sources of stress whose cumulative effect can rapidly escalate a casual dis to a mortal confrontation. Under CeaseFire’s auspices, Tio Hardiman created the Violence Interrupters program, which drafts people from the community — many former gangbangers themselves — as mediators wading into conflicts to defuse them before things get out of hand. It takes considerable will and nerves of steel; “interrupters” have been shot at, and during the course of this documentary’s year-long span one volunteer lands in the hospital for his trouble. But The Interrupters makes a powerful case against the inevitability of hopelessness turning into violence. (2:05) (Harvey)

*Love Exposure Sion Sono’s Love Exposure opens with the claim that it’s “based on a true event,” which is no doubt its first joke. After the death of his saintly mother, youthful protagonist Yu (Takahiro Nishijima) adapts to the adoption of the priesthood by his father (Atsuro Watabe), though it’s harder to accept the eventual intrusion of an insanely needy new parishioner (a memorable Makiko Watanabe), a crackhead-acting real-life succubus who swiftly destroys dad’s faith and vocation. As a result Yu falls in with a bad crowd, becoming its Jesus in a weird pseudo spiritual observance of taking “peek-a-boo panty photos” while remaining otherwise chaste in anticipation of meeting his own personal Madonna — Holy Virgin and Ciccone personae inclusive. High school heartache, martial arts, Ravel’s Boléro, female impersonation, and the insidious manipulations of an agent (Sakura Ando) from the mysterious, Scientology-like Zero Church all factor prominently in a careening story whose takes on religion, sin, and redemption are nothing if not antic. Just what Sono is saying, however, tends to get lost in the blur. Exposure‘s sheer onslaught, not to mention its scale, have made bowled-over converts out of many viewers. Whether its crazy quilt requires 237 minutes, or 90, or 900 for that matter, is an open question — is the writer-director really going somewhere here, or just going and going and going? (3:57) Roxie. (Harvey)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) (Harvey)

Motherland When Raffi Tang (Francoise Yip) learns of her estranged mother’s death, the prodigal-daughter returns to her hometown, San Francisco, only to discover that nothing is as first supposed. Forced to contend with the protracted legal battle between her late mother and re-married father (Kenneth Tsang) as well as an incompetent (and poorly acted) police detective (Jason Payne), Tang drifts, looking distracted, lost, and maybe vaguely concerned throughout the first two thirds of the film. Yip does little to enliven a flat script rife with stock phrases and worn cinematic conventions, and while her emotional distance seems genuine, it’s boring nonetheless. Motherland is, to its credit, an angry movie — director Doris Yeung drew on her own experience with the murder of her mother — but the rage fizzles when it finally does erupt, smothered by uninspired acting and a directionless screenplay. (1:33) (Berkmoyer)

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

*The Names of Love Arthur (Jacques Gamblin) is a 40-ish scientist being interviewed about the threat of a bird flu epidemic when his radio broadcast is interrupted by 20-something Baya (Sara Forestier), who denounces him on-air as a “fascist” for frightening the public. But then, Baya tends to use that label rather indiscriminately, applying it to anyone who might conceivably have views to the right of the dial — and Arthur is in fact a solid liberal, which means she can bed him for love. As opposed to the many, many other men she beds as a self-described “political whore,” seeking out conservative types in order to seduce them and hopefully induce an idealogical shift by whispering sweet nothings (“Not all Arabs are thieves,” etc.) as they orgasm. Raised by parents whose emotions are so tightly wound his mother won’t acknowledge her parents were Jews killed at Auschwitz, Arthur has a hard time adjusting to a relationship with a lover who is faithful emotionally but sees promiscuity as her propagandic gift to the world. Meanwhile Baya’s largely Algerian family treats garrulous political argument as the very air they breathe. This odd-couple story written by Baya Kasmi and director Michel Leclerc deals with serious issues in both humorous and respectful fashion, making for one of the more novel, delightful and depthed French romantic comedies in a long time. Added plus: lots of antic gratuitous nudity. (1:42) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*One Day Why do romantic comedies get such a bad rap? Blame it on the lame set-up, the contrived hurdles artificially buttressed by the obligatory chorus of BFFs, the superficial something-for-every-demographic-with-ADD multinarrative, and the implausible resolutions topped by something as simple as a kiss or as conventional as marriage, but often no deeper, more crafted, or heartfelt than an application of lip gloss. Yet the lite-as-froyo pleasures of the genre don’t daunt Danish director Lone Scherfig, best known for her deft touch with a woman’s story that cuts closer to the bone, with 2009’s An Education. Her new film, One Day, based on the best-selling novel by David Nicholls, flirts with the rom-com form — from the kitsch associations with Same Time, Next Year (1978) to the trailer that hangs its love story on a crush — but musters emotional heft through its accumulation of period details, a latticework of flashbacks, and collection of encounters between its charming protagonists: upper-crusty TV presenter Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working-class aspiring writer Emma (Anne Hathaway). Their quickie university friendship slowly unfolds, as they meet every St. Swithin’s Day, July 15, over a span of years, into the most important relationship of their lives. Despite the blue-collar female lead and UK backdrop that it shares with An Education, One Day feels like a departure for Scherfig, who first found international attention for her award-winning Dogme 95-affiliated Italian for Beginners (2000). (1:48) (Chun)

*Our Idiot Brother If you thought 1998’s The Big Lebowski had eked all the humor that it could from the Dude, well, screenwriter (and Vanity Fair contributor) Evgenia Peretz, her not-so-idiotic brother (director Jesse Peretz), and star Paul Rudd would differ. They correctly guessed that there are still laughs to be wrung from a shaggy stoner in floral jams, only this time with less fuuuck-s and more benevolent, idiot-savant good vibrations. Dazed and confused broheim 2.0 (Rudd) is glimpsed through the jaded, harried prism of his three dysfunctional, supposedly normal sisters: frumpadelic mom Liz (Emily Mortimer), queen-bitch Vanity Fair writer Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), and slatternly would-be comedian Natalie (Zooey Deschanel). A good-hearted naïf who’s easily entrapped by a uniformed police officer claiming to need some pity doobage, Ned has just emerged from the joint and is now couch-surfing among his sibs, exposing the hypocrisies of bourgie-hipster Brooklyn, as well as the infidelities and vanities of family, friends, and partners (Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, and Hugh Dancy) as he goes, in his own good-natured, aw-shucks way. As innocuous (and desexualized) as Andy Griffith beneath the hippie trappings, this dude-with-a-little-d knows where his real family is — with his dog, Willie Nelson, who loves him just as unconditionally. Beastie besties have never seemed so innocent as they are in this proudly feel-good comedy, and despite a cringe-y, saccharine soundtrack and lackadaisical pacing, Rudd’s charismatic sunny slacker and some pointed jabs at the follies of the cooler-than-thou save this indie-that-could. (1:36) (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42)

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Smith Rafael. (Berkmoyer)

Seven Days in Utopia (1:38)

Shark Night 3D (1:31)

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness This documentary cuts to the chase right at the beginning: yeah, Sholem Aleichem was the guy who wrote the Tevye stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. But filmmaker Joseph Dorman isn’t trying to make Fiddler: Behind the Musical. Instead, he takes an in-depth look at the life, writing career, and cultural significance of “one of the great modern Jewish writers — and our greatest Yiddish writer,” per the film’s press notes. Fans of Jewish lit will be particularly engaged by Sholem Aleichem’s tale; raised in a shtetl in what’s now the Ukraine, he moved around Europe and to the United States pursuing various careers, but always writing the popular stories that addressed not just Jewish life, but broader issues facing turn-of-the-last-century Jews, including the cross-generational conflicts that make up much of Fiddler‘s plot and humor. That said, this film does rely an awful lot on PBS-style slow pans over black-and-white photos and intellectual talking heads; one suspects the subject himself (so devoted was he to entertaining the regular folk who gobbled up his tales) would’ve preferred his life story to unfold in a livelier fashion. (1:33) (Eddy)

*Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure Once upon a time (1987 to be exact), two young men moved to San Francisco from the Midwest. Eddie Lee “Sausage” and Mitchell “Mitch D” Deprey wound up living in a somewhat derelict apartment in the Lower Haight. The paint was peeling and the walls were thin, but the rent was cheap. What Eddie and Mitch didn’t count on was having Peter J. Haskett and Raymond Huffman as their neighbors. “You blind cocksucker. You wanna fuck with me? You try to touch me and I will kill you in a fucking minute.” “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up little man!” The insults, tantrum throwing, and threats of violence coming from next door were constant. Eddie and Mitch started to lose sleep; after one failed attempt at complaining to Raymond’s face (he threatened death), they started tape-recording the endless geyser of vitriol — first, as possible future evidence, but also out of a growing voyeuristic fascination with these two seniors who had to be the world’s oddest and angriest odd couple. The rest is history. Mitch and Eddie started including snippets of Peter and Ray’s bickering on mix tapes for friends. Somehow, the editor of the now-defunct SF noise music zine Bananafish heard a snippet and approached Mitch and Eddie about distributing compilations of the recordings to a large network of found sound fans. Gradually “Peter and Raymond” became known and much-beloved characters. Their warped repartee inspired several theatrical adaptations, short animated films, pages of comic book panels by artists such as Dan Clowes, and even a one-off single from Devo side project the Wipeouters. Matthew Bate’s documentary Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure is much an attempt to comprehensively recount the above long, strange trip from start to finish; it is also the newest chapter in the now 20-year saga of Peter, Raymond, Mitch, and Eddie. (1:30) Roxie. (Sussman)

30 Minutes or Less In some ways, 30 Minutes or Less is reminiscent of 2008’s Pineapple Express: both are stoner action comedies about normal people shoved into high-stakes criminal activity. But while Pineapple Express was an exciting addition to the genre, 30 Minutes or Less is a flimsy 80-minute diversion that still feels like a waste of time. Jesse Eisenberg plays Nick, a pizza delivery boy who is forced to rob a bank after two would-be criminals strap a bomb to his chest. Strangely, Eisenberg was more charming as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) — and his buddy Chet (Aziz Ansari) doesn’t exactly up the likability factor. There’s actually the potential for an interesting story here: something darker seems appropriate, given that 30 Minutes or Less was inspired by a true story with a very unhappy ending. But the film completely fumbles, delivering an action comedy that’s neither tense nor funny. That means the pizza’s free, right? (1:29) (Peitzman)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) (Harvey)

*The Trip Eclectic British director Michael Winterbottom rebounds from sexually humiliating Jessica Alba in last year’s flop The Killer Inside Me to humiliating Steve Coogan in all number of ways (this time to positive effect) in this largely improvised comic romp through England’s Lake District. Well, romp might be the wrong descriptive — dubbed a “foodie Sideways” but more plaintive and less formulaic than that sun-dappled California affair, this TV-to-film adaptation displays a characteristic English glumness to surprisingly keen emotional effect. Playing himself, Coogan displays all the carefree joie de vivre of a colonoscopy patient with hemorrhoids as he sloshes through the gray northern landscape trying to get cell reception when not dining on haute cuisine or being wracked with self-doubt over his stalled movie career and love life. Throw in a happily married, happy-go-lucky frenemy (comic actor Rob Brydon) and Coogan (TV’s I’m Alan Partridge), can’t help but seem like a pathetic middle-aged prick in a puffy coat. Somehow, though, his confused narcissism is a perverse panacea. Come for the dueling Michael Caine impressions and snot martinis, stay for the scallops and Brydon’s “small man in a box” routine. (1:52) (Devereaux)

The Whistleblower (1:58) Smith Rafael.

*!Women Art Revolution Bay Area artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s vibrant look back at the first waves of feminist art in the ’60s and ’70s is an extremely necessary and impassioned recounting of a history that perpetually seems to be on the edge of erasure. Mixing old and new interviews with artists, critics, and scholars — many of which are from Hershman Leeson’s own personal archive — !W.A.R. lets those who stood at the frontlines of one the most significant movements in contemporary art tell their own stories. Seeing and hearing the testimonies of the likes of Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, B. Ruby Rich, Judy Chicago, Carolee Scheeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and Ingrid Sischy, one after another, is dazzling — like being in the presence of an Olympian summit — even as their overlapping tales of pushback, casual misogyny and outright ridicule from critics, the art establishment, and in some cases, their colleagues, paint a damning picture of just how endemic sexism was, and as the need for a film such as !WAR attests to, in many ways still is. (1:23) (Sussman)

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. Due to the Labor Day holiday, theater information was incomplete at presstime.

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