Drugs

The pot initiative’s going to win

Zelda Bronstein
-
9
The pot initiative’s going to win

It seems pretty clear to me that, with polls showing widespread support and money pouring in for the campaign, the initiative to legalize pot in California is going to pass. So why are all of the candidates for governor, even Jerry Brown (who may have smoked a joint or two in his time) coming out so strongly against it?


Jerry knows that legal pot isn’t going to create new law-enforcement problems; quite the contrary. It’s going to save huge amounts of money that the state and local governments now waste enforcing a silly law that nobody respects, will cut down on the jail population and discourage the environmentally damaging (and sometimes violent) gangs of rogue growers who plant on public land.


And he ought to know that this kind of a stand isn’t going to help him get elected. Once you take the hard-core Republicans who would never vote for Brown anyway out of the equation and look at the universe of potential Brown voters, legalizing pot probably gets more than 60 percent approval.


If you asked me back in 1978 whether I could imagine a day when Jerry Brown would oppose a marijuana legalization measure that was polling at 60 percent, I would have said: Whoa, man, no way. But then, I inhaled.

Film listings

David Talbot
-
0

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

OPENING

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Film listings

David Talbot
-
0

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

SF INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

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

WED/17

PFA Agrarian Utopia 7. Mundane History 9:20.

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

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

THURS/18

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

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

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

FRI/19

Camera Au Revoir Taipei 7.

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

SAT/20

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

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

SUN/21

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

OPENING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REP PICKS

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

Behind the Mexican drug war

Zelda Bronstein
-
1
Behind the Mexican drug war

Editors note: The killings of three U.S. consular employees in Ciudad Juarez has brought increased press attention in this country to the violence of Mexico’s drug gangs.  Our Mexico City correspondent, John Ross, reports on the background story.

MEXICO CITY – Last July, in a meticulously planned raid reminiscent of the classic guerrilla jail breakouts that are legend in Latin America, a commando force of 20 heavily armed fighters freed 53 comrades from a prison in the northern state of Zacatecas. Were the perpetrators in fact guerrilleros from some as-yet unknown revolutionary foco or narcos emulating a guerrilla-style jailbreak intent on freeing their own?


Recent assassination attempts against high-ranking state officials — Sinaloa’s Secretary of Tourism (successful), Coahuila’s Attorney General (the restaurant at which he was dining with a Texas mayor was sprayed with automatic weapon fire), and a Baja California finance undersecretary (hung by the neck from a Tijuana freeway overpass) — suggest revolutionary retribution in a year that marks the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution in which jitters of new uprisings are legion. January 1st was welcomed in with anarchist bombs, sabotage, and “expropriations” in Mexico City and Tijuana on the northern border.

Although the incidents cited suggest revolutionary subversion, they were all the handiwork of Mexico’s five narco cartels, which are locked in an intractable war with both President Felipe Calderon’s military and federal police — and reportedly hundreds of U.S. drug warriors — that has now taken more than 19,000 lives since December 2006.

The jail breakout in Zacatecas and the Sinaloa and Coahuila shootings are attributed to the syndicates headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, his former associates in the Beltran Leyva gang, and the notorious Zeta cartel.

The hanging of Baja California state finance official Rogelio Sanchez Jimenez was charged to a blood-drenched capo Teodoro Garcia Simentel, a.k.a. “El Teo” or “Three Letters” who is deemed responsible for hundreds of hangings, beheadings, and excessively violent homicides — an associate, Santiago Meza (“El Pozalero”) has reportedly confessed to dissolving 300 victims in vats of acid. Most of the victims were allies of the fading Arellano Felix clan, with whom El Teo is contesting Tijuana.

Simentel was captured this past January 14th in an upscale residential neighborhood of La Paz in adjourning Baja California Sur state, the second top-rung narco purportedly taken down by Mexican authorities in a month. The bust earned bouquets of kudos from Washington, which is financing Calderon’s drug war under the $3,000,000,000 Merida Initiative.

The U.S. role in the capture of El Teo and Arturo Beltran Leyva, “the Boss of Bosses,” who was gunned down by Mexican marines December 16th, appears to have been purposefully downplayed. According to an unidentified member of Calderon’s Security Cabinet as reported by Gustavo Castillo, a La Jornada correspondent with exceptional sources, Simentel was located by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration & Customs Enforcement, a first indication that ICE is now being deployed in Mexico’s drug war.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI are also thought to have armed agents on the ground here under provisions of the Merida Initiative and the North American Security and Prosperity Agreement.    

The Calderon government vehemently denies that participation of U.S. agents led to the capture of El Teo or Beltran Leyva, although it acknowledges enhanced cooperation between the two nations’ drug fighters. The suggestion that Washington has assets on the ground here is not acceptable to many Mexicans, whose country has been repeatedly invaded and even annexed by U.S. troops, and is regarded as a violation of national sovereignty.

The number of U.S. security agents working in Mexico is closely held, but observers of Washington’s presence here such as specialist Jorge Camil affirm that it has been rising dramatically since the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington and now totals in the hundreds. The DEA and the FBI now have offices in provincial capitals such as Tuxtla Gutierrez Chiapas, close to the Guatemalan border and multiple smuggling routes.

Mexico is not only in the crosshairs of the U.S. security apparatus because of the flourishing drug trade — the infiltration of terrorists across the porous border also excites attentions, although all reported incidents to date have proven to be false alarms.

Of increasing interest to Washington is the possible alliance of narco gangs with Mexico’s fledgling guerrilla cells, an interpolation of the Colombian model.

The concept of narco-guerrilla coalescence was first proffered in the mid-1980s, soon after Ronald Reagan officially proclaimed the War on Drugs. Then-veep George H.W. Bush, a Navy man, was placed in charge of overseeing interdiction efforts in the Caribbean to stop the Colombian cocaine flow into the southern United States.

Under Bush’s watch, intelligence reports placed the onus on the Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Army of National Liberation (ELN), and M-19, a left nationalist movement later decimated by the Colombian army, for extending protection to such world-class kingpins as Pablo Escobar.

The truth was, however, more diffuse: paramilitary units such as the United Auto-Defenders of Colombia (AUC) armed by right-wing rural “terratenientes” (rich land owners) and the Colombian military were the big players in the so-called “narco-guerrillas,” although several FARC fronts openly provided protection to the druglords.

The narco-guerrilla thesis eventually became the underlying reason d’etre for Plan Colombia, in which the twin wars on drugs and terrorism were married. Since the late 1990s, Washington has pumped billions into Colombia to sustain this counter-insurgency strategy. The Merida Initiative, signed in that Yucatan city by George Bush and Felipe Calderon in 2007, is often referred to as Plan Mexico.

As recipients of billion-dollar boodles in U.S. drug war largesse, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe and Mexico’s Calderon are Washington’s most significant allies on a continent where the left has taken power in a majority of countries.

Today, despite a decade of Plan Colombia, Colombian cocaine production has held steady and the FARC ranks as Latin America’s most powerful narco-guerrilla group. Although Mexico has no known counterpart, FARC activities here are closely monitored. FARC offices were shuttered during the presidency of Vicente Fox (2000-2006) — the FARC and Colombian president Andres Pastrana entabled negotiations in Mexico City in the 1990s.

A Colombian-born National University graduate student was deported to Bogotá last year on terrorism charges for sympathizing with the FARC, and Uribe has issued extradition warrants for a Mexican student who survived the bombing of the Ecuadorian jungle camp of FARC leader Raul Reyes (not his real name) in 2008.

One connection: FARC operators are said to consort with the Valle del Norte Cartel, the main Colombian supplier for El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel. A purported 2007 jungle tete a tete between Reyes, and an unidentified cartel representative suggested the possibility that the Sinaloa boys would buy cocaine directly from the Colombian rebels rather than deal with a series of middlemen suppliers.

Mexico’s armed leftists take pain to steer clear of association with drug gangs. Military intelligence first identified the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) as drug and gunrunners on the Guatemalan border, an estimate said to have been backed up by CIA satellite overflights. The Zapatistas have dodged the stigma by waging a vigilant crusade against drugs in their autonomous communities in southeastern Chiapas. Cultivation of marijuana by militants is severely punished by banishment from the EZLN. Nonetheless, the Mexican Army has repeatedly stormed into Zapatista villages on the pretext of marijuana patch sightings.

Mexico’s homegrown guerrilla bands have their roots in the north of the country where this distant neighbor nation’s 1910-1919 revolution first germinated. Revolutionary martyrs Francisco Madero, Pancho Villa, Venustiano Carranza, and Alvaro Obregon were all northerners who marched their armies south to seize power. In 1965, Arturo Gamiz, a disaffected rural schoolteacher, and 12 rebels laid siege to army barracks in Ciudad Madero, Chihuahua; all were killed in the assault. Six years later, the September 23rd Communist League based in the northern industrial city of Monterrey took its name from the date of the assault; 15 armed groups of which the September 23rd league was the most prominent operated throughout Mexico in the 1970s. The Forces of National Liberation (FLN), also based in Monterrey, gave birth to the EZLN in Chiapas. A sister guerrilla group, the Villista Army of National Liberation in Chihuahua, was never consolidated.

Conditions in the north of Mexico where both the narco cartels and the military concentrate their forces are propitious for a resurgence of guerrilla activity.

Unemployment in the region, driven by the decline of the maquiladora industry (many assembly plants have moved to China), is at a 15-year high. The rural economy has been eclipsed by neo-liberal adventures such as the North American Free Trade

Agreement and the deepening recession, the worst in 80 years, is forcing campesinos to abandon their land. A hundred years ago in this vast, mineral-rich region of deserts and scarred mountains, landless peasants and displaced farmers formed the nucleus of Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army.

In 2010, many survive the economic crisis by turning to drug cropping — a half million Mexicans are said to earn their living in the drug economy. One indication of increasingly close ties between militant farmers and the drug cartels was the slaying of Margarito Montes Parra, longtime leader of the leftist UGOCEP (General Popular Union of Workers and Farmers) who was ambushed by cartel gunmen in Ciudad Obregon last fall.

Widespread human rights abuses by federal troops who combat the narcos along the northern border has provoked a wave of anti-army, anti-government anger in many northern states and conditions for a Gamiz-like assault on military installations cannot be discounted should drug gangs and armed radicals find common cause.

For prospective guerrilla formations, alliance with narcos has its perks: weapons and money. Both the narcos and the radicals are interested in subverting the state, although their motives may be distinct. For anti-imperialist revolutionaries, poisoning the Yanquis with drugs is a weapon of class war. But negatives abound: everything the cartels touch is corrupted by profit-driven mercantile greed that is at odds with revolutionary ideals, although there are always those who will argue that the end justifies the means.

For Homeland Security and Washington’s security apparatus, the nightmare prospect of a coalition of narcos and guerilleros cruising the border is reason enough to sustain agents on the ground south of the border whether or not Mexican authorities are prepared to admit their presence. Indeed, this January, Obama’s Justice Department announced the merger of its International Terrorism and Narcotics investigation units to prepare for just such an eventuality. The vision of Mexico as a potentially failed narco-state advanced by the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a 2008 evaluation is a five-star national security issue for Washington and the option of a U.S. preventative invasion is always on the table.          

John Ross continues to slog across Obama’s America now in the second month of his monster book tour with “El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption In Mexico City” (“gritty and pulsating” – NY Post.) The author will be in Madison Wisconsin, Traverse City, Grand Rapids Michigan and Chicago (Heartland Café March 31st) during the final two weeks of March.  Consult johnross@igc.org or www.nationbooks.org for local dates.

Film listings

-
0

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

SF INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

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

THURS/11

Castro Today’s Special 7.

FRI/12

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

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

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

SAT/13

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

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

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

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

SUN/14

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

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

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

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

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

MON/15

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

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

TUES/16

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

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

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

OPENING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REP PICKS

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

MUNI driver: luck, not system, saved my family

Mary Magee
-
3
MUNI driver: luck, not system, saved my family

MUNI bus driver Charles Washington says it was luck that won his family a reprieve from a federal deportation order. His Australian bride Tracey, who he married in Reno last April, and her 13-year-old son were served deportation orders after the boy got into a schoolyard fight and a police officer wrote him up with three felony charges. Under the city’s current policy, felony charges against undocumented youth triggers an immediate referral to ICE before the youth can prove their innocence.

Charles and Tracey Washington hug outside a hearing on the city’s policy towards immigrant youth. After the hearing, the juvenile probation department dropped language from its policy that advocates say could lead to racial profiling, but JPD Chief William Sifferman said the department cann’t allow kids due process for fear of being accused of harboring and transporting aliens.

Washington’s family won a reprieve after the media learned of their plight, an outcome Charles puts down to luck, not evidence that the system is working. He believes the nightmare his family is going through proves that the city’s policy towards immigrant youth isn’t working. And he wants those responsible for setting that policy to take responsibility and fix what’s broken,  not pass the buck by trying to hide behind federal laws they claim prevent them from fixing their own policy.

“The problem with the policy is that is doesn’t allow for due process,” Washington said during a March 4 hearing on the city’s policy which Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered in 2008.”The policy is based upon the original charges that a police officer made, a  field officer who has to make a quick decison based upon a couple of known facts,” Washington said. “Kids get treated as if they are guilty before they are proven innocent. There has to be a better way for the system to work.”

Washington doesn’t blame the city’s police or probation officers for his stepson getting referred to the feds before he could prove he was innocent of felony-level charges.

Gabe Calvillo, president of the city’s probation officers union, congratulated the Washington family on their reprieve, but repeated concerns that giving kids their day in court would put his members at risk.

And Washington does not blame city workers for the fact that federal immigration agents used his stepson as bait to get his wife to come in to their Sansome Street office where they handed her and her son deportation orders and slapped an electronic monitoring device on her ankle–a device she is still wearing to this day.

 Tracey Washington demonstrates the device that the feds are forcing her to wear, making her feel like a “murderer,” even though the couple say federal contractors gave them misinformation about when to apply for a green card, after she got married to  Charles Washington while she and her two sons were here on a visa waiver.

As a city worker, Washington gets that these city workers were simply following orders. But as a husband, father and US citizen who is still fighting to keep his family intact, he believes that those responsible for the policy that led to this nightmarish sequence of events are hiding behind claims that their hands are tied by federal law. And he wants them to get off their hands and back to the drawing board, so other families don’t have to go through what his family just experienced.

And unlike many families that feel they were unnecessarily ripped apart by the city’s policy towards immigrant kids, Washington can articulate his concerns without fear of being deported himself.

“It’s unbelievable how any family could have been put in that position,” Washington said, recalling how his son landed in ICE’s hands, after a SFPD officer wrote him up for three felony charges, following a schoolyard fight over 46 cents.

When an SFPD officer charges a juvenile with a felony, juvenile probation is required to refer the kid to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), if they suspect the youth is here without legal documentation.

Once Washington’s stepson was referred to ICE, under a policy that Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered in 2008, the feds ordered him and his mother deported, without waiting to see if local courts actually find the boy guilty of any felony charges.

It was only when Washington went public with his family’s nightmare and the media started making calls that ICE backed off.

But while it was the city’s flawed policy that landed the Washingtons in this dilemma, the Mayor’s Office did not offer to try and help. Instead, the Mayor’s office claimed that their case proves that Newsom’s policy is “not draconian.” (You can read Newsom’s full statement at the end of this post.)

“The Mayor’s Office could have contacted me, tracked me down,” Washington said. “But they just sat back and waited to jump on the band wagon, whichever way it went.”

Mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker said the Mayor’s Office was sympathetic to the family’s plight but could see no reason to get involved in what he described as “a federal immigration matter.”

But Washington notes that it was Newsom’s policy that led to his stepson being referred to ICE, and the feds would have deported his family this week, if they hadn’t gone public with their case,a step most immigrant families are afraid to take.

“The bottom line is that we got lucky,” Washington said. “How many families wouldn’t know what to do in this situation? When I spoke at the press conference at the Asian Law Caucus,  I didn’t know what to do either. What if the Asian Law Caucus had been too busy, or the media hadn’t come to the press conference? Does everybody have to contact a lawyer. Our story shows that the system failed, and that it was luck that saved us.”

While folks are acting as if the Washingtons’ problems are over, the family still faces huge financial and legal challenges.

“For the time being, we’ve had a huge burden lifted off of us, but the next huge problem is that we are bing requested to have one-way plane tickets ready for the first part of April, though we are not being asked to leave now until May 4, that’s several thousand dollars that we have to lose,” Washington said, noting that it will cost over $4,000 to apply for green cards.
“Meanwhile, It looks like everyone wants to point the finger at someone else instead of focusing on the fact that there is a problem.”

Washington made his comments after a hearing that Sup. David Campos called to determine why the Juvenile Probation department hasn’t implemented an amendment that Campos introduced in 2009 to address the Catch 22 situation that’s  hidden within Newsom’s current policy and that ensnared the Washingtons’ kid.

Campos’ amendment instructed probation officers to wait until kids have had their day in court before referring them to ICE. But Mayor Newsom said he will ignore the amendment, and JPD Chief Sifferman has refused to implement it.

Either way, Campos’ March 4 hearing offered a rare insight into the, some would say, dysfunctional dynamics within the city’s juvenile justice department since it came under the microscope of US Attorney Joe Russoniello in 2008.

A Bush appointee, Russoniello has been ideologically opposed to the concept of sanctuary ever since the city enacted its City of Refuge ordinance in the 1980s, when he was first US Attorney for Northern California.

After Kevin Ryan was fired as US Attorney in 2006 and hired as Newsom’s director of criminal justice in 2007, Russoniello resumed his post as top federal prosecutor, a position of power that let him launch a federal Grand Jury investigation in 2008 to determine if JPD’s former practices violated federal law.

Ryan has since resigned from the Mayor’s Office, and the Obama adminstration is vetting Russoniello’s replacement, but the City claims it can’t give immigrant kids their day in court for fear of federal retaliation. And some believe the unresolved tension between the city’s sanctuary policy and the federal immigration laws will continue, unless national immigration reform occurs.

Juvenile Probation Department Chief William Sifferman said today that his department is eliminating language from its juvenile immigrant policy that could be an invitation to racial profiling.

JPD Chief William Sifferman told Campos that his department looked into Campos’ amendment, which directs JPD to modify its policies and practices to the “extent permitted by federal law”‘and concluded that it cannot modify them.

Sifferman recalled what happened when JPD used to return immigrant youth to their country of origin or place them in group homes, with no notification to ICE.

“Many of these youth were arrested for selling crack cocaine in the Tenderloin, were placed in group homes, ran away, were rearrested, selling drugs again,” Sifferman testified.

He recalled how JPD officers were interrogated and threatened with arrest by federal agents who intercepted them at Houston airport as they were accompanying minors to Honduras. And that Russoniello subsequently convened a Grand Jury to investigate JPD’s actions.

“That investigation continues to this day,” Sifferman said. “The department’s current policy was adpoted becoasue of these concerns.”

“Until a court rules otherwise, the department must conclude that [federal] law would not allow the city to change its policy,” Sifferman said.

He said probation officers are trained not to directly question juveniles or their parents about their immigration status. And hee noted “a marked reduction” in the number of unaccompanied Honduran minors who have been arrested for selling crack cocaine.

“We believe our policy has significantly reversed a 15-year trend in the city’s history,” he said.

Sifferman said he did not receive Campos’ request for time estimate information until 48 hours before the March 4 hearing, though Campos said he made his request weeks ago.

But he offered some statistics, including the fact that “since July 2008, JPD has released 107 unduplicated youth to ICE, 125 times.”

“This means that 17 were referred to ICE twice, that they returned to country of origin, then reoffended,” Sifferman explained.

He also noted that 92 percent of the youth are released to ICE after a felony finding.

“Only a small number are released to ICE without having determined if they had committed a felony,” Sifferman said.

The monthly average of kids referred to ICE for the first four months of the city’s new policy was ten, Sifferman said.

“And for the past 16 months, it’s been five,” he said. “We attribute this decline to undocumented Honduran youth no longer returning to the Tenderloin to sell crack with the same frequency.”

But he claimed that while there has been a reduction in releases to ICE, there had been no measurable decline in probation officer’s case or work load.

‘They continue to supervise kids who have not been referred to ICE,” he said.

“We have dedicated none of our resources to working with ICE,” he added.

Contact with ICE is limited to fax transmissions, follow-up phone calls, and follow-up responses, Sifferman said.

“Probation officers do not arrest or detain youth based on their undocumented status nor do they assist in taking youth into ICE custody,” Sifferman said. “We must always recognize the public safety impliations of our policy.”

Asked what kind of resources JPD spends on this contact, Sifferman said, “De minimus.”

Pressed  for more details,  Sifferman said, “It’s difficult to estimate given that our staffing level functions are ministerial—a fax being sent a record placed in a file, a phone call about a potential release date. We haven’t done a time study.”

Campos noted that unlike JPD’s former policy, the amendment he enacted last fall does not call for prior policing and actual transport of youth across the country. But Sifferman countered that if youth are released back into the community, JPD could be aked to transport them “to various locales.”

Campos questioned Sifferman as to the origin of language in Newsom’s current policy that immigrant advocates believe could lead to racial profiling (language that, as the Guardian learned today, has now been deleted from the policy).

“In determining whether there is reasonable suspicion that youth is undocumented, one of the criteria listed in the policy says, ‘presence of undocumented persons, ‘ but how would you know when a person is undocumented?” Campos asked.

“There could be information in the arresting report describing the conditions,” Sifferman suggested.

“How did you decide to include this language in the policy?” Campos asked.

“It was based on research and advice we received from the City Attorney’s office,” Sifferman said. “The entire policy is based on review and approval of the City Attorney’s office.”

“Can you see how something as open-ended as this could lead to racial profiling?” Campos asked.

‘It could, it requires vigilant oversight, if that criterion was taken alone, we’d have  a problem wth that,” Sifferman said.

Sup. Eric Mar said he was “very upset,” that Sifferman did not have the cost estimates available.
Mar also voiced concerns that the policy sounded “like a justification for racial profiling.”

“I really respect you, but it sure sounds like you’re flying in the face of San Francicso values when you are not implementing a policy to protect due process,” Mar said.

“I disagree that we have been intentionally stalling,” said Sifferman, who has been hit with budget cuts and staffing reductions in the past couple of years like other department heads.

Campos took issue with Sifferman citing Title 8, Section 1373 of the US code as justification for not implementing his policy amendment.

That section of the US code states that, “Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual. “

“Can you point to a section of the federal law that requires you to report?” Campos said
“No, I can’t,” Sifferman said.

But Sifferman subsequently noted  that there is a prohibition against “transporting and harboring any person known to be undocumented,” a position that leaves JPD officers feeling vulnerable given that the department has received three federal Granf Jury subpoenas related to JPD’s previous policy towards juveniles.

During public comment, UC Davis Law Professor Bill Ong Hing addressed the fact that a bunch of misinformation continues to swirl around the city’s immigrant juvenile policy.

“I would encourage the Board, Chief Sifferman, the Mayor’s Office and City Attorney’s office to sit down together,” Hing said. “A lot of misinformation is floating around.”

Hing noted that there is nothing in the Campos amendment that prohibits reporting kids to ICE.

“But you do not have to volunteer information to them, if it’s not required,” Hing said.

“The vast majority of jurisdictions don’t contact ICE [before kids have day in court], they recognize that’s not good policing, ” Hing continued. “Under the rules of federalism, there is nothing that prohibits this ordinance.”

“And there has never been a prosecution of a city worker [for following a city’s sanctuary policy], and [a prosecution of a city worker for that] wouldn’t be authorized by the Obama admininstration,” Hing claimed.

He also said that a confidential memo that Mayor Newsom leaked to the Chronicle was ‘laughable”.

“It exagerrates the likelihood of a successfully overruling the sanctuary ordinance,” Hing said.

Hing concluded that City Attorney approved language in Newsom’s current policy, “is a complete inviation for racial profiling.”

City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey responded forcefully to these accusations.

“Racial profiling is illegal, and something we take very seriously,” Dorsey wrote in an email.” Part of the City Attorney’s duty is to advise against illegal conduct. If a client department informs us that a policy could risk illegality, we will work with our clients to make sure laws aren’t broken, and that no one’s rights are violated. That’s a job lawyers do every day.  And that’s especially true here, where the matter involves litigation, threats of litigation, and a federal criminal investigation.”

And today, JPD decided to eliminate the language that was triggering racial profiling concerns.

Meanwhile, mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker noted that of the 125 reports to ICE since July 2008, 97 percent were for felony arrests, and the other 3 percent were “misdemeanors with priors.”

Winnicker also emailed a statement from Newsom that reads as follows:

“I have long supported our sanctuary policy and a range of policies and programs designed to assist our immigrant community. I believe San Francisco continues to be an international leader with our efforts to protect immigrants in our community. However, the sanctuary ordinance as originally conceived and adopted was designed to protect all residents of our city, not as a shield for felons and criminal behavior. I will not put City staff, our sanctuary city policy and thousands of residents at risk to shield felony criminal behavior by a few. Immigration and Customs enforcement is a federal responsibility. San Francisco cannot be the arbiter of immigration cases that take place within the City. That’s why many other counties in California have a similar policy of reporting suspected juvenile felons to Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the booking stage. The recent example of the Washington family validates that our current policy is appropriate. Juvenile Probation officials report undocumented felony arrests to Immigration & Customs Enforcement, and Immigration & Customs Enforcement officials determine the appropriate response. In this case, once President Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office became aware of the exceptional circumstances around the case, they took commendable action to ensure that the young boy and his family were given time to resolve their residency status.San Francisco’s Sanctuary Ordinance continues to strike the appropriate balance between offering a welcoming hand to our immigrant community and protecting the public safety of law-abiding residents of our City.”

That’s a fine statement, and I’m sure the mayor cares about youth, whatever their nationality and immigration status. But  immigrant youth still face a  Catch 22 trap within his policy that has led kids who haven’t committed felonies being referred to ICE for deporation. The question now becomes, can a miracle happen? Will everyone involved–at the city and federal level–sit down and hash out an equitable solution? Will heads of other city departments acknowledge their role in this process or will Sifferman be hung out to dry all on his lonesome? And will a bunch more kids get thrown under the bus before we as a nation find our way towards a saner and more equitable immigration process? Stay tuned.

Education of a felon

-
0
Education of a felon

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Filmmaker Jacques Audiard has described his new film, A Prophet, as “the anti-Scarface.” Yet why do this gripping, gritty feat of moviemaking — tutored though not neutered by the schools of grim social realism and grimy magical realism — that disservice? Why deny this heartfelt yet tough-minded entry into the prisonsploitation ranks of Cool Hand Luke (1967), Papillon (1973), and HBO’s Oz?

A Prophet‘s forebears are couched in the lyrics of Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” and Bertolt Brecht’s “Mack the Knife” (Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s version wheezes warmly over the final credits) and lurk in the memoirs of Edward Bunker and Jean Genet, rather than in the Grand Guignol fantasy of a snow-blind Al Pacino introducing us to his little friend. Yet much like Scarface (1983), A Prophet bottles the heady euphoria that chases the empowerment of the powerless and the rise of the long-shot loner on the margins — permutations of the capitalist success story and odes to hard-working individualism familiar to, say, Michael Mann fans. Still, that swirl of programmatic referents shouldn’t discount the inspired rigor of A Prophet, which — in its almost-Dickensian attention to detail, devotion to its own narrative complexity, and passion for cinematic poetry — rises above the ordinary and, through the prism of genre, finds its own power.

The supremely opportunistic, pragmatically Machiavellian intellectual and spiritual education of a felon is the chief concern of A Prophet. Played by Tahar Rahim with the guileless open-faced charisma reminiscent of River’s Edge-era Keanu Reeves (though Rahim is more agile and pliable than the reserved Reeves), Malik is half-Arab and half-Corsican — and distrusted or despised by both camps in the pen. When he lands in jail for his six-year sentence, he’s 19, illiterate, friendless, and vulnerable enough to get his shoes snatched straight off his feet his first day in the yard. His deal with the devil — and means of survival — arrives with Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), temporarily locked up before his testifies against the mob. Corsican boss Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup, who resembles a scary, sketchy Father Christmas) wants him dead, and Malik, loudly propositioned by the would-be stoolie in the showers, is tagged to penetrate Reyeb’s defenses, namely his cell, with a blade hidden in mouth.

The bittersweet irony is that the man Malik must kill, at the risk of being killed himself, seemingly turns out to be the first to show him any kindness. During their brief, bloody tryst, the cultured Reyeb advises his assassin to educate himself behind bars, offering him gifts of books. And after Malik’s gory rebirth, as first a protected, contemptible serf serving the Corsicans, it turns out that the teenager’s a seer in more ways than one. From his low-dog position, he can eyeball the connections linking the drugs entering the prison to those circulating outside, as well as the machinations intertwining the Arab and Corsican syndicates — just as he happens to see, and confide in, the dead Reyeb, too. It’s no shock that when Cesar finds his power eroding and arranges prison leaves for his down-low, multilingual crossover star that Malik serves not only his Corsican master, but also his own interests, and begins to build a drug empire rivaling his teacher’s.

Throughout his pupil’s progress, Audiard demonstrates a way with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, and when Malik finally breaks with his Falstaffian, castrating patriarch, it makes your heart skip a beat in a move akin to the title of the director’s last film. It’s like several other exquisitely imperishable scenes in A Prophet: a sequence that aims for the chaotic, sensuous intercourse of a close-range shoot-out; the image of a sacrificial deer arcing through the air; the sight of Malik, awkward in a business suit, taking his first plane ride; a vision of a fragile rainbow coalition of crime. This Eurozone/Obama-age prophet is all about the profit — Malik is a biracial, border-crossing player who has translated his survival skills into power-grabbing opportunity — but here he’s imbued with grace, even while gaming for ill-gotten gain.

A PROPHET opens Fri/5 in Bay Area theaters.

Gascon’s remarks at press conference are stunning

Zelda Bronstein
-
4
Gascon’s remarks at press conference are stunning

By Brady Welch

Police Chief George Gascon held a press conference Feb 25th to discuss his desire to arm his officers with Conducted Energy Devices (known to you and me as Tasers or stun guns) — and his comments demonstrated that the chief still doesn’t get it.

Gascon is arguing that Tasers could prevent some deadly police shootings. But there’s a much larger issue that he seems to be ignoring.

On December 28, 2009, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals right here in San Francisco affirmed the decision of a lower court that an unarmed man shot with a Taser can sue the city of Coronado, just outside San Diego. The zapping caused Carl Bryan to fall face first into the pavement, thus knocking out his four front teeth. To add insult to injury, one of the Taser probes lodged in the man’s flesh, requiring a doctor’s scalpel to remove it.
And what was this citizen’s crime? Getting upset with himself for being pulled over twice in the same day for routine traffic infractions. According to court records, the 21-year-old Bryan was driving home on a Sunday morning after a long night with friends and got pulled over for speeding. Later that same morning, he got stopped again, this time for not wearing a seat belt (which he forgot to put back on after initially getting stopped).

Bryan pulled to the curb and started punching the steering wheel, shouting expletives at himself for being so careless. He then got out of the car “yelling gibberish and hitting his thighs,” the court decision reports. The officer yelled at Bryan to get back in the car, but Bryan apparently didn’t hear him. Then the cop, without warning, shot the kid with his Taser gun.
Bryan didn’t die. He also wasn’t on drugs (Tasers are particularly dangerous to people under the influence of stimulants). But he was hurt — and at least according to the court files, there’s good grounds to argue that he should never have been zapped in the first place.

Gascon acknowledged that Tasers can be dangerous, although he offered a somewhat morbid justification of taser-implicated deaths—loosely paraphrased, he suggested that if you ask a crackhead to run around the block, that person would probably suffer cardiac arrest anyway. And he talked about special training to avoid police Tasing of drug-addled and mentally ill people.

But what he’s missing — and what has a lot of community activists concerned — is the situation in Coronado: The Taser shooting of someone who should never have been shot with anything. Two police commissioners, Petra DeJesus and Vincent Pan, have expressed concerns over whether people can trust a San Francisco police department armed with semi-lethal weapons that officers might feel inclined to used in decidedly less than semi-lethal situations. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion is only the most recent and ballyhooed case.

What was particularly galling during the chief’s press conference was when Taser-supporting commissioners Tom Mazzucco and Jim Hammer came forward to plead the case for using Tasers on the mentally ill — as opposed to real bullets — almost as if to say, Certainly, we can all agree on this.

Well, maybe not. Here’s what the Ninth Circuit had to say:

A mentally ill individual is in need of a doctor, not a jail cell, and in the usual case—where such an individual is neither a threat to himself nor to anyone else—the government’s interests in deploying force to detain him is not as substantial as its interest in deploying that force to apprehend a dangerous criminal. Moreover, the purpose of detaining a mentally ill individual is not to punish him, but to help him. The government has an important interest in providing assistance to a person in need of psychiatric care; thus, the use of force that may be justified by that interest necessarily differs both in degree and in kind from the use of force that would be justified against a person who has committed a crime or who poses a threat to the community.

In other words: Cops shouldn’t be shooting mentally ill people anyway, with Tasers or with pistols.

And if you give the cops Tasers, it’s almost certain that they’ll zap a whole lot of people who were, as one critic put it, “guilty of nothing more than mouthing off to a cop on the bus.”

BTW, there’s an interesting Amnesty International report on Tasers here

 

 

 

A look back at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival (part one)

Sue Vaughan
-
0

Over the years, the Sundance Film Festival has become known for its superior documentary selections, exciting experimental programs, mumblecore masterpieces, a few foreign delights, and buzz-worthy indie flicks that eventually become the year’s most under or overrated. The 2010 festival was no exception. Make sure to mark down any of these movies that sound interesting for the upcoming year — for some reason, post-Sundance film releases seem to be shorter, smaller, and becoming even non-existent. (Johan Renck’s decade-defining Downloading Nancy, which screened at Sundance in 2008, was finally released straight to DVD this past month.) Read on for the first in a series of posts detailing my top picks at this year’s fest.

Drake Doremus’ aptly titled Douchebag achieved the festival’s greatest achievement: I heard the word “douchebag” being used in every Utah restaurant, shop and theatre. Luckily the film also does a bang up job as it follows a beardo older brother (on the verge of his wedding) who takes a wild road-trip to find his younger brother’s fifth grade girlfriend. Not only will it cause you to mutter the word douchebag multiple times, the film perfectly captures the dominating and destructive characteristics of certain family members. Even the couple sitting next to me who said they “hated mumblecore films” loved Douchebag. David Dickler’s debut performance as the titular d-bag older brother should have been recognized when awards night came around.

Dickler also edited the film, a fact which brought attention to his quiet career in the medium. He edited Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), Borat (2006), and Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008). And at a compressed running time of 81 minutes, Douchebag is the most fun you’ll have hating a character this year.

One of Sundance’s hottest ticket was for Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are Alright. Cholodenko won Sundance’s screenwriting award for her first film, High Art (1998); her latest is a pitch-perfect family drama for the Y2teens. Two kids who were raised by two different type of mothers (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) track down their surrogate father (Mark Ruffalo) and find him to be a progressive, free-wheeling lone wolf. The film’s progression is presented with such confidence and sensitivity that the film transcends its sign of the times vibe, giving the viewer the feeling that it’s predicting the future.

Coincidentally, John Waters’ new film, Fruitcake, starring Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey, also follows a boy (who runs away from home after his parents are busted for stealing meat at the grocery store) who meets up a with a girl who was raised by lesbian parents and who is looking for her surrogate father.

Pipiloti Rist’s Pepperminta is an inspired, unofficial remake of Czech New Wave director Vera Chytilova’s Daisies (1966). Its psychadelic set and color design felt like an episode of Pee Wee’s Playhouse wrapped up in feature-length Skittles commercial. Many audience members were overwhelmed by the film’s aesthetic, but those who finished it were rewarded with a killer quest through anarchy, feminism, and fearlessness. For anyone who’s been inspired by the music of Kate Bush and Björk, or the children’s books starring Madeline and Pippi Longstocking (after whom the director was nicknamed), this is the movie for you. Rist brings an excitement and inventiveness not only to the screen (and her wardrobe, showcased during the movie’s Q&A), but also to the multimedia exhibit that she also created to compliment the film. Don’t miss seeing Pepperminta in a theater.

Following his previous features I Stand Alone (1998) and Irreversible (2002), enfant terrible Gaspar Noe has now taken the digital revolution to a psychedelic hell with Enter the Void. The warning signs to epileptics upon entering the theater that a strobe effect was used throughout the film kicked things into overdrive right off the bat. Utilizing first person digicam, Noe takes the audience into strobing sexual scenes, deafening drug benders, and all-around supernatural swirly stuff … for two hours and 41 minutes! The film will eventually be released in two versions: a director’s cut and a commercial cut, which will run one reel shorter (by 20 minutes).  Pondering if this epic journey was made to watch while you are on drugs or instead of doing drugs is almost as debatable as the final moment of the voyage (it truly is worth it to make it all the way through to the end!)

Zeina Durra’s The Imperialists Are Still Alive explores a group of Manhattan socialites who by day, talk and make self-righteous Post-Modern art, but by night, wander the city looking for late night parties and showing off their audacious new dresses. Asya (played with a perfect balance of ignorance and irony by Elodie Bouchez) is not only participating in this scene, she’s also worrying herself sick about a kidnapped friend in Lebanon (the film takes place during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict). While Variety pointed out that the film’s title is taken from Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967), it’s the consistent ironic undertone that feels truly Godardian; no doubt it’ll  put off many audiences (more than half of the audience in the press screening left early.) The director was slammed after her introduction for being too pretentious and proud of her work. But that is exactly what rings so true to me about this mini-masterpiece, that reflection of our current contradiction that many of us living in big cities find ourselves in: We know and “care” so much about world events, yet seconds later we’re arguing about the Academy Award nominations. Irony is alive and well.

Coming tomorrow: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ top five picks and honorable mentions from the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

And speaking of pot…

Sasha Cuttler
-
3
And speaking of pot…

Just minutes after my last post on medical marijuana, Assembly member Tom Ammiano announced that he has reintroduced state legislation that would legalize and tax marijuana. Assembly Bill 2254 follows an earlier bill by Ammiano, AB 390, which made history in January by clearing the Assembly Public Safety Committee, only to die from failing to clear a second committee before the legislative deadline.

“Just look at what is happening in our state and it’s obvious that the existing model of prohibition has been a tragic failure. Our prisons are overflowing and it’s easier now for teenagers to get marijuana than alcohol. But yet we continue to spend our limited resources on a failed war on drugs instead of education, health care or job training. With this bill, California can finally have a policy towards marijuana that reflects reality,” Ammiano said in a prepared statement. “We simply cannot afford to continue keeping our heads in the sand and pretend that everything is fine.  It’s time for California to regain control of this issue by taxing and regulating marijuana.”

Blow your mind on this lecture, man

Andrew Lam
-
5

It was a convergence that may have been responsible for the rise of psychedelic drugs, yoga, vegetarianism, and the new age spiritual movement in the western world. And it happened at Harvard University? Don Lattin’s talk on his book The Harvard Psychedelic Club (Harper Collins) next week (Thur/18) narrates one of history’s most momentous groups of college buddies and how their scientific studies on the effects of tripping balls changed American culture in the 1960s.



Sure, we all expanded horizons in college — but these guys set the gold standard. LSD and psilocybin had yet to be codified by the man in 1960, when Timothy O’Leary and Richard Alpert began the Harvard Psilocybin Project, in between trips to Mexico where they dabbled in the indigenous folks’ teonanácatl. The project tested, among other things, the effects of psilocybin on the anti-social behavior of prisoners and facilitation of religious ecstasy in divinity students. They also administered LSD to over 300 students and faculty members. It was during these studies that Leary and Alpert fell in with Andrew Weil and Huston Smith. A quartet of intellects was formed and the rest, as the hippies would say, is history.


Basically, they all got fired from traditional academia, the drugs got banned for use by law abiding citizens, and each “club” member became a leader in a different aspect of counter culture- Smith in world religions, Alpert in guruism, Weil in promoting integrative medicine within traditional psychology and Leary to… well we all know what Leary got up to.


But first they kicked it at Harvard, and their ensuing escapades are also the subject of Lattin’s lecture- which apparently included some total buzzkill “backstabbing, jealousy, and outright betrayal,” according to the event’s press release. E tu, Ram Dass? The lecture is but one mind expanding night brought to us by the California Institute of Integral Studies, who is also sponsoring a talk on “The Way of the Shaman (Fri/12 through Sat/13) and a performance by the Soweto Gospel Choir (March 27) this spring.


 


“The Harvard Psychedelic Club” with Don Lattin


Thur/18 7 p.m., $15


CIIS Main Building


1453 Mission, SF


(415) 575-6100


www.ciis.edu

’80s babies

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
1
’80s babies

arts@sfbg.com

I’m from the city of gangstas and broken dreams / where we hopin’ the Lord hear our silent screams / but this dope money helpin’ my self-esteem — J Stalin, “Self-Destruction”

 

MUSIC I’ve known J Stalin for five years, during which I’ve watched the pint-sized, eternally baby-faced rapper develop from cocky adolescent to full-blown boss, head of a label and an ever-expanding crew of talent both known as Livewire. When we met, he’d already made a prestigious debut as an 18-year-old on Richie Rich’s Nixon Pryor Roundtree (Ten-Six, 2002), but he still had a long grind to get where he is now.

The title of “hottest rapper in Oakland” changes hands rapidly, but at the moment, it’s Stalin’s, coinciding with the recent release of his sophomore album, The Prenuptial Agreement (Livewire/SMC). “Sophomore” is misleading; J’s released countless projects since his first album, On Behalf of the Streets (Livewire/Zoo Ent, 2006) — not simply mixtapes, but full albums under one pretext or another, like a duo disc with Livewire-member Mayback, The Real World, Vol 2 (Livewire/DJ Fresh, 2008), or his entry in SMC’s Town Thizzness series, Gas Nation (2008). But these days, rappers reserve the right to designate “official solo albums” among their endless stream of releases, and J has patiently assembled Prenup over roughly three years.

“On Behalf of the Streets was to prove myself to Oakland,” he says. “When I made Prenup, I was trying to make music for the world. My fanbase is bigger than Oakland now, so I gotta make my music bigger.”

Prenup definitely succeeds in this ambition. The Mekanix — who produced all of Streets — return in force, alongside numerous newer producers like teenage Alameda resident Swerve. Tracks like Swerve’s “Neighborhood Stars” (blessed by Oakland’s godfather, Too Short, as well as Mistah FAB) or the Mekanix’s “HNIC” (featuring Messy Marv) are spacious, state-of-the-art numbers that hold up against anything on national radio.

Yet the core of Stalin’s sound is very Oakland — unsurprising, given his role in shaping the Town’s current obsession: the 1980s. Musically, the signatures of this trend are classic 808 beats, layered with old skool keyboards from a time when synths barely resembled the instruments they allegedly imitated. Aside from the 808s, the resulting tracks sound little like ’80s hip-hop (or even funk), evoking more the sonic palette of that decade’s R&B and even new wave.

DJ Fresh, producer of J’s first “pre-album” The Real World (Livewire/DJ Fresh, 2006) and other Livewire projects, acknowledges that these sounds have had a role in digital hip-hop. “That sound was there, but we mastered it,” he said. “Nobody was really touchin’ that sound before. It helped me find my sound, and it sounds natural with the way Stalin raps.”

“I just got it in me, those ’80s beats,” the often melodic Stalin concurs. “It probably got beat into my head as a child. I got a smooth style of rappin’, my harmonizing and all that. I’m on that ’80s melody vibe.”

 

ROCK OF AGES

Given the size and influence of Livewire, and its association with Beeda Weeda’s PTB crew, the ’80s vibe has gone viral in Oakland over the past couple of years. But unlike other miners of ’80s terrain — say, the Casio rock trend of last decade — the new sound of the Town has an organic lyrical connection through tales of crack and the devastation the drug has wreaked in the ghetto. “Slangin’ rocks” is hardly a novel topic in rap, yet there’s been a shift in presentation. This, I think, is a directly connected to age: unlike their elders, these new rappers are the first generation born during the crack epidemic. Born in West Oakland’s Cypress Village in 1983, Stalin himself is literally a crack baby.

“My mama been clean for two-and-a-half years,” Stalin says. “She did drugs all my life. We wasn’t always broke, because she sold drugs too. But as she got older, she started using more and selling less.”

This was a harsh environment for the young Jovan Smith. When J was only five, his 18-year-old brother, Lamar Jackson, died from swallowing his rocks while escaping from the police. Stalin’s dad, a con man, was in jail for most of Stalin’s childhood.

Stevie Joe — a Livewire rapper whose upcoming disc ‘80s Baby also refers to his East Oakland hood, the Shady 80s — succinctly articulates the effects of such an upbringing.

“A lot of kids grew up alone,” he says. “You gotta go outside because your parents tell you, ‘I’m getting high, get outta here.’ When you outside and they inside getting high, they don’t know what you doing out there. That’s how people get involved with selling drugs, doing drugs, all that.”

Immersed in this environment, Stalin became a d-boy — a teen crack dealer — standing on the corner, taking turns with his friends selling as customers came through. Stevie himself sold drugs more casually until age 19, when his daughter was born. “I never wanted to hit the block, but I needed a stable place where I could make money. It might sound bad on paper, but it helped me raise her.”

Others, like Livewire’s Philthy Rich, whose Town Thizzness disc Funk or Die (SMC) dropped in late ’09, began even earlier. Hailing from East Oakland’s Seminary neighborhood, Philthy caught his first case at age 11 for stealing a bike, before graduating to the dope game.

“I got in the streets when I was young because I had a rough parenthood,” he said. “A single mother. Five different kids from five different fathers. For attention I was rebelling. And it’s not hard to start selling drugs when you already been around that life. Most of the crackheads is people’s family from the neighborhood. So it’s nothing new.

“It was just me out there, trying to find myself,” he continued. “I used to wonder why I was even born.”

 

D-BOY BLUES

In lyrical terms, the ’80s baby generation primarily identifies with classic Bay Area mob music, bypassing more recent hyphy. But there seems to be a difference in presentation. The ’90s mob rapper tended to rap from an adult perspective, portraying himself in hyperbolic exploits as a kind of Scarface-inspired action figure. To be sure, the ’80s babies haven’t abandoned such tales of million-dollar deals, speedboats, and private planes. But alongside this, the story of the d-boy has emerged, reflecting the trauma of the generation’s upbringing. In contrast to the mobster’s comic-book glory, d-boy stories are frequently anti-glamour in tone, from the mundane, heartbreaking experiences of neglect — wearing the same clothes for a week or more being a common detail — to the painful tragedies of losing parents and siblings to drugs or murder. These stories generally unfold against a middle-school or high-school backdrop and are narrated from a present-tense, first-person perspective. The popularity of Stalin and ’80s-baby peers partly stems from the bond these narratives create between a rapper and his young ghetto fanbase. They can appreciate and admire Stalin as the grownup mobster who measures dope by the kilo, but they can identify with J as the d-boy with a bundle of rocks and “dope fiend” mother.

“They relate to us because we talking about what they going through too,” Stalin says. “I was 17 once upon a time. I can still relate; you just got to remember. I remember when I was 12. I can relate to a 12-year-old.”

Despite his chaotic childhood, Stalin wound up one of the lucky ones. Busted at 17, with a weekday curfew and weekends in juvenile hall, he had time on his hands and, like Mac Dre and many others, he used this isolation to begin writing raps. As it turned out, his late brother’s best friend grew up to be DJ Daryl, who produced 2pac’s 1993 smash “Keep Ya Head Up.” Daryl took Stalin under his wing, eventually introducing J to Richie Rich, who was impressed enough to feature Stalin on several tracks on Nixon. For Philthy Rich — subject of a segment in the recent, somewhat histrionic Discovery TV documentary Gang Wars: Oakland (2009) — as well as Stevie Joe, getting off the block took a lot longer.

“After I had my second son,” says Philthy, “I needed to do something else than what I was doing, in and out of jail. The cycle was just going to repeat. I feel like I can get further doing this.”

A chance encounter with Keak da Sneak manager Dame Fame, who was impressed with the rapper’s talents, helped get Stevie off the block and into the recording studio.

“I backslid one time, after a couple of months,” he admits. “But that didn’t last long because I couldn’t do it no more. So every day since I been rappin’.”

While J, Stevie, and Philthy have left the d-boy life behind, they haven’t forgotten the struggles they went through. The pain of this music offers solace to today’s disaffected youth, who, given the cumulative social effects of crack, are wilder than ever.

“These motherfuckers are crazy, because they never been raised,” Stevie says, citing the passing of pre-crack generations in the hood. These are the kids the new brand of “conscious thug” reaches out to. Alongside glorified tales of killing and dealing, the rappers send out more cautionary messages. Stalin voices the paradox on the intro to Prenup: “I told them I sold rocks on MTV / I’m a hustla, I could sell a million mp3s / and still send the message ‘don’t sell drugs’ to teens.” “As black people, we adapted to the ghetto to where we feel like there’s nothing wrong with us,” Stalin says. “It’s like nobody sees the big picture. It seem like nobody have big dreams of getting out the ghetto. They content; fuck being content — strive for more. Like OK, I sold drugs, but when I die, my obituary’s not going to say ‘drug seller.’ My obituary’s something whole different.”

Prison report: People are getting out

-
0

By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy was recently released from a California prison, where he wrote regular reports for us. He continues to comment on prison and criminal-justice issues. You can read his most recent post here.

So it’s finally happening: The early releases are to begin very soon, and the furor of public officials trying to protect their collective asses by decrying the releases and stirring up fear is funny.

Shit, what do you do? The number — 6,500 — is a drop in the bucket. Really, why is everyone so worried about it? These inmates are all getting out anyway, and more time inside equates (according to the pundits anyway) to more time for these low-level offenders to become fodder for the prison gangs and become even worse than they are now. And because they’re getting so much rehabilitation on the inside they should be kept there.

I guarantee that the majority of these 6,500 people are people in for possession or possession for sale. I guarantee the majority got no real help while inside, and a good portion will be on the streets and using drugs again — because, well, not everyone has the capability of self-rehabilitation without being given the tools. Is it any wonder many get out worse than when they go in?

I have been on parole for just over two months now. I was in for possession. My supervision has already dropped from once a week to once a month. Bear in mind, I transferred to a different state, but parole isn’t that hard, not if a person is willing to take responsibility for his or her actions and life. But I’m fortunate — I have a great support network, job, car, house, etc…but I also have the desire to stay out and to stay clean.

I know to many of you this may be counterintuitive, but there are folks that have the desire to stay clean, but just don’t know how. They don’t have the tools or skills or know what to do. They grew up around drugs, they went to prison where there were more drugs, their role models were drug dealers and gangbangers. They go to prison and get no real help and now…they’re released into a world with little supervision to the same neighborhood and the same shit keeps happening AND they keep hearing about how they’re such horrible people. The cycle continues.

Welcome to violence

-
0
Welcome to violence

MUSIC Late last year, Stones Throw Records announced it would release a full-length album of tunes by its veritable resident producer, Madlib, in 2010 … every month. Dubbed Madlib Medicine Show, the 12-part series sounds like a rap nerd fantasy.

Ever since his critically-lionized Quasimoto adventure, 2000’s The Unseen (Stones Throw), when he adopted a helium voice and crafted adult cartoons straight out of Fritz the Cat (1972) and Le Planete Sauvage (1973), Madlib has defined an idiom of crackling sampled loops, slightly buggered raps, and thick clouds of weed smoke. Over 15 years deep into a career that kicked off with a cameo on the Alkaholiks’ 1993 debut 21 and Over (Loud), the L.A. musician’s enigmatic vision perseveres, even as the idealistic underground scene he once occupied — remember back in the ’90s when his old group the Lootpack chastised wannabe gangsta rappers on “The Antidote”? — has turned cynical, becoming obsessed with the same “mainstream” guns-drugs-porn-money quadrangle it once criticized

Meanwhile, onetime critics who complained that Madlib produces too many records have been hushed by a rapacious Internet age, where weekly emissions of tracks and mixtapes are de rigueur. For example, L.A. indie rapper Blu, a promising inheritor of the West Coast hip-hop tradition, has been on “hiatus” for well over a year as he crafts his major label debut, yet still manages to upload several albums’ worth of free online “demos.” Madlib’s dozens of aliases (Yesterday’s New Quintet, DJ Rels, take your pick) and chaotic forays into post-bop, free jazz, soul-jazz broken beat, Brazilian tropicalia, and deep funk might seem quaint in comparison.

Smartly, Madlib doesn’t give his music away for free. The Madlib Medicine Show may resemble those Internet “loosies” and “street albums” you downloaded last night, but he makes you pay for the privilege of hearing his work. (Or at least he tries to; no one is immune to the Web’s torrential bootlegging.)

The first installment, No. 1: Before the Verdict, is particularly pointed in its message of commerce as a soul-destroying, mind-blowing shit-stem. The cover depicts a charred $1 bill (with a weed leaf embedded in a corner), an industrial plant spewing toxic waste, and the World Trade Center being bombed by an airplane. The interior features photos of strangely voodoo-fied Africans — one has a hand protruding from her mouth — and the cryptic message: “There were only three witnesses. Two are dead. The other isn’t talking.”

Before the Verdict’s 17 tracks consist of remixes of Guilty Simpson’s 2007 album Ode to the Ghetto, and a few previews of a forthcoming collaboration tentatively titled OJ Simpson. (Again, just like those damned Internet “street albums.”) Guilty is a decent if ornery thug rapper, but he’s clearly no match for Madlib’s symphony of ’70s soul “rapps,” funky howls, vinyl hiss, DJ cuts, burps and farts, pungent jokes culled from ’60s comedy albums (Redd Foxx and Millie Jackson!), and police scanner snippets. The Detroit rapper’s litanies about “Gettin’ Bitches” and “Robbery” are vocal anchors drowned by the Madlib Invazion’s furiously funky creativity.

Remember when that Quasimoto album intoned at the very beginning, “Welcome to violence”? These days, Madlib doesn’t just promise it. In rave terms, he has entered his hardcore phase. No longer positive and consciousness-expanding, the blessed weed smoke is fuel for a crank personality. The transformation is compelling, hilarious, and frightening. As the rap world’s version of “reality” narrows into a handful of masculine fantasies, Madlib has become the era’s pamphleteer, printing out screaming headlines like a crazed prophet of doom.

Not all of his current work sounds like a ghetto dystopia. On his 2008 homage to his late friend James “J Dilla” Yancey, Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6: A Tribute To …(Stones Throw), Madlib employed the same collagist techniques with melancholy, loving care. And then there’s the other album Madlib produced this month, Strong Arm Steady’s In Search of Stoney Jackson (Stones Throw). The L.A. group fares somewhat better than Guilty Simpson. Madlib lets their hard-rock rhymes breathe a little, before snuffing them with musical ether

MADLIB

with DJ Shortkut

Fri/29, 10 p.m., $20

Mighty

119 Utah, SF.

www.mighty119.com

Prison report: The early release scare

-
0

By Just A Guy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The artistic merit of large men who wrestle in their diapers

-
0

By Caitlin Donohue

sumo 2 0110.jpg
Sumo will save us all! Andy Ristaino’s contribution to “Into the Ring, Sumo Style”

The life of a sumo wrestler, as it turns out, is not much unlike that of a thoroughbred racehorse. Both live in stables- called heya in the case of the Japanese martial artists, where life is highly stratified by the wrestlers’ ranks- and both live life according to their handlers. For the sumo wrestler, this is the head of their stable, always an ex-wrestler, and the National Sumo Association. Their stable head oversees their sleep schedule, diet, what clothing they can wear (novices get a paper-thin robe, even in the winter) and training, while the National Sumo Association takes care of everything else. One unlucky sumo wrestler had the bad luck to crash his car and the Association immediately suspended him from a game. On a short leash, them sumo boys.

Plus, they both do drugs. Racehorses have their ‘roids or horse tranquilizers or whatever they use to get quick, and it turns out sumo wrestlers have been known to toke the wacky weed on occasion.

This all to say that there is more than meets the eye about these exotic creatures. Something about all this regimen, their sleekly obese good lucks, and they way they throw themselves around… one begins to see why the mystique of the sumo has spread to the Bay Area artists that are putting on “Into the Ring, Sumo-Style,” an exhibit showing at the SOMarts Cultural Center.

Leading the pack is cartoonist Marinaomi, whose watercolor renditions of sumo wrestlers belching and excreting colorful balloons set the tone for an offbeat assemblage of pieces that pay homage to these whales of the Land of the Rising Sun. You get Sumo Elvis (Gabrielle Gamboa), Sumo Food Court (Fredrick Nolan) and even Sumo Godzilla Fighter Andy Ristaino). It all takes place in the arty SOMA industrialized wonderland that is SOMarts, a place I love for the sheer originality of their installations.

Picture it: fat men with their hair in buns, everywhere. All that and free sake to boot. Bomb.

“Into the Ring, Sumo Style”
Opening Reception: Fri/15 6-9 p.m. (exhibit continues through Sat/23), free
SOMarts Cultural Center
934 Brannan, SF
www.somarts.org

Sex & Romance

-
0
Sex & Romance

BEST RESTAURANT TO SPARK ROMANCE

Café Jacqueline

Small, chic, and oh so French, this North Beach gem is an ideal spot to sip wine with your candlelit date while waiting for your made-to-order soufflé.

1454 Grant, SF. (415) 981-5565

BEST ONLINE PERSONALS

Eros-guide.com

Like Craigslist but without all those pesky non-sex-related categories, Eros is the definitive guide to escorts, strippers, BDSM partners, and “adult” dating.

www.eros-guide.com

BEST PLACE FOR SINGLES TO MEET SOMEONE

The Cellar

This small subterranean dance club features reasonably priced drinks, theme parties, and singles nights.

685 Sutter, SF. (415) 441-5678, www.cellarsf.com

BEST FIRST DATE SPOT

Foreign Cinema

Upscale cuisine, excellent cocktails, an adjacent art gallery, and a backdrop of films projected onto the wall in the outdoor patio make this a classy choice for a first night out.

2534 Mission, SF. (415) 648-7600, www.foreigncinema.com

BEST PLACE FOR AN ILLICIT TRYST

Bathrooms at the Lexington Club

Girls like going to the loo together — especially at the Lexington, SF’s favorite lesbian bar.

3464 19th St., SF. (415) 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com

BEST BREAKUP SPOT; BEST CRUISING SPOT

Dolores Park

On a sunny day, this sprawling, multifaceted public park is jam-packed with people. Once you finish the breakup talk, just hop to the next blanket over to find your rebound.

Dolores, between 18th and 20th Sts., SF

BEST PLACE TO BUY WEDDING WEAR

Dark Garden

This versatile shop offers quality custom corsets for all your costume, special occasion, and seduction needs.

321 Linden, SF. (415) 431-7684, www.darkgarden.net

BEST PLACE TO HAVE YOUR WEDDING CEREMONY

San Francisco City Hall

Say your vows with simple sophistication in the rotunda of this gorgeous historic building.

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF. (415) 554-4933, www.sfgov.org/cityhall

BEST HOT TUB RENTAL

The Hot Tubs on Van Ness

Clean, comfortable, and calming, each room at the Hot Tubs offers a redwood sauna, a hot tub, a seating area, and controlled lighting and music.

2200 Van Ness, SF. (415) 441-8827, www.thehottubs.com

BEST FLOWER SHOP

Church Street Flowers

Friendly petal peddlers offer a selection of quality blooms in traditional and creative arrangements.

212 Church, SF. (415) 553-7762, www.churchstreetflowers.com

BEST COUPLES COUNSELOR

Marriage Prep 101

This husband-and-wife team hosts informative, proactive, practical sessions to help your relationship succeed.

417 Spruce, SF. (415) 905-8830, www.marriageprep101.com

BEST PLACE TO BUY LINGERIE


My Boudoir: Best Place to Buy Lingerie
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

My Boudoir Lingerie

The exquisite yet low-key purveyor of intimate finery delights shoppers with a diverse selection of reasonably priced, well-crafted bras, panties, teddies, and more.

2029 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-1502, www.myboudoir.net

BEST PLACE TO BUY SEX TOYS; BEST CONDOM SELECTION

Good Vibrations

It’s famous for a reason: a great selection of toys, books, and accessories; helpful staff; and a comfortable atmosphere.

603 Valencia, SF. (415) 552-5460; 1620 Polk, SF. (415) 345-0400; 2504 San Pablo, Berk. (510) 841-

8987; www.goodvibes.com

BEST PLACE TO BUY FETISH GEAR

Mr. S Leather/Madame S Boutique

Between the two of them, Mr. and Madame S can satisfy any of your leather or latex needs, be it for bondage clothing, kinky sex toys, or sexy bedroom hardware.

385 Eighth St., SF. (415) 863-7764, www.mr-s-leather.com, www.madame-s.com

BEST ADULT VIDEO STORE

Superstar Satellite

Home of independent, gay-themed, and top Hollywood movie releases, Superstar is also beloved for its collection of gay adult films.

474 Castro, SF. (415) 863-3333, www.castromoviestore.com

BEST STRIP CLUB

Lusty Lady

The world’s only unionized, worker-owned peep show, the Lusty is a perennial award winner.

1033 Kearny, SF. (415) 391-3991, www.lustyladysf.com

BEST SEX CLUB

Eros

Spa by day and sex club by night, this clean Castro locale provides steam, saunas, showers, lube and condoms, and a diverse selection of music and porn for its male clientele.

2051 Market, SF. (415) 255-4921, www.erossf.com

BEST SEX EDUCATION RESOURCE

Center for Sex and Culture

Is there anything the center doesn’t do? Workshops, classes, social gatherings, a library, archives, and special events are all part of its mission of providing the public with nonjudgmental, sex-positive education and support.

(415) 255-1155, www.sexandculture.org

BEST SEX WRITER

Virgie Tovar

This sex educator, sexual enhancement coach, phone sex operator, and former radio host titillates readers with Destination DD: Adventures of a Breast Fetishist.

www.myspace.com/thevirgieshow, www.breastfetishist.com

Sex & Romance

BEST SWEET PIECE OF ASS


Cake Gallery: Best Sweet Piece of Ass
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

Scoring a sweet piece of ass in SoMa has never been difficult, but finding it gushing with chocolate or vanilla? And in a box? For that you’ll have to head to the Cake Gallery, where a three dimensional ass-cake is actually one of the tamer selections on the menu. The policy here is to quickly whip up “anything your demented mind can imagine.” A giant penis spurting Bavarian jizz? Pssh. If you can’t conjure anything crazier than that for your sister’s Quinceañera, you can peruse an album of past creations for ideas: trannies swimming in rivers of piss, clam bumpin’ lesbians, and iconic cartoon characters engaged in bizarre sex acts are just the tip of the iceberg here. Think big! The only order that might get you a sidewise glance is a “normal” one.

290 Ninth St., SF. (415) 861-2253, www.thecakegallerysf.com

BEST APHRODISIAC WITH ADMISSION

Most San Francisco foodies worth their salt wouldn’t consider dating someone who didn’t like oysters. Obvious body-part references aside, oysters are supposedly one of the saltiest, slipperiest, juiciest aphrodisiacs on the planet (due to high levels of libido-increasing zinc) — plus there’s something both sexy and classy about the whole process of eating them. The largest oyster festival on the West Coast, O’Reilly’s Oyster Festival, then, seems like a good place to take someone if you’ve got ulterior motives. With attractions like the “Shuck and Suck Competition” (winner gets innuendo-filled bragging rights for a whole year), cooking demonstrations, an oyster history exhibition, and live music, North Beach’s oystery weekend pretty much completely rocks. Add that other great aphrodisiac — beer — to the equation, and you’d better have some smooth moves planned for when the sun goes down.

Second weekend in May, Fort Mason’s Great Meadow, SF. www.oreillysoysterfestival.com

BEST DAREDEVIL FIRST DATE

Let’s face it: San Francisco’s dating scene is exhausting. The excess of attractive, successful single people who live and date within the city limits practically guarantees that whoever you’re dating is probably dating someone else; and if someone wants to settle down with you, you’re not quite ready because your three other options are just too good to discard. That means there are a lot of first dates happening all over the city. And how many times can you go for a cup of coffee at an anarchist café, or dinner at a new trendy restaurant, or an indie show at a tiny dive? For an out-of-the-ordinary meet-and-greet, trek your asses up Diamond Heights (specifically, to Douglass Street between 19th and 20th) to the Seward Slides, sit on the empty pizza box you brought with you, and get ready to shoot headfirst down the awesomest hidden hillside slides in San Francisco. Plus, you’re less likely to run into your date’s other poly partners.

Seward and Douglass Sts., SF.

BEST ROMANTIC ACTIVISM

What’s more romantic than equality? A place to celebrate it right in the center of one of our favorite neighborhoods. That’s what we’ve got with Heart of the Castro Wedding Chapel, a charming locale for commitment ceremonies that opened on the heels of the California Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex marriage. The chapel is run by a collective of friends and activists striving to keep the institution legal while also providing dream weddings for couples who never thought they’d have one. Want something simple and elegant? Something crazy and kooky? The folks at Heart will help you plan it, and then they’ll host it in their lovely Victorian suite. Want a big party in December? Or quickie nuptials tomorrow afternoon? Either way, they’ll try to accommodate you. Indeed, they’re so dedicated to your happiness, they’ll even help you find a different venue if theirs doesn’t work for you. With reasonable prices and a great mission, we love Heart of the Castro so much it makes us want to marry them.

4052 18th St., SF. (415) 626-7743, www.heartofthecastro.com

BEST DOGGIE STYLE

Forget the Hallmark cards and expensive rings. Valentine’s Day was made for one thing only: boning. You know it, we know it, and all the animals on God’s green earth know it. If you need proof, book a spot at the SF Zoo’s annual Woo at the Zoo for a multimedia, champagne-soaked rundown of the myriad fornication styles the Coital Creator has bestowed upon Her beastly children. Gasp at the site of a horse’s schlong as it enters an unsuspecting mare. Wince at the violent lovemaking rituals of sharks. Imagine penguin orgies and simian BDSM parties. By the time the show’s over, your animal-loving date will be hornier than a bonobo and ready to get down, monkey-style, in the backseat of your Jaguar (or VW Rabbit, if that’s how you roll). If you hear screams of ecstasy in the parking lot after the show, listen closely — we bet some of ’em are human.

1 Zoo, SF. (415) 753-7080, www.sfzoo.org

BEST FLOATING LAP DANCE

OK, so the dancers on the Mermaids Cruise don’t actually dress like Disney’s Ariel, but they still do a pretty good job of satisfying whatever deep and dirty fetish you have for that under-the-sea siren. Book a spot for you and your friends any Friday or Saturday — or charter a private ride on another night of the week — and you’ll find yourself trapped on a boat for a two hours with an open bar and randy strippers like goth girl Candy, Brazilian kitten Cheetah, Southern belle Trillian, or hip-hop hottie Vanity. They may not have fish scales, but we bet men and women alike won’t be able to keep their eyes off the mermaids’ tails. Heteros, homos, singles, and couples are all welcome on the restored classic motor vessel. And if women aren’t your thing, the company has a Merman Cruise too.

(415) 859-7052, www.mermaidscruise.com

BEST HIPSTER HOOKUP HANGOUT

Want to pick up a hipster punk but can’t handle another night in the Mission. Your best bet is Hemlock Tavern, run by the same folks responsible for Valencia Street favorite Casanova. Located in Polk Gulch (otherwise known as the Tenderloin with higher rent), the Hemlock has a 360-degree bar, plenty of PBR, a pool table, an enclosed and heated smoking room, and bags of peanuts for a dollar — all well worth riding a fixed gear across town for. Plus, there’s often live music in a side room. When the giant red arrow on the wall lights up, you can pay a small cover to see the music or simply stay in the larger bar area and watch music-lovers in tight jeans and studded belts parade past you. Another bonus: this might be the only non-gay bar in San Francisco where the line for the men’s room is longer than the one for the ladies’, which means plenty of opportunity for hitting on cute hipster boys.

1131 Polk, SF. (415) 596-7777, www.hemlocktavern.com

BEST NEXT STEP IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP


Filbert Street Steps: Best Next Step in Your Relationship
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

It’s quite possible that the only thing cuter than twosomes of cooing birds are the cooing couples who watch them. For your own chance to go “awwww” with your amore, head over to the Filbert Steps. Yes, this is the locale for feel-good-movie-of-all-time The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, featuring the tiny cherry-headed conures that make their homes in the trees lining the steps for most of the year. To get there, take your sweetie and your fixie through the Broadway Tunnel to Washington Square Park, and head up Telegraph Hill to the base of Coit Tower. Check out the WPA murals on the way, then descend 28 stories down the wooden stairs until you hear distinctive squawks from the flock. Next? Look. Listen. Lock lips. What you do after that is between you, the birds, and the bees.

Filbert and Telegraph Hill Blvd., SF. www.coittower.org

BEST BEER GOGGLES DOWN BELOW

The thing about shelling out for drinks when you aim to impress a hottie is that they go away so quickly (the drinks, definitely; the hottie, possibly). By the time your crush is rattling ice in the base of their empty vodka-cran-lime glass, the object of your financed affections may have moved on to the other end of the bar. But strike up a good rapport with someone at the Lucky 13, Zeitgeist, the R Bar, or Ace’s, and you can spend your hard-earned bucks on a longer-lasting investment with clearer purpose — and a better chance of big returns. The answer? Underwear bearing the bar’s logo. If your paramour accepts the gift, you know you’re on the same page — and possibly on your way to a private, postbar fashion show. Just make sure you get ones you like. After all, both rejection and romance can end with you having to wear them.

BEST BAR FOR A BOOTY CALL

Smooth-talking, heavy-handed bartenders and a packed house of good-looking, hormonal twenty- and thirtysomethings boozing it up in muted, raucous style are part of what make Solstice a classic among booty-call bars. If you’ve already got a FWB, this place will get you in the mood — and do it in style. And if you’re simply looking for a bed buddy, you’ll have your pick of young execs with flushed cheeks, loosened ties, and skirts deliberately pushed up high-thigh. The menu’s got classy down-home bar food like Kobe beef sliders with sweet potato fries or gorgonzola mac ‘n’ cheese, so you can satisfy any “not before you buy me dinner” roadblocks. Add in that happy hour that starts at 5 p.m. and food is available until midnight (that’s seven hours to score), and you’re looking at pretty good odds. Speaking of looking good, everyone does after a bottle of wine, so take advantage of Monday’s half-off special.

2801 California, SF. (415) 359-1222, www.solsticelounge.com

BEST VIOLET BLUE


Violet Blue: Best Violet Blue
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

Beloved San Francisco sex writer Violet Blue recently started seeing red when she realized porn actress Ada Mae Johnson had adopted her moniker in 2001 — using it to make 300 films, which earned her the coveted “Best New Starlet” award from Adult Video News in 2002. The conflict came to a head at the 2006 Exotic Erotic Ball, where confusion ensued when SF Violet Blue (her given name) and porn star Violet Blue both attended. Last year the writer of sex books and columnist for SFGate.com sued her doppelgänger to get Johnson to change her stage name. After the writer won an initial victory in the courts earlier this year, the porn star finally changed her name — first to Violetta Blue, then to Noname Jane. We’re happy for Blue, though we assume Noname doesn’t feel the same. She’s probably green with envy.

www.tinynibbles.com, www.myspace.com/nonamejane

BEST DISNEY WITH LUBE

Whoever thinks a DVD is the best way to see gay porn never watched it on 8mm. The undoctored color, the absence of grunting, the lurid, jumpy detail … how could you not prefer that to the glossy, homogenous automatons in contemporary adult films? Of course, finding gay porn by way of the DVD’s lasered predecessor isn’t easy — which is where Super8Man comes in. This 8mm-afficionado has collected an impressive number of such films, exhibiting the grainy fantasies at various clubs and venues — like Artists’ Television Access — throughout the city. So keep an eyeball out for this showman and his varied and nuanced delights. Perhaps you’ll even get to see his personal favorite: a madcap vignette of two guys fucking in a van while a wheel man zips them through town with the back doors swinging open. It’s like Disney’s North Avenue Irregulars with lube!

www.super8men.com, www.handbookmen.com

BEST MÉNAGE À MEATLESS

It’s said that vegetarians have the freshest smelling genitals around. But the folks at Millennium seem to know something about the way a flesh deficit affects a vegetarian’s sex life in other ways. Apparently, noncarnivores feel an intense yearning for a four-course meal and an all-night session of cruelty-free lovemaking every month. That’s why they host an Aphrodisiac Dinner and optional accompanying overnight package in a Love Suite at The Hotel California every Sunday closest to the full moon. Gone are the days of curry-scented, low-budget establishments and a grabass session in the VW bus — high-rolling horny vegans can now feast and fornicate in upscale style. You can opt only for the meal ($45), but we suggest the full package ($192) for a more satisfying dessert.

580 Geary, SF. (415) 345-3900, www.millenniumrestaurant.com

BEST SWINGIN’ SEX CLUB

It isn’t just the jazz bands that are swingin’ in North Beach. Private club Twist offers couples the opportunity to engage in that other kind of swinging, away from home. Located in a two-story commercial space, Twist provides a club atmosphere for adults who want to play you-show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine with style, sophistication, and secrecy — the club is invitation-only (apply online), very big on etiquette, and very specific about not giving away details about its patrons. No drugs are allowed, but unlike many sex clubs, there is a bar, though it’s BYO wine and beer (no hard alcohol). Visitors like the art on the walls; the washable black covers on couches and beds; and the supply of fluffy towels, condoms, and lube in every room. Voyeurs and exhibitionists love transparent room dividers, while shyer types like the downstairs dance floor and DJ. No single men are allowed, and couples are asked to arrive, participate, and leave together, so this is an especially appealing and safe place for single ladies. Plus, they get in free!

(415) 812-7221, www.twist-sf.com

BEST GALLERY-WORTHY GLAMOUR SHOTS

Looking for a sexy gift? Or maybe a titillating mantelpiece? We suggest photos of you naked, in your favorite corset, or wrapped around your lover, taken at Erosfoto, the boudoir photography studio run by gallery-exhibited artist Suzanne Jameson. A far cry from mall-quality glamour photos, Jameson’s prints fuse fine art principles with her subjects’ ideas, making the result of each private session tasteful and uniquely sexy. Even better, Jameson’s an expert in helping the women and couples she works with feel comfortable. She encourages models to bring their own music, clothing, lingerie, jewelry, and props — or to borrow some from her extensive collection. She also can provide makeup and hair artists upon request — indeed, many brides-to-be kill two birds with one erotic stone by using portraits as nuptial gifts for their spouses and a chance to test out wedding day hair and makeup. The pictures aren’t cheap — it costs $600 for a two-hour session — but you’re welcome to split the cost with a friend who wants to pose too. You get a DVD with digital negatives, and you keep all rights to the photos.

1483 Guerrero, SF. (415) 706-5237, www.erosfoto.net

BEST DARING DRESS-UP CLOTHES


Stormy Leather: Best Daring Dress-Up Clothes
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRANDON JOSEPH BAKER

While roses and rosé may do it for some, others need latex and leather to get them in the mood. The latter lotharios need look no further than Stormy Leather. This SoMa warehouse is a dream for playing daring dress-up, carrying everything from sweet silk corsets to sadistic leather whips — and everything in between. We especially like its line of latex clothing, with styles ranging from Cat Woman to Marilyn Monroe–esque, and the selection of corsets, including the ruffled Colette and military-themed Sergeant. Since Stormy’s a manufacturer as well as a retailer, you can have items custom made to fit your size and preferences (yellow extra small? red silk 5X?) — and the knowledgeable staff to help you figure out what, exactly, those preferences are. What’s even sexier is how involved Stormy is in the community, providing classes in fetish play, hosting art shows, and sponsoring burlesque troupe Twilight Vixen Revue.

1158 Howard, SF. (415) 626-1672, www.stormyleather.com

Best of the Bay 2009: Arts and Nightlife

-
0
Best of the Bay 2009: Arts and Nightlife

Editors Picks: Arts and Nightlife

BEST BLOODY QUEEN

A gut-spewing zombie drag queen roller derby in honor of Evil Dead 2. An interview with The Exorcist‘s Linda Blair preceded by a rap number that includes the line, “I don’t care if they suck their mother’s cock, as long as they line up around the block!” A virtual wig-pulling catfight with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. All this and more have graced the proscenium of the Bridge Theater as part of the jaw-dropping (literally) Midnight Mass summertime B-movie fun series, brought to us by the always perfectly horrific Peaches Christ. Her wigs alone are usually enough to scare the jellybean-bejeezus out of us, but Peaches combines live craziness with wince-worthy flicks to take everything over the top. After this, her 12th season of disembowelled joy, Peaches is moving on from Midnight Mass to become a director in her own right — she just wrapped up filming All About Evil with Natasha Lyonne and a cast of local fleshbots. Look for it in your googleplex soon, and know that Peaches still stumbles among us.

www.peacheschrist.com

BEST FLAMIN’ FUN

Kids, really, don’t try this at home. Don’t hook up your two-player Dance Dance Revolution game to a row of flamethrowers. Don’t rig said game to blast your dance competitior with a faceful of fire in front of an adoring crowd if they miss a step. Don’t invest in enough propane to fuel a small jet, a flaming movie screen for projecting all those awkward dance moves onto, and a booming sound system to play all the Japanese bubblegum techno you could ever hope to hear. Leave the setup to Interpretive Arson, whose Dance Dance Immolation game has wowed participants and spectators alike from Black Rock City to Oaktown — and will scorch Denmark’s footsies this fall. Do, however, seek out these intrepid firestarters, and don a giant silver fireproof suit with a Robby the Robot hood. Do the hippie shake to the mellifluous tones of Fatboy Slim and Smile.dk, and prepare yourself to get flamed, both figuratively and literally.

www.interpretivearson.com

BEST PENGUIN PARTY, PLANETARIUM INCLUDED

Penguins are damn funny when you’re drunk. They’re pretty entertaining animals to begin with, but after a couple martinis those little bastards bring better slapstick than Will Ferrell or Jack Black. But tipsily peeping innocent flightless birds — plus bats, butterflies, sea turtles, and manta rays — is just one of many reasons to attend Nightlife, the stunningly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences’ weekly Thursday evening affair. This outrageously popular (get there early) and ingenious party pairs gonzo lineups of internationally renowned DJs and live bands with intellectual talks by some of the world’s best-known natural scientists. Cocktails are served, the floor is packed, intellects are high — and where else can you order cosmos before visiting the planetarium? Another perk: the cost of admission, which includes most of the academy’s exhibits, is less than half the regular price, although you must be 21 or older to attend. Come for the inebriated entertainment, stay for the personal enrichment.

Thursdays, 6 p.m., $8-<\d>$10. California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr., Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 379-8000, www.calacademy.org/events/nightlife

BEST LINDY HOP TO LIL’ WAYNE

Retain a fond nostalgia for the 1990s swing revival scene? Swing Goth is the event you’ve been waiting for. Not quite swing and not even remotely goth, Swing Goth gives swing enthusiasts the go-ahead to boogie-woogie to modern tunes at El Rio. This isn’t your grandmother’s fox trot: rock, rap, ’80s, alternative, Madchester, Gypsy punk, and almost anything else gets swung. Held on the first and third Tuesday of each month and tailored for beginners, this event draws an eclectic crowd that includes dudes who call themselves “hep cats,” Mission hipsters, and folks who rock unironic mom jeans and Reebok trainers. If you’re new to swing, arrive at 7:30 and take a one-hour group lesson with ringleader Brian Gardner, who orchestrates the event, to get a quick introduction to swing basics before the free dance. Lessons are $5, but no extra charge for ogling the cute dykes who call El Rio their local watering hole. Swing? Schwing!

First and third Tuesdays, 7 p.m., free. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF. (415) 282-3325, www.swinggoth.com

BEST CELESTIAL TRAJECTORISTS

Who can take a sunburst of boomer rock inspirations — like The Notorious Byrd Brothers-<\d>era Byrds and Meddle-some Pink Floyd — sprinkle it with dew, and cover it with chocolaty nouveau-hippie-hipster blues-rock and a miracle or two? The fresh-eyed, positive-minded folks of Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound can, ’cause they mix it with love and make a world many believed had grown hack and stale taste good. Riding a wave of local ensembles with a hankering for classic rock, hard-edged Cali psych, Japanese noise, and wild-eyed film scores, the San Francisco band is the latest to make the city safe once more for musical adventurers with open minds and big ears. What’s more, the Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound’s inspired new third album, When Sweet Sleep Returned (Tee Pee) — recorded with help from Tim Green at Louder Studios — has fielded much press praise for space-traveling fuzzbox boogie blowouts like “Drunken Leaves” and blissed-out, sitar-touched jangle rambles such as “Kolob Canyon.” Consider your mind burst.

www.myspace.com/theassembleheadinsunburstsound

BEST DANCE DYNAMO

You can’t miss him. He has legs like tree trunks and arm muscles that ripple like lava. When he leaps you think he’ll never come down, and his turns suggest the power of a hurricane. He is dancer Ramón Ramos Alayo, Six years ago he founded the CubaCaribe Festival that now packs in dance aficionados of all stripes, and he’s one of the shaping forces behind the wild San Francisco Carnaval celebration. He runs Alayo Dance Company, for which he choreographs contemporary works with Afro-Cuban roots, and he teaches all over the Bay Area — as many as 60 people show up for his Friday salsa classes at Dance Mission Theater. But Ramos is most strikingly unique as a performer. Ramos is as comfortable embodying Oshoshi, the forest hunter in the Yoruba mythology, as he is taking on “Grace Notes,” a jazz improvisation with bassist Jeff Chambers. No wonder Bay Area choreographers as radically different as Joanna Haigood, Sara Shelton Mann, and Robert Moses have wanted to work with him.

www.cubacaribe.org

BEST BLUEGRASS AMNESIAC

Toshio Hirano packs a mean sucker punch. At first glance he’s a wonderfully eccentric Bay Area novelty, a yodeling Japanese cowboy playing native songs of the American heartland. Yet upon further inspection, it becomes as clear as the skies of Kentucky that Toshio is the real deal when it comes to getting deep into the Mississippi muck of Jimmie Rodgers-<\d>style bluegrass. Enchanted by the sound of American folk music as a Japanese college student, Toshio soon ventured stateside to spend years traveling and playing from Georgia to Nashville to Austin before finally settling in the Bay Area. Today, Toshio plays once a month at Amnesia’s free Bluegrass Mondays to standing-room-only crowds. Stay awhile to hear him play Hank Williams’s “Ramblin’ Man” or Rodgers’s “Blue Yodel No. 1(T for Texas).” It’ll clear that Toshio’s novelty is merely a hook — his true appeal lies in his ability to show that there’s a cowboy lurking inside all of us.

www.toshiohirano.com

BEST COMMUNITY CHOREOGRAPHERS

A collective howl went up in 1995 when it was announced that the annual festival Black Choreographers: Moving into the 21st Century at Theater Artaud was ending due in part to lack of funding. But two East Bay dancers, Laura Elaine Ellis and Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, actually did something about it, working to ensure that African-American dancers and dance-makers received attention for the range and spirit of their work. It took 10 years, but in 2005, Ellis and Kimbrough Barnes helped launch Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now, which takes place every February in San Francisco and Oakland. The three-week event is a fabulous way for a community to celebrate itself and to invite everyone to the party. While the choreographers’ range of talent and imagination has been impressive — and getting better every year — the performances are merely the icing on the cake. Master classes, mentoring opportunites for emerging artists, and a technical theater-training program for local high school and college students are building a dance infrastructure the next generation can plug into.

www.bcfhereandnow.com

BEST MADCAP POP MAIDENS

San Francisco can always use another all-female band — and Grass Widow satisfies that need beautifully, cackling with brisk, madcap rhythms and rolling out a happy, crazy quilt of dissonant wails. Drummer-vocalist Lillian Maring, guitarist-vocalist Raven Mahon, and bassist-vocalist Hannah Lew are punk as fuck, of course — in the classic, pre-pre-packaged noncodified mode — though many will instead compare the trio’s inspired, decentered pop to dyed-in-the-bluestockings lo-fi riot grrrl. Still, there’s a highly conscious intensity to Grass Widow’s questioning of the digital givens that dominate life in the late ’00s, as they sing wistfully then rage raggedly amid accelerating rhythms and a roughly tumbling guitar line on “Green Screen,” from their self-titled debut on Make a Mess: “Flying low into trees. We exist on the screen. Computer can you hear me? Understand more than 1s and 0s?” Grass Widow may sweetly entreat the listener, “Don’t make a scene,” but if we’re lucky, these ladies will kick off a new generation of estrogen-enhanced music-making.

www.myspace.com/grasswidowmusic

BEST PURPLE SING-ALONG

Karaoke is one of those silly-but-fun nightlife activities that always has the potential to be awesome but usually isn’t. The song lists at most karaoke bars suck, the sound systems are underwhelming, and no matter where you go there’s always some asshole bumming everyone out with painful renditions of Neil Diamond tearjerkers. Well, not anymore! Steve Hays, a.k.a. DJ Purple, is a karaoke DJ — or KJ — who has single-handedly turned the Bay Area’s once tired sing-along scene into a mother funkin’ party y’all. DJ Purple’s Karaoke Dance Party happens every Thursday night at Jack’s Club. Forget the sloppy drunks half-assing their way through Aerosmith and Beyoncé songs. DJ Purple’s Karaoke Dance Party is all about Iron Maiden, Snoop Dogg, Led Zeppelin, and Riskay. No slow songs allowed. An actual experienced DJ, Hays keeps the beats running smooth, fading and blending as each person stumbles onstage, and even stepping in for saxophone solos and backup vocals when a song calls for it. And sometimes even when it doesn’t.

Thursdays, 9 p.m., free. Jack’s Club, 2545 24th St., SF. (415) 641-5371, www.djpurple.com

BEST FLANNEL REVIVAL

In this age of continual retro, it comes as a surprise that listening to mainstream ’90s alternative rock can give you, under the right inebriated circumstances, the kind of pleasure not experienced since heroin went out of vogue. Debaser at the Knockout has become one of the best monthly parties in San Francisco, largely because it gives ’80s babies, who were stuck playing Oregon Trail in computer class while Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland were rocking it out in Portland, the chance to live out their Nirvana-era dreams. Debaser promoter Jamie Jams is the only DJ in San Francisco who will spin the Cranberries after a Pavement song, and his inspired mixology is empirically proven to induce moshing en masse until last call, an enticingly dangerous sport now that lead-footed Doc Martens are back in style. Sporting flannel gets you comped, so for those still hung up over Jordan Catalano and the way he leans, Debaser is rife with contemporary, albeit less angsty, equivalents.

First Saturdays, 9 p.m., Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. (415) 550-6994, www.myspace.com/debaser90s

BEST CRANIUM MONOPOLY SCRABBLE RISK

The shaky economy’s probably put your $60 concert plans on hold and relegated those high-rolling VIP nights to the back burner. So it’s a great time to return to the simpler forms of social interaction, such as shaking some dice and screaming, “Yahtzee, bitches!” or guffawing maniacally every time some poor fool attempts to pass your two hotels on Boardwalk. Fortunately, game night at On the Corner café on Divisadero fills your staid Wednesday evenings with enough card-shuffling, Pop-o-matic popping, I-want-to-be-the-thimble classics to sink your battleship blues. Plus, there’s coffee and beer. Working in collusion with the colossal collection of neighboring Gamescape, On the Corner provides a plethora of gaming options to fit its large tables and vibrant atmosphere. Stratego, Scattergories, and other trivial pursuits are all available, and the 7 p.m.-<\d>to-<\d>closing happy hour includes $2.50 draft beers and sangria specials. The tables fill up quickly, though — arrive early so you won’t be sorry.

Wednesdays, 7–10 p.m., free. 359 Divisadero, SF. (415) 522-1101, www.sfcorner.com

BEST PARTY OF ONE

Perfect moments are never the ones you work hard to create. Too much effort kills the magic. Instead, the moments we treasure are those that steal up on us, slipping past our defenses to reveal, for just an instant, the sublime wonder of the universe. This is precisely what happens during one’s first encounter with the Lexington Street disco ball, innocuously spinning its multifaceted heart out on a quiet neighborly block in the heart of the Mission District. One moment you’re just walking down the street minding your own business — perhaps rehashing the “should have saids” or the “could have beens” in the muddled disquiet of your mind — when suddenly you spot it, the incongruously located disco ball suspended from a low-hanging branch, throwing a carpet of stars across the sidewalk for anyone to enjoy. All is still, but the music in your heart will lead you. Hold your hands in the air, walk into the light, and dance.

Lexington between 20th and 21st streets, SF

BEST BLOCK-ROCKIN’ BIKE

Amandeep Jawa’s bright blue, sound-rigged party-cycle — Trikeasaurus — is our bestest Critical Mass compadre and bike lane buddy, and an essential component of his impromptu FlashDance parties. This three-wheelin’, free-wheelin’, pedal-and-battery-powered funk machine has been bringing the party to the people — and leading spontaneous Michael Jackson tributes — from the Embarcadero to the Broadway tunnel for the past two years. Even if you’re just out for a stroll or a bit of that ephemeral San Francisco “sun”-bathing, when Trikeasaurus comes rolling along you just have to boogie on down the road, bust a move, get your groove thing on, let your freak flag fly, and insert ecstatic cliché here. We can pretend all we want in the privacy of our own hip sancta sanctorum that Destiny’s Child or OutKast will never move us, but somehow when Trikeasaurus comes bumping by, we just can’t help but bump right back. Don’t fight the feeling! Join the 500-watt, 150-decibel velolution today.

www.deeptrouble.com

BEST HOLES FOR YOUR KRAUTROCK SOUL

If you’ve done ketamine, you know what it’s like to get lost in the cosmic K-hole. To those who have entered the mystical D-hole, however, your ketamine story is child’s play. The Donuts dance party, thrown at various times and locations throughout the year by DJ Pickpocket and visual artist AC, provides adventurous club-goers with that most delicious of drugs: donuts, given away free. First timers, be careful: these potent little sugar bombs are highly addictive and can often lead to an all-night binge of ecstatic power-boogie, which can result in terrible withdrawal symptoms. Like many other popular club drugs, donuts are offered in powdered form, though they can also be glazed, which leaves no tell-tale residue around the mouth. But as long as you indulge responsibly, entering the Hole of the Donut is perfectly safe. Amp up your experience to fever-pitch perfection with Donuts’ pulse-pumping Krautrock, new wave, retro disco, and dance punk live acts and beats.

www.myspace.com/donutparty

BEST PLACE TO PARTY LIKE A SLOVENIAN

If there’s one thing all Slovenians have in common, it’s that they know how to deck a muthafunkin’ hall, y’all. It stands to reason then that Slovenians run one of the biggest and best halls in town. The Slovenian Hall in Potrero Hill is available for all your partying needs — birthdays, anniversary bashes, coming-out fests, etc. The rooms inside the hall are spacious and clean, the kitchen and bar spaces are outfitted to serve an entire army, and there are plenty of tables and chairs. But it’s the decor that makes this place unique: Soviet-era and vintage tourism advertisements are sprinkled throughout the place and banners promoting Slovenian pride hang from the ceiling. The hall also hosts live music events — recently an Argentine tango troupe took up residence there, making things border-fuzzingly interesting, to say the least.

2101 Mariposa, SF. (415) 864-9629

BEST FUTURE RAP CEO

Odds are you’ve not yet heard of East Bay teen hip-hop talent Yung Nittlz — but one day soon you will. The ambitious, gifted Berkeley High student has already amassed five albums worth of smooth and funky material that he wrote, produced, and rapped and sang on. In August 2007, when he was just 13, the rapper born Nyles Roberson scored media attention when Showtime at the Apollo auditions came to town and he was spotted very first in line, having camped out the night before. And while Yung Nittlz wasn’t among the lucky final few to be picked, he did make a lasting impression on the judges with his strong performance of the song “Money in the Air” and choreography that included him strategically tossing custom-made promo dollars that he designed and made. The gifted artist also designed the professional-looking cover for his latest demo CD, which suggests fans should request the hit-sounding “Feelin’ U” on KMEL 106 FM. Stay tuned. You’ll likely be hearing it soon.

www.myspace.com/yungnittlz

BEST B-MOVIE SURVIVOR

The crappy economy has ruined many things. It’s the reason both the Parkway and the Cerrito Speakeasy theaters — where you could openly drink a beer you’d actually purchased at the concession stand, not smuggled in under your sweatshirt — closed their doors this year. But even a bummer cash crunch can’t dampen a true cult movie fan’s love of all things B. Deprived of a permanent venue for his long-running “Thrillville,” programmer and host Will “The Thrill” Viharo adjusted his fez, brushed off his velvet lapels, and started booking his popular film ‘n’ cabaret extravaganzas at other Bay Area movie houses, including the 4-Star and the Balboa in San Francisco, and San Jose’s Camera 3. Fear not, devotees of film noir, tiki culture, the swingin’ ’60s, big-haired babes, Aztec mummies, William Shatner, the Rat Pack, Elvis, creature features, Japanese monsters, and zombies — the Thrill ain’t never gonna be gone.

www.thrillville.net

BEST GAY FLIPPER ACTION

Much like travel agents, beepers, and modesty, pinball machines are slowly becoming relics of the past. But it’s difficult to understand why these quarter-fed games would fall by the wayside, since they’re especially fun in a bar atmosphere. What else is there to do besides stare at your drink, hopelessly chat up the bartender, constantly check your phone, and try to catch that one cute patron’s eye. At the Castro’s Moby Dick, pinball saves you from such doldrums. Sure, the place has the requisite video screens blaring Snap! and Cathy Dennis chestnuts, and plenty of hunky drunkies to serve as distractions. But its quarter-action collection — unfortunately whittled down to three machines, ever since Theater of Magic was retired due to the difficulty of finding replacement parts — is a delightful retro rarity in this gay day and age. So tilt not, World Cup Soccer, Addams Family, and Attack from Mars fans. There’s still a queer home for your lightning-quick flipping.

4049 18th St., SF. www.mobydicksf.com

BEST BLAST OF JUSTICE

Founded in 2002, the many-membered Brass Liberation Orchestra has been blowing their horns for social justice all over the Bay Area — from the San Francisco May Day March and Oakland rallies for Oscar Grant, to protests against city budget cuts and jam sessions at the 16th Street BART station. Trombones out and bass drums at the ready, this tight-knit organization of funky folk recently returned from New Orleans, where they played to support community rebuilding projects in the Lower Ninth Ward. With a membership as diverse as they come, the BLO toots their horns specifically to “support political causes with particular emphasis on peace, and racial and social justice” — especially concerning immigrants’ rights and anti-gentrification issues. But the most joyful part of their practice is the spontaneous street parties they engender wherever they pop up, and their seemingly impromptu romps through neighborhoods and street festivals. Viva la tuba-lution!

www.brassliberation.org

BEST WITTY WONG

Is your idea of hell being trapped in a room with a white, collegiate, spoken-word “artist” — or worse yet, being forced to wear an Ed Hardy t-shirt? Are you a veteran of the 30 Stockton and the 38 Geary, with the wounds and the stories to prove it? Can you just not help but stare at someone who somehow can’t resist an act of street corner masturbation? Then you’re ready to lend an ear to Ali Wong, the funniest comedian to stomp onto a San Francisco stage in a long time. Some people get offended by Wong, which is one reason she’s funny — comedy isn’t about making friends, and she’s not sentimental. She draws on her family history and writing and performing experience in implicit rather than overt ways while remaining as blunt as your funniest friend on a bender.

www.aliwong.com

BEST SITE FOR SHUTTERBUGS

Take a picture, it’ll last longer. Especially if you take it to — or even at — RayKo Photo Center, a large SoMA space that boasts a studio, a shop stocked with new and used cameras, a variety of black-and-white and color darkrooms, a digital imaging lab (with discount last-Friday-of-the-month nighttime hours), and classes where one can learn the latest digital skills as well as older and arcane processes such as Ambrotype (glass plate) and Tintype (metal plate) image-making. Devoted in part to local photographers, RayKo’s gallery has showcased Bill Daniel’s panoramic yet raw shots of a post-Katrina Louisiana and has likely influenced a new generation of shutterbugs affiliated with groups and sites like Cutter Photozine and Photo Epicenter. One of its coolest and truly one-of-a-kind features is the Art*O*Mat Vending Machine, an old ciggie vendor converted into a $5-a-piece art dispenser. And of course RayKo has an old photo booth, so you can take some quick candid snapshots with or without a honey.

428 Third St., SF. (415) 495-3773, www.raykophoto.com

BEST RAPPING CABBIE

The great myth about cab drivers is that they’re a bunch of underappreciated geniuses who write poetry and paint masterpieces when they’re not busy shuttling drunks around. Most cabbies, however, aren’t Picassos with pine-scent air fresheners. They clock in and out just like we all do, and then they go home and watch reality TV. There are, however, a few exceptions to the rule: true artists who have deliberately chosen the cabbie lifestyle because it allows them the freedom to pursue their passions on the side. MC Mars is such a cabbie. A 20-year veteran on the taxi scene, Mars is also a hip-hop performer, a published author, and an HIV activist. You can check his flow every Wednesday night at the Royale’s open-mic sessions. Or, if you’re lucky enough to hail his DeSoto, you can get a free backseat show on weekends. And don’t forget to pick up his latest CD, “Letz Cabalaborate,” available on Mars’ Web site.

www.mcmars.net

BEST FRESH POETICS

The Bay Area knows poetry. And people in the Bay Area who know poetry today realize that the San Francisco Renaissance, the Beats, the Language poets, and even the New Brutalists might inspire contemporary writers, but they don’t own them. You can encounter proof in places like Books and Bookshelves, and read it in publications like Try. As the Bay Area Poetics anthology edited by Stephanie Young made clear in 2006, Bay Area verse is enormous and ever-changing. One year earlier, David Larsen established a space for it in Oakland with his New Yipes Reading Series, which frequently paired poets with filmmakers. He’s since moved to the East Coast, but Ali Warren and Brandon Brown re-energized the concept, simplifying its name to The New Reading Series and refining its content to readings with musical interludes. It’s the best place around to hear Tan Lin and Ariana Reines and confront notions of the self through Heath Ledger. It’s also hosted a kissing booth, for all you wordsmiths who aren’t above romantic trappings.

416 25th St., Oakl. www.newyipes.blogspot.com

BEST HOUSE OUTSIDE

For 15 years, the much-loved and lovable warm weather Sunset parties have shaken various hills, isles, parks, patios, and boats with funky, techy house sounds. Launched by underground hero DJ Galen in 1994, the outdoor Sunset gigs have amassed a huge following of excited party newbies and familiar old-school ravers — and now even their kids. Early on in the game, Galen was soon joined by fellow Bay favorite DJs Solar and J-Bird, and the three — collectively known as Pacific Sound — have kept the vibe strong ever since. This year saw a remarkable expansion on the Sunset fan base: attendance at the season opener at Stafford Lake reached almost 4,000, and Pacific Sound just launched an annual — and truly moving — party on Treasure Island that had multiple generations putting their hands in the air. The recent Sunset Campout in Belden drew hundreds for an all-weekend romp with some of the biggest names in electronic music — true fresh air freshness.

www.pacificsound.net

BEST SECRET OF ETERNAL RAVE

According to murky local legend, sometime in the early ’90s a Finnish archaeologist named Mr. Floppy passed through Oakland on a quest to find an inverted pyramid rumored to hold the secret to eternal life. He didn’t find anything like that, of course, but he did discover a really cool apartment complex run by an obsessive builder named George Rowan. The sprawling place, which housed multiple dwelling units as well as an outdoor dance area and an out-of-use bordello and saloon famously frequented by Jack London in the 1800s, was an interconnected maze of rooms decorated with found objects and outsider art. It was a perfect spot to throw underground raves, which is exactly what Floppy and Rowan did until the day they got slapped with a fire-hazard citation. Nobody really knows what happened to the psychedelic archaeologist after that, although his spirit lives on: Mr. Floppy’s Flophouse has recently re-opened as a venue for noise shows, freaky circuses, and all-night moonlit orgies.

1247 E. 12th St., Oakl

8, 9 … 2010

-
0
8, 9 … 2010

1. SF garage rock goes pop This year saw Bay Area garage rock go pop in style and impact without losing its soul. I’m thinking of the Fresh and Onlys, and of Ty Segall’s second solo effort Lemons (Goner), a lovely one. I’m thinking of Girls’ Album (True Panther/Matador), which threw down the crossover-move gauntlet with no shame in its game: Christopher Owens’ interviews were as entertaining as his music and brasher — his real talk about sex and drugs made good headline fodder for the excitable British press, but contained the kind of truth that honors life over rules or boring definitions. The secret keeper, though, was the Mantles’ self-titled debut on Siltbreeze. Drew Cramer’s lead guitar and Michael Oliveras’ vocals were even better live, the mark of a band in bloom.

2. The AfroSurreal In May, D. Scot Miller helped put together a special AfroSurreal issue of the Guardian, a collection of words and visions journeying beyond the potential of Barack Obama’s presidency. The Kehinde Wiley piece on the cover wasn’t the only AfroSurreal image on this paper’s front pages — just last week, Conrad Ruiz’s Godzilla-size Yes We Can stomped around the city. Musically, AfroSurrealism manifested in the mind- and mirror-bending quality Dam-Funk’s Toeachizown (Stones Throw) and the rehab hallucinations and Dante-like funeral marches of Chelonis R. Jones’s Chatterton (Systematic). It floated in through cracks in the time warp as well: the ghetto opera of 24 Carat Black’s Gone: The Promises of Yesterday (Numero Group); the proto-punk of Death’s For the World to See (Drag City), especially “Politicians in My Eyes”; and weirdest of all, the gothic funk and skronk of Wicked Witch’s Chaos: 1978-1986 (E.M.).

3. 21st century goth From blackness to deathly whiteface — something gothic this way came in 2009, thanks to Cold Cave’s Cremations (Hospital Productions) and Love Comes Close (Matador). Both staked a claim that the genre is as applicable as death metal to a post-Bush presidency globe. But while those albums notched acclaim and attention, the similar yet more audacious Cure and Cabaret Volatire moves of Jones’ months-earlier Chatterton went ignored and unappreciated. Evidence of racism, proof that German techno only gets appreciated years after the fact, or both?

4. Hauntological mutations In 2009’s sonic mansion, ghosts haunted the hallways leading to and from the gothic banquet hall, and hauntology — a Derrida term applied to music by the critic Simon Reynolds — continued to morph, just as any self-respecting specter should, well beyond dubstep. The maze-like passages of Rooj’s The Transactional Dharma of Rooj (Ghost Box) and Broadcast and the Focus Group’s Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age (Warp) both suggested that spirits have short attention spans, while Demdike Stare’s Symbiosis (Modern Love) traded seances on wet afternoons for retro-futurist meetings with medieval wicked witches.

5. Library music For evidence that the past resides in and fuels the present, go to the library. Specifically, to the abundant compilations and Web sites dedicated to library music — the scores of incidental music produced and recorded for soundtrack use on film, television, and radio. In the wake of his gorgeous book The Music Library (Fuel Publishing), Jonny Trunk released more albums devoted to library labels. The Parisian DJs Alexis Le-Tan and Jess put out a pair of Space Oddities library collections — one electronic, one psychedelic — on Permanent Vacation. Wax Poetics published a lengthy piece to the subject. In an interview, Trunk noted that his Scrapbook (Trunk) shares the same fast-change aesthetics of Broadcast and the Focus Group’s hauntological recordings, just one example of how library music of the past forms the music of now.

6. The new ambient The new ambient is not afraid of extreme melancholy, or long compositions — no longer only Kompact, it can be epic. One of the form’s peak representatives is San Francisco’s Brock Van Wey, whose White Clouds Drift On and On (Echospace) bravely strived for, and sometimes reached, sublime solitude. Another was Klimek, whose Movies is Magic (Anticipate), on which a track such as “pathetic and dangerous” lives up to its death-knell title. The last was Leyland Kirby. His three-CD contribution sums up the current moment in both its title and the name of its label: Sadly, the Future is No Longer What it Was (History Always Favours the Winners).

7. 2009=1989, synthpop and shoegaze I explored this theme in last week’s Decade in Music issue. See: Atlas Siund (in particular “Shelia,”), Crocodiles, Fuck Buttons, Loop, Night Control, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Washed Out (responsible for two of this year’s most gorgeous tracks, “Belong” and “Hold Out”), Wavves, and the xx.

8. How old is now? As the music industry continues to fracture, reissues or uncovered old sounds were as vital and revelatory as new releases. In San Francisco, this meant new rereleases by San Francisco Express, the Units, and most excitingly, Honey Soundsystem’s work on behalf of Patrick Cowley and Jorge Socarras’ Catholic project. Beyond SF, it meant a one-of-a-kind treasure like Connie Converse’s How Sad, How Lovely (Lau derette): one woman, one guitar, one tape recorder, and perhaps the best music of this sad, lovely year.

Passage

-
0
Passage

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Weirdo the Cat, in an act of life-defying cantankerousness, has died. She got wind of my own impending crossing and timed her tumor accordingly, missing by only one day. No, not missing. While it would have been more operatic of her to die in my arms while I was tearfully kissing her goodbye, she let me get to the airport, on the plane, over the continent, over the ocean, up to the terminal, past customs, into the arms of my lover, onto the train, into the taxi, up two flights of stairs with three heavy suitcases, in and out of the bathtub, under the covers and over the rainbow. Then, while the kids were just settling to sleep in the next room, California … then did Weirdo the Cat breathe her last little stinky breath.

That way it would be clear to anyone with a brain bigger than a walnut that I had killed her. Poetically speaking. Ah, but Weirdo the Cat was ever the furry little poet. Only a little bit bitterer. She blamed me (me!) for not drawing her immortal, like other famous felines, with whom she was obsessed — especially Sylvester. I argued that I was a journalist, not a cartoonist, and she produced an eight-pound sledgehammer from behind her back and chased me around the room with it.

It’s true that she mellowed some in her elderly years, just like Grandma Rubino. In the end, she even actually seemed to kind of almost like children, and while they were away would curl up on the floor in their room and purr. I speak here of Weirdo the Cat, not Grandma Rubino.

Anyway, although any lap but mine or Crawdad’s was always strictly out of the question, by the time she had head-butted her last table leg she had socially matured to the point of sometimes actually sniffing strangers before biting them. I speak here of Grandma Rubino, not Weirdo the Cat.

Those three of my readers who have had the pleasure of knowing both these colorful cranks in their more corporal days will understand the confusion. One cursed in Italian, the other in hairballs and half-digested cat food. Other than that they were pretty much the same animal, may they rest in peace.

And in fact may we all get a little bit of sleep tonight. Jet lag — why didn’t I think of it earlier? I write three-act plays and astounding symphonies in my sleep, and then when I’m awake I walk around bumping into things, drooling, and forgetting my hat and purse everywhere. People tell me in Bavarian German that I’ll get over it after a week or so, and I don’t have the heart, or the vocabulary, to explain that, no, this is the way I’ve been since 1992.

There are other advantages to being where I am. For example, I find myself very literally surrounded by sausage, churches, and Christmas. I’ll let you guess which of those represents my idea of heaven.

Hint: some people like mustard on it. I prefer sauerkraut, to my Romea’s dismay, as I also tend to wear her coats and leave my napkins in her coat pockets.

The Stone Age Catholic churches, while pretty to look at, are pure hell on Sunday mornings when they call their faithful to breakfast with gigantic Iron Age dinner bells. It’s enough of a racket to weird out the dead, and to levitate the merely sleeping — in my case before I had quite finished my opus in F-Minor. Romea had to scrape me off the ceiling with a vacuum cleaner attachment.

Christmas itself, I predict, will be more likely to reclaim me here than Catholicism. For starters, it lets you sleep. Then too they celebrate it outdoors, in crowded open-air Christmas markets, featuring not only rampant commercialism but sausage stands! With bockwursts and bratwursts and meter-long sausages.

Whereas church offers warmth. But hey, I can get that at home. Do you know how long a meter is?

While you’re looking it up, lemme tell you where even you can find great bock- and bratwursts and even kielbasa and Italian hot sausages for real cheap: Longs Drugs. Yep, I became addicted when I lived in Rockridge. Trust me …

TOP DOG INSIDE LONG’S DRUGS

(and four other East Bay locations)

Mon.-Sat., 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.–8 p.m.

5100 Broadway, Oakl.

(510) 601-1187

No alcohol

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Film listings

-
0
Film listings

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

OPENING

Avatar Special effects master and woeful screenplay-penner James Cameron returns, for better and worse. (2:42)

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

Did You Hear About the Morgans? A married couple (Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker) move from Manhattan to a small town after witnessing a murder. (1:48)

In Search of Beethoven After the success of his In Search of Mozart, director Phil Grabsky applies his truth-seeking documentary template to Ludwig van Beethoven, a composer so genius he continued creating (and to a lesser extent, performing) even as he succumbed to deafness. Still photos, paintings, interviews with historians and musicologists, and visits to actual Beethoven haunts, along with dramatic readings of the maestro’s letters (by actor David Dawson) and stern narration (by actor Juliet Stevenson, who also loaned her pipes to Mozart), flesh out this biographical portrait. But its most stirring moments come courtesy of its musical performances (by seasoned professionals) of Moonlight Sonata and other notable works. As the doc proves, there’s no better insight into Beethoven’s tumultuous, sometimes tortured life than the notes he left behind. (2:18) Roxie. (Eddy)

*35 Shots of Rum Claire Denis’s portrait in domesticity is so patiently timed and achingly photographed (by her longtime cinematographer Agnès Godard) that your own life routines are liable to seem freshly poetic in its afterglow. We begin with familiar images of transitory longing: trains switching tracks, keeping time. A man smokes a cigarette at dusk, its embers warming his dark skin. He is Lionel (Alex Descas), a Metro operator who lives simply in a boxy apartment building in the outer rings of Paris. He returns home from work with a rice cooker for his twentysomething daughter, Josephine (Mati Diop), though Denis allows their relationship to remain unclear for a while (she is remarkably free when it comes to exposition). Coincidentally, serious Jo has bought herself a cooker on the same day. There’s a whole untold story about the rice cooker, but Denis is content watching them appreciatively spoon out the first batch in their pajamas. The attention to generations, meals, the trains and the small comic gestures (a well-timed fart, an awry romantic moment in the Seine) all suggest Ozu, but the elliptical rhythms and sensual apprehension of bodies is pure Denis. She once did a documentary about a choreographer (2005’s Towards Mathilde), and she approaches everyday life as a kind of dance. Lionel and Jo’s relationship is unlike almost any other father-daughter dynamic in recent movie memory — nonverbal, but clearly loving. If the other characters are kept at arm’s length, that’s because Lionel and Jo keep their safe haven so closely guarded. Things begin to unspool, as they must, in a memorable restaurant dance sequence that makes exquisite use of the Commodores’ 1985 platter, "Nightshift." (1:39) (Goldberg)

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

ONGOING

Armored (1:28) 1000 Van Ness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Invictus Elected President of South Africa in 1995 — just five years after his release from nearly three decades’ imprisonment — Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) perceives a chance to forward his message of reconciliation and forgiveness by throwing support behind the low-ranked national rugby team. Trouble is, the Springboks are currently low-ranked, with the World Cup a very faint hope just one year away. Not to mention the fact that despite having one black member, they represent the all-too-recent Apartheid past for the country’s non-white majority. Based on John Carlin’s nonfiction tome, this latest Oscar bait by the indefatigable Clint Eastwood sports his usual plusses and minuses: An impressive scale, solid performances (Matt Damon co-stars as the team’s Afrikaaner captain), deft handling of subplots, and solid craftsmanship on the one hand. A certain dull literal-minded earnestness, lack of style and excitement on the other. Anthony Peckham’s screenplay hits the requisite inspirational notes (sometimes pretty bluntly), but even in the attenuated finals match, Eastwood’s direction is steady as she goes — no peaks, no valleys, no faults but not much inspiration, either. It doesn’t help that Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens contribute a score that’s as rousing as a warm milk bath. This is an entertaining history lesson, but it should have been an exhilarating one. (2:14) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Me and Orson Welles It’s 1937, and New York City, like the rest of the nation, presumably remains in the grip of the Great Depression. That trifling historical detail, however, is upstaged in Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles (adapted from the novel by Robert Kaplow) by the doings at the newly founded Mercury Theatre. There, in the equally tight grip of actor, director, and company cofounder Orson Welles — who makes more pointed use of the historical present, of Italian fascism — a groundbreaking production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar hovers on the brink of premiere and possible disaster. Luckily for swaggering young aspirant Richard (High School Musical series star Zac Efron), Welles (Christian McKay), already infamously tyrannical at 22, is not a man to shrink from firing an actor a week before opening night and replacing him with a 17-year-old kid from New Jersey. Finding himself working in perilous proximity to the master, his unharnessed ego, and his winsome, dishearteningly pragmatic assistant, Sonja (Claire Danes), our callow hero is destined, predictably, to be handed some valuable life experience. McKay makes a credible, enjoyable Welles, presented as the kind of engaging sociopath who handles people like props and hails ambulances like taxicabs. Efron projects a shallow interior life, an instinct for survival, and the charm of someone who has had charming lines written for him. Still, he and Welles and the rest are all in service to the play, and so is the film, which offers an absorbing account of the company’s final days of rehearsal. (1:54) Shattuck. (Rapoport)

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

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

Planet 51 (1:31) 1000 Van Ness.

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

*The Princess and the Frog Expectations run high for The Princess and the Frog: it’s the first Disney film to feature an African American princess, the first 2D Disney cartoon since the regrettable Home on the Range (2004), and the latest entry from the writing-directing team responsible for The Little Mermaid (1989) and Aladdin (1992). Here’s the real surprise — The Princess and the Frog not only meets those expectations, it exceeds them. After years of disappointment, many of us have given up hope on another classic entry into the Disney 2D animation canon. And yet, The Princess and the Frog is up there with the greats, full of catchy songs, gorgeous animation, and memorable characters. Set in New Orleans, the story is a take off on the Frog Prince fairy tale. Here, the voodoo-cursed Prince Naveen kisses waitress Tiana instead — transferring his froggy plight to her as well. A fun twist, and a positive message: wishing is great, but it takes hard work to make your dreams come true. For those of us raised on classic Disney, The Princess and the Frog is almost too good to believe. (1:37) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*The Private Lives of Pippa Lee Rebecca Miller’s latest is that seldom-produced thing, the female midlife crisis movie. Daughter to playwright Arthur Miller, a titan of Big Theme manly guilts, her projects are indie-scaled, about troubled domestic minutae, with whimsical twists of fate that methodical realist Arthur would never have countenanced. She’s been consistently interesting since 1995’s striking Angela — first among many narratives from the viewpoint of a child struggling in the shadow of an overwhelming and/or unstable parent. In Private Lives, Pippa (Robin Wright Penn) has her own monstrous parental past. Like many people hailing from chaos, Pippa has turned self-conscious model citizen. In drifting early adulthood, she glommed onto the first man who respected her mind — or did he just recognize a rudderless, much younger woman susceptible to flattery? Ever since she’s been ideal consort to newly retired publisher Herb (Alan Arkin), as well as doting mother to their variably grateful children. Barely 40 and living in an old folks’ village, Pippa is starting to think her life a tad ridiculous. Such nagging but inchoate doubt is underlined by the return of a widow neighbor’s shaggy, somewhat surly son (Keanu Reeves) to Chez Mom after his latest failure at adulthood. Opposites attract, though it’s more complicated than that. Miller’s cluttered canvas also makes room for teensy-to-major characters played by Shirley Knight, Blake Lively, Robin Weigert, Julianne Moore, and Monica Bellucci. As is her wont, she piles on both invigorating insights and a few too many whiplash narrative left turns. But The Private Lives of Pippa Lee has charm and idiosyncrasy to spare. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

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

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

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

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

Film listings

-
0
Film listings

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

OPENING

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1...181920...30Page 19 of 30

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org