Feast

Winning big

Andrew Lam
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Winning big

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS In Lovelock at the Saddest Little Carnival Ever I threw ping-pong balls into little glass cups of water and in this manner won two goldfish. Live ones, looping insanely in a small plastic water cup with a lid on it.

“What do you have to do to win a stuffed one?” I said, indicating with a tilt of my head one of the strings of orange-and-white-striped Nemo fish adorning all four posts of the booth. These would have made much better travel companions. Then I could have given it to one of the chunks when I got home.

The carny flashed a piano keyboard smile and drawled, “Those are just for show.”

“I see,” I said, wishing I could have those five-for-a-dollar ping-pong balls back and miss this time. What was I going to do with a plastic cup of goldfish on a 10-day road trip?

There were about 14 other people at the Saddest Little Carnival Ever, and about 13 of them were not on the Zipper, the Orbit, the Spaceship 2000, or the merry-go-round. I found a 10-year-old mark who had gotten away from his parents for the moment and looked like he might know what to do with some goldfish on a 10-day road trip. Or maybe he lived in Lovelock.

“Do you want them?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

So I handed him the little plastic cup and got the hell out of there before his parents came around.

I should have gambled, because lately I’ve been hitting my marks. In San Francisco, weirdly, I scored goals each of the past two Sundays. One was in a 14-4 win, so everyone was doing it, and the other — in a 6-5 win — was lucky cause it grazed off a defender’s head or their keeper surely would have gotten it.

But that’s what I’m saying. Lucky. I should have gambled in Lovelock. On money, not ping-pong balls and goldfish.

Alice Shaw the Person, my teammate and old friend, wanted to go to a barbecue with all the Brazilian boys on our team, and — having grilled the meats with Brazilian boys myself, once or twice — I wanted to go too.

Alas, I had me some childerns to tend to that afternoon, so Alice Shaw the Person went to the feast with someone else and lent me her car to get home.

In life, no one has lent me more cars than Alice Shaw the Person. The last thing I want to do is get onions all over her upholstery. But I was not only hungry as a fullback, I was running late for work and needed of course a bath.

So I did. I ate in the car. First I had to find a parking spot between Ghirardelli Square and the Mission, and that happened at Gough and Hayes. So Kebabs of Hayes Valley seemed like a pretty good idea.

Kebabs in cars, right? It’s like a giant toothpick only it’s putting in instead of taking out, and in the end everyone is happy, give or take the onions.

Yeah, but I didn’t get kebabs. They had Mediterranean wraps, and that seemed even better. Lamb and beef gyro on lavash, with lettuce, tomato, pepper, cukes, and tahini. Sounds to me like shawarma.

Whatever, it was so good, and I was so hungry, that I’m pretty sure none of it — not even a crumb — made it to the floor or even the seat of that car.

One thing, though: there wasn’t any lamb, or beef, in my lamb and beef gyro wrap. It was chicken. All chicken. And it was so juicy and delicious that instead of being mad I was like, yeah, that’s what I meant.

So: New favorite restaurant, for reading my mind. And for being there. It seemed like an okay place to eat in, too. Some people were. They looked happy and clean.

But what do I know?

I know there’s a little boy in Nevada whose parents are yelling at him, right now, and while this isn’t ideal, I’ll take it. 

KEBABS OF HAYES VALLEY

Sun.–Thu. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

406 Hayes, SF

(415) 252-5100

kebabsofhayesvalley.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

 

Couscous with Al Qaeda part 2

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Couscous with Al Qaeda part 2

TRUE TRAVEL TALES: This is part two of Marke B.’s culinary journey through the Arab Spring. You can read part one — spicy! — here.

Before we left Tunis, the lovely people and open vibe of which which we’d rapidly fallen in love with, we ate at a mind-blowing West African lunch off a small street near the African Development Agency building, El Khalifa. Heaping plates of sauce-covered, deeply flavored attiéké poulet brasse (a creamy, manioc-based specialty of Côte d’Ivoire) and choucouya de poulet au cancancan, smothered with onions over berberé-spiked rice, were served cafeteria-style to a bustling room of suits talking international affairs in a head-swimming number of languages.

All the development-speak in the air got us scheming about how to bring more tourists back to this great city, with its intense cosmopolitan air, historical riches, and perfectly enchanting old city section — although we’d already witnessed one option in play: activist tourism. 

In the medina (old city) of Tunis

Fortunately or unfortunately, our hotel (the majestic, insanely reasonable Grand Hôtel de France, go stay there) had played host to a coterie of trendy-anarchisty Western student-types, perpetual cigarette smoke wreathing their immaculately styled dreadlocks. They had come, like us, to see the after-effects of the revolution and make contact with some of the people behind it. But they also wanted a piece of the action, joining demonstrations and breathlessly relating tales of being chased by police — before heading out for a day at the beach. Part of a loose organization called the Knowledge Liberation Front, they had gathered from all parts of Europe, hoping to formulate new models of resistance to the austerity measures sweeping the Union. (The fact that there were so many Italians there, raging against Berlusconi, was kind of encouraging.) They were cute! If, of course, deadly serious. Whatever Tunisian group that had facilitated their “revolution experience” certainly had a great thing started in terms of possible revenue streams.  

But now we were on our way south via Tunisia’s main railroad line, hoping to reach the Grand Erg Oriental, a rippling sea of sand in the Sahara that looks like the pictures in your head when you hear “Sahara.” From there, our ultimate destination would be El Ghriba on the island of Djerba, the oldest synagogue in North Africa, and its huge annual Lag B’Omer festival, which draws tens of thousands of Jews from around the world in a celebrated pilgrimage.   

The third-century Roman-style amphitheater at El Djem 

On the way, we stopped in El Djem, a neat little town that just so happens to contain a humungous, remarkably intact Roman coliseum-like amphitheatre, a 35,000-seat wonder built in the 3rd century (with ancient graffiti carved into its stone!), which we had practically to ourselves. It also has a well-designed museum of ravishing mosaics, including some depicting the martyrdom-by-wild-beasts that the amphitheatre (actually more like a killing factory, really) showcased. Innumerable christians and animals – including now-extinct species of elephants, tigers, even giraffes — were sacrificed horribly for the crowd’s entertainment.

We had the most extraordinary lunch. At Cafe Le Bonheur, a traditional central Tunisian feast with several salads and a main course of tender rabbit stewed in saffron, served in casual French style by a hip young waiter for cheap. Score! Some balmy afternoon time in cafes over cafe filter (coffee served in a glass) confirmed that El Djem is one of those magical little places you could sink into for a while.

The only other tourists in El Djem belonged to a random British family. Hang in there, Tunisia!

Then it was on to Gabes at the end of the train line, an unremarkable oil town (with attendant pollution — but also plentiful alcohol and solid business-traveler restaurants), where we planned to rent a car and drive to the desert. As soon as we got to Gabes, though, we saw our plans would be interrupted. The barbed-wire around the city square was not an encouraging sign. We were now officially in the south, where the revolution had started and which, with its large and impoverished Berber population, had always been restive. 

Now that the Libyan revolution had begun, and tens of thousands of refugees were flooding into Tunisia (which, wonderfully, had welcomed them with open arms, providing housing and resources), the situation had grown more complicated. According to the press and the government, some of the Libyans were bringing weapons into the country with them — weapons stashes had been found in nearby caves. And, alas, on the route to the Grand Erg from Gabes, an Al Qaeda plot had been foiled, with more evidence of Al Qaeda presence being found in the region. (Both Tunisia and Morocco had remained almost Al Qaeda-free until recently, this was all sad news, although it still seemed divorced from the citizen’s everyday reality. Tunisians, especially, seemed casually or privately religious on the whole.)

We realized that it might not be the best thing to drive through the desert countryside, already a tricky operation, without a guide. So we switched plans and headed to tourist center Douz, where once busloads of tourists unloaded to ride camels and 4x4s into the scrubby surroundings, but which was now slowly but valiantly weathering the almost complete lack of tourist traffic since the revolution.

Livestock market at Douz

(First, it’s kind of gross that thousands of package tours cancelled now that there was no dictator, although people on package tours seem like the most vulnerable to feelings of uncertainty. Secondly, it was pretty inspiring to see people who were slowly slipping into poverty due to lack of income hold their heads up because they had won freedom — and remain positive that once things had settled down, people would come back. We heard that again and again.)   

So, swallowing my environmental eeks, we chartered a 4×4 to drive us over the dunes (after we had passed any cryptobiotic hotspots) to the hot springs oasis of Ksar Ghilane in the Grand Erg Oriental sand sea, which I probably don’t need to mention was aaaaah-mazing.

We rode camels named Caramel and Ghaniya (“pretty girl”) through a halcyon sunset into a full moon. And then it rained! In the freakin’ Sahara! Awesome.

We were, as usual, the only tourists there (and devoured delectable chicken tagine in an empty, cavernous mess hall right out of The Shining: camel-riding makes you ravenous!). As we were as well at our next stop, mountainous Matmata, the famous “trogolodyte” Sand People/ Mos Eisley Cantina town from Star Wars. I think that’s right — don’t kill me Star Wars nerds. There things, however, took another unexpectedly sinister turn.

Matmata is one of the biggest tourist draws in Southern Tunisia, thanks to the whole Skywalker connection. We rode in bumpily aboard a louage, the shared minivan taxis that are the main means of transport in these remote regions. But as we approached we saw smoke — and a tour bus, the only one of that week we later heard, rapidly retreating. As we entered the town center, the smoke grew overwhelming. A large group of men were burning tires in front of the government outpost. We were told that a govenment official was supposed to arrive from the capital that morning with news of a jobs program, but he never materialized. Out here the unemployment rate is around 70-80 percent, so this was a big deal (even though driving away the few tourists seemed like a bad idea.)

In the morning, after the tire fire

We managed to stay the night in one of the sunken, white-washed, fantasy-come-true underground trogolodyte dwellings, mingle with the locals, and stuff ourselves with kousksi bil djaj (chicken couscous), shakshouka (eggs poached with tomatoes, peppers, and tumeric) and makrouth — sweet, date-filled pastries native to the city of Kairoun.

The next morning, though, protesters had blocked the highway and were burning more tires. 

With no means of transportation, we started hiking the 12 kilometers to the next biggest city — luckily the day was overcast, this was still the Sahara after all! A nice man in a truck with government plates stopped to give us a ride, but as we rounded a large curve we hit another roadblock. A gang of young men from a nearby mountain town were standing ominously behind rocks piled on the road, makeshift weapons of former highway signs in their hands. As we slowly approached, they silently surrounded the truck.

“Uh oh,” I telegraphed to Hunky Beau, “I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t end well.” And then, “Well, at least a couple of them are hot.”

The guy giving us a ride backed slowly out and we retreated while he made a few calls. We went back to Matmata, our hearts sinking because the situation was getting heavier there as well. We waited a couple of stomach-wrenching hours on a bend outside of town, wondering what to do, at least enjoying the clifftop views. Lo and behold, our guardian angel in the truck returned with two hardcore, seasoned military men aboard (one of them a thick-faced number who looked like he saw a lot of torture under the old regime — and he wasn’t on the receiving end). We quickly squeezed in. As soon as we got back to the roadblock, the army dudes leapt out of the truck and charged the gang, bellowing and waving their arms.

“That’s the way to do it,” I thought, watching through laced fingers. “Barge the fuck right in.” There was a scuffle, one of the kids tried to grab an officer’s gun, weapons were hectically raised, but the kids eventually backed off after getting to vent a bit, and we charged through. Government escort? I’d never been so happy to have one. And all to help two complete strangers make it to their next vacation stop. Tunisia, I love ya.

But yeah, frustration out there is growing. When we eventually made it back to Douz, we had one of the best meals of my life. Finally, we found a great bowl of Ojja, the egg stew cooked with merguez sausages, served by the wonderful women who run Restaurant Chez Magic —  it really was a house of sausage stew magic!

Ojja at last. Crappy iPhone photo by Marke B.

Final destination: Djerba island, the legendary “Land of the Lotus Eaters.” Probably beautiful in its normal, sunny, sparkling blue Mediterranean state. Racked by magnificent storms when we were there. No Tunisian martinis at the beach for me.

No problem, though — there was plenty to enjoy, including one of Tunisia’s most bewitching specialties: brik. I know that there was a lot of other stuff involved, but if ol’ Odysseus and his Greek crew had trouble leaving this isle behind on their quest to return home, I’m pretty sure brik was involved.

Brik at Bric

Imagine, if you will, a thin-skinned pastry, stuffed with mashed potatoes, tuna, capers, parsley, olives, chopped onion, and harissa folded into a triangle and lightly deep-fried. But wait! Before the pastry is folded, and egg is gently broken into it, so that when your fork pierces the pastry skin, the yolk gently breaks and oozes out like a swoosh of golden flavor. I am sorry my vegan friends! Magnificent, and the place to get them is called Bric Belgacem in Houmt Souk, the capital, on January 14, 2011 Street (named after the date of the dictator Ben Ali stepped down). Gaaah, I want one.    

We had come to Djerba, like supposedly tens of thousands of other pilgrims, for the huge annual Lag B’Omer festival at the ancient synagogue of El Ghriba, in one of Northern Africa’s last remaining Jewish communities. Yep, on this small island, Jew and Muslim live side by side in peace — we’d unfortunately seen a dismaying share of anti-Semitism (not just anti-Israelism) on our journey in the form of graffiti, alas. We felt bouyant to be a part of this giant celebration.

And sure, in 2002 Al Qaeda had tried to blow up El Ghriba, which holds possibly the world’s oldest Torah (paraded through the streets during the festival). A truck bomb had killed 21. But that was long enough ago not to frighten people away, right?

El Ghriba synagogue

Not really. Spooked by the revolution and the turmoil just a few kilometers away in Libya (a flood of Libyan refugees was engulfing the island: there were more Libyan license plates than Tunisian ones), so many tourists had cancelled their pilgrimage that the celebration itself was cancelled. And boy, was it cancelled. When we showed up at the ornately-decorated, marvelously Moorish-style synagogue, there were just five old men praying, a father-daughter pair from Kansas (who had just crossed dangerous Southern Algeria for the heck of it) and the effervescent Zoey, a middle-aged Englishwoman who was receiving text messages from God. Let’s let her finish out this account:

“I woke up one day at my home in Norwich one day and I heard God telling me to drive to Israel.” She looked me in the eyes, completely calmly. “So I loaded up my camper and began to drive, trusting him to provide — and he has, oh how has. I made it to Libya and I asked God how was I going to get in. And you know what? He opened the borders for me, just opened them right up so I could drive through. As I was driving toward the border post, the rebels captured it, peacefully, and in the confusion I just drove. I met the rebels and slept in the mountains with them, until it was time to go. I drove on to Benghazi” — she was in a station wagon towing a trailer with a Jesus fish on the bumper — “where God taught me to accept my fear of being bombed, as bombs rained down all around me. I can tell you that was something.

“Checkpoint after checkpoint opened up before me. Sometimes they would search my car, but I had a Koran, and when they saw I had the Word of God with me they let me through. Once when danger approached, I received a text to avoid a certain area. Then finally, I was stopped and they ransacked my trailer. They tried to ransack me as well, but God put a stop to that! I was blindfolded and sent to a prison in Tripoli for a week. They ended up deporting me, and so I’m waiting here at the border until God tells me to try again. Really, you just need to trust sometimes. I can see that you’ll be hearing from him today, just by coming here.

“Sometimes,” she continued, “we have to do whatever crazy thing our heart tells us we should do, and call it belief.”

And with that, she went to drop a harboiled egg in an ancient well, which is the tradition at such occasions.

 

The energy of Arab Spring uprisings soon spread to Spain, although with a very different effect: you can read my report here.

 

 

 

 

Hot sexy events: July 6-12

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events: July 6-12

Good news this week’s gang: Femina Potens has found a new brick and mortar gallery! The sex-positive, high-art fetish org will be moving out to Cesar Chavez between Mission and Valencia, high times for those of us in favor of artsy bondage nights and feminist porn-o-rama. We’ll keep you posted as this story progresses… now onto the sex events!

 

Feelmore510 erotic film night

Didja catch our recent profile of Oakland’s dopest new sex toy store? Certainly worth a trip to downtown Oak-town, so why not make it tonight for owner Nena Joiner’s screening of blue films. Tonight’s theme is vintage – maybe it’ll get you all stoked for next week’s YBCA retro porn festival?

Weds/13 7:30-9 p.m., free

Feelmore510 

1703 Telegraph, SF

(510) 891-0199

www.feelmore510.com


Pink 

Oh man, you’re all dressed up in your marabou finery, you’re at Mission Control, there’s a sexy cat or Dorothy or mermaid sitting across the room giving you the come-hither gaze – and you freeze. Don’t worry, times like these just call for a workshop. You can get that before you hit this week’s Pink play party at the regular pre-party class, which this time around features Martha Baczynski teaching you the fine art of the swinger come-on. Just remember, you gotta bring a “responsible partner” to Pink.

Pre-workshop 9-10:15 p.m.

Play party 10 p.m.-3 a.m., $30 for both, members only

Mission Control 

www.missioncontrolsf.org


Screwup

Guess what trannies, genderqueers, and the like: you now have your very own coffee meet-and-greet! Hie thee hence to Wicked Grounds, where you will find not only a gender-nuetral bathroom, but a roomful of fun, interesting, sexy folks who defy the gender binary that persists in asking: coffee or tea? at SF’s S-M cafe extraordinaire. 

Sat/9 7-9 p.m., free

Wicked Grounds 

289 Eighth St., SF

(415) 503-0405

www.wickedgrounds.com

 

11th Annual South Bay Kink Ride

Board your choppers and bring your appetite – this South Bay tradition takes you to that most suburban of restaurants, to a small park for singetail slingin’, and then out through the Santa Cruz Mountains – and lunch, of course. Perfect for those who enjoy the feel of fresh air whipping by their sexy loins. And whips, of course. 

Sun/10 9 a.m. breakfast, 10:30 ride, free except for cost of food

Marie Callender’s

18500 Sutter, Morgan Hill

www.soj.org/calendar

 

Naked Girls Eating

The gang — Lady Monster, Carol Queen, Cherry Galette, Ophelia Coeur de Noir, and Isis Starr from Naked Girls Reading is back — and they’ve brought snacks. This month, the rude nudes will be orating from tales of delectable food porn — and all the while you can feast on their bodacious bods and treats from SF’s own BDSM coffeeshop, Wicked Grounds. Delicious!

Sun/10 8-10 p.m., $15-20

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

(415) 552-7399

www.sexandculture.org

 

 

 

“Fabulous Fellatio: The Art of Oral Sex” and “Petting the Kitty: Cunnilingus and Female Massage”

Megan Andelloux‘s gotta have a great mouth. The sexpert is teaching not one, but two nights that’ll teach all comers the art of going downtown on their Charlie Brown (and Lucy). Hetero couples: going to one and not the other? Not fun at all, make it a two-fer and everyone goes home happy! 

Fellatio: Mon/11 6:30-8:30 p.m., $20-25

Petting: Tues/12 6:30-8:30 p.m., $20-25

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

(415) 345-0500

www.goodvibes.com 

 

Summer fairs and festivals

Maria Poblet
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Summer fairs and festivals

ONGOING

Young At Art Festival de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 695-2441, www.youngatartsf.com. Through May 22, free. The creative achievements of our city’s youth are celebrated in this eight day event curated and hosted by the de Young Museum.

* Oakland Asian Cultural Center Asian Pacific Heritage Festival Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St., Oakl. (510) 637-0462, www.oacc.cc. Through May 26. Times and prices vary. Music, lectures, performances, family-friendly events in honor of Asian and Pacific American culture and traditions.

DIVAfest Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF. (415) 931-2699, www.theexit.org. Through May 28. Times and prices vary. Bastion of the alternative, EXIT Theatre showcases its 10th annual buffet of fierce women writers, performers, and directors. This year features two plays, beat poetry, musical exploration, and more.

* Yerba Buena Gardens Festival Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission and Third St., SF. (415) 543-1718, www.ybgf.org. Through Oct. 31. Times vary, free. A series of cultural events, performances, activities, music, and children and family programs to highlight the green goodness of SoMa’s landscaped oasis.

 

May 18-June 5

San Francisco International Arts Festival Various venues. (415) 399-9554, www.sfiaf.org. Times and prices vary. Celebrate the arts through with this mish-mash of artistic collaborations dedicated to increasing human awareness. Artists included hail from around the world and right here in the Bay Area.

 

May 21

* A La Carte & Art Castro St. between Church and Evelyn, Mountain View. (650) 964-3395, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. With vendors selling handmade crafts, microbrewed beers, fresh foods, a farmers market, and even a fun zone for kids, there’s little you won’t find at this all-in-one fun fair.• Asian Heritage Street Celebration Larkin and McAllister, SF. www.asianfairsf.com. 11am-6pm, free. This year’s at the country’s largest gathering of APA’s promises a Muay Thai kickboxing ring, DJs, and the latest in Asian pop culture fanfare — as well as tasty bites to keep your strength up.

Freestone Fermentation Festival Salmon Creek School, 1935 Bohemian Hwy, Sonoma. (707) 479-3557, www.freestonefermentationfestival.com. Noon-5pm, $12. Learn about the magical wonders of fermentation with hands-on and mouth-on demonstrations, exhibits, and tasty live food nibbles.

Uncorked! San Francisco Wine Festival Ghirardelli Square, SF. (415) 775-5500, www.ghirardellisq.com. 1-6pm, $45-50 for tasting tickets, free for other activities. Uncorked! brings you the real California wine experience with tastings, cooking demonstrations, and even a wine 101 class for those who are feeling not quite wine-refined.

 

May 20-29

SF Sex Worker Film and Art Festival Various venues, SF. (415) 751-1659, www.sexworkerfest.com. Times and prices vary. Webcam workshops, empowering film screenings, shared dialogues on plant healing to sex work in the age of HIV: this fest has everything to offer sex workers and the people who love ’em.

 

May 22

Lagunitas Beer Circus Lagunitas Brewing Co., 1280 N McDowell, Petaluma. (303) 447-0816, www.craftbeer.com. Noon-6pm, $40. All the wonders of a live circus — snake charmers, plate spinners, and sword swallowers — doing their thing inside of a brewery!

 

May 21-22

* Maker Faire San Mateo County Event Center, 2495 South Delaware, San Mateo. www.makerfaire.com. Sat, 10am- 8pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, $5-25. Make Magazine’s annual showcase of all things DIY is a tribute to human craftiness. This is where the making minds meet.• Castroville Artichoke Festival Castroville, Calif. (831) 633-0485, www.artichokefestival.org. Sat., 10am- 6pm; Sun., 11 am- 4:30 p.m., free. Pay homage to the only vegetable with a heart: the artichoke. This fest does just that, with music, parades, and camping.

 

May 28-29 

San Francisco Carnaval Harrison between 16th and 22nd St., SF. 10am-6pm, free. The theme of this year’s showcase of Latin and Caribbean culture is “Live Your Fantasy” — bound to bring dreams alive on the streets of the Mission.

 

June 3-12

Healdsburg Jazz Festival Various venues, Healdsburg. (707) 433-463, www.healdsburgjazzfestival.org. Times and prices vary. Bask in the lounge-lit glow of all things jazz-related at this celebration in Sonoma’s wine county.

 

June 3-July 3 

SF Ethnic Dance Festival Zellerbach Hall, Berk. and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF. www.worldartswest.org. Times and prices vary. A powerful display of world dance and music taking to the stage over the course of five weekends.

 

June 4

* Berkeley World Music Festival Telegraph, Berk. www.berkeleyworldmusicfestival.org. Noon-9pm, free. Fourteen world music artists serenade the streets and stores of Telegraph Avenue and al fresco admirers in People’s Park.

Huicha Music Festival Gundlach Bundschu Winery, 2000 Denmark St., Sonoma. (707) 938-5277, www.gunbun.com/hmfevent. 2-11pm, $55. Indie music in the fields of a wine country: Fruit Bats, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, Sonny and the Sunsets, and more.

 

June 4-5

Union Street Eco-Urban Festival Union from Gough to Steiner and parts of Octavia, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. Festival goers will have traffic-free access to Cow Hollow merchants and restaurant booths. The eco-urban theme highlights progressive, green-minded advocates and products.

The Great San Francisco Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center, Building A., SF. (415) 383-7837, home.earthlink.net/~sfxtl/index.html. Sat., 10am-6pm; Sun., 10am-4pm, $6. Gems and all they have to offer: beauty, fashion, and mysterious healing powers.

 

June 5

* Israel in the Gardens Yerba Buena Gardens, SF. (415) 512-6420, www.sfjcf.org. 11am-5pm, free. One full day of food, music, film, family activities, and ceremonies celebrating the Bay Area’s Jewish community and Israel’s 63rd birthday.

 

June 10-12

Harmony Festival Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa. www.harmonyfestival.com. 10am-10pm, $45 one day, $120 for three day passes. This is where your love for tea, The Flaming Lips, goddess culture, techno, eco-living, spirituality, and getting drunk with your fellow hippies come together in one wild weekend.

Queer Women of Color Film Festival Brava Theater. 2789 24th St., SF. (415) 752-0868, www.qwocmap.org. Times vary, free. A panel discussion called “Thinkers and Trouble Makers,” bisects three days of screenings from up-and-coming filmmakers with stories all their own.

 

June 11-12

* Live Oak Park Fair 1301 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 227-7110, www.liveoakparkfair.com. 10am-6pm, free. This festival’s 41st year brings the latest handmade treasures from Berkeley’s vibrant arts and crafts community. With food, face-paint, and entertainment, this fair is perfect for a weekend activity with the family.

 

June 11-19 

San Mateo County Fair San Mateo County Fairgrounds. 2495 S. Delaware, San Mateo. www.sanmateocountyfair.com. June 11, 14, 18, and 19, 11am-10pm; all other days, noon-10pm, $10 for adults. It features competitive exhibits from farmers, foodies, and even technological developers — but let’s face it, we’re going to see the pig races.

 

June 12

* Haight Ashbury Street Fair Haight between Stanyan and Ashbury, SF. www.haightashburystreetfair.org. 11am-5:30pm, free. Make your way down to the grooviest corner in history and celebrate the long-standing diversity and color of the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, featuring the annual battle of the bands.

 

June 16-26

Frameline Film Festival Various venues, SF. www.frameline.org. Times and prices vary. This unique LGBT film festival comes back for its 35th year showcasing queer documentaries, shorts, and features.

 

June 17-19 Sierra Nevada World Music Festival Mendocino County Fairgrounds. 14400 CA-128, Boonville. (916) 777-5550, www.snwmf.com. Fri, 6pm-midnight; Sat, 11am-midnight; Sun, 11am-10pm, $60 for Friday and Sunday day pass; $70 for Saturday day pass, $150 three day pass. Featuring Rebulution, Toots and the Maytals, and Jah Love Sound System, this fest comes with a message of peace, unity, and love through music.

 

June 18 

Summer SAILstice Encinal Yacht Club, 1251 Pacific Marina, Alameda. (415) 412-6961, www.summersailstice.com. 8am-8pm, free. Boat building, sailboat rides, sailing seminars, informational booths, music, a kid zone, and of course, wind, sun, and water.

Pinot Days Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, SF. (415) 382-8663, www.pinotdays.com. 1-5pm, $50. Break out your corkscrews and head over to this unique event. With 220 artisan winemakers pouring up tastes of their one-of-a-kind vino, you better make sure you’ve got a DD for the ride home.

 

June 18-19

North Beach Festival Washington Square Park, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.northbeachchamber.com. Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-6pm, free. Make your way down to the spaghetti capital of SF and enjoy food, music, arts and crafts booths, and the traditional blessing of the animals.

Marin Art Festival Marin Civic Center, San Rafael. (415) 388-0151, www.marinartfestival.com. 10am-6pm, $10. A city center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright plays host to this idyllic art festival. Strolling through pavilions, sampling wines, eating grilled oysters, and viewing the work of hundreds of creative types.

 

June 20-Aug 21

Stern Grove Music Festival Stern Grove. Sloat and 19th Ave., SF. (415) 252-6252, www.sterngrove.org. Sundays 2pm, free. This free outdoor concert series is a must-do for San Francisco summers. This year’s lineup includes Neko Case, the SF Symphony, Sharon Jones, and much more.

 

June 25-26

San Francisco Pride Celebration Civic Center Plaza, SF; Parade starts at Market and Beale. (415) 864-FREE, www.sfpride.org. Parade starts at 10:30am, free. Gays, trannies, queers, and the rest of the rainbow waits all year for this grand-scale celebration of diversity, love, and being fabulous.• San Francisco Free Folk Festival Presidio Middle School. 450 30th Ave., SF. (415) 661-2217, www.sffolkfest.org. Noon-10pm, free. Folk-y times for the whole family — not just music but crafts, dance workshops, crafts, and food vendors too.

 

June 29-July 3

International Queer Tango Festival La Pista. 768 Brannan, SF. www.queertango.freehosting.net. Times vary, $10-35. Spice up your Pride (and Frameline film fest) week with some queer positive tango lessons in culturally diverse, welcoming groups of same sex couples.

 

June 30-July 3

High Sierra Music Festival Plumas-Sierra Fairgrounds, Quincy. www.highsierramusic.com. Gates open at 8am Thursday. $205 weekend pass, $90 parking fee. Yonder Mountain String Band, My Morning Jacket, and most importantly, Ween. Bring out your sleeping bags for this four day mountaintop grassroots festival.

 

July 2

Vans Warped Tour Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View. www.vanswarpedtour.com. 11am, $46-72. Skating, pop punk, hardcore, screamo, and a whole lot of emo fun.

 

July 2-3

Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, SF, 1-800-310-6563, www.fillmorejazzfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. Thousands of people get jazzed-up every year for this musical feast in a historically soulful neighborhood.

 

July 4

City of San Francisco Fourth of July waterfront celebration Pier 39, Embarcadero and Beach, SF. (415) 709-5500, www.pier39.com. Noon-9:30pm, free. Ring in the USA’s birthday on the water, with a day full of music and end up at in the city’s front row when the fireworks take to the sky.

 

July 9-10

Renegade Craft Fair Fort Mason Festival Pavilion. Buchanan and Marina, SF. (312) 496-3215, www.renegadecraft.com. 11am-7pm, free. Put a bird on it at this craft fair for the particularly indie at heart.

 

July 14-24

Midsummer Mozart Festival Various Bay Area venues. (415) 627-9141, www.midsummermozart.org. Prices vary. You won’t be hearing any Beethoven or Schubert at this midsummer series — the name of the day is Mr. Mozart alone.

 

July 16-17

Connoisseur’s Marketplace Santa Cruz between Camino and Johnson, Menlo Park. (650) 325-2818, www.miramarevents.com. 10am-6pm, free. Let the artisans do what they do best — you’ll polish off the fruits of their labor at this outdoor expo of artisan food, wine, and craft.

 

July 21-Aug 8

SF Jewish Film Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfjff.org. Times and prices vary. A three week smorgasbord of world premiere Jewish films at theaters in SF, Berkeley, the Peninsula, and Marin County.

 

July 22-Aug 13

Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival Menlo School, 50 Valparaiso, Atherton. (650) 330-2030, www.musicatmenlo.org. Classical chamber music at its best: this year’s theme “Through Brahms,” will take you on a journey through Johannes’ most notable works.

 

July 23-Sept 25

 SF Shakespeare Festival Various Bay Area venues. www.sfshakes.org. Various times, free. Picnic with Princess Innogen and her crew with dropping a dime at this year’s production of Cymbeline. It’s by that playwriter guy… what’s his name again?

 

July 30

Oakland A’s Beer Festival Eastside Club at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl. www.oakland.athletics.mlb.com. 4:05-6:05pm, free with game ticket. Booze your way through the Oakland A’s vs. Minnesota Twins game while the coliseum is filled with brewskies from over 30 microbreweries, there for the chugging in your souvenir A’s beer mug.

 

July 30-31

 Berkeley Kite Festival Cesar Chavez Park, 11 Spinnaker, Berk. www.highlinekites.com. 10am-5pm, free. A joyous selection of Berkeley’s coolest kites, all in one easy location.

 

July 31

Up Your Alley Dore between Folsom and Howard, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.com. 11am-6pm, $7-10 suggested donation. Whether you are into BDSM, leather, paddles, nipple clamps, hardcore — or don’t know what any of the above means, this Dore Alley stroll is surprisingly friendly and cute once you get past all the whips!

 

Aug 1-7

SF Chefs Various venues, SF. www.sfchefs2011.com. Times and prices vary. Those that love to taste test will rejoice during this foodie’s paradise of culinary stars sharing their latest bites. Best of all, the goal for 2011’s event is tons of taste with zero waste.

 

Aug 7

SF Theater Festival Fort Mason Center. Buchanan and Marina, SF. www.sftheaterfestival.org. 11am-5pm, free. Think you can face about 100 live theater acts in one day? Set a personal record at this indoor and outdoor celebration of thespians.

 

Aug 13

San Rafael Food and Wine Festival Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission, San Rafael. 1-800-310-6563, www.sresproductions.com. Noon-6pm, $25 food and wine tasting, $15 food tasting only. A sampler’s paradise, this festival features an array of tastes from the Bay’s best wineries and restaurants.

 

Aug 13-14

* Nihonmachi Street Fair Post and Webster, SF. www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. Founded by Asian Pacific American youths, this Japantown tradition is a yearly tribute to the difficult history and prevailing spirit of Asian American culture in this SF neighborhood.

 

Aug 20-21

Oakland Art and Soul Festival Entrances at 14th St. and Broadway, 16th St. and San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 444-CITY, www.artandsouloakland.com. $15. A musical entertainment tribute to downtown Oakland’s art and soul, this festival features nationally-known R&B, jazz, gospel, and rock artists.

 

Aug 20-22

* SF Street Food Festival Folsom St from Twenty Sixth to Twenty Second, SF. www.sfstreetfoodfest.com. 11am-7pm, free. All of the city’s best food, available without having to go indoors — or sit down. 2011 brings a bigger and better Street Food Fest, perfect for SF’s burgeoning addiction to pavement meals.

 

Aug 29-Sept 5

Burning Man Black Rock City, Nev. (415) TO-FLAME, www.burningman.com. $320. This year’s theme, “Rites of Passage,” is set to explore transitional spaces and feelings. Gather with the best of the burned-out at one of the world’s weirdest, most renowned parties.

 

Sep 10-11

* Autumn Moon Festival Street Fair Grant between California and Broadway, SF. (415) 982-6306, www.moonfestival.org. 11am-6pm, free. A time to celebrate the summer harvest and the end of summer full-moon, rejoice in bounty with the moon goddess.

 

Sept 17-18

SF International Dragon Boat Festival California and Avenue D, Treasure Island. www.sfdragonboat.com. 10am-5pm, free. The country’s largest dragon boat festival sees beautiful man-powered boats take to the water in 300 and 500 meter competitive races.

 

Sept 23-25

SF Greek Food Festival Annunciation Cathedral. 245 Valencia, SF. www.sfgreekfoodfestival.org. Fri.-Sat., 11am-10pm; Sun., noon-9pm, free with advance ticket. Get your baba ghanoush on during this late summer festival, complete with traditional Greek dancing, music, and wine.

 

Sept 25

Folsom Street Fair Folsom between 7th and 12th St., SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org. 11am-6pm, free. The urban Burning Man equivalent for leather enthusiasts, going to this expansive SoMa celebration of kink and fetish culture is the surest way to see a penis in public (you dirty dog!).

 

Sept 30-Oct 2

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com. 11am-7pm, free. Pack some whiskey and shoulder your banjo: this free three day festival draws record-breaking crowds — and top names in a variety of twangy genres — each year.

 

Items with asterisks note family-fun activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Stage Listings

Maria Poblet
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0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Candide of California 1620 Gough; www.custommade.org. $10-28. Previews Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm. Opens Tues/17, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 4. Custom Made Theatre presents this modernized version of the Voltaire tale, which was a hit at the SF Fringe Festival.

Risk is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival EXIT on Taylor, 227 Taylor; (800) 838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $20-50. Opens Fri/13, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 25. Cutting Ball Theater closes its 11th season with a festival of experimental plays, including works by Eugenie Chan, Rob Melrose, and Annie Elias.

BAY AREA

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear Avenue, Mtn View; (650) 254-1148, www.thepear.org. $15-30. Previews Fri/13, 8pm. Opens Sat/14, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 20. Pear Avenue Theatre presents an adaptation of Mark Twain’s novella.

OPEN. Central Stage, 5221 Central, Richmond; (800) 838-3006, www.raggedwing.org. $15-35. Previews Thurs/12, 8pm. Opens Fri/13, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through June 11. Ragged Wing Ensemble presents a new Bluebeard-inspired play written and directed by Amy Sass.

ONGOING

Absolutely San Francisco Alcove Theater, 414 Mason; 992-8168, www.absolutelysanfrancisco.com. $32-50. Check for dates and times. Open-ended. Not Quite Opera Productions presents a musical.

*Caliente Pier 29, The Embarcadero; 438-2668, www.love.zinzanni.org. $117-145. Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Open-ended. Ricardo Salinas, cofounder of famed Mission-born radical Latino comedy trio Culture Clash, penetrates the velvet enclave of Teatro ZinZanni, taking the helm for its latest Euro-style dinner-cirque cabaret show. Under Salinas’ inspired direction, the evening plays as a revolt by brown-hued kitchen and wait staff against a ruthless takeover by, what else, a Chinese conglomerate. Multiculti clashes ensue, with the underdogs led by a brother-sister team played charmingly by ZinZanni regulars Christine Deaver and Robert Lopez, and with much expert repartee and physical humor neatly enveloping characteristically stunning feats of acrobatics and circus arts that leave forkfuls of grub hovering before slack-jawed mouths. I don’t know how many actual kitchen staffers out there can afford the ticket price (though it does come with a tasty five-course meal in addition to a first-class show), but the blend of Salinas and company’s shrewd if subdued social commentary and big-heated Latin-fueled humor—not to mention the exquisite musical numbers featuring guest star Rebekah Del Rio—lead to something altogether harmonious. (Avila)

Cancer Cells The Garage, 975 Howard; 518-1517, www.975howard.com. $15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 22. Performers Under Stress and directors Geoff Bangs and Scott Baker offer this well-conceived program of late Pinter works, a total of nine plays and poems intelligently arranged and unevenly but in some cases vibrantly performed (especially in the case of One for the Road) in a fleet 90-minute evening. With the titular poem, written as the esteemed playwright was undergoing chemo (and recited here with somewhat unnecessary emotion by Valerie Fachman), a telling definition of cancer cells arises: “They have forgotten how to die/ And so extend their killing life.” Given the unbridled political nature of the work that follows—including the devastatingly stark (yet ever articulate to the point of being unexpected) dramatic vocabulary of Mountain Language, a compact depiction and rumination on state-sponsored genocide—those cancer cells grow out of their literal referent into a literary metaphor for the warping, perverting, and devastating consequences of supreme, unchecked power and its Olympian delusions. Pinter’s late works, written with a pronounced urgency in the face of ever-widening war and genocide, advance his shrewd and potent ability for exposing the obscenity beneath the shell games of language as deployed by power in pursuit of its imperial and totalitarian aims. (Avila)

Devil/Fish 2781 24th St; www.cirquenoveau.com. $26. Fri-Sat, 7pm; Sun, 6pm. Through May 22. Cirque Noveau presents a story involving aerial performance, acrobatics, and more.

Eleanor EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 28. Though it seems fitting that a two-and-a-half-hour long epic about historical diva and queen Eleanor of Aquitane should debut at EXIT Theatre’s DIVAfest, Dark Porch Theatre’s production of Eleanor lacks the charisma of its muse. A confused tangle of unnecessary subplots and under-developed characters, Eleanor tries to fit in an 800-year-old grudge match, a thwarted celestial ascension, political chicanery, assassination, adultery, an existential chess game, a crusade, medieval grrrl power, and the quest for the holy grail into a single show, with decidedly mixed results. On the one hand, Alice Moore as the titular queen is a delicious blend of regal and calculating, and Nathan Tucker as her equally conniving consort, Henry II, makes a surprisingly vital and robust king. The design elements are strong, and Dark Porch Theatre’s trademark live music and physical-movement interludes are cleverly arranged. But on the downside, Eleanor also displays what is gradually becoming another one of DPT’s trademarks, an overly convoluted script in need of major tightening in focus. Playwright/director Margery Fairchild needs to sacrifice a good chunk of bit-player intrigue, and rely more on the strength of her iconic queen, to move the action to an endgame more rewarding than this version’s anti-climactic exile to eternal oblivion. (Gluckstern)

*Geezer Marsh, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thurs, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 3pm. Through July 10. The Marsh presents a new solo show about aging and mortality by Geoff Hoyle.

Hugh Jackman, in Performance at the Curran Theatre Curran Theatre, 445 Geary; (888) 746-1799, www.shnsf.com. $40-150. Tues-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 15.The shout that went up the moment he came onstage was enough to let you know this entertainer could do no wrong with this audience. But perhaps just to be on the safe side, Hugh Jackman immediately began courting the 1700 people packed into the Curran from the front rows to the balcony, speaking to many individually, embracing one or two, bringing some onstage, or just flashing them his leading-man smile. Jackman’s limited and exclusive San Francisco engagement, courtesy of producer Carole Shorenstein Hays, wasn’t my cup of tea, or whatever they drink Down Under, but devotees of the Aussie star from Hollywood (X-Men) and Broadway (The Boy from Oz) got the love-fest they wanted. And the multifaceted actor is all pro, likeable and impressive even amid the cheesier aspects of a throwback form: a song-and-dance varietal in an old-school showbiz vein, featuring much personal and professional reminiscing, joking around (including tussles with his personal trainer [Steve Lord] over a dancing prohibition in the buff-up period before his next Wolverine pic), musical routines, and somewhat incongruous medleys backed by an 18-piece band (under direction of Patrick Vaccariello) and flanked by Broadway talents Merle Dandridge (Rent, Spamalot, Aida) and Angel Reda (Wicked). (Avila)

Loveland The Marsh, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through June 4. Ann Randolph’s popular one-woman show about a misfit returning to Ohio from L.A. extends its run.

*Lucky Girl EXIT Studio, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 28. Honey (Cheryl Smith) talks about “the shoes” first, the shoes repeatedly, against even her analyst’s power to retain a common interest in the footwear of her attacker. Why should she so concern herself with this detail of the man who assaulted her, wounding her in ways too subtle and deep to measure—unless through the wayward precision of the poetical imagination some measure might actually be taken. That is the force and beauty of Lucky Girl, a notable new stage adaptation by Tom Juarez of poet Frances Driscoll’s 1997 collection, The Rape Poems, which premieres as part of Exit Theatre’s DIVAfest 2011. Juarez crafts an engagingly dynamic and delicate narrative arc from Driscoll’s thematically joined but otherwise disparate poems, gorgeously formulated verses that delve into a devastating subject with an unexpected range of humor, insight, and compassion. This supple range is acutely grasped and exquisitely interpreted by Smith, whose gripping performance (keenly directed by Kathryn Wood) eschews anything remotely sentimental for a complex and moving portrait of the enduring aftermath of terror. (Avila)

A Most Notorious Woman EXIT Stage Left, 156 Eddy; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through May 28. The axiom “well-behaved women seldom make history” comes to mind when watching a reenactment of the strange but true tale of the meeting between renegade pirate “queen” Grace O’Malley and Queen Elizabeth I. Both exceptionally powerful women in their day, they must surely have found some novel comfort in the presence of the other. Christina Augello plays both divas for DIVAfest with swashbuckling verve in Maggie Cronin’s historical drama, A Most Notorious Woman. Also inhabiting several bit characters along the way, Augello infuses Grace with a matter-of-fact, workaday groundedness, while her Elizabeth is all fuss and neuroses, chattering away to “Leicester” on a thoroughly modern cell-phone while plotting political intrigues. Watching Augello shift between the two strong-willed characters is the production’s greatest pleasure, along with some clever set and costuming flourishes courtesy of John Mayne and Laura Hazlett. There are some awkwardly-paced attempts at shadowplay which interrupt the overall flow, and the presence of an omniscient narrator, a sea-queen wrapped in kelp, is a puzzling distraction, but as staged history lessons of ill-behaved women go, Notorious is both informative and entertaining. (Gluckstern)

Party of 2 — The New Mating Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $27-29. Fri, 9pm. Open-ended. A musical about relationships by Shopping! The Musical author Morris Bobrow.

The Real Americans The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia; 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm (also July 10, 17, and 24, 2pm). Through July 24. Dan Hoyle’s popular show about city and small-town life, directed by Charlie Varon, continues its run.

Secret Identity Crisis SF Playhouse, Stage 2, 533 Sutter; 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/14. Un-Scripted Theater Company presents a story about unmasked heroes.

Shopping! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.shoppingthemusical.com. $27-29. Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. A musical comedy revue about shopping by Morris Bobrow.

Silk Stockings Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson; 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $24-44. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 22. 42nd Street Moon presents a Cole Porter production.

A Streetcar Named Desire Actors Theatre, 855 Bush; 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 4. Actors Theatre of San Francisco presents the Tennessee Williams tale.

Talking With Angels Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $21-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through May 21. A play by Shelley Mitchell set in Nazi-occupied Hungary.

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 31. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of The Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

BAY AREA

Cripple of Inishmaan Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley Campus, Berk; (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. $68. Wed/11-Fri/13, 8pm; Sat/14, 2 and 8pm. The Irish theater company Druid presents a send-up of rural Irish life, written by Martin McDonagh.

Disassembly La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (through June 11). Impact Theatre presents the world premiere of a dark comedy by Steve Yockey.

East 14th – True Tales of a Reluctant Player The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm (except Sat/14, 8pm). Through June 18. Don Reed’s one-man solo show extends its run.

Lady With All the Answers Center REPertory Company, Lesher Center for the Arts, Knight Stage 3 Theatre, 1601 Civic Center, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.centerrep.org. $45. Thurs-Sat, 8:15pm; Sun, 2:15pm. Through Sun/15. Center REPpresents Kerri Shawn’s one-woman play about Ann Landers.

Not a Genuine Black Man The Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thurs, 7:30pm. Through June 16. Brian Copeland’s solo show about Bay Area history continues its successful run.

Passion Play Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkeley.org. $10-15. Fri-Sat, 7pm (also Sun/15, 2pm). Through May 21. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley presents the West Coast premiere of a time-travel play by Sarah Ruhl.

Three Sisters Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-73. Check for dates and times. Through May 22. Berkeley Rep presents a new version of Chekhov’s 1901 play by Sarah Ruhl (In the Next Room, Eurydice), directed by Les Waters. The language sounds generally and pleasingly modern in the mouths of the titular Prozorov sisters—Olga (Wendy Rich Stetson), Masha (Natalia Payne), and Irina (Heather Wood)—although the production is rather traditional in staging (period set by Annie Smart, and corresponding costumes by Ilona Somogyi). We follow the restless siblings and their flock of soldier-admirers through a handful of years in their provincial town, where their late father was an elite military officer. In this period, the dashing officer Vershinin (Bruce McKenzie) brings a spark of new life—especially to the unhappily married Masha—and stokes the sisters’ ultimately unanswered desire to return to their beloved Moscow. The production breathes a good deal of life into the play, whose half-foolish and heartbreakingly funny characters so palpably exude a complex set of longings and misplaced desires, but it labors under an initial stiffness and a somewhat jagged set of performances. (Payne’s twitchy Masha, for instance, whose features maintain throughout a look of unwelcome surprise, feels incongruent at times). Some of the more moving turns concentrate here in the supporting characters, including James Carpenter as Chebutykin, the fawning old doctor who has forgotten all he used to know; Thomas Jay Ryan as Tuzenbach, the self-conscious Russian of German descent desperately smitten with Irina; and Alex Moggridge as the sisters’ much put-upon, feckless, alternately gentle and petulant brother, Andrei. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show The Marsh Berkeley, Cabaret, 2120 Allston Way, Berk; (800) 838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Through July 10. The Amazing Bubble Man performs.

PERFORMANCE

Bay Area Black Comedy Competition Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakl; www.blackcomedycompetition.com. Sat/14, 8pm. $25-45. Don “D.C.” Curry hosts the finals of the competition

Boars Head Cafe Royale, 800 Post; 641-6033. Mon/16, 7:30pm. Free. SF Theater Pub revisits Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays.

Cabaret Lunatique Pier 29 on the Embarcadero; 438-2668, www.love.zinzanni.org. Sat/14, 11:15pm. $25-25. Teatro ZinZanni’s cabaret presents “Celebrate the Mission,” the third of nine performances focusing on specific neighborhoods.

The Devil-Ettes Present…Go Go Mania! Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell; 861-2011, www.devilettes.com. Fri/13, 9pm. $10. A night of burlesque and rock.

DIVAfest EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; 673-3847, www.theexit.org. Through May 28. Check for times and prices. Plays and performances by women artists, including Maggie Cronin, Christina Augello, Margery Fairchild, and Diane DiPrima.

Gods of San Francisco Shotwell Studios, 3252 19th St; Fri-Sat, 8pm (through May 21). $15-20. Ko Labs presents a one-act musical about a mother and daughter in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake.

Gustafer Yellowgold’s Infinity Sock Show Park Library,1950 Page; 355-5656, www.sfpl.org. Thurs/12, 11am. (Also Bernal Heights Library, 500 Cortland; 355-5663, www.sfpl.org. Thurs/12, 3:30pm.) Free. A free performance that is part of a two-week residency.

Katya Takes You Home Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida; www.russianoperadiva.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Tues/17, 8pm; Sun/22, 4pm). Through May 22. $20-30. Katya Smirnoff-Skyy presents an original cabaret.

SF Merionettes Synchronized Swimming Show Balboa Pool, 51 Havelock; (206) 240-0488, www.sf-merionettes.org. Sun/15, 5pm. $10 (suggested donation). The team of swimmers from eight to 17 holds an exhibition of 2011 routines.

Theatresports and Improvised Noir Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center; 474-6776, www.improv.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm (through May 28). $17-20. BATS Improv Theatre presents competition and noir performances.

Lilias White Fairmont Hotel, Venetian Room, 950 Mason; 392-4400, www.bayareacabaret.org. $45. The singer pays tribute to Cy Coleman with “My Guy Cy.”

Words and Voices: Litquake Tribute to Gertrude Stein Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission and 3rd; 543-1718, www.ybca.org. Tues/17, 12:30pm. Free. One of 90 events at this year’s Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.

Yale Glee Club Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter; 771-6900, www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com. Sat/14, 8pm. $75-125. The club is joined by Darren Criss and the SFGC Alumnae Chorus for a performance benefiting No Bully and YouthAware.

BAY AREA

Alameda Children’s Musical Theatre Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High, Alameda; (510) 521-6965, www.acmtkids.org. Fri/13, 7:30pm; Sat/14, 2 and 7:30pm. $7-13. A production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Sara Kraft.

DANCE

CubaCaribe Festival Dance Mission, 3316 24th; 273-4633, www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm; Sun/15, 7pm. $10-24. A program including performances by Colette Eloi’s El Wah Movement and Danys Pérez’s Oyu Oro.

Copious Dance Theater Z Space, 450 Florida; www.copiousdance.org. Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm; Sun/15, 5pm. $18. The company brings four works to the stage, including Portals of Grace, Little Voices, and Secret’s Lament.

Luminous Connections Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon; 695-5720, www.sfsota.org. Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm. $14-24. San Francisco School of the Arts Pre-Professional Dance Program presents a dance concert, under the direction of Elvia Marta.

Moveable Feast The Garage SF, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/11, 8pm. $10-20. Tanya Bello’s Project. B. presents a full-evening show.

Smuin Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission; 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Wed/11-Fri/13, 8pm; Sat/14, 2 and 8pm; Sun/15, 2pm. $20-62. Smuin Ballet presents a spring program, including choreography by Choo-San Goh, Amy Seiwert, and Michael Smuin.

BAY AREA

Company C Contemporary Ballet Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-SHOW, www.lesherartscenter.org. Fri/13, 8pm; Sat/14, 2 and 8pm. $15-40. The company presents three world premieres.

Savage Jazz Dance and Napoles Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts Theatre, 1428 Alice, Oakl; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Thurs/12-Sat/14, 8pm. $5-25. The companies present “Gonzo,” which includes three world premieres by Savage Jazz Dance Company. 

Our Weekly Picks: May 4-11, 2011

Maria Poblet
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WEDNESDAY

MAY 4


MUSIC

Wanda Jackson

Over her 50-plus years in show business, she’s been called “the Queen of Rockabilly” and “the Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice” — and now fans can rightly call Wanda Jackson a true musical icon, with her recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Don’t let that enshrinement fool you into thinking she’s retired, though. She can still belt out tunes like nobody’s business, and proved that yet again with the release of The Party Ain’t Over, her Jack White-produced album that came out earlier this year. Forget about the recent big fuss over in England; come to tonight’s show if you want to see some real royalty. (Sean McCourt)

With Red Meat and DJ Britt Govea

8 p.m., $21

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com


MUSIC

J Mascis

It has been a good couple of years to be a Dinosaur Jr. fan. In 2005, lead singer J Mascis and bandmate Lou Barlow put aside their grievances enough to play shows as the original lineup, along with drummer Murph. In an era of live record performances from bands well past their prime, that would have been enough, but the band released new albums that were as good as ever. (In the case of 2009’s Farm, maybe better.) So now, almost just to show that he can, between Dinosaur Jr. tours and recording sessions, Mascis releases the solo album, Several Shades of Why. Exchanging shredded electric guitars for (still a little fuzzy) acoustics, it’s another surprise, but in the best way. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Black Heart Procession

8 p.m., $20

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com


THURSDAY

MAY 5


MUSIC

Frank Fairfield

Frank Fairfield’s adaptations of blistering American ballads are proudly faithful, but his ability to coax the rightness from battered banjos and fiddles (and to squeeze his voice as if onto fresh shellac) goes way beyond technique. “I don’t even know if [this music] has that much to do with tradition,” Fairfield told one interviewer. “I think it’s just people doing whatever they feel like doing. A lot of this stuff just gets mished and mashed, and that’s the beautiful thing about America.” The fact that he’s a young Angeleno who dresses the old-timey part may raise eyebrows — but trust your ears. He makes an intriguing opener for Cass McCombs, a troubadour cut from a different cloth. (Max Goldberg)

With Cass McCombs

8 p.m., $15

Swedish American Music Hall

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com


FRIDAY

MAY 6


DANCE

Ahdanco/Abigail Hosein Dance Company

While dance can be described as poetry in motion, Ahdanco’s 2011 home season offers both poetry and motion in a dynamic dialogue. For one of the two new works on the program, the dancers share the stage with spoken word artists from the Bay Area Poetry Slam Circuit, weaving Abigail Hosein’s choreography with powerful narrative stories. The other dance is a trio set to an original score composed of four loop stations, trumpet, cello, upright bass, guitar, and female vocals performed live by ambient band, Entamoeba. Hosein’s strong female dancers (many of whom are Mills College alumni) skillfully balance the physical and theatrical. (Julie Potter)

Thurs/6–Fri/7, 8 p.m.; Sun/8, 6 p.m., $20

Ashby Stage

1901 Ashby, Berk.

(510) 837-0776

www.ahdanco.org


EVENT

“Bikes and Beats”

In response to SF’s burgeoning biking scene — and that empty moment on the first Fridays of the month when you realize that the SF Bike Party is over and the rest of your evening is TBA — comes this night club-bike club. Organizers’ goal for this fundraiser for Sunday Streets and the Wigg Party is to make bike culture as un-scary and fun as possible — even to those without handlebar calluses. Bike crafts and fashion will be on display, as well as a dope, divergent musical lineup featuring the Polish Ambassador, Non-Stop Bhangra, Madrone’s Motown on Mondays crew, and that party on two wheels well known to SF cruisers, DJ Deep. (Caitlin Donohue)

10 p.m.–3 a.m., $6–$10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

Facebook: Bikes & Beats


DANCE

“SCUBA 2011”

A terrific idea, SCUBA, a small presenters consortium, has been pooling resources for close to a decade to offer gigs to hot young choreographers, whether homegrown or invited from participating venues. So far, ODC Theater director Rob Bailis’ choices have always been worthwhile. The mix has been rich and varied. On this program, SF’s own Katie Faulkner, who will premiere Sawtooth, will be joined by Amelia Reeber from Seattle and Chris Yon from Minneapolis. Reeber is bringing this is a forgery, a multimedia work that examines choices and transformation. Yon draws on husband-wife vaudeville acts for his duet, The Very Unlikeliness (I’m Going to Kill You), with partner with Taryn Griggs. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/6–Sat/7, 8 p.m.; Sun/8, 7 p.m., $15–$18

ODC Theater

3153 17th St. SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org


SATURDAY

MAY 7


MUSIC

“Walk Like An Egyptian”

What’s Zambaleta, you say? In Egypt, Zambaleta is a spontaneous chaotic street party that happens when everyone is participating, through music or dance. In the Mission, Zambaleta is a world music and dance school with an inclusive environment and celebratory spirit. This weekend’s “Walk Like An Egyptian” festival captures that spirit, featuring Bay Area music from blues and folk to jug bands and indie. The lineup of 18 bands includes an appearance by Annie Bacon’s Folk Opera — plus, proceeds from the festival support community programs at the world music and dance center. Come walk — and party — like an Egyptian. (Potter)

Sat/7, 1 p.m.–midnight;

Also Sun/8, noon–8 p.m., $5–$20

Restoration Workshop

630 Treat, SF

(415) 341-1333

www.zambaleta.org


EVENT

CELLspace Birthday Benefit Funkathon

Celebrate the 15th birthday of CELLspace, San Francisco’s original hub for artistic work and gatherings, by partying down at a Funkathon featuring Action Jackson and other funky music and dance acts. And this is just one event among many, including an art auction May 5, a swap meet and dance party May 6, and a party May 8 that coincides with the Sunday Streets closure of Mission District streets to automobile traffic. CELLspace, a venerable institution that offers classes on everything from welding to breakdancing, is going through ambitious fundraising efforts as it seeks the permits and resources to expand its nightlife offerings, so come have a funky time while supporting a great cause. (Steven T. Jones) 9 p.m., $10–$20

CELLspace

2050 Bryant, SF

(415) 410-7597

www.cellspace.org


FILM/PERFORMANCE

“Ultimate Mommie Dearest“

Oh, I know you’ve already seen 1981’s Mommie Dearest. And I know you can quote all the famous lines (personal favorite: “Tina! Bring me the ax!”) But you’ve never experienced the ultimate Mommie Dearest — because it’s never been attempted until this once-in-a-lifetime event. Marking the cult classic’s 30th anniversary is a dame who surely has never touched a wire hanger in her life, Peaches Christ, and celebrated Peaches cohorts Heklina, Martiny, and (in honor of Mother’s Day), Mrs. Christ herself! A restored print of the film caps a night that also includes the musical stage spectacular Trannie Dearest, a drag tribute to Joan Crawford’s unfailingly dramatic life. Do I even have to add that costumes are encouraged? (Cheryl Eddy)

8 p.m., $25–$40

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.peacheschrist.com

 

EVENT

Urban Cycling Workshop

If I had a nickel for every car devotee or exasperated Muni rider who’s lamented, “Oh, I would totally ride a bike if there weren’t so many scary cars!” I’d be, well, not rich but could certainly buy some fresh handlebar tape ($16 per roll). How awesome, then, that the hardworking bike advocates at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition are offering a four-hour, in-classroom, free introductory course geared toward newbies and cyclists who want to feel more comfortable riding our tiny but intense peninsula. The class covers all the basics, from choosing the best bike to pulling emergency maneuvers, to knowing your legal rights. Ding, ding! (Kat Renz)

2 p.m., free (preregistration required; ages 14 and up)

Fort Mason Center, Bldg. C, Rm. 362

Laguna at Marina, SF

(415) 431-2453 x312

www.sfbike.org/edu


MONDAY

MAY 9


MUSIC

Mogwai

Much like the mythical creatures from Gremlins (1984) that they are named after, Mogwai’s sound can be soft and serene at one moment, then morph into an entirely different dynamic, with blistering guitars and noisy effects multiplying around you. The Glasgow-bred rockers returned in February with its seventh record, and its first Sub Pop release, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, which continues the band’s mostly instrumental and highly successful approach to making music. Creating lush sonic soundscapes richly textured with a wide array of different riffs and tones, the five-piece group is definitely one to catch live if you can. (McCourt)

With Errors

8 p.m., $23.50–$26

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

1-800-745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com


TUESDAY

MAY 10


DANCE

Project.B.

If you have seen Tanya Bello dance — Shift Physical Theater, Robert Moses’ Kin, and Janice Garrett + Dancers come to mind — you won’t have forgotten her. She probably was the shortest (but also the fastest and fiercest) tearing across the stage. Bello is small but she dances big. Lately she has taken advantage of the Garage’s RAW (Resident Artist Workshop) program to hone her choreographic skills. Moveable Feast, her first full-evening work, is plugging into her experience working with choreographers both here and on the East Coast. The idea is to show three versions of one piece in which components — lights, dancers, sets, music — get shuffled around. In the end the audience decides which one worked best. (Felciano)

May 10-11, 8 p.m., $15

Garage

975 Howard, SF

(415) 518 1517 www.brownpapertickets.com 

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Hot sexy events: April 27-May 3

Andrew Lam
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Hot sexy events: April 27-May 3

Hey there sexy, how’s life on the other side of the Intertubes? I wanna get real with some real questions in this week’s sexy events column. Don’t worry, it’s about you. Namely, we here at the SF of BG would like to know just what you feel is missing from sex coverage in this age of Aquarius (ha!) in which we live. Are you feeling like you have pressing sex ed questions that need answering? Are you wishing that there was more event coverage of the parties and perv-a-thons in our fair Sodom By the Bay?

See, we’re going through an evolution with our sex coverage, and though we’ve got some pretty hot and wild ideas up in our noggins, youse the readers are just that, and maybe you’re thinking something we missed. So how bout it – new voices, dildo reviews, heavy breathing monolouges? The Guardian’s mission is to be a voice for the community of San Francisco, so have at us. Um, our safe word is spelt. 

 

Erotic Reading Circle

Share your thoughts, air out those tired old insecurities – get real pervy with, whatever. The monthly Erotic Reading Circle at the Center for Sex and Culture provides a safe space for writers to share their bedroom-related materials. Carol Queen and Jen Cross of Writing Ourselves Whole facilitate the gathering, pretty much a must-do for any aspiring sex scribe. 

Weds/27 7:30 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Center for Sex and Culture 

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org


Hot Draw

Unleash your wild, artistic side at these live drawing sessions – one need only peep the galleries on Mark I. Chester’s website to see that he doesn’t play when it comes to drawing dirty players. Kinky leathermen strut about for a crowd of strictly sketchy, strictly gay male artist scribblers.

Thurs/28 6:30-9:30 p.m., free

Mark I. Chester Studio

1229 Folsom, SF

(415) 621-6294

www.markichester.com


Art of Restraint

How would you like to be situated right in the center of a high-art, surround sound bondage performance? It’s all within your grasp, baby – this week’s Femina Potens event at Mission Control will string up local lovelies Fivestar and Madison Young, while adult film performers and submissives offering up chocolate-covered strawberries romp about. Does it sound too good to be true? Believe, child, believe. 

Sat/30 8 p.m.-3 a.m., $50-75

Mission Control 

www.missioncontrolsf.org


How Weird Street Faire

While not sexy per se, this fair sure is freaky: How Weird takes over a good portion of SoMa for stage upon stage of electronic ass-shaking, and community bonding. What community, you say? Bonding how, you ask? Well maybe just maybe that’s up to you, sailor. Head over in whatever state of disarray you like and get funky. 

Sun/1 noon- 8 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Howard and Second St., SF

www.howweird.org 


Kentucky Fried Woman’s Guilty Pleasures

You need this bucket of crispy, greasy, lip-smackin’ queers stripping down to their burlesque bundles like you need to watch your cholesterol intake. For reals, put down the trans fat. Instead, pop on over to Oakland’s Bench and Bar bar, and feast your eyes on the talents of Alotta Boutté, Scotty the Blue Bunny, and oh! So much more. Heart-stopping, in a good way. 

Sun/1 7:30-10:30 p.m., $10

Bench and Bar

510 17th St., Oakl.

(415) 374-1924

Facebook: Kentucky Fried Woman’s Guilty Pleasures 


“Finding and Maintaining a Happily Ever After: A Relationship Workshop for Lesbian Couples”

How do you make relationships last past the original courting period? Davina and Molly have married each other countless times in protest of unequal civil rights, and so they’re uniquely qualified (maybe) to talk about how to make matrimony mutually awesome (in and out of the bedroom).

Tues/3 6:30-8:30 p.m. $20-25 for singles $35-45 for pairs

Center for Sex and Culture 

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

 

 

FEAST: 9 meat-free marvels

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: 9 meat-free marvels

culture@sfbg.com

The sandwich, like the wheel, is an timeless invention that keeps us rolling. But if you be a vegetable lover, or just someone who fantasizes about two pieces of bread cradling things other than animal carcass, you must plan ahead — or risk finding yourself stuck with a woefully dull cheese and lettuce number. Lucky for us, here in the Bay we celebrate all sandwich orientations — some with brassy beets, others laced with sweet and spicy barbeque sauce, all ample reasons to raise our veggie flags high as we chow down.

 

RHEA’S DELI

Best. Sandwich. This Mission District locale constructs an incomparable veggie BBQ sandwich. Somewhere in this combination of spicy, moist, toasty tastes full of coleslaw and some mysterious sort of thrillingly breaded veggie “chicken” is an addictive chemical. I’m not willing to rule out crack. I love this sandwich. The end.

800 Valencia, SF (415) 282-5255

 

MISSOURI LOUNGE BAR

The veggie hoagie sandwich here is well worth the longish wait that can ensue after ordering at the tent-covered backyard grill. This monster mouth-filler is boldly served with multiple small Morningstar veggie patties. But fear not the brand-name base — the Lounge stakes a proprietary note on this sandwich with its own pesto mayo, sautéed mushrooms, and degree of toasted perfection. The two beers you’ll drink while waiting will not make this hoagie any less delicious.

2600 San Pablo, Berkeley. (510) 548-2080 www.missourilounge.com

 

SAIGON SANDWICH

I challenge you to find someone in this city without a sworn affection for banh mi — with snazzy purveyors of the Vietnamese sandwich nuggets opening up on the swanky section of Fillmore Street, they’re all the rage these days. But the Tenderloin’s Saigon Sandwich makes a down-to-earth yet killer tofu chay banh mi. Crunchy, sweet, and spicy, it’ll leave first-timers and experienced banh mi handlers sparkling — but the best thing reason to twinkle? The price — $3.25!?!

560 Larkin, SF. (415) 474-5698

 

JAY’S CHEESESTEAK

Don’t be fooled by the name — Jay’s is not your everyday cheesesteak dealer. The Mission and Western Addition locations carry a variety of seitan sandwiches that will dazzle your palate no matter how you (mis)pronounce the meat substitute therein. Those unfamiliar with seitan might be interested to note that this wheat gluten-based product has the meat-like qualities of chewiness and savoriness — all without the killing animal guilt. Jay’s is saucy, so prepare with napkins along with your appetite.

3285 21st St., SF. (415) 285-5200; 553 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-5104, www.jayscheesesteak.com

 

CAFÉ MATTINA

Hummus is like the Benjamin Franklin of vegetarian sandwich ingredients. It has humble chickpea roots, yet it’s prolific and given to illustrious ideas and inventions. Of these, let us focus on Cafe Mattina (formerly Cafe Intermezzo)’s hummus sandwich. If you can get past the flocks of university-style chaos on Telegraph Avenue, this very Berkeley sandwich will be waiting for you in all its honey-wheat-and-sprouts glory, the respected founders of meat-free sandwiches.

2442 Telegraph, Berk. (510) 849-4592, www.cafemattina.com

 

ESTELA’S SANDWICHES

Sun-dried tomato pesto, artichoke spread, fresh basil, lettuce, tomato, red onion, carrots, cucumber, and pea sprouts, all drizzled with lemon-oregano vinaigrette on telera bread. Estela, we thank you for your veggie muffelatta.

250 Fillmore, SF. (415) 864-1850

 

JB’S PLACE

This unassuming Potrero Hill joint makes its own amazing falafel — crunchy and crisp on the outside with a soft herbaceous center. Folded into JB’s warm pita wrap, the falafel balls are supported by the tang and crunch of tahini and lettuce. This Middle Eastern lunch is big enough to satisfy even the hungriest of veggie-sauri.

1435 17th St., SF. (415) 626-7973

 

BETTE’S DINER

You can find a lot of great food here. Eggs, hashes, and good old diner fare are among the specialties, but Bette’s simple veggie sandwich hits the mark with its simplicity and freshness. With avocado, roasted red bell peppers, marinated cucumbers, baby greens, and vinaigrette on a baguette, you’ll be enchanted by this no-frills knockout.

1807 Fourth St., Berk. (510) 644-3230

 

THE PLANT CAFÉ

There are times when even I, an ardent vegetarian, mourn the loss of ruebens. Chewy, hearty, a gut punch of protein and sauce — thank Gaia, then, for Plant Cafe’s veggie rueben. Who cares what it’s made of — the zinger is smothered in sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and that creamy cure-all: thousand island dressing.

Various locations, SF. www.theplantcafe.com

 

THE ATLAS CAFÉ

The super-healthy beet sandwich here will tolerate no beet phobia. Accented by kale and vinaigrette on chunky whole wheat bread, its heft and fuchsia weight promise health and happiness. But you have to go to great lengths to procure one: namely, braving the Atlas Cafe’s roomful of smarmy hipster-people staring at laptops (maybe you — quit spilling beets on your shirt, dammit).

3049 20th St., SF. (415) 648-1047, www.atlascafe.net

 

FEAST: 5 tapioca delights

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: 5 tapioca delights

diane@sfbg.com

When it comes to tapioca pudding, levels of neurosis tend to equal levels of nostalgia, with the haters depicting the starchy little pearls as “gummy, scary fish eyes” and the aficionados invoking Mom patiently stirring vanilla extract into the sweet milky mixture over a prairie Wedgewood.

Pearl drinks notwithstanding — and haven’t all those bubble tea places peaked yet? — tapioca pudding remains a rarity outside of a few Jewish delis and Southeast Asian restaurants. But when you do see it, the all-white comfort food has been getting a foodie and fusion makeover, with infusions of lime, maple syrup, and Grand Marnier; bases of cream, orange juice, or coconut milk (join us, lactose intolerant ones!); real vanilla beans instead of extract (sorry, moms), and purees of passionfruit, banana, and mango. Here are five places that serve their tapioca pudding proudly. Indeed, at a few of them, you either eat your tapioca (or sticky rice) or end your meal on a sour note. You choose. (Diane Sussman)

 

OUT THE DOOR

Oh, Charles Phan — is there no humble Vietnamese street food you can’t turn into a sought-after gourmet delicacy? Not even tapioca pudding — to which you added a dollop of mango mousse for extra sweetness, a splash of lemon juice for refreshing tartness, a bit of cream for extra richness, all in a smooth coconut milk base? If there’s any criticism to be had, it’s that OTD’s tapioca pudding is only offered every day at the Westfield Centre outpost (sorry, Ferry Buildingers, you have to wait until summer to get yours). Not nice, Charles Phan, making us traverse the carny ride of an escalator for a bit of tapioca. And while we’re at it, here’s another criticism: OTD’s Ferry Building tapioca comes in prepackaged plastic containers — or is it a compostable composite? — so BYOB (bowl).

845 Market, SF. (415) 541-9913, www.outthedoors.com

 

LE COLONIAL

Who says a night on the town can’t end in tapioca pudding? At the classic and classy Le Colonial, the French-Vietnamese restaurant in the Financial District, you can have it all. Le Colonial may also be the only restaurant in town that suggests a wine pairing for your tapioca pudding (a 2003 Royal Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos). And, Le Colonial serves its tapioca, infused with coconut, over banana custard. That’s right, puddin’ heads, you don’t have to choose! Sop up the two-fer with Le Col’s wonton crisps, and get your textural, salty contrast. Granted, this tapioca isn’t cheap ($9). But this is your big night out — go ahead and splurge in your own homey, comfy way.

20 Cosmo Place, SF. (415) 931-3600, www.lecolonialsf.com

 

THE HOUSE

The House, along with lingering traces of the Beats, are two small respites from North Beach’s Italian theme-park vibe. Situated in an off-kilter, oddly-painted building on a triangulated corner at Grant and Fresno, the House serves Asian fusion fare like Maine crab cake with pickled ginger remoulade and wasabi noodles with Angus steak. Fusions aside, the House’s tapioca pudding may well be prettiest in all the land (take that, shellacked and air-brushed Martha Stewart Living centerfolds). For starters, House decorates its tapioca with a flowery swirl of mango puree that melds into the pudding for a jolt of extra sweetness. But it’s not just the artistry that makes it worth the $4 price tag: the pudding is smooth and creamy, with large pearls that have had all traces of gumminess warmed out of them.

1230 Grant, SF. (415) 986-8612, www.thehse.com

 

PHUKET THAI

If there’s a tapioca pudding that has remained faithful to its pedestrian roots, this is it. No cream, no liqueur, no mousse. Indeed, compared to other places, Phuket’s tapioca can seem on the thin side, and the corn kernels for added sweetness and texture are decidedly off-trend. But Phuket has one thing going for it that no other local tapioca purveyor has: it serves its tapioca warm. That’s right, the cooks make it just for you. And nothing says “ma-ma” like tapioca right off the stove.

248 Divsadero, SF. (415) 864-8584, www.phuketthaisf.com

 

WHOLE FOODS

Some days you need tapioca. You need it bad. You need it bad and you sure as hell aren’t going to make it yourself. And you’re certainly not going to eat another satay dish just to get to the tapioca, or resort to Kozy Shack (not because it’s bad — it’s good — but because the four-ounce containers are just too damn small and you’d have to eat the whole pack). Those are the days to head to Whole Foods’ prepared foods section, where eight-ounce containers of tapioca await. Although Whole Foods takes a classic approach to tapioca, it does up the gourmet ante by using cream (and milk) and a generous helping of vanilla. The result, of course, is smooth, creamy, and sweet — the way you wish your Mom had made it, if she hadn’t been saving the cream for something “special.”

Various locations, www.wholefoodsmarkets.com

 

FEAST: 8 intriguing entrees

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: 8 intriguing entrees

virginia@sfbg.com

Forget that gourmet mac ‘n’ cheese, leave behind another night of Neapolitan pizza — it’s time to consider a meal that has yet to be repeated all over town. Here are a few that have really turned my head of late.

 

HIBISCUS

Hop a flight to the Caribbean via this downtown Oakland eatery, where chef Sarah Kirnon pulls together stimulating new interpretations of classic island flavors. A stand-out on this menu of tastes native to Barbados and Jamaica is Kinon’s Dungeness crab cornmeal porridge, a comforting blue cornmeal mash laced with chunks of crab, butternut squash, carrots, leeks, and spiced up with bird’s eye chili. It may be one of the best dishes she’s served yet.

1745 San Pablo, Oakl. (510) 444-2626, www.hibiscusoakland.com

 

WISE SONS DELI

As long as it stays in its current form — a pop-up eatery that takes over Jackie’s Vinoteca and Cafe on Saturdays — lines at Wise Sons are sure to stay painfully long. That’s because nowhere else in the city can you get the authentic Jewish eats these young guys serve up. It’s no surprise that after only a few weeks of operation, they’re already in hot demand. Corned beef and pastrami are sliced before your eyes in all their meaty glory, excellent chocolate babka is earthy with dark chocolate or laced with Clairessquares caramel in a sweeter incarnation. Don’t miss house-smoked salmon with red onions and capers on a bialy, a traditional roll that’s similar to a bagel but baked instead of boiled.

Saturdays 9 a.m .–2 p.m. 105 Valencia, SF. (415) 787-DELI, www.wisesonsdeli.com

 

BAR BAMBINO

It was with delight I heard that one of the city’s first Italian charcuteries was shifting to a Germanic-Italian cuisine that would focus on the Tyrol and Friuli regions. I’ve been craving Tyrolean food ever since I traveled the area in Italy — its melting pot of cultures equals pleasure on a plate. Bambino’s executive chef Lizzie Binder plays with unique dishes like chewy, subtle pumpkin seed spaetzle, but my favorite is the Alpine bruschetta, simple hunks of rustic bread layered with Alpine ham, melted Montasio cheese, and horseradish kraut. It transported me straight back to dining on ham and cheese on sunny patios in the Alps.

2931 16th St., SF. (415) 701-VINO, www.barbambino.com

 

GITANE

Do not fear raw lamb. Do not expect gaminess. Order this dish — and prepare for fresh, succulent meat to rival the best beef tartares you’ve ever had. Chef Batson’s lamb tartare is unexpectedly silky meat, loaded with flavor. The added bonus is three dollops of worthy spreads, from an eggplant compote to a mix of pomegranate, walnut, and red pepper. There’s just no dish like it in town.

6 Claude, SF. (415) 788-6686, www.gitanerestaurant.com

 

FIFTH FLOOR

Since executive chef David Bazirgan recently climbed aboard, there are a number of noteworthy dishes here — particularly the Mendocino uni flan. It arrives unceremoniously, resembling a little bowl of foam. Dig into this “saffron air” and underneath you’ll find Dungeness crab fondue and a silky uni flan. Heightened by aged kaffir lime and Sichuan pepper, you’ll be dreaming about it all week.

12 Fourth St., SF. (415) 348-1555, www.fifthfloorrestaurant.com

 

HELMAND PALACE

A highly underrated SF gem. Decor is not the latest or hippest — but even better, it’s mellow and unassuming. It’s easy to get a reservation, you can fill up for $15, and even after 20 years, Helmand Palace remains our city’s best Afghani restaurant. Although kaddo (pumpkin that is pan-fried, then baked) in yogurt-garlic sauce remains a favorite dish of mine, I’m just as crazy about aushak, Afghan raviolis filled with leeks and scallions and served in a sauce of yogurt, mint, garlic, tomato, and ground beef: Middle Eastern cuisine meets red sauce Italian.

2424 Van Ness, SF. (415) 345-0072, www.helmandpalace.com

 

ICHI SUSHI

Industry insiders sidle up to Ichi’s sushi bar for impeccable fish from chef Tim Archuleta and crew. Archuleta keeps it seasonal and affordable — you’ll find far less interesting slices of fish elsewhere at higher prices. There are also high quality hot plates, and a particular stand-out is the artistic beef tataki. All-natural beef is seared sous vide, then accented with radish, kimchee, white ponzu, and crispy burdock root. The meat oozes tenderness while the accompanying ingredients add dimension to the dish.

3369 Mission, SF. (415) 525-4750, www.ichisushi.com

 

SPQR

Though everyone loves SPQR’s rustic pastas and exquisite antipasti, you’ll be equally satisfied at its bar with spuntini small bites and a glass of Italian wine from Shelley Lindgren’s impeccable list. Executive chef Matthew Accarrino infuses Roman sensibilities throughout the menu, achieving near-perfection in snacks like milky burrata cheese, which runs over accompanying toast and is sweetened with honey, hazelnuts, and a hint of chili — savory, sweet, silky. Spiced ricotta fritters are equally unforgettable: warm, with a whisper of smoked maple syrup.

1911 Fillmore, SF. (415) 771-7779, www.spqrsf.com

 

FEAST: 5 gourmet gross-outs

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: 5 gourmet gross-outs

diane@sfbg.com

From the design world to the fashion world, there are things that go and things that don’t go (yes, you — guy in the striped shirt and madras Bermuda shorts ensemble; and you too, street scrounger hauling off that hideous oversized floral-pattern couch). But the truth is, these principles remain fixed only until some genius comes along and voila! isn’t everyone on the runway looking sharp in stripes and madras? And doesn’t that flower-power couch look great with that Marimekko wallpaper?

This is precisely the case with some of the weirdest — and tastiest — food pairings in town, dishes in which two icky foods combine to make a better one, or one perfectly good food, paired with a “say what?” one, becomes the way you want it from that point on. As these dishes show, the difference between yuck and yum is a mere two letters. 

 

FRITO PIE AT GREEN CHILE PIES AND ICE CREAM

Consider the Frito pie (or depending on where you’re from, the Frito boat or walking taco), a concoction of disputed and dubious origins. Was it Frito-Lay queen mum Daisy Dean Doolin, or Woolworth lunch counter waitress Teresa Hernandez who invented it? Then again, who really cares who first took a bag of Frito corn chips, smothered them with chili or taco meat, and topped the whole mess with cheese, onions, and jalapenos? Green Chile Pies — SF’s standard-bearers of New Mexican cuisine — may be the only place in town to score this Southwestern carnival midway classic. GCP also takes the pie to dare-devilish new heights, serving its version right out of the bag. And nothing says fresh like the sound and feel of your own crinkly bag.

601 Baker, SF. (415) 614-9411, www.greenchilekitchen.com/pies

 

FRENCH FRY SANDWICH AT GIORDANO BROS

To most right-thinking Californians, what people in Pittsburgh eat is a mystery, if not an opportunity to ponder the eternal question: WTF? Noodle and cabbage halusky. Frizzle fry chipped ham sandwiches. Eat ‘n Park smiley cookies. Or how about letting people have their french fries on their sandwich? Actually, on this one, we have back off. As served on one of the superlative and meaty sandwiches at Giordano Bros., this carb-on-carb combo means never having to pay extra for fries, or having to pause from your sandwich to grab some fries, or wondering if your last bite should be fries or sandwich. You can love the sandwich and save your Pittsburgh-hating for when the Pirates dare try to beat the Giants.

303 Columbus, SF. (415) 397-2767, www.giordanobros.com

 

COTTAGE CHEESE SOUP AT COWGIRL CREAMERY SIDEKICK

Mmmm, beer. But mmmm, cottage cheese? And mmmm, brussels sprouts? And mmmm cottage cheese and brussels sprouts in soup? Before you dub such a commingling “best gag me a spoon” contender, consider Cowgirl Creamery Sidekick’s cheese soup with cottage cheese dumplings. Yes, the staff has to allay the fears of bug-eyed browsers with a taste. But once tasted, many times eaten. Despite its unappetizing name, the hearty, earthy soup starts with shitake and vegetable-based broth infused with cheese and finished with handmade cottage cheese dumplings and shavings of brussels sprouts. The cottage cheese, of course, is Cowgirl Creamery’s hand-clabbered cottage cheese, which has prompted many a trek to the Ferry Building among people who care deeply about curds and whey.

One Ferry Building, SF. (415) 362-9354, www.cowgirlcreamery.com

 

SARDINE AND SQUID SANDWICH AT BARBACCO ENO TRATTORIA

What focus group signed off on this one? What Italian fisherman stranded at sea with a puny catch told Barbacco Eno Trattoria that combining sardines and calamari was a good idea? After all, if there’s one thing Americans abhor, it’s sardines. And if there’s one thing Americans adhor even more than sardines, it’s squid. But when all is said and cooked, Barbacco was wise to listen to the fisherman, and to unite fish and mollusk in one tasty sandwich. Maybe it’s the Acme torpedo roll, or the spicy arugula, or Barbacco’s housemade “roasted tomatoe condimento.” Whatever it is, two tentacles up. (Note: it’s only available when sardines are swimming.)

220 California, SF. (415) 955-1919, www.barbaccosf.com

 

TUNA AND EGG SALAD SANDWICH AT M&L MARKET

Maybe you know some routinized drone who alternates every day between egg salad sandwiches and tuna salad sandwiches. Maybe you are that routinized drone. Maybe on the seventh day, you need to rest. But maybe you’re afraid to rest, and the fear of the unfamiliar prevents you from publicly uttering the words “grilled cheese” or “hot dog today.” Those are the days to head to M&L Market, where they will make you a tuna-and-egg salad sandwich (together). But — beware the ordering protocol. Select your bread first or suffer the wrath of the woman known to regulars as “the sandwich Nazi.” Remember, this is everything you know and love in one sandwich: tradition, paired with tradition, in an entirely new context.

691 14th St., SF. (415) 431-7044

 

FEAST: 7 brunch cocktails

Andrew Lam
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0
FEAST: 7 brunch cocktails

culture@sfbg.com

It’s noon on a Saturday — for you, we envision two possible scenarios. One: you’re covered in glitter, you smell like a wet poodle, and you’re on your way to brunch. Two: you’re well-rested after last night’s sobering yoga, feeling fly, and on your way to brunch. Hey booze breath, forget the three Advil, coffee, and a Xanax — you know there’s no better way to kick a hangover (or forge the path toward one) than to cocktail your way through the early afternoon. And Miss Fresh-As-A-Daisy? Have a drink already. Always helpful, never hurtful, here is our list of the tastiest brunch libations of the moment.

 

GINGER LEMON DROP AT CAFÉ FLORE

There is a stretch of Market Street that catches us unawares: one minute you’re surrounded by city, the next you’re in front of a magical garden filled with people downing bloody marys and eating eggs benedict. Ah, Café Flore, your lush patio makes us feel guilty for not drinking at breakfast. But we resolve not to live our life in shame. The ginger lemon drop, a Café Flore original, is the perfect way to kick off a day of leisure. Ginger liqueur and fresh lemon juice will have you feeling like you’re drinking pure, unadulterated sunshine, while the Ketel One vodka buzz reminds you that you’re actually just drunk.

2298 Market, SF. (415) 621-8579, www.cafeflore.com

 

MOJITO AT THE RAMP

You’re already on a mission to brunch, why not indulge in a meal amid the ocean breezes? Salty winds plus brunch treats and cocktails equals living large at The Ramp, which sits all the way at the end of Dogpatch’s Mariposa Street, perched on the pier of a boatyard. Grab a table inside the funky dining room or outside on the water and make sure to order one of the fresh mint mojitos. Two sips in, and you’ll be feeling like a brunch pirate. Day drunk ahoy!

855 Terry Francois, SF. (415) 621-2378, www.ramprestaurant.com

 

SPICED ALEXANDER AT AXIS CAFÉ AND GALLERY

The standard Alexander cocktail is made with gin, chocolate liqueur, and cream, a mature take on chocolate milk. The spiced Alexander at Axis Café, a lowkey but upscale café and art gallery at the base of Potrero Hill, is served hot and spiked with soju — great by itself or with one of the cafe’s whole wheat pancake and poached cranberry plates. A lesser-known brunch beverage, yes, but it pairs way better with waffles than a tequila shot. Like an old-fashioned hot cocoa, Axis’ is sweet, creamy, and warm — perfect for the seats by the joint’s roaring fireplace.

1201 Eighth St., SF. (415) 437-2947, www.axis-cafe.com

 

FOG CUTTER AT BAR AGRICOLE

This sleek SoMa restaurant is known in some circles as the Chez Panisse of cocktails, so it’s no wonder that its brunch offerings include libations worth writing home about, once you’ve sobered up. One standout is the fog cutter, a complex citrus drink made with pisco, rum, gin, sherry, citrus juice, and orgeat (almond syrup) served on the rocks and with a taste that’s similar to a mai tai. Planning on catching up with your correspondence later that day? We suggest you stick to one, for clarity’s sake.

355 11th St., SF. (415) 355-9400, www.baragricole.com

 

BLOODY MARY AT HOME

While it’s true that you can build your own bloody mary in the comfort of your own home, doing it at Market and Church Street’s comfiest brunch spot is much more exciting. Home puts the world at your fingertips: pickled veggies, olives, and over 15 kinds of hot sauce. This, friends, is the art of taking bloody mary by the horns.

2100 Market, SF. (415) 503-0333, www.home-sf.com

 

MICHELADA AT COCK-A-DOODLE CAFÉ

This downtown Oakland breakfast spot has the brunch drink for when you’re looking to kick off your free day with some heat. As all those who have ventured south of the border will recall, the michelada is a bloody mary gone Mexican, the dreaded red beers (lager and tomato juice) of your college days gone festive. Crisp Corona, lime, and Cock-A-Doodle’s house bloody mary mix await you, served in a huge salt-and-chile-rimmed glass that’s ready to baila contigo.

719 Washington, Oakl. (510) 465-5400 www.cockadoodlecafe.com

 

IRISH COFFEE AT THE BUENA VISTA

The Buena Vista’s Irish coffee story is frequently repeated by a certain faction of Bay Area folks. It is said, usually after the storyteller has downed a few, that this Fisherman’s Wharf bar was the first to perfect the drink on this side of the Atlantic. The Buena Vista’s Irish coffee is a proprietary mix of Irish whiskey, hot joe, and frothy cream — and although a friend of ours once wisely told us never to mix our uppers with our downers, to her we say: welcome to brunch drinks.

2765 Hyde, SF. (415) 474-5044 www.thebuenavista.com

 

FEAST: 10 contemporary kitchen essentials

Andrew Lam
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0
FEAST: 10 contemporary kitchen essentials

By now, you (hopefully) know the basic building blocks of good eating: fresh, in-season vegetables and fruits, whole grains, and — for the carnivorous set — lean, unprocessed meat and fish. Awesome. But unless you’re an adherent of the new Paleo diet fad, which mimics the eating habits of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, it’s going to take a bit more to transform this no-frills foundation into something you’d want to sit down to. Here are a few kitchen essentials that can quickly shift your cooking from serviceable to superb. (Emily Appelbaum)

 

SESAME OIL

Ancient Assyrian legend holds that when the gods assembled to create the universe, their drink of choice was sesame seed wine. And when Ali Baba needed to unseal a magic cave stocked with treasure, it was Sesamum indicum, which bursts open at maturity, that he invoked with the famous phrase “Open, Sesame!” If you’re looking to introduce some similar magic into your cooking, sesame oil is a good place to start. The cold-pressed oil has a light flavor and high smoke point, making it ideal for fast, high-temperature stir fries and wok cooking. When toasted, the oil becomes rich, smoky, and deep. A few drops make salads and noodle dishes sinfully savory and create the perfect base for dipping sauces. For a decadent indulgence, try the following: spread hot toast with miso (fermented soybean paste), top with a slice of avocado, and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil, then close your eyes and float a bit.

Available at Ming Lee Trading Inc. 759 Jackson, SF. (415) 217-0088

 

TAHINI

Speaking of sesames, Bay Area veggies, vegans, and carnivores alike have been blending tahini, a paste made from hulled sesame seeds, into homemade hummus for years. When mixed with a little fresh garlic, lemon, and salt, tahini will make quick work of a can of garbanzos — but there are tons of other uses for this simple spread. Try branching out with bean dips. Include white cannellini beans, black beans, or even kidney beans, which are super-high in antioxidants. Ditch expensive bottled salad dressing in favor of tahini mixed with soy sauce, lemon juice, or cider vinegar, and any fresh herbs you like. Toss soba noodles with steamed veggies and tahini for a fast, healthy dish served hot or cold. Or, for a whole array of desserts, start by kneading tahini and honey into flour for a tender, pliable pastry.

Available at Semiramis Imports, 2990 Mission, SF. (415) 824-6555

 

QUINOA

If you haven’t tried this indigenous staple from the Andes, you’re missing out. Stocked with the full set of essential amino acids, these unassuming seeds may be the most complete protein source the plant kingdom can provide. Quinoa even made NASA’s short list for crops to be included in ecological life support systems for long-duration manned spaceflights. It cooks in minutes and — with its mild, nutty taste and light texture — it’s an ideal base for curries, stews, and cold salads mixed tabouleh-style. Unfortunately, the quinoa craze in wealthy countries has left the crop unaffordable in some traditional regions such as the Bolivian salt flats, where most cultivated quinoa is now grown for export. Be sure to look for quinoa from companies like La Yapa Organic that pay a fair price to farmers.

Available at Rainbow Grocery, 1745 Folsom, SF. (415) 863-0620, www.rainbow.coop

 

COCONUT MILK

If you’re the kind of good San Francisco citizen who duly visits the local farmers market every week, gets carried away by the textures and colors and aromas of nature’s bounty, and then balks at everything you’ve brought home when it comes time to stuff it in the fridge — fear not. Coconut milk is the thing for you. Nothing else can so quickly transform a mountain of disparate vegetables into a rich, harmonious meal. Nearly any food in any season (potatoes regular and sweet, carrots, sweet and spicy peppers, pineapple, green beans, onions, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkin, spinach, kale) can feel at home in a coconut milk bath, spiced with a pinch of curry powder or garam masala and perfumed with handful of fresh herbs.

Available at Khanh Phong Supermarket, 429 Ninth St., Oakl., (510) 839-9094

 

FRESH-GROUND BLACK PEPPER

My list of Things for Which There Is No Excuse is short, and most of the items on it — like tube tops and being mean — are negotiable under certain circumstances. But one entry that cannot be compromised on is the use of pre-ground black pepper. It is simply never, ever OK. The difference between the freshly cracked pepper and the plebian, tasteless grey powder that sifts from a can is like the difference between a jam band CD and a live show. Invest in a good-quality peppermill and you’ll end up putting pepper in all kinds of places you never imagined: after experiencing pepper’s pungency in soups and bisques, on roasted root vegetables, and over tomatoes served sliced and sprinkled with kosher salt, you’ll find yourself shaking it onto strawberries marinated in balsamic vinegar and pondering the possibilities of peppercorn ice-cream. A few turns of your grinder set to coarse can quite possibly make the world go ’round.

To browse more varieties of pepper than you crank a mill at, visit San Francisco Herb Co. 250 14th St., SF. (415) 861-3018, www.sfherb.com

 

FRESH-GROUND NUTMEG

Everything said on the subject of black pepper applies — with perhaps a smidge less fervor — to nutmeg. That sickly stuff stuck with humidity to the inside of a glass shaker at Starbucks does not even remotely resemble the delicately perfumed flakes that you scrape from a whole nutmeg seed, the hard, egg-shaped center of the nutmeg tree’s fruit). Once you stop shaking the horrid pre-ground granules over your coffee, you’re likely to realize the nutmeg is not just a sweet spice. It goes particularly well with cheese and cream sauces, enriches egg and pasta dishes, and enhances all types of savory cookery with that little something-something that makes diners go “hmmm.” But if you want to relegate it to the dessert realm, no one’s going to stop you from grating a little bit over your midnight dish of chocolate ice-cream.

Fremont-based organic spice company Spicely distributes to a bevy of Bay Area retailers, but their products are also available in bulk on its website, www.spicely.com

 

FRESH GINGER

Like nutmeg, the edible rhizome of Zingiber officinale is often relegated to the subsidiary role of sweet spice — at least in American cooking. But travel nearly anywhere else in the world, from Morocco to Malaysia, Venezuela to Vietnam, and ginger plays the snappy star in soups, roasts, stews, and salads. Grate fresh ginger and garlic into peanut oil as the base for a superlative stir-fry. Stir into soups for a revitalizing broth. For a crisp, peppery salad, shred cabbage, carrots, and green beans and toss with ginger, vinegar, or lime juice, and maybe a dollop of peanut butter (or use your newly purchased tahini). Pulse ginger, chiles, and garlic in your food processor for a quick crust to sear onto meats or tofu. Ginger is a versatile gal, so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Available at New May Wah Market, 707-719 Clement, SF. (415) 668-2583

 

FRESH LEMONS AND LIMES

Nothing wakes up heavy, sleepy flavors like a bright squeeze of acid, but don’t even bother with the bottled stuff here. Before you juice, take a second to zest the thin colored rind — which contains tons of essential oils — from the outside of the fruit, being careful to stay away from the white pith. Then cut in half through the equator and squeeze. Older fruits can be coaxed to spill their juice by rolling back and forth between the palm and the cutting board. Or zap in the microwave for just a few seconds. Lemons add zip to Italian and French dishes, limes to Asian, Indian and Latin. The brave and adventurous might even try whole lemons or limes — rind, pith, pulp, and all — chopped very finely in salsas; crusts for veggies, fish or tofu; and marinades. An old-timey recipe for something called Funeral Pie uses whole lemons, thrown in a blender with some sugar, eggs, and a little flour. The result is poured in a pie crust and “Viola!” A super-quick desert ready in a flash, in case of Great Aunt Millie’s untimely demise.

Bi-Rite Market stocks organic, biodynamic lemons and limes from Becks Grove whenever possible. 3639 18th St., SF. (415) 241-9760

 

BLACK BEAN SAUCE

Hot Chinese sriracha sauce might be manufactured right here in Northern California, but that’s no excuse for indiscriminately squirting that sticky red rooster bottle over everything — from eggs to escargot — that stands still long enough. If it’s spice you’re craving, aim for a subtler, deeper flavor. Chinese-style black bean sauces, garlic or chili, provide plenty of heat without the cloying, vinegary sweetness of sriracha. Instead, their fire is mellow and a bit smoky, and develops on the tongue. Try over steamed veggies such as asparagus, broccoli, or bok choy. Use to marinate tofu or chicken, and serve over everything from tempeh to tacos. If you like the taste, try going a step further and purchasing some fermented black beans — a salty, spicy condiment something like a cross between miso and Marmite.

Available at Pang Kee Bargain Market, 1308 Stockton, SF., (415) 982-1959

 

REAL MUSTARD

All mustards are essentially a combination of whole or ground mustard seeds suspended in vinegar and spices. But subtle variations in the type of grind and proportions of ingredients can make all the difference. If you inhabit the realm of ballpark-yellow, your culinary development has been sorely stunted. All mustards work as emulsifiers, making them ideal mix-ins for dressings, marinades, and notoriously finicky Hollandaise sauces. Whole grain mustards combined with miso, maple syrup, horseradish, or Parmesan cheese (not all at once!) make a crunchy coating for salmon, chicken, pork chops, or baked squash. Finely-ground mustards like German Hangstenberg are superhot and go well with preserved meats and blander veggies like cabbage. Some mustards are made with imported vinegars or champagnes, and are best paired with simple breads and cheeses so their unique flavors come through. And for something a little closer to home, try Mendocino Mustards, made in Fort Bragg.

Available at Canyon Market, 2815 Diamond, SF. (415) 586-9999

 

FEAST: 6 best breakfast bets

Andrew Lam
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FEAST: 6 best breakfast bets

SF: a brunch town if ever there was one. The life of the alternative journalist is such that we’re rarely awake at sunrise, wondering from where the hell our next hangtown fry will materialize. But there are times when it behooves one to dine at 8 a.m. on a weekday (occasions that usually correspond to the appearance of a mother or father). Set that alarm, sweetie: here’s where you’ll find Guardian staff dragging to before a big day.

 

JUST FOR YOU

A menu peppered with delightful little zingers like “What’s grits? It’s that pasty white stuff … like you had in prison,” makes this my favorite sassy breakfast joint in Dogpatch. Just For You offers classic breakfast fare with a Southern twist — biscuits, cornbread, grilled catfish filets, or creole crab cakes to go along with your eggs and home fries. Breakfast is served all day, and if you’re an early bird, you can even score a deal-worthy plate of two pancakes with coffee for just $4.75 — but only if you get there between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. weekdays. A strict schedule — just like you had in prison. (Rebecca Bowe)

732 22nd St., SF. (415) 647-3033, www.justforyoucafe.com

 

JOANN’S CAFE

Two good reasons to get up early in the morning. One: you are going on an exciting air voyage. Two: a nice meal is waiting for you. Or both — that’s generally the happy confluence that brings me to JoAnn’s, a cheery diner-like entity en route to the airport, where a display case full of homemade muffins greets early risers and a menu full of American classics and salsa-tinged breakfast items await to congratulate the new dawn. The tiny joint opens at 7:30 a.m. every day, and even if you are flying solo (my favorite), JoAnn’s counter seating provides the perfect perch to munch orange french toast and ponder whether you prefer the x-ray scan or the pat-down. (Caitlin Donohue)

1131 El Camino, South San Francisco. (650) 872-2810

 

JIM’S RESTAURANT

Jim’s is the ultimate greasy spoon, unpretentious, no-fuss diner food perfect for when you just want a simple breakfast and to avoid the scene. You won’t find brioche french toast or bottomless sherbet-colored sparkling drinks on the menu; instead, you’ll find classic breakfast options: eggs, pancakes, waffles — and beer, if that hangover’s knocking. Five bucks gets you eggs, hash browns, bacon, fruit, and toast; for $3 more, you can upgrade to hangtown fry. Speaking of relics, this joint is like the diner that time forgot. Wood-paneled walls and AM Gold on the stereo could keep you lingering till the afternoon. (Jackie Andrews)

2420 Mission, SF. (415) 285-6020

 

NEW POTRERO MARKET

I like to live outside the laws — of good nutrition, that is — and skip breakfast. But on those days when I’m extra-hungry or extra-rich, I’ll pick up a piece of fruit at New Potrero Market, right by the Guardian office. (Just go with whichever looks the most appealing — usually the bananas are pretty good, although they don’t always have them in stock. Apples are a good alternative. I don’t like oranges. Too much work, especially in the morning.) I don’t drink coffee, but I make up for it in Diet Cokes, which are also available at New Potrero Market. True convenience. (Cheryl Eddy)

301 18th St., SF. (415) 282-2225

 

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S

When I want sheer comfort with a side of 1970s and Audrey Hepburn, I head to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. There, servers call you “hon” as the Beach Boys play on cassette tapes and you sip coffee, gazing at a faded Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster. But this dive provides a lot more to sink one’s teeth into than kitsch. I love Tiffany’s pancakes loaded with fresh blueberries, and they taste even better as you sit at the counter, watching them transform from batter to fluffy cakes on the griddle. For savory contrast (and if you have room), order giant hash brown “sandwiches” stuffed with ham, cheese, onions, and all-around goodness. (Virginia Miller)

2499 San Bruno, SF (415) 468-0977

 

CAFE LEILA

Don’t be thrown off by Cafe Leila’s flowery San Pablo facade or frilly name. Once you’re inside, it’s serious breakfast time whether you’re a morning person or a hungover owl. With a big dining room and sunny, cute patio, you’ll be sure to find a good amount of personal space to scarf down one of their many innovative breakfasts. Aside from a few everyday bagel options, Cafe Leila comes up with crazy omelet ideas that make me feel special, like the date omelet, a pile of farm eggs with dates and feta. And with three kinds of hot sauce, my condiment voice is always saying “Leilaaaaa.” (Hannah Tepper) 

1724 San Pablo, Berk. (510) 525.7544, www.cafeleila.com

 

Laughing and screaming

Andrew Lam
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0
Laughing and screaming

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Is it desirable to invest time and money in an elaborate dance theater piece about a noncontroversial subject? Are we supposed to walk away from an artistic experience having learned something about ourselves that we didn’t know before? Is it worthwhile to make a work about a common or familiar topic? Those are some of the questions that percolated through my mind watching Amara Tabor-Smith’s rich Our Daily Bread, which runs at CounterPULSE through April 24.

The answers, of course, are yes, yes, and yes. Tabor-Smith and her exceptional collaborators, primarily her fellow dancers Stephanie Bastos, Adriel Eddo, Eyle Moore, Aimee Suzara, and Alicia Walters, took on the complex yet basic topic of food — how we choose, prepare, and consume what we put into our mouths — and kneaded it into shapes that proved both muscular and smooth. Laura Diamondstone’s lobby installation and Lauren Elder’s set transformed CounterPULSE into something akin to a home, even including a small arbor with hanging pots of herbs. Ajayi Lumumba Jackson and Guy de Chalus contributed the music.

With the audience being prepped by the smell of cooking wafting through the theater and performers interacting with people as they entered, the experience felt more like visiting somebody’s house instead of a theater. And sure enough, we were offered palate-cleansing ginger, pieces of cake that we fed to a partner, and tiny portions of collard and black-eyed peas. If these gestures proved nothing else, they showed that the way to the heart goes through the stomach. Bread became a love feast.

But Tabor-Smith is too much of an artist to be satisfied with all of us walking out newly determined to become more responsible in our relationship to food. That would have been easy. She did more than that. Bread is a theatrically cogent, emotionally rich piece of dance theater that made us laugh at ourselves and want to scream at the end. The lens she offered is that of African American women as a feisty, independent, cantankerous, and embracing group of human beings. Seeing her dancers teasing and competing in the kitchen — wearing kerchiefs and stirring the pots — and the next moment as fierce warriors with masked faces and shaking fists, raining terror on anybody standing in their way, was transformational. At one point, the women stood huddled in fear back-to-back, reduced to a tiny space, but not giving an inch.

In addition to the dancers, two ancillary figures observed and participated in the work’s trajectory. Elizabeth Summers, an older woman, was the storyteller, the Griot who wandered in and out of the action. A white-clad Pippa Fleming, silently watching from her rocking chair or with her face pressed against the “kitchen” window, acted as an Orisha of death, but perhaps, when sanctifying the dancers at the end, also of hope.

Bread‘s central metaphor of the gumbo — that wondrous stew that would taste so much better without that vile spice called filé — was turned inside out. Women on stage and on video quarreled about the ingredients and you saw it being made. We got to peek into CounterPULSE’s tiny kitchen. But the traditional dish also became a way of honoring the women who made it over the years, and what it represents within individual families. And perhaps even more poignantly, it stood for the tension and love between generations, for a time when eating together created a bond between people like no other. Too bad they couldn’t serve some of it. Without filé please.

In the second half Bread became much darker as it focused more tightly on the exploitative farming practices that prevent communities with little economic power from accessing wholesome food and allow middle-class Americans to spend less of their food budget. An old news clip described “hard-working” braceros working in the fields. The reporter was so condescending in the way he described the “efficiency” of these farming practices, you wanted to scream. The choreographic response paid tribute to the workers’ physical gestures.

In the beginning, Bread meandered. Its ending — a memorial service honoring a Latino teenager who died of heat exhaustion because of no access to water — came at you with the force of a divine revenge. Imagine a wake in which weeping turns into screaming whose fury quite possibly might awaken the dead.

OUR DAILY BREAD

Thurs/21–Sun/24, 8 p.m.; $15–$22

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2060

www.counterpulse.org

 

A Beirut festival

Andrew Lam
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0
A Beirut festival

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE Mazzat used to be a deli, and some of the badges and incidents of deli-hood remain — mostly the glass cases, full of delectables, that run deep into the restaurant like a half-wall. The neighborhood setting is unusual. The old Central Freeway used to run almost directly overhead as a kind of hellish roof of concrete, but it’s gone now, leaving — across the street — a large gap with an improvised garden: an open wound that’s slowly healing. The setting reminds me of Prenzlauer Berg, an area of what was once East Berlin, with weedy emptiness and the memory of damage just steps away from gleaming renewal.

Mazzat (which opened in December in the old Apollo Market & Deli space) does gleam. With its rather formal look — of polished dark wood and taupe paint, inverted tulip lamps, white linen tablecloths, and a handsome wooden wine rack at the rear of the narrow dining room — it belongs in spirit to the renewed heart of Hayes Valley rather than to the whitewater river of traffic surging along Fell Street past the restaurant’s front door. It also implies much higher prices than those you actually find, with the majority of items — the menu is Lebanese — under $10, and in many cases well under $10. You can enjoy a brilliant feast at Mazzat and still find yourself looking at surprisingly reasonable number at the end.

The menu includes quite a few choices you would expect to find throughout the eastern Mediterranean, including dolma, tabbouleh, and baba ghanoush. The hummus ($5), served in a slanted oval bowl, was wonderful, with its potentially overbearing constituents, including garlic, lemon, and tahini (which can be quite bitter) held in a proper balance. On the side came warm pita triangles in a bottomless basket. Even better was the yogurt-cucumber dish known in Greece as tzatziki ($5); it tasted as if it had been made with whole-milk yogurt, which has a velvety quality its more gelatinous low-fat cousins can’t match.

The Lebanese salad fattoush ($8) is something of an analog to the Italian bread salad panzanella, in that each is a way of making use of stale bread. In fattoush, the bread is pita, and at Mazzat, the toasted pita chunks were tossed with shreds of romaine, chopped red pepper, and bits of cucumber. It was as if a panzanella had collided with a caesar salad and the result given a tangy-sweet dressing.

Also slightly sweet were the meat pies ($6 for four), pastry rosettes filled with chopped beef that had been simmered with onion and tomato. I would have liked the filling a little better if it had been a bit less sweet and more savory (onion has surprising sweetening power, almost like carrot, when cooked enough), but it was easy to balance the sweetness with a hit of tzatziki.

On the savory-verging-on-salty part of the spectrum, there is the halloumi cheese ($4), presented as a quartet of fried chips with a slight softness and rubberiness inside. Halloumi is a Cypriot cheese, typically made with blend of cow and sheep milk, and this halloumi did indeed seem like a well-trained feta, with some of the pungency and saltiness nicely muted by the cow milk. If you like saganaki (the Greek cheese that gets doused with brandy and set on fire tableside) and can live with less theatrics, you’ll like the halloumi.

There was a divergence of views on the chicken shawerma wrap ($8), a burrito-sized cylinder of lavash stuffed with chicken that smelled and tasted of clove. The party of the second part didn’t care for the clove, and I understood the objection — clove has a strong personality — without joining it. The discordant association, for me, had to do with Christmas, since clove, with its penetrating perfume, is a key ingredient of mulled cider, a holiday favorite. On the other hand, the presence of clove meant that the wrap (with its flatbread skin nicely pressed and warm like a freshly ironed shirt) would never be mistaken for a burrito.

The desserts were of a proportion I would call ideal. They were bigger than petits fours, but several degrees of magnitude smaller than what you usually find at restaurants — and pay $9 or $10 for now. Nammura ($2.50), a kind of semolina cake that looked like a rectangle of corn bread, was nicely moist and just sweet enough to qualify as a dessert, although it did look lonely and naked on its plate. Almost anything would have helped: a scattering of berries, a sifting of powdered sugar, a splash of liqueur — maybe some arak, the Lebanese answer to pastis? More complete was the baklava ($3), intense with honey and fresh chopped pistachio, which also lent a lovely sheen of pale green, a hint of spring inside Mazzat as in the garden across the way.

MAZZAT

Mon.–Thurs., 4–10 p.m. Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

501 Fell, SF

(415) 525-3901

www.mazzatsf.com

Wine and beer

DS/MC/V

Not noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

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

WED/16

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

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

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

THURS/17

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

PFA Dance Town 7. Nang Nak 9:20.

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

FRI/18

PFA Passion 7. The Taqwacores 8:45.

SAT/19

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

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

SUN/20

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

 

OPENING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REP PICK

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

 

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

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

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

THURS/10

Castro West Is West 7.

FRI/11

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

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

PFA Abrazas 7. Break Up Club 9:20.

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

SAT/12

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

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

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

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

SUN/13

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

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

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

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

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

MON/14

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

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

TUES/15

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

PFA I Wish I Knew 7.

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

OPENING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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OPENING

The Adjustment Bureau In this drama adapted from a Philip K. Dick story, a congressman (Matt Damon) and a dancer (Emily Blunt) fall in love, much to the annoyance of the mysterious suits (portrayed by Mad Men‘s John Slattery, among others) tasked with controlling the politician’s destiny. (1:39) Marina, Piedmont, Shattuck.

Beastly Beauty (Vanessa Hudgens) meets beast (Alex Pettyfer) in this teen-oriented drama. Neil Patrick Harris is also involved, hopefully playing a singing tea kettle. (1:35)

Carmen in 3D Bizet’s popular opera hits the big screen, thanks to RealD and London’s Royal Opera House. (2:55)

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

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

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

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

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

Rango Pirates of the Caribbean series director-star duo Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp re-team for this animated comedy about a chameleon’s Wild West adventures. (1:47) Presidio.

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

*Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives See “Something Wild.” (1:53) Sundance Kabuki.

When We Leave See “Choose or Lose.” (1:59) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

ONGOING

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

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

Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (1:47) 1000 Van Ness.

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

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

*Blue Valentine Sometimes a performance stands out and grabs attention for embodying a particular personality type or emotional state that’s instantly familiar yet infrequently explored in much depth at the movies. What’s most striking about Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine is the primary focus it lends Michelle Williams’ role as the more disgruntled half of a marriage that’s on its last legs whether the other half knows that or not. Ryan Gosling has the showier part — his Dean is mercurial, childish, more prone to both anger and delight, a babbler who tries to control situations by motor-mouthing or goofing through them. But Williams’ Cindy has reached the point where all his sound and fury can no longer pass as anything but static that must be tuned out as much as possible so that things get done. Things like parenting, going to work, getting the bills paid, and so forth. It’s taken a few years for Cindy to realize that she’s losing ground in her lifelong battle for self-improvement with every exasperating minute she continues to tolerate him. Williams’ bile-swallowing silences and the involuntary recoil that greets Dean’s attempts to touch Cindy are the film’s central emotional color: that state in which the loyalty, obligation, fear, pity, or whatever has kept you tied to a failing relationship is being whittled away by growing revulsion. Gosling’s excellent stab at an underwritten part is at a disadvantage compared to Williams, who just about burns a hole through the screen. (1:53) Four Star, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

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

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

The Eagle The mysterious fate of Rome’s Ninth Legion is all the rage lately — well, so sayeth the wee handful of people who caught Neil Marshall’s Centurion last year. For all who missed that flawed if worthy release, The Eagle arrives with a bigger budget and a bigger-name cast to puzzle out exactly what happened when thousands of Roman soldiers marched into what’s now Scotland, circa 120 AD, and never returned. The Eagle‘s Kevin Macdonald (2006’s The Last King of Scotland) bases his film on Rosemary Sutcliff’s popular children’s book, The Eagle of the Ninth, but the theory advanced here resembles Centurion‘s: the army was wiped out by hostile (and occasionally body-painted) natives. Much of The Eagle takes place decades after the disappearance, with the son of a Roman commander (Channing Tatum) scuttling past Hadrian’s Wall to seek truth, clear his family name, and reclaim a highly symbolic bronze eagle. Providing muscle and street smarts (or whatever the equivalent — backwoods smarts?) is slave Jamie Bell. The Eagle is handsomely shot, with some semi-thrilling PG-13 battle scenes, and any spin on Unsolved Mysteries: The Ninth Legion can’t really suck outright. But while Tatum has clearly clocked in the gym time to embody a Roman soldier, he doesn’t possess nearly enough depth (or any interesting qualities whatsoever) to play a character who supposedly has a lot of big emotions to work through. Bell does what he can with his sidekick role, short of performing CPR on his pulse-free costar, but it ain’t enough. Was Vin Diesel unavailable, or what? (1:54) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

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

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

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

*The Green Hornet I still don’t understand why this movie had to be in 3D, or what Cameron Diaz’s character has to do with anything, but I liked The Green Hornet in spite of myself. Only in Hollywood could artsy director Michel Gondry hook up with self-satisfied comedian Seth Rogen, who stars in and co-wrote this surprisingly amusing (if knowingly lightweight) superhero entry. After the death of his father (a megarich newspaper owner — how retro!), Rogen’s party boy Britt Reid decides, either out of boredom or misdirected rebellion, to become an anti-crime vigilante only pretending to be a criminal. (And that’s about as complicated as this movie gets.) Helping him, which is to say creating all of the cool cars and gadgets and single-handedly winning all of the fist fights, is Kato (Taiwanese actor Jay Chou, taking over the role Bruce Lee made famous). As himself, Reid is so obnoxious he pisses off newspaper editor Axford (Edward James Olmos); as the Hornet, he’s so obnoxious he pisses off actual crime boss Chudnofsky, played by movie highlight Christoph Waltz — more or less doing a Eurotrash twist on his Oscar-winning Inglourious Basterds (2009) Nazi. (1:29) SF Center. (Eddy)

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

How I Ended This Summer (2:04) Sundance Kabuki.

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

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

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

Just Go With It Only within the hermetically sealed landscape of the Hollywood romantic comedy can a man’s sociopathic impulse (to lie about being unhappily married to every gullible young woman he sleeps with over the course of two action-filled decades) be smoothed over into a laughable character defect that the right woman will see through or look past and then cure him of. But here we are in Hollywood, or rather, in Beverly Hills, where, as depicted by Just Go With It, the moral continuum seems to range from plastic surgeons who perform good boob jobs to plastic surgeons who perform bad ones. Adam Sandler is one of the good-fake-boob kinds but also the liar liar, and Jennifer Aniston is the long-suffering office assistant and single mom who joins forces with him in the cause of smoothing out a wrinkle in his ersatz romantic life. This involves the construction of an improvisatory tissue of lies so vast that it envelops an entire fake blended family (including not one but two creepily precocious children) and necessitates a trip to Hawaii and nearly two hours of penile-implant, mammary-gland, and alimentary-canal humor to be untangled sufficiently for a happy ending. Sandler and Aniston have a decent comic rapport going, at least until the sappy, sick-making moment of truth, and this reviewer may have snickered at one or two moments, or even periodically throughout the film, but is deeply ashamed of it now. (1:56) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never 3D (1:45) 1000 Van Ness.

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

No Strings Attached The worst thing about No Strings Attached is its advertising campaign. An eyeroll-worthy tagline — “Can sex friends stay best friends?” distracts from the fact that this is a sharp and satisfying romantic comedy. Perhaps it’s not the most likely follow-up to Black Swan (2010), but Natalie Portman is predictably charming, and Ashton Kutcher proves he’s leading man material after all. They’re aided by an exceptional supporting cast, including indie darlings Greta Gerwig and Olivia Thirlby, and underrated comic actors Lake Bell and Mindy Kaling. No Strings Attached is a welcome return to form from director Ivan Reitman, who gave us classics like Ghostbusters (1984) before tainting his image with Six Days Seven Nights (1998) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006). There are likely going to be many who will dismiss Reitman’s latest out of hand — and with those misleading trailers and posters, it’s hard to blame them. But I advise you to give No Strings Attached a chance: at the very least, it’ll counter the image of Portman tearing at a stubborn hangnail. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

Daly City Burmese, please

Andrew Lam
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0

We found it only a couple blocks away from the Daly City BART stop on the corner of John Daly Blvd and Mission St: Little Yangon. The Burmese restaurant was almost completely empty when we came in even though it was almost 9 p.m. on a Tuesday. A restaurant with one waitress, my plus one, and I. Here there was no next-door table conversation about non-profits, no street artist bros before me on the waiting list, no hipster babies crying, and no scary lesbians except for me and my dining companion — just deeply satisfying, affordable food.

The life of a Mission kid: it might start as something to brag home about, but living the dream isn’t always as all-fun-all-the-time as it sounds. When I first moved to the neighborhood, I delighted in the variety of cheap, amazing food. Cancun was what brought me here and Sunflower was why I stayed. But two years down the road, the places that once made me joyous have become sources of anxiety and malaise. I find myself making desperate choices, like going to We Be Sushi three nights in a row. And anywhere I go I fear that I will see my ex-girlfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, a previous employer, someone I spilled beer on the night before, or some combination of the three.

Time for a vacation. And just as the bridge-and-tunnelers feel that they must migrate to my neighborhood on the weekends, making it louder, dumber, and harder to live in, so too must I migrate to new restaurant territory. I ventured south and only a few BART stops away I found unexplored territory in Daly City.

Little Yangon’s dining room was lined with Southeast Asian tapestries, an electronic Buddha shrine with flashing neon lights rotating around its head, the soothing sound of Thai pop music swelling around us as we sipped Coronas and leisurely flipped through the menu. I already felt about a million times better. 

We ordered a feast: fried shrimp salad, prawn curry, biriyani, and the rainbow salad – noodles in a tamarind and yellow pea dressing. Most of the items on the menu are between $6.50 and $11. The rainbow salad arrived first and when I tasted it I knew I’d have to come back. The flavors in Burmese food are totally unique: a combination of citrus meets peanut meets warm spices – a variety that’s indicative of the fact that Burmese cuisine has roots in three different cultures.

Burma is bordered by Tibet, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India – anyone familiar with eating these countries’ different cuisines will be able to note the way that they all come together in Burmese dishes. Our curry and biryani were infused with traditional Indian spices like garam masala, along with a hint of tangy sweetness. 

My fellow gourmand and I agreed that the fried shrimp salad was by far the winning plate. It was the kind of thing you would never be able to replicate, or figure out how to make at home – a magical assortment of fried and whole shrimp, crispy noodles, onions, herbs, and a sweet-spicy dressing drawn from the kitchens of Vietnam, Thailand, and India in one fell swoop.

 

A rainbow salad, a waitress, and thee: recipe for a mellow evening at Little Yangon. Photo by Alex Fine

Our waitress and a few quiet cooks started closing up shop as my friend and I finished our meal. Does this sound snobby? I care about service. Not in a demanding way, I’m just saying that bad vibes can ruin a meal. But in this arena too, Little Yangon was perfect. The service was mellow, respectful, but attentive nonetheless. For someone used to being either totally ignored by restaurant waitstaff or obliged to engage in way too much overly-friendly chit-chat (and eye contact, shudder), Little Yangon was once again a welcome break.

As we left we thanked one of the cooks, who also turned out to be a sweet Burmese guy named Soe Naing, the owner of Little Yangon who does all the cooking and menu-planning with his wife and sister. Naing started out in the restaurant business immediately after moving to the States, washing dishes in a sushi restaurant. Soon enough, he was learning the art of sushi-making from his boss and moved on to start his own Daly City sushi business called Sunrise Sushi. Little Yangon is Naing’s newest restaurant, and he opened it to cook the food that he grew up eating in Burma. His spontaneous friendliness, kindness, and generosity shined through as he shared his hopes for the future of the business. “We’re getting busier!” he informed us excitedly, before walking us out and thanking us for coming in to eat. Try getting that kind of experience at Sunflower.

Walking back home from 16th and Mission, weaving between people with no pants on and pigeons covered in sludge, I was protected by my full-bellied shield, knowing that I had finally escaped the Mission, even just for one good meal.

 

Little Yangon

Mon 10 a.m.- 5 p.m.; Tues-Sun10 a.m. – 9 p.m. 

6318 Mission, Daly City

(650) 994-0111

Beer and Wine

MC/V

Moderately noisy

Wheelchair accessible

 

Ed Lee is San Francisco’s interim mayor

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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4

After a unanimous vote by San Francisco’s newly installed Board of Supervisors on Jan. 11, City Administrator Edwin M. Lee was sworn in as interim mayor of San Francisco. The swearing-in was regal affair staged in the rotunda of City Hall. A host of prominent political figures, including Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, congregated to witness the changing of the guard.

Former Mayor Willie Brown served as master of ceremonies, standing behind a podium on the grand staircase with members the newly elected board to his right and former Mayor Gavin Newsom and Mayor-elect Ed Lee to his left.

Newsom offered advice to Lee on how to govern the city, saying, “Figure out what it is you want to accomplish, and work backward from there.”

Rose Pak, the powerful head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, was seated near the front row for a close-up view of the ceremony. Speaking to the historic nature of the first Asian American holding the office of mayor in San Francisco, Lee singled out Pak, whom he called his good friend, saying, “Today, Rose, our struggle is here, and it’s succeeding.”

Newly anointed as mayor, Lee expressed gratitude to Brown, Newsom, Pak, and the members of the Board of Supervisors who supported him.

He also noted that several weeks ago, he hadn’t even anticipated such a momentous change. “It’s been a whirlwind for me,” he said.

Lee promised to be “a mayor who tackles things head on, and moves the bar forward.” He also vowed to be inclusive – and if he is true to his word, it will mark a dramatic difference from Newsom’s administration, which tended to exclude anyone who disagreed with the mayor.

“I want to say to all of you: I will do my very best to represent all the communities,” Lee said. “I’m going to open up that Room 200 to everybody.”

Following the swearing-in was a reception featuring tables piled high with sushi, gourmet finger foods, and fancy cheese, plus a bar serving wine and beer. Several observers remarked to the Guardian that they had never seen such a feast offered up to the public at City Hall.

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