Festivals

Darker than dark

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Darker than dark

arts@sfbg.com

FILM It is one of those hard truths one must learn to live with: Quentin Tarantino will always have seen more obscure exploitation movies than you. His new Django Unchained will arrive just in time for Christmas like a gift wrapped severed limb, leaving dedicated fanboy/fangirl types just weeks yet to immerse themselves in the world of spaghetti westerns to which it pays homage.

That makes two features in a row he’s made inspired by 1960s and 70s Euro trash cinema, following 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, which tipped hat to the era’s myriad international-coproduction war flicks. If you saw the obscure 1978 Italian film that was based on (and named after), you also probably already know who and what a Django is, how to pronounce him, and maybe even the factoid that countless (seriously, no one knows how many) ersatz Django “sequels” were made to cash in on the 1966 original’s success.

If not, join the more innocent multitudes at the multiplex come December, many of whom will no doubt be asking for one ticket to “Duh-jango,” please. There’s no shame in knowing nothing about such cultural marginalia. But what even faintly hipster-identifying person would admit to not knowing everything there is to know — even being bored with that knowledge — behind Reservoir Dogs (1992), the now 20-year-old Citizen Kane of indie meta guy flicks? How many people can not only quote its every line, but quote the every line of at least a few amongst its own umpteen mostly lousy imitations (yep, that includes you, 1999’s Boondock Saints)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvoKT481EmU

In the gradual groundswell of attention that greeted Dogs back then, viewers confidently cited Tarantino’s inspirations (as did he himself), noting the imprint of everything from classic noir titles to Kurosawa. Yet one movie that had a very direct influence was almost completely absent from those discussions, failing to rise from its prior two decades of complete obscurity even in the two decades post-Dogs.

Together at last in one canine-throwdown double bill is Day of the Wolves, that forgotten 1971 thriller — thanks of course to the Roxie Cinema and Elliot Lavine, themselves reunited for the latest installment in “Not Necessarily Noir,” that catch-all occasional series encompassing all things cool and (mostly) celluloid which don’t fit the loose strictures of their long-running actual noir retrospectives. Wolves and Dogs tussle to kick off the two-week schedule this weekend.

Day of the Wolves‘ low profile is somewhat explicable: it was never released theatrically in the US, and for years withheld from legal exhibition due to copyright issues. Still, one marvels how such a flamboyant relic of pure Seventies-ness could have remained under the radar for so long. TV and Vegas comedian Jan Murray is improbably cast as the mastermind who orchestrates the assembly of six career criminals in a secret desert location. All strangers, they’re instructed to call one another only by assigned number, wear identical outfits, and sport full facial hair (some obviously glued-on). Their mission is to “hit a whole town and peel it like an orange” — sealing off a “model community” in the Southwest, emptying every till, then scramming via private plane.

It’s an ingenious plan that counts on the complacent vulnerability of such burgs. In fact, Wellerton’s city council has just demonstrated ideal small-mindedness by firing its police chief (late, SF-born Richard Egan, a second tier 1950s star gone to flab) for the crime of actually enforcing laws on some of its more irresponsible A-list citizens. Thus the population of 7,000 or so is woefully under prepared when they find the power cut off, exit routes blocked, and seven armed desperados in charge.

The early going bears closest resemblance to Reservoir Dogs, and is the most inspired. (Later when the film gets to its prolonged actual climax, it devolves into a more ordinary Western-style shoot-’em-up between the raiders and Egan’s cop-turned vigilante, though there’s a doozy of a final twist.) Writer-director Ferde Grofe Jr., whose career in features sprawled sparsely from the early 60s to the late 80s, demonstrates a real flair for memorable idiosyncrasy, if less so for action. In style and content, Wolves is a perfect time capsule: groovy rock score (with “acid” guitar, bongos, and flute), very wide lapels, and a dune buggy chase. This near-classic B movie will be shown in one mightily color-faded, “pinked-out” 35mm print, an ostensible flaw that plays more like a finishing touch.

“Not Necessarily Noir III” mixes more such rediscoveries with fairly well known cult faves of the last decades, from neo-noirs to Hong Kong action to 70s New Hollywood questing (exceptional 1978 drama Who’ll Stop the Rain with Nick Nolte and Tuesday Weld; the seldom-seen ’71 Cisco Pike with Kris Kristofferson, Gene Hackman, and Warhol superstar Viva). Among its more rarefied titles are two Me Decade Franco-noirs with Jean-Paul Belmondo (who performs some amazing stunts himself in 1971’s The Burglars); 1968’s very disturbing crime thriller Night of the Following Day (wherein white-blond Marlon Brando is the good guy), and a supernatural blaxploitation double bill of very odd, arty 1973 vampire tale Ganja and Hess and the next year’s wacky, tacky voodoo revenge saga Sugar Hill.

Particularly worth checking out is Darker Than Amber, an attempt to launch a James Bond-style series featuring John D. MacDonald’s best-selling Florida sleuth Travis McGee. Unfortunately this 1970 maiden effort flopped, and the film has seldom been seen — especially without cuts — since. Admittedly it has pedestrian TV-style direction from Robert Clouse (who’d hit his sole career peak later with Bruce Lee’s 1973 Enter the Dragon), and the production values are just B-plus. But it’s an ideal vehicle for Rod Taylor, the brawny, wry, relaxed Aussie who should have been a huge star in the 60s and 70s, but despite a couple memorable films (1963’s The Birds, 1960’s The Time Machine) never got the right break. He’s surrounded by a memorable gallery of MacDonald characters, with two body-builder villains (William Smith, Robert Philips) in addition to the frequently shirtless star making this an notably homoerotic entry for the era in a macho action genre.

“NOT NECESSARILY NOIR III”

Oct. 19-31, $6.50-$10

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

 

Frog killers in the heat: San Juan’s first street art festival

Andrew Lam
-
1

Sego painted a coqui. That makes sense because the soft-spoken Mexican mural artist dabbles luminously in the animal kingdom, improbably creating detailed scenes of magical realism with little more than aerosol cans.

The coqui is Puerto Rico’s mascot, the tranquil frog that defines the nighttime soundscape, and plagues tourists unused to the noise with its chirps. Sego’s wall, part of the first street art festival in San Juan history Los Muros Hablan, was an “aww” moment for the passing cars (and there are a lot of them. Sweltering San Juan lives and dies by the air-conditioned automobile.)

Less than a mile away, Roa is working on an iguana that, despite its vampy, lounging posture, holds a dead coqui in one languid claw. Roa is Belgium, and generally acknowledged to have popularized animal drawings in this brave new world of gallery-approved street artists. Delayed by the theft of his lift’s batteries and a few dehabilitating hangovers, he’s probably still working on the piece in San Juan’s 90 degree humid swampiness.

He left the frog death and pertaining iguana paw for the end of the piece. While I lounged in the shade of an orange road safety buoy last week, I watched cars stop, belching young men whose only desire was to take a picture with Roa. All the better if he was holding his baseball cap over his face (he always is.) Later these images would pop up on Instagram, appropriately hashtagged so that we could review them easily.

I wonder how San Juan will like the crushed coqui. “You can see a lot of things in it,” Roa told me on a late-night ride out to said jungle with some other Los Muros artists and attaches. The long-ago Spanish rule of Puerto Rico, the right-now United States colonization of the island. “There’s a lot of ways to interpret it,” he told me. 

Though one will note a preponderance of animal renderings in the Los Muros Hablan renderings, it wasn’t all frogs and frog-killers in the Santurce streets. Local legend Sofia Maldonado threw up a warning about the 709 women who have been murdered in Puerto Rico between 2000 and 2011. Though Maldonado was the only female muralist at the fest, La Repuesta — the spectacular, grungy club that gave over a back room to serve as Los Muros’ nerve center and gathering spot for the Escuela Central de Artes Visuales (Center High for the Visual Arts) students that assisted, and generally mooned around the artists in the festival — did host a Los Muros ladies night, featuring an all-female cast of live painters and DJs. Women made up the bulk of the audience at an artist panel discussion at San Juan’s Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Museum of Contemporary Art), looked up at the scenes being sprayed on their city’s walls.

Argentina’s Jaz labored over a mural so layered it came off looking like an illustration from an Illuminati-made children’s book.

Mexico’s Nuezz painted a folkloric, horizontal man in a hat along the side of La Respuesta.

Ever from Buenos Aires is working (again, altitude delays) on a six-story naked woman shooting colorful shapes from her eyes who may or may not bear a resemblance to your humble writer, whose labia may or may have been seen by a substancial segment of San Juan commuters.

Spain’s Aryz (you’ll remember him from that Aesop Rock album cover) gave birth to a mermaid-toned skeleton man on a condo building. 

Juan Fernandez, one half of the La Pandilla duo that along with mosaic artist Celso helped to organize the entire affair, drew endless loops that eventually formed a song bird. Alexis Diaz, the other half, had barely gotten started by the time I left Puerto Rico, so busy was he shuttling fellow artists from hotel to breakfast to wall and replacing stolen lift batteries. I’m sure whatever he’s working on will turn out great though. 

Painting big murals is not, for most of even its stars, a money-making proposition. Los Muros Hablan paid its visiting artists airfare to the island, kitted them out with supplies, and occasionally-late lifts to access the dizzying heights of their canvases in exchange for their services in bringing attention to the often-overlooked Santurce neighborhood.

Santurce’s blocks, though they stand a 10-minute bike ride from the city’s white sand Ocean Park, are largely vacant by night. Flashy new condo developments dot the area, betting that new inhabitants will warm to a walkable ‘hood. One wonders how they feel about dead coquis. 

In the case of its international visitors, the fest took charge of feeding the beasts, a source of consternation among the local painters. Making murals like these is generally just a way to make one’s impression on the streets, and of course the many bajillions of street art fans addicted to RSS feeds around the world.

Generally at these festivals, the artists wear their painted-ass shorts and sneakers 24 hours a day, and sleep three to a room until they’re off on the next flight — to Australia, to New York, back to Barcelona. They get paid in new tans and Instagram followers, aim for the interest of art collectors. Such is street life, even if you’re in charge of scenery. 

Check next week’s paper for the debut of my new column Street Seen, featuring my interview of all-around Puerto Rican badass — and only female muralist at Los Muros Hablan — Sofia Maldonado

Live Shots: Treasure Island Music Festival 2012

Tony Robles
-
0

Music nerds talk lineups the way sports fans manage fantasy teams, particularly with festivals, where suddenly strategy becomes a part of catching a show. Treasure Island Music Festival, is sort of an exception, since in theory you can catch every single act, given the two alternating stages. At the same time, this means that unless you head to the silent disco or take a nap, one of those geeks will be standing behind you during a set, obsessively talking about how the lineup should be slotted differently.

Day 1
SF’s Dirty Ghosts had the challenging task of being a rock band opening the festival on the traditional hip-hop/electronic day. K. Flay followed, and told the crowd “I know it’s early, but we can still party,” and the local MC proceeded to give a hair tossing performance that had her drummer breaking a snare. It was a decent lead in for Oakland’s the Coup. Boots Riley has been off my radar for a bit, but it appears our ambassador of P-funked rap has been keeping more than his afro tight – pulling from now-more-appropriate-than-ever classics like “5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O” and the upcoming Sorry to Bother You.

At 2:31pm, a guy in a tie-dye Quicksilver shirt was vomiting near where Grimes was playing: the festival had started. Like Matthew Dear and Porter Robinson, Grimes is a returning acts from this year’s Noise Pop. Maybe it was just her bandmate’s flowing iridescent ponchos, but Grimes’ sound seemed lighter than at the Rickshaw Stop. I decided I preferred this side of Grimes, but the Euro bubblegum quality of the creepily infantile “Phone Sex” was pushing it. Matthew Dear seemed out of place in full sun on the Bridge Stage, fog machines pumping. His set was similar to what I heard at Public Works, but progressed slowly. Nearing the end of his set the band got into a groove with “You Put a Smell on Me” but it’ was a little late.

Toro y Moi sounded just like when I saw it a couple years back, but would probably have fit in better somewhere on Sunday. Near the end you could hear a DJ on the other stage playing snippets and raising the crowd, partly using soundcheck to hype for Public Enemy. When actually starting, Chuck D arrived on stage, introducing the whole support crew but saved Flavor Flav for last.

The hyperbolic performance took me back to a time before reality TV. Chuck D was outspoken (Fuck BET. Fuck urban radio. Fuck Viacom.) but used time well. Flavor was Flavor, and rambled for five minutes after his time is up. AraabMusik, waiting on the Tunnel Stage didn’t seem to mind: he gave an impressive, sample stuttering finger drumming MPC performance, after having a smoke with his crew.

At 6:01 I saw the guy who’d been throwing up earlier, walking arm in arm with a girl, both smiling and probably holding each other up.

Things started to blur, the time between switching stages seemed to decrease. Porter Robinson left no impression on me. Tycho sounded like a person making slow, thoughtful love to a synthesizer, but whereas it could have been a great lead-in to the xx, suffered from being between Robinson and a high energy performance from the Presets.

Speaking of which, I’ve had an aversion to the Presets (largely stemming from issues I have with Australian pop), but their performance, particularly “If I Know You” won me over. An awkward soundcheck delay for the following band, SBTRKT, meant the worst thing I could say about it is that it felt too short. Producer Aaron Jerome and singer Sampha played to their strengths, closing with “Wildfire” and having what seemed like the whole crowd leaning back and strutting like they were the sexiest, smoothest motherfuckers on the field.

Girl Talk opened with the awesome (and oft utilized) “International Player’s Anthem” by UGK before quickly triggering “Dancin’ in the Dark.” I hear the Boss at least once more before I leave twenty minutes later. I’m sure there was confetti.  

Day 2

Between openers Imperial Teen and Joanna Newsom, things were rather low-key, just all around relaxing, emotional, sunny music (including my returning favorites, Hospitality.) The crowd trickled in steadily and the field fills up with blankets faster than the day before. It’s a rather sedate afternoon, aside from one thing.

Who scheduled Ty Segall – noted garage thrasher, guitar mangler, and kick drum stomper – in that mid-afternoon slot? Love the dude, he sounded great, but he was not much appreciated outside the pit. The blanket crowd? It didn’t dig that. Particularly right between Youth Lagoon’s indie emo Bob Dylan and Gavin’s second cousin. That’s prime time nap time, especially when the first half of Joanna Newsom’s performance can’t be heard past the soundbooth. (Seriously, can Nap Time with Joanna Newsom be a real thing? On Nick Jr. after Yo Gabba Gabba?) The collective bombast of Los Campesinos picked things up – back to back with Segall would have been a hell of a way to wake up.

And bake up. Because Best Coast was playing with the sun going down. When this festival is at its best, the music and the environment seem to play into one another, and from there out, it basically went perfect. I haven’t seen the band since a sloppy show at Regency Ballroom with Wavves a few years back. The basic sound is still the same – beachy guitar pop with a stony edge – but has developed since then. Part of it’s lineup changes, as the new drummer is a lot tighter than before (and has easily the loudest snare of the weekend), part of it’s just improvement. Bethany Consentino apologized for singing a slow song, but there’ was no reason. She can definitely carry a ballad now.

Anticipation iwas high for Divine Fits, the “supergroup” featuring Dan Boeckner, Britt Daniels, and Sam Brown. Mainly I’m sure because a lot of fans were there for the Bay Area debut, but also because of the glorious, Hollywood matte painting skyline waiting for them behind the Tunnel Stage. As soon as they hit the chorus of “Baby Get Worse,” complete with the ’80s throwback keyboard, I was sold. Halfway through the set someone up front was apparently amped enough for Boeckner to ask, “Dude, are you on PCP?” Elsewhere in the crowd people pleasantly remarked, “Hey, this sounds like Spoon.”

Previously I’d thought the crowd seemed thicker due to all the blankets, but when I walked back towards the Bridge Stage, I realizes that simply way more people turned out for some combination of the last three bands.

M83 – returning to the Bay for the first time since their sold out Fillmore shows in the spring – opened with an alien, had lots of lasers, and played that one song. One thing I now know for sure: it is possible to play percussion while doing the running man.

The last act on the Tunnel Stage, Gossip was one of the only real surprises for me this festival. Punk diva Beth Ditto opened by welcoming the audience to comedy night, later commenting that the band hadn’t toured the US in three years, because the Euro is stronger. Crowded at the front of the stage were possibly the most intense fans I saw all weekend, clearly attached not only to Ditto’s vocal talent, but also her empowering, Aretha Franklin-esque sense of Pride. Pointing to the already crowded photo pit, Ditto said cruelly, “I wish there was a lot less space. And a lot more photographers.”

You couldn’t really have more photographers than there were in the pit at the end of the night for the xx, stopping in the Bay Area for the last festival date on their current tour, supporting the sophomore album Coexist.

It was clear that in their live performance the xx tries to capture the same sort of intimacy as their albums, with a stark and stripped down stage and singers Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim in the front. Either singer could do well alone, but together there’s an undeniable chemistry, like lovers in dialogue.

In their live show they definitely play into that, while producer Jamie XX stays literally more in the shadows; Sunday night he was up a level behind the pair, manning a series of controllers, cymbals, and drum pads to creates the fundamental beats that the guitars wash over. The resulting music takes its time – I’d call it shoegaze dance if that weren’t such an idiotic concept – and the xx did as well, opening with the enrapturing “Angels,” setting a sensual mood that stayed till then end.

Earlier Ditto had called them, obviously, the Sex Sex. Anyone who really felt that way – or just wanted to get to John Talabot and Jamie XX at Public Works – hopefully caught a cab, as the wait for shuttles off the island at the end of the night were upwards of an hour and a half. Note to self: work that factor into the TIMF strategy next year.

Gruesome discovery

-
0
Gruesome discovery

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM In the summer of 1999, horror fans hungered for something, anything, that wasn’t a Scream-inspired self-aware slasher.

Though it had no stars, a microscopic budget, and was filmed in nausea-inducing shaky-cam, The Blair Witch Project burst into cinemas with a novel set-up — filmmakers lost in the woods record supernatural goings-on before falling victim to evil themselves — and scares galore. Towering box-office receipts, a Time magazine cover, and legions of rip-offs ensued.

“We just wanted to scare people,” Blair Witch co-director Daniel Myrick told me when I interviewed him for the Guardian back in 1999. He couldn’t have known that Blair Witch‘s influence would still be felt over a decade later, in movies like the blockbuster Paranormal Activity series — and even outside the horror genre, where stories constructed from characters filming themselves have become commonplace.

Now there’s V/H/S, an energetically exploitative take on the trend that reaches past Blair Witch to high-five the granddaddy of them all, 1980’s legendarily nasty Cannibal Holocaust. V/H/S also nods to vintage horror’s fondness for the anthology format, setting up the action with a frame story, Tape 56: hooligans film themselves behaving badly, then prowl a house in search of a mysterious VHS tape.

The apparently abandoned dwelling is creepy enough, with a dead body just hangin’ out in the TV room. But each tape they watch contains material so shocking (a woman turns flesh-tearingly monstrous after a drunken hookup; a student Skyping with her boyfriend suspects her apartment is haunted; and a road trip, a camping trip, and a Halloween party all go very, very wrong) it unsettles even tough guys who, earlier in the day, were grabbing women on the street in service of their budding “reality porn” business.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv6S3RGMGw8

Each “tape” is directed by a different filmmaker or filmmaking team, all of whom were directed to use the found-footage format. So yes, V/H/S is a movie about people filming themselves watching other people who are also filming themselves.

“With a found-footage anthology, you could make a found-footage movie about people finding footage, and that seemed like such an obvious idea,” explains Simon Barrett, who worked on both the wraparound and haunted-apartment tale The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger. “A lot of found-footage [features] become ludicrous; after two hours, you run into all the clichés of characters screaming at each other to turn the camera off. But you can believe that someone would leave the camera on for, say, 14 minutes of something scary happening to them.”

Adds Adam Wingard, whose multiple V/H/S credits include directing Tape 56, “Found footage is the most modern, new way to tell stories that we’ve seen before. We’ve seen vampires and ghosts. It puts it in a whole new context and framework for modern audiences — it basically spices up the genre.”

The biggest name on V/H/S‘s roster is probably Ti West, who made cult hit The House of the Devil (2009) and last year’s The Innkeepers.

“Some of my favorite movies are documentaries, so documentary-style filmmaking isn’t something that I have a problem with,” West says. “It’s that mostly [these kinds of films are] really derivative of the ones that came before them, which is frustrating.”

West, whose V/H/S segment is styled like a vacation video, prefers to shoot his films traditionally, though “I don’t think found footage is going to go away,” he says. “All of us in our daily lives [consume] found footage. We’re so accustomed to recording videos like it’s no big deal, and seeing videos recorded by amateurs. We’re so conditioned by the news and reality TV. It’s now just part of us, and part of our media.”

He’s right, of course. And when the found-footage aspect is no longer the film’s biggest novelty, like it was in the Blair Witch era, there’s room for other themes to emerge. V/H/S is — to use a word that doesn’t exist — “bro-y.” There are multiple scenes of male characters pointing the camera at clothed women, naked women, naked women who don’t know they’re being filmed, women the men are trying to have sex with, etc. (All of the filmmakers were male, though some female producers did work behind the scenes.)

V/H/S played multiple festivals, including Sundance, ahead of its theatrical debut this week. “I’m very curious about how mainstream audiences are going to respond,” Barrett says. “I feel like in the festival world, audiences come at these films ready to find some kind of political subtext to them, which I think our film overall kind of lacks at times. And when they’re trying to find out what it might be, that’s when segments get accused of being misogynistic.

He adds, “I think it’s an instinctive reaction to a horror film that touches on these subjects but doesn’t stop to tell the audience that these things are wrong, which — by the way, I think that actually is sexist, feeling you have to stop and tell the audience that women are empowered. That’s actually pretty condescending. I would rather just make a movie that does those things and hope that people get it. Which, you know, happens about half the time.”

The theme of voyeurism that runs through the film was a coincidence, though Barrett thinks that once the other filmmakers saw the frame story — inspired, he says, by Romain-Gavra’s “Stress” video for the band Justice, Harmony Korine’s 2009 Trash Humpers, and “sharking” videos — they might have been inspired in that direction.

“It is interesting that four of the six shorts could be interpreted as having some kind of failed sex tape element to them,” he says. “But I think that also just kind of organically came up, because we realized that we had total creative freedom to address the things that most found footage movies normally have to avoid. I think this was an opportunity for us to touch on these serious subjects in a goofy way. Ultimately, we just wanted to make a fun horror movie.”

West, who had a tight window to make Second Honeymoon, was the first to finish his short, turning it in before Tape 56 was completed.

“[V/H/S] turned out to have this really intense, misogynistic theme that kind of just came out of nowhere. It wasn’t planned,” he says. “Since I was first, I wonder: if I had gone last, would I have made something different? It sounds really stupid to say we didn’t know [the theme] was going on, but really everyone was very removed from each other.”

Also, West points out, “The filmmakers are not like the people they depict. In a way, the movie is presenting these awful dudes and they’re getting their comeuppance. So it may seem misogynistic, but actually it’s kind of this feminist revenge thing. I don’t know why it happened. I didn’t realize it until Sundance, when I was watching it and going, ‘There are some weird threads going on in this movie.'”

 

V/H/S opens Fri/5 in Bay Area theaters.

Northern promises

-
0
Northern promises

On the Road (Walter Salles, US/France/UK/Brazil, 2012) Walter Salles (2004’s The Motorcycle Diaries) engages Diaries screenwriter Jose Rivera to adapt Jack Kerouac’s Beat classic; it’s translated to the screen in a streamlined version, albeit one rife with parties, drugs, jazz, danger, reckless driving, sex, philosophical conversations, soul-searching, and “kicks” galore. Brit Sam Riley (2007’s Control) plays Kerouac stand-in Sal Paradise, observing (and scribbling down) his gritty adventures as they unfold. Most of those adventures come courtesy of charismatic, freewheeling Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund of 2010’s Tron: Legacy), who blows in and out of Sal’s life (and a lot of other people’s lives, too, including wives played by Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst). Beautifully shot, with careful attention to period detail and reverential treatment of the Beat ethos, the film is an admirable effort but a little too shapeless, maybe simply due to the peripatetic nature of its iconic source material, to be completely satisfying. Among the performances, erstwhile teen dream Stewart is an uninhibited standout. Thu/4, 6:30 and 6:45pm, Smith Rafael. (Cheryl Eddy)

Road North (Mika Kaurismäki, Finland) Mika Kaurismäki’s films are generally much more broadly accessible than the dryly minimalist ones of his brother Aki, yet the latter has by far the larger international audience. That might change a bit with this likable seriocomic road trip. Emotionally recessive concert pianist Timo (Samuli Edelmann) is less than delighted one day to find an uninvited guest slumped outside his apartment: the father who abandoned him 30-odd years earlier. Far from having improved himself in the interim, Leo (Vesa-Matti Loiri) is a corpulent slob, convenience store robber, and car thief. But he is insistent in dragging his son on a journey whose full purpose he won’t reveal until its end. Actually, you can guess where it’s headed — but getting there is full of surprises, some touching and some very funny. Fri/5, 9pm, Smith Rafael; Sun/7, 6pm, Sequoia. (Dennis Harvey)

Fat Kid Rules the World (Matthew Lillard, US) It really does suck to be Troy (Jacob Wysocki from 2011’s Terri). An XXL-sized high schooler, he’s invisible to his peers, derided by his little brother (Dylan Arnold), and has lived in general domestic misery since the death of his beloved mother under the heavy-handed rule of his well-meaning but humorless ex-military dad (Billy Campbell). His only friends are online gamers, his only girlfriends the imaginary kind. But all that begins to change when chance throws him across the path of notorious local hell raiser Marcus (Matt O’Leary), who’s been expelled from school, has left the band he fronts, and is equal parts rebel hero to druggy, lyin’ mess. But he randomly decrees Troy is cool, and his new drummer. Even if he’s just being used, Troy’s world is headed for some big changes. Actor Matthew Lillard’s feature directorial debut, based on K.L. Going’s graphic novel, is familiar stuff in outline but a delight in execution, as it trades the usual teen-comedy crudities (a few gratuitous joke fantasy sequences aside) for something more heartfelt and restrained, while still funny. O’Leary from last year’s overlooked Natural Selection is flamboyantly terrific, while on the opposite end of the acting scale Campbell makes repressed emotion count for a lot — he has one wordless moment at a hospital that just might bring you to the tears his character refuses to spill. Sat/6, 3pm, Sequoia; Oct. 11, 7pm, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Central Park Five (Ken Burns, US) Acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns takes on the 1989 rape case that shocked and divided a New York City already overwhelmed by racially-charged violence. The initial crime was horrible enough — a female jogger was brutally assaulted in Central Park — but what happened after was also awful: cops and prosecutors, none of whom agreed to appear in the film, swooped in on a group of African American and Latino teenagers who had been making mischief in the vicinity (NYC’s hysterical media dubbed the acts “wilding,” a term that became forever associated with the event). Just 14 to 16 years old, the boys were questioned for hours and intimidated into giving false, damning confessions. Already guilty in the court of public opinion, the accused were convicted in trials — only to see their convictions vacated years after they’d served their time, when the real assailant was finally identified. Using archival news footage (in one clip, Gov. Mario Cuomo calls the crime “the ultimate shriek of alarm that says none of us are safe”) and contemporary, emotional interviews with the Five, Burns crafts a fascinating study of a crime that ran away with itself, in an environment that encouraged it, leaving lives beyond just the jogger’s devastated in the process. Sat/6, 3:30pm, Smith Rafael; Mon/8, 3:15pm, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Rebels with a Cause (Nancy Kelly, US) The huge string of parklands that have made Marin County a jewel of preserved California coastline might easily have become wall-to-wall development — just like the Peninsula — if not for the stubborn conservationists whose efforts are profiled in Nancy Kelly’s documentary. From Congressman Clem Miller — who died in a plane crash just after his Point Reyes National Seashore bill became a reality — to housewife Amy Meyer, who began championing the Golden Gate National Recreation Area because she “needed a project” to keep busy once her kids entered school, they’re testaments to the ability of citizen activism to arrest the seemingly unstoppable forces of money, power and political influence. Theirs is a hidden history of the Bay Area, and of what didn’t come to pass — numerous marinas, subdivisions, and other developments that would have made San Francisco and its surrounds into another Los Angeles. Sat/6, 6:15pm, Sequoia; Tue/9, 4pm, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Sessions (Ben Lewin, US) Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-Earth questions and confessions. Sat/6, 7pm, Smith Rafael; Sun/7, noon, Sequoia. (Harvey)

Flicker (Patrik Eklund, Sweden) The provincial HQ of behind-the-times, inept telecommunications company Unicom is locus to a whole bunch of weirdness during the eventful work week chronicled by Swedish writer-director Patrik Eklund’s first feature. To wit: sterility by electrocution, tarantula therapy, grade-school performances of Frankenstein, Ted Danson fixations, workplace application of dunce caps, blind dates, domestic terrorism cults, and scented candle making. If you only see one Scandinavian comedy this year, make it Klown. If you only see two, however, this is definitely the other one. It’s a goofy, lightly surreal delight. Sat/6, 9pm, Smith Rafael; Mon/8, 3:15pm, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Jayne Mansfield’s Car (Billy Bob Thornton, US) Billy Bob Thornton’s first directing gig in over a decade is an ensemble piece set in small-town 1969 Alabama — like every U.S. town at the time, a hotbed of generational conflict over the Vietnam War and the generally changin’ times. Particularly defining that gap is the squabbling relationship between hawkish patriarch Jim Caldwell (Robert Duvall) and youngest son Carroll (Kevin Bacon), who — though a World War II veteran, like brother Skip (Thornton) — has appointed himself a sort of elder to the local hippie population. That alone is enough to set Jim’s teeth on edge; he’s put in an even crustier mood upon hearing that his ex-wife has died, and her corpse is being brought back from England by the new family (John Hurt, Ray Stevenson, Frances O’Connor) she’d acquired after leaving him. The awkward meeting between two very different clans quickly thaws in various ways, however, some sexual, some comradely. Dismissed as a garrulous mess in its other festival showings to date, this Car is indeed one rusty, leaky, wayward vehicle at times, with some forced situations and way too much speechifying in the director’s script (co-written with Tom Epperson). But the thematically over ambitious, structurally clumsy movie is watchable nonetheless, with some real strengths: most notably strong performances (especially Thornton’s own) and a real feel for a particular high-Southern Brahmin milieu that hasn’t changed much more in the last 40 years than it did in the prior 40. Thornton will receive the MVFF Award and be interviewed onstage at the film’s screening. Sun/7, 6:30pm, Smith Rafael; Oct. 14, 5pm, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Ricky on Leacock (Jane Weiner, France/US) Shot over the last 40 years, since she was her subject’s student, Jane Weiner’s film about globe trotting director-cinematographer Richard Leacock is a fond tribute that pays due respect to the latter’s innovations in the documentary form. Dismayed by the lack of spontaneity that cumbersome equipment forced on the genre, he began devising a series of lightweight, synch-sound cameras that could unobtrusively travel with and capture events as they occurred. While his own mostly TV-targeted fruits of that labor are relatively little-known today, their impact on nonfiction cinema was enormous — and Leacock, who died last year at 89, was clearly charming company. Sun/7, 7pm, Smith Rafael; Mon/8, 9:15pm, 142 Throckmorton. (Harvey)

In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo, Korea) This latest bit of gamesmanship from South Korea’s Hong Sang-soo (2000’s Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors) has Isabelle Huppert playing three Frenchwomen named Anne visiting the same Korean beachside community under different circumstances in three separate but wryly overlapping stories. In the first, she’s a film director whose presence induces inapt overtures from both her married colleague-host and a strapping young lifeguard. In the more farcical second, she’s a horny spouse herself, married to an absent Korean man; in the third, a woman whose husband has run away with a Korean woman. The same actors as well as variations on the same characters and situations appear in each section, their rejiggered intersections poking fun at Koreans’ attitudes toward foreigners, among other topics. Airy and amusing, In Another Country is a playful divertissement that’s shiny as a bubble, and leaves about as much of a permanent impression. Tue/9, 4:15pm, Sequoia; Oct. 12, 9:45pm, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

To Kill A Beaver (Jan Jakub Kolski, Poland) Furtive, paranoid, solitary Eryk (Eryk Lubos) returns from places unknown to prepare his dilapidated farmhouse for a mission that, for a long time, remains equally unclear. Veteran Polish director Jan Jakub Kolski’s enigmatic drama takes its time unfolding the mysteries of Eryk’s traumatic past, unstable present, and future purpose. He’s all suspicion when he finds local teen Bezi (Agnieszka Pawelkiewicz) trespassing on his property, but her brazen come-on and hidden vulnerabilities chip away at his ample defenses. This intricate character study in the guise of a thriller puzzle is offbeat and absorbing, thanks in large part to Lubos’ prickly performance as a man as damaged as he is dangerous. Oct. 10, 6:30pm, Smith Rafael; Oct. 11, 9:30pm, Sequoia. (Harvey)

Holy Motors (Leos Carax, France) Holy moly. Offbeat auteur Leos Carax (1999’s Pola X) and frequent star Denis Lavant (1991’s Lovers on the Bridge) collaborate on one of the most bizarrely wonderful films of the year, or any year. Oscar (Lavant) spends every day riding around Paris in a white limo driven by Céline (Edith Scob, whose eerie role in 1960’s Eyes Without a Face is freely referenced here). After making use of the car’s full complement of wigs, theatrical make-up, and costumes, he emerges for “appointments” with unseen “clients,” who apparently observe each vignette as it happens. And don’t even try to predict what’s coming next, or decipher what it all means: this wickedly humorous trip through motion-capture suits, graveyard photo shoots, teen angst, back-alley gangsters, old age, and more (yep, that’s the theme from 1954’s Godzilla you hear; oh, and yep, that’s pop star Kylie Minogue) is equal parts disturbing and delightful. Movies don’t get more original or memorable than this. Oct. 11, 6pm, Sequoia; Oct. 12, 3:15pm, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The 35th Mill Valley Film Festival runs Oct. 4-14 at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; Cinéarts@Sequoia, 25 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; and 142 Throckmorton Theatre, Mill Valley. For additional venues, full schedule, and tickets (most shows $13.50), visit www.mvff.com. Additional short reviews at www.sfbg.com.

 

Indie indeed

-
0
Indie indeed

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM The 35th Mill Valley Film Festival is a star-studded affair, with tributes to Dustin Hoffman and 1977’s Star Wars and celebrity guests (Ben Affleck! Ang Lee! Stevie Nicks!), but indie cinema fans won’t want to miss Strutter. It doesn’t have any movie stars, but it comes courtesy of indie heroes Allison Anders (1992’s Gas Food Lodging, 1993’s Mi vida loca) and Kurt Voss, Anders’ co-director and co-writer on 1987’s Border Radio and 1999’s Sugar Town.

Anders says she views Strutter — the tale of Brett, a rock’n’roller working through heartbreak and post-college angst — as a continuation of her other films with Voss, all of which are music-themed and set in Los Angeles.

“When Kurt and I did Sugar Town, we kind of realized it was a companion piece to Border Radio. I think it was Michael Des Barres who said Border Radio‘s musicians were trying to pay their rent, and Sugar Town‘s musicians were trying to meet their mortgage. They were on a different level, but their desperation was the same,” she says. “In Strutter, the characters are even more desperate; nobody has any real roots except the streets of Los Angeles and the desert. In all three, there’s the music angle — but it’s also the desperation of trying to keep a band going, and what that means to people, particularly in LA.”

Though they tell separate stories, the three films share certain actors — but most of Strutter‘s leads are making their feature debuts. “I teach one quarter a year at UC Santa Barbara, which is where I met Flannery Lunsford, [who plays Brett],” she says. “I introduced Flannery to Kurt and they started doing some projects together. Then, Kurt and I started talking to Flannery about doing that last piece of the Border Radio trilogy, because Flannery also had a band.”

The love triangle between Brett, fellow musician Damon (Dante Ailano White), and femme fatale Justine (much-discussed, but never seen onscreen), was inspired by a famous rock’n’roll rivalry.

“Both Kurt and I were very enamored with the Britpop triangle of Brett [Anderson] from Suede, Damon [Albarn] from Blur, and Justine [Frischmann] from Elastica,” she says. “While we didn’t want to do that story, it was a kind of muse for the film, and we named all the characters after them.”

Anders may be a film-biz veteran, but she’s embraced the 21st century idea of online fundraising: both Strutter and its score (by Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis) were funded via Kickstarter.

“Kurt still has a sheet of paper where I wrote down names of people who, if each of them just gave us a little bit of money, we could finish making Border Radio. Back then you didn’t have any kind of mechanism for making that happen, but that’s essentially what crowdfunding is,” she says. “The great thing is, now you get your friends and people you don’t know to contribute to your project. Then, nobody [else] owns your movie, or record, or whatever it is. You’re doing your work on your own terms. If you’ve got a movie like Strutter, and you don’t have stars, and you’re shooting in black and white — we were doing everything the way we wanted to do it. For me, it was the better way to do things.”

www.mvff.com

The Spring Standards on genre jumping, Fleetwood Mac, and SF pizza

Tony Robles
-
0

The Spring Standards kids grew up together on the Delaware/Pennsylvania border and got their start playing small folk festivals and around the campfire back in high school. After a break from their collaboration, Heather Robb, James Cleare, and James Smith found themselves in Brooklyn, inspired to pick up where they left off. They’ve been playing together as the Spring Standards for four years and released double EP yellow//gold last spring.

SFBG So I understand you’ve been on tour for the majority of the past few years. What’s that like?

HR It’s demanding. The hardest part about it is realizing where your regular life is, but luckily touring comes naturally to us. We love getting out, seeing the country, meeting new people, and having weird experiences. We’re still at that level of touring where, on any given night, we could be crashing with complete strangers, which always makes for some great adventure or strange story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfO3gB80M_o

SFBG How would you describe your genre?

HR It’s rock and roll in the sense that it’s free and liberated expression – it’s loud sometimes and raucous and rowdy sometimes – but we also have really deep roots in folk music, Americana, and bluegrass. We’re accessing old school harmony-driven folk rock that was big in the ‘70s. And every so often we decide to totally jump to a different genre and play a heart-wrencher ballad that has nothing to do with rock and roll or a really loud White Stripes song that has nothing to do with folk music.

SFBG Do you try to channel any specific musicians?

HR I think we do sometimes for specific songs. There’s definitely a track off of gold that’s very Fleetwood Mac and in “So Simple So True” I really tried to channel Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Find the Cost of Freedom.” But, for the most part, I’d say we don’t. We have three songwriters, and I think we just sit down and try to follow what our hearts are telling us on a given day, which can really take us anywhere.

SFBG Can you explain the concept behind ‘yellow//gold’?

HR We hear a lot of different things from a lot of different people about what our sound is, but most consistently we hear that it’s all over the map, which we take as both constructive criticism and praise. The idea for yellow//gold came from wanting to have two opportunities to explore really different sides of our identity musically. We started with this idea of color because it felt intuitive, expressive, and not so limiting. Yellow’s more of the folk-based side of what we do, and gold is the rock-based side. We decided to release them together because they make the most sense when you look at them next to each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn9LeVtpH0s

SFBG What excites you most about playing here in San Francisco?

HR We’re excited to follow up on our June show and love the whole San Francisco scene. And there was a pizza shop I was supposed to visit last time but didn’t get to, so I’ll be looking forward to that!

The Spring Standards
With Dylan Champagne, Ed & The Red Reds
Wed/3, 8pm, $8
Hotel Utah
500 Fourth St., SF
(415) 546-6300
www.hotelutah.com

Appetite: New whisk(e)y releases and WhiskyFest

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Appetite: New whisk(e)y releases and WhiskyFest

I’ll take whisk(e)y year round. But as summer evolves to fall, it seems all the more appropriate enjoyed on crisp nights, preferably fireside. Thankfully, WhiskyFest approaches this Friday/5, in the usual massive, underground Marriott ballrooms. Recapping past years, VIP early pours of rare whiskies and seminars tend to be highlights. There’s another seminar this week with the legendary, delightful Parker Beam, exploring Japanese Whisky with Suntory brand ambassador Neyah White, and I’m particularly looking forward to beer and single malt pairings with Highland Park brand ambassador Martin Daraz.

There’s a number of  new pours this year, including Glenfiddich’s Malt Master which I review below, Parker’s Heritage Collection release for 2012, the Master Distiller’s Blend of Mashbills (Parker Beam’s annual, limited edition releases are among the most exciting American whiskies made), and for the first time ever Nikka Japanese whisky, which I’ve long had to enjoy when in Europe, as you can’t get it here in the US… until this fall, thanks to SF’s very own Anchor Distilling here in SF. Anchor is importing Nikka with, as Anchor President David King told me recently, a few more Japanese whiskies to come — a huge win for whisky lovers like myself who’ve been longing for more imports from Japan. I sampled Taketsuru 12 year, which will also be poured at WhiskyFest, while Anchor will soon import their 17 yr and 21 yr whiskies.

If you aren’t going to WhiskyFest, or even if you are, here are three recently-released American whiskies and two Scotches worth seeking out:

AMERICAN WHISKEY

High West American Prairie Reserve Whiskey ($40; 46%/92 proof) – Besides being a real value at $40, I’d deem Prairie Reserve (named after the largest wildlife reserve in the lower 48 states, a 5000 square miles reserve in the works in northeastern Montana) another winner in High West’s Utah-distilled catalogue. With 10% of all sales going to this reserve, High West expresses its love of Western land through whiskey — a blend of two bourbons, to be exact: six-year-old Bourbon from the old Seagrams plant in Lawrenceberg, Indiana (a corn-dominant whiskey at 75% corn, 20% rye, 5% barley malt), and a 10-year-old Four Roses Bourbon (60% corn, 35% rye, 5% barley malt). Orange spice dominates on the nose, there’s the expected bourbon characteristics of vanilla caramel, and sweet, nutty, dark cherries to taste. Though not made from a High West mashbill, it is in keeping with their style, is an elevated cocktail base, yet also a joy sipped neat. 

Balcones “1” Texas Single Malt Whisky ($69; 52.7%/105.4 proof) — This new release from the always interesting Balcones Distilling feels Texan namely in its robust character. You could call it a Texas whiskey for the cowboy set but actually their Brimstone smoked corn whiskey, which goes down like a campfire of scrub oak, exhibits a greater ruggedness. The Single Malt, though bracing, is simultaneously smooth, even silky, unfolding with pear, cinnamon spice, even dusty earth. Even though I find Master Distiller Chip Tate’s Brimstone more grab-you-by-the-cojones fascinating, his Texas Single Malt is ultimately more sophisticated and balanced. 

WhistlePig TripleOne ($111; 55.5%/111 proof) – The splurge, out this month at a limited 1100 cases, is WhistlePig’s TripleOne from Master Distiller Dave Pickerell, who you may know as Maker’s Mark master distiller for 14 years. As Pickerell said, I was the very first to try TripleOne at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans this July. TripleOne is WhistlePig rye but at 111 proof (vs. 100), aged 11 years (vs. 10). The bracing TripleOne doesn’t boast quite as long a finish as the flagship rye, but it’s even more complex, surprisingly akin to applejack or Calvados at first sip, opening up into spicy rye body with citrus and chocolate notes. It’s a beauty showing the elegance possible in rye whiskies. 

SCOTCH WHISKEY

Balvenie DoubleWood 17 year ($130; 43%/86 proof) – Balvenie’s new DoubleWood release has been aging 17 years (vs. their classic 12 year), or essentially 17 years in bourbon casks (for 17 years) and 3 to 6 months in Oloroso sherry casks. I prefer  bourbon cask liveliness in my Scotch and with the sherry finish there’s merely a whisper of sweet muskiness. Nougat and apples unfold, caramel peeks out, but the body is light and smooth, while still standing up with a hint of briny robustness. 

Glenfiddich Master Malt Edition ($90; 43%/86 proof) – This brand new, limited-edition whisky was just released in September from the classic distillery, one of only four in Scotland still owned and run by the same family since the 1800’s. At merely 18,000 bottles, it’s small production for Glenfiddich, celebrating their 125th anniversary. Malt Master Brian Kinsman crafted their first double-matured whisky, which spent roughly 6 to 8 years in used Bourbon barrels, then 4 to 6 years in sherry casks. Sherry sweetness hits first on the nose but thankfully doesn’t overpower the whisky though sherry characteristics dominate (of course there are devotees on both sides of the bourbon or sherry cask-aged whisky spectrum). With whispers of brine, fruitcake and cinnamon, Mitch Bechard, Glenfiddich’s Brand Ambassador, West, said over lunch that it, “Goes down like a penguin in a wet suit”… that is to say, smooth.

If you find a way to taste it, I especially love the new, but already sold out in the States (only 1000 bottles) 1974 edition ($800; 46.8%/93.6 proof), a cask strength single malt, that is surprisingly bright for such age, with pear, vanilla, even passion fruit notes, and a long, spiced finish. A drop of water brings out briny, salty characteristics. 

Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot, www.theperfectspotsf.com 

 

The Performant: Love is (not) a battlefield

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Our Genocides and “Combat Paper” speak out for peace.

Along with playing host to all of the fun and fabulous festivals occurring this past weekend (hopefully you managed to make it out to at least one), San Francisco also played host to a more sobering event—the sixteenth play in a cycle of seventeen on the topic of genocide. Penned by Eric Ehn, all seventeen are being prepared and presented in various corners of the country before coming together at La MaMa in New York in November for a complete run entitled “Soulographie: Our Genocides.” Last May, the tenth play in the cycle, “Cordelia,” a Noh-inflected reimagining of King Lear was presented by Theatre of Yugen, and this weekend “Dogsbody”, directed by Rebecca Novick, turned the Mission Street headquarters for Intersection of the Arts into a Ugandan battlefield. 

Humming and singing, the three-person cast enters the room, clad respectively in the garb of a jungle soldier, the mismatched scraps of a peasant child, a flowing white garment and incongruous leggings.

We meet Scovia (Rami Margron), kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army, first as a kitchen slave, second as a spoil of war, with all the violent implications that entails. Over the course of the play we see the tape rewound to the moment when Scovia’s life is changed for the worse—hiding in a schoolyard tree where she is found first by bees, then by the LRA. In a dreamlike, non-linear narrative, Scovia recounts her traumas with expressionistic text and expressive dance (choreographed by Erica Chong Shuch), while a menacing Reggie D. White and sympathetic Catherine Castellanos flank her on either side, unshakable traces of an endless nightmare. 

Drained and devastated, Margron finally describes the moment she is forced to kill her own father, flour falling from her fingers to the stage as she speaks, like handfuls of graveyard dust. In the second half of the play, set in a futuristic, war-torn Texas, this same dust will be thrown over her body by White during a described act of violence, turning her, appropriately, into a funereal witness to her own destruction. In this segment, White as “Dogface” and Margron as “Nipple” navigate the chaotic battlegrounds of Texas, the days of arrows, the death of human compassion. Although not every Ehn-penned message is completely clear, the ultimate implication is: in the brutal arena of war, there is no place for love.

There might be a space for redemption, however, and at Southern Exposure this idea is being explored with a series of interactive paper-making workshops through September 29. Spinning old uniforms into new paper, artist Drew Cameron crafts the materials of war into a civilian statement of catharsis. Himself a former soldier, Cameron’s Combat Paper workshops have been presented on both coasts, geared particularly towards veterans and their families, but embracing participation from all. Just the act of cutting up and pulping a set of fatigues can be an emotional liberation of sorts, and the resultant paper perfectly embodies the idea of a blank slate with the potential to become an expression of peace.

 

Chronic youth

-
1
Chronic youth

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM It can’t be a coincidence that within a week, a pair of films have been released about 35-year-olds who contemplate hooking up with 19-year-olds. That 16-year age gap — with an immature or other otherwise emotionally stunted thirtysomething on one end, and a precocious millennial on the other — is narrow enough to be plausible, but just wide enough to be awkward.

Now in theaters, Hello I Must Be Going traces the existential flailings of Amy (Melanie Lynskey), so discombobulated post-divorce that she moves back home and takes up with Jeremy (Christopher Abbott), the son of one of her father’s potential clients. Despite their chic Connecticut lifestyle, Mom (Blythe Danner) and Dad (John Rubinstein) have been hit by the recession; Amy’s self-pitying second adolescence only makes the household tension worse. Meanwhile, her hot, clandestine fling with Jeremy, an uninhibited actor, is tested less by their age difference than by his connection to the lucrative account that Amy’s father is desperately trying to land. Of course, there is a cringe-worthy scene where Amy crashes a party, looking for Jeremy, and the bleary-eyed youth who answers the door announces “Someone’s mom is here!”

This week’s Liberal Arts reverses the genders of the controversial couple, with Jesse (How I Met Your Mother‘s Josh Radnor, who also wrote and directed) falling for Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), a student at the leafy Ohio university he graduated from years before (never named, but filmed at Kenyon College, Radnor’s own alma matter). The two meet when Jesse, now a jaded Brooklynite, visits to celebrate the retirement of Professor Hoberg (Richard Jenkins); unlike Hello‘s Amy and Jeremy, who waste no time knocking boots, the question of whether to consummate the relationship becomes a major plot point.

Liberal Arts is at its best when delineating a specific type of collegiate experience — as safe, privileged bubble where, as Jesse explains, you can announce “I’m a poet!” without anyone punching you in the face. It can also be an oppressive space, as illustrated by a cranky prof who feels trapped by academia (a razor-sharp Lucinda Janney), and a morose classmate of Zibby’s who identifies a little too closely with David Foster Wallace.

And it’s stuff like the Wallace references (again, never named — just identified via heavily dropped hints, for all the cool viewers to catch) that’re ultimately Liberal Arts‘ undoing. Radnor explores some interesting themes, but the film is full of indie-comedy tropes — the friendly stoner (Zac Efron) who randomly appears to dispense life lessons; an anti-Twilight rant that’s a bit too pleased with itself; the unusually attractive character who appears in the first act and is obviously destined for inclusion in the inevitable happy ending.

By contrast, “airless” and “predictable” are not words anyone would use to describe the life of legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland, colorfully recounted in Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a doc directed by her granddaughter-in-law, Lisa Immordino Vreeland. The family connection meant seemingly unlimited access to material featuring the unconventionally glamorous (and highly quotable) Vreeland herself, plus the striking images that remain from her work at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Narrated” from interview transcripts by an actor approximating the late Vreeland’s husky, posh tones, the film allows for some criticism (her employees often trembled at the sight of her; her sons felt neglected; her grasp of historical accuracy while working at the museum was sometimes lacking) among the praise, which is lavish and delivered by A-listers like Anjelica Huston, who remembers “She had a taste for the extraordinary and the extreme,” and Manolo Blahnik, who squeals, “She had the vision!”

Glamour also factors into Peter Ford: A Little Prince, a 40-minute documentary directed by Alexander Roman, who’ll attend both Sun/30 screenings with film subject Peter Ford. “My whole life has been defined by being Glenn Ford’s son,” the sixtysomething Peter says. (For all the Jeremys and Zibbys out there, Glenn Ford was a Hollywood superstar in the 1950s.) Home movies and snapshots depicting a blissful domestic life contrast with Peter’s rambling interview, which spans the length of the film and reveals that all those happy scenes were staged for publicity purposes. Less a bio of Glenn, Peter, or Peter’s mother, dancer Eleanor Powell, A Little Prince is more a peek into the psyche of someone who’s spent his life in the shadow of a legend. “Being a movie star’s child is the hardest job in the world,” Peter says — hyperbole clearly wrought from a lifelong identity crisis.

And it wouldn’t be a week in San Francisco without a film festival (or two: check out Nicole Gluckstern’s take on the Berlin and Beyond Film Festival elsewhere in this issue). The folks at SF IndieFest — who already program their flagship fest, plus DocFest and genre showcase Another Hole in the Head — add another to the rolls with the Northern California Action/Sports Film Festival.

Aimed at athletes rather than typical film-fest types (evidence: movies screen at Sports Basement locations, where you can gear up for your next adventure on the way out the door), this three-day event contains the expected array of skiing, skateboarding, and surfing flicks — check out Manufacturing Stoke, which takes a look at how the surf industry has been transformed by a recent trend toward using environmentally-friendly materials to build boards — but also films focusing on more specialized pursuits like bouldering and slacklining.

Fans of Into Thin Air won’t want to miss 40 Days at Base Camp. The base camp in question is the bustling, ever-shifting village — filled with an international population of guides, climbers both soulful and breezy, Sherpas, volunteer medics, and assorted support staff — perched beneath Mount Everest. As personal triumphs mingle with day-to-day activities (and grimmer tasks, like clearing away long-dead bodies that have worked their way up through the ice), one observer accurately dubs the scene “a fascinating microcosm.” *

Liberal Arts and Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel open Fri/28 in Bay Area theaters.

Peter Ford: A Little Prince screens Sun/30, 11am and 3pm, at Delancey Street, 600 Embarcadero, SF. For tickets ($8) and more information, visit www.alittleprince.net.

Northern California Action/Sports Film Festival runs Fri/28-Sun/30 with films screening simultaneously at Sports Basement locations in SF, Walnut Creek, and Sunnyvale, and Mission Cliffs, 2295 Harrison, SF. For tickets ($5; festival pass, $25) and schedule, visit www.sfindie.com.

Live Shots: Rock Make Festival

-
1

Crafting DIY-style is already pretty punk rock — but combine it with actual live tunes, and you’ve got yourself the Rock Make Street Festival, a street celebration of music and art.

This past Saturday, 9/15, the Indian Summer sunshine rays beamed down on Capp and 18th street in the Mission, as festival par-tay goers munched on Indian burritos from the Kasa Indian food truck, ogled handmade wood ties by Wood Thumb and of course, listened to music by local bands like Permanent Collection, a punk pop band that took the stage and added some seriously rocking moments to the festival. Rock Make: a true indie celebration of what makes the Bay Area so downright beautiful.

The Performant: Further

-
0
The Performant: Further

You’re either on the bus, or you’re off the bus at Popcorn Anti-Theater’s Fringe Festival revival

As lovers of art, adventure, and reckless shenanigans might recall, the monthly Popcorn Anti-Theater bus shows last rolled about eight years ago, and while plenty of other groups have used buses as vehicles to drive a performance since, none have managed it with the same regularity and broadness of scope.

The aggressively anything-goes vibe of Popcorn events of yore combined theatrics, live music, dance, poetry, gibberish, urban exploration, and plenty of oddience participation into a series of unpredictable occurrences. Since the shows were pulled together by different collaborators each month, it wasn’t always necessarily “good” art (a specious qualifier at best), but it was almost always good fun, so when I hear that Popcorn is making a rare appearance at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, I immediately resolve to check it out.


Although the pristine white rent-a-bus is only half full as we pull away from the EXIT Theatre, the morale is high. As we settle into our seats, an attractive young woman in a lab coat, Assistant J (Crystelle Reola) passes out index cards and pens and instructs us to write down our deepest desires as the grey-wigged Professor Murnau (V.N. Von Boom Boom) introduces herself as dead. As the bus noses along, en route to our secret destination, we are treated to video footage of a group of cute kids undergoing a test of their willpower ala the 1972 Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. We also receive marshmallows of our own, which some folks eat immediately, and others save for later.

We wind up on Treasure Island where we encounter the rest of the cast who, according to the script, were mysteriously instructed to show up at a secret location for undisclosed reasons. An unlikely trio, a wealthy businessman, a self-important socialite, and an aging radical, they fuss and squabble, their action framed by a bright string of distant city lights. Gradually they come to realize that they were all part of the original Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, and that the dead professor and the beguiling Assistant J. have brought them back together to “conclude” the experiment. The world, it seems, is divided into “Gobblers” and “Resisters”. The marshmallow still tucked warm in my pocket attests to my abilities in impulse control, but *what does it all mean?*

Written and directed by Patricia Miller, “Sugar High: The Four Marshmallows of the Apocalypse,” heralds Popcorn’s return to the (very) small stage and monthly social calendar. Originator and ringleader Hernan Cortez promises to roll out the bus rides every first Friday of the month, with an emphasis on unconventional performance structure and scenic site-specificity, or what he calls “the diesel-driven processional spirit of adventure.”

“The idea is to be short, sweet, and mobile,” he explains of the hit-and-run style of Popcorn’s “thea-tours”. “Most performance (can be) executed in less than five minutes, seven tops. Basically if you can’t communicate in a short time span, you can’t communicate.” But he emphasizes that almost any artistic discipline can be a part of Popcorn. “If anyone musician, comedian, actor, scientist , cook, burlesque , variety act  has had a hard time finding a stage to perform on, you may find a home here.”

As we pull back up to the EXIT Theatre, left to ponder the concepts communicated to us during our brief sojourn to a parallel universe, I realize I still have my marshmallow and look forward to my reward. Sadly it appears that the reward for not eating my marshmallow early is only the opportunity to eat it late. Fair enough, I suppose. Marshmallows don’t grow on trees. But I’m not entirely sure the experiential portion of the show can be called complete without the possibility to win a second. Maybe next time.

Fall Beer and Wine Events

-
0
Fall Beer and Wine Events

caitlin@sfbg.com

 

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA RENAISSANCE FAIR

What better pairing for your mug of ale than a feisty joust? Oct. 6-7 at the NorCal Ren Fair means the arrival of the St. Hubertus German mercenaries, costumed troops-for-hire who wear tight colored pants. That weekend is also Oktoberfest at the fair — though of course mead, beer, and four types of cider are available throughout the four-week entirety of the bodice-busting. Just make sure you dodge the roving pack of Puritans who will be roaming ye olde paths and pubs.

Saturdays and Sundays, Sat/15 through Oct.1. 10am-6pm, $25/day, $35/weekend, $150/10-day pass. 10021 Pacheco Pass Hwy 152, Gate 6, Hollister. (408) 847-FAIR, www.norcalrenfaire.com

 

BREWS ON THE BAY

Because if anywhere is a good place to get drunk on nice beer, a World War II liberty ship is a fantastic place to get drunk on nice beer. After all, the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien is too large to succumb to the rocking waves of the Bay. Even if it bobbed like a dinghy, this is worth getting wet for: 15 member breweries of the SF Brewer’s Guild pouring all-you-can-drink allotments of over 50 beers, from the companies’ best-sellers to seldom-seen seasonals. Plus live music and food trucks. Ahoy, well-worth-it hangover!

Sat/15, noon-5pm, $50. S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien, Pier 45, SF. www.sfbrewersguild.org

 

SF COCKTAIL WEEK

Ask anyone –- this town has serious cocktailian chops. That’s why (if you’ve got the cash, admission for most events starts around $45) it’s worth checking out this week of artisan tastings, bartender contests, and classes that’ll leave you shaking like a star.

Mon/17-Sun/23, various SF venues. www.sfcocktailweek.com

 

GRENACHE DAY

In the 1980s, a group of NorCal wine producers got together to celebrate the excellency of varietals from France’s Rhone Valley. They called themselves the Rhone Rangers, and set about recreating the wines’ majesty here in the Golden State. Today, they celebrate work well done on internationally-celebrated Grenache Day. Check out the special vino in its red, white, and rose forms through free tastings at 15 wineries in Paso Robles, Santa Cruz’s Bonny Doon Vineyard, Santa Rosa’s Sheldon Wines, and Sacramento’s Caverna 57.

Sept. 21, various venues, free. www.rhonerangers.org

 

EAT REAL FESTIVAL

You know you can nosh away at this fest, which celebrates the best in local, sustainable nourishment — but be sure you wash it down in style. Eat Real offers a chance to sample 20 Bay beers, like sustainable Berkeley pourers Bison Brewing and its beer garden co-curator Adam Lamoreaux’s Oakland-born Linden Street Brewery. 15 NorCal wineries will be represented as well. And no festival markups here — all adult beverages go for $5 per cup.

Sept. 21 1-9pm; Sept. 22, 10:30am-9pm; Sept. 23, 10:30am-5pm; free. Jack London Square, First St. and Broadway, Oakl. www.eatrealfest.com

 

TOUR DE FAT

The beer and bike carnival of the year is back, with all its usual circus magic and a costumed bike parade under the trees of GGP. Onstage, Fat Tire beer has another full musical line-up planned: Los Amigos Invisibles, He’s My Brother She’s My Sister, Yo-Yo People, and more. Sip the Colorado brand’s brews, and stick around for the end, when a lucky car owner trades their wheels in for a bike during a elaborate yearly ritual.

Sept. 22, 10:30-5pm, free. Lindley Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.newbelgium.com/events/tour-de-fat

 

LAGUNITAS DAYTIME PARTY

Retire to the sunny patio of downtown Oakland’s best beer store-pub to meet the masterminds behind Marin’s Lagunitas Brewing Co. They’re not coming empty-handed, either — the label’s new session IPA, named for the time in which such things are best drunk (Daytime) will be on the pour, lubricating what is sure to be a fascinating conversation with local beer greats.

Sept. 22, 1-6pm, free. Beer Revolution, 464 Third St., Oakl. (510) 452-2337, www.beer-revolution.com

 

OKTOBERFEST BY THE BAY

Snap them lederhosen and rub your belly — you’ll need all the digestive help you can get after this perfectly pleasant weekend of steins, sausages, and oompah. Now with two sessions on Saturday to avoid beer gut overcrowding!

Sept.28, 5pm-midnight; Sept. 29, 11am-5pm and 6pm-midnight; Sept. 30, 11am-6pm, $25-75/session. Pier 49, SF. (888) 746-7522, www.oktoberfestbythebay.com

 

DRINK GREAT BEERS TASTING PARTY

Beer Connoisseur magazine sponsors this all-you-can-taste Saturday extravaganza in the swanky climes of Blu Restaurant. Taste little-known brews against old favorites, and discover which flavor ways really fill your pint.

Sept. 29, 3-6pm, $60-85. Blu Restaurant, 747 Market, fourth floor, SF. www.drinkgreatbeers.com

 

LOCA UNCORKED

Because the Blue Angels will be less (?) terrifying with a bellyful of California wine in you, head out to this Bay Area exploration of the wines of Lodi, a small town tucked just between Sacramento and Stockton that is flush with wine producers. Your admission gets you tastes of 200 (!) Lodi wines, tons of snacks, and a front row seat for Fleet Week’s aerial shenanigans.

Oct. 6, 1-5pm, $55-65. 291 Avenue of the Palms, Treasure Island, SF. www.locauncorked.com

 

Evil genius

-
2
Evil genius

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC Mark Mothersbaugh wants to devolve. “I would love to be 20 right now. Kids now have cell phones that have more power than the Beatles had when they recorded their first album. You don’t have to go through the whole gauntlet of getting on a record company.” We’re looking back since Mothersbaugh’s band Devo is currently touring again with Blondie. The two bands haven’t played shows together since 1977, when Devo — on the East Coast for the first time, at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB’s — was an unsigned, pop avant-garde band fresh out of Akron, Ohio.

“As a kid, I’d wondered, how do you get on the other side of the moat? How do you get to be on the side with the castle that has the recording studio? It seemed so impossible when i was a kid and now it’s a non issue.” Mothersbaugh is speaking from his own “castle,” his Mutato Muzika production company on the Sunset Strip.

A multimedia artist, Mothersbaugh has made a solo career in soundtracks. Pee-wee’s Playhouse started the trajectory, and his work on Rugrats and most Wes Anderson films cemented a reputation as a go-to-guy for quirky, slightly off-center scores. (Rivaled only by Danny Elfman.) It’s a different lifestyle, being in the studio, chasing a lot of deadlines for film companies. His recent work includes 21 Jump Street, Safe, and Hotel Transylvania. Evaluating the success of a project, he seems to look to the box office. “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” he says, “was Lionsgate’s follow-up to The Hunger Games, so it wasn’t as big as their other one.”

If Mothersbaugh looks at the industry shrewdly, it’s for good reason. For much of the last two decades — while still performing at cherry picked festivals and events — Devo was on a recording hiatus. “Dealing with record companies, quite honestly, just became a burn out and made it not fun to be an artist,” Mothersbaugh says.

“At the time cassettes came out, I went to Wexler, the President of Warner Brothers and said, ‘I read something in Variety, it costs you guys more to make an audio cassette than to make an LP, but you deduct 35 percent of my royalties when you make a cassette instead of an LP, instead of letting me share the profit. Why is that?’ He just smiled and said ‘Because that’s the way it is.'”

It’s fairly telling about how labels treated musicians that this is coming from Mothersbaugh. Formed in the aftermath of the Kent State shooting — where the idealism of the ’60s suddenly devolved — Devo took a decidedly anti-punk approach, trying to change the system from within. Mothersbaugh recalls seeing Pachelbel’s Canon turned into a Burger King jingle and being inspired. “I just remember thinking that was evil genius at work. Rebellion isn’t how you change things. It’s through subversion in this country. And who did it best? Madison Avenue.” (Devo would in turn appropriate the BK jingle as lyrics to “Too Much Paranoia.”)

A band that wanted to be a brand, part of Devo’s strategy has been embracing commercialism and infecting it. “For us every time one of our songs got in a commercial we thought there was a chance that some kid would hear the song later on somewhere else and think, what is that song actually about?” An early plan (taking cues from Andy Warhol’s factory) was to send out groups of kids to perform. It actually came about in 2006, as Devo 2.0 on Walt Disney Records, but in the pre-MTV era, it just puzzled execs. “It was hard enough to talk them into letting us make our short films,” Mothersbaugh says.

Today Devo is re-energized. In addition to finding time to tour, it picked up where it left off with 2010’s return to formula, Something for Everybody, a candy-coated pop album with a cynical filling. The timing was right and everybody — the two sets of brothers that make up the band — wanted to make another record. “And probably more than anything, it was Alzheimer’s,” Mothersbaugh says. “We forgot what it was that made us stop.”

DEVO

With Blondie

Mon/10, 8pm, $39.50–$92.50

Warfield

982 Market, SF

(415) 345-0900

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

Alerts

Andrew Lam
-
0

WEDNESDAY 29

Bernal Heights outdoor cinema Roccapulco Supper Club, 3140 Mission, SF; www.bhoutdoorcine.org. 7pm, $10 suggested donation. The first of five nights of film screenings in Bernal Heights. At this kickoff party, enjoy drinks, food and music from the Bernal Jazz Quintet before a lineup of short films celebrating community and organizing in the Bay Area. Films include Berkeley High School students on heritage and identity, "Occupy the Auctions Dance Party!" in which Occupy Bernal and ACCE stop evictions on the steps of City Hall, and a tour of Alemany Farm (also the beneficiary of the event’s ticket price), among others. The event also includes the announcement of winners of the Best of Bernal and Spirit of Bernal Awards and the first-year recipients of the Mauricio Vela Youth Film Scholarship.

Occupy, the state of the movement Mediterranean Café, 2475 Telegraph, Berk; www.occupyoakland.org. 7-10pm, free. Einar Stensson, a sociologist at Stockholm University and activist at Occupy Stockholm during the fall of 2011, studied Occupy Oakland for two months. Why did the movement start and spread so quickly around the globe? How is Occupy organized? Who matters in the movement and why? What is the future of Occupy? Come hear his perspectives on where Occupy is, locally and internationally.

FRIDAY 31

Occupy the Bay The 25th Street Collective, 477 25th St., Oakl; www.occupyoakland.org. 6pm, $25. "This week in Oakland, California will go down as a watershed moment. People across America were disgusted by what they saw here. Average Americans trying to stand up and peacefully assemble, to be brutally savaged and attacked by the police department that they pay for." So said Michael Moore to a fired up crowd in the wake of the Oct. 26 Occupy Oakland eviction that rained tear gas and rubber bullets on demonstrators. This is just one of the many historic events caught on tape by filmmakers Jonathan Riley and Kevin Pina, whose documentary Occupy the Bay is screening around the Bay Area before it starts showing in film festivals. On Friday, stick around for special musical performances from Jabari Shaw, Shareef Ali and Super Natural.

Enemies of the state: In their own words Station 40, 3030B 16th St., SF; station40events.wordpress.com. 7pm, free. After a year of Occupy and years more of struggle by people who are not down with the state, there are a lot of people in jail and prison. At this event, organizers will read writing from those locked up. Poems and statements from Truth and Kali of Occupy Oakland and a statement from Jesse Nesbitt, the May Day brick-thrower we profiled ("Who is the Brick Thrower?" 5/8/12). As the event description says, "Any effort at anti-repression in the face of lengthy prison terms must be aimed at bringing down separation at all costs." Come fight the separation and connect.

Original Plumbing birthday celebration Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF; www.originalplumbing.com. 10pm, $3-6. Original Plumbing, the trans male quarterly magazine, is throwing a party celebrating its third year on this planet. It now lives in the Brooklyn part of the planet, but it all started in San Francisco, and they’re coming back here to party. "We feel that there is no single way to sum up what it means to be a trans man because we each have different beliefs, life experiences, and relationships to our own bodies," say the organizers, and they started the magazine to document this diversity of experiences. Celebrate with the editors Amos Mac and Rocco Katastrophe, and performances by Rocco Katastrophe with special guests Billie Elizabeth, Nicky Click & Jenna Riot. Birthday cupcakes available!

TUESDAY 4

Rally to save City College City Hall steps, 1 Polk, SF; ProtectOurCityCollege@gmail.com. 12pm, free. A rally in support of Prop A, the local ballot measure that would create a parcel tax for revenue to City College of San Francisco. "If City College is to survive and maintain accessibility, educational quality and the mission of serving low-income and underrepresented students with the best educators and staff, we must pass Prop A," say organizers of the rally, which include students, teachers, staff and supporters.

The Vaselines move beyond ‘Kurt Cobain’s favorite band’

Tony Robles
-
6
The Vaselines move beyond ‘Kurt Cobain’s favorite band’

Hailing from Scotland in the late 1980s, The Vaselines released just a couple of EPs and one full album before originally calling it quits after two short years together. However, thanks to fans like Kurt Cobain, who covered three of their tunes with Nirvana, and exposed the band to larger audiences around the world, new generations have fallen in love with them in the ensuing years.
 
Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee — the duo behind the Vaselines — reformed the group for a series of outstanding shows in 2008, including their first ever concerts in the United States.

“We didn’t really know what to expect, we didn’t know if anybody would be at the shows, or if they’d be interested, because it had been 20 years, and we had never been to America,” says Eugene Kelly over the phone from his home in Glasgow, Scotland.

In addition to performing at Sub Pop Records’ 20th anniversary festival — the Seattle label re-issued their collected works back in 1992 — the Vaselines played several other shows in the US, including New York and San Francisco, where they were inspired by the devoted fan base that came out to see them.
“It’s a great thing to be able to play songs that were written 20 years ago, and there’s an audience for them, and people want to see us play,” says Kelly.

It was this enthusiastic response that prompted the band to come back together to later write and record a new album, Sex With An X (Sub Pop), which came out in 2010, and perfectly captured the unique and infectious spirit of their earlier work.

“When we started doing a few shows, and then started getting more offers, we thought, ‘we can play the same 19 songs that we’ve got forever, or we write some new songs to make it interesting for us, and try to say something new,’ so we just got down to work doing that.”

Although it had been more than two decades since they recorded together, and the group had a far bigger audience than ever before — one that had been listening to the same small output for a long time — Kelly says that there wasn’t any conscious effort to try to sound the same.

“I think it was a natural thing once we got together and started writing — we decided to not try to be beholden to what the sound was like in the past — they’re different recordings 20 years later, so obviously something is going to be different. We just thought, ‘let’s try to just make a record and hopefully it will turn out to be a good one,’ and not work slavishly to try to copy what we had done [before].”

The resulting album was warmly received by fans, as it contained the same signature ingredients as their earlier work, and the band found that they were also able to move beyond simply being labeled ‘Kurt Cobain’s favorite band’— but that doesn’t mean that they don’t appreciate what Nirvana covering “Son of A Gun,” “Molly’s Lips,” and “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam” did for their career.

“We’re quite happy with the association; we wouldn’t really be able to do any of this now if wasn’t for them putting our name into the world, we’re totally grateful. But with the new record, it gave us something else to talk about, and we don’t have to talk about the past — we’re happy with our history, but we’re also looking forward,” says Kelly.

Although the Vaselines won’t be playing any new material at the four shows they’ve currently got booked here in the US, they are always working on new ideas when not on the road.

“I’m writing songs all the time, sometimes it will work for the Vaselines, sometimes it will work for something else at some point— I’d like to do other stuff as well, I’ve always wanted to do a musical, but that’s probably further down the line — I think maybe I’ll do that once I get the punk rock out of my system.”

For now, however, Kelly is happy to continue building on the legacy of the Vaselines, and is encouraged when he meets fans at shows or runs across younger musicians from bands at festivals who tell him what his band has meant to them over the years.

“We only released a couple of records, and the fact that they actually got to the other side of the world, and anybody had the chance to listen to them is amazing. It does make you feel old though when you see these very young people come up to you and say they’ve been listening to you since they were in high school — but if we made anyone pick up a guitar, or bass, or drums, that’s just a great feeling to know that you might have inspired somebody.”

The Vaselines
With Mister Loveless
Fri/31, 9pm, $22
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF.
(415) 771-1421
www.independentsf.com

Alerts

Andrew Lam
-
0

 

Wednesday 29

Bernal Heights outdoor cinema Roccapulco Supper Club, 3140 Mission, SF; www.bhoutdoorcine.org. 7pm, $10 suggested donation. The first of five nights of film screenings in Bernal Heights. At this kickoff party, enjoy drinks, food and music from the Bernal Jazz Quintet before a lineup of short films celebrating community and organizing in the Bay Area. Films include Berkeley High School students on heritage and identity, “Occupy the Auctions Dance Party!” in which Occupy Bernal and ACCE stop evictions on the steps of City Hall, and a tour of Alemany Farm (also the beneficiary of the event’s ticket price), among others. The event also includes the announcement of winners of the Best of Bernal and Spirit of Bernal Awards and the first-year recipients of the Mauricio Vela Youth Film Scholarship.

Occupy, the state of the movement Mediterranean Café, 2475 Telegraph, Berk; www.occupyoakland.org. 7-10pm, free. Einar Stensson, a sociologist at Stockholm University and activist at Occupy Stockholm during the fall of 2011, studied Occupy Oakland for two months. Why did the movement start and spread so quickly around the globe? How is Occupy organized? Who matters in the movement and why? What is the future of Occupy? Come hear his perspectives on where Occupy is, locally and internationally.

Friday 31

Occupy the Bay The 25th Street Collective, 477 25th St., Oakl; www.occupyoakland.org. 6pm, $25. “This week in Oakland, California will go down as a watershed moment. People across America were disgusted by what they saw here. Average Americans trying to stand up and peacefully assemble, to be brutally savaged and attacked by the police department that they pay for.” So said Michael Moore to a fired up crowd in the wake of the Oct. 26 Occupy Oakland eviction that rained tear gas and rubber bullets on demonstrators. This is just one of the many historic events caught on tape by filmmakers Jonathan Riley and Kevin Pina, whose documentary Occupy the Bay is screening around the Bay Area before it starts showing in film festivals. On Friday, stick around for special musical performances from Jabari Shaw, Shareef Ali and Super Natural.

Enemies of the state: In their own words Station 40, 3030B 16th St., SF; station40events.wordpress.com. 7pm, free. After a year of Occupy and years more of struggle by people who are not down with the state, there are a lot of people in jail and prison. At this event, organizers will read writing from those locked up. Poems and statements from Truth and Kali of Occupy Oakland and a statement from Jesse Nesbitt, the May Day brick-thrower we profiled (“Who is the Brick Thrower?” 5/8/12). As the event description says, “Any effort at anti-repression in the face of lengthy prison terms must be aimed at bringing down separation at all costs.” Come fight the separation and connect.

Original Plumbing birthday celebration Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF; www.originalplumbing.com. 10pm, $3-6. Original Plumbing, the trans male quarterly magazine, is throwing a party celebrating its third year on this planet. It now lives in the Brooklyn part of the planet, but it all started in San Francisco, and they’re coming back here to party. “We feel that there is no single way to sum up what it means to be a trans man because we each have different beliefs, life experiences, and relationships to our own bodies,” say the organizers, and they started the magazine to document this diversity of experiences. Celebrate with the editors Amos Mac and Rocco Katastrophe, and performances by Rocco Katastrophe with special guests Billie Elizabeth, Nicky Click & Jenna Riot. Birthday cupcakes available!

Tuesday 4

Rally to save City College City Hall steps, 1 Polk, SF; ProtectOurCityCollege@gmail.com. 12pm, free. A rally in support of Prop A, the local ballot measure that would create a parcel tax for revenue to City College of San Francisco. “If City College is to survive and maintain accessibility, educational quality and the mission of serving low-income and underrepresented students with the best educators and staff, we must pass Prop A,” say organizers of the rally, which include students, teachers, staff and supporters.

1...678...19Page 7 of 19

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