Film

The discreet musical charms of ‘Hallam Foe’

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hallamfoecd.jpg

Various artists
Hallam Foe: Original Soundtrack
(Domino)

By Todd Lavoie

Some things take a mighty long time to wash up on American shores from abroad. Take Hallam Foe – the British independent film was released last year overseas, but is only now beginning to hit stateside screens, thanks to a distribution deal with Magnolia Pictures. (For whatever reason, the delightfully odd little gem has been re-titled Mister Foe for the American market.)

Trust me: this film’s worth the wait. Charming but occasionally unsettling, whimsical but rippling with currents of darkness, it’s engrossing as hell, and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) is riveting as the troubled young man in the title role. In any case, I’m here to focus on the music – and the soundtrack is a wonderful, headphone-hugging treat. Keeping the original title of the film despite the name change on the marquee, the disc works flawlessly as the score to such a curious mix of sweetness and foreboding. Even without the accompanying visuals, these 16 songs link together to sustain a devilishly peculiar mood over the course of an hour. A fine tribute, then, to a film which whirls love into death, innocence into obsession, cuteness into the grotesque.

Hallam Foe takes place mainly in two locations: the rolling hills and ice-cold lochs of the Scottish countryside, and the rooftops and lookout spots above Edinburgh. The soundtrack does an impressive job of conveying both landscapes, sliding skillfully from agrarian folk to pavement-hitting electronics and lurching big-city rock ‘n’ roll. Maybe “sliding” isn’t the right term – “gliding” might be more appropriate, given the film’s focus on Hallam wanting to be above it all, looking down from great heights. Many of the songs contained here are buoyed along by a sense of weightlessness: rhythms wash in and wash out, synth blips and bleeps soar in the highest registers, and occasionally disembodied voices hover and hum somewhere in the vague distance.

Toronto International Film Festival: Days 3-4

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While San Francisco was having some of its nicest weather of the year, it rained in Toronto. Fortunately, my chief focus was indoors, in the dark, so it didn’t matter, really — soggy socks be damned. I made it to JCVD, Belgian director Mabrouk El Mechri’s surprisingly dignified tribute to Jean-Claude Van Damme, and probably my most-anticipated movie of the 2008 festival. I’d be lying if I said I was totally satisfied with it — there were some hilarious moments, but not many; there were a few action scenes, but also a lot of talking (including Van Damme’s very own emotional monologue). I guess I was expecting something bigger, louder, and more obnoxious (yes, those are code words for “better”), but kudos are due to Van Damme for playing himself — especially since he’s not always portraying himself in a flattering way. That said, if you hunger for fun, tacky, old-school JCVD, you’re better off putting your VHS copy of Hard Target (1993) through its well-worn paces.

Toronto International Film Festival: Days 1-2

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If you ask me, there’s no better way to start your Toronto International Film Festival experience than with a film that contains a money shot revolving around a shredded set of intestines. Ohhh yeah, I knew the France-UK-Belgium co-production Vinyan was gonna be intense when I noted the director, Fabrice Du Welz, had also helmed 2004’s Calvaire — one of those don’t-get-off-the-main-road horror flicks that rang more depraved than most. In Vinyan, we meet well-off Euro couple Paul (Rufus Sewell) and Jeanne (Emmanuelle Beart) whose Christmas vacation turned to horror when their young son was washed away in the Indian Ocean tsunami six months prior. Or was he? Semi-convinced that he may instead have been kidnapped, the pair has stayed in Thailand grasping at hope — and in Jeanne’s case, sanity. A Heart of Darkness-style excursion into the wilds of Burma (where’s John Rambo when you need him?) pushes both partners into places of utter terror, both physical and psychological. Vinyan is also the best freaky-little-kids movie I’ve seen in awhile — we’re talking Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) territory here.

“Trouble the Water”

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REVIEW Anyone impressed by Cloverfield‘s camcorder frenzy needs to see the remarkable video diary Kimberly Roberts made in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward while Katrina wailed and the government balked. Trouble the Water directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal initially came to the city in hopes of investigating the way in which National Guard support was waylaid by an America being stretched thin in Iraq. The film opens with the directors talking to a bureaucrat, but within moments Roberts and her husband Scott bum rush the side of the frame and never let go. The New York–based Fahrenheit 9/11 producers thankfully let Roberts’ eyewitness footage run for long segments, underscoring its The Hague–worthy indictment with periodic cutaways to the naysayers (George W. Bush, FEMA’s Michael Brown, and so on). When we return to her shot of a neighborhood drunk who died in the storm, it feels as significant a victory for the documentary process as the stabbing in Gimme Shelter (1970). The storm interrupts Roberts’ camerawork the first time; months later, back in the Ninth Ward, it’s the police telling her to stop rolling. Even when Trouble the Water moves into more conventional over-the-shoulder filmmaking, Kimberly and Scott Roberts remain enthralling subjects. It’s doubtful festival-goers saw anything as breathtaking as Kimberly Roberts’ autobiographical rap "Amazing" at this past snooze of a Sundance, where Trouble the Water claimed the Grand Jury Prize. Rappers, it turns out, make the best reporters.

TROUBLE THE WATER opens Fri/5 at the Sundance Kabuki.

The filth and the fury

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Apologies to all Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville fans out there, but the American novel didn’t get good until it shook off the last vestiges of Puritanism and risked a certain shock factor. It wasn’t just the authors pushing potentially offensive social-realist (Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair) or unflattering social-elite-portraiture boundaries (Edith Wharton, Henry James, etc.) who made the upstart nation’s lit suddenly comparable to the Old World’s new output. By the dawn of the 20th century, non-rabble-rousing Yank fiction (not to be confused with today’s street-corner favorite tabloid, Yank) had also matured stylistically. Still, it’s those "dirty books" that somehow still stick out in well-read readers’ back pages. American censorship battles in the 20th century were, until well into the sexual revolution, largely fought on literary terrain.

Barney Rosset, the subject of new documentary Obscene, should be canonized by First Amendment fans as the patron saint of key mid-20th-century obscenity cases. As founder of Evergreen Review and Grove Press, this "smut peddler" published everyone from Harold Pinter to Octavio Paz to Kathy Acker, as well as a whole lot of unapologetic porn (mostly the Victorian kind). No wonder Rosset was behind some of the central court struggles against censorious US standards for both literature and movies. He consorted with yippies and Black Panthers, produced close friend Samuel Beckett’s only film (1965’s Film), and was called a "tragic hero" by his own analyst (one of many). He is an interesting enough guy that one wishes codirectors Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor’s admiring portrait was longer — it gets the career highlights down but barely touches on what sounds like an equally colorful personal life.

Weaned on the radicalism of Depression-era East Coast experimental schools, Rosset was an Army combat cinematographer during World War II. He returned home to produce 1948’s virtually unknown Strange Victory — a movie about American racism so incendiary that only one New York City theater would consent to show it. Having been checked out by the FBI as a possible "Communist filth racketeer" while in grammar school, he was on familiar ground when he commenced the first of many legally challenged literary ventures in the late 1950s. Evergreen Press republished Allen Ginsberg’s suppressed epic poem Howl; Grove launched US printings of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, both already decades-old yet still banned on our shores. Other causes célèbres included William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (published just after his assassination), and Che Guevara’s diaries (which angered somebody enough to get Grove’s offices bombed).

As if this wasn’t drama enough, Rosset’s business and personal fortunes experienced considerably more disorder as the turbulent ’60s turned into the oversatiated ’70s. Importing a Marxist quasidocumentary art film from Sweden, 1967’s I Am Curious (Yellow), made cinema safe for sex after protracted court battles. It also made millions, which perversely hurt Grove in the end — forcing an expansion that proved disastrous, particularly when 1968 sequel I Am Curious (Blue) bombed. The CIA put Rosset under surveillance and women’s liberationists assailed his catalog as sexist, yet threatening calls and sniper fire at his home did not exactly discourage his alcohol and amphetamine abuse. He was even fired from Grove itself after a supposedly friendly takeover.

Too bad Obscene just skims over the less-public chapters in its subject’s life, like his four marriages. Now a dapper and delightful old man, Rosset has long since burned through the last of many fortunes made and lost. He’s broke but blithe about it, as if cocooned by admiration — the eccentric lineup of praise-singing interviewees here include Jim Carroll, John Waters, Amiri Baraka, Erica Jong, and Gore Vidal. Perhaps the best testaments to Rosset’s character, however, are priceless excerpts from a cable-TV interrogation in which he responds to actual smut peddler Al Goldstein’s exasperatingly crude questions ("How do you get sucked into marriage?" being the least of them) with charming, earnest self-examination.

OBSCENE: A PORTRAIT OF BARNEY ROSSET AND GROVE PRESS

Opens Fri/5

Nightly at 7, 8:45 p.m. (also Sat–Sun, 3, 5 p.m.), $5–$10

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

(415) 431-3611, www.roxie.com

Ballin’

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Best known for her career as a documentarian (she won an Oscar for 1997’s Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien), Jessica Yu makes her narrative feature debut with Ping Pong Playa, an often gut-busting sports fable about a wannabe NBA star who becomes the unlikely hero of his ping-pong-crazed family.

Lead actor Jimmy Tsai’s performance as Christopher "C-Dub" Wang is so dead-on hilarious, I assumed he was a stand-up comedian. Nope: "I met Jimmy because he was the production accountant at [Ping Pong Playa production company] Cherry Sky Films," Yu explains. "I went to a screening of short films where he showed these humorous spots he had made for an online clothing company. I remember thinking this was a great character to use for something. So when [Cherry Sky’s] Joan Huang and Jimmy approached me about working on [a comedy] together, my first thought was we have to put this character C-Dub in it."

The first-time thespian was already a naturally funny guy (he cowrote the film with Yu), but he trained for six months to get his skills in line with the film’s ping-pong storyline. "There’s something inherently funny about the sport," Yu says. "Not to take anything away from it, but no matter how hard you hit a ping-pong ball, it still makes that smack! So the idea of putting somebody who was kind of bombastic into that world was ripe for opportunity."

Yu says her background as a champion fencer influenced her desire to make a sports movie. "I think there were certainly discussions about the kind of sports that Asians are known for being good at — whether it’s diving, or ping-pong, or to some extent fencing. I just think it’s interesting that a character like C-Dub has no interest in excelling at what he sees as marginalized sports — but that tends to be where you see a lot of Asians on the podium."

As for Yu, "My game’s pretty terrible! We had a ping-pong table on set at all times — and if it’s sitting there long enough you’re gonna play. I’m still not good at it, but I enjoy it a little more now."

PING PONG PLAYA

Opens Fri/5 in Bay Area theaters

Here Today

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

What the heck is going on with the Today contraceptive sponge? My wife and I have always used condoms, but when we saw the sponges a few months back, we figured, "Let’s try ’em."

Oh … my … god. Going bareback after years of condom use was absotively amazing for both of us. We also discovered that what my wife calls her "special trick" — which involves sliding the condomless head of my cock over her clit — worked OK for her with a condom on, but she describes it as "exquisite" without one.

So now, Synova, the company that was making the sponge, has declared bankruptcy, and sponges are going for $8 a pop on eBay. Do you know if Synova is going to come out of its reorganization and start making the sponge again?

Love,

Spongelover

Dear Lover:

I hate to be the one to break your heart, or rather to rebreak it after Synova — cads that they are — already treated you and yours so callously, but you will survive. Your heart will go on.

There’s something about the sponge (beyond the spermicide itself) that just makes people go all gooey. This is the second time sponge fans have loved and lost, and I’m afraid I do not know when, if ever, your beloved will return. Back in the ’90s, Seinfeld‘s Elaine coined the term "sponge-worthy" when she discovered the first shortage and had to start gauging whether or not a boyfriend rated a precious, hoarded sponge. That model was pulled from the market for safety and manufacturing problems, and didn’t come back until last year, along with a media blitz that attracted hordes of new fans. And yes, Synova, the new owner, has declared bankruptcy. The manufacturing rights have passed to yet another company, but I don’t think it’s saying when — or if — it will begin exercising them.

So what’s the big deal? The sponge is nothing but a … sponge, filled to the brim with Nonoxynol-9, the soapy, controversial spermicide that has been around forever. The big advantages are ease of application (pop it in) and forgetability (you don’t have to pop in another one for a day or so). Nonoxynol-9, though, can be some nasty stuff. A number of studies have demonstrated that it causes enough irritation to let in pathogens, including HIV, and it tastes horrible. Plus, I will forever bear a grudge against it since it caused a boyfriend to develop a huge bright red clown-mouth — a scarlet letter "O" — around his lips, just in time for Passover at my mother’s house, and people kept asking him about it all night until he was ready to die. So, um, none for me. But I do understand your dismay at the loss of a dear contraceptive.

There are other forms of spermicide — film or pellets or whatever — but they don’t work well without a diaphragm-y thing to hold them in place. In fact, even with such a device, they work just as poorly as the beloved sponge, which is very poorly indeed in women who have had children and only sort of OK in women who haven’t. The sponge was never a great form of birth control; it just allowed for great sex. Is your wife absolutely sure she wouldn’t like a nice NuvaRing or an IUD? I know, it’s not fair — I’d like to be able to recommend some sort of device to insert — but they’ve got to be better than condoms and eternal sorrow.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I’m on the pill and monogamous, so I’m not limited to water-based lubricants. Recently my partner and I got the idea to try vitamin E oil — it smells and tastes pretty good, it lasts longer than Astroglide, and if it’s edible, we figured, it must be safe. Well … a short while after we happily started lubing with E, I got a urinary tract infection and have since read numerous lists of suggestions for avoiding UTIs that all seemed to mention specifically using a water-based lubricant. I feel somewhat weird about asking my doctor this question, so I’m turning to you: are "natural" but non-water-based lubes such as vitamin E oil bad for one’s inner girly parts, or have I wrongly linked a few coincidental events?

Love,

Gimme an E?

Dear E:

You’re right that it could be a coincidence, but I’m betting it’s not. I don’t know what kind of carrier oil was used for the vitamin E, but whatever it is, your vagina probably doesn’t know how to get rid of it. I completely agree that water-based lubes are essentially unsatisfactory, but luckily one does not have to reach for weird, random substances off the supplement shelf. What you want is a nice silicone lube, of which there are many. You can get them flavored if that’s your scene, but most are taste- and scent-free, non-irritating, non-drying, and so slippery they are actually kind of dangerous — and you really want to watch where you prop the bottle between applications. You will love them and you will thank me.

Love,

Andrea

Got a salacious subject you want Andrea to discuss? Ask her a question!

Also, Andrea is teaching! Contact her if you’re interested in (sex)life after baby classes. Her new blog is at www.gogetyourjacket.com, but don’t look there for the butt sex. There isn’t any.

Stage names

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

SEPT. 2

Estelle The British soul femme gets a chance to sing to the subjects of “American Boy.” Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421, www.theindependentsf.com

SEPT. 8–9

Built to Spill Pulling off Perfect from Now On (Warner Bros., 1997) from start to finish. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 522-0333, www.slims-sf.com

SEPT. 10

Robert Forster Two years on from Grant McLennan’s unexpected death, the dandified half of the Go-Betweens’ now-fabled songwriting duo returns to the stage with an album that includes three songs cowritten with his old bandmate. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.musichallsf.com

SEPT. 19–20

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Mellow with age? No way, say the Grinderman and crew. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.ticketmaster.com

SEPT. 19

Al Green and Gladys Knight The Reverend is riding high on the acclaim for his latest recording, Lay It Down (Blue Knight), while Aaliyah’s aunt has kept her voice healthy and powerful in a manner that certain other divas must envy. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Rd., Concord. Also Oct. 7, Mountain Winery, 14831 Pierce, Saratoga. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 19

My Morning Jacket Southern men channel their Evil Urges (Ato). Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berk. (510) 809-0100, www.anotherplanetent.com

SEPT. 20

Herbie Hancock Loved the fusion maestro’s bon mot to Joni Mitchell. Nob Hill Masonic Center, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

This Land Is Your Land Songsmiths and word slingers Sheryl Crow, Cat Power, Henry Rollins, Mike Ness, and Son Volt pay homage to John Steinbeck, who’s been dubbed “the Woody Guthrie of American authors,” and Woody Guthrie, who has been described as “the soundtrack to Steinbeck.” Guthrie’s granddaughter Sarah Lee and husband (and Steinbeck nephew) Johnny Irion round out the bill of this event — a portion of the proceeds go to the Steinbeck and Guthrie family foundations. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Rd., Concord. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 20–21

Treasure Island Musical Festival Stunning views, equally awesome sounds — who could ask for anything more? Try a full day of dance beats (Justice, TV on the Radio, Goldfrapp, Hot Chip, et al.) followed by another of all-out indie rock (the Raconteurs, Tegan and Sara, Vampire Weekend, and the gang). Treasure Island, SF. www.treasureislandfestival.com

SEPT. 22–24

Spoon Can’t get enough of Britt Daniel and company? Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 24

Journey, Heart, and Cheap Trick Feathered-hair flashbacks in full effect. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Rd., Concord. Also Sept. 27, Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com. Also Oct. 7, Mountain Winery, 14831 Pierce, Saratoga. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 25

Silver Jews With a likely gentle assist from Why?’s Yoni Wolf, David Berman flashes his sterling songwriting once more. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

SEPT. 26–27

Mission of Burma The Boston life-changers play 1982 post-punk classic Vs. (Ace of Hearts/Matador, 1982) in its entirety. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422, www.theindependentsf.com

Rancid Up from Gilman and back on the ginormous Warfield stage, alongside the Adolescents and the Aquabats! Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.ticketmaster.com

SEPT. 26–28

San Francisco Blues Festival The 36th annual throwdown kicks off with a blues film series at the Roxie Theater and continues at the Great Meadow with Hot Tuna, the Delta Groove All Star Blues Revue, Johnny Winter, and Gospel Hummingbirds. Various locations. www.sfblues.com

SEPT. 28

Beach House Baltimore’s Alex Scully and Victoria Legrand — the niece of Michel — rewards the devotion of listeners who’ve discovered that the endlessly resplendent Devotion (Carpark) is a contender for album of the year. Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.swedishamericanhall.com

Earth, Wind & Fire, Angie Stone, and Michael McDonald A slab of ’70s soul fantasy, a little stab at post–Celebrity Fit Club redemption, and a whole lotta distinctive yacht-rock vocalization, all under one roof. HP Pavilion, 525 W. Santa Clara, San Jose. (415) 421-8497, www.hppsj.com

SEPT. 30

My Bloody Valentine The moment has finally arrived for MBV fans. Will they stretch the distorted bridge of “You Made Me Realize” into infinity? Here’s hoping the answer is yes. Concourse, 620 Seventh St., SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 3–5

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 8 Dang, bluegrass, country, and roots fans are in for one of the most diverse lineups yet: Earl Scruggs, Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with T Bone Burnett, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Hazel Dickens, the Gourds, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Tift Merritt, and Greg Brown mix it up with Gogol Bordello, Odetta, Elvis Costello, Iron and Wine, Richard Thompson, the Jayhawks’ Mark Olson and Gary Louris, Heavy Trash, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and MC Hammer. A free downhome massive in every sense. Golden Gate Park, SF. www.strictlybluegrass.com

OCT. 3–NOV. 9

San Francisco Jazz Festival Lovers of singing can go straight to the source: the indomitable Jimmy Scott. Lovers of song can sit by the piano of one of the American songbook’s best-known authors: Randy Newman. Lovers of soul can pick up their prescriptions when Dr. Lonnie Smith leads a groove summit. Lovers of revolution can break free from election propaganda with the Brecht-tinged jazz of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. And lovers of the late Alice Coltrane can pay respects to the music of her son and bandmate Ravi. Various venues, SF. 1-866-920-JAZZ, www.sfjazz.org

OCT. 3

Sigur Rós All hail the Icelandic etherealists. Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berk. (510) 809-0100, www.anotherplanetent.com

OCT. 4

Lovefest The dance music massive and procession is a-twirl with beatmakers à la Armin Van Buuren, Above and Beyond, Kyau and Albert, Deep Voices, Colette, Hil Huerta, and Green Velvet. Various locales, SF. www.sflovefest.org

OCT. 5

Cut Copy The spirit of ELO is a living thing that chugs through the stadium disco of these DFA-affiliated Aussies, and the swoon of OMD isn’t too far away. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com

OCT. 11–12

Santana The pater familias teams with his scion’s Salvador Santana Band. Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, and Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Road, Concord. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 13

The Black Kids The Wizards of Ahhhs initiate the Virgins. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 14–15

Brightblack Morning Light For those about to rock in a manner that makes Spiritualized seem like meth heads, we salute you. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016, www.cafedunord.com

OCT. 18

Mary J. Blige Mary, Mary, quite contrary to … smoothie opener Robin Thicke. Sleep Train Pavilion, 2000 Kirker Pass Road, Concord. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 23–26

Budget Rock Seven Magnifico garage-rock from folks who mean it — and love it. Don’t you dare miss Mummies’ Russell Quan’s 50th birthday with Hypstrz and the Rantouls; Ray Loney and the Phantom Movers with Apache; Hank IV with the Lamps and Bare Wires; and Thee Makeout Party with the Pets. Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. www.storkcluboakland.com.

OCT. 27–28

Girl Talk Master of megamix mayhem Gregg Gillis returns to SF, albeit without the pay-what-you-like system offered to those who purchase his latest album. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

OCT. 31

Yelle The French electro vixen pops up again. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com

NOV. 1–2

Madonna Break it down, New York magazine-style. Tabloid sensation dissipates, while ageless sex appeal, hardcore show-womanship, and — please remember, your Madge-sty — good songs are a girl’s real best friend. Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum, Oakl. (415) 421-8497, www.livenation.com

>>More Fall Arts Preview

Olympic disc toss

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

 

SEPT. 2

Theresa Andersson, Hummingbird, Go! (Basin Street) Could this be the latest hair — or rather, heir — to Dusty Springfield’s not-so-dusty blue-eyed soul diva throne, aided by Allen Toussaint, Ane Brun, and Sweden’s Tobias Froberg?

Apollo Sunshine, Shall Noise Upon (World’s Fair) Bad album titles happen to even imaginative psych-poppers.

Lila Downs, Shake Away (EMI/Manhattan) New York-Oaxaca singer-songwriter doffs the Frida drag and bares some Shakira-style midriff along with a lively pop sound.

Donnie Klang, Just a Rolling Stone (Bad Boy) Making the Band 4′s broom-topped answer to Jon B and Justin T paraphrases Bobby D for the TRL set.

New Kids on the Block, The Block (Interscope) Old manager Lou Pearlman is going to prison, Donnie is headed for divorce court, and there are even rumors that one member is — gasp — nonheterosexual.

Underoath, Lost in the Sound of Separation (Tooth & Nail/Solid State) Rock me, sexy screamo Jesus-freaks.

UNKLE, End Titles … Stories for Film (Surrender All) Say “UNKLE” like Black Mountain and Josh Homme want you to.

Brian Wilson, That Lucky Old Sun (Capitol) He reunites with Van Dyke Parks and takes a trip down memory’s drag strip, covering Louis Armstrong and paying homage to SoCal.

Young Jeezy, The Recession (Def Jam) True dat. Producers like Eminem and Jazze Pha and contributors such as Kanye West and T-Pain feel Jeezy’s, erm, pain.

 

SEPT. 9

Calexico, Carried to Dust (Touch and Go) Dusted but darn pretty. Whispery. Poppy.

Cornelius, Sensurround (Everloving) Keigo Oyamada, 3-D sound specialist, returns with a video-and-remix DVD/CD, aptly titled after a quake-imitating movie gimmick.

Kimya Dawson, Alphabutt (K) Everyone poops.

Michael Franti and Spearhead, All Rebel Rockers (Anti-/Epitaph) The SF activist stalwart spit-shines a spunky-fresh blend of dub and funk.

Fujiya and Miyagi, Lightbulbs (Deaf, Dumb & Blind) Fresh from car and Miller Lite commercials, the English kraut-rockers with the Japanese name(s).

Gym Class Heroes, The Quilt (Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen/Atlantic) I hate gym.

Hatchback, Colours of the Sun (Lo) Dfa- and Prins Thomas–approved Sorcerer-buddy Sam Grawe sets the controls beyond cosmic into hypnotic with epic instrumental jams such as “White Diamond” and “Horizon.”

Okkervil River, The Stand Ins (Jagjaguwar) The sweet sequel to last year’s novelistic The Stage Names.

Kardinal Offishall, Not 4 Sale (Geffen) The Clipse dispenses financial advice on “Set It Off.”

Jessica Simpson, Do You Know? (Columbia Nashville) Huh?

The Sound of Animals Fighting, The Ocean and the Sun (Epitaph) A dreamy Animal Collective meets a mathier-than-thou Dillinger Escape Plan?

Emiliana Torrini, Me and Armini (Rough Trade) In The Two Towers (2002), the Icelandic songbird serenaded the gruesome-cute ring-a-ding-dinger with “Gollum’s Song.”

Tricky, Knowle West Boy (Domino) The 40-year-old boy sings the body eclectic.

 

SEPT. 12

Metallica, Death Magnetic (Warner Bros.) When they weren’t pissing off neighbors, the music biz titans and longtime friends of Bugs Bunny were recording — with Rick Rubin — outside of SF for the first time in a dozen years.

 

SEPT. 16

George Clinton, George Clinton and Some Gangsters of Love (Shanachie) The gang — Carlos Santana, Sly Stone, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and RZA — is all here, maggot brains.

Faith Hill, Joy to the World (Warner Bros.) The initial single off the C&W-pop vocalist’s first Xmas album: “A Baby Changes Everything.”

Ill Bill, The Hour of Reprisal (Uncle Howie/Fat Beats) Bad Brains and Raekwon the Chef cook up mischief with “La Coka Nostra.”

Musiq Soulchild, On My Radio (Atlantic) The spirit of Philadelphia, from behind soulful shades.

Nelly, Brass Knuckles (Derrty/Universal) Fergie, Ciara, and Lil Wayne get derrty right herre.

Ne-Yo, Year of the Gentleman (Def Jam) We’re waiting for “Year of the Ice Road Trucker.”

Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It (Columbia) Oakland will come out for its boy.

Alexander Tucker, Portal (ATP Recordings) Acclaimed UK fingerpicking maestro of murk-folk returns with a dissonant, symphonic mix of vibes, cello, and electric mandolin on his third album.

The Veronicas, Hook Me Up (Sire) The Aussie twins hope to hook up the Jonas Brothers’ tweeny audience with their sassy pop.

 

SEPT. 23

Blitzen Trapper, Furr (Sub Pop) The wild-eyed Northwesterners focus on a janky old piano found outside their studio.

Cold War Kids, Loyalty to Loyalty (Downtown/Atlantic) Chilly times call for tunes with titles like “Golden Gate Jumpers.”

Common, Invincible Summer (Geffen) Last sighted orbiting will.i.am’s Obama ad and now rotating with the Neptunes.

Charlie Haden Family and Friends, Rambling Boy (Decca) The jazz genius gets back to his Iowa-bound country-music roots with help from offspring Petra and Josh, Elvis Costello, Rosanne Cash, and Pat Metheny.

Kings of Leon, Only By the Night (RCA) Brothers by day.

Jenny Lewis, Acid Tongue (Warner Bros.) Elvis Costello really does get around, guesting here alongside She and Him and Lewis manfriend Johnathan Rice.

Mogwai, The Hawk Is Howling (PIAS/Wall of Sound) The Scottish instrumentalists move on from making music for Zinedine Zidane. Song titles include “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead,” and “I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School.”

Peter Bjorn and John, Seaside Rock (Almost Gold/Star Time International) The trio from Sweden veer away from lyrical pop to lyric-free — and whistle-free, one hopes — compositions inspired by childhood.

TV on the Radio, Dear Science (Interscope) Shining with radioactive adorableness.

 

SEPT. 29

Marianne Faithfull, Easy Come, Easy Go (Naive, UK) The queen of the nicotine rasp reunites with Hal Wilner to cover Dolly Parton, Neko Case, Judee Sill, Randy Newman, and Morrissey.

 

SEPT. 30

Miles Davis, Kind of Blue: 50th Anniv. (Columbia/Legacy) In marriage, the 50th anniversary is golden. In the music industry, the 50th anniversary is a two-CD plus DVD plus LP plus book plus poster.

Dungen, 4 (Sublimininal Sounds) The fourth studio album by Swedish foursome is divided into two sounds: raw guitar rock and jazz-inflected cinematic orchestration\

El Guincho, Alegranza! (Young Turks/XL) Born with the zestful zing! of an Esquivel sample, Pablo Diaz-Reixa’s irresistible 10-track burst of Barcelona beach boy 21st-century Tropicalia finally gets a US release — and, one hopes, a tour to go with it.

Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Hudson (Arista) After an Oscar, various red carpet misfires, and the Sex and the City movie, her debut arrives, taking the s, the o, the l, and the o out of “solo“ via guest appearances or production by Diane Warren, Timbaland, Ne-Yo, T-Pain, Cee-lo, Pharrell, Ludacris, Akon, John Legend, and duet partner R. Kelly.

Mercury Rev, Snowflake Midnight (Yep Roc) Melting the heels of the band’s seventh studio album is Strange Attractor, a companion collection of 11 free downloadable tracks.

Barbara Morgenstern, BM (Monika Enterprise) The operator behind effervescent bursts of multilayered electronic pop presents her fifth album and — attention SF club promoters! — hopes to the tour the states.

Nina Simone, To Be Free (Sony Legacy) A three-CD, one-DVD retrospective that spans more than four decades, from Dr. Simone’s earliest recordings with Bethlehem to her final recordings for Elektra.

Taj Mahal, Maestro (Heads Up) Forty years after his recording debut and five years after his last US release, he covers Otis Redding and works with Ziggy Marley.

T.I., Paper Trail (Grand Hustle/Atlantic) His house arrest album, narrowed down from 50 songs, includes production by all the usual big names, and cameos by Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, John Legend, Usher, and the dreaded Fall Out Boy.

XX Teens, Welcome to Goon Island (Mute) I see Paris, I see Toulouse, I see someone’s green and blue boobs.

 

OCT. 7

Black Sabbath, Paranoid (Deluxe) (Universal) The band’s biggest-selling album gets a quadraphonic update, along with instrumental versions of six songs.

Deerhoof, Offend Maggie (Kill Rock Stars) A pencil drawing by Tomoo Gokita of a half-naked mystery man graces the cover, and the first single has been released in the form of sheet music.

Jolie Holland, The Living and the Dead (Anti-/Epitaph) Norman Mailer wouldn’t be able to attract guests like M. Ward and Marc Ribot.

Morgan Geist, Double Night Time (Environ) In the wake of contributing cellist Kelley Polar’s second album, one member of Metro Area presents his own new romantic bouquet of Detroit techno-tinged disco pop, with guest crooning by Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys.

Gregory and the Hawk, Moenie and Kitchi (FatCat) Sweetly twee indie-folk prepares its latest world-domination campaign.

Lambchop, OH (ohio) (Merge) Chop, chop — Nashville rocks.

MSTRKRFT, title to be announced (Dim Mak) Isis brings the “Bounce.”

Of Montreal, Skeletal Lamping (Polyvinyl) Do be a drag — with plenty of confetti.

Rise Against, Appeal to Reason (Geffen) Tried to reason with them about playing up the pirate metal.

Senses Fail, Life Is Not a Waiting Room (Vagrant) So why are we waiting for our hearing to fail?

Michele Williams, Unexpected (Columbia) The Destiny’s Child vocalist, not the actress, stops going gospel in favor of pop.

Women, Women (Jagjaguwar) Hope they get to hang out with Lesbians.

 

OCT. 14

The Alps, III (Type) Local music heads Scott Hewicker, Jefre-Cantu Ledesma, and Alexis Georgopoulos makes the leap from CD-R to “proper” album release, paying homage to the hallucinatory sides of Serge Gainsbourg, Ennio Morricone, and Terry Riley along the way.

I’m From Barcelona, Who Killed Harry Houdini (Mute) The Swedish — not Spanish — mega-band returns with 10 new songs, including at least one by the ill-fated famous illusionist.

Ray LaMontagne, Gossip in the Grain (RCA) And buzz in the barn.

Queen and Paul Rodgers, The Cosmos Rocks (Hollywood) We know guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May finally completed his doctorate, but that title will have Freddy Mercury’s ghost hitching it to the next galaxy.

T. Pain, Thr33 Ringz (Jive) After producing most of Ciara’s upcoming full-length, Faheem Najm recruits Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West for his own — if it doesn’t go putf8um, I’m gonna buy you a drank and fall in love with a stripper.

 

OCT. 21

Hank III, Damn Right, Rebel Proud (Curb/Bruc) The disc has been described as a “Jekyll and Hyde mix of disturbingly dark stuff and good ol’ country.”

Labelle, Back to Now (Verve) Their first full-length in 33 years brings Gamble and Huff, Lenny Kravitz, and Wyclef Jean out of the woodwork.

Lee Ann Womack, Call Me Crazy (MCA Nashville) She sang at the 2004 Republican National Convention, but redeemed herself as much as possible a year later with the “20 Years and Two Husbands Ago.” Now, unfortunately, she’s borrowing titles from Anne Heche.

 

OCT. 28

Cradle of Filth, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder (Roadrunner) The grimy tots say they were inspired by Joan of Arc’s aristocratic compatriot.

Cynic, Traced in Air (Season of Mist) The proggish metal outfit issues its first studio album since 1993.

Warren G, The G Files (Hawino) Quick, regulate before G notices.

It’s a Musical, The Music Makes Me Sick (Morr) Guitar-free Berlin duo craft harmonic pop in the key of Bacharach, with trumpets, vibraphones, and canonical choirs.

Grace Jones, Hurricane (Wall of Sound, UK) The most anticipated comeback of the season, since Glass Candy, the Chromatics and every other nu-disco act offering pale versions of her fabulous robot chick chic — includes contributions by Brian Eno and Sly and Robbie and a song called “Corporate Cannibal.”

John Legend, Evolver (G.O.O.D Music/Columbia) Kanye West, Andre 3000, and Estelle join the high-minded proceedings.

Pink, title TBA (LaFace/Zomba) She attempts to get the party started — yet again.

 

NOV. 4

Big Boi, Sir Luscious Leftfoot … Son of Chico Dusty (LaFace) Ouch, don’t hurt yourself on that title. The OutKast insider finds support in Andre 3000, Mary J. Blige, and Too $hort.

Dido, title TBA (Arista). “Thank You,” multi-instrumental wiz and producer Jon Brion for overseeing this long-time-coming album.

 

NOV. 11

Missy Elliott, Block Party (Atlantic) Was it really over a decade ago that the late Babygirl gave her a boost to fame? Keyshia Cole is a likely guest, and Timbaland is just one of many co-producers.

 

NOV. 18

Kelly Clarkson, title TBA (RCA) Everybody loves the Rachael Ray of American Idol pop! Don’t they?

>>More Fall Arts Preview

Cinemania

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› johnny@sfbg.com

Mock Up on Mu Craig Baldwin’s latest opus, on rocket science and Scientology in California, with the director in person.

Sept. 2. Pacific Film Archive

Obscene A new documentary about Evergreen Review and Grove Press publisher Barney Russet and his many battles on behalf of free speech and real art.

Sept. 5–11. Roxie Film Center

Lost Indulgence and In Love We Trust A pair of films by up-and-coming Chinese directors Zhang Yibai and Wang Xiaoshuai.

Sept. 6–20. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wattis Theater, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

"History Stutters: Found Footage Films" Bruce Conner’s John F. Kennedy–assassination film Report (1965) and Ken Jacobs’ Malcolm X. assassination response Perfect Film (1984) is on the same bill; program also includes a movie with Ed Henderson.

Sept. 9. Pacific Film Archive

Leave Her to Heaven The 1947 Technicolor noir — and ultimate swimmer’s nightmare — returns with a demonstration of film restoration.

Sept. 12. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org

"MilkBar International Live Film Festival" Three days of experimental cinema, including more than 20 local short works.

Sept. 12–14. Noodle Factory Performing Arts Center, 1255 26th St. #207, Oakl. (510) 289-5188, www.milkbar.org

"Unknown Pleasures: The Films of Jia Zhangke" At last, China’s vanguard contemporary filmmaker gets an extensive Bay Area retrospective.

Sept. 12–Oct. 17. Pacific Film Archive

"The People Behind the Screen" Local programmers contribute to "Bay Area Now": Jesse Hawthorne Ficks presents girl rock; Stephen Parr of Oddball Films shares a giddy taste of his mega-montage project Euphoria; and kino21 puts together performance cinema; Peaches Christ, Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, and DocFest also have nights.

Sept. 13–Oct. 18. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Shatfest Thrillville’s tributes to the one and only William Shatner continue with his 1968 spaghetti western White Comanche.

Sept. 18. El Cerrito Speakeasy Theater, 10070 San Pablo, El Cerrito. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net

"Taylor Mead: A Clown Underground" The legendary wit Mead visit for screenings that showcase his best starring roles (1960’s The Flower Thief and 1967–68’s Lonesome Cowboys).

Sept. 18–21. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Forbidden Lies The Roxie is distributing this look at con artist Norma Khouri, which gets a theatrical run after a successful trip through the festival circuit.

Sept. 19. Roxie Film Center

MadCat Women’s International Film Festival Ariella Ben-Dov’s fest turns 12 with eight archival greats (including one by Samara Halperin) and silent films with live rock scores.

Sept. 19 and 23. Various venues. (415) 436-9523, www.madcatfilmfestival.org

"Psychotic and Erotic: Rare Films by Tinto Brass" Ass-fixated erotica that includes talking animals and naked cannibals.

Sept. 24. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"How We Fight: Iraqi Short Films" Kino21 kicks off a series with Argentine director Mauro Andrizzi’s feature-length compilation of short videos shot by US or British soldiers, Iraqi militia members, and corporate workers.

Sept. 25. Artists’ Television Access

"James Dean Memorial Weekend" Come back to the five and dime, or failing that, the Castro, and be sure to wear your red windbreaker.

Sept. 26–28. Castro Theatre

Film in the Fog Gene Kelley is singing in the rain — and the Presidio fog.

Sept. 27. Main Post Theatre, 99 Moraga, SF. (415) 561-5500, www.sffs.org

The World’s Largest Shopping Mall The debut or preview of a film by Sam Green and Carrie Lozano is at the heart of a program devoted to psychogeography.

Sept. 27. Other Cinema

Deathbowl to Downtown Coan Nichols’ and Rick Charnoski’s look at the history of NYC street skateboard culture, narrated by Chloë Sevigny.

Sept. 29. Castro Theatre

"Bette Davis Centennial" She’ll tease you, she’ll unease you — all the better just to please you.

Sept.–Oct. Castro Theatre

Dead Channels You can never get enough weird horror and fantasy.

Oct. 2–5. Roxie Film Center

Mill Valley Film Festival The major fall Bay Area festival turns 31.

Oct. 2–12. Various venues. (415) 383-5256, www.mvff.org

Rosemary’s Baby and The Devils Double the demonic hysteria!

Oct. 3. Castro Theatre

"No Wave: The Cinema of Jean Eustache" The series includes 1965’s Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes, his 215-minute masterpiece The Mother and the Whore (1973), his hog-slaughtering documentary — shades of Georges Franju? — The Pig (1970), and a 1997 doc portrait of him.

Oct. 4–22. Pacific Film Archive

"Rediscovering the Fourth Generation" The post-Mao cinema that laid groundwork for directors such as Jia Zhangke gets a SF showcase.

Oct. 4–30. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wattis Theater, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

Vertigo The greatest San Francisco movie ever — maybe greatest movie ever — gets the outdoor screening treatment from Film Night in the Park.

Oct. 4. Union Square, SF. (415) 453-4333, www.filmnight.org

"Spirit of ’68" and "Know Your Enemy" A pair of programs compiled by Jack Stevenson

Oct. 5. Oddball Films, 275 Capp, SF. (415) 558-8117, www.oddballfilm.com

Manhattan and Muppets Take Manhattan Mariel Hemingway, meet Miss Piggy.

Oct. 7–9. Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994. www.redvicmoviehouse.com

"French Cinema Now" A new minifestival from the San Francisco Film Society.

Oct. 8–12. Various venues. (415) 561-5000, www.sffs.org

"Superstars Next Door: A Celebration of SF Amateur Sex Cinema from the ’60s" Stevenson looks at that time in SF when everyone would take off their clothes for a camera — with film in it.

Oct. 9–11. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Midnites for Maniacs: Back to School … in the ’90s" Jesse Hawthorne Ficks serves up Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1991), Romeo and Juliet (1995), and Starship Troopers (1997).

Oct. 10. Castro Theatre

"Envisioning Russia: A Century of Filmmaking" The expansive 16-film program extends across eight decades.

Oct. 10–30. Pacific Film Archive

"Protest-sploitation" A lecture-demo by Christian Divine looking at six "youth" films made in 1970, along with a screening of that year’s The People Next Door.

Oct. 11. Other Cinema

RR James Benning’s train film finally reaches a Bay Area destination.

Oct. 14. Pacific Film Archive

Arab Film Festival The festival turns 12 this year.

Oct. 16–Nov. 4. Various venues. (415) 564-1100. www.aff.org

DocFest IndieFest’s doc extension turns seven this year with a slate of at least 60 films.

Oct. 17–Nov.6. Roxie Film Center and Shattuck Cinema, 2230 Shattuck, Berk. (415) 820-3907, www.sfindie.com

Leslie Thornton A three-program SF Cinematheque series devoted to the director behind Peggy and Fred in Hell (1985–present) and other experimental works, with Thornton in-person.

Oct. 19–26. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

United Nations Association Film Festival Environmentalism is the focus of the festival’s 11th year.

Oct. 19–26. Various venues. (650) 724-5544, www.unaff.org

"I Love Beijing: The Films of Ning Ying" Ning and her acclaimed Beijing trilogy — which spans from the Peking Opera to dogs, cops, and taxi drivers — visit the Bay, capping things a screening of her 2005 "Chinese Sex and the City" feature Perpetual Motion.

Oct. 23–27. Pacific Film Archive

The Werewolf of Washington The president’s speechwriter is a lycanthrope in this Nixon-era flick.

Oct. 31. Pacific Film Archive

"The New Talkies: Bollywood Night" Kino21 presents six works of live narration to Bollywood film scenes.

Nov. 1. Artists’ Television Access

"Occult on Camera" Erik Davis charts out the Aleister Crowley–Kenneth Anger–Led Zeppelin triumvirate-of-evil — what does Jimmy Page’s appearance in the closing ceremony of the Olympics mean?

Nov. 1. Other Cinema

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine The SF premiere of a new documentary devoted to the sculptor.

Nov. 2–3. Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Ghosts Nick Broomfield’s excellent first non-documentary feature, about the abuse of Chinese immigrants in the United Kingdom.

Nov. 7–13. Roxie Film Center

San Francisco International Animation Festival The burgeoning fest and showcase turns three with a program that includes the Cannes favorite Waltz with Bashir.

Nov. 13–16. Various venues. (415) 561-5000, www.sffs.org

Luther Price New works by one of the more scathing and harrowing filmmakers on the planet, presented by SF Cinematheque.

Mid-November. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

New Italian Cinema Will it include Matteo Garrone’s Cannes critic’s fave Gomorra?

Nov. 16–23. Various venues. (415) 561-5000, www.sffs.org

"Films by Martha Colburn" A night of kinetic works by the collage creator, presented in conjunction with a show at Berkeley Art Museum.

Dec. 2. Pacific Film Archive

Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy Thrillville stuffs your stocking with a gem from 1957.

Dec. 11. El Cerrito Speakeasy Theater, 10070 San Pablo, El Cerrito. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net

James Hong A sneak peek at the local director’s expose on Japan’s rewriting of history, Lessons in the Blood.

Dec. 13. Other Cinema

"At Sea" Peter Hutton’s At Sea (2004-7), about the life and death of a colossal container ship, is the centerpiece of an oceanic SF Cinematheque program.

Dec. 14. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS/OTHER CINEMA

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.othercinema.com

CASTRO THEATRE

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

ROXIE FILM CENTER

3317 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS

701 Mission, screening room, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

>>More Fall Arts Preview

Autumn reels

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

As summer dwindles into, well, Indian summer (this is San Francisco, after all), film fans are all asking the same thing: will The Dark Knight be nominated for Best Picture, or what? Like, what other 2008 release has even come close? As the temperature tries to make up its mind between freezing fog and freaky heat, the only thing to do is haul ass to the movieplex and let Hollywood deplete your brain cells as painlessly as possible. Who knows, there might be some awards-season contenders in the following list of fall movie picks. There’s at least one talking chihuahua, anyway. All dates subject to change.

Sept. 26: Seems like just yesterday that Shia LaBeouf was giving interviews about how he wasn’t going to be a show biz cliché — you know, keeping his head down, concentrating on his career, and avoiding scandalous run-ins with the law. Maybe Eagle Eye, in which the erstwhile spawn of Indy Jones plays a ne’er-do-well mysteriously targeted by terrorists, will make it into theaters before he has his first tabloid-fodder romance. Tick-tock, Us Weekly!

Oct. 3: Weirdly, there aren’t many horror flicks primed for October releases this year. Guess Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which stars the voices of nearly every known Latino actor in Hollywood (Edward James Olmos, how could you?), is gonna have to fit the bill. Director Raja Gosnell also helmed both Scooby-Doo movies. Far more promising is Ed Harris’ Appaloosa, a Western about two lawmen (Harris and Viggo Mortensen) whose friendship is tested by, natch, a dame (Renée Zellweger). Those of us for whom "Viggo on a horse" is box-office draw enough can work around the Zellweger.

Oct. 10: Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, and William Monahan, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Departed, join forces for Body of Lies, a political thriller worth seeing based on the above pedigree alone. So what if Leo has a weird Southern accent in the trailer, and Ridley and Russell’s last collaboration birthed the 2006 bomb A Good Year?

Oct. 17: Do we really need to see Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush biopic, W., having just suffered through eight years of the worst president ever to take office? Is it too soon to point and laugh? Judging from the hilarious (and scary-because-it-might-actually-be-true) trailer, the performances of Josh Brolin and others cast as real-life newsmakers will make W. well worth it. Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice may be a stretch, but Toby Jones as Karl Rove is particularly inspired.

Oct. 24: Two cunning linguists, Brick writer-director Rian Johnson and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind writer Charlie Kaufman, have new flicks out today. Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom follows the entanglements of con men played by Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo; Kaufman makes his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York, in which a dying theater director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman aims to create one last great work of art.

Nov. 14: James Bond (extra-buff Daniel Craig version) returns in Quantum of Solace. In Australia, Baz Luhrmann, Nicole Kidman, and Hugh Jackman combine their home-country superpowers for a sweeping epic set you-know-where.

Nov. 21: I realize I already foamed over Viggo Mortensen above, but The Road — directed by The Proposition‘s John Hillcoat and adapted from the postapocalyptic Cormac McCarthy novel — absolutely gets my vote for most-anticipated 2008 release.

Nov. 26: The Castro Theatre gets a two-day exclusive on Milk before it opens wide Nov. 28. Don’t know what Milk is? What kind of a San Franciscan are you?

Dec 12: Keanu Reeves stars in The Day the Earth Stood Still remake. Insert your own Klaatu/Keanu joke here.

Dec. 25: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button reunites Fight Club director David Fincher with star Brad Pitt. Based on a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the film explores the curious-indeed life of a man (Pitt, with copious CG assistance) who ages in reverse.

>>More Fall Arts Preview

Sino the times

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

If the world-class flash of the Beijing Olympics isn’t enough of an example of China’s rising international cultural power, we’ll have continued reminders at Bay Area museums and galleries in the coming months. It’s perhaps a tipping point: Pace Beijing, a big outlet for a major western gallery, just opened, signaling a market vetting of art currently being made in China. In fact, a wide swath of Asia will the focus of the international art world this fall with a confluence of biennials — and a triennial — that rival the 2007 European "grand tour" of the "Venice Biennale," "Documenta," and "Münster Sculpture Project." This September sees the opening of biennials in Singapore; Taipei, Taiwan; Yokohama, Japan; Guangzhou and Shanghai in China; and Busan and Gwangju in Korea, the latter organized by Okwui Enwezor, dean of the San Francisco Art Institute.

So it does seem fitting, given our Pacific Rim position, that we at least reflect this activity. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art got a jump-start in the Sino-surveys, as "Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Logan Collection," opened prior to the Olympics and continues through Oct. 5. It’s a lively crash course in its subject, though the museum did give us one in 1999 — the pivotal "Inside Out: New Chinese Art," which included most of the artists on view now. The current show has the opportunity to provide scope — with newer works augmenting some classics — and the mix seems particularly smooth, no doubt because we have become far more familiar with China in general and with at least some of the cultural conditions that fuel the work.

"Half Life" satisfies with 50 pieces of painting, sculpture, and installations, but it seems modest in comparison to "Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection," a show that will fill almost the entire UC Berkeley Art Museum from Sept. 10–Jan. 4, 2009, with 141 works by 96 artists. Both exhibitions provide the opportunity to bring artists here and generate public dialogues, panel discussions, artist talks, and film screenings, which will play out in various venues around town. Berkeley’s show brings Ai Weiwei, a breakout international art star with intellectual buzz, out for a Bay Area residency.

One can’t help but notice that both these shows have "collection" in the title revealing a troubling sense of western ownership — a scenario suggesting that such works wouldn’t come to our attention without patronage. In this case, the collectors take on a passionate, fact-filled advocacy role: Swiss collector Uli Sigg has been supporting art in China for two decades, while Kent Logan, who has acquired works with his wife Vicki, writes extensively on his collection in the SFMOMA show’s catalog. Apparently it takes vision — and packaging — to float this work into a western context.

Other shows continue the focus on Asia, including Chinese sculptor Zhan Wang’s solo turn at Haines Gallery (Sept. 4-Oct. 4). His supershiny metal scholar’s rock is a highlight in the de Young’s sculpture garden, and that museum has organized a historical show with themes that may prove to be an interesting counterpoint: "Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970" (Oct. 25-Jan. 18, 2009), which surveys work by Asian and Asian American artists who worked in the United States — albeit at a time when the art world was less heated and international than it is today. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Mills College Art Museum expand the geographic scope with, respectively, Manila-Bay Area exchange show "Galleon Trade: Bay Area Now 5 Edition" (Sept. 4–Oct. 19) and "The Offering Table: Women Activist Artists from Korea" (Sept. 6-Dec. 7). The Asian Art Museum opens another can of cultural worms — and dazzling artifacts — with the historical "Arts of the Islamic World from Turkey to Indonesia," Sept. 5–March 1, 2009. One hopes that such exhibits expand on what we ordinarily think of as Asian art, contextualizing the current fascination with the contemporary Chinese art scene.

GLEN HELFAND’S PICKS FOR FALL VISUAL ART

•"Andrew Schoultz: In Gods We Trust," Sept. 4–Oct. 25. Reception Sept. 4. Marx and Zavattero, 77 Geary, SF. (415) 627-9111, www.marxzav.com

•Renzo Piano’s California Academy of Sciences building opens Sept. 27. 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF. (415) 379-8000, www.calacademy.org

•Teddy Cruz and Pedro Reyes, Oct. 17–Dec. 13. Reception Oct. 16. Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut, SF. (415) 749-4563, www.waltermcbean.com

•"Lutz Bacher: ODO," Oct. 31–Dec. 13. Ratio 3, 1447 Stevenson, SF. (415) 821-3371, www.ratio3.org

•"The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now," Nov. 8–Feb. 8, 2009. SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

>>More Fall Arts Preview

Connect four

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Photos by Jeffery Cross

GUILLERMO GÓMEZ PEÑA

SFBG Who is inspiring — or revolting — to you, in terms of art and performance, including political performance?

Guillermo Gómez-Peña The best and — most inspiring performance I’ve experienced took place in the Mexico City zocalo. A group of 100 indigenous men from the Coordinadora de los 400 pueblos, tired of waiting for the mayor to listen to their claims, decided to take off their clothes, each drink a liter of water, and pee in unison against the walls of the Palacio Nacional. The power of this action was not in the collective pissing ritual but rather in the exposure of the nude indigenous body, marked by the scars of hard labor and history. The image has been haunting me.

SFBG What do you hope will happen in the US presidential election?

GGP In the realm of symbolic politics, the best thing that can happen is for the United States to elect an articulate mulatto president, the son of a Kenyan immigrant, whose second name is Hussein. But in reality, it worries me that Obama’s project of hope sounds more and more like Hallmark humanism.

SFBG What is your favorite time of year in seasonless San Francisco?

GGP I love it when the sun comes out in earnest and tropicalism hits the streets for a few days. I love to bar hop in the Mission and watch the myriad subcultures show off their self-styled fashion, muscles, tattoos and nalgas palidas. But I also love certain neighborhoods under heavy fog. I feel I am walking in the middle of a British gothic novel. My worry is that this gorgeous city is slowly becoming a bohemian theme park.

I FEEL THAT I AM FREE BUT I KNOW I AM NOT

Oct. 2, 5–8 p.m.; Oct.11, 3–5 p.m.; and Oct. 21, 5–8 p.m.; free, $5

SF Camerawork

657 Mission (second floor), SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org

MAPA/CORPO 3

Oct. 23–25; times and prices TBD

Project Artaud Theater

450 Florida, SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

www.litquake.org

———-

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE

SFBG What are your plans for this fall?

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE I’m going on a crazy cross-country book tour, starting with the book launch Oct. 8 at City Lights — check my Web site (www.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com) for details.

SFBG Your novel, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, is published by City Lights. A recent review in Publishers Weekly seems to think the book’s protagonist is a woman. What did you learn from that review?

MBS I learned most people are even more confused about gender than me. But guess what — the book is already available in Bay Area stores, so readers can rush to figure it out, just like the latest John Grisham.

SFBG So, are you allergic to oxygen?

MBS These days, who isn’t?

SFBG Where’s your favorite sex place in SF, or maybe better, where in SF needs to be turned into a sex spot?

MBS City Hall would be fun. So much elegance and charm, as long as they get rid of everyone who’s usually there. The 38 Geary would be perfect: I always get horny on that bus. Anywhere on my late-night walks — I usually walk up Leavenworth and Hyde from O’Farrell to Bush or so. Feel free to stalk me!

SFBG What do you want to happen in the presidential election?

MBS Do we still call that an election?

SFBG What is your favorite time of year in seasonless San Francisco?

MBS Anytime when the fog rolls in and I can breathe.

SO MANY WAYS TO SLEEP BADLY RELEASE PARTY

Oct. 8, 7:30 p.m.

City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus, SF

(415) 362-8193

www.citylights.com

———–

JOANN SELISKER

SFBG Your new show, Off Leash: Who’s a Good Girl?, ponders the canine-human continuum. What have you learned?

JoAnn Selisker In terms of interspecies relationships, I find human behavior and motivation to be much more strange and unfathomable (and sometimes disturbing) than that of the canine. I speak human, so I ought to understand where humans are coming from. If dogs weren’t so helpless, misunderstood, disregarded, and maltreated, I would prefer to be a dog.

SFBG What do you think of Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer?

JS I think he makes some nice dog beds. You can get anything he thinks your dog needs with his "brand" on it. You could call him the Martha Stewart of the dog world. She reaches us through Wal-Mart, and he reaches us through PETCO. They both give us simple how-to instructions and affordable, quality products. All we have to do is buy the videos, magazines, supplies, and accessories, follow step-by-step instructions, and … voilà! The perfect dinner party; the well-mannered pet.

SFBG In your earlier show, Begin with a Box, you put creative instructions by Twyla Tharp to the test. What did you discover?

JS Well, how interesting — Twyla Tharp is a lot like the Dog Whisperer and Martha Stewart! Each of these masters generously shares secrets to success, in simple, step-by-step format. We can all become Twyla Tharp, the Dog Whisperer and/or Martha Stewart.

I discovered that I will never become Twyla Tharp. I started the Begin with a Box project with a box, just like she says, and proceeded step-by-step to completion. I should now be a MacArthur genius, with name recognition and a project with Prince.

OFF LEASH: WHO’S A GOOD GIRL?

Oct. 8, 8 p.m.; Oct. 9, 7:30 p.m.; $15–$18

Project Theater Artaud

450 Florida, SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

www.litquake.org

———-

TIM SULLIVAN

SFBG What are your plans for this fall?

TIM SULLIVAN I traveled all summer, so I’m going to try my best to stay put. I have two shows opening this fall, one at SF Camerawork and one in Dallas. I’ll be teaching a class at San Francisco Art Institute and continuing to make things.

SFBG Your contribution to SF Camerawork’s fall exhibition, "I Feel I Am Free But I Know I Am Not," involves a rowboat. What should people expect if they step into the boat?

TS Everyone who gets into the boat will be instantly transformed into a movie star in a recreation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944). I really need people to come out and participate to make this work.

SFBG You’ve collaborated with George Kuchar before. Do you have a favorite Kuchar quote, or Kuchar story?

TS A few years back I was in Kuchar’s class film, Kiss of Frankenstein. On the first day he handed us the script, I was rolling on the floor laughing. The entire script is hilarious and quote-worthy! It was definitely the best reading I did in graduate school. The last line (spoiler alert!) always gets me: "Kiss me sloppy."

SFBG What is your favorite time of year in seasonless San Francisco?

TS Fall is always my favorite season. In my home state of Wisconsin I love it because the leaves fall off the trees. Here in SF I love it because the tourists leave and the streets thin out.

I FEEL I AM FREE BUT I KNOW I AM NOT

Sept. 4, 5–8 p.m., free; Sept. 13 and 27, 2–5 p.m., $5

SF Camerawork

657 Mission (second floor), SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org


>>More Fall Arts Preview

Fall Arts Preview 2008

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> johnny@sfbg.com

I don’t know about you, but I hear something is happening in early November. Since I can’t quite identify exactly what it is, let’s focus on all the events around it this fall — especially the spaces on stages and screens and pages and in museum and gallery rooms.

A little birdie tells me this fall will be propagandized, rather than purely politicized, into infinity. In times like these, it helps to have art that finds a realm outside the false promises, a place from which to look back at our society — including the politicians who try to rule it — and say: you better perform!

That’s the case this week’s fab four cover stars, Guillermo Gómez Peña, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, JoAnn Selisker, and Tim Sullivan. This quartet of singular creative forces is united in using imaginative performance to reject inhibiting norms.

Gómez Peña and his group La Pocha Nostra are bringing Mapa/Corpo 3 — an interactive ritual involving "political acupuncture" that was banned in the United States for three years — to Theater Artaud as part of Litquake and the Living Word Festival. At SF Camerawork, they’ll also be trying out what they call performance karaoke, which is sort of an aesthetic, political, and ethical update on the popular game Twister. There, they are part of "I Feel That I Am Free But I Know I Am Not," an extended exhibition (curated by Chuck Mobley) that also includes some live video by Sullivan, whose photographic and video work looks at everyday imagery and familiar pop iconography from new and sometimes hilarious angles.

New views of everyday pop banality are also JoAnn Selisker’s forte. Presented by Litquake and ODC, her latest piece, Off Leash: Who’s a Good Girl? uses text and dance to explore the relationship between dogs and their best frenemy, humans. Everything goes full circle with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore — you can see some of Gómez Peña’s flair for radical sexual and political performance in his past activism with Gay Shame, and like Sullivan and Selisker, his image doesn’t come from Macy’s. In his new novel, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (City Lights, 256 pages, $15.95), he shows readers a San Francisco that Frommer’s doesn’t know about.
This fall, Gómez Peña, Bernstein Sycamore, Selisker, and Sullivan are just part of a blitz that’s bringing everything from multiple Chinese art exhibitions and film programs to the premiere of Gus Van Sant’s Milk. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy season.


>>Connect four
Cover stars: A quartet of our favorite artists and performers sounds off


>>Diverse moments
Dance: Highlights run from modern to the Bard
By Rita Felciano


>>Curtain calls
Stage: Theater gets political, playful, potent
By Robert Avila


>>Vizzy with the possibilities
Visual Art: We scope out the promising shows
By Katie Kurtz, Kimberly Chun, and Johnny Ray Huston


>>Sino the times
Visual Art: Bay Area museums and galleries home in on Asia
By Glen Helfand


>>Olympic disc toss
Music: Will these new music releases go far or fall flat?
By Kimberly Chun and Johnny Ray Huston


>>Stage names
Concerts: Got live if you want it — and you do
Johnny Ray Huston and Kimberly Chun


>>“Daughter” goes to the opera
Classical: Amy Tan revamps her bestseller. Plus, more classical picks
By Ching Chang


>>Forecast: blackout
Clubs: The season’s prime parties offer plenty to fall down about
By Marke B.


>>Autumn reels
Film: 10 big-screen release dates to remember — for better and worse
By Cheryl Eddy


>>Cinemania
Film: 50 ways to rep film this fall
By Johnny Ray Huston


>>Notes of a dirty old man
Lit: Or, a portion from a wine-stained notebook
By Charles Bukowski

>>FALL FAIRS AND FESTIVAL GUIDE
More festive events than you can shake a bare tree at
By Duncan Scott Davidson, Kat Renz, and Ian Ferguson

“Riot on Sunset Strip” film series

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PREVIEW Break out your go-go boots for this four-day flashback to Los Angeles’ 1960s experience hosted by Dominic Priore, author of Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Last Stand in Hollywood and Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece. It kicks off with the 1968 counterculture grab-bag You Are What You Eat, a freeform documentary encompassing both the LA and San Francisco hippie scenes, plus appearances by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, David Crosby, Tiny Tim, Paul Butterfield, the Hells Angels, the Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls Too (an actual place), and notorious (and soon to be killed) SF dealer Super Spade. Next up: Roger Corman’s ’67 chestnut The Trip, in which Peter Fonda takes a heavy ride through the windmills of his mind. That same year’s lesser-remembered Riot on Sunset Strip, produced by the inimitable Sam Katzman (1967’s Hot Rods to Hell, 1953’s Killer Ape), tells the shocking story of reckless youth Andy (Mimsy Farmer), looking for kicks you-know-where to escape her broken home. Bummers ensue, not helped by a surreptitious acid-dosing freakout and the fact that Andy’s dad is an LAPD chief! Two great garage bands, the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband, perform onscreen in this epic about those daring (as the advertising put it) "teenyboppers with their too-tight capris." Finally, Chris Hall’s 2006 Love Story documents the brief rise and long fall of Arthur Lee’s Love, the cult-adored psychedelic pop band.

"RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP" film series runs Thurs/28–Sun/31 at the Red Vic Movie House. See Rep Clock for showtimes.

Follow the Money, online, if you can.

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by Sarah Phelan

“Follow the money.” That’s what Deep Throat told reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men, William Goldman’s classic film about the investigation that led to President Nixon’s resignation.

It was good advice then and now, no matter what story you are investigating, no matter what city you live/work in.

But Deep Throat’s classic advice got a tad harder to follow in the city by the Bay, thanks to kinks in new software, plus the overzealous efforts of some interns who apparently got carried away with the black pen, while redacting campaign finance records down at the San Francisco Ethics Commission.

The SF Ethics Commission, just in case you are wondering, is where people running for elected office, and people running political campaigns, file their financial disclosure reports.

All of which makes Ethics a good place to start if you want to follow the money in a particular political race.

It’s a pathway that you need to keep watching for months, if not years, after a race, since many donations and expenditures are made at the last minute and aren’t recorded, until long after the victory champagne has gone flat.

These days, campaign filings can be made the old-fashioned way, with paper filings, or the new Internet-enabled way, with online filings.

If you file electronically, Ethics’ software automatically redacts the street addresses and signatures of campaign donors from these online records.

These redactions aren’t undertaken because of new redaction policies over at City Hall, Ethics officials say, but to put the department in compliance with the Secretary of State.

But when Ethics started contracting with private vendor Netfile this spring, Netfile’s software apparently began deleting donor’s zip codes, too.

As a result of these unsanctioned redactions, it became impossible to follow online, exactly which parts of the City, the money was flowing from, in the June 3 election.

Meanwhile, the address of the Ethics Commission itself got redacted from a couple of online reports. (You can view an example of this redaction classic, by clicking here:

“For them to redact the actual address of the Ethics Commission speaks volumes about the mood over there,” one City Hall insider told us.

But the way Ethics’ executive director John St. Croix explains it, this classic blooper occurred because Ethics was trying to expand the amount of information that available online.

“Some overzealous interns got carried away,” St. Croix said, as they tried to help Ethics redact donor street addresses from paper filings, before posting them online.

“This happened because we were trying to scan copies of paper filings and post them online, which has never been done before, “ St. Croix explained.

“We decided it wasn’t worth the effort to redo it, all over again, St. Croix added, noting that you can still view the original, non-redacted paper filings at the Ethics Office.

Provided, that is, that you have Ethics street address, which is at 25 Van Ness Avenue. But shh, don’t tell anyone!

Vamp camp

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STRAIGHT-TO-DVD REVIEW These are dark and bloody times for vampires. The Mormon-made young adult series Twilight goes multiplex in December. Next month brings the premiere of True Blood, an HBO drama about our fanged frenemies, created by Six Feet Under‘s Alan Ball. And at the vanguard of the iron-deficient-creatures-of-the-night revival is Lost Boys: The Tribe (Warner Premiere), a long-delayed sequel to 1987 teen vampire classic The Lost Boys.

Twenty years have passed since the Emerson family moved to Santa "Santa Cruz" Carla, when young Sam (Corey Haim) tacked up that sexy poster of Rob Lowe and met the Frog brothers (Haim ex-BFF Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander); older bro Michael (Jason Patric) partied down and pounded blood with overbite sufferer David (Kiefer Sutherland); and the mulleted, steroidalicious dude from Tina Turner’s band with the oily slip ‘n’ slide torso hoisted his sax aloft, sang "I Still Believe," and forever ruined the good name of Santa Cruz’s music scene. The back cover of The Tribe refers to the sequel as a "modern remagining" of the original. Does she mean to imply an imagined TV show or film name? Given how far downhill the national culture has slid over the past two decades (think, oh … The Two Coreys), it should come as no surprise that the straight-to-DVD sequel is figuratively as well as literally a suckfest.

A new pair of Emerson siblings, orphaned brother and sister Chris and Nicole (progeny of Michael? Sam?), move to a beachside town called Luna Bay and soon begin knocking heads and other body parts with a gang of meathead surfer vamps (the Poison look: definitely out). Having left behind his parents’ comic book shop, mysteriously solo vampire slayer Edgar Frog (Feldman) has taken up residence in a creepy trailer. A talentless half-brother to Kiefer Sutherland named Angus has been dredged up to play head bloodsucker Shane, who takes a shine to Nicole and slips blood in her drink, roofie-style, at a party.

Saddled with a mind-boggling script and actors of ill or no repute, the filmmakers attempt to distract us by upping the trash quotient. Picture a Dumpster after a six-week Sunset Scavenger strike. Or rather, picture a crapstorm of severed heads, entrails, impalements, fountains of blood, tits, alcoholic beverages poured on tits, ass, not one but two girl-on-girl makeout scenes, and many, many money shots of vampires mid–feeding frenzy. Suffer through the closing credits for The Two Coreys reunion as painful as anything you’ve seen on the A&E Television Network or YouTube. Suffer through the extras for a pair of equally Corey-tastic alternate endings, an Edgar Frog featurette on the tools of the trade (carbon fiber stakes, holy water balloons), and a depressing video in which a "Cry Little Sister" remix is performed for an audience of downmarket extras taking a stab at vampire chic.

Collage boys

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

As we enter the intoxicatingly rich world of Zona, we encounter a deceptively simple melodrama. It unfolds in shadow play on a gold-hued screen fronting a kind of rectangular tent at the back of the stage. We see the silhouette of a mother cradling her newborn infant, swaddled in a blanket, as an old recording of an Italian operatic duet comes seeping through. The woman sets the baby down and briefly retires from the scene, giving opportunity to a snarling beast which promptly swoops in and snatches up the child. Returning to find the babe gone, she collapses in a fit of grief and anguish as the music swells to its climax, her gently unduutf8g hand rising from her swooning body in a kind of unconscious farewell.

This same gesture, delicate and precise, returns later as another woman, played by the same male actor (a deft Stephen Lawson, now out in front of the curtain in another of several consecutive female guises), finally greets the beast that has been pursuing her — a naked male figure with the head of a bear — with a frightened reflex that suddenly transforms into a come hither call.

In its straightforwardness, the shadow play at the start of Zona is anything but straight. It sets up a number of complex tensions that will wend their way through a layered 55-minute multimedia collage of drag performance, lip-synch, camp iconography, and dark revelry presented by Montreal cabaret performance duo 2boys.tv (Lawson and Aaron Pollard). These tensions include the art form itself, as Zona recycles the tropes of queer cabaret in a focused reclamation of an intensely dark strain in midcentury American film and theater brooding on madness, desire, and loss.

Not that Zona isn’t also immediately rewarding and funny. A scene in which Lawson repeatedly mimes a looped sample of Elizabeth Taylor’s screams in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) is as hysterical as it is, frankly, hysterical. But it’s less an excuse for knowing camp humor than part of an attempt to push the queer cabaret form in a more dramatically serious direction, while allowing it more self-reflexivity than ever. Enveloped in an often breathtaking series of video-based images and a haunting soundscape, Zona traces a somber, troubled mood throughout, while eschewing any easy resolution of its themes.

Although originally created for a 2006 theater festival in Calgary, Canada, rather than a bar or cabaret, Zona‘s design stays true to its roots in underground queer theater, and is so intimate and compact it almost makes the modest stage at New Conservatory Theatre Center look overly roomy. At the same time, Pollard’s video and audio direction add greatly to the show’s ingenious layering of textures, cultural references, and associations. In one achingly lovely movement, a reclining Lawson, as the actress whose love has led her to the brink of madness, opens a large book toward the audience from the lip of the stage. On its blank pages appear two small video projections: one of the naked beast with bear’s head, and the other of the actress’ character herself, both dynamic images subtitled in halting phrases of pain, regret, and remembered passion. Lawson’s mesmerizing performance, meanwhile, strikes an eerie balance between human emotion and jagged masquerade.

Zona marks the West Coast debut for the Canadian duo, with thanks due to NCTC’s artistic director Ed Decker for bringing the denizens of Montreal’s vibrant scene out to the Bay Area. Here’s looking forward to the next time the boys are back in town.

ZONA

Wed–Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 2 p.m., $22–$34

New Conservatory Theatre Center

25 Van Ness, SF

(415) 861-8972

www.nctcsf.org

“Warchild”

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REVIEW German director Christian Wagner’s Warchild is a captivating and tragic drama about the psychological repercussions of the Bosnian war. Ten years after the fighting has ended, Senada (Labina Mitevska) comes across evidence suggesting that her daughter Aida, who was lost in the melee, might still be alive. She follows lead after lead with a kind of eerie resolve, undaunted by the fact that everyone — including her estranged husband — thinks she’s behaving irrationally. She eventually makes her way into Germany illegally and discovers that Aida, now 12 and renamed Kristina, was adopted by an affluent couple. Although the girl is clearly enjoying a life of privilege and has no recollection of her birth parents, Senada is determined to take her back to Bosnia. Naturally, this desperation is an expression of maternal love. But Senada also seems to believe that in reclaiming Aida, she will be able to reclaim the life that was essentially stolen from her during the war. Mitevska gives an arresting performance as the guarded but obviously broken protagonist; she is simultaneously sympathetic and unsettling.

WARCHILD opens Fri/22 at the Roxie Film Center. See Rep Clock for showtimes.

Into the wild

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I first heard singer-songwriter Kaki King when a friend returned from a three-month stint traveling in the Pacific Northwest with her third CD, …Until We Felt Red (Velour, 2006). She accidentally left the disc at my apartment and for the next few weeks before I, ahem, remembered to give it back, my world was filled to the brim with King’s ethereal, rhythmic compositions, all centered around her virtuosic guitar playing.

King, who turns 29 Aug. 24, made a name for herself as a solo guitarist on 2003’s Everybody Loves You (Velour), impressing guitar geeks with her unusual technique of picking the strings with both hands. On her next three albums, King gradually incorporated additional instrumentation, including her voice, into her empyrean sonic quilt-work. This year’s Dreaming of Revenge (Velour) is perhaps her most accessible recording yet.

"I’ve always been writing vocals into songs," King said from her parents’ home in Atlanta. "My first two records were instrumental guitar because that was kind of a discipline, just something I had been trying to accomplish."

While King’s sings more on Dreaming than ever — on almost half the tracks — the album remains grounded in her work as an instrumentalist, with her voice often figuring as just one more layer in a lush cosmic soundscape. Everything she writes, she explained, "has fundamentally to do with tuning up my guitar and working from there."

Other musicians have been converted to King’s music. Recently she has played on albums by the Foo Fighters and Tegan and Sara, been showcased in the 2007 film, Into the Wild, and gigged as a hand double in August Rush (2007). But King insists that she did not imagine herself paying the bills as a full-time musician until just before she recorded her third album. "I always thought, ‘Oh, I’ll do another record and then I’ll go to grad school,’<0x2009>" she said. She always assumed she would take over her parents’ law firm.

The songwriter will play Outside Lands with a five-piece, although lately she has been yearning to return to her solo roots, which she plans to do on her fall tour. "I’m doing a show that’s going completely back to just me on guitar, what I was doing when I was touring the first time," she said. "I have lost just a little bit of my chops because I haven’t played guitar at that level in a while, so I’m basically rechallenging myself to go out there for 70 or 80 minutes playing just guitar — no looping, no bands, no cutesy chit-chat. It feels almost like a cleansing thing."

KAKI KING performs at 4:30 p.m., Sat/23, on Outside Lands‘ Presidio stage, Lindley Meadow.

Comic drama

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Rock me, sexy Jesus — I mean, sexy, sniffle-y Steve Coogan. With a little luck, the British actor’s latest comedy will soon place those lyrics on the lips of teenaged malcontents — the same ilk that Coogan’s hemorrhoid-commercial thespian and high school drama theater Dana Marschz haplessly mentors in Hamlet 2. As a parody of inspirational teacher flicks, Hamlet 2 (see our review) is a rousing success — the type Mr. Holland would toss his opus for. It’s almost completely due to Coogan. In contrast to his brief, blotto turn through that other cinematic lampoon in the theaters, Tropic Thunder, he klutzes, kibitzes, and futzes, hilariously, through nearly every frame.

Hamlet 2 finds Coogan playing an American mired in a monochromatic Albuquerque. Marschz is a pathetic synthesis of ditziness, show-must-go-on hope, and ambition — writing Hamlet 2 seems the perfect way for him to exorcise his own fatherly ghosts and put a feel-good spin on that downer play. Yet it was the character’s bare-faced vulnerability that Coogan — known in the United Kingdom for his TV commentator Alan Partridge and stateside as an independent actor who has appeared in films by Michael Winterbottom, Jim Jarmusch, and Sofia Coppola — found most daunting.

"I think I’m going to fall flat on my face in everything I do, really," allows the actor, congested and "bunged-up" during the San Francisco stop of a press tour. "I’m used to playing comic characters who are often unpleasant people and who you somehow have some kind of empathy for. This guy isn’t awful or nasty. He’s vulnerable and foolish and slightly self-delusional. I could see how you could make him funny. [The trick is to make sure] the audience would care enough about him to see it through to the end. That was the tough thing."

Coogan meets the challenge. Now perhaps kids in music stores will call out for the actor’s drama geek or rocker Christ figure as much as his smirking, überhipster version of Tony Wilson in 2002’s 24 Hour Party People. "I feel very, very close to that film," Coogan says of Wilson, partly because he grew up in Manchester, where he often slipped into Wilson’s Hacienda nightclub. "All the events in that movie, I witnessed as a young teenager. When I did the movie, I felt like I was reliving my youth — except I was playing the guy at the center of the events, rather than the spectator."

Money for nothing

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seems to be feeling pretty confident in her reelection prospects this November, despite an independent challenge by high-profile peace mom Cindy Sheehan.

But that hasn’t stopped the San Francisco Democrat from raising big bucks from scores of interest groups who are contributing to her campaign committee and to the political action committee she controls, known as PAC to the Future.

Most of the money she’s raising is going toward assuring her continued power in Washington by giving it to the campaigns of other Democratic members of Congress, particularly those facing tough election battles that could threaten the party’s House majority.

Pelosi’s reelection committee has raised $2.36 million over the past two years, hundreds of thousands more than the average House member, according to federal campaign disclosure records and data maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Her PAC raised an additional $585,000 during the current election cycle and spent $769,000, much of which has also gone to other candidate committees in payments of $5,000 and $10,000.

Many newly elected Democrats in the House represent conservative constituencies, and with her blessing they sometimes vote with Republicans to distance themselves from the party’s perceived liberal leaders like Pelosi, according to a new book published this month, Money in the House: Campaign Funds and Congressional Party Politics (Perseus, 2008). Democratic leaders in the meantime have continued a phenomenal fundraising spree to help protect those House members.

"Speaker Pelosi’s extraordinary financial commitment to her party, and especially to her party’s vulnerable members, illustrates the overriding emphasis congressional parties and members place on money," writes author Marian Currinder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. "And her encouragement of selective ‘opposition votes’ demonstrates the complexity of governing in a highly partisan and highly competitive political environment."

Even the day-to-day reelection expenses of Washington’s unrivaled leading lady are outsize, as Pelosi’s spending records show. In June 2007, she celebrated her 20th year in Congress with a glitzy fundraiser held in the capital’s Union Station that cost at least $92,000 and featured a performance by soul singer Patti LaBelle.

The bill included $25,393 for a slick video production; $61,105 on catering, rentals, and securing the site; $2,000 for hairstyling and wardrobe assistance insisted on by LaBelle; $2,824 on flower arrangements; and $1,396 for chocolates from a Pennsylvania-based confection maker.

Pelosi spent at least $650 from her campaign on makeup for the steady string of appearances she made after being sworn in as House speaker in January 2007. An annual fundraiser held this year at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco cost $23,454 for catering and other expenses.

As for the top contributors to Pelosi’s reelection committee, they include several members of the Gallo family, proprietors of the E&J Gallo Winery, who gave a total of $23,000 through maximum individual donations of $4,600. The Modesto-based company has long made contributions to both parties, particularly enriching candidates who show a willingness to scale back or even throw out the federal estate tax, which affects the inheritances of the wealthiest American families.

The Corrections Corporation of America gave $2,300 to Pelosi and $2,700 to her PAC. CCA is part of a storied group of for-profit privatization companies in Nashville, Tenn. that are closely tied to former Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist and includes the Hospital Corporation of America and Ardent Health Services.

Just this year, the state of California hired CCA to house 8,000 inmates at six of the company’s facilities; a significant portion will go to a new $205 million CCA complex under construction in Arizona.

The nation’s largest private jail company suffered bad publicity during the 1990s due to a series of high-profile escapes and inmate killings inside its prisons. It teetered on the edge of bankruptcy after overbuilding jails without having enough inmates available to fill them, but the George W. Bush administration helped save the company with a new homeland security agenda that called for confining rather than releasing undocumented immigrants while they awaited deportation or asylum-request proceedings. The company’s revenue jumped nearly a half-billion dollars over the last five years and its lobbying activities in Washington, DC have increased similarly.

The entertainment industry has ponied up its share to Pelosi as well. The maximum $4,600 donation came from Aaron Sorkin, powerhouse writer behind the long-running TV series The West Wing and the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War. Christie Hefner, a regular donor to Democrats and heiress to Playboy Enterprises, contributed $1,000.

Steven Bing, a Hollywood producer who inherited a real estate fortune, and billionaire Las Vegas developer Kirk Kerkorian gave thousands to Pelosi over the last two years. Kerkorian has given to both parties, but he and Bing share a special relationship after having fought a nasty tabloid war.

Kerkorian allegedly hired private investigators to sift through Bing’s trash in search of DNA evidence that would link him to a child borne by Kerkorian’s ex-wife, whom he was divorcing, according to a lawsuit filed by Bing. Vanity Fair in July described Bing as part of a skirt-chasing entourage that ran with Bill Clinton and threatened to tarnish Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid with its freewheeling bachelor reputation.

The wealthy Herbert and Marion Sandler, major supporters of MoveOn.org and other social justice causes, gave Pelosi a combined $9,200. The couple presided over the meteoric rise of Oakland mortgage lender Golden West Financial, which sold to Wachovia for $24 billion in 2006. The housing crisis led Wachovia to post staggering multibillion-dollar losses this summer, and some business writers have attributed its declining fortunes to the Golden West purchase.

In June, George Zimmer of Fremont, founder of the Men’s Warehouse, gave $2,300. Notable husband and wife political team Clint and Janet Reilly, both active as candidates and donors, contributed a total of $19,200 to Pelosi’s campaign and PAC.

"Essentially, raising money for the party and its candidates is required of leaders," Money in the House author Currinder told the Guardian. "Pelosi wouldn’t have been elected speaker if she wasn’t a stellar fundraiser."

So where is Pelosi’s money going if not to television ads for her own campaign? She divided $250,000 among the campaigns of approximately 70 congressional candidates, and disbursed about $532,000 more to them through PAC to the Future. The beneficiaries included $14,000 to Democrat Chet Edwards of Texas, whose district includes President George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch. Pelosi has publicly recommended him to Barack Obama as a possible running mate.

In addition, about half of the money Pelosi has raised since the beginning of 2007, slightly more than $1 million, went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, DC. She also gave to the Democratic parties of key battleground states including Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio. She singled out Democrat Travis Childers of Mississippi for extra cash totaling $21,000. In May, Childers stunned observers by defeating a Republican in a special election held when a representative vacated his House seat to take over for conservative icon Sen. Trent Lott.

"She has had prodigious success raising funds for individual Democratic candidates, for the DCCC, and for her own campaign and PAC," Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institute, told us. "Most party leaders represent safe seats but nonetheless try to set a high standard for raising money to advance their party’s broader objectives."

Pelosi’s Capitol Hill and San Francisco offices directed our questions to her fundraising operations at the DCCC. Her political director there, Brian Wolff, called the war chest "another vehicle for her to communicate with constituents in California." But he conceded that the pressure is on, "especially now that we have so many candidates and incumbents that need help. It definitely falls on her to be able to have a very aggressive fundraising campaign."

Wolff insists, too, that the Democrats revolutionized fundraising by seeking out smaller donations from large numbers of people instead of returning to the same short list of affluent contributors they had in the past.

In general, top donations to Pelosi still have come from lobbyists and lawyers, the real estate industry, insurance companies, banking and securities firms, and Amgen, a major biotech researcher based in Thousand Oaks. Officials from the labor movement’s biggest new power broker, the Service Employees International Union, also gave substantial sums, as did other major unions. But they fell far behind the contributions of large business interests.

Art Torres, chair of the California Democratic Party, told us that health care reform failed in 1990s at least partly because of political spending by drug companies. But he said that Democrats winning the White House and expanding their majorities in Congress would create a greater mandate to overhaul the health care system.

"It’s always been about issues" rather than fundraising, Torres said. "When I’ve talked to her, it’s always been about ‘How can we get this or that legislation through?’<0x2009>"

It’s worth pointing out, however, that the nation’s largest drug wholesaler, McKesson Corp., is based in San Francisco, and donors from pharmaceutical companies gave Pelosi more than $85,000 this cycle. Drug companies have given freely to Democrats in the past, but Democratic officeholders "still voted against their interests every time," Torres said.

Pelosi’s campaign spending on everything but her own reelection shows she doesn’t regard Sheehan as much of a threat. But the antiwar candidate did make it onto the ballot Aug. 8 and the Sheehan campaign has raised approximately $350,000 since December in small contributions after refusing to accept money from PACs and corporations.

"We didn’t have the party infrastructure going into this," said Sheehan campaign manager Tiffany Burns, adding that Pelosi’s campaign expenditures are "just another example of how Pelosi believes she is entitled to this seat."

“Trumbo”

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REVIEW "I have the feeling that if you give most people in the world the choice between enough food for their children and shelter and clothing in return for their freedom of speech, that they will go for the food, the shelter, and the necessities," said Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter of Spartacus (1960), Exodus (1960), Papillon (1973), and a number of other films, including Roman Holiday (1953) and The Brave One (1956), that either were written under an assumed name or (at the time) simply went uncredited. Trumbo and the rest of the "Hollywood 10" — screenwriters and directors who, when suspected of being communists, refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee by invoking the First Amendment, not the Fifth, as justification. They were subsequently blacklisted by Hollywood studios. Trumbo director Peter Askin weaves insightful commentary from family, friends, film historians, and actors (Donald Sutherland, Dustin Hoffman, and Kirk Douglas make appearances) with vintage footage of the Academy Award–winning writer, giving us an eloquent portrait of a stubborn but nevertheless admirable man. Although the documentary is ostensibly about the impact the blacklisting had on the screenwriter’s life, excerpts from speeches, novels, and letters (read by the likes of Joan Allen, Paul Giamatti, Liam Neeson, David Strathairn, and Michael Douglas) are interspersed throughout the film, showing that Trumbo (who died in 1976 at age 70) had a way of making words dance — and that he was deeply invested in everything he wrote.

TRUMBO opens Fri/15 in Bay Area theaters.

A passage to everywhere

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On the current season of Weeds, the brother-in-law and erstwhile accountant of pot-dealing MILF Mary-Louise Parker hatch a moneymaking scheme they’re convinced can’t miss: becoming "coyotes," guiding illegal immigrants across the US-Mexico border. Weeds is, of course, a comedy, but its characters’ recent relocation to the San Diego area has made border-crossing (Parker drives across to pick up a shipment … ) and immigration ( … and, unknowingly, brings back a man in the trunk of her Prius) among the show’s focal themes. The same topic, but from a (mostly) more serious angle, informs "Crossing the Border," a film series running Aug. 15–21 at the Roxie Film Center. Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo’s 2006 doc Arizona Crossing takes a sobering look at immigration via the harsh, remote, and often deadly Southwestern desert, offering revealing interviews with both advocates and opponents. Of course, US-Mexico ain’t the only high-tension border on the globe. "Crossing the Border" is cosponsored by Goethe-Institut of San Francisco, and many of its selections concern European frontiers — proof that the desire to find a better life (even if it involves a total uprooting of all that is familiar, and introduces almost certain danger) is truly a universal one.

"CROSSING THE BORDER"

Aug. 15–21

Roxie Film Center, 3117 16th St., SF

(415) 431-3611, www.roxie.com

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