International

Don’t fence him in

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Don’t fence him in

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE One of the most fascinating aspects of the world of dance studies has been the split that has taken place in the last few decades between dance history and dance theory. To oversimplify, the first concerns itself with discussing works in terms of their formal values of aesthetics; the second, influenced by cultural studies, prefers to look at pieces as social constructs.

Of course, there is an overlap between the two fields, and while I appreciated this new way of thinking about dance as a mind expander, I also deeply resented what I considered the devaluing of individual artistic achievement.

Good news: dancers themselves have come to the rescue. Immersed in cultural, gender, race, and other sociological studies — the lingua franca of today’s academy — they have started making works in which concepts like ambiguity, perception and reality, performance and identity, and direct and mediated experience are the subject matter, not a byproduct, of their work-making concerns. Some of these approaches — such as Jess Curtis’ ongoing Symmetry Project Studies, for instance — have yielded astounding results. Or Keith Hennessy’s mashing together of sociopolitical issues into novel form-giving approaches. Even at the heart of Joe Goode’s work, though he is in many ways a more traditional artist, lie principles of uncertainty and multiplicity on a constantly shifting ground.

It’s probably no accident that Miguel Gutierrez, a prominent member of this group of artists, started his career in the Joe Goode Performance Group. Gutierrez, now a New York City resident with a growing international reputation from France to Australia, is bringing his most recent piece, HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE, to San Francisco. Clever that man he is, he recently refused to describe this solo in an interview with the Dancers Group’s indance publication.

Gutierrez last performed in San Francisco in 2008, when he brought his Bessie Award-winning Retrospective Exhibitionist/Difficult Bodies to what is now Z Space. It consisted of a solo for himself and a trio for Anna Azrieli, Michelle Boule, and Abby Crain. Although the trio had its own merits, it was Gutierrez’s appropriately-titled solo that communicated as a gutsy, spectacularly in-your-face piece of dance theater. Retrospective intrigued because of newness, intoxicated because of its intensity, and overall impressed because it was a complete statement. The questions Gutierrez asked about identity, perception, and the nature of performance may not have been that novel or original, but the way he framed them within a reshaped theatrical context made them so.

Wriggling lasciviously on a full-length mirror, he attempted to devour and slip into his own image. It was simultaneously pathetic and touching. Putting side-by side a video of himself as a high school pretty boy with two girls and his current, lived-in body as a gay man on stage put both identities in question.

In another section, Gutierrez laconically read aloud answers he had given in a videotaped interview while we watched the original on a monitor. What was more true: the artifice of his aping himself or the fake spontaneity of the television image?

Gutierrez appears in San Francisco as part of the Garage’s Verge festival, where kindred spirits Laura Arrington, Jorge de Hoyos, and Jesse Hewit will open for him. Garage director Joe Landini is presenting Gutierrez because he wants to encourage this type of performance practice, but also because he is an old friend. “Miguel used to run that [Methuselah-age] elevator at 50 Oak Street,” he remembers — up to Lines Ballet’s studios and down to the basement swimming pool. 

HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE Fri/8–Sun/10, 8 p.m., $15. Garage, 975 Howard, SF. www.brownpapertickets.com

 

The nonconformist

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The nonconformist

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Marxist, aesthete, padrone, Oscar winner, supreme screen sensualist — the list of contradictions goes on, onscreen as well as off, for Bernardo Bertolucci. Earlier this year he emerged from a long creative hibernation (attributable, it turns out, to back pain so severe it prevented any work) to accept an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival and begin work on his first film in nearly a decade, a claustrophobic drama about a withdrawn teen who secretly sequesters himself in the family basement. It will be filmed in 3-D — an idea so daft it just might prove brilliant.

Because, after all, it is lunacy and excess as well as intelligence, beauty, instinct, and so forth that have led Bertolucci to some of his most extraordinary as well as dubious achievements, nearly all of them debatable as falling into either category.

Now that he’s reaching a half-century spent in the director’s chair, it is clear what an unpredictable, erratic, even arbitrary career this has been; the line between the sublime and silly in his films is easily felt but almost impossible to define. What makes 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, for instance, a genuine fever dream of mad desire, while two later films equally about eros and yearning — 1996’s Stealing Beauty and 2003’s The Dreamers — are fussy, false, a little embarrassing? Trained as a poet (whatever that means), he surrenders to cinema time and again as someone intoxicated by images as he once was to words, taking each sustained impulse to its logical (or illogical) endpoint, whether to transcendence or off an artistic cliff.

The Pacific Film Archive’s summer retrospective “Bernardo Bertolucci: In Search of Mystery” provides an opportunity to weigh most of the exhilarating highs and a couple of the baffling lows in a wayward trajectory one hopes is nowhere near complete. (Only 71, he can surely spare us another three decades — look at Manoel de Oliveira, wildly prolific at 102, yet without a single film as memorable as a half-dozen or more of Bertolucci’s.) All 13 features will be offered in new prints, a big lure for a director whose best movies — particularly those shot by the incomparable cinematographer Vittorio Storaro — it would be criminal to view in any but the most pristine visual condition.

After a promising literary start as a teenager — his father, notably, was a well-regarded poet, art historian, and film critic — Bertolucci apprenticed to family friend Pier Paolo Pasolini on 1961’s Accattone!. When Pasolini moved on to another project, Bertolucci made his own directorial debut at age 21 with similarly gritty The Grim Reaper (1962). That tale of a prostitute’s murder, cowritten with Pasolini, as well as 1964’s Before the Revolution (a presumably somewhat autobiographical mélange about a young bourgeois torn between tentative radicalization and pleasures of the flesh as represented by Bertolucci’s then-wife Adriana Asti) reflected his heavy early influencing by the ebbing Italian neorealist movement and still-current French New Wave.

Inspired by Dostoyevsky, 1968’s Partner was a transitional work, straddling Godardian dialecticism and pure extravagance. When 1970’s Jorge Luis Borges-drawn puzzle The Spider’s Strategem found Bertolucci discovering his sumptuous mature style (as well as Storaro’s rapturous lighting and camera movement), Godard denounced him as a sellout. The international breakthrough was that same year’s The Conformist, a Moravia story about the individual surrender to fascism — passivity turning to criminality being a frequent Bertolucci subject — that somehow became a baroque tone poem of saturated color, hedonistic suggestion, and damp paranoia. It announced the arrival of a great artist, albeit one for whom style would always trump political content, and whose literary sources were often twisted nearly past recognition by his own overwhelming authorial stamp.

The 1970s were a dazzling high-wire decade for Bertolucci. Last Tango was an X-rated scandal and sensation, an experience so psychologically (and literally) naked for Marlon Brando that he didn’t speak to the director for years afterward. Bertolucci explained: “He felt that I stole something from him, that he didn’t know what he was doing … I like to have very famous, important actors because it is a challenge to find out what they are hiding.”) Its tale of two people with only compulsive coitus in common is still berserk, implausible, off-putting, and completely enveloping.

The epic, multinational cast (Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Dominique Sanda, Burt Lancaster, even some Italians) 1900, a film originally over five hours long, offered the first half of Italy’s 20th century as a class struggle, as well as a conceptual one, between idealism and decadent pageantry — Pasolini wrestling with Luchino Visconti. Few knew what to make of the contrastingly intimate (yet, again, stylistically gaga) 1979 La Luna, an Oedipal drama based on a dream Bertolucci had about Maria Callas. Fervently loved by a slim cult following, it was otherwise so ridiculed and loathed that 32 years later 20th Century Fox still hasn’t coughed up a U.S. home-format release.

With the new decade, the limbs Bertolucci went out on became less reliably inspirational, perhaps partly because Storaro had developed conflicting allegiances to other directors (Francis Ford Coppola, Carlos Saura, Warren Beatty). Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981) is dispirited and dull. Little Buddha (1993) was a silly idea nonetheless spiked by enchanted storybook scenes with Keanu Reeves as Siddhartha — ludicrous-sounding stunt casting that is somehow perfect. Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers found this uneasily homophilic director reduced to ogling young bodies of both sexes like a dirty old professor.

On the other hand, 1990’s The Sheltering Sky was difficult, ravishing, another masterpiece if a great commercial disappointment. Another leap into exotica, 1987’s The Last Emperor had the opposite fate — winning all nine of its nominated Oscars in a slow year, a staggering spectacle widely admired yet loved by few (least of all the Chinese), elephantine yet wry, and closer to David Lean respectability than auteurist idiosyncrasy. Then after all this 1998’s Besieged, a tiny story of unrequited love and noble sacrifice shot with two actors and hand-held camera, felt rejuvenative — as if the increasingly burdened composer of massive symphonies had discovered the joy in a piano miniature.

The curio in the PFA’s series is 1967’s The Path of Oil — a three-part Italian documentary about petroleum production, apparently undertaken in a funk when two failed first features had temporarily reduced his career prospects. It’s handsome, if clearly less than a labor of love. But for the Bertolucci fetishist, no film is so impersonal or underwhelming (or on the other hand beloved) that it might not yet spring surprises, whether on a first viewing or an umpteenth. 

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI: IN SEARCH OF MYSTERY

July 8–Aug. 18, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

bampfa.berkeley.edu

Sad day for San Francisco film fans

Sue Vaughan
-
2
Sad day for San Francisco film fans

Two big bummers today, my fellow cinemaniacs.

The first bit of news is that it’s official, according to collective member Claudia Lehan: beloved Haight Street landmark the Red Vic Movie House will officially be closing its doors July 25, the theater’s 31st birthday (read my story about the Red Vic’s 30th birthday year here.) The last film to grace its screen will be perennial Red Vic favorite (and annual Red Vic birthday flick), Harold and Maude (1971). Stay tuned for more on this story.

And sad news from the San Francisco Film Society: charismatic executive director Graham Leggat will be stepping down from the post he’s held since 2005 due to health issues, according to a SFFS press release. (Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik has more on the story here.) Leggat wasn’t just a figurehead for the organization. He oversaw a huge expansion of SFFS’ programs — per the release: “Historic developments under Leggat’s direction include the launch of the country’s only daily independent regional online film magazine, SF360.org, in 2006; integration of the filmmaker services programs of Film Arts Foundation in 2008, which have since grown into a rich array of grants, residencies and project development services; the creation and expansion of SFFS’s annual Fall Season slate of festivals and events, which this year includes seven themed film series between September and November; and the recent announcement of the creation of the San Francisco Film Society New People Cinema, which provides a year-round theatrical home for the organization’s myriad activities for the first time in its 54-year history.” Best of luck to Leggat — a man whose charming, witty presence is familiar to all regular attendees of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

(Summer!) Trash Lit: The Profession

Zelda Bronstein
-
0
(Summer!) Trash Lit: The Profession

By Steven Pressfield. Crown, 320 pages, $25


Wow, they still drink Rolling Rock in 2032. And they still use military laptops and handhelds and complain about bad TV reception. The web doesn’t seem to have advanced much, and people still rely on the Al Jazeera video feed to see what’s going on in the Middle East.


There’s a lot that’s jarring in The Profession, a military thriller set in the Middle East 20 years in the future. For one thing, the future looks a lot like today, except that there’s been a dirty bomb attack on Long Beach and the Chinese are starting to cash in their U.S. debt, putting the world economy into turmoil. (It takes China 20 years to figure that out? Damn.)
So it’s pretty bad sci-fi. But it’s not a bad adaptation of the Heart of Darkness/Apaocalypse Now myth of the powerful general who goes rogue with his loyal troops and tries to take over part of the world.


In this case, it’s the Middle East, where (again, bad sci-fi) they’ve just found some more really rich oil fields. And much of the military work of the major nations is done by mercenaries.


One of them is General James Salter, who got cashiered out of the Marine Corps for defying the president’s orders, but who has a MacArthur-like following in both the military and the civilian worlds. He’s a private soldier now, and he’s got this plan to take control of much of the world’s oil, and then return in triumph to Washington, where he can become president (oh, and marry the widow of the prez who cashiered him, who is also involved in this plot.


Our hero, Gilbert Gentilhomme (and what kind of name is that for an action hero?) is one of Salter’s best friends and loyalists, one of the few who can get close to the great man. And he knows he can’t let the general get away with his plan.


Lots of desert battles. Random brutality. International intrigue, of sorts. A bleak and dusty vision of the future — but one where there’s no climate change or peak oil. No sex (and how come none of this summer’s thrillers have any sex?). But not bad for a quick beach read.
 

Burner artists go bigger and wider

Sasha Cuttler
-
66
Burner artists go bigger and wider

I’ve been covering Burning Man for many years, both for the Guardian and my book, so it’s easy to feel a little jaded about another year of preparing for that annual pilgrimage to the playa. But then I plug into the innovative projects that people are pursuing – as I did last week for the annual Desert Arts Preview – and I find myself as amazed and wide-eyed as a Burning Man virgin.
And when the weekend came, I watched my old camps go bigger than ever – with Opulent Temple throwing a rocking Rites of Massive six-stage dance party on Treasure Island, and the Flux Foundation lighting up the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas with its newest installation, BrollyFlock – demonstrating the ambitious scale at which veteran burners are now operating.
Increasingly, burners are putting their energies into real world projects not bound for Burning Man, often with the help of Black Rock Arts Foundation, the nonprofit spinoff of Black Rock City LLC that funds and facilitates public art projects. BRAF’s latest, a project that is also receiving a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, is The Bike Bridge, which pairs noted burner artist Michael Christian with 12 young women from Oakland to turn old bicycles and bike parts into sculptures that will be built at The Crucible and placed throughout Oakland.
“The Bike Bridge is the next evolution of our community-focused public art projects,” BRAF Executive Director Tomas McCabe said in a June 23 press release. “This educational and creative project is designed specifically to engage Oakland’s youth.”
Later that evening, McCabe and other burners gathered on the waterfront in Kelly’s Mission Cafe for the Desert Arts Preview, where he ticked off a long list of projects that BRAF was working on around the world, from the conversion of a bridge in Portland, Ore. into an elaborate artwork to a sculpture made of sails for next year’s Figment festival in New York City to a bus opera (written about bus culture and performed aboard buses) in Santa Fe to a cool interactive floating eyeball artwork that will tour Paris, London, Barcelona, and San Francisco to the BOOM Parade (combining bicycles and boom boxes) that will roll through Bayview Hunters Point in October.
But the most ambitious artworks are still being planned for that limitless canvas of the Black Rock Desert, where Burning Man will be staged in late August. This year’s temple, The Temple of Transition, is being built out of Reno by a huge international crew from 20 countries headed by a pair of artists known simply by their nationalities, Irish and Kiwi, who built Megatropolis at last year’s event.
“We built a city block of buildings and burned it to the ground,” Kiwi told the gathering, noting how impressed he’s been by a number of recent projects he’s watched. “When you start doing that, you feel challenged and wonder what you can do next.”
Irish said they were particularly inspired by watching the Temple of Flux go up last year, a project involving more than 200 volunteers that I worked on and chronicled for the Guardian, and said it made them want to bid to build this year’s temple. “That’s what inspired us,” Irish said.
The project includes a series of towers and altars, the tallest one in the center reaching about 120-feet into the air, a phenomenal height against the vast flatness of the playa. They said volunteers have been plentiful and the city of Reno has actively facilitated their work, “but our main concern is having enough finances,” Kiwi said.
The project got a grant from the company that stages Burning Man, Black Rock City LLC, which gave almost $500,000 to 44 different projects this year, but most didn’t come anywhere close to covering the full project costs. The Temple of Transition bridged its gap by raising almost $25,000 in a campaign on Kickstarter, which many projects are now using.  
“It’s a great way to cut out the middle man. You guys are funding art directly,” longtime artist Jon Sarriugarte, who got a BRC art grant this year to build the Serpent Twins (with his partner, Kyrsten Mate), said of Kickstarter, where he was about three-quarters of the way to meeting his goal of the $10,000 he needs to cover his remaining project costs.
Serpent Twins is a pair of Nordic serpents crafted from a train of 55-gallon containers and illuminated with fire and LED effects that will snake their way around the playa this year, one of many mobile artworks that have been getting ever more ambitious each year.
“I love the playa. It’s a beautiful canvas, but it’s also a beautiful road,” Sarriugarte told the group, conveying his excitement at driving his art into groups of desert wanderers: “I can’t wait to split the crowds and then contain them.”
Another cool project that is in the final days of a much-needed Kickstarter campaign is Otic Oasis, whose artists (including longtime Burning Man attorney Lightning Clearwater) brought a scale model to the event. It’s a slotted wood structure made up of comfy lounging pods stacked into a 35-foot pyramid design that will be placed in the quietest corner of the playa: deep in the walk-in camping area, inaccessible to art cars and other distractions.
That and other projects that are doing Kickstarter campaign are listed on the Burning Man website, where visitors can get a nice overview of what’s in store.  
One project that didn’t meet its ambitious Kickstarter goal was Truth & Beauty, artist Marco Cochrane’s follow-up to last year’s amazing Blissdance, a 40-sculpture of a dancing nude woman that has temporarily been placed on Treasure Island. But the crew has already made significant progress on the new project, a 55-foot sculpture of the same model in a different pose (stretching her arms skyward), and Cochrane told me they will be bringing a section of her from her knees to shoulders as a climbable artwork.

The Flux crew has been working for months on BrollyFrock, a renegade flock of flaming, illuminated, and shade-producing umbrellas that was commissioned by Imsomniac for its Nocturnal and Electric Daily Carnival music festivals, and it was placed at the latter festival near Wish, large dandelions that were built near the Temple of Flux at Burning Man last year, as well as new artworks by Michael Christian. Flux’s Jessica Hobbs said burners artists have become much sought-after by the large festivals that have begun to proliferate.

“I really think a lot of these music festivals are looking at how our pieces make an experience,” Hobbs said, citing both the spectacularity and interactivity that are the hallmarks of Burning Man artworks of the modern era. The Flux crew was pushed to meet a tight deadline for the project, preventing them from doing a big project for Burning Man this year, but that’s just part of the diversification being experienced by burner artists these days. “We challenged ourselves and we came away with another great project.”

 

Smells like motherland spirit

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Smells like motherland spirit

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM When North Korea makes the news, it’s usually under unpleasant headlines containing words like “nuclear” and “hostilities.” What most Americans know of this secretive country is either drawn from these dire reports or formed via pop culture. Notable are Vice magazine’s surprisingly illuminating North Korean travelogue, which “aired” online, and a pair of 2004 films: doc A State of Mind, about two girls training for the country’s circus-on-a-terrifying-scale Mass Games, and, of course, Team America: World Police.

For the sum of a few thousand euros, Beijing-based Koryo Tours can book Westerners (except journalists — NO JOURNALISTS ALLOWED!) on trips that include the Mass Games, the DMZ, Baekdu Mountain, and more (act now for the “Kim Il Sung 100th Birthday Ultimate Mega Tour 2012”!) The Koryo website’s FAQ (“Will the guides try to brainwash me?”) offers quite an education about how controlled access to the country really is — as you might suspect, tourists have to be extremely careful where they point their cameras. Still, a vacation in North Korea would surely be a one-of-a-kind experience.

With that in mind, Koryo is sponsoring a screening of a one-of-a-kind — at least in America — film, Centre Forward, a 1978 curio that was digitally restored in 2010. Directed with limited artistic flair by Pak Chong-Song (according the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ website, “considered one of the DPRK’s finest filmmakers”), this 75-minute, black-and-white propaganda piece weaves the tale of Comrade In Son, a gifted but inexperienced soccer player struggling to succeed on a team that recently upgraded its training regime from merely exhausting to sadistically brutal.

Along the way, the lad wearing No. 17 learns important lessons from his sister (a dancer whose training also tends toward the sadistically brutal), his roommate (an older player with international triumphs under his belt), his coach (who gives motivational speeches that invoke the teachings of the Fatherly Leader), and the lyrics of the rousing tunes that play over the film’s many montages — “Oh we are sportspersons of the Leader, let us demonstrate wisdom and vigor,” that sort of thing. There’s never any doubt, because it’s emphasized over and over, that sporting glory is owned by the motherland, not individual players. (Though if you fail, you’re personally responsible for hindering the DPRK’s pursuit of being “a kingdom of sports.”)

Centre Forward‘s original release must’ve stirred the hearts of North Korean soccer fans who recalled the national team’s best-ever World Cup showing; in 1966, it reached the quarter-finals after defeating perennial powerhouse Italy. Contemporary fans might better remember the 2010 World Cup, though they’d probably prefer not to — while even qualifying for the tournament was an accomplishment (and the extreme underdogs did score a goal in their game against Brazil), the team exited after three losses, including a humiliating 0-7 defeat versus Portugal.

The media, of course, feasted on the oddities the outsider country brought to the World Cup stage: the identically-dressed fans that were alleged to be Chinese actors imported to South Africa for the occasion; the assertion that the North Korean coach was getting pitch-side advice from Kim Jong-il via an invisible phone invented by the Supreme Leader himself. We chuckled, sure. But who didn’t worry a bit when the team had to trudge back to Pyongyang, still stinging from having their asses handed to them on international television by Cristiano Ronaldo and company?

Multiple sources reported the team and coach were “publicly rebuked” (some said for six hours) for their poor showing, and that the team was forced to “reprimand” their own coach, who was then quickly shunted into a laboring job (see above, re: “kingdom of sports.”) Superstar striker Jong Tae-se — loyal to North Korea, but born in Japan, so he enjoys the decadent luxury of playing in Europe — was spared from this punishment. But what happened to the other players? If Centre Forward‘s “no pain-no gain” training philosophy at all resembles real life, I shudder to imagine.

CENTRE FORWARD

Thurs/30, 7:30 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Fake-out

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Fake-out

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL It’s not just the title of Stephanie Syjuco’s solo show “RAIDERS” — her first at Catharine Clark Gallery — that brings to mind Indiana Jones. Something of the latter-day swashbuckler comes across in Syjuco’s art, which, like Indy, initially seems to be playing to all sides for the sake of plunder — when in fact this cleverness is the outward expression of a deeper skepticism toward the very institutions it’s engaged with.

But Indiana Jones is also a pop cultural commodity and a franchise that has netted millions for creators George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. This too, I imagine, is not lost on Syjuco, whose work frequently strips Pop Art bare of its smart, slick exterior (as well as Conceptual Art of its pretensions) to access the larger and far less glamorous network of market forces, production processes, and questions of ownership that shape it as a commodity.

Whereas Takashi Murakami installed an actual Louis Vuitton boutique inside Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, Syjuco’s project “Counterfeit Crochet” called on hobbyists the world over to knit fake designer bags, complete with logos, and even provided the patterns and instructions. She has also, on more than one occasion, set up detourned versions of shops and marketplaces inside museum walls.

“RAIDERS” opens with an installation of what at first glance appears to be a collection of handsome Asian antiquities — mainly vases and small, decorative vessels — arranged on the very shipping crates they were transported in. It quickly becomes obvious that what we’re looking at is truly a set-piece, and that the “priceless” cache before us is actually an arrangement of life-size photographic reproductions adhered to laser-cut wooden backings.

Raiders: International Booty, Bountiful Harvest (Selections from the A____ A__ M______) — to give the installation its full title — becomes more interesting when you consider that Syjuco used images downloaded from the Asian Art Museum’s online database of its holdings as her source material. Love and theft (if I may poach the title of Eric Lott’s remarkable study of American minstrelsy) are certainly forces that have shaped many a museum’s prized holdings, and it is this history — one so often bound to colonialism and its aftermath — that is also embedded in Syjuco’s fakes.

And Syjuco decidedly, politically, traffics in fakes, not forgeries. Practically every piece in “RAIDERS” has rematerialized online, open source materials — be they digital images or readily accessible canonical texts — into art objects that are themselves parodies of object-ness. Conceptually whip-smart and materially banal (wood, tape, paper, and glue are common ingredients), Syjuco’s pieces continually taunt us with the question, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

In the gallery’s back room, jewel-case-size blocks of wood covered in pixilated digital prints of CD cover art representing Syjuco’s entire collection of “music illegally downloaded or pirated from others” are, as the bright orange stickers adhered to their shrink-wrapped exteriors proclaim, really available for the “blowout price” of $9.99 a piece.” Across from this pile that looks as if it had been airlifted straight from a Tijuana bootlegger, is Phantoms (h__rt _f d__kn_ss) an installation organized around Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, replete with a table, sawhorses, houseplants, TV monitors, and 10 bound copies of different online, public domain versions of Conrad’s text that are strictly “price upon request.”

Syjuco is certainly not the first artist to take on the art world’s biggest white elephant: value. But she wields her scalpel with a thoughtful precision and economy of gesture that will forever be beyond the abilities of a gaseous giant such as Damien Hirst. And that, to borrow another clichéd bit of market-speak, is truly priceless.

 

INKSTAINS

If you missed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s excellent Eadweard Muybridge retrospective that closed earlier this month, Matt Bryans has created something of an homage to the early master’s photographic panoramas and doctored views of a not-quite-virginal Yosemite at SF Camerawork.

“Untitled” unfurls along one of the gallery’s walls for nearly 30 feet, a fantastical expanse of ever-shifting landscape seemingly captured from a middle distance. Glaciers give way to snow-capped peaks, which then dip into valleys that ease into rolling plains and finally abut more misty crags. In the piece’s upper half, clouds swirl and dissolve across the arc of the sky as in a Chinese ink painting.

Although the piece has the weathered patina of an old daguerreotype and recalls Muybridge in its staged epicness, Bryans is a collage artist who works solely with a medium whose livelihood has been called into question about as often as film photography’s: newsprint. “Untitled” — which like the other large collage commissioned by SF Camerawork is all explosions and stars wrapped around a support column — was created using only India erasers and inky photographs clipped from newspapers.

Scanning the sky of Bryans’ panorama, you can make out the smudged traces of what was once type. And the closer you look, you start seeing the fissures between the thousands of carefully glued pieces that Bryans has transformed into a seemingly organic whole, which nonetheless appears on the point of disintegration.

The panorama piece is large enough that it sags a little and billows whenever a current of air hits it. It seems to hang heavy with the losses it embodies — photography’s ghosts, newspapers as a disappearing medium, the unknowable contexts of the images themselves — a load that’s almost too much to bear. 

STEPHANIE SYJUCO: RAIDERS

Through July 16

Catharine Clark Gallery

150 Minna, SF

(415) 399-1439

www.cclarkgallery.com

MATT BRYANS: BREAKING THE LAND

Through Aug. 20

SF Camerawork

657 Mission, SF

(415) 512-2020

www.sfcamerawork.org

 

Girls just want to have fun

Andrew Lam
-
9
Girls just want to have fun

culture@sfbg.com

SEX It was their first official slumber party and a late-night run to the grocery store for pink hair dye was in order. Decked out in a combination of pink, pajamas, and leather, the San Francisco girls of Leather shrieked and giggled as they wandered the aisles searching for anything rosy-colored. The girls could easily have been mistaken for a freshman herd of coeds soaked in Malibu and cheap vodka, but as the group’s president, Leland, remembers, they were “just high on girls.”

Until they discovered the store’s collection of pink and white unicorns — on sale.

“We all oohed and ahhed and ended up purchasing six of them, surprising the other girls by returning to the party with an entire unicorn herd,” Leland says. From sleeping bags and hair braiding to dirty storytelling and play piercing, the night teetered between innocent and naughty, sweet and sexy. “So many unicorns, so many needles, and so much blood!” she said.

The SF girls of Leather (the girls prefer a lowercase “g” and uppercase “L” out of respect for the traditions of the leather community) are giddy and flirty: the epitome of seventh-grade girliness, complete with kinky sleepovers, hearts, and cuteness. As this year-old group sees it, maturity is overrated when it comes to BDSM — and a hint of silliness in a dark dungeon can only heighten the sex appeal. Who else is going to giggle or blush after a spank?

The group’s approach to leather is hardly in line with the masculine traditions that have come to be associated with the history of the kink community. But in the year since the girls formed their group, they’ve been working to secure their place in the continuum of leather lovers. And judging from the group’s growing membership — and accolades from the leather community at large — SFgoL is providing a much-needed refuge for marginalized fans of lighthearted play, splashing accents of pink across the traditional wash of black.

 

GIRL GOALS

Historically, a girl in the leather community has been defined as the female-identified version of a boy — a submissive expected to service a dominant individual in various kinds of BDSM play. But in SFgoL parlance, girl means something way more fun. Top, bottom, submissive, dominant, giver, receiver, experienced, or curious: all roles are welcome in the group, as long as you “girl” identify.

Which means what, exactly?

“Leather doesn’t have to be serious,” says Leland, who is of the mind that people of all ages, bodies, and sexual preferences can find bliss by tapping into their own personalized “girl-space.”

“You’re a leathergirl if you feel like it,” says SFgoL Vice President Kate McKinley. Even boys and bois are allowed in the group — as long as they have a “girl heart.” Coincidentally, McKinley wears one of these around her neck — a silver heart necklace.

“I play girly and therefore this group is where I belong,” she says.

An important tenet of the leather life, service (traditionally, the practice of obediently pleasing a dominant character) is still an integral part of the girl group’s goals — but its definition of the term goes beyond tending to masters and daddies.

In the year since the group’s inception, SFgoL has volunteered at multiple fundraisers and organized charity drives for nonprofits benefiting women in the leather community and beyond. Members are free to service individuals but are required to serve the community by means of philanthropy: grown-up Girl Scouts earning merit badges for kink.

Their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed — the San Francisco Bay Area Leather Alliance recognized SFgoL as its best new organization of 2010. “Contributing to the community makes it easier for us to enjoy what we’re doing,” says SFgoL member Anita, who asked that we not use her last name for professional reasons.

Anita moved to San Francisco from Norway on a work visa, but soon found herself lusting for a close encounter with leather. She discovered some BDSM groups for women interested in playing with women, but because she identified as straight when she arrived in the city, the SFgoL’s more inclusive membership requirements felt like a better fit.

She was also attracted to the group because it didn’t require members be in a dominant-submissive relationship. She was free to play with whomever, whenever, and however she pleased. “I’m a girl and I was interested in exploring the leather community in a group where I could just be myself and share my feelings,” she says.

Last month the SFgoL celebrated its one-year anniversary with 18 full members and more than 100 girls on its Listserv. The numbers are a strong indicator of its success, especially since the current version of the SFgoL isn’t the city’s first attempt at a girly collective. In 2004, a leathergirl group was formed, but failed to secure footing in the established leather community. The second time around seems to be the shiny charm — or maybe these girls are just extra-charming?

“We do have a smokin’ hot group of girls,” giggles Leland, looking around the table and raising her eyebrows at Anita and McKinley.

It’s lunch hour on a Tuesday and the three girls flirt like crazy, constantly laughing and finishing each other’s sentences between small bites of spicy Thai food. The three are a prime example of the group’s demeanor and exactly why Leland has enforced a “no cruising” rule during official meetings.

“The meetings are meant to be safe space and for taking care of business. But yes, we can play outside the meetings,” she says, batting her lashes as the other girls smirk, hiding a thousand secrets anyone with a pulse would die to hear.

 

RESIZING THE LEATHER FIT

Since its inception, the leather community has been predominately male. Icons like Marlon Brando, and the work of Tom of Finland and the Satyrs Motorcycle Club, defined modern masculinity in the 1950s, igniting a kinky obsession in the gay community. A badass jacket, muir cap, and related wardrobe of black hide became a symbol of sexual power and masculine independence, eradicating the stereotype that all gay men were effeminate.

Leather rules and traditions grew from military protocol and were diligently enforced by masters and their slaves, daddies and their boys. Women were intrigued, but struggled to find a place among the men; many leather bars turned away women at the door.

Over time, elements of BDSM became associated with leather and the community began to flex. During the ’80s, leatherwomen competitions popped up, and in the ’90s, groups like San Francisco’s Outcasts — now the Exiles —provided the community with strong female-identified role models. In 2006, the Exiles helped open Betty Paige’s Secret, which in subsquent years of the festival became Venus’ Playground. It was the first leatherwomen play space at the Folsom Street Fair.

It’s been six years since the Venus milestone, yet during this April’s International Ms. Leather competition in San Francisco, it was apparent that questions about the role of women in the leather community remain.

In a moment of call and response, “Where are the leatherwomen?” was shouted into the microphone. The answer was loud and proud: “Here we are! We’re here!” followed by a rumble of audience applause. Women may be standing their ground with paddles in hand, but the exchange was telling of their struggle for continued acknowledgment.

Deborah Isadorah, a veteran of kink and current leather momma, has been entranced by the leather community for more than 40 years, and is proud to have watched the roles of women expand. But in Isadorah’s eyes, the progression has been slow going.

“We live in a patriarchal society and that reflects on every part of our society, including leather,” she says, sipping a latte in Oakland and soaking in the spring sun.

“The men outnumber us physically in this community, [but that] doesn’t mean women’s voices are missing,” she continues. Isadorah is pleased with the progress of her generation of leatherwomen and is happy to sit back and nurture the younger crop. “I think we’ve done our job: to educate women about their bodies and the opportunities they have to explore sexuality beyond what society thinks is appropriate.”

Today, nearly half the current directors of the Leather Alliance, the community’s well-respected governing board, are female.

“We’re sitting at the table now,” says Daddy Vick Germany, a female-bodied leather daddy who has been a part of the Bay Area’s leather community for more than 15 years and serves as a director for the Alliance. Overall, Daddy Vick is content with the community’s moves toward inclusivity. “The men are leaving more space for us,” she says.

But traces of segregation can still be found. “Sometimes men just don’t see you — you’re not even in their line of vision,” she says, referring to a recent experience at the Up Your Alley street fair where a man blindly butted in front of her while she stood in a concession line. She recognizes that these incidents can be subconscious, but any female who roams the SoMa leather fairs is bound to encounter this feeling of invisibility. It makes her “mad as hell.”

Elected SF Dyke Daddy in 2002, Vick made substantial efforts to bridge gaps between the sexes. She’s currently running for SF Leather Daddy, a traditional competition built on fundraising for the AIDS crisis. In 2009 a transman won the competition, but if she wins, Daddy Vick would be the first female-bodied daddy to hold the title. Her candidacy alone is sure to shake things up with leathermen who believe in upholding traditional roles — but her motives are pure.

“I’m not doing this to make a statement as a female daddy. I’m running because I think I’m a good daddy for the community,” she says, meaning she cares about being a supportive, reliable father figure for those around her. The “working title” would help her foster change more effectively than her individual efforts.

Besides Folsom’s Venus’ Playground, there are no official social spaces intended for leatherwomen. This makes sharing communal bars and events incredibly important. Change is a slow process, but Daddy Vick says ample motivation is brewing in all corners, and — paired with the diffusion of kink — the space for growth can only flourish. Leather is opening into an umbrella term with the capacity to encompass multiple elements of fetish, and to further accept people of all genders, bodies, and preferences in any role.

In this respect, Daddy Vick thinks the SFgoL could play an important role. “It just takes people like Leland, coming in with a different energy. People who stand up in the crowd, see a need, and start organizing.”

 

FOLLOW THE PINK BRICK ROAD

While leatherwomen made slow but steady strides in the past decade, those straddling the space between butch and femme — the girl space — began breaking ground for themselves, too. In 2003 an international Leather Girl Network was born, led by the Bay Area’s Cheryl D. The group intended to mirror the already well-established leather boy community. Girls everywhere were giddy with possibilities.

“I had always identified with the title of ‘girl.’ I was a girl who liked to serve the community, but I was also a switch,” says Mistress Pilar, a longtime leather veteran and member of the original, and now revived, SF girls of Leather. Being a switch — someone who doesn’t commit to top or bottom exclusively — meant her definition of girl didn’t fit with that of the Leather Girl Network, which stated: girl equals submission. She wasn’t alone in her dilemma.

In 2004, San Francisco girls decided to put together their own troop, headed by girl Lori, the 2003 San Francisco Leather Dyke girl (a contest that no longer exists), and girl Hayden, the 2004 title-holder. They intentionally left the definition of girl open to allow for individual interpretation. The leather community shuddered at the loose restraints, confused by the men, boys, and transpeople that joined the girl ranks.

“People in the leather community were not comfortable with this idea at the time. No one even liked talking about it,” says Pilar, referring to the notion that a girl didn’t need to be a biological woman to be in their group. “The attitude that people should ‘get off the fence’ really hurt.”

The initial group grew to about 30 members and its short three years as a successful alliance was packed with fundraising, volunteer work, and super-girly fun. But eventually the negative attitudes, biased expectations, and confusion over the definition of “girls” wore down on moral.

“People would walk up to me and demand, ‘girl, clean my boots’ and I would say, ‘I don’t serve you, I serve the community,'” Pilar says shaking her head.

Even Daddy Vick remembers how the group of strong, independent individuals struggled to prove themselves to the wider leather community. The girls, she says, “took a lot of flak” for contesting tradition. “There was still a belief in place that girls and boys couldn’t be leaders. Some thought girls and boys should be seen and not heard.”

The girls managed to have good times regardless, but Pilar says by early 2007 the group was down to five members who reluctantly agreed the end had come. It wasn’t until the 2010 International Ms. Leather competition — when Pilar decided to donate the leftover SF girls memorabilia and a curious Leland started asking questions — that SFgoL sparked back into life, with a little PR and a lot of ambition.

“Leland is a wonderful leader. She creates a really positive image of a girl,” says Pilar, nostalgically looking over an old stack of meeting notes, scribbled calendars, and photos from the original group. The dissolution of her crew hit hard, and it’s bittersweet for Pilar to hear about the new group’s instant success. But more than anything, she’s proud. “I feel like a proud mom. Those are my girls.”

Coincidentally, just as the girls sprung out of the woodwork and formed an official group, the San Francisco boys of Leather, a longstanding and once very active organization, hung up their chaps and caps due to a decline in membership. The boys generously donated all their remaining funds to the girls.

Steve Gaynes, the 1994 SF Leather Daddy and Alliance director representing the 15 Association, a longstanding sexual fraternity for men interested in BDSM, has been a leatherman since 1978 and has watched all kinds of groups come and go. He says the ebb and flow is just a reflection of the community’s current needs.

“The energy ran of out the boys and ran into the girls. If there’s no driving force behind a group, it will die,” he says, noting the community’s excitement for the new girl group. “They’re enthusiastic, inclusive, and have clear ideas for their future. And they’re doing [it all] with a lot of respect for tradition.”

And the SFgoL’s continued dedication to volunteer work and partnerships with other groups have shown the community at large that it values the path paved by the forefathers — and foremothers — of leather.

Paying tribute to old protocol is simple. Isadorah boils it down to three simple rules: integrity, honesty, and service to the community. Judged by this metric, she says, anyone who thinks the SFgoL is out of line is just being stubborn. “Whenever something happens in the community that brings change, there will always be someone who is offended,” Gaynes says. “You won’t know you’ve created change until you’ve offended those people. Change is good and should be embraced.”

 

LOOKING OUT FOR THE GIRLS

Leland and McKinley agree that there seems to be a buzz of excitement surrounding the SfgoL lately. The group’s logo is everywhere, and partnerships are being fostered across the community. Leland has even been asked to serve as a director for the SF Leather Alliance.

But her primary concern is making sure the SFgoL remains a safe, welcoming landing pad for girls who are new to the leather community. And these days, the media is providing all sorts of inspiration for curiosity. Rihanna’s song “S&M” speaks directly to sexual play, but even a quick Google search for “girls in leather” retrieves images of celebrities in fetish gear, from Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus in leather leggings to Emma Watson in a full latex suit with collar. In general, our society is opening up to alternative sex and women want in on the action.

But girls who jump in with little research and few friends may not leave with the most positive experiences. The inherent power dynamic associated with BDSM relationships and play can blur the lines between consent and abuse, and Leland says it’s important for newbies to have mentors within reach. “Sometimes the person you’re playing with may not have your best intentions at heart,” she says. “But as an alliance of girls, we can look out for each other.”

The way forward

Andrew Lam
-
0
The way forward

sarah@sfbg.com

Two days before President Obama announced his plan to begin withdrawing 33,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next 15 months, Peace Action West’s political director Rebecca Griffin delivered a box containing thousands of toy soldiers to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office in downtown San Francisco.

Tied to each soldier were handwritten messages that gave reasons for demanding a large and swift withdrawal. Many of the petitions came from folks whose loved ones are in the military or are veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Unlike most Democratic Party leaders, Feinstein has not demanded a significant draw-down of combat troops, despite polls showing that Americans increasingly support leaving Afghanistan, particularly after the killing of Osama bin Laden. There’s good reason for the public’s growing restlessness. This 10-year war has already surpassed Vietnam as the longest conflict in U.S. history.

According to the online database icasualities.org, 1,637 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan and 4,463 soldiers have died in Iraq. Another 11,722 service members have been wounded in Afghanistan, and 32,100 in Iraq, primarily by improvised explosive devices. And that’s not counting the thousands who are suffering from depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and other ailments.

Griffin said her goal was to draw attention to the political organizing in support of ending the war. But even as she made her delivery, Feinstein was on MSNBC maintaining that draw-down decisions should be left to the military generals.

In the wake of President Obama’s June 22 announcement, which went way farther than the generals wanted, many of Feinstein’s colleagues such as Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the house minority leader, expressed disappointment that the pace of withdrawal isn’t quicker.

“I am glad this war is ending, but it’s ending at far too slow a pace,” Boxer said.

“We will continue to press for a better outcome,” Pelosi stated.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Concord), who visited the troops over Memorial Day weekend, told us that a different strategy is needed. “Our troops are incredible, dedicated, and skilled. But every minute of every day, they are in a very dangerous situation, and many of them are dying. There is no recognition that we are caught in the middle of a five-way civil war.”

And Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) vowed to offer defense appropriations amendments to cut all funding for combat operations. “History shows there is no military solution in Afghanistan,” she said. “We’ve got to engage with the Taliban and engage with those in the region to find some stability.”

But where does Obama’s plan leave the peace movement as the election nears?

Griffin said activists should take credit for getting Obama to withdraw 33,000 troops rather than the smaller number his generals wanted. She sees his plan as a sign that activists need to keep pushing for more, including a concrete timeline for when he will bring all the troops home.

Under Obama’s plan, 68,000 troops will still be on the ground in September 2012, and 2014 is identified as the deadline for completing the transition to Afghan control and ending the U.S.’s combat mission.

“This means there’ll be a significant military presence in Afghanistan for at least another three-and-a-half years,” Griffin said. “By the end of Obama’s first term, the war will be 11 years old and there will be nearly double the American troops on the ground as there were when [George W.] Bush left office.”

Progressive activist and author Norman Solomon, who is running in the 2012 race to replace Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Marin County), noted that a recent New York Times’ headline read “Obama Opts for Faster Afghan Pullout.”

“But faster than what?” Solomon said, noting that “10,000 troops are only 10 percent of our force. This is a pattern we saw in Iraq, where the withdrawal was too slow and the numbers remaining doubled when you factored in all the private contractors.”

Solomon said that when Nixon pulled 500,000 troops from Vietnam in the late 1960s, the conflict actually increased in terms of the tonnage of weaponry used. “And the U.S. is now engaged in wars in Libya, Yemen, and a Pakistan air war.”

But longtime antiwar activist and former Democratic state legislator Tom Hayden saw a number of clues in Obama’s speech for how to push for a faster, bigger, more significant draw-down.

“Obama said 33,000 troops will be withdrawn by next summer, followed by a steady pace of withdrawal. So that gets you to 50,000 troops by the election, and all combat troops out by 2014,” Hayden told us. “If he could be pushed by the peace movement, that would break the back of the warmongers’ planning.”

In his speech, Obama noted that the U.S. will host a summit with our NATO allies and partners to shape the next phase of this transition next May in Chicago, where Obama’s former chief of staff is mayor.

“Get ready, Rahm Emanuel, for big demonstrations,” warned Hayden, who was a member of the Chicago Seven group tried for inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. “But do you imagine Obama would do that if he were going to escalate the war? No — he’s wrapping a ribbon of unity to transfer control to Afghanistan on a timetable.”

He also noted that Obama’s allies aren’t exactly pushing him to stay. “They may not have an exit strategy, but they are heading for the exits,” Hayden said. “So if you organize demonstrations with international support, that gives you an organizational opportunity in multiple governments to press Obama to leave.”

Hayden predicts that Obama is moving toward a diplomatic settlement, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that is pro withdrawal and pro women.

“But Obama’s got a genuine problem of his own making. He escalated the damn war,” Hayden said. “He doesn’t want the military to be attacking his plan. But if he wants to be in the center, he’s going to offend the generals.

Hayden noted that in his speech Obama said, “America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.” It was a statement that sounded in line with a recent U.S. Conference of Mayors resolution calling on Congress “to bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments.”

But Richard Becker, western regional coordinator of the antiwar ANSWER Coalition, described Obama’s draw-down as “a minimal pledge.”

“Given the growing discontent with the war, it’s hard to see how you can claim that this is a step forward,” he told us.

Becker said it has been difficult to mobilize the antiwar movement under a Democratic administration. He also stressed the importance of people coming out in San Francisco for a “protest, march, and die-in” on Oct. 7, the 10th anniversary of the war, and for a major action in Washington. D.C., on Oct. 6. “What’s going to get the U.S. out is a combination of what’s going on in Afghanistan — and what kind of antiwar movement we have here.”

Alerts

Maria Poblet
-
0

WEDNESDAY 29

Moon Tides and the women of Jeju Island

Photographer Brenda Paik Sunoo presents her book Moon Tides, an homage to the female divers of Jeju-do between the ages of 39 and 93. Through photographs and interviews, the author presents the lives of these remarkable South Korean women who dive for seaweed and shellfish with little more than a knife and no breathing apparatus. This practice is common throughout coastal Korea and Japan, usually leaving the men to stay at home and care for the family. The film focuses on the older generations who still do it. The evening includes a wine reception; tickets can be purchased online.

5:30–7:30 p.m., $10

Russ Building

235 Montgomery, 12th Floor, SF

(415) 543-4669

www.imow.org

 

SATURDAY 2

Immigration history and Angel Island

Like a Left Coast Ellis Island, Angel Island was an immigration station for newly arrived immigrants and war prisoners. It was also the location of the 1939 trial to deport Australian-born International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) President Harry Bridges for allegedly being a member of the Communist Party. ILWU historian Harvey Schwartz and ironworker Mike Daly discusses the island’s history — from the trial of Harry Bridges to the Pearl River Delta Taishan people of China, who were largely responsible for building the early infrastructure of California. Check the website for ferry and shuttle information.

11 a.m., free

Angel Island Immigration Post

Mess Hall

Northeast side of the island

www.laborfest.net

 

SUNDAY 3

Labor attacks in California

The McCarthy-era “witch hunts” in California that targeted trade union members and their right to make a living also helped shape the future of the labor movement. The backlash included a large protest and sit-in at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings in San Francisco, which resulted in ending the HUAC hearings and their attack on the labor movement. Hear about that tumultuous time from those who were involved, including Phil Mezey (the San Francisco State University professor who was fired for not signing a loyalty oath), labor historians, and a handful of retired workers and protestors.

2 p.m., free

ILWU Local 34

801 Second St., SF

www.laborfest.net 

 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Despite risks, Bay Area residents return to Gaza

Sasha Cuttler
-
113
Despite risks, Bay Area residents return to Gaza

Kathy Sheetz says she isn’t afraid of what might happen when she sets sail again next week for Gaza. On her last trip she was welcomed by Israeli bullets, but she sees the message as more important than any possible consequences.

Her message, along with the hundreds of other activists who will be sailing to Gaza aboard 10 ships dubbed the Freedom Flotilla 2—Stay Human, is that Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza is unacceptable.

Sheetz, a 65-year-old Richmond resident, has sailed — or attempted to sail — to Gaza every year since 2008, when she and 43 other activists took two fishing boats to the shores of the Gaza. They had room only for themselves and safely arrived in Gaza. She realized the potential to come back with supplies and aid for the people. One necessity she had never thought of: hearing aids for children, some of whom are going deaf from the dropping of bombs.

Last year, the first Freedom Flotilla set sail for Gaza. Sheetz was one of many activists from around the world aboard six ships of the flotilla that were attacked by the Israeli Navy during an early morning raid in international waters.

Soldiers boarded the ships and attacked the unarmed passengers. They fired rubber bullets while a helicopter above the flotilla shot live rounds. In the end, nine activists died.

Still, she’s going back.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Sheetz said. “(Palestinians in Gaza) seem to be paying a price and I think it’s wrong.”

Thirty-six activists, nine journalists, and four crew members will be aboard the American boat when it sets sail from an undisclosed port in Greece. Out at sea, it will meet up with nine other boats carrying activists from around the world. The port and launch date are being kept secret to avoid sabotage attempts by pro-Israeli enemies of the flotilla, said Jane Jewell, a media coordinator for the organization US Boat to Gaza.

The mission of the trip is not only to bring awareness to the situation in Gaza, but also to bring badly needed medical supplies and aid. Two of the ships in the flotilla are devoted to carrying cargo.

The American boat will only carry letters of support, though, in fear of retaliation by the U.S. government for being seen as aiding the terrorist organization Hamas.

All passengers aboard The Audacity of Hope, the name of the American boat, had to sign an awareness document that highlights the inherent dangers of the trip, including the possibility of death.

Henry Norr, 65, first visited Gaza in 2002 and has been to Palestine three times, witnessing injustices and working to spread the word. In 2005 he acted as a copy editor for the International Middle East Media Center, helping to report raids and arrests of activists.

“Everybody knows that there’s some danger,” Norr said. “We like to think that the Israelis will come to their senses.”

This will be the 10th trip made to Gaza since 2008. Of the previous nine, five arrived in Gaza successfully, three of the boats were detained in Israel and last years flotilla was outright attacked.

The Audacity of Hope, a name shared by the American boat and President Obama’s book, could signify the audaciousness of the journey or be a tongue-in-cheek joke, depending on who’s asked.

Both Jewell and Adam Shapiro, an organizer for the Free Gaza Movement, which helped organize the flotilla, felt Obama was just a puppet for Israel who does not have the courage to enact real change.

They said he backed down too easily to pressure from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Obama suggested earlier this year that Israel and Palestine revert to pre-1967 borders in an attempt to bring peace to the region.

The U.S. State Department also recently issued a statement condemning travel to Gaza.

“Previous attempts to enter Gaza by sea have been stopped by Israeli naval vessels and resulted in the injury, death, arrest, and deportation of U.S. Citizens,” said the statement. “The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem are not able to provide consular assistance in Gaza or on the high seas or coastal waters.”

Jewell, summing up the statement, said, “Americans citizens take second place to Israel.”

“They know that their American citizenship isn’t going to help them,” Jewell said of the activists.

Sheetz first found herself in Gaza in 1991 when trying to travel to Tel Aviv, Israel, for a conference. She hoped to rent a car in Rafah, Egypt, a border town with Gaza, but was instead forced onto a bus by an Israeli woman. She ended up in Tel Aviv, but not after wondering about what had happened.

“It was just a very odd experience,” Sheetz said. “I couldn’t describe it.”

Now she’s heading back, again, informed and with a mission.

“It’s not helping Israel,” Sheetz said of the occupation. “If they want security, this is not the way to go about it.”


Dick Meister: Can a woman beat Hoffa?

Maria Poblet
-
0

 

A woman as president of the macho Teamsters Union that was once headed by supermacho Jimmy Hoffa? It could happen. 

Sandy Pope thinks so, and she’s going to try as hard as she can to make it happen – going to try as hard as she can to succeed Hoffa’s lawyer son, Jimmy junior, as head of one of the country’s largest and most powerful unions.

If a majority of delegates at the Teamster convention that opened today in Las Vegas vote for Pope to unseat Hoffa, who was first elected a dozen years ago, she’ll be only the third woman to ever head an international union.

Randi Weingarten, the highly regarded president of the American Federation of Teachers, who took office in 2008, is one of the others. The third is Mary Kay Henry, who just recently succeeded the controversial Andy Stern as president of the country’s largest union, the 1.3 million-member Service Employees International Union, the SEIU.

The Teamsters comes in at number two, with 1.2 million members. Hoffa’s supporters argue that Sandy Pope is not up to handling such a huge and diverse union. Her record, however, seems to indicate otherwise.

For 33 years, the 54-year-old Pope has held her own in the union’s macho culture, as a driver of big long haul freight trucks and as a warehouse worker.  For seven years she’s been president of a New York Teamster local of drivers and warehouse workers, one of only 16 of the Teamster’s 407 locals nationwide to be headed by a woman.

Before that, Pope was an international union representative in the Teamster’s warehouse division. She’s been a longtime leader of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), which has exposed much of the corruption that’s been common in the union since the days of Hoffa senior as president.

The TDU’s work has led to some important corrections in union operations, but much remains to be done, and it’s unlikely that Hoffa junior would do much about it.  As the incumbent, he’s running a status quo campaign. Some local level Teamster officials fear retaliation from Hoffa and his allies if they campaign for Pope.

But Pope certainly isn’t backing off one bit. She’s promising to halt or at least slow the concessions that Teamster negotiators have granted employers in recent years.  Under her, she says, the union” will close the concessions stand.”

It also would push the union’s officers off the gravy train. In one Minnesota Teamsters local closely allied with Hoffa, for instance, the principal officer is paid $200,000 a year. Hoffa himself is paid $363,000.  And that’s going on at the same time that many rank-and-file Teamsters are taking pay and benefit cuts and otherwise feeling the effects of a declining economy.

It’s what the pro-labor magazine “Labor Notes” quite accurately calls “the union leadership’s back-scratching, pocket-lining culture.”

Generally speaking, Pope’s promising to return to the basics of union operations – to build public support, mobilize the union’s current members and wage a major organizing drive to recruit new members. Pope also promises that some 20,000 of the union’s members whose jobs have been downgraded to part-time can expect a drive to make those jobs full-time.

It’s clear that, like many dissident Teamsters, Sandy Pope is “sick of having a lawyer with a big name hijack our union.”

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

 

PRIDE TOP 5: Horse Meat Disco

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
1
PRIDE TOP 5: Horse Meat Disco

Magical UK disco foursome Horse Meat Disco (the four horsemen of the discopocalypse?) are joining House of Stank at Juanita More’s super-kiki Pride party on Sunday — and hottie Jim Stanton from the quartet has gifted us with his Pride Top 5. Get ready to twirl, because there’s also a hot-hot Horsemeat minimix after the jump, celebrating the upcoming July 4 release of their third compilation disc, Horsemeat III (holy mirrorballs, Duck Man, just check out this track list). Get into it.

Macho, “I’m a Man” (Prelude), 1978
Macho is a proper disco song that reminds me of San Francisco because of the leather scene. It is sooo gay and hard! Perfect for that “dark room” action. Haha!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VbLB4UEFvw

Locussolus, “I Want It  (Prins Tomas Remix)” (International Feel/UK), 2011
Prins Tomas turns DJ Harvey’s celebrated epic club track into a funky Dr Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band-style work out for our new disco generation. BIG!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EDtfBDSWug


Ava Cherry, “You Never Loved Me” (RSO), 1980
EVERYTHING you want from  a disco track jam-packed into 8 minutes. Bitterness, heartache and regret? Check! Searing strings? Check! Brass section to die for? Check! And that trippy break HIT!!!

 

Run Baby Run, “Let No Man Put Asunder (Ron Hardy Edit)” (Salsoul), 1983
I love the original a lot, BUT I like Ron Hardy’s “raw” side! A proper Chicago legend. I edit this to another level. Soo ENERGETIC!!!Always in my set.


Paul Parker, Right On Target (Megatone), 1982
A muscular slab of energetic and frisky true San Francisco. Non-stop heavy action from Patrick Cowley the godfather of hi-NRG.

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

And check out this minimix!!

 

<< <Horse Meat Disco III Mini-Mix by Strut

Rep Clock

Maria Poblet
-
0

Schedules are for Wed/22–Tues/28 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

BALBOA 3620 Balboa, SF; www.balboamovies.com. $20. “Opera, Ballet, and Shakespeare in Cinema:” Rigoletto, performed by Placido Domingo, Sat-Sun, 10am.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. “Frameline 35: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival,” Wed-Sun. Visit www.frameline.org for complete schedule and ticket information. Stonewall Uprising (Davis and Heilbroner, 2010), Tues, 7. Free screening.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $10.25. The Tree of Life (Malick, 2011), call for dates and times. The Trip (Winterbottom, 2010), call for dates and times. Coppelia, performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, Thurs, 7 and Sun, 1. This event, $18. Buck (Meehl, 2011), June 24-30, call for times.

“FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK” This week: Creek Park, 451 Sir Francis Drake, San Anselmo; (415) 272-2756, www.filmnight.org. Donations accepted. Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), Fri, 8; National Velvet (Brown, 1944), Sat, 8.

FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; www.lntsf.com. $10. “Asian Movie Madness” •The Host (Bong, 2006), and Yang Zean (1979), Thurs, call for times.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Music and Nostalgia:” The Blues Brothers (Landis, 1980), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Japanese Divas:” Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953), Wed, 7; Dragnet Girl (Ozu, 1933), Fri, 7; Sisters of the Gion (Mizoguchi, 1936), Fri, 9; Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956), Sat, 8:45. “The Cult of the Kuchars:” “8mm Films by George and Mike Kuchar,” Thurs, 7; Weather Diary 1 (George Kuchar, 1986), Sat, 6. “Secession from the Broadcast: The Internet and the Crisis of Social Control,” lecture by Gene Youngblood, Sat, 3:30. “Arthur Penn: A Liberal Helping:” Little Big Man (1970), Sun, 5:30; Night Moves (1975), Sun, 8:10.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. “Midnites for Maniacs:” •The Purple Rose of Cairo (Allen, 1985), Wed, 2, 9:15, and Broadway Danny Rose (Allen, 1984), Wed, 7:15. Single film, $7; double feature, $10. Forgetting Dad (Minnich, 2009), Thurs, 7:15, 9:25. The Warriors (Hill, 1979), Fri-Sat, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sat, 2, 4:15). Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune (Bowser, 2011), Sun-Tues, 7:15, 9:20 (also Sun, 2, 4:15).

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “Frameline 35: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival,” Wed-Thurs. Visit www.frameline.org for complete schedule and ticket information. Making the Boys (Robey, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 7:30, 9:30.

SUBTERRANEAN ARTHOUSE 2179 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 540-7185, www.brownpapertickets.com. $10. “Innovative California Dance Films,” Fri, 8:30.

“TEMESCAL STREET CINEMA 2011” 49th St at Telegraph, Oakl; www.temescalstreetcinema.com. Free. Trust (Kelly and Yamamoto, 2010), Thurs, 8:45. With music by Ash Reiter at 8pm.

TOP OF THE MARK InterContinental Mark Hopkins, One Nob Hill, SF; www.topofthemark.com. Free. Bullitt (Yates, 1968), Tues, 7:30. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. Oki’s Movie (Hong, 2010), Thurs, 7:30; Sun, 2.

Film Listings

Maria Poblet
-
0

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

FRAMELINE

The 35th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival runs through Sun/26 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk; Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; and Victoria, 2961 16th St., SF. For tickets (most films $9-$15) and complete schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

OPENING

Bad Teacher Cameron Diaz don’t need no education. (1:29) Shattuck.

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

Cars 2 Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Caine, and others give voice to the autos in this spy-themed Pixar sequel. (1:52) Balboa, Shattuck.

Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop seems less of a movie title and more like a hushed comment shared between one of the many hangers-on during the filming of the “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour.” Throughout 23 cities’ worth of footage, O’Brien seethes, paces, sweats, yells and beats dead jokes so hard that they spring back to life, as he is wont to do.

At this point, the Leno/Coco drama is a bit stale — at least in internet time — but the documentary is a fascinating comedian character study nonetheless. It may be hard to sympathize with a man nursing a bruised ego as he cashes a $45 million dollar check, but it’s easy to see that he’s one of the best late night hosts (temporarily off) the air. Split primarily between clips of O’Brien performing songs on stage with a myriad of celebrity guests and bemoaning how exhausted and frustrated he is, Can’t Stop derives most of its hilarity from the off-the-cuff comments that pepper Conan’s everyday conversations. (1:29) Lumiere, Shattuck. (David Getman)

Oki’s Movie See review at www.sfbg.com. (1:20) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

*Viva Riva! Gritty, riveting, and even heartbreaking, Viva Riva!, the first Congolese feature film to get distribution in the states, is much like its small-time crook of an anti-hero, Riva (Patsha Bay Mukuna) — in love with life and prepared to laugh in the face of death when it comes knocking. Director Djo Tunda Wa Munga’s African Movie Academy Award winner tumbles with the grimy details of its Kinshasa, Congo, backdrop, and rarely stumbles. A mere foot soldier in a sprawling crime world, Riva has seized his chance at breaking into the big time, with a score of stolen gasoline, and has returned home. His eyes are on an unlikely prize, Nora (Marie Malone), the well-guarded moll of a Kinshasa gangster. As Riva stalks his lithe prey, he’s tailed by the ruthless Angolan crime boss he’s crossed (Hoji Fortuna) and a local military commander under the thug’s thumb (Marlene Longage). As sexy and violent as a contemporary noir, and as familiar as a folk tale unraveled round a campfire, Viva Riva! holds your attention with all the bruised bravado of its Stagger Lee-like protagonist, catching you in with the way the gorgeous Nora undulates at an outdoor gathering at one moment, then squats in the dirt to take a piss at the next. (1:36) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Chun)

ONGOING

*L’Amour Fou Pierre Thoretton’s documentary L’amour fou opens with two clips of men bidding farewell. The first, from 2002, is of the French-Algerian couturier Yves Saint Laurent announcing his retirement in a moving and emotional speech worthy of his favorite writer Marcel Proust. The second is of Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s longtime business partner and former lover, eulogizing his departed friend at the designer’s memorial service six years later. Thoretton’s film is suffused with goodbyes, many tender and candid, some portentous and rehearsed. To be sure, L’amour fou is a touching portrait of the powerful and tempestuous bond between Saint Laurent and Bergé, a bond that lasted close to five decades and resulted in one of the great empires of 20th century fashion. But it is also, alongside David Teboud’s two 2002 YSL documentaries, another entry in the hagiography of Saint Laurent, one cannily steered by Bergé as much as by Thoretton. Well-spoken and charming, Bergé still comes off as the punchy entrepreneurial foil to Saint Laurent’s dazzling but fragile genius. He can be both hyperbolic (praising Saint Laurent’s gifts) but also forthcoming (discussing the designer’s demons). Former muses Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux are also interviewed, but this is clearly Bergé’s show. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

The Art of Getting By The Art of Getting By is all about those confusing, mixed-up and apparently sexually frustrating months before high school graduation. George (Freddie Highmore) is a trench coat-wearing misanthrope — an old soul, as they say — whose parents and teachers are always trying to put him inside a box and tell him how to think. He finds a kindred sprit in Sally (Emma Roberts) who smokes and watches Louis Malle films. Hot. Heavily scored by the now-ancient songs of early ’00s blog bands, it may all sound like indie bullshit but this one has charm and wit despite its post-trend package. Like a sad little crayon, Highmore is a competent Michael Cera surrogate du jour. Writer-director Gavin Wiesen embraces hell of clichés, but he suitably sums up a generational angst along the way. The film may not always feel real, but it does have real feeling. Look out for great performances from Blair Underwood and Alicia Silverstone. (1:24) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Ryan Lattanzio)

*Beautiful Boy Save the children, but pity the parents. Director-cowriter Shawn Ku’s Beautiful Boy is one of two recent films concerning parents of kids who go on school killing sprees, and it’ll get potentially shortchanged due to the forthcoming We Need to Talk About Kevin‘s head-turning cast and its Hitchcockian literary source material. Still, Beautiful Boy shines in its own humble way, by dint of its quiet sense of integrity and refusal to pander. The bone-deep unhappiness suffusing the family concerned was present long before 18-year-old college student Sammy (Kyle Gallner) picked up a gun, killed more than a dozen people, then took his own life. Surviving parents Kate (Maria Bello) and Bill (Michael Sheen) already kept separate bedrooms under the same roof and led separate lives, with Bill pasting an unsettling grin on for work and Maria relentlessly pushing to make everything all right, neither noticing the barely perceptible warning signs that their only son was succumbing to despair. Belying its title, Beautiful Boy is less focused on the desperate youngster than on the adults attempting to cope with the horror he’s wrought — not necessarily cleaning up after him or picking up the pieces, but somehow finding their way through their own explosive responses. Bolstered by fine performances by Bello and Sheen, it’s yet another installment in the post-9/11 cinema of trauma — this time, attempting to imagine the unimaginable and to comprehend a kind of healing. (1:40) SF Center. (Chun)

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

*Bill Cunningham New York To say that Bill Cunningham, the 82-year old New York Times photographer, has made documenting how New Yorkers dress his life’s work would be an understatement. To be sure, Cunningham’s two decades-old Sunday Times columns — “On the Street,” which tracks street-fashion, and “Evening Hours,” which covers the charity gala circuit — are about the clothes. And, my, what clothes they are. But Cunningham is a sartorial anthropologist, and his pictures always tell the bigger story behind the changing hemlines, which socialite wore what designer, or the latest trend in footwear. Whether tracking the near-infinite variations of a particular hue, a sudden bumper-crop of cropped blazers, or the fanciful leaps of well-heeled pedestrians dodging February slush puddles, Cunningham’s talent lies in his ability to recognize fleeting moments of beauty, creativity, humor, and joy. That last quality courses through Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’ captivating and moving portrait of a man whose reticence and personal asceticism are proportional to his total devotion to documenting what Harold Koda, chief curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes in the film as “ordinary people going about their lives, dressed in fascinating ways.” (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

Bride Flight Who doesn’t love a sweeping Dutch period piece? Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight is pure melodrama soup, enough to give even the most devout arthouse-goer the bloats. Emigrating from post-World War II Holland to New Zealand with two gal pals, the sweetly staid Ada (Karina Smulders) falls for smarm-ball Frank (Waldemar Torenstra, the Dutchman’s James Franco) and kind of joins the mile high club to the behest of her conscience. The women arrive with emotional baggage and carry-ons of the uterine kind. As the harem adjusts to the country mores of the Highlands, Frank tries a poke at all of them in a series of sex scenes more moldy than smoldery. This Flight, set to a plodding score and stuffy mise-en-scene, never quite leaves the runway. Not to mention the whole picture, pale as a corpse, resembles one of those old-timey photographs of your great grandma’s wedding. These kinds of pastoral romances ought to be put out to, well, pasture. (2:10) Opera Plaza. (Lattanzio)

*Bridesmaids For anyone burned out on bad romantic comedies, Bridesmaids can teach you how to love again. This film is an answer to those who have lamented the lack of strong female roles in comedy, of good vehicles for Saturday Night Live cast members, of an appropriate showcase for Melissa McCarthy. The hilarious but grounded Kristen Wiig stars as Annie, whose best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is getting hitched. Financially and romantically unstable, Annie tries to throw herself into her maid of honor duties — all while competing with the far more refined Helen (Rose Byrne). Bridesmaids is one of the best comedies in recent memory, treating its relatable female characters with sympathy. It’s also damn funny from start to finish, which is more than can be said for most of the comedies Hollywood continues to churn out. Here’s your choice: let Bridesmaids work its charm on you, or never allow yourself to complain about an Adam Sandler flick again. (2:04) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Cave of Forgotten Dreams The latest documentary from Werner Herzog once again goes where no filmmaker — or many human beings, for that matter — has gone before: the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, a heavily-guarded cavern in Southern France containing the oldest prehistoric artwork on record. Access is highly restricted, but Herzog’s 3D study is surely the next best thing to an in-person visit. The eerie beauty of the works leads to a typically Herzog-ian quest to learn more about the primitive culture that produced the paintings; as usual, Herzog’s experts have their own quirks (like a circus performer-turned-scientist), and the director’s own wry narration is peppered with random pop culture references and existential ponderings. It’s all interwoven with footage of crude yet beautiful renderings of horses and rhinos, calcified cave-bear skulls, and other time-capsule peeks at life tens of thousands of years ago. The end result is awe-inspiring. (1:35) SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*The Double Hour Slovenian hotel maid Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport) and security guard Guido (Filippo Timi) are two lonely people in the Italian city of Turin. They find one another (via a speed-dating service) and things are seriously looking up for the fledgling couple when calamity strikes. This first feature by music video director Giuseppe Capotondi takes a spare, somber approach to a screenplay (by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, and Stefano Sardo) that strikingly keeps raising, then resisting genre categorization. Suffice it to say their story goes from lonely-hearts romance to violent thriller, ghost story, criminal intrigue, and yet more. It doesn’t all work seamlessly, but such narrative unpredictability is so rare at the movies these days that The Double Hour is worth seeing simply for the satisfying feeling of never being sure where it’s headed. (1:35) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Green Lantern This latest DC Comics-to-film adaptation fails to recognize the line between awesome fantasy-action and cheeseball absurdity, often resembling the worst excesses of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. A surprisingly palatable Ryan Reynolds stars as Hal Jordan, the cocky test pilot who is chosen to wield a power ring as a member of an intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern Corps. He must face down Parallax, an alien embodiment of fear, who appears here as a chuckle-inducing floating head surrounded by tentacles. Peter Sarsgaard is effectively nauseating as Hector Hammond, who becomes Parallax’s crony after he is transformed by a transfusion of fear energy. The acting is all over the map, with Blake Lively’s blank-faced love interest caricature as the weakest link, and the effects are hit-or-miss, but scenes featuring alien Green Lanterns should please fans, and you could probably do worse if you’re looking for an entertaining popcorn flick. (1:45) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Stander)

The Hangover Part II What do you do with a problematic mess like Hangover Part II? I was a fan of The Hangover (2009), as well as director-cowriter Todd Phillips’ 1994 GG Allin doc, Hated, so I was rooting for II, this time set in the East’s Sin City of Bangkok, while simultaneously dreading the inevitable Asian/”ching-chang-chong” jokes. Would this would-be hit sequel be funnier if they packed in more of those? Doubtful. The problem is that most of II‘s so-called humor, Asian or no, falls completely flat — and any gross-out yuks regarding wicked, wicked Bangkok are fairly old hat at this point, long after Shocking Asia (1976) and innumerable episodes of No Reservations and other extreme travel offerings. This Hangover around, mild-ish dentist Stu (Ed Helms) is heading to the altar with Lauren (The Real World: San Diego‘s Jamie Chung), with buds Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug (Justin Bartha) in tow. Alan (Zach Galifianakis) has completely broken with reality — he’s the pity invite who somehow ropes in the gangster wild-card Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). Blackouts, natch, and not-very-funny high jinks ensue, with Jeong, surprisingly, pulling small sections of II out of the crapper. Phillips obviously specializes in men-behaving-badly, but II‘s most recent character tweaks, turning Phil into an arrogant, delusional creep and Alan into an arrogant, delusional kook, seem beside the point. Because almost none of the jokes work, and that includes the tired jabs at tranny strippers because we all know how supposedly straight white guys get hella grossed out by brown chicks with dicks. Lame. (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer Try not trying so hard, Judy Moody. The tween paperback fave gets an OTT makeover for the cineplex, as director John Schultz and company throw as many bells, whistles, silly new slang, kooky gruesome colors, CGI twinkles, sing-along subtitles, and zany hijinks into the mix as possible, in vain hope of keeping kiddie eyeballs from drifting. Bright-eyed redhead Judy Moody (Jordana Beatty) — think Pippi Longstocking, only way more annoying — is stuck at home for the season, sans most of her pals and parentals, scuttling her plans for a Not Bummer Summer filled with weirdly competitive thrill points (her very own invention) and pointless faux adventures (ditto). Her cute, arty, wack-eee Aunt Opal (Heather Graham) offers some diverting solace, but the summer seems to find its groove only after Judy slimily co-opts younger bro Stink’s (Parris Mosteller) obsession with Bigfoot. Lovers of visceral kid stuff will appreciate Judy and mob’s affection for pee and puke references — too bad the entire enterprise just reeks of very bummer desperation. (1:31) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Kung Fu Panda 2 The affable affirmations of 2008’s Kung Fu Panda take a back seat to relentlessly elaborate, gag-filled action sequences in this DreamWorks Animation sequel, which ought to satisfy kids but not entertain their parents as much as its predecessor. Po (voiced by Jack Black), the overeating panda and ordained Dragon Warrior of the title, joins forces with a cavalcade of other sparring wildlife to battle Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), a petulant peacock whose arsenal of cannons threatens to overwhelm kung fu. But Shen is also part of Po’s hazy past, so the panda’s quest to save China is also a quest for self-fulfillment and “inner peace.” There’s less character development in this installment, though the growing friendship between Po and the “hardcore” Tigress (Angelina Jolie) is occasionally touching. The 3-D visuals are rarely more than a gimmick, save for a series of eye-catching flashbacks in the style of cel-shaded animation. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Stander)

*Making the Boys In 1968 The Boys in the Band revolutionized Broadway and opened a lot of minds by being a hit play (and film) about NYC homosexuals. Yet on the cusp of “Gay Liberation” and for many years thereafter, much of the actual gay community hugely objected to author Mart Crowley’s fictive portrait of its ‘mos as insular, shallow, classist, bitchy, and guilt-ridden. It was (as interviewee Edward Albee notes here) a picture ideally suited to straight Broadway audiences who lined up to see queers rendered pitiful if still identifiably human. Crayton Robey’s absorbing documentary chronicles the bumpy road of Boys and its creators — Crowley never had another hit, floundering until he moved into TV series scripting. The cast of the 1970 movie version, directed by William Friedkin (one year before The French Connection, followed by The Exorcist), saw their big break turn into a virtual industry blacklisting. Exceptions were unimpeachably heterosexual thespians Laurence Luckinbill and Cliff Gorman, who only “played” gay. This engrossing document recalls a work that trailblazed, was rejected as politically correct, then re embraced as an important touchstone in gay visibility and self-empowerment. (1:33) Roxie. (Harvey)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Balboa, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Mr. Popper’s Penguins (1:35) 1000 Van Ness.

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

Submarine (1:37) Opera Plaza, SF Center.

*Super 8 The latest from J.J. Abrams is very conspicuously produced by Steven Spielberg; it evokes 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial as well as 1985’s The Goonies and 1982’s Poltergeist (so Spielbergian in nature you’d be forgiven for assuming he directed, rather than simply produced, the pair). But having Grandpa Stevie blessing your flick is surely a good thing, especially when you’re already as capable as Abrams. Super 8 is set in 1979, high time for its titular medium, used by a group of horror movie-loving kids to film their backyard zombie epic; later in the film, old-school celluloid reveals the mystery behind exactly what escaped following a spectacular train wreck on the edge of their small Ohio town. The PG-13 Super 8 aims to frighten, albeit gently; there’s a lot of nostalgia afoot, and things do veer into sappiness at the end (that, plus the band of kids at its center, evoke the trademarks of another Grandpa Stevie: Stephen King). But the kid actors (especially the much-vaunted Elle Fanning) are great, and there’s palpable imagination and atmosphere afoot, rare qualities in blockbusters today. Super 8 tries, and mostly succeeds, in progressing the fears and themes addressed by E.T. (divorce, loneliness, growing up) into century 21, making the unknowns darker and the consequences more dire. (1:52) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*13 Assassins 13 Assassins is clearly destined to be prolific director Takashi Miike’s greatest success outside Japan yet. It’s another departure for the multi-genre-conquering Miike, doubtless one of the most conventional movies he’s made in theme and execution. That’s key to its appeal — rigorously traditional, taking its sweet time getting to samurai action that is pointedly not heightened by wire work or CGI, it arrives at the kind of slam-dunk prolonged battle climax that only a measured buildup can let you properly appreciate. In the 1840s, samurai are in decline but feudalism is still hale. It’s a time of peace, though not for the unfortunates who live under regional tyrant Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), a li’l Nippon Caligula who taxes and oppresses his people to the point of starvation. Alas, the current Shogun is his sibling, and plans to make little bro his chief adviser — so a concerned Shogun official secretly hires veteran samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) to assassinate the Lord. Fully an hour is spent on our hero doing “assembling the team” stuff, recruiting other unemployed, retired, or wannabe samurai. When the protagonists finally commence their mission, their target is already aware he’s being pursued, and he’s surrounded by some 200 soldiers by the time Miike arrives at the film’s sustained, spectacular climax: a small village which Shinzaemon and co. have turned into a giant boobytrap so that 13 men can divide and destroy an ogre-guarding army. A major reason why mainstream Hollywood fantasy and straight action movies have gotten so depressingly interchangeable is that digital FX and stunt work can (and does) visualize any stupid idea — heroes who get thrown 200 feet into walls by monsters then getting up to fight some more, etc. 13 Assassins is thrilling because its action, while sporting against-the-odds ingeniousness and sheer luck by our heroes as in any trad genre film, is still vividly, bloodily, credibly physical. (2:06) Bridge, Shattuck. (Harvey)

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

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

*Trollhunter Yes, The Troll Hunter riffs off The Blair Witch Project (1999) with both whimsy and, um, rabidity. Yes, you may gawk at its humongoid, anatomically correct, three-headed trolls, never to be mistaken for grotesquely cute rubber dolls, Orcs, or garden gnomes again. Yes, you may not believe, but you will find this lampoon of reality TV-style journalism, and an affectionate jab at Norway’s favorite mythical creature, very entertaining. Told that a series of strange attacks could be chalked up to marauding bears, three college students (Glenn Erland Tosterud, Tomas Alf Larsen, and Johanna Morck) strap on their gumshoes and choose instead to pursue a mysterious poacher Hans (Otto Jespersen) who repeatedly rebuffs their interview attempts. Little did the young folk realize that their late-night excursions following the hunter into the woods would lead at least one of them to rue his or her christening day. Ornamenting his yarn with beauty shots of majestic mountains, fjords, and waterfalls, Norwegian director-writer André Ovredal takes the viewer beyond horror-fantasy — handheld camera at the ready — and into a semi-goofy wilderness of dark comedy, populated by rock-eating, fart-blowing trolls and overshadowed by a Scandinavian government cover-up sorta-worthy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009). (1:30) Lumiere. (Chun)

*X-Men: First Class Cynics might see this prequel as pandering to a more tweeny demographic, and certainly there are so many ways it could have gone terribly wrong, in an infantile, way-too-cute X-Babies kinda way. But despite some overly choppy edits that shortchange brief moments of narrative clarity, X-Men: First Class gets high marks for its fairly first-class, compelling acting — specifically from Michael Fassbender as the enraged, angst-ridden Magneto and James McAvoy as the idealistic, humanist Charles Xavier. Of course, the celebrated X-Men tale itself plays a major part: the origin story of Magneto, a.k.a. Erik Lehnsherr, a Holocaust survivor, is given added heft with a few tweaks: here, in an echo of Fassbender’s turn in Inglourious Basterds (2009), his master of metal draws on his bottomless rage to ruthlessly destroy the Nazis who used him as a lab rat in experiments to build a master race. The last on his list is the energy-wrangling Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who’s set up a sweet Bond-like scenario, protected by super-serious bikini-vixen Emma Frost (January Jones). The complications are that Erik doesn’t ultimately differ from his Frankensteins — he pushes mutant power to the detriment of those puny, bigoted humans — and his unexpected collaborator and friend is Xavier, the privileged, highly psychic scion who hopes to broker an understanding between mutants and human and use mutant talent to peaceful ends. Together, they can move mountains—or at least satellite dishes and submarines. Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique and Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast fill out the cast, voicing those eternal X-Men dualities — preserving difference vs. conformity, intoxicating power vs. reasoned discipline. All core superhero concerns, as well as teen identity issues — given a fresh charge. (2:20) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

 

Hard at work: YNOT Summit addresses the business behind web porn

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
1
Hard at work: YNOT Summit addresses the business behind web porn

A man dressed in suit and tie walks into a conference room. A woman stands up to shake to his hand, followed by another man who unbuttons his jacket and outstretches his hand. You anxiously await the stereotypical bow-chika-wow-wow music to signal a wild menage a trios but instead, actual business is conducted. As easy as it is to imagine the inter-workings of the online adult entertainment industry as a porn itself, the reality involves a lot more clothing and a lot of legit, business-type activities. This week’s 15th annual YNOT Summit 2011 is the proof that will eventually become your pudding.

The YNOT Summit began in 1997 as the Cybernet Expo and has since become the longest-running adult industry gathering for professionals to hang-out, swap ideas, teach, and learn about running successful erotic web companies. The event is the physical representation of YNOT, an adult webmaster resource site that provides industry news and directories, basically a Better Business Bureau for online sex. About 400 adult industry professionals from around the country have registered for this year’s three consecutive days of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. classes. It’s a full-on school day covering all the general subjects, business models, legalities and international market basics, with a couple recess-like networking opportunities, including a game of Two Truths and a Lie and an interactive photo-shoot. 

This year’s hottest session will no doubt be the “Pros and Cons of .XXX Domain Names”; an industry-wide debate over the new voluntary option for sex sites to take on the .xxx domain, which officially premiered this spring. Jay Kopita, the Summit’s director of operations, expects things could get a little hostile, as most industry folks disagree with the system and think it’s simply a disguised measure for governing bodies to collect some cash and increase censorship. Supporters of .xxx claim it’s all about protecting the children– no surprise there. A member of the ICM Registry, the Florida based company who runs all .xxx operations, will be on the discussion panel to answer questions and to tackle the loads of criticism. 

ynot

Not just any conference– check those banners!

The rest of the conference should be pretty predictable and Kopita says the event aims to keep things as professional as possible during the day.

“It’s not about going out and partying all the time. I mean, that happens anyway when you bring together a bunch of adult industry professionals, but the daily actives of the Summit are for people who are looking for a return on their investments,” he says. “These are people who want to learn how to make money from the adult business.”

The group is encouraged to get it all out after hours: each night the Summit throws an exclusive party for attendees. Saturday night’s play time is “Kink at the Castle”–  a sure to-be exciting evening running around the Armory with Kink.com. Work hard, play hard. 

 

YNOT SUMMIT 2011

Thurs/23- Sat/25, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily

Web registration closes Wed/22– ask for SFBG discount at the door

Holiday Inn Golden Gateway Hotel

1500 Van Ness, SF

www.YNOTSummit.com

Civil rights advocates say S-Comm reforms are spin, part of bigger FBI biometric tracking plan

Mary Magee
-
23
Civil rights advocates say S-Comm reforms are spin, part of bigger FBI biometric tracking plan

In face of mounting criticism nationwide, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced today changes to its Secure Communities (S-Comm) deportation program. These changes include protections for domestic violence victims, and immigrants who are pursuing legitimate civil liberties protections. They give more discretion to ICE prosecutors, create a new detainer form that stipulates in multiple languages that arrestees cannot be detained under an ICE hold for more than 48 hours, except on holiday weekends. The form also requires local law enforcement to provide arrestees with a copy, which has a number to call if they believe their civil rights have been violated. The agency also said it will provide civil rights training related to its S-Comm program at the state and local level.

Immigrant and civil rights advocates said the announcement shows that the administration acknowledges that there are serious problems with S-Comm’s design and implementation. But they charged that the announced reforms fall far short of the S-Comm moratorium that an increasing number of advocates and lawmakers, including California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, have demanded.

And some advocates expressed concern that the feds’ insistence on expanding S-Comm, in which fingerprints taken by local law enforcement agencies are automatically shared with federal and international databases, is proof that the program is the first step towards rolling out a much larger program called the Next Generation Identification (NGI) initiative.

Under the NGI, the FBI plans to phase-in the deployment of a host of new biometric interoperability capabilities to state and local law enforcement agencies within the next five years. And NGI likely won’t be limited to non-citizens and undocumented immigrants, suggesting that US citizens charged with a crime will also find that once their fingerprints are taken, law enforcement agencies will immediately compile a huge and internationally interconnected dossier on them, regardless of whether they are innocent of the charges.

Civil rights advocates also worry that local enforcement agencies’ participation in S-Comm will become inevitable because S-Comm is simply the first of a number of biometric interoperability systems being brought online by the NGI.
In other words, S-Comm is just the first of many additional information systems that are being made available to local law enforcement agencies to fully and accurately identify suspects in their custody.

And, according to the FBI/CJIS’s own documents, the feds have adopted a three-part strategy to deal with jurisdictions that do not wish to participate:
1.    Deploy S-Comm to as many places as possible in the surrounding locale, creating a “ring of interoperability” around the resistant site.
2.    Deploy S-Comm selectively to state correctional system facilities, permitting identification of Level 1 offenders who may have been arrested and sentenced in the non-participating jurisdiction,
3.    Ensure that the jurisdiction understands that non-participation does not equate to non-deployment.
In other words, though a local law enforcement agency is technically free to shut off, or ignore, the receipt of records related to the fed’s fingerprint-matching capabilities, the feds are already warning local law enforcement agencies that local officers may find themselves “deprived of substantive information relating to an arrested subject’s true identity, place of origin, and other pertinent data of significant law enforcement value.”

Ammiano, who is the author of California’s TRUST Act, which would allow local governments to opt out of S-Comm, said: “Today’s announcement by ICE is simply window dressing. How many more innocent people have to be swept up by the ironically named Secure Communities program before the Obama administration will change course? Talking about the need for comprehensive immigration reform is not an excuse for continuing with a flawed, unjust program that is having tragic consequences for communities across the country. It is time for a moratorium on S-Comm pending a real review of the program not just PR spin from ICE.”

Professor Bill Ong Hing, immigration law expert at the University of San Francisco, stated, “The fact is, under our Constitution, immigration is a federal responsibility. Neither a state like Arizona, nor the federal government itself, can force local governments to act as immigration agents. Such measures compound the injustices of our deeply broken immigration system – and public safety and local resources are among the first casualties.”

And the Asian Law Caucus, the ACLU of California, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, the California Immigrant Policy Center, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network released the following joint statement:  “We are deeply disappointed by the inadequacy of the Administration’s response to the mounting body of evidence that the ‘Secure’ Communities program is damaging public safety and ensnaring community members. The painful stories of domestic violence victims and other innocent community members facing deportation thanks to S-Comm underscore that the program has simply gone off the rails. While today’s announcement acknowledges that problems exist with the program, the measures outlined by the Administration are a far cry from workable solutions these problems. To announce “reform” before review is an exercise in politics, not policy. The administration should suspend the program and wait for the Inspector General report in order to develop fair and transparent policies.” 

“Before vital relationships between local law enforcement and immigrant communities are furthered damaged, before more domestic violence victims, street vendors, family members, and workers who are merely striving for the American dream are swept up for deportation, S-Comm must be reigned in,” the coalition continued. “For the sake of public safety and transparency, we need real solutions. We strongly support California’s TRUST Act, which sets safeguards the federal government has failed to implement and allows local governments out of S-Comm, and we continue to call for a national moratorium on this fundamentally flawed program.”

In recent weeks, Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts, have either pulled out or refused participation in the program while numerous local governments have sought a way out of a deportation dragnet that harms public safety and has operated with no transparency or local oversight. And Ammiano’s TRUST Act, which also sets basic standards for those jurisdictions that do want to participate in S-Comm passed the state Assembly in May and the Senate Public Safety Committee this week.

During today’s press conference, ICE Director John Morton told reporters that “it makes sense to prioritize resources. We don’t have enough resources to remove everyone who is here unlawfully.”

But when the Guardian asked if the reforms address the community criticisms that S-Comm was rolled out as a way to catch serious criminals, but has been largely used to deport non-felons, Morton maintained the S-Comm has always focused on serious criminal offenders, but was never limited to that.
“We remove felony offenders at a higher rate than are convicted in the general population,” he stated. ‘But federal law does not provide that you can come here unlawfully and then commit crimes other than violent crimes.”

True, but local law enforcement agencies have repeatedly observed that you break vital trust with immigrant communities if they believe that contact with police, including  being arrested for crimes they did not actually commit, or arrests for very low-level misdemeanors, will lead to deportation.

“This feels like a non-announcement, and it’s far from reform,” said B, Loewe of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. “You don’t put a collar around a snake and call it a pet.”

And SF Police Commissioner Angela Chan, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, said the reason ICE and the FBI, “are so crazy for S-Comm is because it’s the first step in a much bigger loop that will include citizens and non-citizens alike.”

NDLON and the Asian Law Caucus are part of the coalition that is calling on the Obama administration to publicly oppose and terminate all programs that create partnerships between state and local law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security; halt the development of the vast data gathering infrastructure that houses S-Comm, and inform the public of the current scope and purpose of its data collection and dissemination activities; and allow state and local jurisdictions to opt-out of S-Comm.

After today’s press conference, ICE issued a press release stating that through April 30, 2011, more than 77,000 immigrants convicted of crimes, including more than 28,000 convicted of aggravated felony (Level 1) offenses like murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children were removed from the U.S. after identification through S-Comm.

“These removals significantly contributed to a 71 percent increase in the overall percentage of convicted criminals removed by ICE, with 81,000 more criminal removals in FY 2010 than in FY 2008,” ICE stated. “As a result of the increased focus on criminals, this period also included a 23% reduction or 57,000 fewer non-criminal removals.

ICE also observed that the agency currently receives an annual congressional appropriation that is only sufficient to remove a limited number of the more than 10 million individuals estimated to be in the U.S. unlawfully. “As S-Comm is continuing to grow each year, and is currently on track to be implemented nationwide by 2013, refining the program will enable ICE to focus its limited resources on the most serious criminals across the country,” ICE stated.

ICE further noted that it is creating a new advisory committee that will advise ICE on ways to improve S-Comm, including recommending on how to best focus on individuals who pose a true public safety or national security threat.  This panel will be composed of chiefs of police, sheriffs, state and local prosecutors, court officials, ICE agents from the field and community and immigration advocates.  The first report of this advisory committee will be delivered to the Director of ICE within 45 days.

ICE Director Morton also issued a new memo that directs the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to ensure that victims of and witnesses to crimes are properly protected. The memo clarifies that the exercise of discretion is inappropriate in cases involving threats to public safety, national security and other agency priorities.

And ICE and the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) have created an ongoing quarterly statistical review of the program to examine data for each jurisdiction where S-Comm is activated to identify effectiveness and any indications of potentially improper use of the program. “Statistical outliers in local jurisdictions will be subject to an in-depth analysis and DHS and ICE will take appropriate steps to resolve any issues,” ICE stated.
.

The naughty list: Sex on screen at the SF International LGBT Film Fest

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
22
The naughty list: Sex on screen at the SF International LGBT Film Fest

Relationships, emotions and identities? Yada yada yada. The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival may explore all the complicated bits of queerness but lest we forget that this festival is dedicated to a community centered around sexual preference. Who wants to see some hot, artsy gay sex on the big screen? If your hand is waving high in anticipation (among other body parts) you won’t be disappointed when you see what this year’s festival has hot on the reel.

Romantic and handholding gay characters will be a dime a dozen throughout the 10 days of films, which is awesome and wonderful in itself, but eventually all those homo chick-flicks might start to make your mouth water for something a bit more juicy. Gay porn is always a couple blocks or clicks away, but the independent, inspiring, adventurous, and beautiful varieties are much harder to get your lubed hands on. The unique visions of filmmakers from around the globe will be represented during the festival’s 35th year anniversary and if you time it right, you could probably find yourself pleased in public for a consecutive week and a half. Some are provocative, some sexually explicit, and others just have a lot of enjoyable visuals. Here are some steamy recommendations to provoke that scandalous theater hard-on and maybe even a Pride-ful romp with a fellow film-fester. 

Longhorns

longhorns

It’s Texas in 1982 when frat-boy Kevin and openly gay student Cesar become schoolmates. Kevin needs a little “help” and Cesar comes through with a helping hand. These study-buddies always end their homework and a well-deserved round of handjobs– lots of them. 

 

Community Action Center

cac

No dialogue. Just sex. Metallic bodies, gender-queer, paint splashing, fruit bashing, blood-red wooden dildos, witches, and dungeons will flash before your eyes in a series of shocking shorts. The performers were encouraged to go “hog wild” in this cinematic orgy and the results look dirty. 

 

I Want Your Love

want_love

Recreational sex always sounds like a good idea when booze does the convincing. Besties Jesse and Brenden decide to give it an arousing go, but predictably end up with sticky emotions. 

 

LA Zombie

la zombie

One word: wound fucking with prosthetic alien cocks. This sexy horror flick will get your adrenaline pumping all night.

 

May I Please Have Another

may_i_please

This series of six kinky shorts runs the gamete with a guitar-slaying transexual dominatrix, a queer leather family who sends off their bratty brother with a proper beating, the scenes behind International Mr. Leather, arousing poems, and surprising sexual encounters. 

 

Weekend

weekend

This extended one-night stand gets complicated as Russell and Glen get high, have loads of awesome sex, and chat for hours. Passionate and honest, it may be a love story but it’s also got enough skin to keep you perky. 

 

Three

three

From the director of Run Lola Run, Germany’s Tom Tykwer explores bisexuality and human motivation through three test subjects: Simon, Hanna, and Adam. The erotic chaos is a complete mind-fuck that will send you to bed with dripping dreams. 

 

SF INTERNATIONAL LGBT FILM FEST

Thurs/15 – Sun/26

Times, locations and ticket prices vary

Check the schedule and get tickets in advance at www.Frameline.org

 

Sing out

Andrew Lam
-
0
Sing out

arts@sfbg.com

FRAMELINE It may be summer break for America’s favorite Slushee-barraged show choir, but judging by the array of song-and-dance numbers in this year’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, Glee fever continues to spike. Half of the fest’s showcase films celebrate the power of the performing arts, including Mangus!, about a young man’s against-all-odds dream of playing the lead in his high school’s production of Jesus Christ Spectacular. Leading Ladies features a mother-daughter-daughter trio immersed in the world of competitive ballroom dancing. And the shorts roster offers no less than three musicals — the Australian films Slut: The Musical and Cupcake: A Zombie Lesbian Musical hail, naturally, from the program “Zombies, Aussies, Musicals, Oh My!,” while Who’s the Top? explores a relationship’s diminished sexual undercurrents through musical comedy. Directed by Jennie Livingston, Who’s the Top? is paired with Paris Is Burning (1990), Livingston’s acclaimed full-length documentary on the late-1980s ball scene in New York City.

The on-and-off-stage drama continues with Jamie and Jessie Are Not Together, a tale of thespians, best friends, and housemate tension rooted more in unvoiced amour than in chore wheels and whose turn it is to buy toilet paper. As the title’s Chicago-dwelling characters negotiate Jamie’s imminent departure for the Big Apple and (she hopes) Broadway, a few wistful tunes are crooned, accompanied by the occasional step-ball-change, but the songs feel somewhat opportunistically tacked on, and the film’s strength lies more in its exploration of that foggy, foggy gray area between the romance of intimate friendship and the romance of ripping the clothes off of someone you really care about.

The tweens of Spork show slightly more promise, at least when it comes to working the dance floor at a nightclub unaverse to letting in 13-year-olds. Spork — so nicknamed by her burnout but well-meaning brother due to her intersex status — is shy, awkward, and isolated at school — when not being tortured by a clique of tiny, racist mean girls led by a Britney Spears wannabe named Betsy Byotch. The answer, clearly, is to best the Byotch in a high-stakes middle-school dance-off — for if we’ve learned one thing from Glee and every high school musical and dance-ical pumped out by Hollywood in the past few decades, it’s that community can be found through soaring vocal harmonies, choreographed ass-shaking, and following one’s dreams.

This lesson is perhaps best exemplified by Leave It on the Floor, which updates (and fictionalizes) the drag and tranny ball scene of Paris Is Burning, transports it to the warehouses of South Central L.A., and adds some infectious music and lyrics (the song “Justin’s Gonna Call” is particularly likely to stay trapped in your brain for days). Leave It‘s kicked-to-the-curb protagonist, Brad, is equally in need of community and a place to crash, and he finds both (after a fashion) in the House of Eminence, the reigning underdog of the ball scene, proudly populated by outcasts and freaks — as well as a hot dueting partner, queer family, and a closing-number set of runway moves that nearly set a warehouse ballroom on fire and probably won’t be coming to a show choir competition near you anytime soon.

FRAMELINE 35: SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBT FILM FESTIVAL

June 16–26, most films $9–$15

Various venues

www.frameline.org

 

Heroes and hoedowns

Andrew Lam
-
0
Heroes and hoedowns

arts@sfbg.com

FRAMELINE This year’s Bay Area-centric Frameline features run a thematic and identification gamut appropriate to the festival’s ever-inclusive programming. Several are celebrations of local LGBT heroines and heroines, some recently deceased and some still-with-us.

Scott Gracheff’s With You commemorates the life and legacy of late local resident Mark Bingham, who famously died on United Airlines Flight 93 and is strongly suspected of being among the passengers who stormed the cockpit and prevented that hijacked Newark-to-SFO flight from reaching its presumed governmental target in Washington, D.C., on 9/11.

As his activist mother Alice Hoagland and everyone else here says, it’s the sort of thing he would do — Bingham was, among other things, an avid rugby player, metalhead, daredevil, UC Berkeley frat president, world-class partier, several-time arrestee (for reckless hijinks rather than criminal menace), bear chaser, global traveler, dot-com-wave surfer, and “human labrador retriever” (as a long-term boyfriend calls him). He lived a very full life and doubtlessly would have continued living it to the limit if this encounter with terrorism hadn’t cut his time short at 31.

A life that remained eventful for nearly three times that length was that of Del Martin, who along with surviving partner Phyllis Lyon founded SF’s Daughters of Bilitis — the nation’s first lesbian political and social organization — in the highly conservative climate of 1955. They remained highly active in feminist, gay, senior, and other progressive causes over the decades. Martin’s death in 2008 at age 87 occasioned a tribute in the City Hall rotunda that is captured by veteran local filmmaker Debra Chasnoff’s Celebrating the Life of Del Martin. This hour-long document demonstrates the breadth of Martin’s influence as prominent politicians, musicians, authors, progressive and religious leaders, et al. pay homage.

How exactly to honor our dead is the question at the heart of Andy Abrahams Wilson’s very polished The Grove, which charts the creation of the National AIDS Memorial Grove — an idea brought to fruition by the surviving partner of local landscape gardener Stephen Marcus — as well as some struggles over its visibility (even most visitors to Golden Gate Park don’t seem to know it’s there) and purpose.

When a recent contest was held for an installation to be added to the site, two women designers won with a striking sculptural concept intended to make a potent statement à la D.C.’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial about the disease’s devastation. But the grove’s current board shot it down, preferring to maintain the space’s leafy, meditative feel — even if that might also maintain its relative public invisibility. Should the memorial comfort those who directly suffered loss, or metaphorically convey that loss in vivid terms for future generations?

Very much living with HIV — emphasis on the living part — is the subject of Dain Percifield’s Running in Heels: The Glendon “Anna Conda” Hyde Story. Glendon Hyde a.k.a. Anna Conda fled a horrific Bible Belt background to become one of SF’s premier drag personalities, running the Cinch’s popular Friday night Charlie Horse revue for five years until a new condo’s complaining tenants shut that down. Enraged by the city’s “war on fun,” hostility toward the homeless, and other issues to boot, he joined 13 other candidates running for District 6 (Tenderloin) supervisor last year. He didn’t win, but this doc will make you hope he tries again.

Last but far from least is this year’s sole Bay Area narrative feature, shot largely in Fruitvale even if it is set in Texas. A big leap from writer director David Lewis’ prior features, Longhorns is a delightful romantic comedy about several 1982 Lone Star state frat boys dealing with sexual impulses and related emotions that might — oh lawd no — mean they’s quar, not just “messing around.” With some soundtracked songs by H.P. Mendoza (2006’s Colma: The Musical), this total charmer is (as one character puts it) “hotter’n a billy goat in a pepper patch.”

FRAMELINE 35: SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBT FILM FESTIVAL

June 16–26, most films $9–$15

Various venues

www.frameline.org

Quickies: Short Frameline reviews

Andrew Lam
-
0
Quickies: Short Frameline reviews

Below are some reviews of films that intrigued us from the upcoming Frameline Film Festival. Check out more of our coverage here.

Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (Madeleine Olnek, U.S., 2011) Who can’t identify with that title? Metaphorically speaking, that is. Although Madeleine Olnek’s B&W feature insists on etaking it quite literally, to pretty hilarious results. Lonely stationery-store clerk Jane (Lisa Haas) tells her shrink she dreamed a close encounter in which a space ship dropped a note her way that read “What are you doing later?” Shortly thereafter, she finds herself the object of amorous pursuit by Zoinx (Susan Ziegler), one of several bald-pated, high Peter Pan-collared exiles from planet Zotz who’ve been dumped in Manhattan to seek “hot Earthling action” and get their hearts broken — because it is believed back home that “big feelings” of love are destroying the ozone. Ergo, guilty citizens must be rendered “numb and apathetic” by off-shore interspecies romance before safely returning. Meanwhile two badly mismatched government operatives (Dennis Davis, Alex Karpovsky) are spying upon the intergalactic love intrigue. Go Fish (1994) meets Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), at last! June 25, 3:30 p.m., Castro. (Dennis Harvey)

The Evening Dress (Myriam Aziza, France, 2009) Everybody’s crushed on a teacher at some point, and indeed everybody in Helene Solenska’s (Lio) sixth grade French grammar class seems to have a crush on her. Why not: she’s attractive, wears sexy clothing (by classroom standards at least), and addresses the occasional sass with challenging provocation rather than simple discipline. But shy, studious Juliette (Alba Gaia Bellugi) has a crush bordering on obsession, particularly once she misinterprets teach’s attentions toward outgoing male student Antoine (Léo Legrand). You’re never too young to have a nervous breakdown, and our heroine’s increasingly reckless actions threaten to make her a pariah. Myriam Aziza’s feature is in that My Life as a Dog (1985) realm of movies about unpleasant childhoods that aren’t exploitative but at times grow truly discomfiting — it’s a worst case-scenario of pubescent imagination run amuck amid the usual teasing and bullying of peers. It’s a very good film if not an especially pleasant one. June 22, 4 p.m., Castro. (Harvey)

A Few Days of Respite (Amor Hakkar, Algeria and France, 2010) Quiet, bespectacled Moshen and his younger lover Hassan have fled Iran in the hopes of starting a new life together in Paris. They have only each other, and yet, because they lack visas, they must keep their distance while traveling to avoid arousing suspicion. While on a train in southern France, Moshen befriends Yolande, an older widow hungry for companionship who offers him a quick job painting her flat in a nearby small town. He agrees, forcing Hassan to continue hiding out, first in plain sight, and later, unknown to Yolande, in her attic, until tragedy drags everything out into the open. Algerian writer-director Amor Hakkar, who also plays Moshen, has crafted a sparse, intimate drama — emotionally enriched by its muted performances and minimal dialogue — about the lengths we are willing to go for love and the price we must pay in the process. Mon/20, 9:30 p.m., Elmwood; June 22, 9:30 p.m., Castro. (Matt Sussman)

How Are You? (Jannik Splidboel, Denmark, 2011) In the past few years Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, a Berlin-based artistic duo and romantic couple, have become international art world darlings known for their ambitious, playful, and critical large-scale installations, such as turning an exhibition space into a life-size replica of a New York City subway station or building a Prada pop-up shop in the Southwestern art mecca Marfa, Texas. At only 70 minutes, How Are You? can’t help but be a whirlwind tour, air kissing the bigger issues (commodity fetishism, identity politics, commercialism, and the vexed relationship the art world has to all three) Elmgreen and Dragset’s projects touch on while tracing the duo’s career trajectory all the way to their victory lap at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Brief but solid. Sun/19, 6:30 p.m., Roxie. (Sussman)

L.A. Zombie (Bruce LaBruce, Germany/U.S./France, 2010) If you’re going to see one Bruce LaBruce gay zombie erotic film, don’t make it L.A. Zombie. Alas, the latest from the queer Canadian auteur doesn’t hold up alongside its thematic predecessor, 2008’s Otto; or Up With Dead People. Lacking any of Otto‘s subtlety, L.A. Zombie is all sex, no substance. Sometimes that works: LaBruce’s The Raspberry Reich (2004) doesn’t go light on the porn, and that’s surely one of his best. But L.A. Zombie is lacking on all fronts. It stars noted gay porn actor Francois Sagat as a possible zombie (as in Otto, this is never made clear) who makes it his mission to fuck dead men back to life. Insert endless scenes of the zombie sticking his weird alien cock into gaping wounds and ejaculating blood onto corpses. If you can stomach that sentence, you can handle the film, but what’s the point? LaBruce’s past efforts have all the full-frontal male nudity without sacrificing the humor or cultural commentary. June 23, 9:30 p.m., Victoria. (Louis Peitzman)

Miwa: A Japanese Icon (Pascal-Alex Vincent, France, 2011) Chanteuse, star of stage and screen, outspoken champion of gay rights, drag queen: Akihiro Miwa has worn these many titles on her taxi-yellow, hair-like tiaras since she first rose to prominence as an androgynous torch singer at Tokyo jazz clubs in the 1950s. But it wasn’t until her dazzling star turn as the titular jewel thief in the camp classic Black Lizard (1968) that Miwa became a household name throughout Japan. Despite its clear admiration of its subject, Pascal Alex-Vincent’s documentary gives Miwa the Wikipedia treatment, resulting in a film that shares the unfortunate distinction of being both heartfelt and dull. Even his interviews with the lady herself come off as lusterless. Do yourself a favor, and track down a copy of Black Lizard instead. Mon/20, 1:30 p.m., Castro. (Sussman)

The Mouth of the Wolf (Pietro Marcello, Italy, 2009) This experimental narrative is a mix of archival footage and dramatic vignettes depicting the great love between two unlikely entwined souls who met in prison: ex-hood/longtime jailbird Enzo, a.k.a. Vincenzo Motta), and sometimes drug-addicted transsexual Mary Monaco (who died last year after filming). It’s also a lyrical appreciation of Genoa, the fabled northern Italian seaport that’s experienced tumultuous changes for over two millennia. Pietro Marcello’s unpinnable “docu-fiction” — Motta and Monaco apparently play themselves, a highlight being a 12-minute, nearly unbroken-shot dual interview — is frequently gorgeous cinematic poetry. If you seek the more conventional rewards of prose, you’ll probably be bored. However: anybody looking for Daddy should be informed that Enzo is pretty much the last word in unreconstructed macho-manliness. June 22, 9:30 p.m., Elmwood; June 24, 11 a.m., Castro. (Harvey)

Smut Capital of America (Michael Stabile, U.S., 2010) San Francisco. It’s smutty! You already know that, but do you know how deep-down and dirty it really is, in a historical sense? Basically we invented hardcore pornography in the 1960s (OMG, pubic hair!) and this lively local short, soon to expand to full-length, tells that story through fascinating archival footage, no-punch-pulled interviews with folks like John Waters and pornologist John Karr, and titillating naughty bits. Throughout there’s a feeling that a vital part of the story of sexual liberation, gay and straight, is being unearthed. And the raunchy tales of Polk Street hustlers, sticky-floored cinemas, and buck-wild hippie girls throwing open their golden gates will flood you with San Francisco pride. The short plays as part of the “Only in San Francisco” program with Running in Heels: The Glendon ‘Anna Conda’ Hyde Story and Making Christmas: The View From the Tom and Jerry Christmas Tree. Sun/19, 11 a.m., Victoria. (Marke B.)

Weekend (Andrew Haigh, U.K., 2011) The mumblecore-y movie many of us who lived through the 1990s wish was made back then: all that’s missing is the purposefully retro Cure soundtrack. Two scruffy, hipsterish, actually attractive Brit boys enjoy an ideal weekend fling. There is a fixie involved. Commitment-phobes each — one because he isn’t quite into the gay scene, one because he’s too full-on liberated for relationship gibberish — they gradually and adorably deal with their emotional attraction. By no means is this My Beautiful Launderette, and the melancholy self-regard might come a bit thick (Weekend was a big hit at the SXSW film fest, so … ), but it’s a well-acted, lovely film that examines the state of cute white skinny young bearded gay blokes today. Fri/17, 4:15, Castro. (Marke B.)

Without (Mark Jackson, U.S., 2011) This first feature by Seattle’s Mark Jackson (not to be confused with the Bay Area theater talent) is a stark reading of the psyche of 19-year-old Joslyn (Joslyn Jensen), newly arrived as temporarily caretaker to nearly-vegetative, wheelchair-bound Frank (Ron Carrier) while his kids and grandkids are on vacation. Left with this almost completely helpless charge — requiring butt-wiping, wheelchair-to-bed lifting, and regular transfusions of the Fishing Channel as stimulant — Joslyn seems to wallow in rather than escape her problems. Which appear to consist largely of a lesbian relationship whose gasping breaths we witness in occasional flashback. Isolated by no Internet or cellphone reception, not to mention her own powers of repression, Joslyn gradually looses grip as Jackson’s narrative grows more disturbing and ambiguous. Sat/18, 6:30 p.m., Victoria. (Harvey)

Frameline 35: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival

June 16–26, most films $9–$15

Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF

Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk.

Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., SF

Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF

www.frameline.org

 

Wild is the wind

Andrew Lam
-
0
Wild is the wind

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO “I remember the last time I saw Nina Simone, it was just after the Bush-Gore election fiasco. She was maaad,” graciously loquacious jazz chanteuse Kim Nalley told me over the phone when I asked her about the High Priestess of Soul’s relevance today. “Here was this woman who had been there through so many stages of the civil rights struggle, fought for voting rights in Mississippi, been there through all of that — and then to hear about black communities, Jewish communities, where the votes just disappeared …

“Well, she wasn’t having any of that. She told us we had to always keep up the fight, keep the fire going, and never let go. What was gained in one generation could be completely wiped out in the next. And all the while she was playing the most spellbinding music. I think that’s her angle on now”

Golden-voiced and full of fierceness, Ms. Nalley, a longtime (but not too long) Bay Area phenom and former owner of Jazz at Pearl’s in North Beach, intends to keep that message alive for five straight weeks at the Rrazz Room — and sing the sugar out of a Nina Simone set list that runs to 44 songs, augmented with tales of the activist diva’s life and accomplishments. If just thinking about doing all that makes you draw a breath, add in that Nalley is finishing up her Ph.D. in history at UC Berkeley, teaching jazz to grade school kids, and preparing to embark on a string of international tours and recording projects. Plus she’s catching up on all four seasons of Mad Men. Did I mention she’s gorgeous and actually exists?

She’s also well aware of the hold almighty Nina still exerts on the dancefloor imagination — from the famous, or infamous, Verve Remixed series of the early ’00s, to more recent sample-based efforts like those of Massive Attack, Gui Boratto, Ark, and this spring’s rather unfortunate minimal-tech hit “Sinnerman 2011” by Sean Miller and Daniel Dubb, which apparently took two people to make. (Civilization has so far escaped an Auto-Tuned strip-rap version of “See-Line Woman” or Deadmau5’s “Young Gifted and Black” but I could easily see Nicki Minaj as all “Four Women” at once.)

“You hear these newer versions of her, but some can sound so dated so quickly,” Kim said. “The originals never stop being fresh, alive. There’s nothing wrong with introducing her to new audiences in different ways. But Nina has always been with us, right there, so go out and hear her actual music, already.” *

SHE PUT A SPELL ON ME: THE MUSIC OF NINA SIMONE

Through July 17, Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.,

Sundays, 7 p.m., $30–$37.50

Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko

222 Mason, SF

www.therrazzroom.com

 

TRANNYSHACK: HEKLINA’S BIRTHDAY

The highest hog in dragland turns 103, and this night of greatest hits command performances will be an over-the-top trashtacular. Plus: Justin V. Bond from New York City, and probably some light rimming.

Fri/17, 9:30 p.m.–-3 a.m., $12–>$15. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.trannyshack.com

 

PRECOMPRESSION

It’s that time, again — time for the Burning Man gear-up and things that sound like this: “We invite you to live out this year’s theme in ways that manifest your personal journey.” I’m gonna be a pizza! Put it on the pizza! Put it on the pizza! It’s all good. With a holy helluva lot of DJs, theme installations, and fun-fur coughs.

Sat/18, 8 p.m.–4 a.m., $15 in “Playa finery,” $20 without. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

FLYING SAUCER BEACH PARTY

What do you get when you mix big-headed invaders, a slew of hot bodies, a ton of zombie-Martian makeup, and the “Hand Jive”? No, not Weinergate II: Night of the Living Tweets. Culturally invaluable burlesque crew Hubba Hubba Revue and a slew of groovy ghoulies play beach blanket bingo — but with laser guns! — at this ginchy all-day dress-up-and-rock-out bash.

Sun/16, 2 p.m.-8 p.m., $10 before 3 p.m., $12 after. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.hubbahubbarevue.com

Rep Clock

Maria Poblet
-
0

Schedules are for Wed/15–Tues/21 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times are p.m. unless otherwise specified.

BALBOA 3620 Balboa, SF; www.balboamovies.com. $20. “Opera, Ballet, and Shakespeare in Cinema:” Coppelia, performed by Bolshoi Ballet, Wed, 7:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. •Repulsion (Polanski, 1965), Wed, 2:50, 7, and Bunny Lake Is Missing (Preminger, 1965), Wed, 4:50, 9. “Frameline 35: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival,” June 16-26. Visit www.frameline.org for complete schedule and ticket information.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $10.25. These Amazing Shadows (Mariano and Norton, 2011), Sun, 7. With filmmakers and special guest Peter Coyote in person. The Tree of Life (Malick, 2011), June 17-23, call for times. The Trip (Winterbottom, 2010), June 17-23, call for times. The Cove (Psihoyos, 2010), Tues, 7. This event, featuring a live performance by Bob Weir, $40; proceeds benefit Earth Island Institute and SaveJapanDolphins.org.

“FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK” This week: Old Mill Park, 300 block of Throckmorton, Mill Valley; (415) 272-2756, www.filmnight.org. Donations accepted. How to Train Your Dragon (DeBlois and Sanders, 2010), Fri, 8. Dolores Park, Dolores and 19th St, SF. Caddyshack (Ramis, 1980), Sat, 8.

FOUR STAR 2200 Clement, SF; www.lntsf.com. $10. “Asian Movie Madness” •Lovers in Turbulent Days (1980), and Rorita Couple, Thurs, call for times. For mature audiences only.

MARSH ARTS CENTER 2120 Allston, Berk; www.culturedisabilitytalent.org. $5-20. “Superfest 2011 International Disability Film Festival,” Fri, 11am-4pm; Sat, 10:30am-2:30pm; Sun, 11am-4pm. Films that portray the disability experience.

OPERA PLAZA 601 Van Ness, SF; www.anightmaretoremember.com. $12. “A Nightmare to Remember Film Festival,” horror films, Sat, 7-10.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “The Cult of the Kuchars:” “Beyond Melodrama: Short Films By George and Mike Kuchar,” Wed, 7; “Artist Friends: Videos by George and Mike Kuchar,” Sun, 4:30; “Mike Kuchar Selects:” Empty Canvas (Damiani, 1963), Sun, 6:50. “Arthur Penn: A Liberal Helping:” The Chase (1966), Thurs, 7; Alice’s Restaurant (Penn, 1969), Sat, 6; Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Sat, 8:40. “Japanese Divas:” Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953), Fri, 7; Odd Obsession (Ichikawa, 1959), Fri, 9.

RED VIC 1727 Haight, SF; (415) 668-3994; www.redvicmoviehouse.com. $6-10. The Cockettes (Weber and Weissman, 2002), Wed, 2, 7:15, 9:30. Insidious (Wan, 2011), Thurs-Sat, 7:15, 9:25. Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1988), Sun-Mon, 7:30 (also Sun, 2, 4:45). “Midnites for Maniacs:” •Broadway Danny Rose (Allen, 1984), June 21-22, 7:15; The Purple Rose of Cairo (Allen, 1985), June 21-22, 9:15 (also June 22, 2). Single film, $7; double feature, $10.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “Another Hole in the Head Film Festival,” Wed-Thurs. Horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films; visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule. Meek’s Cutoff (Reichardt, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 7. The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (Pooley, 2009), Wed-Thurs, 9. Making the Boys (Robey, 2010), June 17-23, call for times. “Frameline 35: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival,” June 17-23. Visit www.frameline.org for complete schedule and ticket information. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. Klaus Kinski: Jesus Christ the Savior (Geyer, 1971/2008), Thurs, 7:30; Sun, 2.

Film Listings

Maria Poblet
-
0

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

FRAMELINE

The 35th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival runs June 16-26 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk; Roxie, 3117 16th St., SF; and Victoria, 2961 16th St., SF. For tickets (most films $9-$15) and complete schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

OPENING

The Art of Getting By The Art of Getting By is all about those confusing, mixed-up and apparently sexually frustrating months before high school graduation. George (Freddie Highmore) is a trench coat-wearing misanthrope — an old soul, as they say — whose parents and teachers are always trying to put him inside a box and tell him how to think. He finds a kindred sprit in Sally (Emma Roberts) who smokes and watches Louis Malle films. Hot. Heavily scored by the now-ancient songs of early ’00s blog bands, it may all sound like indie bullshit but this one has charm and wit despite its post-trend package. Like a sad little crayon, Highmore is a competent Michael Cera surrogate du jour. Writer-director Gavin Wiesen embraces hell of clichés, but he suitably sums up a generational angst along the way. The film may not always feel real, but it does have real feeling. Look out for great performances from Blair Underwood and Alicia Silverstone. (1:24) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Ryan Lattanzio)

*Beautiful Boy Save the children, but pity the parents. Director-cowriter Shawn Ku’s Beautiful Boy is one of two recent films concerning parents of kids who go on school killing sprees, and it’ll get potentially shortchanged due to the forthcoming We Need to Talk About Kevin‘s head-turning cast and its Hitchcockian literary source material. Still, Beautiful Boy shines in its own humble way, by dint of its quiet sense of integrity and refusal to pander. The bone-deep unhappiness suffusing the family concerned was present long before 18-year-old college student Sammy (Kyle Gallner) picked up a gun, killed more than a dozen people, then took his own life. Surviving parents Kate (Maria Bello) and Bill (Michael Sheen) already kept separate bedrooms under the same roof and led separate lives, with Bill pasting an unsettling grin on for work and Maria relentlessly pushing to make everything all right, neither noticing the barely perceptible warning signs that their only son was succumbing to despair. Belying its title, Beautiful Boy is less focused on the desperate youngster than on the adults attempting to cope with the horror he’s wrought — not necessarily cleaning up after him or picking up the pieces, but somehow finding their way through their own explosive responses. Bolstered by fine performances by Bello and Sheen, it’s yet another installment in the post-9/11 cinema of trauma — this time, attempting to imagine the unimaginable and to comprehend a kind of healing. (1:40) SF Center. (Chun)

Green Lantern Ryan Reynolds stars as the green-suited hero. (1:45) Four Star, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki.

Just Like Us You want to like Just Like Us, Egyptian American director-comedian Ahmed Ahmed’s documentary charting his tour of the Middle East. The comic gets credit for touching on potentially thought-provoking material while fishing for laughs amid a potential minefield of religious and cultural taboos and pushing audience boundaries in countries where national borders are hard-fought and loaded with controversy. Journeying from Dubai to Beirut to Ahmed’s ancestral homeland, the friendly band of merrymakers, including female comic Whitney Cummings, deals with self-censorship, sight-sees, and learns what kind of jokes fly with an audience unaccustomed to the conventions of standup comedy. Unfortunately the doc feels self-interested and suffers from the fact we hear so little from the ordinary people in the cheap seats. The hope is that Ahmed and his crew would break it all down and crack it open, but just as its title and its comedians’ jokes go, Just Like Us prefers to play it safe, underlining a good-natured message of inclusion and unity, never quite hitting the smart, sharp commentary that the best comedy aspires to. (1:12) Lumiere. (Chun)

*Last Mountain Appalachia remains a gorgeous natural refuge — at least those parts not razored by coal-mining corporations who dynamite the tops off hills in order to access mineral deposits. Flooding, deforestation, chemical contamination, and human ailments including brain tumors are among the significant accusations levied against greedy privatizations by Bill Haney’s documentary. On the other hand, a huge amount of the nation’s electricity hies from the region’s coal. Gorgeously photographed, Last Mountain is a stark portrait of political corruption rolling back all environmental regulation. Who’s the major reactionary villain here? Duh: W. At times the movie seems overmuch a promotion for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a croak-voiced environmental activist who objects to the spoilage of his privileged childhood vacation playground. But he’s right — at least ideologically. (To his credit, he calls out corporations as the dominating players in “our campaign finance system, which is just a system of legalized bribery.”) For locals who’ve both profited and suffered from strip-mining (the area’s cancer rate is sky-high, sometimes-fatal workplace violations ditto), as well as imported civil disobedience protestors, the reality is much harsher. (1:35) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Making the Boys In 1968 The Boys in the Band revolutionized Broadway and opened a lot of minds by being a hit play (and film) about NYC homosexuals. Yet on the cusp of “Gay Liberation” and for many years thereafter, much of the actual gay community hugely objected to author Mart Crowley’s fictive portrait of its ‘mos as insular, shallow, classist, bitchy, and guilt-ridden. It was (as interviewee Edward Albee notes here) a picture ideally suited to straight Broadway audiences who lined up to see queers rendered pitiful if still identifiably human. Crayton Robey’s absorbing documentary chronicles the bumpy road of Boys and its creators — Crowley never had another hit, floundering until he moved into TV series scripting. The cast of the 1970 movie version, directed by William Friedkin (one year before The French Connection, followed by The Exorcist), saw their big break turn into a virtual industry blacklisting. Exceptions were unimpeachably heterosexual thespians Laurence Luckinbill and Cliff Gorman, who only “played” gay. This engrossing document recalls a work that trailblazed, was rejected as politically correct, then re embraced as an important touchstone in gay visibility and self-empowerment. (1:33) Roxie. (Harvey)

Mr. Popper’s Penguins Jim Carrey plays a New Yorker who suddenly finds himself taking care of six penguins. Wackiness ensues. (1:35) Presidio.

*The Trip See “In Spite of Himself.” (1:52) Clay, Smith Rafael.

*Trollhunter Yes, The Troll Hunter riffs off The Blair Witch Project (1999) with both whimsy and, um, rabidity. Yes, you may gawk at its humongoid, anatomically correct, three-headed trolls, never to be mistaken for grotesquely cute rubber dolls, Orcs, or garden gnomes again. Yes, you may not believe, but you will find this lampoon of reality TV-style journalism, and an affectionate jab at Norway’s favorite mythical creature, very entertaining. Told that a series of strange attacks could be chalked up to marauding bears, three college students (Glenn Erland Tosterud, Tomas Alf Larsen, and Johanna Morck) strap on their gumshoes and choose instead to pursue a mysterious poacher Hans (Otto Jespersen) who repeatedly rebuffs their interview attempts. Little did the young folk realize that their late-night excursions following the hunter into the woods would lead at least one of them to rue his or her christening day. Ornamenting his yarn with beauty shots of majestic mountains, fjords, and waterfalls, Norwegian director-writer André Ovredal takes the viewer beyond horror-fantasy — handheld camera at the ready — and into a semi-goofy wilderness of dark comedy, populated by rock-eating, fart-blowing trolls and overshadowed by a Scandinavian government cover-up sorta-worthy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009). (1:30) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Chun)

ONGOING

*L’Amour Fou Pierre Thoretton’s documentary L’amour fou opens with two clips of men bidding farewell. The first, from 2002, is of the French-Algerian couturier Yves Saint Laurent announcing his retirement in a moving and emotional speech worthy of his favorite writer Marcel Proust. The second is of Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s longtime business partner and former lover, eulogizing his departed friend at the designer’s memorial service six years later. Thoretton’s film is suffused with goodbyes, many tender and candid, some portentous and rehearsed. To be sure, L’amour fou is a touching portrait of the powerful and tempestuous bond between Saint Laurent and Bergé, a bond that lasted close to five decades and resulted in one of the great empires of 20th century fashion. But it is also, alongside David Teboud’s two 2002 YSL documentaries, another entry in the hagiography of Saint Laurent, one cannily steered by Bergé as much as by Thoretton. Well-spoken and charming, Bergé still comes off as the punchy entrepreneurial foil to Saint Laurent’s dazzling but fragile genius. He can be both hyperbolic (praising Saint Laurent’s gifts) but also forthcoming (discussing the designer’s demons). Former muses Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux are also interviewed, but this is clearly Bergé’s show. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

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

*Bill Cunningham New York To say that Bill Cunningham, the 82-year old New York Times photographer, has made documenting how New Yorkers dress his life’s work would be an understatement. To be sure, Cunningham’s two decades-old Sunday Times columns — “On the Street,” which tracks street-fashion, and “Evening Hours,” which covers the charity gala circuit — are about the clothes. And, my, what clothes they are. But Cunningham is a sartorial anthropologist, and his pictures always tell the bigger story behind the changing hemlines, which socialite wore what designer, or the latest trend in footwear. Whether tracking the near-infinite variations of a particular hue, a sudden bumper-crop of cropped blazers, or the fanciful leaps of well-heeled pedestrians dodging February slush puddles, Cunningham’s talent lies in his ability to recognize fleeting moments of beauty, creativity, humor, and joy. That last quality courses through Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’ captivating and moving portrait of a man whose reticence and personal asceticism are proportional to his total devotion to documenting what Harold Koda, chief curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes in the film as “ordinary people going about their lives, dressed in fascinating ways.” (1:24) Balboa, Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

Bride Flight Who doesn’t love a sweeping Dutch period piece? Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight is pure melodrama soup, enough to give even the most devout arthouse-goer the bloats. Emigrating from post-World War II Holland to New Zealand with two gal pals, the sweetly staid Ada (Karina Smulders) falls for smarm-ball Frank (Waldemar Torenstra, the Dutchman’s James Franco) and kind of joins the mile high club to the behest of her conscience. The women arrive with emotional baggage and carry-ons of the uterine kind. As the harem adjusts to the country mores of the Highlands, Frank tries a poke at all of them in a series of sex scenes more moldy than smoldery. This Flight, set to a plodding score and stuffy mise-en-scene, never quite leaves the runway. Not to mention the whole picture, pale as a corpse, resembles one of those old-timey photographs of your great grandma’s wedding. These kinds of pastoral romances ought to be put out to, well, pasture. (2:10) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Lattanzio)

*Bridesmaids For anyone burned out on bad romantic comedies, Bridesmaids can teach you how to love again. This film is an answer to those who have lamented the lack of strong female roles in comedy, of good vehicles for Saturday Night Live cast members, of an appropriate showcase for Melissa McCarthy. The hilarious but grounded Kristen Wiig stars as Annie, whose best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is getting hitched. Financially and romantically unstable, Annie tries to throw herself into her maid of honor duties — all while competing with the far more refined Helen (Rose Byrne). Bridesmaids is one of the best comedies in recent memory, treating its relatable female characters with sympathy. It’s also damn funny from start to finish, which is more than can be said for most of the comedies Hollywood continues to churn out. Here’s your choice: let Bridesmaids work its charm on you, or never allow yourself to complain about an Adam Sandler flick again. (2:04) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Cave of Forgotten Dreams The latest documentary from Werner Herzog once again goes where no filmmaker — or many human beings, for that matter — has gone before: the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, a heavily-guarded cavern in Southern France containing the oldest prehistoric artwork on record. Access is highly restricted, but Herzog’s 3D study is surely the next best thing to an in-person visit. The eerie beauty of the works leads to a typically Herzog-ian quest to learn more about the primitive culture that produced the paintings; as usual, Herzog’s experts have their own quirks (like a circus performer-turned-scientist), and the director’s own wry narration is peppered with random pop culture references and existential ponderings. It’s all interwoven with footage of crude yet beautiful renderings of horses and rhinos, calcified cave-bear skulls, and other time-capsule peeks at life tens of thousands of years ago. The end result is awe-inspiring. (1:35) Balboa, SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*The Double Hour Slovenian hotel maid Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport) and security guard Guido (Filippo Timi) are two lonely people in the Italian city of Turin. They find one another (via a speed-dating service) and things are seriously looking up for the fledgling couple when calamity strikes. This first feature by music video director Giuseppe Capotondi takes a spare, somber approach to a screenplay (by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, and Stefano Sardo) that strikingly keeps raising, then resisting genre categorization. Suffice it to say their story goes from lonely-hearts romance to violent thriller, ghost story, criminal intrigue, and yet more. It doesn’t all work seamlessly, but such narrative unpredictability is so rare at the movies these days that The Double Hour is worth seeing simply for the satisfying feeling of never being sure where it’s headed. (1:35) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Everything Must Go Just skirting the edge of sentimentality and banality, Everything Must Go aims to do justice by its source material: Raymond Carver’s rueful, characteristically spare short story, “Why Don’t You Dance?,” from the 1988 collection Where I’m Calling From. And it mostly succeeds with some restraint from its director-writer Dan Rush, who mainly helmed commercials in the past. Everything Must Go gropes toward a cinematic search for meaning for the Willy Lomans on both sides of the camera — it’s been a while since Will Ferrell attempted to stretch beyond selling a joke, albeit often extended ones about masculinity, and go further as an actor than 2006’s Stranger Than Fiction. The focus here turns to the despairing, voyeuristic whiskey drinker of Carver’s highly-charged short story, fills in the blanks that the writer always carefully threaded into his work, and essentially pushes him down a crevasse into the worst day of his life: Ferrell’s Nick has been fired and his wife has left him, changing the locks, putting a hold on all his bank accounts, and depositing his worldly possessions on the lawn of their house. Nick’s car has been reclaimed, his neighbors are miffed that he’s sleeping on his lawn, the cops are doing drive-bys, and he’s fallen off the wagon. His only reprieve, says his sponsor Frank (Michael Pena), is to pretend to hold a yard sale; his only help, a neighborhood boy Kenny who’s searching for a father figure (Christopher Jordan Wallace, who played his dad Notorious B.I.G. as a child in 2009’s Notorious) and the new neighbor across the street (Rebecca Hall). Though Rush expands the characters way beyond the narrow, brilliant scope of Carver’s original narrative, the urge to stay with those fallible people — as well as the details of their life and the way suburban detritus defines them, even as those possessions are forcibly stripped away — remains. It makes for an interesting animal of a dramedy, though in Everything Must Go‘s search for bright spots and moments of hope, it’s nowhere near as raw, uncompromising, and tautly loaded as Carver’s work can be. (1:36) SF Center. (Chun)

The Hangover Part II What do you do with a problematic mess like Hangover Part II? I was a fan of The Hangover (2009), as well as director-cowriter Todd Phillips’ 1994 GG Allin doc, Hated, so I was rooting for II, this time set in the East’s Sin City of Bangkok, while simultaneously dreading the inevitable Asian/”ching-chang-chong” jokes. Would this would-be hit sequel be funnier if they packed in more of those? Doubtful. The problem is that most of II‘s so-called humor, Asian or no, falls completely flat — and any gross-out yuks regarding wicked, wicked Bangkok are fairly old hat at this point, long after Shocking Asia (1976) and innumerable episodes of No Reservations and other extreme travel offerings. This Hangover around, mild-ish dentist Stu (Ed Helms) is heading to the altar with Lauren (The Real World: San Diego‘s Jamie Chung), with buds Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug (Justin Bartha) in tow. Alan (Zach Galifianakis) has completely broken with reality — he’s the pity invite who somehow ropes in the gangster wild-card Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). Blackouts, natch, and not-very-funny high jinks ensue, with Jeong, surprisingly, pulling small sections of II out of the crapper. Phillips obviously specializes in men-behaving-badly, but II‘s most recent character tweaks, turning Phil into an arrogant, delusional creep and Alan into an arrogant, delusional kook, seem beside the point. Because almost none of the jokes work, and that includes the tired jabs at tranny strippers because we all know how supposedly straight white guys get hella grossed out by brown chicks with dicks. Lame. (1:42) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Incendies When tightly wound émigré Nawal (Luba Azabal) dies, she leaves behind adult twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) — and leaves them documents that only compound their feelings of grief and anger, suggesting that what little they thought they knew about their background might have been a lie. While resentful Simon at first stays home in Montreal, Jeanne travels to fictive “Fuad” (a stand-in for source-material playwright Wajdi Mouawad’s native Lebanon), playing detective to piece together decades later the truth of why their mother fled her homeland at the height of its long, brutal civil war. Alternating between present-day and flashback sequences, this latest by Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (2000’s Maelstrom) achieves an urgent sweep punctuated by moments of shocking violence. Resembling The Kite Runner in some respects as a portrait of the civilian victimization excused by war, it also resembles that work in arguably piling on more traumatic incidences and revelations than one story can bear — though so much here has great impact that a sense of over-contrivance toward the very end only slightly mars the whole. (2:10) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer Try not trying so hard, Judy Moody. The tween paperback fave gets an OTT makeover for the cineplex, as director John Schultz and company throw as many bells, whistles, silly new slang, kooky gruesome colors, CGI twinkles, sing-along subtitles, and zany hijinks into the mix as possible, in vain hope of keeping kiddie eyeballs from drifting. Bright-eyed redhead Judy Moody (Jordana Beatty) — think Pippi Longstocking, only way more annoying — is stuck at home for the season, sans most of her pals and parentals, scuttling her plans for a Not Bummer Summer filled with weirdly competitive thrill points (her very own invention) and pointless faux adventures (ditto). Her cute, arty, wack-eee Aunt Opal (Heather Graham) offers some diverting solace, but the summer seems to find its groove only after Judy slimily co-opts younger bro Stink’s (Parris Mosteller) obsession with Bigfoot. Lovers of visceral kid stuff will appreciate Judy and mob’s affection for pee and puke references — too bad the entire enterprise just reeks of very bummer desperation. (1:31) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

Kung Fu Panda 2 The affable affirmations of 2008’s Kung Fu Panda take a back seat to relentlessly elaborate, gag-filled action sequences in this DreamWorks Animation sequel, which ought to satisfy kids but not entertain their parents as much as its predecessor. Po (voiced by Jack Black), the overeating panda and ordained Dragon Warrior of the title, joins forces with a cavalcade of other sparring wildlife to battle Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), a petulant peacock whose arsenal of cannons threatens to overwhelm kung fu. But Shen is also part of Po’s hazy past, so the panda’s quest to save China is also a quest for self-fulfillment and “inner peace.” There’s less character development in this installment, though the growing friendship between Po and the “hardcore” Tigress (Angelina Jolie) is occasionally touching. The 3-D visuals are rarely more than a gimmick, save for a series of eye-catching flashbacks in the style of cel-shaded animation. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Sam Stander)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Balboa, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

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

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides The last time we saw rascally Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), he was fighting his most formidable enemy yet: the potentially franchise-ending Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007). The first Pirates movie (2003) was a surprise critical success, earning Depp his first-ever Oscar nomination; subsequent entries, though no less moneymaking, suffered from a detectable case of sequel-itis. Overseeing this reboot of sorts is director Rob Marshall (2002’s Chicago), who keeps the World’s End notion of sending Jack to find the Fountain of Youth, but adds in a raft of new faces, including Deadwood‘s Ian McShane (as Blackbeard) and lady pirate Penélope Cruz. The story is predictably over-the-top, with the expected supernatural elements mingling with sparring both sword-driven and verbal — as well as an underlying theme about faith that’s nowhere near as fun as the film’s lesser motifs (revenge, for one). It’s basically a big swirl of silly swashbuckling, nothing more or less. And speaking of Depp, the fact that the oft-ridiculous Sparrow is still an amusing character can only be chalked up to the actor’s own brand of untouchable cool. If it was anyone else, Sparrow’d be in Austin Powers territory by now. (2:05) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Le Quattro Volte There are “documentaries” that use staged or fictive elements to fib, and others toward some greater truth. Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte is of the second type. You might well question just how much of this “docu-essay” simply occurred on camera, or occurred when/how it did for the camera. But that really doesn’t matter, because the results have their own enigmatic, lyrical truth, one that might not have been arrived at by pure observation. In some ways, this is a better movie about life, existence, and the possibility of God than The Tree of Life. At the very least, it’s shorter. It might help to know — though the film itself won’t tell you — that Frammartino drew inspiration from the purported theories of ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, and mystic Pythagoras. (Purported because his sect was highly secretive and no writings survive.) He believed in transmigration of the soul, a.k.a. metempsychosis — souls reincarnating from human to animal to various elements, endlessly replenishing nature. There, now you have some CliffsNotes on a movie that itself chooses to wash over the viewer almost as neutrally as the stationary landscape studies of James Benning. Void of recorded music and nearly all speech (the few overheard bits go untranslated), Frammartino’s film — shot in and around the medieval Calabrian village of Serra San Bruno — is part neorealist nod and part metaphysical rapture. It is gorgeous, and occasionally goofy, just like the deity one might pick to be Up There. (1:28) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Submarine (1:37) SF Center.

*Super 8 The latest from J.J. Abrams is very conspicuously produced by Steven Spielberg; it evokes 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial as well as 1985’s The Goonies and 1982’s Poltergeist (so Spielbergian in nature you’d be forgiven for assuming he directed, rather than simply produced, the pair). But having Grandpa Stevie blessing your flick is surely a good thing, especially when you’re already as capable as Abrams. Super 8 is set in 1979, high time for its titular medium, used by a group of horror movie-loving kids to film their backyard zombie epic; later in the film, old-school celluloid reveals the mystery behind exactly what escaped following a spectacular train wreck on the edge of their small Ohio town. The PG-13 Super 8 aims to frighten, albeit gently; there’s a lot of nostalgia afoot, and things do veer into sappiness at the end (that, plus the band of kids at its center, evoke the trademarks of another Grandpa Stevie: Stephen King). But the kid actors (especially the much-vaunted Elle Fanning) are great, and there’s palpable imagination and atmosphere afoot, rare qualities in blockbusters today. Super 8 tries, and mostly succeeds, in progressing the fears and themes addressed by E.T. (divorce, loneliness, growing up) into century 21, making the unknowns darker and the consequences more dire. (1:52) California, Empire, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Eddy)

*13 Assassins 13 Assassins is clearly destined to be prolific director Takashi Miike’s greatest success outside Japan yet. It’s another departure for the multi-genre-conquering Miike, doubtless one of the most conventional movies he’s made in theme and execution. That’s key to its appeal — rigorously traditional, taking its sweet time getting to samurai action that is pointedly not heightened by wire work or CGI, it arrives at the kind of slam-dunk prolonged battle climax that only a measured buildup can let you properly appreciate. In the 1840s, samurai are in decline but feudalism is still hale. It’s a time of peace, though not for the unfortunates who live under regional tyrant Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), a li’l Nippon Caligula who taxes and oppresses his people to the point of starvation. Alas, the current Shogun is his sibling, and plans to make little bro his chief adviser — so a concerned Shogun official secretly hires veteran samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) to assassinate the Lord. Fully an hour is spent on our hero doing “assembling the team” stuff, recruiting other unemployed, retired, or wannabe samurai. When the protagonists finally commence their mission, their target is already aware he’s being pursued, and he’s surrounded by some 200 soldiers by the time Miike arrives at the film’s sustained, spectacular climax: a small village which Shinzaemon and co. have turned into a giant boobytrap so that 13 men can divide and destroy an ogre-guarding army. A major reason why mainstream Hollywood fantasy and straight action movies have gotten so depressingly interchangeable is that digital FX and stunt work can (and does) visualize any stupid idea — heroes who get thrown 200 feet into walls by monsters then getting up to fight some more, etc. 13 Assassins is thrilling because its action, while sporting against-the-odds ingeniousness and sheer luck by our heroes as in any trad genre film, is still vividly, bloodily, credibly physical. (2:06) Bridge, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls It’s hard to name an American equivalent of New Zealand’s Topp Twins — a folk-singing, comedy-slinging, cross-dressing duo who’re the biggest Kiwi stars you’ve never heard of (but may be just as beloved as, say, Peter Jackson in their homeland). Recent inductees in the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame, the fiftysomething Jools and Lynda, both lesbians, sing country-tinged tunes that slide easily from broad and goofy (with an array of costumed personas) to extremely political, sounding off on LGBT and Maori rights, among other topics. Even if you’re not a fan of their musical style, it’s undeniable that their identical voices make for some stirring harmonies, and their optimism, even when a serious illness strikes, is inspiring. This doc — which combines interviews, home movies, and performance footage — will surely earn them scores of new stateside fans. (1:24) Roxie. (Eddy)

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

*X-Men: First Class Cynics might see this prequel as pandering to a more tweeny demographic, and certainly there are so many ways it could have gone terribly wrong, in an infantile, way-too-cute X-Babies kinda way. But despite some overly choppy edits that shortchange brief moments of narrative clarity, X-Men: First Class gets high marks for its fairly first-class, compelling acting — specifically from Michael Fassbender as the enraged, angst-ridden Magneto and James McAvoy as the idealistic, humanist Charles Xavier. Of course, the celebrated X-Men tale itself plays a major part: the origin story of Magneto, a.k.a. Erik Lehnsherr, a Holocaust survivor, is given added heft with a few tweaks: here, in an echo of Fassbender’s turn in Inglourious Basterds (2009), his master of metal draws on his bottomless rage to ruthlessly destroy the Nazis who used him as a lab rat in experiments to build a master race. The last on his list is the energy-wrangling Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who’s set up a sweet Bond-like scenario, protected by super-serious bikini-vixen Emma Frost (January Jones). The complications are that Erik doesn’t ultimately differ from his Frankensteins — he pushes mutant power to the detriment of those puny, bigoted humans — and his unexpected collaborator and friend is Xavier, the privileged, highly psychic scion who hopes to broker an understanding between mutants and human and use mutant talent to peaceful ends. Together, they can move mountains—or at least satellite dishes and submarines. Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique and Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast fill out the cast, voicing those eternal X-Men dualities — preserving difference vs. conformity, intoxicating power vs. reasoned discipline. All core superhero concerns, as well as teen identity issues — given a fresh charge. (2:20) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

 

1...454647...100Page 46 of 100

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