Labor

BART’s safety culture slammed at Assembly hearing

Michael Redmond
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BART was slammed by legislators and its workers on Nov. 7 for refusing to make a key worker safety improvement demanded by state regulators since a 2008 fatality, instead choosing to aggressively defend the “simple approval” process that contributed to two more fatalities on Oct. 19, after which the district finally made the change.

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment had already planned the San Francisco hearing into why BART spent years appealing rulings by the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration before the recent tragedy, but that incident sharpened criticism of the district for valuing efficiency over safety.

“The culture of safety at BART must change,” said BART train operator Jesse Hunt, who gave dramatic testimony about the callous culture at BART that led to the Oct. 19 tragedy. “It’s not a single incident, it’s a pattern of disregard for safety.”

The hearing also delved into why BART had an uncertified trainee at the helm of the train that killed Christopher Sheppard and Laurence Daniels on Oct. 19, despite warnings by its unions that district preparations to run limited service during the strike would be unsafe (see “Tragedy follows strike,” Oct. 23).

“Simple approval” made employees doing work on the tracks responsible to avoid being hit by trains moving silently at up to 80mph. When BART exhausted its administrative appeals of Cal-OSHA’s rulings in June, it filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court and continued to defend the practice, which its unions had long sought to end.

“BART challenged that citation and continues to do so to this day,” Chair Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) said in his opening remarks, noting that it took two recent fatalities for BART to drop its stance. “I’m deeply troubled this decision wasn’t made much earlier.”

For BART, the hearing only went downhill from there as state regulators testified to the district’s litigious refusal to adopt important safety precautions, employees painted a picture of a district hostile to them and their safety concerns, and legislators chastised BART managers for not having reasonable answers to their questions.

In response, BART Assistant General Manager of Operations Paul Oversier denied the district undervalues safety and said that it defended the simple approval process because it had been used tens of thousand of times and, “We had a track record in mind of a procedure that was working well.”

Asked whether he continues to defend it after the Oct. 19 incident, Oversier said, “Irrespective of what our opinion might be, we suspended the simple approval process,” a decision that he said could disrupt service, increase costs, and “that may cause us to look at what our hours of operation are.”

The hearing was called by Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-SF, who said in his opening remarks, “I was very concerned to read many of the OSHA findings, that it found BART was in violation of California state law,” which prohibits employers from making workers responsible for their own safety in dangerous situations.

Later, Ting questioned BART Chief Safety Officer Jeff Lau about how many of OSHA’s safety violations it had taken steps to correct versus how many it continues to resist, a question Lau said that he couldn’t answer. “I’m extraordinarily disappointed in your response,” Ting told Lau, demanding that he prepare a detailed written response to the questions and submit it to the committee, which plans to revisit the issue once more details emerge from the NTSA investigation of the Oct. 19 incident.

Hunky Vikings! Crusading Texans! And more new movies!

Sue Vaughan
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1
Hunky Vikings! Crusading Texans! And more new movies!

Two big ‘uns this week: blockbuster-to-be Thor: The Dark World (review below), and the very fine drama Dallas Buyers Club, featuring standout performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto (Dennis Harvey’s review here). If you seek a respite from Hollywood, check out San Francisco’s own South Asian International Film Festival (some recommendations from me, here), or read on for more short takes on this week’s new offerings.

The Motel Life Brothers (Stephen Dorff, Emile Hirsch) go on the run after a tragic accident. Kris Kristofferson and Dakota Fanning co-star. (1:25) Roxie.

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

Running From Crazy Can one ever escape one’s toxic genetic legacy, especially when one’s makeup, and even one’s genius, is so entangled with mental illness, the shadow of substance abuse, and a kind of burden of history? Actor, author, healthy-living proponent, and now suicide prevention activist Mariel Hemingway seems cut out to try, as, eh, earnestly as she can, to offer up hope. Part of that involves opening the door to documentarian Barbara Kopple, in this look at the 20th century’s most infamous literary suicide, Mariel’s grandfather Ernest Hemingway, and just one of his familial threads, one full of lives cut deliberately short. For Running From Crazy, Kopple generally keeps the focus on Mariel, who displays all the disarming groundedness and humility of the youngest care-taking, “good” child. Her father, Ernest’s eldest son, Jack, regularly indulged in “wine time” with his ailing wife and, according to Mariel, had a pitch-black side of his own. But we don’t look to closely at him as the filmmaker favors the present, preferring to watch Mariel mountain climb and bicker with her stuntman boyfriend, meet up with her eldest sister Muffet, and ‘fess up about the depression that runs through the Hemingway line to her own daughters. Little is made of Mariel’s own artistic contributions in acting, though Kopple’s work is aided immeasurably by the footage Mariel’s rival middle sister Margaux shot for a documentary she planned to do on Ernest. Once the highest paid model in the world, Margaux leaves the viewer with a vivid impression of her brash, raw, eccentric, and endearingly goofy spirit — she’s courageous in her own way as she sips vino with her parents and older sister and tears up during a Spanish bull fight. Are these just first world problems for scions who never hesitated to trade on their name? Kopple is more interested in the humans behind the gloss of fame, spectacle and sensation — the women left in the wake of a literary patriarch’s monumental brand of masculinity and misogyny. And you feel like you get that here, plainly and honestly, in a way that even Papa might appreciate. (1:40) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPHaLkd4J28

Spinning Plates Joseph Levy’s enjoyable documentary contrasts life at three widely disparate U.S. restaurants: the Martinez family’s modest enterprise La Cocina de Gabby, a Tucson showcase for a wife and mother’s Mexican cooking; Breitbach’s Country Dining in rural Iowa, a 151-year-old purveyor of all-American comfort food; and superstar chef Grant Achatz’s Chicago Alinea, where a 24-course meal of culinary art/science experiments can set you back $800 (yes, that’s for one diner). The latter is a global destination for serious foodies, acclaimed by the industry’s most prestigious observers. (Its nearly 24/7 supply deliveries are also a noisy nightmare for someone I know whose apartment is next door.) The teensy town that’s grown up around Breitbach’s has a population of 70; on a busy weekend, the business attracts up to 2,000, many driving long distances to get there. Yet the people we get to know the best here, the émigré Martinezes, illustrate another side of restaurant life — the side in which a majority of new eateries fail within three years, despite (as seemingly is the case at Gabby’s) all palate-pleasing, reasonable pricing and tireless labor. Tying together these three stories is … well, nothing, really, beyond some vague notion that good food is something that breeds “community.” (Yet high-ticket Alinea can hardly be said to reflect that, while Levy doesn’t actually bother interviewing any patrons to let us know whether the other two establishments’ food is anything special.) Still, and despite some rather bogus dramatic chronology-manipulation of events that happened several years ago, Spinning Plates is an entertaining sampler plate of a movie. And the Martinez family’s story lends it a bit of real gravitas. (1:32) (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npvJ9FTgZbM

Thor: The Dark World Since any tentacle of Marvel’s Avengers universe now comes equipped with its own money-printing factory, it’s likely we’ll keep seeing sequels and spin-offs for approximately the next 100 years. With its by-the-numbers plot and “Yeah, seen that before” 3D effects, Thor: The Dark World is forced to rely heavily on the charisma of its leads — Chris Hemsworth as the titular hammer-swinger; Tom Hiddleston as his brooding brother Loki — to hold audience interest. Fortunately, these two (along with Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Idris Elba, and the rest of the supporting cast, most of whom return from the first film) appear to be having a blast under the direction of Alan Taylor, a TV veteran whose credits include multiple Game of Thrones eps. Not that any Avengers flick carries much heft, but especially here, jokey asides far outweigh any moments of actual drama (the plot, about an alien race led by Christopher Eccleston in “dark elf” drag intent on capturing an ancient weapon with the power to destroy all the realms, etc. etc., matters very little). Fanboys and -girls, this one’s for you … and only you. (2:00) (Cheryl Eddy)

BART’s safety culture slammed at Assembly hearing

Sasha Cuttler
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BART was slammed by legislators and its workers today for refusing to make a key worker safety improvement demanded by state regulators since a 2008 fatality, instead choosing to aggressively defend the “simple approval” process that contributed to two more fatalities on Oct. 19, after which the district finally made the change.

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment had already planned today’s San Francisco hearing into why BART spent years appealing rulings by the California Occupational Safety and Health Administrations before the recent tragedy, but that incident sharpened criticism of the district for valuing efficiency over safety.

“The culture of safety at BART must change,” said BART train operator Jesse Hunt, who gave dramatic testimony about the callous culture at BART that led to the Oct. 19 tragedy. “It’s not a single incident, it’s a pattern of disregard for safety.”

The hearing also delved into why BART had an uncertified trainee at the helm of the train that killed Christopher Sheppard and Laurence Daniels on Oct. 19, despite warnings by its unions that district preparations to run limited service during the strike would be unsafe.

“Simple approval” made employees doing work on the tracks responsible to avoid being hit by trains moving silently at up to 80mph. When BART exhausted its administrative appeals of Cal-OSHA’s rulings in June, it filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court and continued to defend the practice, which its unions had long sought to end. 

“BART challenged that citation and continues to do so to this day,” Chair Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) said in his opening remarks, noting that it took two recent fatalities for BART to drop its stance. “I’m deeply troubled this decision wasn’t made much earlier.”

For BART, the hearing only went downhill from there as state regulators testified to the district’s litigious refusal to adopt important safety precautions, employees painted a picture of a district hostile to them and their safety concerns, and legislators chastised BART managers for not having reasonable answers to their questions.

In response, BART Assistant General Manager of Operations Paul Oversier denied the district undervalues safety and said that it defended the simple approval process because it had been used tens of thousand of times and, “We had a track record in mind of a procedure that was working well.”

Asked whether he continues to defend it after the Oct. 19 incident, Oversier said, “Irrespective of what our opinion might be, we suspended the simple approval process,” a decision that he said could disrupt service, increase costs, and “that may cause us to look at what our hours of operation are.”

That suggestion drew murmurs of outrage from the union members that packed the hearing, including those who had just testified about how the district refuses to work collaboratively with its workers, who even had to learn of the district’s decision to end simple approval from evening news reports rather than directly.

“Shifting the burden from people in the field to the control center is not a long term solution,” testified Sal Cruz, a BART train controller of 15 years who was on the contract bargaining team. “Time and time again, we’re never really involved in these decision-making processes.”

Christine Baker, director of the Department of Industrial Relations, and Juliann Sum, acting director of its Division of Occupational Safety and Health (better known as Cal-OSHA), testified as to their agency’s long, trying history of getting BART to comply with its rulings, with Baker calling the resistance to reform “clearly an issue of grave concern.”

Legislators probed why that might be the case, asking whether abating the problems might be seen as an admission of liability to either the agency and a victim and whether it was the norm for those cited. Baker said no to both questions: “It is not an admission of guilt if they abate…Many employers abate as soon as there is a citation.”

So why is it standard practice at BART to avoid correcting the 40 violations it received from Cal-OSHA in the last 12 years?

“In most cases, the district has acted in good faith to try to abate the citations,” Oversier testified, but he said that BART often disagreed with Cal-OSHA’s findings and that “the investigation doesn’t really start until you appeal.” He said BART has paid just 22 percent of what it has intially been fined by OSHA, casting that as smart stewardship of ratepayer money and saying, “It’s the appeal process that brings closure to the process.”

Meanwhile, Baker, Sum, and Cal-OSHA attorney Amy Martin said they are currently investigating the Oct. 19 incident for both civil violations and penalties and the possibility of criminal prosecution of BART officials if “they intentionally took the action that led to the fatality,” Martin said.

The hearing was called by Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-SF, who said in his opening remarks, “I was very concerned to read many of the OSHA findings, that it found BART was in violation of California state law,” which prohibits employers from making workers responsible for their own safety in dangerous situations. 

Later, Ting questioned BART Chief Safety Officer Jeff Lau — whose testimony came almost entirely from prepared statements he read, in a way that didn’t inspire much confidence in the material — about how many of OSHA’s safety violations it had taken steps to correct versus how many it continues to resist. Lau said that he couldn’t answer the question, even though Ting noted that he first called this hearing back in June and Lau should have been prepared to answer that central question.

“I’m extraordinarily disappointed in your response,” Ting told Lau, demanding that he prepare a detailed written response to the questions and submit it to the committee, which plans to revisit the issue once more details emerge from the NTSA investigation of the Oct. 19 incident.

Most of the panel criticized BART’s foot dragging and called for reforms.

“This latest accident, a terrible tragedy, could have been avoided,” said Assemblymember Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), decrying Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent veto of Assembly Bill 1165 by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Oakland), which would have expedited Cal-OSHA appeals and perhaps required BART to fix the problems pending its appeal.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (S-SF) recounted his own history of difficult dealings with intransigent BART officials, from trying to improve station safety when he was a supervisor starting in the mid-‘90s to his work as a legislator trying to provide some oversight of the BART Police after the Oscar Grant shooting.

“I feel like it still has a long way to go. Transparency and accountability will be very important around this issue,” Ammiano said.

Later, Ammiano asked Cruz whether the ill-fated Oct. 19 train should have been traveling slower than 60-70mph, and Cruz responded, “With knowledge of people being wayside [a term that means on the tracks], you would think that.”

The most scathing and dramatic testimony came from the nine workers called to testify at the hearing, three from each of BART’s three unions, all of which had made safety reforms a big part of their recent contract negotiations, with varying degrees of success.

“We are dealing with a culture at BART that doesn’t take workers seriously or the safety of workers seriously,” began AFSCME District Council 57 Executive Director George Popyack. “Our objective today is to make BART a better and safer place to work.”

Several workers said the district’s main imperatives are to cut costs and keep the trains on time, which causes safety compromises on an almost daily basis. “We’re so pushed to keep that schedule sometimes we push on the edge,” said train controller Ken Perez. 

While BART officials refused to discuss details of the Oct. 19 incident, as per a gag order from the NTSB, union members that testified said it’s clear that the district’s disregard for safety and its desire to break the strike are what led to the tragedy.

“BART was planning to run a limited service with people not trained to run those trains and that was connected to this accident,” ATU Local 1555 President Antonette Bryant testified.

“The train that hit the workers was a manager being trained to run the train in the event of an extended strike,” Poyyack said, noting how irresponsible it was to be running a train at what the NTSB said was 60-70mph on the one line where there were workers on the track. He and others said there was no good reason for the district to do so, calling it an example of the district’s flagrant disregard for safety.

“The culture of BART is a significant contributor to the incident,” said BART train operator Jesse Hunt. “The culture is one of gambling with worker and rider safety.”

Hunt said BART’s safety culture directly caused the Oct. 19 tragedy: “There was no reason for a trainee train to be operated or for employees to be on the ground.”

John Arantes, president of the BART Professional Chapter of SEIU Local 1021, said the district took an extremely aggressive posture in labor negotiations — “a scorched earth strategy encouraged by directors like Zachary Mallet,” the newest elected member and one critical of unions in the press — forcing the strike and the unnecessary Oct. 19 tragedy.

And he posed a question that remains unanswered, despite the hearing and the Guardian’s attempts to get an answer: “Who authorized the training exercise and to what extent were the BART directors involved?”

Hearing to probe safety at BART and issues related to recent tragedy

Sasha Cuttler
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Hearing to probe safety at BART and issues related to recent tragedy

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment will hold a hearing in San Francisco tomorrow (Thu/7 at 10am) looking at workplace safety issues in the BART system, one initially prompted by the district’s record of unaddressed safety violations, but which took on special resonance when two BART workers were killed on the tracks on Oct. 19.

Assemblymember Phil Ting called for the hearing back in June, but he postponed it until the district resolved a protracted contract impasse with its three unions that resulted in two four-day strikes this year, with an agreement finally reached two days after the tragedy — and at least partially prompted by it.

Ting told the Guardian that he was motivated by dozens of violations from the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration that the district has received since its last fatality in 2008 — which were highlighted by the unions and reported by us — and the fact that “BART ended up appealing them instead of going to fix them.”

“It’s so unfortunate that we have this tragedy, which will create a greater sense of urgency on this issue,” Ting said, noting that he wants to focus on, “How do we move forward and fix these problems?”

Beyond those safety issues lurk another important issue that we at the Guardian have been raising, but which most journalists have ignored and the district has tried to avoided addressing: Was the district ignoring safety concerns by its unions to train replacement drivers on that ill-fated train, and did its preparations to run limited service during a strike harden its negotiating stance and force the strikes and ultimately the tragedy?

It may be many months before the National Transportation Safety Board investigation arrives at conclusions about what caused the fatalities, but it has already said that a trainee was at the helm at the time. Although the NTSB has told the district not to publicly discuss the accident, that doesn’t cover the labor negotiations that led up to it, and the Guardian has finally been able to get some responses from the district to our questions (below, you can find an extended exchange between me and BART spokesperson Alicia Trost), but key questions remain unanswered.

Will tomorrow’s hearing illuminate the connection between the labor impasse and the tragedy? “We’ll have to touch on some of it,” Ting told us. “But I’m not sure what they’ll say.”

BART Board President Tom Radulovich discussed the issues with the Guardian, and he cautioned about any rush to judgement about the cause of the Oct. 19 accident and whether it was connected to preparations that the district was making to possibly offer replacement service, which the board would have had to approve.

Although he said the board was briefed by district officials about the possibility of offering service, Radulovich said he didn’t consider the idea feasible and that “a lot of directors had misgivings about even the possibility of running replacement service.”

Radulovich also defended the eventual deal as resulting from compromises on both sides and not simply the district sweetening its offer and dropping some of its work rule demands — which the unions had blamed for the Oct. 17 breakdown in negotiations — and “I don’t think [limited replacement service] would have broken a strike.”

But SEIU Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly, who was part of the union’s negotiating team, said the district was “bargaining toward a strike” all year and that the threat of running replacement service was taken seriously by the unions, all of whom warned the district it would be unsafe.

“We would have lost this fight if they had put limited service on,” Daly told us, noting how that would have allowed the district to weather a strike long enough to break the will of union members.

Daly also disputes the district’s characterization that relaxed work rules demands by the unions settled the impasse, telling us, “In the end, the deal was a little more compromise on substance, but not as much as that would have occurred in the binding arbitration that we proposed before the strikes.”

The district rejected that offer, setting the stage for the latest strike, and Daly said the only reason why BART softened its stance was because the tragedy made BART realize its plan to run replacement service was not longer a viable option: “There is not question in anyone’s mind that was the breakthrough.”

Both Radulovich and district officials insist there were no active plans to run replacement service, although BART spokesperson Alicia Trost made clear that the district had publicly raised that possibility and that training to that end was already underway at the time the tragedy.

Radulovich insists that the district wasn’t bargained toward a strike and that “we just wanted a balanced package.” But he also wasn’t at the bargaining table, and he says that he’s not aware of how much driver training had been done and whether it was being done on the ill-fated train in preparation for replacement service.

“I still have a lot of questions and I do want to see the facts,” Radulovich told us.    

We at the Guardian also still have a lot of questions, which Trost was dodging until just a few days ago, when my last blog post on the topic finally prompted a substantial response. So here’s our most recent email exchange:

 

SFBG: Who at the district proposed training replacement drivers and did the board approve that training?
Did the district discuss warnings from the unions that such training would be unsafe? Why was the decision made to go ahead with the training anyway?
Why did it take days for BART to admit a trainee was driving the train that killed those men? And wasn’t casting that train as solely on a maintenance run deceptive?
Does the district regret the decision to train replacement drivers?
What role did the tragedy play in BART’s decision to sweeten its final offer and end the strike?
Did anyone at the district discuss with Tom Hocke how running replacement service could help break a strike? Do you deny that running limited service would help to break a strike?
Did the possibility of running replacement service allow the district to take a tougher stance at the bargaining table? And did this tragedy help the district conclude that running such service wasn’t a viable option?
Can you characterize what you meant by an “extended strike” and explain why training took place immediately at the onset if the strike?

 

BART: The District wanted a plan in place to run limited train service in the event of a prolonged strike.  The intent was never to replace workers, as our workers would be welcomed back once a strike ended, but to provide some limited congestion relief if the Bay Area was faced with a long, crippling and economically devastating strike. 

If the district was going to provide this limited service for the public it would need more certified managers which is why we were training. At the same time we were negotiating in good faith and trying to prevent a strike from happening in the first place. Our priority was always to get to a deal and avoid an unnecessary strike.  Once the unions went on strike for the second time we continued to negotiate and leave the door open for a deal. Which is exactly what happened. A deal came together and BART never needed to go to the board with a limited train service plan. Safety is always our top priority and is always the first, second and third consideration in everything we do. 

The NTSB immediately put a gag order on BART officials just hours after the tragic deaths, which remains in place today. Only the NTSB can provide information surrounding the incident. The NTSB announced the train was being used for both maintenance and training purposes. Under the gag order, BART is allowed to site what the NTSB has reported to date. 

The tragedy certainly redoubled everyone’s efforts to get to a deal.   The breakthrough came when the unions presented language on Beneficial Past Practice on Sunday night. This opened the door to continue to work off the progress that had been made on the economic components with the mediators just days before and resolve the remaining issues. 

 

SFBG: Thanks for finally getting back to me, but I don’t think you directly answered any of the questions that I posed.

 

BART: Did BART management consider the warnings (include one in the form of a

lawsuit) that running that service was unsafe?  Safety is always our top priority and is always the first, second and third consideration in everything we do.

And did the tragedy reinforce that safety question and signal to the district that running trains during a strike was probably unwise and that the district should sweeten its contract offer?

We have to run trains during a strike to exercise the system (details sent in a earlier email.) If you are talking about running passenger service, we never needed to move forward with such a plan as we were not faced with a prolonged strike.  The tragedy certainly redoubled everyone’s efforts to get to a deal.   The breakthrough came when the unions presented language on Beneficial Past Practice on Sunday night. This opened the door to continue to work off the progress that had been made on the economic components with the mediators just days before and resolve the remaining issues.

Who at the district proposed training replacement drivers and did the board approve that training?

The Operations Department was conducting the training as publically discussed by Paul Oversier to the MTC and to the media.  The board does not need to approve training.  (on background: I do not know if or who officially “proposed it.”  The first I learned of the concept was the MTC meeting.)

Did the district discuss warnings from the unions that such training would be unsafe? Why was the decision made to go ahead with the training anyway?

Safety is always our top priority and is always the first, second and third consideration in everything we do. The District wanted a plan in place to run limited train service in the event of a prolonged strike.

Why did it take days for BART to admit a trainee was driving the train that killed those men? And wasn’t casting that train as solely on a maintenance run deceptive?   

During the press conference immediately following the accident, a reporter asked where the train was going.  Mr. Oversier explained the train had just dropped off the graffiti train and was headed back to Concord.  He said he didn’t know who was driving the train as he had just arrived to the scene. The NTSB immediately put a gag order on BART

officials just hours after the tragic deaths, which remains in place today. Only the NTSB can provide information surrounding the incident. The NTSB announced the train was being used for both maintenance and training purposes. Under the gag order, BART is allowed to site what the NTSB has reported to date, which is why we can now point out the fact the train was both a training train and a maintenance/inspection trains we routinely run during strikes to exercise the system and deploy staff to assignments.
Does the district regret the decision to train replacement drivers?

This is a difficult question to answer without a summary of findings from the NTSB.
What role did the tragedy play in BART’s decision to sweeten its final

offer and end the strike?

The tragedy certainly redoubled everyone’s efforts to get to a deal.   The breakthrough came when the unions presented language on Beneficial Past Practice on Sunday night. This opened the door to continue to work off the progress that had been made on the economic components with the mediators just days before and resolve the remaining
issues.

Did anyone at the district discuss with Tom Hocke how running replacement

service could help break a strike?

No, the intent was to provide some contingencies for the travelling public being adversely impacted by the unions decision to strike.  

Do you deny that running limited service would help to break a strike?

The intent was never to replace workers, as our workers would be welcomed back once a strike ended, but to provide some limited congestion relief if the Bay Area was faced with a long, crippling and economically devastating strike.  Skeletal service would never be able to replace BART’s normal operation but it could provide a tiny bit of
congestion relief to the public.  BART’s bargaining team was always focused
on getting a deal with union leadership- one that would be approved by the
workers as well.

Did the possibility of running replacement service allow the district to take a tougher stance at the bargaining table? And did this tragedy help the district conclude that running such service wasn’t a viable option?

Our priority was always to get to a deal and avoid an unnecessary strike. Once the unions went on strike for the second time we continued to negotiate in good faith and leave the door open for a deal. Which is exactly what happened. A deal came together and BART never needed to go to the board with a limited train service plan.

Can you characterize what you meant by an “extended strike” and explain why training took place immediately at the onset if the strike?

There was never an exact time period placed on what an “extended strike” would be, but
union leadership indicated publically they were prepared for a month long strike which would be the “longest and bloodiest strike” we’ve ever seen. We began initial training weeks before the strike- as widely covered by the media.  If the district was going to provide limited service for the public it would need more certified managers than we had.

 

 

 

Film Listings: November 6 – 12, 2013

Michael Redmond
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0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, Sam Stander, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Dallas Buyers Club See “Life’s Work.” (1:58) Embarcadero.

The Motel Life Brothers (Stephen Dorff, Emile Hirsch) go on the run after a tragic accident. Kris Kristofferson and Dakota Fanning co-star. (1:25) Roxie.

Running From Crazy Can one ever escape one’s toxic genetic legacy, especially when one’s makeup, and even one’s genius, is so entangled with mental illness, the shadow of substance abuse, and a kind of burden of history? Actor, author, healthy-living proponent, and now suicide prevention activist Mariel Hemingway seems cut out to try, as, eh, earnestly as she can, to offer up hope. Part of that involves opening the door to documentarian Barbara Kopple, in this look at the 20th century’s most infamous literary suicide, Mariel’s grandfather Ernest Hemingway, and just one of his familial threads, one full of lives cut deliberately short. For Running From Crazy, Kopple generally keeps the focus on Mariel, who displays all the disarming groundedness and humility of the youngest care-taking, “good” child. Her father, Ernest’s eldest son, Jack, regularly indulged in “wine time” with his ailing wife and, according to Mariel, had a pitch-black side of his own. But we don’t look to closely at him as the filmmaker favors the present, preferring to watch Mariel mountain climb and bicker with her stuntman boyfriend, meet up with her eldest sister Muffet, and ‘fess up about the depression that runs through the Hemingway line to her own daughters. Little is made of Mariel’s own artistic contributions in acting, though Kopple’s work is aided immeasurably by the footage Mariel’s rival middle sister Margaux shot for a documentary she planned to do on Ernest. Once the highest paid model in the world, Margaux leaves the viewer with a vivid impression of her brash, raw, eccentric, and endearingly goofy spirit — she’s courageous in her own way as she sips vino with her parents and older sister and tears up during a Spanish bull fight. Are these just first world problems for scions who never hesitated to trade on their name? Kopple is more interested in the humans behind the gloss of fame, spectacle and sensation — the women left in the wake of a literary patriarch’s monumental brand of masculinity and misogyny. And you feel like you get that here, plainly and honestly, in a way that even Papa might appreciate. (1:40) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Spinning Plates Joseph Levy’s enjoyable documentary contrasts life at three widely disparate U.S. restaurants: the Martinez family’s modest enterprise La Cocina de Gabby, a Tucson showcase for a wife and mother’s Mexican cooking; Breitbach’s Country Dining in rural Iowa, a 151-year-old purveyor of all-American comfort food; and superstar chef Grant Achatz’s Chicago Alinea, where a 24-course meal of culinary art/science experiments can set you back $800 (yes, that’s for one diner). The latter is a global destination for serious foodies, acclaimed by the industry’s most prestigious observers. (Its nearly 24/7 supply deliveries are also a noisy nightmare for someone I know whose apartment is next door.) The teensy town that’s grown up around Breitbach’s has a population of 70; on a busy weekend, the business attracts up to 2,000, many driving long distances to get there. Yet the people we get to know the best here, the émigré Martinezes, illustrate another side of restaurant life — the side in which a majority of new eateries fail within three years, despite (as seemingly is the case at Gabby’s) all palate-pleasing, reasonable pricing and tireless labor. Tying together these three stories is … well, nothing, really, beyond some vague notion that good food is something that breeds “community.” (Yet high-ticket Alinea can hardly be said to reflect that, while Levy doesn’t actually bother interviewing any patrons to let us know whether the other two establishments’ food is anything special.) Still, and despite some rather bogus dramatic chronology-manipulation of events that happened several years ago, Spinning Plates is an entertaining sampler plate of a movie. And the Martinez family’s story lends it a bit of real gravitas. (1:32) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Thor: The Dark World The Avengers juggernaut rolls on as Thor (Chris Hemsworth) grabs his hammer for a stand-alone sequel. See review at www.sfbg.com. (2:00) Balboa, Presidio.

ONGOING

About Time Richard Curtis, the man behind 2003’s Love Actually, must be enjoying his days in England, rolling in large piles of money. Coinciding with the 10-year anniversary of that twee cinematic love fest comes Curtis’ latest ode to joy, About Time. The film begins in Cornwall at an idyllic stone beach house, as Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) describes his family members (Bill Nighy is dad; Richard Cordery is the crazy uncle) and their pleasures (rituals (tea on the beach, ping pong). Despite beachside bliss, Tim is lovelorn and ready to begin a career as a barrister (which feels as out of the blue as the coming first act break). Oh! And as it happens, the men in Tim’s family can travel back in time. There are no clear rules, though births and deaths are like no-trespass signs on the imaginary timeline. When he meets Mary (Rachel McAdams), he falls in love, but if he paves over his own evening by bouncing back and spending that night elsewhere, he loses the path he’s worn into the map and has to fix it. Again and again. Despite potential repetition, About Time moves smoothly, sweetly, slowly along, giving its audience time enough to feel for the characters, and then feel for the characters again, and then keep crying just because the ball’s already in motion. It’s the most nest-like catharsis any British film ever built. (2:03) Marina, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

All Is Lost As other reviewers have pointed out, All Is Lost‘s nearly dialogue-free script (OK, there is one really, really well-placed “Fuuuuuck!”) is about as far from J.C. Chandor’s Oscar-nominated script for 2011’s Margin Call as possible. Props to the filmmaker, then, for crafting as much pulse-pounding magic out of austerity as he did with that multi-character gabfest. Here, Robert Redford plays “Our Man,” a solo sailor whose race to survive begins along with the film, as his boat collides with a hunk of Indian Ocean detritus. Before long, he’s completely adrift, yet determined to outwit the forces of nature that seem intent on bringing him down. The 77-year-old Redford turns in a surprisingly physical performance that’s sure to be remembered as a late-career highlight. (1:46) Albany, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Big Sur (1:21) 1000 Van Ness, Smith Rafael.

Blue is the Warmest Color The stars (Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux) say the director was brutal. The director says he wishes the film had never been released (but he might make a sequel). The graphic novelist is uncomfortable with the explicit 10-minute sex scene. And most of the state of Idaho will have to wait to see the film on Netflix. The noise of recrimination, the lesser murmur of backpedaling, and a difficult-to-argue NC-17 rating could make it harder, as French director Abdellatif Kechiche has predicted, to find a calm, neutral zone in which to watch Blue is the Warmest Color, his Palme d’Or–winning adaptation (with co-writer Ghalya Lacroix) of Julie Maroh’s 2010 graphic novel Le Blue Est une Couleur Chaude. But once you’ve committed to the three-hour runtime, it’s not too difficult to tune out all the extra noise and focus on a film that trains its mesmerized gaze on a young woman’s transforming experience of first love. (2:59) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Blue Jasmine The good news about Blue Jasmine isn’t that it’s set in San Francisco, but that it’s Woody Allen’s best movie in years. Although some familiar characteristics are duly present, it’s not quite like anything he’s done before, and carries its essentially dramatic weight more effectively than he’s managed in at least a couple decades. Not long ago Jasmine (a fearless Cate Blanchett) was the quintessential Manhattan hostess, but that glittering bubble has burst — exactly how revealed in flashbacks that spring surprises up to the script’s end. She crawls to the West Coast to “start over” in the sole place available where she won’t be mortified by the pity of erstwhile society friends. That would be the SF apartment of Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a fellow adoptive sister who was always looked down on by comparison to pretty, clever Jasmine. Theirs is an uneasy alliance — but Ginger’s too big-hearted to say no. It’s somewhat disappointing that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really do much with San Francisco. Really, the film could take place anywhere — although setting it in a non-picture-postcard SF does bolster the film’s unsettled, unpredictable air. Without being an outright villain, Jasmine is one of the least likable characters to carry a major US film since Noah Baumbach’s underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007); the general plot shell, moreover, is strongly redolent of A Streetcar Named Desire. But whatever inspiration Allen took from prior works, Blue Jasmine is still distinctively his own invention. It’s frequently funny in throwaway performance bits, yet disturbing, even devastating in cumulative impact. (1:38) Metreon, Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Vogue. (Harvey)

Captain Phillips In 2009, Captain Richard Phillips was taken hostage by Somali pirates who’d hijacked the Kenya-bound Maersk Alabama. His subsequent rescue by Navy SEALs came after a standoff that ended in the death of three pirates; a fourth, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, surrendered and is serving a hefty term in federal prison. A year later, Phillips penned a book about his ordeal, and Hollywood pounced. Tom Hanks is perfectly cast as Phillips, an everyman who runs a tight ship but displays an admirable ability to improvise under pressure — and, once rescued, finally allows that pressure to diffuse in a scene of memorably raw catharsis. Newcomer Barkhad Abdi, cast from an open call among Minneapolis’ large Somali community, plays Muse; his character development goes deep enough to emphasize that piracy is one of few grim career options for Somali youths. But the real star here is probably director Paul Greengrass, who adds this suspenseful high-seas tale to his slate of intelligent, doc-inspired thrillers (2006’s United 93, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum). Suffice to say fans of the reigning king of fast-paced, handheld-camera action will not be disappointed. (2:14) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Carrie Is the world ready for a candy-covered Carrie? It’s a sad state of affairs when the best thing about a movie, particularly a wholly superfluous remake like this, is its creepy poster. That’s the closest thing this Carrie has to offer next to that retina-scorching, iconic 1976 image of blood-saturated Sissy Spacek that continues to lend inspiration to baby Billiths everywhere. Nonetheless, like a shy violet cowering in the gym showers, this Carrie comes loaded with potential, with Boys Don’t Cry (1999) director Kimberly Peirce at the helm, the casting of Julianne Moore and Chloe Grace Moretz in the critical mother-daughter roles, and the unfortunately topical bullying theme. Peirce makes a half-hearted attempt to update the, um, franchise when the tormented Carrie (a miscast Moretz) is virally videoed by spoiled rival Chris (Portia Doubleday), but the filmmaker’s heart — and guts — aren’t in this pointless exercise. We speed through the buildup — which unconvincingly sets up Carrie’s torments at home, instigated by obviously mentally ill, Christian fundamentalist mom Margaret (Moore), and at school, where the PE teacher (Judy Greer) pep-talks Carrie and Sue Snell (Gabriella White) is mysteriously hellbent on paying penance for her bullying misdeeds — to the far-from-scary denouement. Let’s say mean-spirited reflexive revenge-taking is no real substitute for true horror and shock. Supposedly drawn to Carrie for its female-empowerment message, Peirce nevertheless isn’t cut out to wade into horror’s crimson waters — especially when one compares this weak rendition with Brian De Palma’s double-screen brio and high-camp Freudian passion play. (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (1:35) Metreon.

The Counselor The reviews are in, and it’s clear Ridley Scott has made the most polarizing film of the season. Most of The Counselor‘s detractors blame Cormac McCarthy’s screenplay, the acclaimed author’s first that isn’t drawn from a prexisting novel. To date, the best film made from a McCarthy tale is 2007’s No Country for Old Men, and The Counselor trawls in similar border-noir genre trappings in its tale of a sleek, greedy lawyer (Michael Fassbender) who gets in way over his head after a drug deal (entered into with slippery compadres played by Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem) goes wrong. Yes, there are some problems here, with very few unexpected twists in a downbeat story that’s laden with overlong monologues, most of them delivered by random characters that appear, talk, and are never seen again. But some of those speeches are doozies — and haters are overlooking The Counselor‘s sleazy pleasures (many of which are supplied by Cameron Diaz’s fierce, feline femme fatale) and attention to grimy detail. One suspects cult appreciation awaits. (1:57) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Diana The final years of Diana, Princess of Wales are explored in what’s essentially a classed-up Lifetime drama, delving into the on-off romance between “the most famous woman in the world” (Naomi Watts) and heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). Relationship roadblocks (his Muslim family, back home in Pakistan, is hesistant to accept a divorced, Christian Brit as their son’s partner) are further complicated by extraordinary circumstances (Diana’s fame, which leads to paparazzi intrusions on the very private doctor’s life), but there’s real love between the two, which keeps them returning to each other again and again. By the third or fourth tearful breakup — followed by a passionate reunion — Diana‘s story becomes repetitive as it marches toward its inevitable tragic end. Still, director Oliver Hirschbiegel (2004’s Downfall, another last-days-in-the-life biopic, albeit of a slightly different nature) includes some light-hearted moments, as when a giggling Diana smuggles Hasnat through the palace gates (past guards who know exactly what she’s up to). As you’d expect, Watts is the best thing here, bringing warmth and complexity to a performance that strives to reach beyond imitation. (1:52) SF Center. (Eddy)

Don Jon Shouldering the duties of writer, director, and star for the comedy Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has also picked up a broad Jersey accent, the physique of a gym rat, and a grammar of meathead posturing — verbal, physical, and at times metaphysical. His character, Jon, is the reigning kingpin in a triad of nightclubbing douchebags who pass their evenings assessing their cocktail-sipping opposite numbers via a well-worn one-to-10 rating system. Sadly for pretty much everyone involved, Jon’s rote attempts to bed the high-scorers are spectacularly successful — the title refers to his prowess in the art of the random hookup — that is, until he meets an alluring “dime” named Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), who institutes a waiting period so foreign to Jon that it comes to feel a bit like that thing called love. Amid the well-earned laughs, there are several repulsive-looking flies in the ointment, but the most conspicuous is Jon’s stealthy addiction to Internet porn, which he watches at all hours of the day, but with a particularly ritualistic regularity after each night’s IRL conquest has fallen asleep. These circumstances entail a fair amount of screen time with Jon’s O face and, eventually, after a season of growth — during which he befriends an older woman named Esther (Julianne Moore) and learns about the existence of arty retro Swedish porn — his “Ohhh&ldots;” face. Driven by deft, tight editing, Don Jon comically and capably sketches a web of bad habits, and Gordon-Levitt steers us through a transformation without straining our capacity to recognize the character we met at the outset — which makes the clumsy over-enunciations that mar the ending all the more jarring. (1:30) Elmwood, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Ender’s Game Those entering Ender’s Game in search of homophobic threads or politically unsavory themes will likely be frustrated. After all, Orson Scott Card — once a board member of the National Organization for Marriage, and here serving as a producer intent on preserving the 1985 novel that netted him acclaim — has revisited what was initially a short story multiple times over the years, tweaking it to reflect a new political climate, to ready it for new expedient uses. Who knows — the times are a-changin’ fast enough, with the outcry of LGBT activists and the growing acceptance of gay military members, to hope that a gay character might enter the mix someday. Of course, sexuality of all sorts is kept firmly in check in the Ender‘s world. Earth has been invaded by an insect-like species called the Formics, and the planet unifies to serve up its best and brightest (and, it’s implied, most ruthless) young minds, sharpened on first-person-shooters and tactical games, to the cause of defeating the alien “other.” Andrew “Ender” Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is the knowing hybrid of his sociopath brother Peter (Jimmy Pinchak) and compassionate sister Valentine (Abigail Breslin) — of the trinity, he’s “the One,” as Han Solo, I mean, Harrison Ford, cadet talent-spotter and trainer Colonel Graff, puts it. Ender impresses the leather off the hardened old war horse, though the Colonel’s psychologically more equipped cohort Major Anderson (Viola Davis) suspects there’s more going on within their chosen leader. Director-screenwriter Gavin Hood demonstrates his allegiance to Card’s vision, valorizing the discipline and teamwork instilled by military school with the grim purpose and dead serious pleasure one might take in studying a well-oiled machine, while Ender is sharpened and employed as a stunningly effective tool in a war he never truly conceived of. This game has a bit more in common with the recent Wii-meets-Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Godzillas of Pacific Rim than the winking, acidic satire of Starship Troopers (1997), echoing a drone-driven War on Terror that has a way of detaching even the most evolved fighter from the consequences of his or her actions. The question is how to undo, or rewrite, the damage done. (1:54) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Enough Said Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a divorced LA masseuse who sees naked bodies all day but has become pretty wary of wanting any in her bed at night. She reluctantly changes her mind upon meeting the also-divorced Albert (James Gandolfini), a television archivist who, also like her, is about to see his only child off to college. He’s no Adonis, but their relationship develops rapidly — the only speed bumps being provided by the many nit-picking advisors Eva has in her orbit, which exacerbate her natural tendency toward glass-half-empty neurosis. This latest and least feature from writer-director Nicole Holofcener is a sitcom-y thing of the type that expects us to find characters all the more adorable the more abrasive and self-centered they are. That goes for Louis-Dreyfus’ annoying heroine as well as such wasted talents as Toni Colette as her kvetching best friend and Catherine Keener as a new client turned new pal so bitchy it makes no sense Eva would desire her company. The only nice person here is Albert, whom the late Gandolfini makes a charming, low-key teddy bear in an atypical turn. The revelation of an unexpected past tie between his figure and Keener’s puts Eva in an ethically disastrous position she handles dismally. In fact, while it’s certainly not Holofcener’s intention, Eva’s behavior becomes so indefensible that Enough Said commits rom-com suicide: The longer it goes on, the more fervently you hope its leads will not end up together. (1:33) Albany, Piedmont. (Harvey)

Escape Plan It’s fascinating how ruined faces and silvered goatees can lend an air of, uh, gravitas to even the most muscle-bound action-movie veterans. The logic: Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger have been around so long that they must possess more than a few brain cells to rub together. And rub they do — to surprisingly pleasing effect in this cut-above-the-next-Expendables-sequel meeting of blockbuster behemoths. Stallone’s Ray Breslin is a prison security specialist so nerdily devoted to his work that he gets himself locked up to test his clients’ jails. He gets in over his head when he’s thrown into the most secure private prison in the world, which happens to be run by former Blackwater mercenaries. It’s essentially the next, rather permanent-looking step after your not-so-friendly rendition flight. Breslin befriends security man Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), who’s in the clink on behalf of his “digital Robin Hood” boss. Menaced by warden Hobbs (Jim Caviezel) and brawny Drake (Vinnie Jones), the two prisoners kick off a changeable game, Muslim prisoner Javed (Faran Tahir) in tow. Director Mikael Håfström lays out the plans with geeky enthusiasm by way of zippy point-of-view shots that are supposed to let you into Breslin’s noggin. Shockingly, after Stallone’s recent brain-dead exercises (2012’s Bullet to the Head), it’s not an unhappy experience in this smarter-than-it-looks post-9/11 prison-break drama that wears its complicated feelings about War on Terror-era crime and punishment — and torture — on its sleeve. Still, matters never get too bleeding-heart liberal here, at the risk of alienating the stars’ audiences. Sly obviously embraces this opportunity to play smarter than usual, while the ex-Governator sinks his choppers into his role with glee, trotting out a Commando-style slo-mo gun-swinging move that will have his geek brigade cheering. (1:56) SF Center. (Chun)

Free Birds (1:31) Elmwood, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

God Loves Uganda Most contemporary Americans don’t know much about Uganda — that is, beyond Forest Whitaker’s Oscar-winning performance as Idi Amin in 2006’s The Last King of Scotland. Though that film took some liberties with the truth, it did effectively convey the grotesque terrors of the dictator’s 1970s reign. But even decades post-Amin, the East African nation has somehow retained its horrific human-rights record. For example: what extremist force was behind the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which proposed the death penalty as punishment for gayness? The answer might surprise you, or not. As the gripping, fury-fomenting doc God Loves Uganda reveals, America’s own Christian Right has been exporting hate under the guise of missionary work for some time. Taking advantage of Uganda’s social fragility — by building schools and medical clinics, passing out food, etc. — evangelical mega churches, particularly the Kansas City, Mo.-based, breakfast-invoking International House of Prayer, have converted large swaths of the population to their ultra-conservative beliefs. Filmmaker Roger Ross Williams, an Oscar winner for 2010 short Music by Prudence, follows naive “prayer warriors” as they journey to Uganda for the first time; his apparent all-access relationship with the group shows that they aren’t outwardly evil people — but neither do they comprehend the very real consequences of their actions. His other sources, including two Ugandan clergymen who’ve seen their country change for the worse and an LGBT activist who lives every day in peril, offer a more harrowing perspective. Evocative and disturbing, God Loves Uganda seems likely to earn Williams more Oscar attention. (1:23) Roxie. (Eddy)

Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Inequality for All Jacob Kornbluth’s Inequality for All is the latest and certainly not the last documentary to explore why the American Dream is increasingly out of touch with everyday reality, and how the definition of “middle class” somehow morphed from “comfortable” to “struggling, endangered, and hanging by a thread.” This lively overview has an ace up its sleeve in the form of the director’s friend, collaborator, and principal interviewee Robert Reich — the former Clinton-era Secretary of Labor, prolific author, political pundit, and UC Berkeley Professor of Public Policy. Whether he’s holding forth on TV, going one-on-one with Kornbluth’s camera, talking to disgruntled working class laborers, or engaging students in his Wealth and Poverty class, Inequality is basically a resourcefully illustrated Reich lecture — as the press notes put it, “an Inconvenient Truth for the economy.” Fortunately, the diminutive Reich is a natural comedian as well as a superbly cogent communicator, turning yet another summary of how the system has fucked almost everybody (excluding the one percent) into the one you might most want to recommend to the bewildered folks back home. He’s sugar on the pill, making it easier to swallow so much horrible news. (1:25) California. (Harvey)

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Kill Your Darlings Relieved to escape his Jersey home, dominated by the miseries of an oft-institutionalized mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and long-suffering father (David Cross), Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) enters Columbia University in 1944 as a freshman already interested in the new and avant-garde. He’s thus immediately enchanted by bad-boy fellow student Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), a veteran of numerous prestigious schools and well on the road to getting kicked out of this one. Charismatic and reckless, Carr has a circle of fellow eccentrics buzzing around him, including dyspeptic William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) and merchant marine wild child Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston). Variably included in or ostracized from this training ground for future Beat luminaries is the older David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), a disgraced former academic who’d known Carr since the latter was 14, and followed him around with pathetic, enamored devotion. It’s this last figure’s apparent murder by Carr that provides the bookending crux of John Krokidas’ impressive first feature, a tragedy whose motivations and means remain disputed. Partly blessed by being about a (comparatively) lesser-known chapter in an overexposed, much-mythologized history, Kill Your Darlings is easily one of the best dramatizations yet of Beat lore, with excellent performances all around. (Yes, Harry Potter actually does pass quite well as a somewhat cuter junior Ginsberg.) It’s sad if somewhat inevitable that the most intriguing figure here — Hall’s hapless, lovelorn stalker-slash-victim — is the one that remains least knowable to both the film and to the ages. (1:40) SF Center, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Last Vegas This buddy film may look like a Bucket List-Hangover hybrid, but it’s got a lot more Spring Breakers in it than you expect — who beats Vegas for most bikinis per capita? Four old friends reunite for a wedding in Vegas, where they drink, gamble, and are confused for legendary men. Morgan Freeman sneaks out of his son’s house to go. Kevin Kline’s wife gave him a hall pass to regain his lost sense of fun. Kline and Freeman trick Robert De Niro into going — he’s got a grudge against Michael Douglas, so why celebrate that jerk’s nuptials to a 30-year-old? The conflicts are mostly safe and insubstantial, but the in-joke here is that all of these acting legends are confused for legends by their accidentally obtained VIP host (Romany Malco). These guys have earned their stature, so what gives? When De Niro flings fists you shudder inside remembering Jake LaMotta. Kline’s velvety comic delivery is just as swaggery as it was during his 80s era collaborations with Lawrence Kasdan. Douglas is “not as charming as he thinks he is,” yet again, and voice-of-God Freeman faces a conflict specific to paternal protective urges. Yes, Last Vegas jokes about the ravages of age and prescribes tenacity for all that ails us, but I want a cast this great celebrated at least as obviously as The Expendables films. Confuse these guys for better? Show me who. (1:44) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Vizcarrondo)

Man of Tai Chi (1:45) Metreon.

Muscle Shoals Hard on the heels of Dave Grohl’s Sound City comes another documentary about a legendary American recording studio. Located in the titular podunk Northern Alabama burg, Fame Studio drew an extraordinary lineup of musicians and producers to make fabled hits from the early 1960s through the early ’80s. Among them: Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a slew of peak era Aretha Franklin smashes, the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” and those cornerstones of Southern rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” Tales of how particular tracks came about are entertaining, especially when related by the still-lively likes of Etta James, Wilson Pickett, and Keith Richards. (Richards is a hoot, while surprisingly Mick Jagger doesn’t have much to say.) Director Greg Camalier’s feature can be too worshipful and digressive at times, and he’s skittish about probing fallouts between Fame’s founder Rick Hall and some long-term collaborators (notably the local in-house session musicians known as the Swampers who were themselves a big lure for many artists, and who left Fame to start their own successful studio). Still, there’s enough fascinating material here — also including a lot of archival footage — that any music fan whose memory or interest stretches back a few decades will find much to enjoy. (1:51) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

12 Years a Slave Pop culture’s engagement with slavery has always been uneasy. Landmark 1977 miniseries Roots set ratings records, but the prestigious production capped off a decade that had seen some more questionable endeavors, including 1975 exploitation flick Mandingo — often cited by Quentin Tarantino as one of his favorite films; it was a clear influence on his 2012 revenge fantasy Django Unchained, which approached its subject matter in a manner that paid homage to the Westerns it riffed on: with guns blazing. By contrast, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is nuanced and steeped in realism. Though it does contain scenes of violence (deliberately captured in long takes by regular McQueen collaborator Sean Bobbitt, whose cinematography is one of the film’s many stylistic achievements), the film emphasizes the horrors of “the peculiar institution” by repeatedly showing how accepted and ingrained it was. Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, an African American man who was sold into slavery in 1841 and survived to pen a wrenching account of his experiences. He’s portrayed here by the powerful Chiwetel Ejiofor. Other standout performances come courtesy of McQueen favorite Michael Fassbender (as Epps, a plantation owner who exacerbates what’s clearly an unwell mind with copious amounts of booze) and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, as a slave who attracts Epps’ cruel attentions. (2:14) California, Embarcadero, Marina, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Wadjda Hijabs, headmistresses, and errant fathers fall away before the will and wherewithal of the 11-year-old title character of Wadjda, the first feature by a female Saudi Arabian filmmaker. Director Haifaa al-Mansour’s own story — which included filming on the streets of Riyadh from the isolation of a van because she couldn’t work publicly with the men in the crew — is the stuff of drama, and it follows that her movie lays out, in the neorealist style of 1948’s The Bicycle Thief, the obstacles to freedom set in the path of women and girls in Saudi Arabia, in terms that cross cultural, geographic, and religious boundaries. The fresh star setting the course is Wadjda (first-time actor Waad Mohammed), a smart, irrepressibly feisty girl practically bursting out of her purple high-tops and intent on racing her young neighborhood friend Abudullah (Abdullrahman Algohani) on a bike. So many things stand in her way: the high price of bicycles and the belief that girls will jeopardize their virginity if they ride them; her distracted mother (Reem Abdullah) who’s worried that Wadjda’s father will take a new wife who can bear him a son; and a harsh, elegant headmistress (Ahd) intent on knuckling down on girlish rebellion. So Wadjda embarks on studying for a Qu’ran recital competition to win money for her bike and in the process learns a matter or two about discipline — and the bigger picture. Director al-Mansour teaches us a few things about her world as well — and reminds us of the indomitable spirit of girls — with this inspiring peek behind an ordinarily veiled world. (1:37) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Zaytoun It’s 1982 in war-torn Beirut, and on the semi-rare occasion that streetwise 12-year-old Palestinian refugee Fahed (Abdallah El Akal) attends school, he’s faced with an increasing number of empty desks, marked by photos of the dead classmates who used to sit there. His own father is killed in an air strike as Zaytoun begins. When an Israeli pilot (Stephen Dorff — a surprising casting choice, but not a bad one) is shot down and becomes a PLO prisoner, Fahed’s feelings of hatred give way to curiosity, and he agrees to help the man escape back to Israel, so long as he brings Fahed, who’s intent on planting his father’s olive sapling in his family’s former village, along. It’s not an easy journey, and a bond inevitably forms — just as problems inevitably ensue when they reach the border. Israeli director Eran Riklis (2008’s Lemon Tree) avoids sentimentality in this tale that nonetheless travels a pretty predictable path. (1:50) Smith Rafael. (Eddy) *

 

Media let BART slide

Michael Redmond
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Media let BART slide

BART continues to stonewall important questions about whether it was training scab drivers to break the recent strike by its unions when its trainee-driven train killed two workers on Oct. 19 — a stance made possible by the failure of the mainstream media to connect the dots or correct the anti-union bias that characterized its coverage of this long labor impasse.

Local journalists have failed to highlight the connection between that tragedy and the subsequent decision by the district to suddenly soften its stance and sweeten its offer, within hours of the National Transportation Safety Board revealing that a trainee was driving and that BART’s “maintenance run” story was a deception.

Local media outlets did dutifully report that a trainee was driving, but they failed to point out to readers and viewers the significance of that disclosure or ask the district whether the training was intended to break the strike and whether that plan fed the district’s hardline bargaining stance.

We have asked those questions of the district, and when we got misleading obfuscations, we asked again and again, and our questions are still being largely ignored. And here’s why they matter: Because if the district was planning to run trains during the strike, it reinforces the unions’ contention that the district forced a strike that it was preparing to break, a plan that became untenable when two people died, just as the unions warned might happen if the district ran trains without experienced drivers.

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost did finally confirm to us that, “BART has been training some non-union employees to operate limited passenger train service in the event of an extended strike if so authorized by the Board of Directors,” but she and BART Board President Tom Radulovich have each ignored our follow-up questions and requests to discuss this is greater detail.

This should be a huge scandal, the kind of thing that might force General Manager Grace Crunican to resign and BART directors to lose their seats — except for the fact that the media are ignoring this simple, obvious narrative and failing to do their job.

The East Bay Express, a rare exception on the local media landscape, published an excellent article on Oct. 30 about how the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area News Group (which includes the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and San Jose Mercury News) misled the public about the BART standoff.

Not only have these daily newspapers written some truly atrociously anti-worker editorials, but even the supposedly objective news stories have been clearly biased in their emphasis and omissions, including the current failure to demand accountability.

But this could backfire considering the truth will probably come out eventually, even if it’s long after the media spotlight has moved on. NTSB investigations can take up to a year, but they are remarkably thorough and it will probably eventually discuss why these drivers were being trained.

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment announced on Oct. 29 that it will also hold a hearing to “get to the bottom” of the tragedy, and one can only hope that someone on that committee will grill the district about its intentions in running that ill-fated train and conducting new driver training just one day into the latest strike.

Betting on Graton

Michael Redmond
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news@sfbg.com

The route to Wine Country was chock-full of gamblers on Nov. 5. They came in cars and limos. And they came on buses, just like hundreds of San Franciscans do every evening, many of them older Asian and Latino immigrants hoping to win big — or at least enjoy a diversion and a few free drinks.

But this day was a little different. It was the grand opening of Graton Resort & Casino, which is closer to San Francisco than the other casinos, both in distance and in its pro-labor progressive values.

Normally, Northern California tribes and even Harrah’s in Reno pay private bus companies to bring Bay Area customers to their doors. Graton hasn’t contracted these services yet, but the buses came anyway.

“Graton’s not paying us,” said Rocio Medrano, coordinator at Kenny Express, which planned to send three buses from Mission and 15th streets — where buses to various casinos line up every evening — to the opening. “But we had to go. Everyone was so excited.”

FADA Tours, which leaves from Kearny and Sacramento streets, sent six buses, every seat sold out in advance. Xin Jing Service dispatched three buses from downtown Oakland. Walter Wooden, a driver at Xin Jing, gave the same reason for the not-so-chartered bus service as Medrano: “The people want to go.”

Graton’s counting on it. California’s newest casino has steep profit projections, based largely on its proximity to the Bay Area. “Winning Just Got Closer,” Graton’s homepage screams. Next to the purple slogan, a map shows directions from San Francisco to the casino’s Rohnert Park address.

Odds are, most of the estimated 10,000 people who are swarming Graton in its opening days didn’t take home much winnings. But for a 1,300-person Native American tribe, and an Oakland-based labor union, winning really just got closer.

 

RARE UNION CASINOS

“Graton is very important,” said Marty Bennett, research and policy analyst at UNITE HERE Local 2850. “Now that it’s open, our organizing drive will begin soon.”

The 2,000-member local represents food service, hotel, and gaming workers, mostly in the East Bay. In a recent campaign, it organized a strike of 180 food service workers at Oakland International Airport. Its only current North Bay location is the Petaluma Sheraton, but Graton is poised to become its newest shop.

The likely unionization of Graton stems from an agreement signed in 2003 by Local 2850 and the tribal chairman who made Graton happen, Greg Sarris. The agreement guarantees card check neutrality, the union’s preferred way of organizing.

The other path to unionization is a secret ballot election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But these elections are generally announced months before their dates, and notoriously offer a window of time for management to harass and intimidate workers.

The difference between card check and secret ballots is “night and day,” according to Wei-Ling Huber, president of Local 2850.

“It’s not even close. In a secret ballot election that’s run by the NLRB, about 50 percent of all organizing drives include termination of organizers,” Huber said.

If Graton workers vote to unionize with a card check, it could grow Local 2850’s 2,000-person membership by more than 50 percent. Huber said that about 1,200 of Graton’s 2,200 workers have jobs that would be represented by UNITE HERE, including bartenders, servers, and cleaning staff.

“It’s incredibly exciting,” Huber said. “The office is definitely abuzz.”

So is the Las Vegas office of Station Casinos. Members of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria own the casino, but Station has the contract to manage it. And it’s a lucrative property. Graton is projected to bring in $300 to $400 million in its first year.

Station spokesperson Lori Nelson told us by email the company is “excited to welcome residents from the Bay Area as we invite them all out to check out the newest entertainment destination created just for them.”

Nelson emphasized that Graton is targeting Bay Area customers.

“In fact, our advertising campaign that’s been on the air and on billboards the past few weeks even reads ‘From Bay to Play in 43 Minutes,'” Nelson wrote.

That “43 minutes” can be more like a couple hours on traffic congested days such as opening day. But increased congestion aside, Graton’s location 50 miles from San Francisco is a jackpot for Station. It was also key to the leverage Sarris had when he hired Station to manage Graton, using that leverage to require a worker-friendly operation.

When Sarris was looking to hire a management company, he invited representatives from the many interested firms to his living room, pitting them against each other.

“I did create what I like to call a cock fight,” Sarris tells us.

Sarris’ conditions were audacious. He wanted full tribal control of the development board, a LEED-certified green building, and $200 million upfront. But the condition that made most companies back down, he said, was his demand for living wages and benefits right off the bat, and the option for workers to unionize once the casino opened.

“The union thing was a deal breaker for everyone else. Station even had a problem with it,” Sarris said. “But it was my way or the highway on that one.”

 

RIPPLE EFFECT?

In Las Vegas, Culinary Union Local 226 — a UNITE HERE affiliate — has been waging a campaign against Station since 2010. Its website devoted to Station workers’ struggle includes a list of 88 instances of alleged unfair labor practices committed by Station and calls the company called “rabidly anti-union.”

But in Rohnert Park, UNITE HERE and Station have been working together.

“We’re optimistic that our relationship here can be very different,” said Huber. “I think that the tribe has had a really positive influence on bringing us together in California in a way that is not the case in Las Vegas.”

At Sarris’ urging, the casino was built with 100 percent union labor. It created about 700 jobs. And Jack Buckhorn, president of the North Bay Labor Council, said that 75 percent of people hired to build Graton were Sonoma County residents.

“These were long-term jobs. It really helped out as we’re recovering from this great recession,” Buckhorn said. “These were all really good jobs.”

That 75 percent local hire rate is impressive compared to some construction projects with similar price tags in San Francisco. After neighborhood activism, the $1.5 billion UCSF Mission Bay Hospital has maintained a rate of 20 percent local hire. And the Golden State Warriors have been praised for its promise of 25 percent local hire for construction of its proposed arena on Piers 30-32.

Sarris says that his commitment to good working conditions at Graton is rooted in history.

“I believe in dignity in the workplace,” Sarris said. “Let’s not forget the way we labored in kitchens and fields with low wages and no benefits.”

Workers’ rights are just one part of the vision Graton’s tribal council has for the casino, which also includes a bevy of social programs, more than $25 million annually for parks and open spaces in Sonoma County, and an organic farm.

“We see Graton as a means to an end,” said Joanne Campbell, a 12-year tribal council member.

With Graton’s opening, Sarris isn’t just the leader of a tribe that’s about to get rich. He has influence in Sonoma County, and he says he intends to use it to fight injustice.

The Oct. 22 death of 13-year-old Santa Rosa boy Andy Lopez at the hands of Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus sparked weeks of protests in Santa Rosa, including a march Oct. 29 attended by hundreds from the East Bay and San Francisco.

“There was a 13-year old boy who was just shot up here. We now have the power to put people in and out of office, and we will,” Sarris said in a conversation last week. He declined to specify which officials might be a target of such a campaign, but said that “it’s not just police and sheriffs, it’s elected officials.”

“We can elect a spotted Chihuahua into office if we want,” Sarris said. “Look at all the money we’re going to have.”

 

KEEPING THE TURKEY

Sarris reiterated those ideas at a Nov. 3 meeting of the North Bay Organizing Project that was focused on Lopez. He then presented Lopez’s family with a check for $8,000.

“From day one, the only reason I got into it is to create something here that will benefit Indian and non-Indian alike,” Sarris said. “I’m especially concerned about people of color.”

After the genocide of Native Americans and centuries of oppression that followed, getting wealth back into indigenous communities is a complicated task. And with Graton, Sarris may achieve it for a tribe made up of descendants of those who first populated Novato, Marshall, Tomales, San Rafael, Petaluma, Bodega, and Sebastopol.

“It’s Thanksgiving again. But this time, we’re keeping the turkey,” Sarris said. “We’ll share it, but we’re keeping it.”

The people slogging up 101 this week were financing more than a glitzy new casino. Graton’s profits could fund serious progressive causes in Sonoma County. But first, its Bay Area customers will need to empty their pockets.

Someone has to lose for the house to win. Which demographics will most frequent Graton remains to be seen. One indication could be the clientele of Kenny Express.

“The seniors that are retired, they go on a daily basis. We also have people who work during the day and take the bus at night,” Medrano said. “They’re mostly Filipino, Hispanic, Chinese.”

Halloween 1951 and the good old days in Rock Rapids, Iowa

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The tale of what really happened on Halloween Eve in 1951 in Rock Rapids, Iowa.  (Updated by popular demand.)

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Back where I come from,  Halloween was one of the most culturally advanced holidays of our era.  We had some fast times and created some enduring smalltown legends on Halloween. This was in my hometown of Rock Rapids, a small farming community nestled along the Rock River in northwest Iowa just five miles south of  the Minnesota state line.  I can speak for a generation or two back in the early 1950s when Halloween was the one night of the year when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.

Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose and genial mayhem was on the agenda.  Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.

It was all quite civilized.

The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs and lawn sprinklers and potted plants on porches.

After an evening of such lusty adventures, we would go home about 11 p.m. and tell our parents what we had been up to and how we evaded Shinny the whole evening and they would (generally) be relieved. Shinny would just drive around in his patrol car and shine his lights here and there when he saw trouble brewing  and do some honking. But somehow he never caught anybody, made no arrests nor did any  followup investigations.  And the targets of our pranks never seemed to make police complaints. I once asked Paul Smith, the editor of the celebrated Lyon County Reporter, why he never wrote up this bit of zesty small town lore. “Bruce,” he said, “I don’t want things to get out of hand.” During my era, they never did. As a Rock Rapids reporter on special assignment, I feel an obligation to retell this story on Halloween and bring some Rock Rapids values to San Francisco.

Nonetheless, the city elders decided to keep Halloween devastation to a minimum and scheduled a dance in the Community Building, with the misbegotten idea the pranksters would give up their errant ways and come to the dance. The Casjens Gang would have none of this. In fact it was the year of the dance diversion that we made our most culturally significant contribution to Halloween lore in Rock Rapids. We happened upon a boxcar, loaded with coal, parked on a siding a block or so from Main Street, which also served as a busy main arterial highway for cars coming across northwest Iowa.

It is not clear to this day who came up with the idea of rolling the boxcar across Main Street and blocking all traffic coming from both directions. We massed behind the car and pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Then Bob Babl came up with a brilliant idea:  to use a special lever his dad used to move boxcars full of lumber from the  nearby Babl  lumberyard. Bob slipped through a fence behind the yard and somehow managed to find the lever in the dark. He soon came forth, triumphantly holding the lever.

We massed again, now some 20 or so strong, behind the railroad  car and waited for the signal to push. Willie Ver Meer climbed to the top of the car and wrenched the wheel that loosened the brakes. We heaved in unison and the car moved slowly on the tracks until it reached the middle of Main Street. Willie gave a mighty heave and ground the car to a dead stop, bang, squarely in the middle of the street. Almost immediately, the cars started lining up on both sides of the car, honking away. Grace under pressure. An historic event. Man, were we proud.

We slipped away and from a safe distance watched the fruits of our labor unfold. Shinny, the ever resourceful police chief, soon came upon the scene. He strode into the dance in the nearby Community Building and commandeered the dancers to come out and help him move the car back onto its siding. We bided our time, waited till the dancers started dancing again and then went back and pushed the car once again into the middle of the street. Jerry Prahl added a nice touch by rolling out a batch of Firestone tires onto the street from his Dad’s nearby store. Suddenly, Main Street was a boxcar- blocked, tire-ridden mess. Again, the cars started lining up, honking away. Then we fled, figuring we were now wanted pranksters and needed to be on the lam for the duration.

The Casjens gang and groupies have retold the story through the years at our regular get togethers at the Sportsmen’s Club bar at Heritage Days in Rock Rapids and at our all-Rock Rapids Cocktail Party and Beer Kegger held for years in a Long Beach park and then in the back lawn of the Mary Rose Babl Hindt house in Cupertino. We would jokingly say that the statute of limitations never runs out in Rock Rapids and so we needed to be careful what we said and ought not to disclose fully the involvement of Dave Dietz, Hermie Casjens, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Jerry Prahl, Bob Babl, Romain Hahn, Willie Ver Meer, and lots of others, some who were there working in peril, others who declared they were there safely after the fact.

A few years ago, just before Halloween, I was invited back to Rock Rapids to speak to a fund-raising event for the local high school. It was a a crisp clear night just like the night of Halloween in l95l and a perfect setting to tell the story publicly in town for the first time. The event was at the new community building, on Main Street, just a block or so from the old Community Building, and a block or so from the siding where we found the boxcar. I told the audience that Shinny had assured me the statute of limitations had run out in Rock Rapids and that I could now,  five decades later, tell the boxcar- across -Main -Street caper with no fear of prosecution. And so I did, with relish.

Chuck Telford was in the audience and I recalled that he had driven up to us that night, as part of a civilian patrol, and inquired as to what we were doing. When he could see what we were doing, he just quietly drove off. “Very civilized behavior,” I told the audience.  Afterward, I told Chuck I would back him for mayor, on the basis of that enlightened response alone. Craig Vinson, then the Iowa  highway patrolman for the area, came up to me and said he remembered the incident vividly because he was on duty that night and came upon the boxcar blocking the highway with long lines of honking cars. “I got ahold of Shinny that night and told him it was his job to move the boxcar and get it off the highway,” he said. Others in attendance said they had gotten a whiff of the story but were never able to pin it down and were glad to get the real story.  The high school principal and superintendent didn’t say much and, I suspect, were worried my tale might lead to the Rock Rapids version of the movie “Ferris Buhler Takes A Day Off.”

For years, I said in my talk, I didn’t think that Shinny ever knew exactly what happened or who was involved in the caper or how we pulled it off, twice, almost before his very eyes. Shinny retired in Rock Rapids and I saw him twice a year when I came back to visit my parents. But I never said anything and he never said anything but I finally found the right moment and cautiously filled him in. He chuckled and said, “Let’s drink to it.”  And we did,  for years.

At the 55th reunion of the famous Dream Class of l953, I invited Shinny to sit in with us. He was still going strong at 89. He assured us once again that the statute of limitations had run out and we could speak openly about the Halloween caper in his presence and in front of witnesses. So Dave Dietz and I retold the story with expansiveness and gusto. Shinny supplied some key missing details. For example, he said that he didn’t get his troops out of the dance but out of the nearby movie theater with the threat that he would arrest them if they didn’t help him move the boxcar. However, Dave and I didn’t pin down some key details, such as how Shinny got someone nimble and brave enough to undo the work of Willie Ver Meer, climb to the top of the boxcar, twice, and wrench loose the brake. The boxcar would not budge until that brake was undone. That would have required some  expertise with boxcars, plus some physical skills, and would have been quite a feat to do at night with a gallery of a crowd and honking cars.  And then there was the issue of the second boxcar blocking and how he could rally his troops twice in one might. Thus, there are some tantalizing questions that may never get answered.

So there we were, five decades later, working to make the fast times even faster on Halloween in Rock Rapids. Did Shinny  ever arrest anybody on Halloween? “No,” he said. “I would just shine my car lights and honk my horn and everybody would run.” Any hard feelings? Shinny chuckled. “Naw,” he replied. “Let’s drink to Halloween in the good old days.”

And so we did. Shinny often called me at my office in San Francisco and he always told  the receptionist, “Tell Bruce, it’s Shinny. I’m his parole officer in Rock Rapids.”  I”m glad that we were able to confess properly to the top cop of Rock Rapids in l951 and to hear Shinny’s side of the story. 

Alas, Shinny had died by the time of our 60th class reunion last summer. But in the curious way that news gets around Rock Rapids, Delores Ockenga Berg  reported at the reunion that there was some major news about Shinny. She said the source for the news was a relative of hers who was the camp director at Camp Foster, a YMCA camp on East Lake Okiboji where Dave Dietz, Alan Lyng, and I from our class and many other boys from Rock Rapids and northwest Iowa towns spent many happy summers. Among other things, we learned to swim, because our town had no swimming pool, and we learned to row boats and paddle canoes, because we had no lake and only a shallow river. 

Shinny, Delores said, had willed his farm to Camp Foster. The camp had sold the farm and used the money to build a large lodge in his honor. Delores said the lodge was named Sheneberger Hall and that it  was a splendid addition to the camp. Shinny didn’t say much before he died about his plans for this unusual bequest. Most people didn’t even know he owned a farm. But he confided in me in his later years and explained  that he wanted to do something special for Camp Foster. The reason, he said, was because the boys who went to Foster had all turned out so well and he wanted to do his bit to see that this trend continued.  

And so we toasted Shinny as a philanthropist for young boys and an enlightened small town police officer whose career was symbolized by the way he handled things on Halloweens in Rock Rapids: he turned on his patrol lights and honked his horn but never made any arrests.

Those were the days, my friends. The days of fast times and enduring legends of Halloweens in Rock Rapids, Iowa. Let’s hope they never end.  B3

P.S.: Ted Fisch, a key conspirator, and I talk regularly about Rock Rapids. He was the center and I was the left-handed quarterback on our almost  famous 195l football  team. He became a colonel in the Air Force and loved to say that he was the only field grade officer he knew of who was a solid Democrat. He lives in Redondo Beach and we talk often on the phone and discuss such things as why there are so few Democrats in Rock Rapids. and why our congressional district must live with Rep Steve King, a tea party politician before there was a tea party. In one conversation, he said, “Bruce, a friend of mine googled my name the other day and found that I was mentioned in your Halloween story. How could that be? Does that mean I am up there forever? Does that mean the boxcar story will be up there forever?” Somehow, the news made me feel good.

STOP THE DIGITAL PRESSES:  Then I realized as I was finishing  this blog that Ted has a good and timely point. So I just now googled Dave Dietz and Hermie Casjens and Jerry Prahl  for starters and found that they, too, and probably all other named co-conspirators, have been outed in my world-wide blog, Thank God the statute of limitations has run out in Rock Rapids.

 

 

Media misses connection between BART tragedy and settlement

Sasha Cuttler
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Media misses connection between BART tragedy and settlement

BART continues to stonewall important questions about whether it was training scab drivers to break the recent strike by its unions when its trainee-driven train killed two workers on Oct. 19 — a stance made possible by the failure of the mainstream media to connect the dots or correct the anti-union bias that characterized its coverage of this long labor impasse.

The failure of local journalists to highlight the connection between that tragedy and the subsequent decision by the district to suddenly soften its stance and sweeten its offer — within hours of the National Transportation Safety Board revealing that a trainee was driving and that BART’s “maintenance run” story was a deception — is as myopic as it is appalling.

After all, the daily newpapers, television stations, and wire services did finally, dutifully report that a trainee was driving, even as they failed to point out to readers and viewers the significance of that disclosure or ask the district, “Why were you training drivers during a strike? Were you planning to offer service during the strike?”

We have asked those questions of the district, and when we got misleading obfuscations, we asked again and again, and our questions are still being largely ignored (actually, we just got a limited but important response, see below). And here’s why they matter: Because if the district was planning to run trains during the strike, it reinforces the unions’ contention that the district was hard-bargaining to force a strike that it was preparing to break, a plan that became untenable when two people died, just as the unions warned might happen if the district ran trains without experienced drivers.

This should be a huge scandal, the kind of thing that might force General Manager Grace Crunican to resign and BART directors to lose their seats — except for the fact that the media is ignoring this simple, obvious narrative and failing to do its job.

The East Bay Express, which today published an excellent article on how the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area News Group (which includes the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and San Jose Mercury News) mislead the public about the BART standoff, is the only other media outlet in the region to join the Bay Guardian in highlighting the relevant facts in this story.

Not only have these newspapers written some truly atrociously anti-worker editorials, but even the supposedly objective news stories have been clearly biased in their emphasis and omissions. Why else would they repeatedly emphasize a proposal by an obscure Republican member of the Orinda City Council to prohibit future BART strikes — a bit of election-related grandstanding that has no chance of passing in Democrat-controlled Sacramento — while failing to analyze why BART suddenly sweetened its offer beyond what Crunican said the district could afford?

But this could be a situation that backfires on local media managers considering that the truth will probably come out eventually, even if it’s long after the media spotlight has moved on. NTSB investigations can take up to a year, but they are remarkably thorough and it will probably eventually discuss why these drivers were being trained.

The Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment announced yesterday that it will also hold a hearing to “get to the bottom” of the tragedy, and one can only hope that someone on that committee will grill the district about its intentions in running that ill-fated train and conducting new driver training just one day into the latest strike.

UPDATE: As I was posting this story, I finally heard back from BART spokesperson Alicia Trost, who made it sound like preparations to break the strike weren’t news — even though it may be news to most newspaper readers.

“The District has publicly acknowledged, dating back to a September 13, 2013 Metropolitan Transportation Commission subcommitee meeting, that BART has been training some non-union employees to operate limited passenger train service in the event of an extended strike if so authorized by the Board of Director. The Board was never requested to authorize revenue service during the strike,” she wrote by email.

Yet those public aknowledgements don’t appear to have made it to the public. And when the Chronicle’s Matier & Ross did run an anonymously sourced item breaking the news that BART may be training replacement drivers, BART refused to comment, the duo soft-peddled the scoop, and the relevation failed to make it into the larger narratives the newspaper offered about BART.

And even now, Trost followed up her admission by minimizing its importance, saying that the ill-fated train was also being run for maintenance purposes, which the NTSB had also reported.

“BART has to ‘exercise the system’ by running trains on the tracks to prevent rust build up. Rust can build up quickly and will interfere with train service. BART continued to run inspection trains throughout the entire strike just as it did during the July strike,” she wrote.

But the real issue is whether the district deliberately triggered two strikes that the heavily impacted public angrily blamed on workers, thanks largely to how the standoff had been cast by the mainstream media and the district. After all, BART chose a notoriously anti-union labor consultant as its lead negotiator, a decision that even Willie Brown criticized in his Sunday column, although Brown cast the district as just dumb instead of intentionally forcing a strike.

I’m still waiting for Trost to answer my follow-up questions, and I’ll update this post if and when I hear back. I’m also still waiting to hear from BART Board President Tom Radulovich, whose progressive credibility has been tarnished in the eyes of some for playing such a lead role in BART’s media strategy.

Thankfully, the divisive standoff between BART and its unions seems to be over, but the questions about what really drove it and how its conclusion came about are still relevant and largely unanswered. And that says a great deal about the state of journalism today.

Meister: The Legislature shows Congress how

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Guardian columnist Dick Meister has covered labor and political affairs for more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which contains several hundred of his columns.

Forget for a moment what’s happened ­­ or not happened  ­- in Congress. Concentrate instead on what’s meanwhile gone on in the State Legislature, much of it for the benefit of California’s working people.

 The State AFL-CIO cites, for instance, the Legislature’s passage this year of more than a dozen decidedly worker-friendly bills sponsored by the labor
federation and strongly backed by the federation’s Democratic Party allies in Sacramento.

The most important of the bills will raise the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10 an hour by January of 2016. Other key laws:

*Require overtime pay for domestic workers, who are currently excluded from
most labor laws.

*Will make it easier for immigrant workers to get drivers’ licenses and
protect them from retaliation when they speak out about poor pay and working
conditions.

*Should make it easier for workers with criminal records who are denied jobs
despite their rehabilitation.

*Give corporate tax breaks to employers who create jobs.

*Increase the legal protections for the state’s notably exploited farm
workers and car wash employees.

*Strengthen current laws that require builders holding state contracts to
pay their crews the prevailing wage for construction work in their areas.

*Encourage Employers and workers “to identify and minimize the risk of
workplace violence.”

*Expand the law granting paid family sick leaves to workers caring for ill
parents and children to also include work time lost while caring for sick
parents-in-law, siblings, grandparents  and grandchildren.

*Ease the unjust impact of current immigration law enforcement on workers
and families by limiting the state’s cooperation with the federal “Secure
Communities” program.

Art Pulaski, the State AFL-CIO’s chief officer, rightly claims that with
passage of the laws, California undoubtedly has become “the national leader
in sporting workers and their families.”

What’s more, says Pulaski, passage of the laws marked a crucial start of
“the essential work of rebuilding the state’s middle class.”

If only we could expect even a fraction of such important work from our
squabbling federal legislators.

Copyright 2013 Dick Meister

Guardian columnist Dick Meister has covered labor and political affairs for
more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator.
Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which contains several
hundred of his columns.

Lee family quietly leaves home as activists pledge to push reforms

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Lee family quietly leaves home as activists pledge to push reforms

Members of Lee family quietly moved out of their longtime home in Chinatown last night, a day before their latest scheduled Ellis Act eviction, which had been postponed twice before thanks to headline-grabbing progressive activism that turned away deputies and persuaded the Mayor’s Office to intervene with the landlord.

But this time, the Mayor’s Office has been mum about the case (officials haven’t responded to our requests for comment) after failing to find a solution to the Lees – an elderly couple using Social Security to care their disabled 48-year-old daughter – still unresolved situation. With help from the Asian Law Caucus and Chinatown Community Development Center, the Lees moved their belongings into storage while they are staying in a hotel.

“The family is staying at a hotel in the city for the next few days as they try to finalize on a couple of potential rental units here. They’ll be paying over twice the amount that they had been paying for their rent-controlled unit. Their SSI won’t be enough to make ends meet, and so they will be spending down their relocation compensation, which may be depleted in the next several months,” Asian Law Caucus attorney Omar Calimbas told us. “Hopefully, the family will be able to find subsidized housing by then, or they will be in a precarious state of affairs again.”

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi told us yesterday that he’s been waiting for word from the Mayor’s Office and hoping to avoid this evicting the family. “We’re duty bound. It’s a court order,” Mirkarimi said of his eviction obligation. “The eviction is on the books, but we’ve been expecting an alternative plan by the Mayor’s Office after he intervened in this case.”

The San Francisco Examiner, which had earlier given splashy credit to Mayor Ed Lee for stalling the Lee family’s eviction – to the irritation of some activists that probably deserve more credit than anyone in the Mayor’s Office – had the only journalist on the scene with the Lees last night, but the paper didn’t have any comments or updates from the Mayor’s Office.

Weeks before Mayor’s Lee’s headline-grabbing Sept. 25 intervention in the Lee case, Mirkarimi had his Eviction Assistance Unit contact the Lees and try to help them avoid being turned out with no place to go. But in a city where his office performs around 1,000 evictions per year – it executed 998 court-ordered evictions last year — the single full-time staffer in that office is overwhelmed.

“We need more staff to assist when it gets to this point,” Mirkarimi told us. But his budget request last year to add another position to the unit was denied by the Mayor’s Office and Board of Supervisors, a request that Mirkarimi renewed in a Sept. 30 letter to Mayor Lee.

“When there is a determination, our EAU attempts to support individuals and families facing eviction, not just Ellis Act evictions, but all evictions. This unit is comprised of one full time deputy sheriff and the partial time of another deputy.  Based on [the current eviction] trend, our EAU staffing is insufficient and ill-equipped to assist qualified individuals and families who may be at risk of becoming homeless,” Mirkarimi wrote. “With renewed focus on the consequences of evictions in San Francisco, I return to our FY 2013-2014 budget request to enhance our EAU with one full time clinical outreach worker.”

Meanwhile, the activists say they won’t wait for the next budget cycle or rely on the Sheriff’s Department for help with imminent evictions. They say that they plan to propose a package of reforms for dealing with the eviction crisis as soon as this week.

“Overall, the several weeks of reprieve from the eviction that were won after an incredible display of community solidarity with the Lees were very important in giving them time to find a temporary fix,” Calimbas told us. “Stay tuned in the next day or so for the next move by a growing coalition of community organizations, housing advocates and labor in pushing for a comprehensive package of legislative reform to curb the outbreak of displacement-based speculation.”

Guardian Staff Writer Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez contributed to this report.

 

Fame and blame

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Fame and blame

cheryl@sfbg.com

LIT Every student of salacious San Francisco history knows the tale of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Over Labor Day weekend in 1921, the silent-film comedian hosted a rager at Union Square’s Hotel St. Francis (now known as the Westin St. Francis), the largest hotel on the West Coast at the time. Starlet Virginia Rappe fell ill at the party, and when she died days later as a result of internal injuries, Arbuckle went on trial (three times) for the crime.

The resulting media frenzy was the first of its kind, a show-biz scandal in the earliest days of movie stars. The public greeted it with both disgust and relentless curiosity. The industry reacted first by shunning Arbuckle — to this day, he’s rarely championed on the level of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin — and then ushering in nearly four decades of the Motion Picture Production Code, “moral” guidelines by which studios self-censored film content.

Delving into l’affaire de Arbuckle is Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal that Changed Hollywood (430 pp., Chicago Review Press, $29.95), Greg Merritt’s page-turner that explores not just the trial, but the often-misunderstood lives of both Arbuckle and Rappe. I called him up to further discuss the book, a must-read for film-history buffs.

SF Bay Guardian Why were you drawn to this story?

Greg Merritt To me, it had always been the ultimate Hollywood scandal. And there just wasn’t a good book that really dealt fairly with the two principals, Arbuckle and Rappe.

SFBG How did Arbuckle’s fame impact his trial?

GM People were just getting to know these movie stars. They saw them in their little towns, up on the big screen. And suddenly, this character that people thought of as a friend — they changed their opinion of him basically overnight. There were headlines calling him a beast. That is paramount to this whole story, that he was one of the first people to experience what it was like to be a movie superstar, and then he was accused of rape and murder.

SFBG What bearing did the Arbuckle case have on the film industry?

GM It stopped his career in 1921, which is huge; we never got to see what he could have done, especially since [at that time] comedy features were a phenomenon that hadn’t really developed yet. And it changed the public’s whole relationship with movie stars. Suddenly, people wanted to know what these stars were really like, not just the PR from the studios. Not just the bad, but what they were really, truly like.

And then probably the most important way that it affected the industry was the wave of movie self-censorship [that followed in its wake]. [The case] received so much condemnation that Hollywood had to censor itself to avoid actual censorship.

SFBG What role did Prohibition play?

GM It was all part of the changing society. This was the beginning of the Jazz Age, a time when women were coming out to nightclubs — before that, public drinking had been kind of a guys’ thing. When this erupted in 1921, a lot of the [outrage] was about how Fatty was at a party with these women who weren’t his wife, and effectively breaking the Prohibition laws, although the laws were complicated about where or when you could drink. It was the Victorian Age versus the Jazz Age — it was kind of the first culture war.

SFBG Was it hard finding information on Virginia Rappe? Why has she been so misunderstood?

GM Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to find out information about her. She was putting herself out there in the papers, doing interviews when she was a model and a costume designer, and I was able to find out so much about her story.

As for why she was treated so poorly, I think both sides just used her during the case. The press built her up as this innocent, and then the defense did the opposite. Decades afterwards, no one stood up for her, and she was called a slut or a prostitute or whatever. The case was eventually, essentially, blamed on her.

SFBG Why do you think history has distorted so many of the facts of this case?

GM I think the rumors were probably so spectacular that they eventually sort of replaced the facts. Now, when I talk to people, most haven’t heard of Fatty Arbuckle. Or if they have, they only know that he supposedly raped someone with a bottle. That story just took off, and now it seems to be the only thing people know about this case. It’s incredible, because he was the second-biggest movie star at the time after Charlie Chaplin. People ask me, “Can you imagine a scandal being this big today?” It’s really hard to imagine someone so hugely popular being accused of murder today. O.J. Simpson wasn’t Fatty Arbuckle, you know. It just doesn’t compare. *

Lessons of the BART standoff

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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EDITORIAL BART and its unions reached a tentative deal on new contracts late Monday (10/21) night, the next day restoring service that had been disrupted by the second four-day strike this year. Now, it’s time for everyone to move on from this impasse — and the ugly demonization of workers that accompanied it — and try to heal the damage that was done.

Sadly, it appears to have taken the senseless deaths of two BART employees on Oct. 19 to reinforce the safety concerns that unions have raised from the beginning, undermine critics’ belittling claims that “the trains run themselves” and don’t need trained workers, and back the district down from its aggressive brinksmanship and preparations to run limited service during what could have been a long strike.

There are still many questions to be answered. Was the district forcing a strike with its “final offer” and last minute decision to seek more authority over work rules? Would it really have offered service to the public using scab drivers? Was the driver training that was happening on that ill-fated train a factor in the tragedy?

We may not have a definitive answer to that last question for quite awhile, but we already learned from the NTSB that BART officials were deceiving the general public when they claimed the train was simply on a maintenance run to remove graffiti and when they offered misleading answers to the Guardian’s direct questions about whether driver training was being done.

Unfortunately, that was just the latest example of a pattern of behavior unbefitting of officials in a public agency. It began with the decision to pay almost $400,000 to a notoriously anti-union contract negotiator. It continued through stall tactics and an aggressive public relations strategy. And it culminated with seeking sweeping authority over work rules at the 11th hour and following up with training new drivers as soon as a strike was underway, apparently hoping to run enough service that the unions would be forced to accept a bad contract.

None of that should have happened, and it was only possible because the financially healthy district played off of the conservative campaigns against public employee unions of recent years to undermine the public image of their workers and deny them reasonable raises and safety improvements.

The media is also culpable, particularly the editorial writers at the San Francisco Chronicle and Bay Area News Group, which ran vitriolic and false rants condemning workers and unions, even supporting Republican calls to outlaw strikes by transportation workers.

Only in the funhouse mirror they created was it possible to credibly push the ridiculous claim that unions were striking because they were afraid of using email. It’s not necessary to dehumanize and demean our adversaries. We in the progressive Bay Area are better than that, and maybe now we can act like it.

BART reaches tentative deal with unions, ending the strike

Sasha Cuttler
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BART reaches tentative deal with unions, ending the strike

The BART strike ended this morning — the second four-day strike of the current labor contract impasse, both of which hobbled the  Bay Area’s transportation system — after the district reached a tentative contract with its three unions late last night.

The agreement was spurred by the tragic deaths of two BART employees on Saturday and by yesterday’s National Transportation Safety Board revelation that the train that struck the workers was being used by the district to train drivers, presumably in preparation for offered limited public service during the strike.

“We are pleased to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement with union leadership that will bring the trains back into service, starting tomorrow, while union members consider the agreement and vote on it,” BART General Manager Grace Crunican said in a public statement issued at 10pm last night, withholding details of the deal. “This is a good package for our union members while still allowing the District to make the necessary investments in our infrastructure. That investment is critical to the future of the Bay Area.”

Union sources tell the Guardian that Saturday’s tragedy definitely created the conditions to reach an agreement, with the district softening its hardline insistence on its “last, best, and final offer” and the unions agreeing to some work rule changes, which they say the district and media had mischaracterized their position on. Technological modernizing will go through, but the unions retained authority over safety and other working conditions. 

For more on the breakdowns that led to the strike, the circumstances surrounding Saturday’s accident, and the aftermath of that tragedy, read tomorrow’s Guardian print edition, which goes on line this evening. 

BART workers say the district deliberately caused the strike

Sasha Cuttler
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Photos by Tim Daw

Members of BART’s three striking unions gathered, rallied, and picketed outside the Lake Merritt BART station in Oakland for much of today, many of them still openly grappling with yesterday’s surprising turn of events that put them in the position of going out on strike for the second time this year.

As BART spokesperson Alicia Trost and SEIU Local 1021 President Roxanne Sanchez both confirmed this morning on KQED’s Forum, it was the district’s 11th hour demand for more authority to set work rules that caused negotiations to break down after days of intensive talks had gotten the two sides close to an agreement on the other issues.

BART officials such as Trost and BART Board President Tom Radulovich (who hasn’t yet returned our call for comment) publicly cast the work rule issue as about the district’s ability to modernize, citing how the district is still using fax machines and paper pay stubs rather than fully converting to electronic communications, blaming the requirement to consult with unions on procedural changes.

But Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told the Guardian that the pair had “completely mischaracterized” the conflict, and he speculated about whether Radulovich — who must approve the contracts but hasn’t been a party to the talks — was “being lied to” by BART’s management team and labor consultant.

Daly and other union leaders say work rules such as requiring union approval for changing past practices related to scheduling, hours, and the kind of tasks workers perform are essential to protecting things like the eight-hour workday, worker safety, and whistleblowing and free speech rights.

“We had a basic framework understanding on the economics, but then BART illegally tied that to this work rule change on past practices. And what that meant for us is in order to get a reasonable economic package, we needed to swallow this poison pill,” Daly told us.

George, a train engineer at the rally who wouldn’t give us his last name, said the work rules have been developed over decades and are important to the management-worker balancing act, but that they shouldn’t be a barrier to modernizing.

“We have long term work contracts because we’re here for the long haul and the employer is here for the long haul, so we try to work these things out,” he told us, saying that the workers strongly support their union leaders and have told them, “Do not bring us back a lousy offer to vote on, do your job.”

But not all BART workers feel that way, and some have supported the district’s demand that the union put its “last, best, and final offer” up for a vote of the membership.

“I’m really pissed. Obviously there’s been a decision in our union. I don’t think the union is representing us, the [transit vehicle mechanics]. Nobody wanted to strike, not us,” said Robert Earl Bright, a BART engineer/mechanic profiled in the Guardian this summer. “None of the TVMs wanted to strike. Work rules, I have no concept.”

SEIU Local 1021 Executive Director Peter Castelli told the the Guardian that he understands the concerns of workers like Bright, but that he think most members will support the decision to strike once they get more information.

“It’s a fast evolving situation, with the stewards and union leadership saying ‘we gotta go out.’ So explaining things to our own membership takes time. But it shows the unity and how they trust their leadership,” Castelli told us.

He ridiculed statements by district officials that the unions are resisting modernizing the system. “We’re not afraid of technology, so that’s really grasping,” Castelli told the Guardian. “Some of the people in BART have technology degrees and they’re keeping the trains from wrecking, so we’re not afraid of technology.”

Instead, both Daly and Castelli said that the district was deliberately trying to provoke a strike by making a last minute demand that it knew would be unacceptable to the unions. “It’s to make us strike. The public is devastated by this, and for good reason, and we’re very sympathetic. So they’re thinking that, ‘Maybe we make them strike one more time and they’ll fold,” Castelli told us. “Our only other option is submission and surrender.”

BEST OF THE BAY 2013: LOCAL HEROES

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bruce Brugmann, Jean Dibble, and Tim Redmond

The San Francisco Bay Guardian — which has had a significant impact on the Bay Area’s cultural and political dynamics and dialogue over the last 47 years — was largely the creation of three people with complementary skills and perspectives, an amalgam that gave the Guardian its voice and longevity.

Although they are no longer involved with running the paper, we’re honoring their contribution and legacy with a form of recognition they created: a Local Hero Award in our Best of the Bay issue, an annual edition that has been adopted by almost every alt-weekly in the country.

Bruce Brugmann and Jean Dibble launched the Guardian in October 1966 after years of planning by the married couple, and they ran it as co-publishers until the paper’s sale to the San Francisco Newspaper Co. last year, with Dibble running the business side and Brugmann in charge of editorial and serving as its most public face.

“We were one of the few husband and wife newspaper teams, a real mom and pop operation,” Brugmann told us. “We couldn’t have done it without the two of us, we needed both of our skill sets.”

They met in 1956 at the University of Nebraska, where Brugmann studied journalism and served as editor of the Daily Nebraskan, starting his long career as journalistic rabble-rouser. Dibble studied business, which she would continue in graduate school at Harvard University’s Radcliffe College while Brugmann got a master’s in journalism at Columbia University.

As graduation neared, they started talking about forming a newspaper together, an idea that percolated while Brugmann served in the US Army, where he wrote for Stars and Stripes, and Dibble moved to San Francisco with their two kids to work in personnel and administrative positions.

After the Army, they settled in Wisconsin, where Brugmann worked as a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal before moving to the Bay Area to work on launching the Guardian while Brugmann supported the family working for the Redwood City Tribune.

“We came out here with the idea of doing it and we immediately started planning. Jean did the prospectus, a damn good prospectus,” Brugmann said.

The Guardian published sporadically in the beginning, but it tapped into a vibrant counterculture that was clashing with the establishment and began publishing important articles highlighting inequities in the Vietnam War draft and exposing local political scandals, including how Pacific Gas & Electric illegally acquired its energy monopoly.

“A lot of it was just keep your head down and keep going,” Dibble said. “We never talked about alternatives, it was just what we were going to do.” The Guardian covered the successful revolts against new freeways in the city and plans to build Manhattan-style skyscrapers, publishing the book The Ultimate Highrise in 1971. In the mid-’70s, the Guardian won a successful unfair competition lawsuit against the Chronicle and the Examiner over their joint operating agreement, allowing the paper to become a free newsweekly. “Eventually, things got better, and we got some large advertisers in the ’80s and they really helped kick us off,” Dibble said. That was also when Tim Redmond, a journalist and activist steeped in radical politics, started writing for the Guardian, going on to serve as the paper’s executive editor and guiding voice for more than 30 years. “Tim was always more radical than I was,” Brugmann said, giving Redmond credit for the Guardian’s groundbreaking coverage of tenant, environmental, and economic justice issues. “Every publisher needs an editor who was more radical than they are to push them.” The two journalists had a prolific partnership, mentoring a string of journalists who would go on to national acclaim, turning the Guardian into a model for alt-weeklies across the country, exposing myriad scandals and emerging arts and cultural trends, and helping to write and pass the nation’s strongest local Sunshine Ordinance. “We always wanted to make things better,” Brugmann said of what drove the Guardian. “Even the battles that we lost, we got major concessions. Yerba Buena is much better because of the stories we did at the time, same thing with Mission Bay…San Francisco is much better that we were here. And we’re really proud and we appreciate the work of the current Guardian staff in keeping the Guardian flame alive.”

 

LOCAL HEROES: Kate Kendell

The night Proposition 8 passed was one of the hardest of Kate Kendell’s life. She remembers it with startling detail — and she should, because she was one of the most prominent opponents of the measure to overturn marriage equality in California.

“I was hopeful right up until the end that Prop. 8 would be defeated,” she said, speaking slowly as she pulled her thoughts from what sounded like a dark place. “Our initial polling numbers said we’d probably lose, but I really hoped in the deepest heart of my heart that when people got in there that they’d punch their vote in favor of the person they knew.”

But as the voters of California showed in that 2008 election, sometimes the good guys lose.

Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, fought the good fight since she started there in 1994. The NCLR litigates, creates policy, and performs outreach for LGBT civil rights on a national level, with headquarters in San Francisco. After years of anticipation, she poured herself into the campaign against the proposition that would make her marriage illegal, and then the measure passed.

That night she hung her head in disbelief. She felt physically ill, and her mind roiled in grief equaled only by the death of one of her parents. “It felt like that,” she said.

Kendell and her wife, Sandy, went home without speaking a word, and when she got in the door she tried to pull it together. Steeling herself to face her family, Kendell walked out of the bathroom and burst into tears. Her son said simply “this just means we have to fight more.”

So she did, and we all won.

That led to the moment for which Kendell may be remembered for a long time to come. When Prop. 8 was overturned by the US Supreme Court this year, a flock of San Francisco politicians descended the steps inside the rotunda at City Hall. Kendell took to the podium and spoke to the nation.

“My name is Kate Kendell with the National Center for Lesbian Rights,” she said, “and fuck you, Prop. 8!” The crowd erupted into cheers.

She regrets saying it now, but history will likely forgive her for being human. For someone whose own marriage’s validity was threatened and who spent two decades fighting for equality, she earned a moment of embarrassing honesty.

Kendell’s infamous declaration may be how she’s known, but one of her key decisions behind the scenes shaped the LGBT equality movement as well. When then-Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration wanted a couple to be the first in his round of renegade gay marriages in 2004, it was Kendell who suggested Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.

The two were in a relationship since 1953, pioneers of LGBT activism in San Francisco. Kendell said it was only right that they were first to read their vows in the city they helped shape. “Were it not for their contributions, visibility, and courage in the ’50s and ’60s, we wouldn’t be in that room with Newsom contemplating marriage licenses,” she said. “I’m just happy they said yes. It was absolutely appropriate.” And it’s with that sense of history that she herself pioneers forward, pushing in states across the US what Harvey Milk fought for in California — workplace protections for the LGBT community. “In 38 states, you can be fired from your job or being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. That has to change,” she said. “When the next chapter of history is written, it will be about a nation that treats the LGBT community as equals.”

 

Theo Ellington

Last year, when San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee floated the idea of implementing stop-and-frisk, a practice that many civil rights advocates say amounts to racial profiling, Theo Ellington stepped up to create a Change.org petition to oppose the idea — and won.

The policy would have given San Francisco police officers the authority to stop and search any individual who “looks suspicious,” in an effort to get guns off the streets.

“I found it was basically a predatory policing practice that didn’t belong in a city like San Francisco,” Ellington told us. His petition garnered a little more than 2,300 signatures, “enough to show policymakers we were paying attention,” he guesses. Faced with mounting pressure and a community outcry, Lee ultimately abandoned the idea.

“That was a win, I think, for everyone fighting for what’s really a civil right,” the 25-year-old, native San Franciscan told us in a recent phone interview. “It’s not a black issue or a white issue,” but it did strike a nerve and provide Ellington with some momentum for coalition building.

Ellington was born and raised in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, home to a significant portion of the city’s dwindling black population. The campaign against stop-and-frisk helped catalyze his still-evolving political organization, the Black Young Democrats of San Francisco, of which he is president.

Go to BYDSF’s website and you’re confronted with some startling statistics about the experience of black San Franciscans: In the last 20 years, the African American community has dwindled to only 6 percent of the city’s population; meanwhile, the high school dropout rate stands at 38 percent, the unemployment rate is 18 percent, and the level of poverty stands at a disheartening 20 percent.

To tackle these looming challenges, BYDSF now faces the hurdle of getting local elected officials to care. “Since then, we have been trying to build our membership and figure out where we fit in the political climate of SF,” Ellington says.

His group’s chief concerns include closing the achievement gap in San Francisco public schools, doing something about the escalating cost of housing, and finding better solutions for public transit. “There’s the housing need, obviously. It’s a need that working class folks in general are facing,” he said.

He’s pursing a master’s degree in urban affairs at the University of San Francisco, and says he’s taken it upon himself to learn everything he can about how cities operate. To that end, he often ponders vexing questions: “How do you figure out a way to give those same opportunities to everyone? How do you provide opportunities for all income levels?”

His successful opposition campaign to stop-and-frisk didn’t stop Mayor Lee from appointing him to the Commission on Community Investment and Infrastructure, which oversees the successor to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. A major project under that body’s purview is the Hunters Point Shipyard development, a massive undertaking led by construction firm Lennar Urban, practically in Ellington’s backyard. Having grown up in the neighborhood, he sees himself as being in a unique position to ensure that the developers are providing jobs for local residents as required under the agreement. “It allows me to speak to both sides — on the community level, and in City Hall,” he said. “There are certain social dynamics you won’t understand unless you have lived in the community.” Ultimately, Ellington says, his goal is to push local politicians to find ways of making San Francisco a place where people of all income levels can find their way. “There’s a lot more work to do,” he said. “I think San Francisco is at a real pivotal point, where we can choose to go in the right direction … or we can choose the opposite.”

 

LOCAL HEROES: Shanell Williams

Shanell Williams is a chameleon activist, spearheading the effort to save City College of San Francisco from many fronts.

When City College fought off a statewide initiative to save money by stigmatizing struggling students, she defended the school as an Occupy activist. With a banner raised high, she faced down the California Community College Board of Governors, shouting their wrongs aloud at a meeting attended by hundreds. The board was stunned but her fellow activists were not, because that’s who Williams is: an uncompromising defender of San Francisco.

Now, as City College faces a fight for its existence, Williams is defending it again, this time as a duly elected CCSF student trustee.

Williams is at the forefront of Save CCSF, an Occupy-inspired group publicly protesting the Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges, the body trying to shut down City College. San Francisco is holding its breath until next July to hear if the accrediting commission will close the city’s only community college — and Williams was one of the key organizers helping students’ voices rise up to decry the decision to close the school.

She has reason to fight hard, growing up watching her community ravaged by those in power who purported to do good. She is a black woman and San Francisco native raised in the Fillmore and the long history of redevelopment and its role in the flight of The City’s African American population shaped her ethos. To Williams, there are forces that care about money at the expense of communities and those forces need to be fought.

“How are we supporting people to have a decent quality of life?” she said, and that’s the way she’s approached saving her community since a young age.

In 2003, while in high school, Williams got a taste of politicking as a member of San Francisco’s Youth Commission, appointed by then-Mayor Willie Brown. “I think he’s a very interesting character with a lot of influence over the city,” she said, with just an edge of steel to her voice.

As a teenaged politician, she discovered the work of the Human Rights Commission and was inspired. While a student of Washington High School and then Wallenberg High, she had a tough home life and entered the foster care system, getting a firsthand look at how the state takes care of its youth.

It galvanized her, honed her, and made her yearn for change. “I just innately had a sense of wanting to see justice and fairness,” she said.

Energized, she joined the Center for Young Women’s Development, the Youth Treatment Education Court, Urban Services YMCA, the Youth Leadership Institute, and more. She joined so many organizations and taught so many youth and government officials that even she can’t remember all of them off the top of her head.

At one point, she even taught judges across the country about cultural competency. “We had this whole spoken word performance thing we did,” she said, laughing.

In 2010, as Williams took classes at City College, she waved the banner defending San Francisco’s community college students. She pushed for city-level minimum wage requirements for City College workers, who earned dollars less. She also pushed back against state requirements to cut off priority registrations to those who took too long in the community college system — because she’s been there herself.

“They need a few chances to get it right and become a good student,” she said. When the struggle to save City College is done, win or lose, Williams sees herself remaining an advocate for students for years to come. At 29 years old, she’s still a student herself, and she eagerly awaits the day she’ll transfer to Cal or Stanford as an Urban Studies major. It all comes back to defending her city. “We have to broaden the movement,” she said. “The enemy is not about color, it’s about wealth inequality. It’s not just about City College either. It’s about the austerity regime that doesn’t care about working class people and poor folks.”

 

San Franciscans for Healthcare, Jobs, and Justice

When the San Francisco Mayor’s Office cut a deal with Sutter Health and its California Pacific Medical Center affiliate for an ambitious rebuild of hospital facilities — which would shape healthcare services in San Francisco for years to come — community activists began to find serious flaws in the proposal.

So they organized and banded together into a coalition to challenge the powerful players pushing the plan, eventually helping to hash out a better agreement that would benefit all San Franciscans. Representing an alliance between labor and community advocates, the coalition was called San Franciscans for Healthcare, Jobs, and Justice.

When the whole affair began, it seemed as if the CPMC rebuild would incorporate a host of community benefits — but those promises evaporated after the healthcare provider walked away from the negotiating table, unhappy with the terms.

Then a second agreement, with much weaker public benefits, came out of a second round of talks between CPMC and the Mayor’s Office. But by then, so much had been given up that “we were stunned,” said Calvin Welch, who joined the coalition on behalf of the Council of Community Housing Organizations. “We met with [Mayor Ed Lee] and told him, this is absolutely unacceptable.”

But the mayor wasn’t willing to address their concerns at that time. When the deal failed to win approval after a series of hearings at the Board of Supervisors, however, “the unacceptable deal that the mayor created melted in the sun of full disclosure,” Welch said.

That plan would have allowed St. Luke’s Hospital, a critically important facility for low-income patients, to shrink to just 80 beds with no guarantee that it would stay open in the long run. CPMC’s commitment to providing charitable care to the uninsured was disappointingly low. And while the project was expected to create 1,500 permanent jobs in San Francisco, the deal only guaranteed that 5 percent of those positions would go to existing San Francisco residents.

Enter the movers and shakers with San Franciscans for Healthcare, Housing, Jobs, and Justice. The coalition took its place at the negotiating table, along with CPMC, a mediator, and an unlikely trio of supervisors that included Board President David Chiu and Sups. David Campos and Mark Farrell. Over several months, the coalition put in some serious time and energy to push for a more equitable outcome.

“We pushed so hard for a smaller Cathedral Hill [Hospital] and a larger St. Luke’s,” Welch said, describing their strategy to safeguard against the closure of St. Luke’s. They also pushed for CPMC to make a better funding contribution toward affordable housing, a stronger guarantee for hiring San Franciscans at the new medical center, and improvements to transit and pedestrian safety measures as conditions of the deal.

Under the terms that were ultimately approved, St. Luke’s will remain a full-service hospital, and CPMC will commit to providing services to 30,000 “charity care” patients and 5,400 Medi-Cal patients per year.

CPMC also agreed to contribute $36.5 million to the city’s affordable housing fund, and promised to pay $4.1 million to replace homes it displaces on Cathedral Hill. Under the revised deal, 30 percent of construction jobs and 40 percent of permanent entry-level positions in the new facilities would be promised to San Francisco residents.

One of the greatest victories of all, Welch said, was how well coalition members worked together. “This was the most straight-up equal collaboration with labor and community people, equally supporting one another, that I’ve ever been involved with,” Welch said. Even though they were motivated to participate by different sets of concerns, the two sides remained mutually supportive, Welch said. During the long, grueling hearings, “The nurses never left,” he noted in amazement. “The nurses stuck around for all the community stuff.”

 

Photos by Evan Ducharme

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST BART STRIKE BENEFIT

Michael Redmond
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Best of the Bay 2013: BEST BART STRIKE BENEFIT

We all got a four-day taste of Bay Area life without BART during the labor strike in early July (with another one coming in October, or so it seems at press time) — and it was hardly a transit flavor we savored. But amid all the bitter, there was a sweet worth noting, for anyone who used the opportunity to finally try commuting by San Francisco Bay Ferry. What a way to go! For instance, did you know we actually live on a bay, with water and everything? It’s true! With the ferry, you’re out on that very water, viewing the Bay’s waterfront cities from new vantage points, traveling in comfort, usually right on schedule — with access to an on-board bar serving reasonably priced beer and cocktails, no less. Plus, the ferries travel to Marin County, that land considered so inaccessible for adherents of non-aquatic public transportation. It’s almost enough to avoid the underground for good. Almost.

www.sanfranciscobayferry.com

Film Listings: October 16 – 22, 2013

Michael Redmond
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, Sam Stander, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. Due to early deadlines for the Best of the Bay issue, theater information was incomplete at presstime.

OPENING

After Tiller Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s After Tiller is incredibly timely, as states like Texas and North Carolina continue to push forth increasingly restrictive abortion legislation. This doc focuses on the four (yes, only four) doctors in America who are able to perform late-term abortions — all colleagues of Dr. George Tiller, assassinated in 2009 by a militant anti-abortionist. The film highlights the struggles of what’s inherently a deeply difficult job; even without sign-toting (and possibly gun-toting) protestors lurking outside their offices, and ever-shifting laws dictating the legality of their practices, the situations the doctors confront on a daily basis are harrowing. We sit in as couples make the painful decision to abort babies with “horrific fetal abnormalities;” a rape victim feels guilt and relief after terminating a most unwanted pregnancy; a 16-year-old Catholic girl in no position to raise a child worries that her decision to abort will haunt her forever; and a European woman who decides she can’t handle another kid tries to buy her way into the procedure. The patients’ faces aren’t shown, but the doctors allow full access to their lives and emotions — heavy stuff. (1:25) Roxie. (Eddy)

Broadway Idiot “I can’t act, I can’t dance … compared to a lot of these people, I can’t even sing,” Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong admits, moments before he’s seen taking the Broadway stage in the musical based on his band’s American Idiot. (He played the character of St. Jimmy for stints in both 2010 and 2011.) Director Doug Hamilton’s doc mixes concert, rehearsal, and full-on musical footage; interviews (with Armstrong, show director Michael Mayer, music supervisor Tom Kitt, and others); and behind-the-scenes moments to trace the evolution of American Idiot from concept album to Broadway show. Fans will feast on those behind-the-scenes moments, as when the band stops by Berkeley Rep — where the show had its pre-Broadway workshop performances — to hear new arrangements of their songs for the first time, or cast members prep to perform with Green Day at the Grammys. For everyone else, Broadway Idiot offers a slick, energetic, but not especially revealing look at the creative process. Good luck getting any of those catchy-ass songs out of your head, though. (1:20) Vogue. (Eddy)

Carrie A high-school outcast (Chloë Grace Moritz) unleashes hell on her bullying classmates (and her controlling mother, played by Julianne Moore) in Kimberly Peirce’s take on the Stephen King classic. (runtime not available) Shattuck.

Escape Plan Extreme prison breaking (from, naturally, an “escape-proof” facility) with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, and Vincent D’Onofrio. (1:56) Shattuck.

The Fifth Estate After being our guide through the world of 1970s Formula One racing in Rush, Daniel Brühl is back serving that same role — and again grumbling in the shadows cast by a flashier character’s magnetism — for a more recent real life story’s dramatization. Here he’s German “technology activist” Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who in 2007 began collaborating with the enigmatic, elusive Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) on WikiLeaks’ airing of numerous anonymous whistleblowers’ explosive revelations: US military mayhem in Afghanistan; Kenyan ruling-regime corruption; a Swiss bank’s providing a “massive tax dodge” for wealthy clients worldwide; ugly truths behind Iceland’s economic collapse; and climactically, the leaking of a huge number of classified U.S. government documents. It was this last, almost exactly three years ago, that made Assange a wanted man here and in Sweden (the latter for alleged sexual assaults), as well as putting US Army leaker Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning in prison. The heat was most certainly on — although WikiLeaks was already suffering internal woes as Domscheit-Berg and a few other close associates grew disillusioned with Assange’s megalomania, instability, and questionable judgment. It’s a fascinating, many-sided saga that was told very well in Alex Gibney’s recent documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, and this narrative feature from director Bill Condon (2004’s Kinsey, 2006’s Dreamgirls, the last two Twilights) and scenarist Josh Singer feels disappointingly superficial by contrast. It tries to cram too information in without enough ballasting psychological insight, and the hyperkinetic editing and visual style intended to ape the sheer info-overload of our digital age simply makes the whole film seem like it’s trying way too hard. There are good moments, some sharp supporting turns, and Estate certainly doesn’t lack for ambition. But it’s at best a noble failure that in the end leaves you feeling fatigued and unenlightened. (2:04) California. (Harvey)

Vinyl When the surviving members of a long-defunct, once-popular Welsh pop punk outfit reunite for a less lucky member’s funeral, the squabbles that have kept them incommunicado for decades are forgotten — with the help of lots of alcohol. They even jam together, and lo and behold, the hungover next morning reveals recorded evidence that they’ve still “got it.” In fact, they’ve even thrown together an insanely catchy new song that would be a perfect comeback single. Only trouble is, when they shop it around to record companies (including their own old one), they’re invariably told that no matter how good the music is, audiences today don’t want old fogies performing it. (That would be “like watching your parents have sex,” they’re told.) The all-important “tweens to twenties” demographic wants stars as young as themselves, only hotter. So Johnny (Phil Daniels) and company have the bright idea of assembling a quintet of barely-legal cuties to pose as a fake band and lip-synch the real band’s new tune. Needless to say, both take off like wildfire, and eventually the ruse must be exposed. Sara Sugarman’s comedy is loosely inspired by a real, similar hoax (pulled off by ’80s rockers the Alarm), and might have dug deeper into satire of an industry that has seldom deserved mocking evisceration more than it does now. Instead, Vinyl settles for being a brisk, breezy diversion, likable if a bit formulaic — though that single, “Free Rock ‘n’ Roll,” really is catchy in an early Clash-meets-Buzzcocks way. (1:25) Roxie. (Harvey)

Zaytoun It’s 1982 in war-torn Beirut, and on the semi-rare occasion that streetwise 12-year-old Palestinian refugee Fahed (Abdallah El Akal) attends school, he’s faced with an increasing number of empty desks, marked by photos of the dead classmates who used to sit there. His own father is killed in an air strike as Zaytoun begins. When an Israeli pilot (Stephen Dorff — a surprising casting choice, but not a bad one) is shot down and becomes a PLO prisoner, Fahed’s feelings of hatred give way to curiosity, and he agrees to help the man escape back to Israel, so long as he brings Fahed, who’s intent on planting his father’s olive sapling in his family’s former village, along. It’s not an easy journey, and a bond inevitably forms — just as problems inevitably ensue when they reach the border. Israeli director Eran Riklis (2008’s Lemon Tree) avoids sentimentality in this tale that nonetheless travels a pretty predictable path. (1:50) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Zero Charisma Scott (Sam Eidson) is a raging nerd, of the staunchly old-school variety: he lives for the sacred ritual of “game night,” where as Game Master he guides his minions through Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy role-playing. His hobby, which is really more of a lifestyle, is the only thing he really likes; otherwise, he’s a self-described “loser,” in his late 20s but still living with his grandmother (a delightfully acidic Anne Gee Byrd) and working a crappy job delivering tacos and donuts, sometimes to his former co-workers (who all hate him) at a game shop straight out of The Simpsons. When “cool” nerd (and insufferable hipster) Miles (Garrett Graham) joins Scott’s game and threatens his fantasy world — at the exact moment his long-lost mother (Cyndi Williams) swoops in, intent on selling Nana’s house out from under her — chaos reigns. Writer Andrew Matthews (who co-directed with Katie Graham) clearly knows Scott’s world well; the scenes revolving around gaming (“But we’re almost to the hall of the goblin queen!”) are stuffed with authentic and funny nerd-banter, and while Scott himself is often mocked, RPGs are treated with respect. Scott’s personal journey is a little less satisfying, but Zero Charisma — an Audience Award winner at SXSW — has at least as much quirky appeal as a pair of multi-sided dice. (1:27) Roxie. (Eddy)

ONGOING

A.C.O.D. When happy-go-lucky Trey (Clark Duke) announces rather suddenly that he’s getting married, cranky older bro Carter (Adam Scott), the Adult Child of Divorce of the title, is tasked with making peace between his parents (Richard Jenkins and Catherine O’Hara). Trouble is, they haaaate each other (Jenkins: “If I ever see that woman, I’m gonna kick her in the balls”) — or so Carter thinks, until he discovers (to his horror) that there’s long-dormant passion lurking beneath all the insults. He also discovers that he was part of a book about kids of divorce written by a nutty PhD (Jane Lynch), and is drawn into her follow-up project — through which he meets fellow A.C.O.D Michelle (Jessica Alba, trying way too hard as a bad girl), a foil to his level-headed girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). As the life he’s carefully constructed crumbles around him, Carter has to figure out what really matters, blah blah. Stu Zicherman’s comedy (co-scripted with Ben Karlin; both men are TV veterans) breaks no new ground in the dysfunctional-family genre — but it does boast a cast jammed with likable actors, nimble enough to sprinkle their characters’ sitcom-y conflicts with funny moments. Amy Poehler — Scott’s Parks and Recreation boo — is a particular highlight as Carter’s rich-bitch stepmother, aka “the Cuntessa.” (1:27) Metreon, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Baggage Claim Robin Thicke may be having the year of a lifetime, but spouse Paula Patton is clearly making a bid to leap those “Blurred Lines” between second banana-dom and Jennifer Aniston-esque leading lady fame with this buppie chick flick. How competitive is the game? Patton has a sporting chance: she’s certainly easy on the eyes and ordinarily a welcome warm and sensual presence as arm candy or best girlfriend — too bad her bid to beat the crowd with Baggage Claim feels way too blurry and busy to study for very long. The camera turns to Patton only to find a hot, slightly charming mess of mussed hair, frenetic movement, and much earnest emoting. I know the mode is single-lady desperation, but you’re trying too hard, Paula. At least the earnestness kind of works — semi-translating in Baggage Claim as a bumbling ineptitude that offsets Patton’s too-polished-and-perfect-to-be-real beauty. After all, we’re asked to believe that Patton’s flight attendant Montana can’t find a good man, no matter how hard she tries. That’s the first stretch of imagination, made more implausible by pals Sam (Adam Brody) and Janine (singer-songwriter Jill Scott), who decide to try to fix her up with her old high-flying frequent-flier beaus in the quest to find a mate in time for her — humiliation incoming — younger sister’s wedding. Among the suitors are suave hotelier Quinton (Djimon Hounsou), Republican candidate Langston (Taye Diggs), and hip-hop mogul Damon (Trey Songz), though everyone realizes early on that she just can’t notice the old bestie (Derek Luke) lodged right beneath her well-tilted nose. Coming to the conclusion that any sane single gal would at the end of this exercise, Patton does her darnedest to pour on the quirk and charm — and that in itself is as endearing as watching any beautiful woman bend over backwards, tumbling as she goes, to win an audience over. The strenuous effort, however, seems wasted when one considers the flimsy material, played for little more than feather-light amusement by director-writer David E. Talbert. (1:33) Metreon. (Chun)

Blue Jasmine The good news about Blue Jasmine isn’t that it’s set in San Francisco, but that it’s Woody Allen’s best movie in years. Although some familiar characteristics are duly present, it’s not quite like anything he’s done before, and carries its essentially dramatic weight more effectively than he’s managed in at least a couple decades. Not long ago Jasmine (a fearless Cate Blanchett) was the quintessential Manhattan hostess, but that glittering bubble has burst — exactly how revealed in flashbacks that spring surprises up to the script’s end. She crawls to the West Coast to “start over” in the sole place available where she won’t be mortified by the pity of erstwhile society friends. That would be the SF apartment of Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a fellow adoptive sister who was always looked down on by comparison to pretty, clever Jasmine. Theirs is an uneasy alliance — but Ginger’s too big-hearted to say no. It’s somewhat disappointing that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really do much with San Francisco. Really, the film could take place anywhere — although setting it in a non-picture-postcard SF does bolster the film’s unsettled, unpredictable air. Without being an outright villain, Jasmine is one of the least likable characters to carry a major US film since Noah Baumbach’s underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007); the general plot shell, moreover, is strongly redolent of A Streetcar Named Desire. But whatever inspiration Allen took from prior works, Blue Jasmine is still distinctively his own invention. It’s frequently funny in throwaway performance bits, yet disturbing, even devastating in cumulative impact. (1:38) Clay, Metreon. (Harvey)

Captain Phillips In 2009, Captain Richard Phillips was taken hostage by Somali pirates who’d hijacked the Kenya-bound Maersk Alabama. His subsequent rescue by Navy SEALs came after a standoff that ended in the death of three pirates; a fourth, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, surrendered and is serving a hefty term in federal prison. A year later, Phillips penned a book about his ordeal, and Hollywood pounced. Tom Hanks is perfectly cast as Phillips, an everyman who runs a tight ship but displays an admirable ability to improvise under pressure — and, once rescued, finally allows that pressure to diffuse in a scene of memorably raw catharsis. Newcomer Barkhad Abdi, cast from an open call among Minneapolis’ large Somali community, plays Muse; his character development goes deep enough to emphasize that piracy is one of few grim career options for Somali youths. But the real star here is probably director Paul Greengrass, who adds this suspenseful high-seas tale to his slate of intelligent, doc-inspired thrillers (2006’s United 93, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum). Suffice to say fans of the reigning king of fast-paced, handheld-camera action will not be disappointed. (2:14) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (1:35) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio.

Don Jon Shouldering the duties of writer, director, and star for the comedy Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has also picked up a broad Jersey accent, the physique of a gym rat, and a grammar of meathead posturing — verbal, physical, and at times metaphysical. His character, Jon, is the reigning kingpin in a triad of nightclubbing douchebags who pass their evenings assessing their cocktail-sipping opposite numbers via a well-worn one-to-10 rating system. Sadly for pretty much everyone involved, Jon’s rote attempts to bed the high-scorers are spectacularly successful — the title refers to his prowess in the art of the random hookup — that is, until he meets an alluring “dime” named Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), who institutes a waiting period so foreign to Jon that it comes to feel a bit like that thing called love. Amid the well-earned laughs, there are several repulsive-looking flies in the ointment, but the most conspicuous is Jon’s stealthy addiction to Internet porn, which he watches at all hours of the day, but with a particularly ritualistic regularity after each night’s IRL conquest has fallen asleep. These circumstances entail a fair amount of screen time with Jon’s O face and, eventually, after a season of growth — during which he befriends an older woman named Esther (Julianne Moore) and learns about the existence of arty retro Swedish porn — his “Ohhh&ldots;” face. Driven by deft, tight editing, Don Jon comically and capably sketches a web of bad habits, and Gordon-Levitt steers us through a transformation without straining our capacity to recognize the character we met at the outset — which makes the clumsy over-enunciations that mar the ending all the more jarring. (1:30) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Enough Said Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a divorced LA masseuse who sees naked bodies all day but has become pretty wary of wanting any in her bed at night. She reluctantly changes her mind upon meeting the also-divorced Albert (James Gandolfini), a television archivist who, also like her, is about to see his only child off to college. He’s no Adonis, but their relationship develops rapidly — the only speed bumps being provided by the many nit-picking advisors Eva has in her orbit, which exacerbate her natural tendency toward glass-half-empty neurosis. This latest and least feature from writer-director Nicole Holofcener is a sitcom-y thing of the type that expects us to find characters all the more adorable the more abrasive and self-centered they are. That goes for Louis-Dreyfus’ annoying heroine as well as such wasted talents as Toni Colette as her kvetching best friend and Catherine Keener as a new client turned new pal so bitchy it makes no sense Eva would desire her company. The only nice person here is Albert, whom the late Gandolfini makes a charming, low-key teddy bear in an atypical turn. The revelation of an unexpected past tie between his figure and Keener’s puts Eva in an ethically disastrous position she handles dismally. In fact, while it’s certainly not Holofcener’s intention, Eva’s behavior becomes so indefensible that Enough Said commits rom-com suicide: The longer it goes on, the more fervently you hope its leads will not end up together. (1:33) Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Escape From Tomorrow Escape From Tomorrow acquired cachet at Sundance this year as a movie you ought to see because it probably wouldn’t surface again. The reason was its setting, which composites two of the most photographed (and “happiest”) places on Earth. They’re also among the most heavily guarded from any commercial usage not of their own choosing. That would be Disney World and Disneyland, where Escape was surreptitiously shot — ingeniously so, since you would hardly expect any movie filmed on the sly like this to be so highly polished, or for its actors to get so little apparent attention from the unwitting background players around them. That nobody has pulled the fire alarm, however, suggests Disney realized this movie isn’t going to do it any real harm. While its setting remains near-indispensable, what writer-director Randy Moore has pulled off goes beyond great gimmickry, commingling satire, nightmare Americana, cartooniness, pathos, and surrealism in its tale of 40-ish Jim (Roy Abramsohn), which starts on the last day of his family vacation — when his boss calls to fire him. What follows might either be hallucinated by shell-shocked Jim, or really be a grand, bizarre conspiracy, with occurrences appearing to be either imaginary or apocalyptic (or both). Lucas Lee Graham’s crisp B&W photography finds the grotesquerie lurking in the shadows of parkland imagery. Abel Korzeniowski’s amazing score apes and parodies vintage orchestral Muzak, cloying kiddie themes, and briefly even John Williams at his most Spielbergian. All the actors do fine work, slipping fluidly if not always explicably from grounded real-world behavior to strangeness. But the real achievement of Escape From Tomorrow is that while this paranoid fantasy really makes no immediate sense, Moore’s cockeyed vision is so assured that we assume it must, on some level. He’s created a movie some people will hate but others will watch over and over again, trying to connect its almost subliminal dots. (1:43) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Inequality for All Jacob Kornbluth’s Inequality for All is the latest and certainly not the last documentary to explore why the American Dream is increasingly out of touch with everyday reality, and how the definition of “middle class” somehow morphed from “comfortable” to “struggling, endangered, and hanging by a thread.” This lively overview has an ace up its sleeve in the form of the director’s friend, collaborator, and principal interviewee Robert Reich — the former Clinton-era Secretary of Labor, prolific author, political pundit, and UC Berkeley Professor of Public Policy. Whether he’s holding forth on TV, going one-on-one with Kornbluth’s camera, talking to disgruntled working class laborers, or engaging students in his Wealth and Poverty class, Inequality is basically a resourcefully illustrated Reich lecture — as the press notes put it, “an Inconvenient Truth for the economy.” Fortunately, the diminutive Reich is a natural comedian as well as a superbly cogent communicator, turning yet another summary of how the system has fucked almost everybody (excluding the one percent) into the one you might most want to recommend to the bewildered folks back home. He’s sugar on the pill, making it easier to swallow so much horrible news. (1:25) Metreon, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete (2:00) Metreon.

Insidious: Chapter 2 The bloodshot, terribly inflamed font of the opening title gives away director James Wan and co-writer and Saw series cohort Leigh Whannell’s intentions: welcome to their little love letter to Italian horror. The way an actor, carefully lit with ruby-red gels, is foregrounded amid jade greens and cobalt blues, the ghastly clown makeup, the silent movie glory of a gorgeous face frozen in terror, the fixation with 1981’s The Beyond — lovers of spaghetti shock will appreciate even a light application of these aspects, even if many others will be disappointed by this sequel riding a wee bit too closely on its financially successful predecessor’s coattails. Attempting to pick up exactly where 2011’s Insidious left off, Chapter 2 opens with a flashback to the childhood of demonically possessed Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson), put into a trance by the young paranormal investigator Elise. Flash-forward to Elise’s corpse and the first of many terrified looks from Josh’s spouse Renai (Rose Byrne). She knows Josh killed Elise, but she can’t face reality — so instead she gets to face the forces of supernatural fantasy. Meanwhile Josh is busy forcing a fairy tale of normalcy down the rest of his family’s throats — all the while evoking a smooth-browed, unhinged caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. Subverting that fiction are son Dalton (Ty Simpkins), who’s fielding messages from the dead, and Josh’s mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), who sees apparitions in her creepy Victorian and looks for help in Elise’s old cohort Carl (Steve Coulter) and comic-relief ghost busters Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson). Sure, there are a host of scares to be had, particularly those of the don’t-look-over-your-shoulder variety, but tribute or no, the derivativeness of the devices is dissatisfying. Those seeking wickedly imaginative death-dealing machinations, or even major shivers, will curse the feel-good PG-13 denouement. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Institute In 2008, mysterious flyers began popping up around San Francisco that touted esoteric inventions such as “Poliwater” and the “Vital-Orbit Human Force Field” and included a phone number for the curiously-monikered Jejuene Institute. On the other side of the phone line, a recording would direct callers to a Financial District office building where they would undergo a mysterious induction process, embarking on an epic, multi-stage, years-long alternate reality game, designed primarily to reveal the magic in the mundane. In Spencer McCall’s documentary The Institute, viewers are introduced to the game in much the same way as prospective inductees, with few clues as to what lies in store ahead. A handful of seemingly random interviewees offer a play-by-play recap of their own experiences exploring rival game entities the Jejune Institute and Elsewhere Public Works Agency — while video footage of them dancing in the streets, warding off ninjas, befriending Sasquatches, spelunking sewers, and haunting iconic Bay Area edifices gives the viewer a taste of the wonders that lay in store for the intrepid few (out of 10,000 inductees) who made it all the way to the end of the storyline. Frustratingly, however, at least for this former inductee, McCall’s documentary focuses on fleshing out the fictions of the game, barely scratching the surface of what must surely be an even more intriguing set of facts. How did a group of scrappy East Bay artists manage to commandeer an office in the Financial District for so long in the first place? Who were the artists behind the art? And where am I supposed to cash in these wooden “hobo coins” now? (1:32) Smith Rafael. (Gluckstern)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (1:53) 1000 Van Ness.

Machete Kills Herewith we have the first sequel to a film (2010’s Machete) spawned from a fake trailer (that appeared in 2007’s Grindhouse). Danny Trejo’s titular killer has been tasked by the POTUS (Charlie Sheen, cheekily billed by his birth name, Carlos Estevez) to take down a Mexican madman (Demian Bechir) who’s an enemy of both his country’s drug cartels and the good ol’ USA. But it’s soon revealed (can you have plot spoilers in a virtually plotless film?) that the real villain is weapons designer Voz (Mel Gibson), a space-obsessed nutcase who’d fit right into an Austin Powers movie. The rest of Machete Kills, which aims only to entertain (with less social commentary than the first film), plays like James Bond lite, albeit with a higher, bloodier body count, and with famous-face cameos and jokey soft-core innuendos coming as fast and furious as the bullets do. As always, Trejo keeps a straight face, but he’s clearly in on the joke with director Robert Rodriguez, who’d be a fool not to continue to have his exploitation cake and eat it too, so long as these films — easy on the eyes, knowingly dumb, and purely fun-seeking — remain successful. (1:47) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Metallica: Through the Never The 3D IMAX concert film is lurching toward cliché status, but at least Metallica: Through the Never has more bite to it than, say, this summer’s One Direction: This is Us. Director Nimród Antal (2010’s Predators) weaves live footage of the Bay Area thrash veterans ripping through hits (“Enter Sandman,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” etc.) into a narrative (kinda) about one of the band’s roadies (The Place Beyond the Pines‘ Dane DeHaan). Sent on a simple errand, the hoodie-wearing hesher finds himself caught in a nightmarish urban landscape of fire, hanging bodies, masked horsemen, and crumbling buildings — more or less, the dude’s trapped in a heavy metal video, and not one blessed with particularly original imagery. The end result is aimed more at diehards than casual fans — and, R-rated violence aside, there’s nothing here that tops the darkest moments of highly personal 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. (1:32) Metreon. (Eddy)

Muscle Shoals Hard on the heels of Dave Grohl’s Sound City comes another documentary about a legendary American recording studio. Located in the titular podunk Northern Alabama burg, Fame Studio drew an extraordinary lineup of musicians and producers to make fabled hits from the early 1960s through the early ’80s. Among them: Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a slew of peak era Aretha Franklin smashes, the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” and those cornerstones of Southern rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” Tales of how particular tracks came about are entertaining, especially when related by the still-lively likes of Etta James, Wilson Pickett, and Keith Richards. (Richards is a hoot, while surprisingly Mick Jagger doesn’t have much to say.) Director Greg Camalier’s feature can be too worshipful and digressive at times, and he’s skittish about probing fallouts between Fame’s founder Rick Hall and some long-term collaborators (notably the local in-house session musicians known as the Swampers who were themselves a big lure for many artists, and who left Fame to start their own successful studio). Still, there’s enough fascinating material here — also including a lot of archival footage — that any music fan whose memory or interest stretches back a few decades will find much to enjoy. (1:51) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Prisoners It’s a telling sign of this TV-besotted times that the so-called best-reviewed film of the season so far resembles a cable mystery in line with The Killing and its ilk — in the way that it takes its time while keeping it taut, attempts to stretch out beyond the perimeters of the police procedural, and throws in the types of envelope-pushing twists that keep easily distractible viewers coming back. At two and a half hours plus, Prisoners feels like a hybrid, more often seen on a small screen that has borrowed liberally from cinema since David Lynch made the Twin Peaks crossing, than the large, as it brings together an art-house attention to detail with the sprawl and topicality of a serial. Incendies director Denis Villeneuve carefully loads the deck with symbolism from the start, opening with a shot of a deer guilelessly approaching a clearing and picking at scrubby growth in the cold ground, as the camera pulls back on two hunters: the Catholic, gun-toting Keller (Hugh Jackman) and his son (Dylan Minnette), intent on gathering a Thanksgiving offering. Keller and his fragile wife Grace (Maria Bello) are coming together with another family — headed up by the slightly more yuppified Franklin (Terence Howard) and his wife Nancy (Viola Davis) — for Thanksgiving in what seems like a middle-class East Coast suburb. The peace is shattered when the families’ young daughters suddenly disappear; the only clues are the mysterious RV that rumbles slowly through the quiet neighborhood and ominous closeups from a predator’s perspective. Police detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is drawn into the mystery when the RV is tracked down, along with its confused driver Alex (Paul Dano). That’s no consolation to the families, each grieving in their own way, with Keller perpetually enraged and Franklin seemingly on the brink of tears. When Alex’s aunt (an unrecognizable Melissa Leo) comes forward with information about her nephew, Keller decides to take matters into his own hands in ways that question the use of force during interrogation and the very definition of imprisonment. Noteworthy performances by Jackman, Gyllenhaal, and Dano highlight this elegant, wrenching thriller — while Villeneuve’s generally simple, smart choices might make the audience question not only certain characters’ morality but perhaps their own. (2:33) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Romeo and Juliet Every director sees the star-crossed lovers differently: Zefferelli’s approach was sensuous, while Luhrmann’s was hip. Carlo Carlei, director of the British-Swiss-Italian production hitting theaters this week, is so hamstrung by the soapy mechanics of the Twilight series and the firmament of high school productions he fails to add much vision — what he does instead is pander to tweens as much as possible. Which means tweens might like it. Hailee Steinfeld makes Juliet’s foolishness seem like the behavior of a highly functional teenager, while Douglas Booth’s chiseled Romeo can’t help resembling a cheerful Robert Pattinson. Juliet’s maid has never been more memorable than Leslie Mansfield and Paul Giamatti is occasionally not self-consciously Paul Giamatti as the cunning friar. Yet the syrupy score is miserably persistent, and the sword fights are abundant and laughable. Tybalt (Gossip Girl‘s Ed Westwick) leads a group that walks in slo-mo, hats flopping behind them. Carlei wrong-headedly stages the double suicide to resemble Michelangelo’s Pietà, but Romeo and Juliet aren’t martyrs for our fantasies, they’re the Adam and Eve of young love. Cinematic adaptations should remind you they’re original, but this Romeo and Juliet simply doesn’t know how. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Runner Runner Launching his tale with a ripped-from-the-headlines montage of news reports and concerned-anchor sound bites, director Brad Furman (2011’s The Lincoln Lawyer) attempts to argue his online-gambling action thriller’s topicality, but not even Anderson Cooper can make a persuasive case for Runner Runner‘s cultural relevance. Justin Timberlake plays Richie Furst, a post-2008 Wall Street casualty turned Princeton master’s candidate, who is putting himself through his finance program via the morally threadbare freelance gig of introducing his fellow students to Internet gambling. Perhaps in the service of supplying our unsympathetic protagonist with a psychological root, we are given a knocked-together scene reuniting Richie with his estranged gambling addict dad (John Heard). By the time we’ve digested this, plus the image of Justin Timberlake in the guise of a grad student with a TAship, Richie has blown through all his savings and, in a bewildering turn of events, made his way into the orbit of Ben Affleck’s Ivan Block, a shady online-gambling mogul taking shelter from an FBI investigation in Costa Rica, along with his lovely adjutant, Rebecca (Gemma Arterton). Richie’s rise through the ranks of Ivan’s dodgy empire is somewhat mysterious, partly a function of the plot and partly a function of the plot being piecemeal and incoherent. The dialogue and the deliveries are also unconvincing, possibly because we’re dealing with a pack of con artists and possibly because the players were dumbfounded by the script, which is clotted with lines we’ve heard before, from other brash FBI agents, other sketchily drawn temptresses, other derelict, regretful fathers, and other unscrupulous kingpins. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Rush Ron Howard’s Formula One thriller Rush is a gripping bit of car porn, decked out with 1970s period details and goofily liberated camera moves to make sure you never forget how much happens under (and around, and on top of) the hood of these beastly vehicles. Real life drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda (played by Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl, respectively) had a wicked rivalry through the ’70s; these characters are so oppositional you’d think Shane Black wrote them. Lauda’s an impersonal, methodical pro, while Hunt’s an aggressive, undisciplined playboy — but he’s so popular he can sway a group of racers to risk their lives on a rainy track, even as Lauda objects. It’s a lovely sight: all the testosterone in the world packed into a room bound by windows, egos threatening to bust the glass with the rumble of their voices. I’m no fan of Ron Howard, but maybe the thrill of Grand Theft Auto is in Rush like a spirit animal. (The moments of rush are the greatest; when Lauda’s lady friend asks him to drive fast, he does, and it’s glorious.) Hunt says that “being a pro kills the sport” — but Howard, an overly schmaltzy director with no gift for logic and too much reliance on suspension of disbelief, doesn’t heed that warning. The laughable voiceovers that bookend the film threaten to sink some great stuff, but the magic of the track is vibrant, dangerous, and teeming with greatness. (2:03) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

The Summit The fight for survival is a dominant theme this season at the movies, with astronaut Sandra Bullock grappling for her life in Gravity; lone sailor Robert Redford piloting a leaky boat in All Is Lost; and Tom Hanks battling Somali pirates in Captain Phillips. No movie stars appear in The Summit, a documentary from Irish filmmaker Nick Ryan, but that doesn’t lessen its power. In fact, this tale of a staggeringly tragic mountaineering accident — in which 11 people perished in a 48-hour period atop K2, the second-highest peak in the world — might be the most terrifying of the bunch. Along with the expected historical context, interviews, and some stunning aerial footage, The Summit crafts its tale using a seamless blend of re-enactments and archival footage shot during the deadly 2008 expedition. Editor Ben Stark picked up two awards at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and you can see why — it’s difficult at times to pick out what’s real and what’s not. The Summit also delves into the more metaphysical aspects of climbing, including “summit fever” — sharing the startling statistic that for every four people who attempt K2, one will die. It goes without saying that the danger of K2 is clearly part of its allure, and The Summit (a companion piece of sorts to 2003’s Touching the Void) does an admirable job getting inside the heads of those who willingly tempt death in order to feel more alive. (1:39) SF Center. (Eddy)

Wadjda Hijabs, headmistresses, and errant fathers fall away before the will and wherewithal of the 11-year-old title character of Wadjda, the first feature by a female Saudi Arabian filmmaker. Director Haifaa al-Mansour’s own story — which included filming on the streets of Riyadh from the isolation of a van because she couldn’t work publicly with the men in the crew — is the stuff of drama, and it follows that her movie lays out, in the neorealist style of 1948’s The Bicycle Thief, the obstacles to freedom set in the path of women and girls in Saudi Arabia, in terms that cross cultural, geographic, and religious boundaries. The fresh star setting the course is Wadjda (first-time actor Waad Mohammed), a smart, irrepressibly feisty girl practically bursting out of her purple high-tops and intent on racing her young neighborhood friend Abudullah (Abdullrahman Algohani) on a bike. So many things stand in her way: the high price of bicycles and the belief that girls will jeopardize their virginity if they ride them; her distracted mother (Reem Abdullah) who’s worried that Wadjda’s father will take a new wife who can bear him a son; and a harsh, elegant headmistress (Ahd) intent on knuckling down on girlish rebellion. So Wadjda embarks on studying for a Qu’ran recital competition to win money for her bike and in the process learns a matter or two about discipline — and the bigger picture. Director al-Mansour teaches us a few things about her world as well — and reminds us of the indomitable spirit of girls — with this inspiring peek behind an ordinarily veiled world. (1:37) (Chun)

When Comedy Went to School This scattershot documentary by Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya is about two big subjects — the Catskill Mountains resorts that launched a couple generations of beloved Jewish entertainers, and mid-to-late 20th century Jewish comedians in general. There’s a lot of overlap between them, but the directors (and writer Lawrence Richards) can’t seem to find any organizing focus, so their film wanders all over the place, from the roles of resort social directors and busboys to clips from History of the World Part I (1981) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971) to the entirely irrelevant likes of Larry King. That said, there’s entertaining vintage performance footage (of Totie Fields, Woody Allen, etc.) and interview input from the still-kicking likes of Sid Ceasar, Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, Jerry Stiller, and Jerry Lewis. For some this will be a welcome if not particularly well crafted nostalgic wallow. For others, though, the pandering tone set by one Lisa Dawn Miller’s (wife of Sandy Hackett, who’s son of Buddy) cringe-worthy opening rendition of “Make ‘Em Laugh” — to say nothing of her “Send in the Clowns” at the close — will sum up the pedestrian mindset that makes this doc a missed opportunity. (1:23) (Harvey) *

 

BART negotiations continue as unions withhold strike threat UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler
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105
BART negotiations continue as unions withhold strike threat UPDATED

With the 60-day cooling off period ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown coming to an end on Thursday, raising the specter of another Bay Area Rapid Transit shutdown, BART’s two main unions announced yesterday that they were holding off on calling a strike for now. [UPDATE 10/11: BART unions today issued a 72-hour strike notice, meaning they could strike on Monday].

“We’ve listened to the public and we share their concern about a disruption in service at the end of the cooling-off period.  We do not want to strike. That is why we’re not giving a 72-hour notice at this time, because we want to leave every opportunity open to try to get this deal done. Of course we are keeping all options on the table,” Service Employee International Union Local 1021 and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 said in a joint statement.

Some media reports indicate that there has finally been some progress in the long-stalled negotiations, with a framework on pensions being agreed to, although the two sides still seem far apart on wages, benefits, and the length of the contract.

The unions cast it this way: “To this point of doing everything possible to avoid a strike: over the past 10 days, the unions have moved publicly three times, to BART’s zero times. If this were a score in the baseball playoffs – we, the Oakland A’s would be three and they, the Detroit Tigers would be zero. 

“At this point, if there is a disruption in service at the end of the cooling-off period, it will be for one reason and for one reason alone: our elected BART leadership has not shown leadership.”

BART Board President Tom Radulovich disputed that the concessions have been one-sided, but he said that, “They continue to want to negotiate in the media and we’re not really down with that.”

Asked to characterized where things stand and the prospects for resolving the impasse without another strike, Radulovich said, “We’re still cranking away and trying to get it done…It’s really not up to us whether there’s a strike or not. We just have to get this done.”

Meanwhile, while conservatives clamor to use the situation to get the Democrat-controlled Legislature to ban unions from striking (good luck with that one), Sup. John Avalos held a hearing yesterday at City Hall to examine some of the larger issues at play in the impasse, such as retirement security, that the Guardian covered in our July 9 issue.

Asked how the hearing went, Avalos told the Guardian, “We talked a lot about how BART has been villifying workers in the court of public opinion in an effort to weaken workers’ bargaining power.”

 

Film Listings: October 9 – 15, 2013

Michael Redmond
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0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, Sam Stander, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

A.C.O.D. When happy-go-lucky Trey (Clark Duke) announces rather suddenly that he’s getting married, cranky older bro Carter (Adam Scott), the Adult Child of Divorce of the title, is tasked with making peace between his parents (Richard Jenkins and Catherine O’Hara). Trouble is, they haaaate each other (Jenkins: “If I ever see that woman, I’m gonna kick her in the balls”) — or so Carter thinks, until he discovers (to his horror) that there’s long-dormant passion lurking beneath all the insults. He also discovers that he was part of a book about kids of divorce written by a nutty PhD (Jane Lynch), and is drawn into her follow-up project — through which he meets fellow A.C.O.D Michelle (Jessica Alba, trying way too hard as a bad girl), a foil to his level-headed girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). As the life he’s carefully constructed crumbles around him, Carter has to figure out what really matters, blah blah. Stu Zicherman’s comedy (co-scripted with Ben Karlin; both men are TV veterans) breaks no new ground in the dysfunctional-family genre — but it does boast a cast jammed with likable actors, nimble enough to sprinkle their characters’ sitcom-y conflicts with funny moments. Amy Poehler — Scott’s Parks and Recreation boo — is a particular highlight as Carter’s rich-bitch stepmother, aka “the Cuntessa.” (1:27) Metreon. (Eddy)

American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco Documentary about the Jewish experience in San Francisco. (:57) Vogue.

Captain Phillips See “Survival Mode.” (2:14) Four Star, Marina.

Escape From Tomorrow See “Exile on Main St. USA.” (1:43) Roxie.

Machete Kills Danny Trejo returns as the non-texting antihero in the sequel to Robert Rodriguez’s 2010 flick based on one of the fake trailers in 2007’s Grindhouse. (1:47)

Mother of George Fashion photographer and music video director Andrew Dosunmu’s second feature opens with one of the most rapturous set pieces in recent cinematic memory: a wedding ceremony and banquet in Brooklyn’s Nigerian expat community so sensuously rich it washes over the viewer like a scented bath. Afterward, restaurateur Adoydele (Isaach De Bankole) and his younger immigrant bride Adenike (Danai Gurira) live in a connubial bliss increasingly compromised by the pressure on her to bear children. When that doesn’t happen, it could be either party’s biological “fault;” but tradition and an imperious mother-in-law (Bukky Ajayi) place blame firmly on Adenike’s shoulders, till the latter considers a desperate, secret solution to the problem. Like Dosunmu and his cinematographer Bradford Young’s 2011 prior feature Restless City, this follow-up is so aesthetically transfixing (not least its Afropop soundtrack) you can easily forgive its lack of equally powerful narrative impact. Someday they’ll make a movie that works on both levels — but meanwhile, Mother of George is gorgeous enough to reward simply as an object of sumptuous beauty. (1:47) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Muscle Shoals Hard on the heels of Dave Grohl’s Sound City comes another documentary about a legendary American recording studio. Located in the titular podunk Northern Alabama burg, Fame Studio drew an extraordinary lineup of musicians and producers to make fabled hits from the early 1960s through the early ’80s. Among them: Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a slew of peak era Aretha Franklin smashes, the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” and those cornerstones of Southern rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” Tales of how particular tracks came about are entertaining, especially when related by the still-lively likes of Etta James, Wilson Pickett, and Keith Richards. (Richards is a hoot, while surprisingly Mick Jagger doesn’t have much to say.) Director Greg Camalier’s feature can be too worshipful and digressive at times, and he’s skittish about probing fallouts between Fame’s founder Rick Hall and some long-term collaborators (notably the local in-house session musicians known as the Swampers who were themselves a big lure for many artists, and who left Fame to start their own successful studio). Still, there’s enough fascinating material here — also including a lot of archival footage — that any music fan whose memory or interest stretches back a few decades will find much to enjoy. (1:51) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Romeo and Juliet Every director sees the star-crossed lovers differently: Zefferelli’s approach was sensuous, while Luhrmann’s was hip. Carlo Carlei, director of the British-Swiss-Italian production hitting theaters this week, is so hamstrung by the soapy mechanics of the Twilight series and the firmament of high school productions he fails to add much vision — what he does instead is pander to tweens as much as possible. Which means tweens might like it. Hailee Steinfeld makes Juliet’s foolishness seem like the behavior of a highly functional teenager, while Douglas Booth’s chiseled Romeo can’t help resembling a cheerful Robert Pattinson. Juliet’s maid has never been more memorable than Leslie Mansfield and Paul Giamatti is occasionally not self-consciously Paul Giamatti as the cunning friar. Yet the syrupy score is miserably persistent, and the sword fights are abundant and laughable. Tybalt (Gossip Girl‘s Ed Westwick) leads a group that walks in slo-mo, hats flopping behind them. Carlei wrong-headedly stages the double suicide to resemble Michelangelo’s Pietà, but Romeo and Juliet aren’t martyr for our fantasies, they’re the Adam and Eve of young love. Cinematic adaptations should remind you they’re original, but this Romeo and Juliet simply doesn’t know how. (1:58) Shattuck. (Vizcarrondo)

The Summit See “Survival Mode.” (1:39)

ONGOING

Baggage Claim Robin Thicke may be having the year of a lifetime, but spouse Paula Patton is clearly making a bid to leap those “Blurred Lines” between second banana-dom and Jennifer Aniston-esque leading lady fame with this buppie chick flick. How competitive is the game? Patton has a sporting chance: she’s certainly easy on the eyes and ordinarily a welcome warm and sensual presence as arm candy or best girlfriend — too bad her bid to beat the crowd with Baggage Claim feels way too blurry and busy to study for very long. The camera turns to Patton only to find a hot, slightly charming mess of mussed hair, frenetic movement, and much earnest emoting. I know the mode is single-lady desperation, but you’re trying too hard, Paula. At least the earnestness kind of works — semi-translating in Baggage Claim as a bumbling ineptitude that offsets Patton’s too-polished-and-perfect-to-be-real beauty. After all, we’re asked to believe that Patton’s flight attendant Montana can’t find a good man, no matter how hard she tries. That’s the first stretch of imagination, made more implausible by pals Sam (Adam Brody) and Janine (singer-songwriter Jill Scott), who decide to try to fix her up with her old high-flying frequent-flier beaus in the quest to find a mate in time for her — humiliation incoming — younger sister’s wedding. Among the suitors are suave hotelier Quinton (Djimon Hounsou), Republican candidate Langston (Taye Diggs), and hip-hop mogul Damon (Trey Songz), though everyone realizes early on that she just can’t notice the old bestie (Derek Luke) lodged right beneath her well-tilted nose. Coming to the conclusion that any sane single gal would at the end of this exercise, Patton does her darnedest to pour on the quirk and charm — and that in itself is as endearing as watching any beautiful woman bend over backwards, tumbling as she goes, to win an audience over. The strenuous effort, however, seems wasted when one considers the flimsy material, played for little more than feather-light amusement by director-writer David E. Talbert. (1:33) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Battle of the Year Nothing burns Americans more than getting beat at their own culture game. Hence the premise of this 3D dance movie named after the international b-boy competition that regularly shuts out US teams. Diddy-like hip-hop kingpin Dante (Laz Alonso) is feeling the softness of the market, never mind that the trend cycles have spun the other way — we gotta win the b-boy crown back from the Koreans and Russians! So he enlists his old friend and now-down-and-out coach Jason (Lost‘s Josh Holloway) to assemble a winning crew from ragtag talents pulled from across the country, among them the strutting Rooster (Chris Brown). How does one put together a real team from this loose gathering of testosterone-saturated, ever-battling egos? Korean American director Benson Lee twirls off his own documentary Planet B Boy with this fictitious exercise that begs this question: why aren’t there more 3D dance movies? Probably because, much like porn, everything surrounding the money shots usually feels like filler. Leave aside the forced drama of bad news unbearables like Brown and his frenemies — the moments when Battle really lives up to the hype are when the movie’s many hyperathletic, gravity-defying b-boys like Ivan “Flipz” Velez, Jon “Do Knock” Cruz, and David “Kid” Shreibman show off their moves. (1:49) SF Center. (Chun)

Blue Jasmine The good news about Blue Jasmine isn’t that it’s set in San Francisco, but that it’s Woody Allen’s best movie in years. Although some familiar characteristics are duly present, it’s not quite like anything he’s done before, and carries its essentially dramatic weight more effectively than he’s managed in at least a couple decades. Not long ago Jasmine (a fearless Cate Blanchett) was the quintessential Manhattan hostess, but that glittering bubble has burst — exactly how revealed in flashbacks that spring surprises up to the script’s end. She crawls to the West Coast to “start over” in the sole place available where she won’t be mortified by the pity of erstwhile society friends. That would be the SF apartment of Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a fellow adoptive sister who was always looked down on by comparison to pretty, clever Jasmine. Theirs is an uneasy alliance — but Ginger’s too big-hearted to say no. It’s somewhat disappointing that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really do much with San Francisco. Really, the film could take place anywhere — although setting it in a non-picture-postcard SF does bolster the film’s unsettled, unpredictable air. Without being an outright villain, Jasmine is one of the least likable characters to carry a major US film since Noah Baumbach’s underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007); the general plot shell, moreover, is strongly redolent of A Streetcar Named Desire. But whatever inspiration Allen took from prior works, Blue Jasmine is still distinctively his own invention. It’s frequently funny in throwaway performance bits, yet disturbing, even devastating in cumulative impact. (1:38) Clay, Metreon. (Harvey)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (1:35) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio.

Don Jon Shouldering the duties of writer, director, and star for the comedy Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has also picked up a broad Jersey accent, the physique of a gym rat, and a grammar of meathead posturing — verbal, physical, and at times metaphysical. His character, Jon, is the reigning kingpin in a triad of nightclubbing douchebags who pass their evenings assessing their cocktail-sipping opposite numbers via a well-worn one-to-10 rating system. Sadly for pretty much everyone involved, Jon’s rote attempts to bed the high-scorers are spectacularly successful — the title refers to his prowess in the art of the random hookup — that is, until he meets an alluring “dime” named Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), who institutes a waiting period so foreign to Jon that it comes to feel a bit like that thing called love. Amid the well-earned laughs, there are several repulsive-looking flies in the ointment, but the most conspicuous is Jon’s stealthy addiction to Internet porn, which he watches at all hours of the day, but with a particularly ritualistic regularity after each night’s IRL conquest has fallen asleep. These circumstances entail a fair amount of screen time with Jon’s O face and, eventually, after a season of growth — during which he befriends an older woman named Esther (Julianne Moore) and learns about the existence of arty retro Swedish porn — his “Ohhh&ldots;” face. Driven by deft, tight editing, Don Jon comically and capably sketches a web of bad habits, and Gordon-Levitt steers us through a transformation without straining our capacity to recognize the character we met at the outset — which makes the clumsy over-enunciations that mar the ending all the more jarring. (1:30) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Elysium By the year 2154, the one percent will all have left Earth’s polluted surface for Elysium, a luxurious space station where everyone has access to high-tech machines that can heal any wound or illness in a matter of seconds. Among the grimy masses in burned-out Los Angeles, where everyone speaks a mixture of Spanish and English, factory worker Max (Matt Damon) is trying to put his car-thief past behind him — and maybe pursue something with the childhood sweetheart (Alice Braga) he’s recently reconnected with. Meanwhile, up on Elysium, icy Secretary of Defense Delacourt (Jodie Foster, speaking in French and Old Hollywood-accented English) rages against immigration, even planning a government takeover to prevent any more “illegals” from slipping aboard. Naturally, the fates of Max and Delacourt will soon intertwine, with “brain to brain data transfers,” bionic exo-skeletons, futuristic guns, life-or-death needs for Elysium’s medical miracles, and some colorful interference by a sword-wielding creeper of a sleeper agent (Sharlto Copley) along the way. In his first feature since 2009’s apartheid-themed District 9, South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp once again turns to obvious allegory to guide his plot. If Elysium‘s message is a bit heavy-handed, it’s well-intentioned, and doesn’t take away from impressive visuals (mercifully rendered in 2D) or Damon’s committed performance. (2:00) Metreon. (Eddy)

Enough Said Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a divorced LA masseuse who sees naked bodies all day but has become pretty wary of wanting any in her bed at night. She reluctantly changes her mind upon meeting the also-divorced Albert (James Gandolfini), a television archivist who, also like her, is about to see his only child off to college. He’s no Adonis, but their relationship develops rapidly — the only speed bumps being provided by the many nit-picking advisors Eva has in her orbit, which exacerbate her natural tendency toward glass-half-empty neurosis. This latest and least feature from writer-director Nicole Holofcener is a sitcom-y thing of the type that expects us to find characters all the more adorable the more abrasive and self-centered they are. That goes for Louis-Dreyfus’ annoying heroine as well as such wasted talents as Toni Colette as her kvetching best friend and Catherine Keener as a new client turned new pal so bitchy it makes no sense Eva would desire her company. The only nice person here is Albert, whom the late Gandolfini makes a charming, low-key teddy bear in an atypical turn. The revelation of an unexpected past tie between his figure and Keener’s puts Eva in an ethically disastrous position she handles dismally. In fact, while it’s certainly not Holofcener’s intention, Eva’s behavior becomes so indefensible that Enough Said commits rom-com suicide: The longer it goes on, the more fervently you hope its leads will not end up together. (1:33) Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Family It’s hard to begrudge an acting monolith like Robert De Niro from cashing out in his golden years and essentially going gently into that good night amid a volley of mild yuks. And when his mobster-in-witness-protection Giovanni Manzoni takes a film-club stage in his Normandy hideout to hold forth on the veracity of Goodfellas (1990), you yearn to be right there in the fictional audience, watching De Niro’s Brooklyn gangster take on his cinematic past. That’s the most memorable moment of this comedy about an organized criminal on the lam with his violent, conniving family unit. Director-cowriter Luc Besson aims to lightly demonstrate that you can extract a family from the mob but you can’t expunge the mob from the family. There’s a $20 million bounty on Giovanni’s head, and it’s up to his keeper Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones) to keep him and his kin quiet and undercover. But the latter has his hands full with Gio penning his memoirs, wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) blowing up the local supermarket, daughter Belle (Dianna Agron, wrapped in bows like a soft-focus fantasy nymphet) given to punishing schoolyard transgressors with severe beatings, and son Warren (John D’Leo) working all the angles in class. Besson plays the Manzoni family’s violence for chuckles, while painting the mob family’s mayhem with more ominous colors, making for a tonal clash that’s as jarring as some of his edits. The pleasure here comes with watching the actors at play: much like his character, De Niro is on the run from his career-making albeit punishing past, though if he keeps finding refuge in subpar fare, one wonders if his “meh” fellas will eventually outweigh the Goodfellas. (1:51) SF Center. (Chun)

Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Inequality for All Jacob Kornbluth’s Inequality for All is the latest and certainly not the last documentary to explore why the American Dream is increasingly out of touch with everyday reality, and how the definition of “middle class” somehow morphed from “comfortable” to “struggling, endangered, and hanging by a thread.” This lively overview has an ace up its sleeve in the form of the director’s friend, collaborator, and principal interviewee Robert Reich — the former Clinton-era Secretary of Labor, prolific author, political pundit, and UC Berkeley Professor of Public Policy. Whether he’s holding forth on TV, going one-on-one with Kornbluth’s camera, talking to disgruntled working class laborers, or engaging students in his Wealth and Poverty class, Inequality is basically a resourcefully illustrated Reich lecture — as the press notes put it, “an Inconvenient Truth for the economy.” Fortunately, the diminutive Reich is a natural comedian as well as a superbly cogent communicator, turning yet another summary of how the system has fucked almost everybody (excluding the one percent) into the one you might most want to recommend to the bewildered folks back home. He’s sugar on the pill, making it easier to swallow so much horrible news. (1:25) California, Metreon. (Harvey)

Insidious: Chapter 2 The bloodshot, terribly inflamed font of the opening title gives away director James Wan and co-writer and Saw series cohort Leigh Whannell’s intentions: welcome to their little love letter to Italian horror. The way an actor, carefully lit with ruby-red gels, is foregrounded amid jade greens and cobalt blues, the ghastly clown makeup, the silent movie glory of a gorgeous face frozen in terror, the fixation with 1981’s The Beyond — lovers of spaghetti shock will appreciate even a light application of these aspects, even if many others will be disappointed by this sequel riding a wee bit too closely on its financially successful predecessor’s coattails. Attempting to pick up exactly where 2011’s Insidious left off, Chapter 2 opens with a flashback to the childhood of demonically possessed Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson), put into a trance by the young paranormal investigator Elise. Flash-forward to Elise’s corpse and the first of many terrified looks from Josh’s spouse Renai (Rose Byrne). She knows Josh killed Elise, but she can’t face reality — so instead she gets to face the forces of supernatural fantasy. Meanwhile Josh is busy forcing a fairy tale of normalcy down the rest of his family’s throats — all the while evoking a smooth-browed, unhinged caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. Subverting that fiction are son Dalton (Ty Simpkins), who’s fielding messages from the dead, and Josh’s mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), who sees apparitions in her creepy Victorian and looks for help in Elise’s old cohort Carl (Steve Coulter) and comic-relief ghost busters Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson). Sure, there are a host of scares to be had, particularly those of the don’t-look-over-your-shoulder variety, but tribute or no, the derivativeness of the devices is dissatisfying. Those seeking wickedly imaginative death-dealing machinations, or even major shivers, will curse the feel-good PG-13 denouement. (1:30) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Institute In 2008, mysterious flyers began popping up around San Francisco that touted esoteric inventions such as “Poliwater” and the “Vital-Orbit Human Force Field” and included a phone number for the curiously-monikered Jejuene Institute. On the other side of the phone line, a recording would direct callers to a Financial District office building where they would undergo a mysterious induction process, embarking on an epic, multi-stage, years-long alternate reality game, designed primarily to reveal the magic in the mundane. In Spencer McCall’s documentary The Institute, viewers are introduced to the game in much the same way as prospective inductees, with few clues as to what lies in store ahead. A handful of seemingly random interviewees offer a play-by-play recap of their own experiences exploring rival game entities the Jejune Institute and Elsewhere Public Works Agency — while video footage of them dancing in the streets, warding off ninjas, befriending Sasquatches, spelunking sewers, and haunting iconic Bay Area edifices gives the viewer a taste of the wonders that lay in store for the intrepid few (out of 10,000 inductees) who made it all the way to the end of the storyline. Frustratingly, however, at least for this former inductee, McCall’s documentary focuses on fleshing out the fictions of the game, barely scratching the surface of what must surely be an even more intriguing set of facts. How did a group of scrappy East Bay artists manage to commandeer an office in the Financial District for so long in the first place? Who were the artists behind the art? And where am I supposed to cash in these wooden “hobo coins” now? (1:32) New Parkway, Roxie. (Gluckstern)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (1:53) 1000 Van Ness.

Metallica: Through the Never The 3D IMAX concert film is lurching toward cliché status, but at least Metallica: Through the Never has more bite to it than, say, this summer’s One Direction: This is Us. Director Nimród Antal (2010’s Predators) weaves live footage of the Bay Area thrash veterans ripping through hits (“Enter Sandman,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” etc.) into a narrative (kinda) about one of the band’s roadies (The Place Beyond the Pines‘ Dane DeHaan). Sent on a simple errand, the hoodie-wearing hesher finds himself caught in a nightmarish urban landscape of fire, hanging bodies, masked horsemen, and crumbling buildings — more or less, the dude’s trapped in a heavy metal video, and not one blessed with particularly original imagery. The end result is aimed more at diehards than casual fans — and, R-rated violence aside, there’s nothing here that tops the darkest moments of highly personal 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Parkland Timed to tie in with the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, writer-director Peter Landesman’s sprawling ensemble drama takes that tragedy as its starting point and spirals outward, highlighting ordinary folks who were caught up in the drama’s aftermath by virtue of their jobs or circumstance. There’s a lot going on here, with a huge cast of mostly-recognizable faces (Billy Bob Thornton as Secret Service Agent Forest Sorrells; Paul Giamatti as amateur filmmaker Abraham Zapruder; Ron Livingston as an FBI agent; hey, there’s Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden in two scenes as a stern nurse!), but the events depicted are so familiar that the plot never becomes confusing. Landesman — who favors scenes of breakneck-paced action punctuated by solemn moments of emotion — might’ve done better to narrow his focus a bit, perhaps keeping just to the law-enforcement characters or to Lee Harvey Oswald’s family (James Badge Dale plays his shell-shocked brother, while Jackie Weaver hams it up as his eccentric mother). But paired with 2006’s Bobby, Parkland — named for the hospital where both JFK and Oswald died — named for the hospital where both JFK and Oswald died — could make for an interesting, speculative-history double-feature for Camelot buffs. That said, Oliver Stone fans take note: Parkland is strictly Team Lone Gunman. (1:33) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Prisoners It’s a telling sign of this TV-besotted times that the so-called best-reviewed film of the season so far resembles a cable mystery in line with The Killing and its ilk — in the way that it takes its time while keeping it taut, attempts to stretch out beyond the perimeters of the police procedural, and throws in the types of envelope-pushing twists that keep easily distractible viewers coming back. At two and a half hours plus, Prisoners feels like a hybrid, more often seen on a small screen that has borrowed liberally from cinema since David Lynch made the Twin Peaks crossing, than the large, as it brings together an art-house attention to detail with the sprawl and topicality of a serial. Incendies director Denis Villeneuve carefully loads the deck with symbolism from the start, opening with a shot of a deer guilelessly approaching a clearing and picking at scrubby growth in the cold ground, as the camera pulls back on two hunters: the Catholic, gun-toting Keller (Hugh Jackman) and his son (Dylan Minnette), intent on gathering a Thanksgiving offering. Keller and his fragile wife Grace (Maria Bello) are coming together with another family — headed up by the slightly more yuppified Franklin (Terence Howard) and his wife Nancy (Viola Davis) — for Thanksgiving in what seems like a middle-class East Coast suburb. The peace is shattered when the families’ young daughters suddenly disappear; the only clues are the mysterious RV that rumbles slowly through the quiet neighborhood and ominous closeups from a predator’s perspective. Police detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is drawn into the mystery when the RV is tracked down, along with its confused driver Alex (Paul Dano). That’s no consolation to the families, each grieving in their own way, with Keller perpetually enraged and Franklin seemingly on the brink of tears. When Alex’s aunt (an unrecognizable Melissa Leo) comes forward with information about her nephew, Keller decides to take matters into his own hands in ways that question the use of force during interrogation and the very definition of imprisonment. Noteworthy performances by Jackman, Gyllenhaal, and Dano highlight this elegant, wrenching thriller — while Villeneuve’s generally simple, smart choices might make the audience question not only certain characters’ morality but perhaps their own. (2:33) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Runner Runner Launching his tale with a ripped-from-the-headlines montage of news reports and concerned-anchor sound bites, director Brad Furman (2011’s The Lincoln Lawyer) attempts to argue his online-gambling action thriller’s topicality, but not even Anderson Cooper can make a persuasive case for Runner Runner‘s cultural relevance. Justin Timberlake plays Richie Furst, a post-2008 Wall Street casualty turned Princeton master’s candidate, who is putting himself through his finance program via the morally threadbare freelance gig of introducing his fellow students to Internet gambling. Perhaps in the service of supplying our unsympathetic protagonist with a psychological root, we are given a knocked-together scene reuniting Richie with his estranged gambling addict dad (John Heard). By the time we’ve digested this, plus the image of Justin Timberlake in the guise of a grad student with a TAship, Richie has blown through all his savings and, in a bewildering turn of events, made his way into the orbit of Ben Affleck’s Ivan Block, a shady online-gambling mogul taking shelter from an FBI investigation in Costa Rica, along with his lovely adjutant, Rebecca (Gemma Arterton). Richie’s rise through the ranks of Ivan’s dodgy empire is somewhat mysterious, partly a function of the plot and partly a function of the plot being piecemeal and incoherent. The dialogue and the deliveries are also unconvincing, possibly because we’re dealing with a pack of con artists and possibly because the players were dumbfounded by the script, which is clotted with lines we’ve heard before, from other brash FBI agents, other sketchily drawn temptresses, other derelict, regretful fathers, and other unscrupulous kingpins. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Rush Ron Howard’s Formula One thriller Rush is a gripping bit of car porn, decked out with 1970s period details and goofily liberated camera moves to make sure you never forget how much happens under (and around, and on top of) the hood of these beastly vehicles. Real life drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda (played by Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl, respectively) had a wicked rivalry through the ’70s; these characters are so oppositional you’d think Shane Black wrote them. Lauda’s an impersonal, methodical pro, while Hunt’s an aggressive, undisciplined playboy — but he’s so popular he can sway a group of racers to risk their lives on a rainy track, even as Lauda objects. It’s a lovely sight: all the testosterone in the world packed into a room bound by windows, egos threatening to bust the glass with the rumble of their voices. I’m no fan of Ron Howard, but maybe the thrill of Grand Theft Auto is in Rush like a spirit animal. (The moments of rush are the greatest; when Lauda’s lady friend asks him to drive fast, he does, and it’s glorious.) Hunt says that “being a pro kills the sport” — but Howard, an overly schmaltzy director with no gift for logic and too much reliance on suspension of disbelief, doesn’t heed that warning. The laughable voiceovers that bookend the film threaten to sink some great stuff, but the magic of the track is vibrant, dangerous, and teeming with greatness. (2:03) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

Short Term 12 A favorite at multiple 2013 festivals (particularly SXSW, where it won multiple awards), Short Term 12 proves worthy of the hype, offering a gripping look at twentysomethings (led by Brie Larson, in a moving yet unshowy performance) who work with at-risk teens housed in a foster-care facility, where they’re cared for by a system that doesn’t always act with their best interests in mind. Though she’s a master of conflict resolution and tough love when it comes to her young chargers, Grace (Larson) hasn’t overcome her deeply troubled past, to the frustration of her devoted boyfriend and co-worker (John Gallagher, Jr.). The crazy everyday drama — kids mouthing off, attempting escape, etc. — is manageable enough, but two cases cut deep: Marcus (Keith Stanfield), an aspiring musician who grows increasingly anxious as his 18th birthday, when he’ll age out of foster care, approaches; and 16-year-old Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), whose sullen attitude masks a dark home life that echoes Grace’s own experiences. Expanding his acclaimed 2008 short of the same name, writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton’s wrenchingly realistic tale achieves levels of emotional honesty not often captured by narrative cinema. He joins Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler as one of the year’s most exciting indie discoveries. (1:36) Roxie. (Eddy)

Wadjda Hijabs, headmistresses, and errant fathers fall away before the will and wherewithal of the 11-year-old title character of Wadjda, the first feature by a female Saudi Arabian filmmaker. Director Haifaa al-Mansour’s own story — which included filming on the streets of Riyadh from the isolation of a van because she couldn’t work publicly with the men in the crew — is the stuff of drama, and it follows that her movie lays out, in the neorealist style of 1948’s The Bicycle Thief, the obstacles to freedom set in the path of women and girls in Saudi Arabia, in terms that cross cultural, geographic, and religious boundaries. The fresh star setting the course is Wadjda (first-time actor Waad Mohammed), a smart, irrepressibly feisty girl practically bursting out of her purple high-tops and intent on racing her young neighborhood friend Abudullah (Abdullrahman Algohani) on a bike. So many things stand in her way: the high price of bicycles and the belief that girls will jeopardize their virginity if they ride them; her distracted mother (Reem Abdullah) who’s worried that Wadjda’s father will take a new wife who can bear him a son; and a harsh, elegant headmistress (Ahd) intent on knuckling down on girlish rebellion. So Wadjda embarks on studying for a Qu’ran recital competition to win money for her bike and in the process learns a matter or two about discipline — and the bigger picture. Director al-Mansour teaches us a few things about her world as well — and reminds us of the indomitable spirit of girls — with this inspiring peek behind an ordinarily veiled world. (1:37) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

We Are What We Are The title of Jim Mickle’s latest film sums up the attitude of the Parker family: We Are What We Are. We eat people. Our human-flesh cravings go back generations. Over the years, our dietary habits have become our religion. And that’s just the way it is — until teen sisters Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner) start to have some doubts. As We Are (a remake of Mexican director Jorge Michel Grau’s 2010 film) begins, the girls’ mother has suddenly died amid a punishing rainstorm — and their grief-stricken Dad (Bill Sage) has become awfully twitchy. As the local police, a suspicious doctor (Michael Parks), and a curious neighbor (Kelly McGillis) begin to poke into their business, the Parkers prep for “Lambs Day,” a feast that most definitely involves whoever is chained up in the basement. Though not all of the dots connect in the Parkers’ elaborate backstory (how do Mom and Dad have an obscure variation on mad-cow disease if they’re only eating man-meat once a year?), We Are still offers a refreshing change from indie horror’s most recent common denominators — no found-footage tricks here. The last-act dinner scene is required viewing for any self-respecting cannibal-flick connoisseur. (1:45) California, SF Center. (Eddy)

When Comedy Went to School This scattershot documentary by Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya is about two big subjects — the Catskill Mountains resorts that launched a couple generations of beloved Jewish entertainers, and mid-to-late 20th century Jewish comedians in general. There’s a lot of overlap between them, but the directors (and writer Lawrence Richards) can’t seem to find any organizing focus, so their film wanders all over the place, from the roles of resort social directors and busboys to clips from History of the World Part I (1981) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971) to the entirely irrelevant likes of Larry King. That said, there’s entertaining vintage performance footage (of Totie Fields, Woody Allen, etc.) and interview input from the still-kicking likes of Sid Ceasar, Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, Jerry Stiller, and Jerry Lewis. For some this will be a welcome if not particularly well crafted nostalgic wallow. For others, though, the pandering tone set by one Lisa Dawn Miller’s (wife of Sandy Hackett, who’s son of Buddy) cringe-worthy opening rendition of “Make ‘Em Laugh” — to say nothing of her “Send in the Clowns” at the close — will sum up the pedestrian mindset that makes this doc a missed opportunity. (1:23) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The World’s End The final film in Edgar Wright’s “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy” finally arrives, and the TL:DR version is that while it’s not as good as 2004’s sublime zombie rom-com Shaun of the Dead, it’s better than 2007’s cops vs. serial killers yarn Hot Fuzz. That said, it’s still funnier than anything else in theaters lately. Simon Pegg returns to star and co-write (with Wright); this time, the script’s sinister bugaboo is an invasion of body snatchers — though (as usual) the conflict is really about the perils of refusing to actually become an adult, the even-greater perils of becoming a boring adult, and the importance of male friendships. Pegg plays rumpled fuck-up Gary, determined to reunite with the best friends he’s long since alienated for one more crack at their hometown’s “alcoholic mile,” a pub crawl that ends at the titular beer joint. The easy chemistry between Pegg and the rest of the cast (Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan) elevates what’s essentially a predictable “one crazy night” tale, with a killer soundtrack of 1990s tunes, slang you’ll adopt for your own posse (“Let’s Boo-Boo!”), and enough hilarious fight scenes to challenge This is the End to a bro-down of apocalyptic proportions. (1:49) Metreon. (Eddy) *

 

The Performant: I’m With the Banned

Sue Vaughan
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Since practically every single calendar day of the year has been appropriated by some cause or another (in this month alone we celebrated Labor Day, Patriot Day, National IPA Day, National Seat Check Day, World Rabies Day, and National Grandparents Day, to say nothing of Suicide Prevention Week, Constitution Week, and National Emergency Preparedness Week), it can be hard to keep them all straight. But one week that stands out, at least for myself is Banned Books Week (Sept 22-28), a 30 year-old tradition spearheaded by the American Library Association.

A celebration of free speech and the free exchange of ideas, especially in regards to minors and schoolchildren, Banned Books Week events range from readings to panel discussions to virtual “hangouts” across the nation. And lest you think that banned books are an anachronism of unenlightened school boards past, consider this list of the most challenged books of 2012, which includes such well-known works of obscenity such as Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and the gleefully irreverent Captain Underpants series. Lists like these are practically an invitation to read, and the persistence of certain books such as Brave New World, The Chocolate War, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings on the list over the past 10 years only speak to their enduring ability to provoke, to embolden, and to inform.

Since the single best way to celebrate Banned Books Week is solitary in nature, I opted for the second-best way, which was to head over to the Emerald Tablet for their flagship reading series: “Under the Influence.” Not a celebration of Banned Books per se, what “Under the Influence” offers is a mash-up of influential works alongside works written that were somehow inspired by them. In last Friday’s edition, excerpts of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Paula Vogel, William S. Burroughs, and Maggie Nelson were presented side by side with essays, poems, and plays about deserts, identity, pending apocalypse, and fibromyalgia, speaking less perhaps to the manufactured exile created by banning books, but instead to literature’s overarching resilience and penchant for freedom.

Colleen Hubbard was first, and immediately won me over by reading an excerpt from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Wind, Sand and Stars (Reynal and Hitchcock, 1939), and then an excerpt of her own writing about Denmark’s Råbjerg Mile, the largest Wanderdüne in Northern Europe. The next reader, Abe Becker, read an excerpt from Paula Vogel’s Desdemona (Dramatists Play Service, 1994) with a friend filling in the role of Desdemona while he took on Emilia, her maid. His work that was inspired by Vogel was also a play: a retelling of the play-outside-the-play in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, in which local drunk Christopher Sly is taken in by an aristocrat to be made sport of, performed by a cast of three volunteer readers.

Clint Flippen read excerpts from notable banned book Naked Lunch (Grove Press, 1962), by William S. Burroughs, then proceeded to read poems of his own that flirted with that enduring obsession we have with the apocalypse while likening the destruction of ant farms to that of destroying whole civilizations — certainly an accurate observation from the POV of the ants. Wrapping it up was Amy Berkowitz, who channeled Maggie Nelson, first in a few excerpts from her short prose meditations on a color, “Bluets” (Wave Books, 2009), and then delved into a piece of her own entitled “Tender Points,” about living with fibromyalgia.

Co-created-and-curated by local literary wrangler Evan Karp, the event’s comfy living room vibe was that of anything goes, and past readings have included influential works such as films, songs, and Shakespeare (see Becker) along with the usual prose. Last Friday of the month at 7:30, if you’d like to check it out. Snacks are provided, and donations cheerfully accepted.

“Under the Influence”
The Emerald Tablet
80 Fresno St, SF
(415) 500-2323
www.emtab.org

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