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The people’s court

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The people’s court

arts@sfbg.com

HAIRY EYEBALL Amanda Curreri wants you. Like the open-ended phrasing of its title, "Occupy the Empty," Curreri’s second solo show at Ping Pong Gallery is both a basic statement of what an artist does within an exhibition space and a call to action soliciting the viewer to step in, step up, and take a stand. Or perhaps the phrase should be "take the stand," since, as the artist explained to me during a recent gallery visit, the arrangement of the installation’s components roughly mirrors the layout of a courtroom.

A heavy wooden bench sits to the right of the gallery entrance, evoking where the witnesses, lawyers, and spectators sit; leaning against the wall to the right is the "jury box," two long panels silk-screened with six life-size images of chairs apiece; a sculpture in the gallery’s center, which looks like a segment of the kind of pearl necklace both Jackie O and a porn actress would wear, becomes the balustrade that typically separates the actors from the observers in legal proceedings.

On the wall opposite the bench hangs a canvas covered in carefully painted grayscale rectangles — an abstract approximation of TV static — that’s next to a TV set elevated on a stool off of which hangs a compilation of last words of various famous figures (it’s hard to top Karl Marx’s final trump card: "Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough"). This is what Curreri refers to as the "power spot" in the room, "either where the judge would go or where the witness stand would be."

Our conversation is occurring after I’ve just "stepped down" from being videotaped by Curreri, and her telling collapse of the judge’s bench and the jury box sums up my experience: I wasn’t really under oath, but I wanted to be true to myself, since my act of testifying and its record are now part of "Occupy the Empty." She’s been asking people who come by the show to sign up and share their thoughts on the subject of last words. On July 9th, just before the exhibit closes, these conversations will be played back on the TV set, which until then has remained off.

Curreri started formulating "Occupy the Empty" last year after participating in a court hearing in Massachusetts concerning her late father. It turns out this was the same courthouse in which Italian-American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to death in the early 20th century. Curreri, also of Italian-American descent, started thinking about the judicial system as a kind of democratic theater in which one’s mandatory performance carries incredibly high stakes — including, as with Sacco and Vanzetti and thousands of other tragic cases, death.

"I wanted to bring some gravity into what we do as artists," Curreri explains, reflecting on the stakes of participation in her art. "I really value the way people put their lives together and present themselves. So I wanted a work that would necessitate some commitment on the viewers’ part."

When Curreri starts remembering the conversation she had with her father on his deathbed, I think of the collage hanging on the wall opposite the silk-screened jury box, in which Curreri has surrounded a copy of the moving letter Sacco wrote to his son on the eve of his execution with childhood photos of her and her dad. This fusion of the personal with the historic is simultaneously touching and troubling (Sacco’s words are not those of Curreri’s father, even though the two men are aligned graphically), but it is rooted in the common impulse to ground our present by finding solace in the past. Last words are comforting in this regard. They are epigrammatic reminders that we will have our say.

At its core, "Occupy the Empty" is about just that: having a say. Or as Curreri phrases it: "I’m asking people to stand in a moment of silence and occupy it and project."

MORE FAMILY MATTERS


"3+3," a group show of local marquee names at Haines Gallery, contains a lot of eye candy. Shaun O’Dell’s delicate ink-on-paper exercises in moiré pattern interference and Leslie Shows’ graphic reconfiguration of a brush-painted Chinese landscape scroll via cut-out comics and Benday dot sprays are particularly lovely stations in this curatorial relay: Haines selected O’Dell along with Kota Ezawa and Darren WatersTon, who in turn chose Emily Prince, Taha Belal, and Shows, respectively.

Prince’s contribution stands out because the beauty of its craft comments on the nature and history of its craft. In two identical wooden square frames hang what appear to be identical lace doilies, although the one of the right seems more brittle and aged. Closer inspection reveals that the second doily is in fact a to-scale, scanned, and intricately cut-out paper replica of the one on the left, which the wall card indicates was crocheted by the artist’s grandmother. Prince’s handiwork is no less delicate — or "auratic" for that matter — than that of her grandmother’s, and this tribute to "women’s work" is no less genuine for containing a facsimile.

If you want to have a conversation about the place of craft within fine art, you’re first going to have to navigate through these two skeins.

OCCUPY THE EMPTY

Through July 10, free

"Last Words" viewing party July 9 , 7–9 p.m.

Ping Pong Gallery

1240 22nd St, SF

(415) 550-7483

www.pingponggallery.com

3+3

Through July 10, free

Haines Gallery

49 Geary, SF

(415) 397-8114

Powder keg

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Powder keg

news@sfbg.com

Ask any pollster, political consultant, or academic who studies the American electorate about the mood of the voters this year and you’ll get the same one-word answer: Angry.

Everyone’s pissed — the liberals, the conservatives, the moderates, the people who don’t even know where they fit in. It’s an unsettled time and, potentially, very bad news for a progressive agenda that seeks to address issues ranging from poverty and war to the long-term health of the public and the planet.

The Democrats, who swept into power with an enormously popular president just 18 months ago, may lose control of Congress. The tea partiers have driven the Republicans so far to the right that some candidates for Senate are openly talking about eliminating Social Security. The unemployment rate — the single most important factor in the politics of the economy — remains high and doesn’t show any signs of improving.

And the progressive left seems frustrated and demoralized, particularly in California. The Golden State, which once led the nation in innovation and enlightened social policy, now seems to be leading the politically dysfunctional race to the bottom.

The nation could be headed for a dangerous era, rife with the potential for right-wing demagoguery and other nasty political schisms. The state of the economy could easily fuel a more powerful movement to shrink the scope of government and a continuing backlash against the public sector — and the financial backers of the antitax and antiregulation movement are drooling at the prospect.

But there’s also a chance for progressives to seize a populist narrative and shift the discussion away from traditional disagreements and toward those areas, particularly the destructive influence on government by powerful corporations, where the grassroots right and grassroots left might actually agree.

The anger that voters feel toward a government that isn’t meeting their needs is starting to find other outlets. People are as mad about the abuses of big business — the Wall Street meltdown, the bailouts, the BP oil spill, the political manipulation — as they are about the failures of Congress and the president. If you ask Americans of every political stripe who they least trust — big government or big business — even conservatives aren’t so sure anymore.

For 30 years, the central narrative of American politics has revolved around the size and effectiveness of government. Now there’s a chance to shift that entire debate in American politics toward the largely unchecked power of corporations. It is, populist writer Jim Hightower told us, “an enormous opportunity handed to us by the bastards.”

But so far, none of the Democratic leaders in California are taking advantage of it to start dispelling damaging myths and crafting political narratives that might begin to create some popular consensus around how to deal with society’s most pressing problems.

 

THE PEOPLE WANT TAXES

There have been many polls gauging voter anger, but one of the most comprehensive and interesting recent ones was “Californians and Their Government,” a collaborative study by the Public Policy Institute of California and the James Irvine Foundation that was released in May.

It shows that Californians are mad about the state’s fiscal problems, disgusted with their political leaders, divided by ideology, and deeply conflicted over the best way forward. An astounding 77 percent of respondents say California is headed in the wrong direction and 81 percent say the state budget situation is a “a big problem.”

But the anti-incumbent message isn’t necessarily an anti-government message. Most Californians are willing to put more of their cash into public-sector programs, even during this deep recession. When asked to name the most important issues facing the state, 53 percent mentioned jobs and the economy . The state budget, deficit, and taxes only got the top billing of 15 percent.

And contrary to the conventional wisdom espoused by moderate politicians and political consultants, most voters say they are willing to pay higher taxes to save vital services. “Californians tell us they continue to place a high value on education and want education to be protected from cuts. And they’re willing to commit their money to help fund that,” PPIC director Mark Baldassare told the Guardian.

The survey found that 69 percent of respondents say they would pay higher taxes to protect K-12 education from future cuts, while 54 percent each say they would pay higher taxes to prevent cuts to higher education and to health and human services programs. In other words, voters seem to recognize where we’ve cut too deeply — and where we haven’t cut enough: only 18 percent of respondents would be willing to pay higher taxes to prevent cuts to prisons and corrections.

Baldassare said the June primary results also showed that people are willing to pay more in taxes for the services they value. “Around the state, there was a lot of evidence that people responded favorably to requests by their local governments for money, particularly for schools,” he said.

Both the California Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are held in very low esteem with voters, according to the PPIC study, and Schwarzenegger’s 23 percent rating is the lowest in the poll’s history.

Barbara O’Connor, political communications professor who heads the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at Sacramento State University, told us that voter unhappiness with elected leaders is no surprise. Right now, most people are afraid that their basic needs won’t be met over the long run.

“The common narrative is fear, and fear channels into anger,” O’Conner said.

And that fear is being tapped into strongly this year by the Republican candidates, who are trying to scare voters into embracing their promises to gut government and keep taxes as low as possible.

“If there’s any lesson to be learned from Meg and Carly’s early ads, it’s fear-mongering, fear-mongering all the time — and that doesn’t create a very positive narrative,” O’Connor said of gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.

O’Connor noted that Barack Obama’s campaign had great success in using a positive, hopeful message and said she believes the right leader can also do so in California. “I talked to Jerry [Brown]’s people about it and said you can’t just run a negative campaign because that’s what Meg is doing.”

Despite the tenor of the times, O’Connor said she’s feeling hopeful about hope. She also believes Californians would respond well to a leader like Obama who tried to give them that hope — if only someone like Brown can pick up that mantle. “I think the environment is right for a positive message. But the question is: do we have people capable of delivering it?”

She said the no-new-taxes, dismantle-government rhetoric has started to wear thin with voters. “The real fiscal conservatives are badly outnumbered in Californian,” O’Connor said. As for the corporate sales jobs, O’Connor said voters have really started to wise up. “They aren’t going to be scammed.”

The results of the June primary election showed that voters across the spectrum were also disturbed by big special-interest money. Proposition 16, backed by $46 million from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., went down to defeat — even in counties that tend to vote Republican.

And this fall, with two rich former CEOs spending their personal wealth to win two of California’s top elected offices and energy companies pushing a measure to roll back California’s efforts to combat global warming, there could be great opportunity in a narrative targeting those at the top of our economic system.

 

THE TOP AND THE BOTTOM

Some observers say that whatever their shared feelings about corporate scams, conservatives and liberals in the state are just too far apart, and that there’s little hope for any substantive agreement. “People are becoming more polarized,” said consultant David Latterman, who often works for downtown candidates and interests. “I think we’re beyond compromise.”

Allen Hoffenblum, a Los Angeles-based Republican strategist, agreed. “The voter are all mad, but they’re mad at different things. I just don’t see where they come together.”

But Hightower, who has spent a lifetime in politics as a journalist, elected official, author, and commentator, has a different analysis.

“As I’ve rambled through life,” he wrote in a recent essay, “I’ve observed that the true political spectrum in our society does not range from right to left, but from top to bottom. This is how America’s economic and political systems really shake out, with each of us located somewhere up or down that spectrum, mostly down.

“Right to left is political theory; top to bottom is the reality we actually experience in our lives every day — and the vast majority of Americans know that they’re not even within shouting distance of the moneyed powers that rule from the top of both systems, whether those elites call themselves conservatives or liberals.”

In an interview, he told us he sees a lot of hope in the fractured and potentially explosive political ethos. “There’s all this anger,” he said. “People don’t know what to do. And I think the one focus that makes sense is the arrogance and abuse of corporate executives.”

In fact, Hightower pointed out, the teabaggers didn’t start out as part of the Republican machinery. “Wall Street and the bailouts sparked the tea bag explosion,” he said. It wasn’t until big right-wing outfits like the Koch brothers, who own oil and timber interests and fund conservative think tanks, started quietly funding tea party rallies that the anti-corporate, anti-imperial edge came off that particular populist uprising.

“At first, the teabaggers didn’t even know where the money was coming from,” Hightower said. “You can’t be mad at the teabaggers; we should have been out there organizing them first.”

There’s plenty of evidence that anger at big business is growing rapidly — and rivals the distrust of big government that has defined so much of American politics in the past 30 years. The bailouts were “the first time in a long time that people have been slapped in the face by collusion between big business and its Washington puppets,” Hightower noted.

Then there’s the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. In January, a sharply divided court ruled 5-4 that corporations had the right to spend unlimited amounts of money supporting or opposing political candidates. Progressives were, of course, outraged — but conservatives were, too.

Polls show that more than 80 percent of Democrats think the decision should be overturned. So do 76 percent of Republicans. “This is a winner for our side,” Hightower noted. “But our side’s not doing anything about it.”

Sure, President Obama denounced the ruling in his State of the Union speech and promised reform. But the bill the Democrats have offered in response does nothing to stop the flow of money; it would only increase disclosure requirements. And in response to furor from the National Rifle Association, it’s been amended and is now so full of holes that it doesn’t do much of anything.

Political consultants advising Whitman are clearly looking for ways to direct the voter unhappiness into a demand for lower taxes and smaller budgets. She’s already vowed to fire 40,000 state workers, and her most recent campaign ad attacks Brown for expanding public programs and raising the state deficit.

So far Brown hasn’t challenged that narrative — and some Democrats say he shouldn’t. It would be safer, they say, for Brown to get out front and demand his own cuts in Sacramento. “Going after public-sector pensions is a winner,” one Democratic campaign consultant, who asked not to be named, told us. “If Whitman beats Brown on those issues, she wins.”

But that approach is never going to be effective for Democrats. If the argument is over who can better cut government spending, the GOP candidates will always win. The better approach is to see if progressives can’t shift the debate — and the anger — toward the private sector.

As Hightower put it: “You can yell yourself red-faced at Congress critters you don’t like and demand a government so small that it’d fit in the backroom of Billy Bob’s Bait Shop and Sushi Stand, but you won’t be touching the corporate and financial powers behind the throne.”

That’s where the discussion has to start. And there’s no better place than California.

The Golden State is a great example of what happens when the tax- cutters win. In 1978, the liberals in Sacramento, operating with a huge state budget surplus, couldn’t figure out how to derail the populist anger of property tax hikes. So Proposition 13, the beginning of the great tax revolt, passed overwhelmingly. Over the next decade, more antitax initiatives went before the voters, and all were approved.

Now the state is heading toward fiscal disaster. The schools are among the worst-funded in the nation. The world-famous University of California system is on the brink of collapse. Community colleges are turning away students. The credit rating on California bonds have fallen so far that it’s hard for the state to borrow money. And there’s still a huge budget gap.

The tax-cut mentality that led to the so-called Reagan revolution started in California; a political movement that shifts the blame for many of the state’s problems away from government and onto big business ought to be able to start here as well. And it’s potentially a movement that could bring together people who normally find themselves on opposite sides of the fence.

A case in point: the measure the oil companies have put on the November ballot to repeal the state’s greenhouse gas limits. The corporations backing the initiative, led by Valero, argue that California’s attempts to slow climate change will cost jobs. That’s a line we’ve heard for decades. Every tax cut, every move toward deregulation, is defended as helping spur job growth.

But the past four presidents have done nothing but cut taxes and reduce regulations — and the result is facing Americans on the streets every day. There is also growing evidence that even Republican voters don’t believe everything big businesses tell them anymore. And they’re starting to grasp that sometimes deregulation leads to outcomes like larcenous CEOs and unstoppable oil leaks.

So the potential for a successful progressive populist movement is out there. But it’s not going to happen by spontaneous combustion.

 

SF SHOWS THE WAY

On the national level, one of the factors creating this gloomy electorate is the failure of President Obama to keep the coalition that elected him active and engaged. The intense partisanship in Washinton has turned off many independent Obama voters, while his progressive supporters have been disappointed by issues ranging from his escalation in Afghanistan to tepid reforms on health care and Wall Street.

“One of the narratives now is where are the Obama voters and will they participate?” Jim Stearns, a San Francisco political consultant who works mostly on progressive campaigns, told us. “They still love Obama but they’re not moved by him anymore.”

Perhaps more important, they have lost the sense of hope that he once instilled. The Republican Party’s descent into right-wing extremism and the strong anticorporate narratives that have emerged in the last year — from BP’s oil spill to PG&E’s political manipulation to Goldman Sachs’ self-dealing to the prospect of unrestricted corporate campaign propaganda unleashed by the Citizens United ruling — have created the possibility that the negative narratives by the left may crowd out the positive ones.

“Meg Whitman is someone you can hate. She’s the rich Republican CEO trying to buy her way into office,” Stearns said. “But it’s a depressing message.”

But Stearns said there is another, most hopeful political narrative that is emerging in San Francisco, one that might eventually grow into a model that could be used at the state and federal levels. “We’re lucky in San Francisco. Progressive voters are engaged.”

He noted that San Francisco’s voter turnout was higher than expected in the June primary, and far higher than the record low state number, even though there really weren’t any exciting propositions or closely contested races on the local ballot — except for the Democratic County Central Committee, where progressives maintained their newfound control. And it’s because of the organizing and coalition-building that the left has done.

“What you’ve seen over the last few years is a coalition of labor, neighborhood groups, environmentalists, and the progressives now operating through the Democratic Party. That’s a great coalition with a lot for people to trust,” Stearns said.

Meanwhile, downtown has all but collapsed as a unified political force. “They don’t really have a political infrastructure,” Stearns said of downtown. “Normally it would be the mayor who gets everyone in line and working together.”

Even Latterman, the downtown-oriented consultant, agrees that the business community is no longer setting San Francisco’s agenda because it’s become fractured and unable to push a consistent political narrative: “There’s certainly been a lack of coordination.”

He also agrees that progressives have become more organized and effective. “Clearly, the Democratic Party of San Francisco has become a conduit for progressive politics and politicians, but not issues,” Latterman said. “What a lot of people get wrong in the city is the difference between politics and policy.”

Part of the reason is economic. With scarce resources, a high threshold for approving new revenue sources, and a fiscally conservative mayor unwilling to talk taxes, it’s been difficult to move a progressive agenda for San Francisco. And in Sacramento, it’s barely part of the discussions.

“The people of California have been held hostage by a handful of Republicans who are making us cut everything we care about,” while in San Francisco “Newsom is taking an entirely Republican approach to the budget,” Stearns said.

Looking toward the fall races, Stearns said the progressive coalition and majority on the Board of Supervisors will be tested on issues such as Muni reform, and the question will be whether fiscal conservatives like Sup. Sean Elsbernd can blame Muni’s problems on drivers, or whether progressives can create and sell a broader package that includes new revenue and governance reforms.

“The drivers are going to get their guarantee taken out of the charter, that’s going to happen. But people know that isn’t all that’s wrong with Muni,” Stearns said.

But to craft a more comprehensive solution, he said the progressives are going to need to use their growing coalition to connect the dots for voters. “We need to run a citywide campaign around a whole constellation of issues,” Stearns said, citing Muni, schools, taxes, resistance to mean-spirited measures like sit-lie, and the larger issues raised by the Brown and Barbara Boxer campaigns. “We need to figure out a way to put all that in the same coalition and run one campaign around it. And we can do that because progressives retained control of the DCCC.”

 

THE STRUGGLE AHEAD

Although they’ve made great strides, San Francisco progressives are still struggling with a mayor who sees the solution to every budget crisis as cuts — and with a growing number of efforts to blame public employees for the city’s fiscal problems. Even Jeff Adachi, the public defender once considered a standard-bearer for progressive causes, is pushing a ballot measure that would require city workers to pay more for their pensions.

Gabriel Haaland, who works with Service Employees International Union Local 1021, made the right point in the pension debate. “Big financial institutions crashed the stock market,” he said recently, “and now they want to blame city workers.”

In a blog post on the political website Calitics, Robert Cruickshank put it clearly: “The notion that ‘everyone needs to give back’ just doesn’t make sense given our economic distress. We’ve already given back too much. We gave back our wages. We gave back our ability to afford health care and housing and transportation. We gave back the robust public- sector services that created widespread prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s. We gave back affordable, quality education. And too many of us have given back our future.

“No, it’s time for someone else to give back. It’s time for the wealthiest Californians and the large corporations to give back. For 30 years now they have benefited from economic policy designed to take money and benefits from the rest of us and give it to those who already have wealth and power.”

That’s a message that ought to appeal to anyone who’s hurting from this recession. It ought to cross red and blue lines. It ought to be the mantra of a new progressive populism that can channel voter anger toward the proper target: the big corporations that created the problems that are making us all miserable.

If Jerry Brown could adopt that narrative, he could change the state of California — and the state of the nation.

Film listings

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

OPENING

*Everyone Else See "Nobody But You." (1:59) Lumiere, Shattuck.

The Last Airbender Millions of people out of work, and M. Night Shyamalan is still making movies. (1:34) Presidio.

Love Ranch See "Madam Majesty." (1:57) Embarcadero.

*Restrepo Starting mid-’07, journalists-filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger spent some 15 months off and on embedded with a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, a Taliban stronghold with steep, mountainous terrain that could hardly be more advantageous for snipers. Particularly once a second, even more isolated outpost is built, the soldiers’ days are fraught with tension, whether they’re ordered out into the open on a mission or staying put under frequent fire. Strictly vérité, with no political commentary overt or otherwise, the documentary could be (and has been) faulted for not having enough of a "narrative arc" — as if life often does, particularly under such extreme circumstances. But it’s harrowingly immediate (the filmmakers themselves often have to dive for cover) and revelatory as a glimpse not just of active warfare, but of the near-impossible challenges particular to foreign armed forces trying to make any kind of "progress" in Afghanistan. (1:33) Bridge. (Harvey)

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Another one already? Jeez. (2:04) California, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

ONGOING

The A-Team Why was the original A-Team the most popular band of mercenaries on TV? The estimable chemistry and comedic skills of Mr. T; legit Breakfast at Tiffany‘s star George Peppard; conservative commentator Dwight Schultz; and Dirk Benedict, fresh from his role as the original Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica, played a major part, as did the quasi-anti-authoritarian, boyish, blow-’em-up-real-good tone, making it more of a cartoonishly violent kin to MASH than First Blood (1982). The cheeky humor and snappy writing were the real key to The A-Team‘s popularity — the reason impressionable protein units like yours truly tuned in. Director Joe Carnahan (2006’s Smokin’ Aces) and cast seem to have sussed out a bit of that magic, especially when the sun-roasted Bradley Cooper as Faceman and Sharlto Copley as Murdock roll with the what-the-hell non-sequiturs (less sure is the star of last year’s District 9‘s grip on exactly what accent he’s been charged with). But the cinematic version won’t be rehabbing the public’s view of guns-for-hire like Blackwater anytime soon. Liam Neeson lacks the cigar-chomping paternal bravado of Peppard, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson is tasked with the unenviable job of following T time, and the script, complete with the ludicrously elaborate plans and a spark-challenged romance between Cooper and Jessica Biel, is just a rough excuse to watch boys and their toys. (1:57) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

*Babies Thomas Balmes’ camera records the first year in the lives of four infants in vastly different circumstances. They’re respectively born to hip young couple in Tokyo’s high-tech clutter; familiar moderately alterna-types (the father is director Frazer Bradshaw of last year’s excellent indie drama Everything Strange and New) in SF’s Mission District; a yurt-dwelling family isolated in the vast Mongolian tundra; and a Namibian village so maternally focused that adult menfolk seem to have been banished. Yes, on one level this is the cutest li’l documentary you ever saw. But if you were planning to avoid thinking that is all (or most) of what Babies would be like, you will miss out big time. Void of explanatory titles, voice-over narration, or subtitle translations, this is a purely observatory piece that reveals just how fascinating the business of being a baby is. There’s very little predictable pooping, wailing, or coddling. Instead, Balmes’ wonderful eye captures absorbing moments of sussing things out, decision-making, and skill learning. While the First World tykes firstborns both — are hauled off to (way) pre-school classes, the much less day planned Third Worlders have more complex, unmediated dealings with community. Those range from fending off devilish older siblings to Mongol Bayarjargal’s startlingly casual consorting with large furry livestock. (Imagine the horror of parents you know were their baby found surrounded by massive cows — a situation that here causes no concern whatsoever for adults, children, or bovines.) So accustomed to the camera that it doesn’t influence their behavior, the subjects here are viewed with an intimacy that continually surprises. Babies is getting a wider-than-usual release for a documentary, one cannily timed to coincide with Mother’s Day. But don’t be fooled: this movie is actually very cool. (1:19) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky Revered for the innovative fashion house that set the bar for style and was always knocked off but never cut prices for the real deal (and still sniffs at online clothing sales), Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel gets her second biopic, as an artist on par with composer Igor Stravinsky in this rhapsodically sensuous love letter to an unlikely romance. It opens with the designer and future branding legend (depicted with burning eyes and pantherine mystery by Anna Mouglalis) attending the controversial, riot-starting 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Paris. Recognizing Stravinsky (a viral avant-garde stud-muffin in the hands of Mads Mikkelsen, last in deadlocks and warrior face in Clash of the Titans) as a simpatico radical spirit, Chanel lends her house to the composer. He comes with considerable baggage: a slew of children and a consumptive wife, Katarina (Elena Morozova). Morozova’s performance as the angel-faced earth mother scorned, so blatantly disrespected by the rad lovers madly getting down on the music-room carpet, almost steals the show, but then the house-porn fabulosity of the recreated Chanel villa in Garches — a symbol of their hermetic attraction and shot like a seductive, claustrophobic, black-and-white deco womb — takes over, and we’re back in the thick of CoGor’s somewhat inexplicable affair once again. (1:55) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Cyrus It’s tempting to label Mark and Jay Duplass’ Cyrus as "mumblecore goes mainstream." Yes, the mumblecore elements are all there: plentiful moments of awkward humiliation, characters fumbling verbally and sometimes physically in desperate attempts to establish emotional connections, and a meandering, character-driven plot, in the sense that the characters themselves possess precious little drive. The addition of bona fide indie movie stars John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, and Marisa Tomei — not to mention Hollywood’s chubby-funny guy du jour, Jonah Hill — could lead some to believe that the DIY-loving Duplass brothers (2005’s The Puffy Chair, 2008’s Baghead) have gone from slacker disciples of John Cassavetes (informally known as "Slackavetes") to worshippers at the slickly profane (with a heart) altar of Judd Apatow. But despite the presence of Apatow protégé Hill (2007’s Superbad) in the title role, Cyrus steers clear of crowd-pleasing bombast, instead favoring small, relatively naturalistic moments. That is to say, not much actually happens. Mumblecore? More or less. Mainstream? Not exactly. Despite playing a character with some serious psychological issues, Hill comes off as likeable. Unfortunately the movie is neither as broadly comic nor as emotionally poignant as it needs to be — the two opposing forces seem to cancel each other out like acids and bases. (1:32) California, Metreon. (Devereaux)

8: The Mormon Proposition (1:30) Elmwood, Sundance Kabuki.

*Exit Through the Gift Shop Exit Through the Gift Shop is not a film about the elusive graffiti-cum-conceptual artist and merry prankster known as Banksy, even though he takes up a good chunk of this sly and by-no-means impartial documentary and is listed as its director. Rather, as he informs us — voice electronically altered, face hidden in shadow — in the film’s opening minutes, the film’s real subject is one Thierry Guetta, a French expat living in LA whose hangdog eyes, squat stature, and propensity for mutton chops and polyester could pass him off as Ron Jeremy’s long lost twin. Unlike Jeremy, Guetta is not blessed with any prodigious natural talent to propel him to stardom, save for a compulsion to videotape every waking minute of his life (roughly 80 percent of the footage in Exit is Guetta’s) and a knack for being in the right place at the right time. When Guetta is introduced by his tagger cousin to a pre-Obamatized Shepard Fairey in 2007, he realizes his true calling: to make a documentary about the street art scene that was then only starting to get mainstream attention. Enter Banksy, who, at first, is Guetta’s ultimate quarry. Eventually, the two become chummy, with Guetta acting as lookout and documenter for the artist just as the art market starts clambering for its piece of, "the Scarlet Pimpernel of street art," as one headline dubs him. When, at about three quarters of the way in, Guetta, following Banksy’s casual suggestion, drops his camcorder and tries his hand at making street art, Exit becomes a very different beast. Guetta’s flashy debut as Mr. Brainwash is as obscenely successful as his "art" is terribly unimaginative — much to the chagrin of his former documentary subjects. But Guetta is no Eve Harrington and Banksy, who has the last laugh here, gives him plenty of rope with which to truss himself. Is Mr. Brainwash really the ridiculous and inevitable terminus of street art’s runaway mainstream success (which, it must be said, Banksy has handsomely profited from)? That question begs another: with friends like Banksy, who needs enemies? (1:27) Lumiere. (Sussman)

Get Him to the Greek At this point movie execs can throw producer Judd Apatow’s name on the marquee of a film and it’s a guaranteed blockbuster. It’s hard to say whether this Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) spin-off benefits from the Apatow sign of approval or if it would be better off standing on its own, but it definitely doesn’t benefit from comparisons to its predecessor. Russell Brand returns as the British rock star Aldous Snow, and Jonah Hill, playing a different character this time, is given the task of chaperoning the uncooperative Snow from London to LA in 48 hours. Despite a great cast, including a surprisingly animated P. Diddy, the story is pretty bland and can’t match the blend of drama and comedy that Marshall achieved. Of course, none of that matters because the movie execs are right: if you like Apatow’s brand of humor, you’re going to have a good time anyway. (1:49) Empire, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peter Galvin)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo By the time the first of Stieg Larsson’s so-called "Millennium" books had been published anywhere, the series already had an unhappy ending: he died (in 2004). The following year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became a Swedish, then eventually international sensation, its sequels following suit. The books are addicting, to say the least; despite their essential crime-mystery-thriller nature, they don’t require putting your ear for writing of some literary value on sleep mode. Now the first of three adaptive features shot back-to-back has reached U.S. screens. (Sorry to say, yes, a Hollywood remake is already in the works — but let’s hope that’s years away.) Even at two-and-a-half hours, this Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by necessity must do some major truncating to pack in the essentials of a very long, very plotty novel. Still, all but the nitpickingest fans will be fairly satisfied, while virgins will have the benefit of not knowing what’s going to happen and getting scared accordingly. Soon facing jail after losing a libel suit brought against him by a shady corporate tycoon, leftie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) gets a curious private offer to probe the disappearance 40 years earlier of a teenage girl. This entangles him with an eccentric wealthy family and their many closet skeletons (including Nazi sympathies) — as well as dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), androgynous loner, 24-year-old court ward, investigative researcher, and skillful hacker. Director Niels Arden Oplev and his scenarists do a workmanlike job — one more organizational than interpretive, a faithful transcription without much style or personality all its own. Nonetheless, Larsson’s narrative engine kicks in early and hauls you right along to the depot. (2:32) Clay, Four Star, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Grown Ups In order of star power, Grown Ups casts Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade as five fortysomething friends who reunite to attend the funeral of their high school basketball coach, and play catch-up over a long weekend together at a cabin by the lake. If you’re expecting five of America’s biggest comedy stars to form like Voltron and make the most hilarious movie of the year, you’ve got a sad day coming. Grown Ups is never the sum of its parts, it’s about on par with Sandler’s other producing/starring affairs, and probably features a lot of the same jokes. People fall in poop and little kids say cute things designed to make audiences awww, but history has shown that’s exactly what a popcorn viewer is looking for. By these standards, Grown Ups is a perfectly summer-y movie. (1:42) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Peter Galvin)

Have You Heard from Johannesburg? The best word to describe Connie Field’s Have You Heard From Johannesburg? is "impressive." At eight-and-a-half hours, the seven-part documentary series spans nearly five decades of the South African anti-apartheid movement. The individual films are well-researched and thought-provoking. The stories are compelling — that is, until you put them all together. The complete series is just too long for those without a strong, vested interest in South African history. It’s simply not approachable for the mainstream, and the approximately three-hour chunks it’s meant to be consumed in are daunting. These films are better suited to a televised series, where viewers could appreciate hearing about anti-apartheid pioneers like Oliver Tambo and Desmond Tutu in smaller, digestible bites. As it stands, Field’s documentary is not likely to find a wide audience — a real pity, given the 10 years of effort she put into it, and the importance of sharing the South African struggle for equality with the rest of the world. (8:30) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

*I Am Love I Am Love opens in a chilly, Christmastime Milan and deliberately warms in tandem with its characters. Members of the blue-blood Recchi family are content hosting lavish parties and gossiping about one another, none more than the matriarch Emma (Tilda Swinton). But when prodigal son Edoardo befriends a local chef, Emma finds herself taken by both the chef’s food and his everyman personality, and is reminded of her poor Soviet upbringing. The courtship that follows is familiar on paper, but director Luca Guadagnino lenses with a strong style and small scenes acquire a distinct energy through careful editing and John Adams’ unpredictable score. Swinton portrays Emma’s unraveling with the same gritty gusto she brought to Julia (2008), and her commitment to the role recognizes few boundaries. You’ve probably seen this story before, but it has rarely been this powerful. (2:00) Albany, Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

*Iron Man 2 Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) returns, just as rich and self-involved as before, though his ego his inflated to unimaginable heights due to his superheroic fame. Pretty much, he’s put the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing on the back burner, exasperating everyone from Girl Friday Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow); to BFF military man Rhodey (Don Cheadle, replacing the first installment’s Terrence Howard); to certain mysterious Marvels played by Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson; to a doofus-y rival defense contractor (Sam Rockwell); to a sanctimonius Senator (Garry Shandling). Frankly, the fact that a vengeful Russian scientist (Mickey Rourke) is plotting Tony’s imminent death is a secondary threat here — for much of the film, Tony’s biggest enemy is himself. Fortunately, this is conveyed with enjoyable action (props to director Jon Favreau, who also has a small role), a witty script (actor Justin Theroux — who knew? He also co-wrote 2008’s Tropic Thunder, by the way), and gusto-going performances by everyone, from Downey on down. Stay for the whole credits or miss out on the geek-gasm. (2:05) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Whether you’re a fan of its subject or not, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s documentary is an absorbing look at the business of entertainment, a demanding treadmill that fame doesn’t really make any easier. At 75, comedian Rivers has four decades in the spotlight behind her. Yet despite a high Q rating she finds it difficult to get the top-ranked gigs, no matter that as a workaholic who’ll take anything she could scarcely be more available. Funny onstage (and a lot ruder than on TV), she’s very, very focused off-, dismissive of being called a "trailblazer" when she’s still actively competing with those whose women comics trail she blazed for today’s hot TV guest spot or whatever. Anyone seeking a thorough career overview will have to look elsewhere; this vérité year-in-the-life portrait is, like the lady herself, entertainingly and quite fiercely focused on the here-and-now. (1:24) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Jonah Hex Based on DC’s dark western comics, Jonah Hex is a jumbled mess of mishandled superhero tropes and obligatory attempts at badass-ery. The title character, a grizzled gunfighter with a distinctive facial scar, could be an engaging outsider antihero, but as portrayed by Josh Brolin, he feels neither as cool nor as tortured as we’re clearly expected to believe. The film has a decidedly ’90s feel to it — think overbudgeted, underthought masterpieces like Wild Wild West (1999) — with its farcically fantastical take on post-Civil War supervillainy. Its ridiculous cast of character actors is almost completely squandered, including archvillain John Malkovich, Aidan Quinn as Ulysses S. Grant, and Will Arnett in an inexplicably serious role. Megan Fox is trying the hardest out of the whole cast, but in a rather sleazy move, her character always seems to appear in soft focus. Oh, and there are a few explosions. (1:81) 1000 Van Ness. (Sam Stander)

The Karate Kid The most baffling thing about The Karate Kid is its title: little Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) never actually learns karate. He practices kung-fu, an entirely different form of martial arts — you know, from a different country. There’s something obnoxious and absurd about the misnomer: the film seems to suggest that if you’ve seen one Asian culture, you’ve seen them all. That aside, it’s not a bad movie. Smith is mostly pretty likeable, and there’s a definite satisfaction to seeing him grow from bullied weakling to kung-fu star. And Jackie Chan gets to exercise his dramatic chops — he even gets a crying scene! But Karate Kid is a "reboot," the preferred term for the endless stream of unnecessary remakes Hollywood keeps churning out. You can’t help but think about the superior 1984 version. Jaden Smith is no Ralph Macchio, Jackie Chan is no Pat Morita, and kung-fu is no karate. Don’t even get me started on the "jacket on, jacket off" crap. Which, if you say it quickly, sounds a little adult for a PG movie. (2:20) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

*The Killer Inside Me This January a Sundance controversy broke. The movie in question was eclectic English director Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me, the latest screen version of a beloved and spectacularly nasty noir tale by literary pulp hero Jim Thompson. The protest was that the onscreen violence against women was viciously excessive. The accusation is true: in Winterbottom’s film, violence is horribly immediate, sadistic yet matter-of-fact, almost unendurable — everything movie violence almost never is. There’s nothing remotely comfortable about the highly personal, unnecessary cruelty our antihero wreaks. Sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a good ol’ boy in his dusty, back-slappy west Texas hometown of the late 1950s, is a world-class sociopath who depends on lazy small-town gullibility and rote suspicion toward outsiders to literally get away with murder. Lou is shagging local Amy (Kate Hudson) — but gets distracted by Joyce (Jessica Alba), a probable prostitute he’s asked to bum rush outta town. Leading ladies Alba and Hudson are widely perceived as spoiled hotties of little talent — hence perfect battering-rams for pulp-machismo movie violence. What’s cool about Winterbottom’s Killer is that it refuses to let you enjoy the abuse they endure, which is viscerally unpleasant as a fist to the gut. It’s abrupt, grueling, and horrific. At once folksy-nostalgic and vicious, The Killer Inside Me is unabashedly about men who hate women. It successfully translates Thompson’s gambit of insinuating us into the seemingly pleasant, reasonable viewpoint of a protagonist we are then surprised to discover is psychotic and without a conscience. Offended Sundance attendees should’ve gotten a clue: deliberately misleading in its pulp-nostalgia trappings, this is one movie that upsets not gratuitously, but exactly as it should. (1:48) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Killers (1:40) 1000 Van Ness.

*Knight and Day A Bourne-again Vanilla Sky (2001)? Considerably better than that embarrassingly silly stateside remake, though not quite as fulfilling as director James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007) rework, this action caper played for yuks still isn’t the most original article in the cineplex. But coasting on the dazzling Cheshire grins of its stars, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reunited for the first time since Sky, you can just make out the birth of a beautiful new franchise. Everygirl June Havens (Diaz) is on her way to her sister’s wedding when she collides-cute at the airport with Roy Miller (Cruise). After killing the passengers and pilots on their plane, he literally sweeps her off her feet — thanks to some potent drugs. Picture a would-be Bond girl dragged against a spy-vs.-spy thriller semi-against-her-will — grappling with the subtextual anxiety rushing beneath all brief romantic encounters as well as some very justifiable survival fears. Can June overcome her trust issues? Is Roy the man of her dreams — or nightmares? Mangold and company miss a few opportunities to have more fun with those barely teased out ideas, and the polished, adult-yet-far-from-knowing charisma of the leads doesn’t quite live up to sophisticated interplay of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or even the down-home fun of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, but it’s substantial enough for Knight and Day to coast on, for about 90 minutes tops. (2:10) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Chun)

Lovers of Hate Living out of his car after being dumped by Diana (Heather Kafka), perpetually dour Rudy (Chris Doubek) can hardly find a place to take a shower. In stark contrast to his desperate situation, Rudy’s brother Paul (Alex Karpovsky) is a successful children’s fantasy writer, holed up in a borrowed mansion in Utah to work on his next book. Rudy decides to pay his bro an unwelcome surprise visit, but he arrives just behind Diana, who has come to have a serious chat (and also some sex) with Paul. Still in love with Diana, Rudy skulks unnoticed through the tremendous house, playing vengeful voyeur to the new couple’s already rather weird relationship. Lovers of Hate‘s central trinity are not especially nice people, but neither are any of them evil; writer-director Bryan Poyser balances pity and disgust at their painfully human actions, without necessarily making a case for why we care. (1:33) Roxie. (Stander)

Micmacs An urge to baby-talk at the screen underlines what is wrong with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film: it is like a precocious child all too aware how to work a room, reprising adorable past behaviors with pushy determination and no remaining spontaneity whatsoever. There will be cooing. There will be clucking. But there will also a few viewers rolling their eyes, thinking "This kid rides my last nerve." It’s easy to understand why Jeunet’s movies (including 2001’s Amélie) are so beloved, doubtless by many previously allergic to subtitles. (Of course, few filmmakers need dialogue less.) They are eye-candy, and brain-candy too: fantastical, hyper, exotic, appealing to the child within but with dark streaks, byzantine of plot yet requiring no close narrative attention at all. The artistry and craftsmanship are unmissable, no ingenious design or whimsical detail left unemphasized. In Micmacs, hero Bazil (Dany Boon) is a lovable misfit who lost his father to an Algerian landmine, then loses his own job and home when he’s brain-injured by a stray bullet. He falls in with a crazy coterie of lovable misfits who live underground, make wacky contraptions from junk, and each have their own special, not-quite-super "power." They help him wreak elaborate, fanciful revenge on the greedy arms manufacturers (André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié) behind his misfortunes, as well as various human rights-y global ones. So there’s a message here, couched in fun. But the effect is rather like a birthday clown begging funds for Darfur — or Robert Benigni’s dreaded Life is Beautiful (1997), good intentions coming off a bit hubristic, even distasteful. (1:44) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

La Mission A veteran S.F. vato turned responsible — if still muy macho — widower, father, and Muni driver, fortysomething Che (Benjamin Bratt) isn’t the type for mushy displays of sentiment. But it’s clear his pride and joy is son Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez), a straight-A high school grad bound for UCLA. That filial bond, however, sustains some serious damage when Che discovers Jes has a secret life — with a boyfriend, in the Castro, just a few blocks away from their Mission walkup but might as well be light-years away as far as old-school dad is concerned. This Bratt family project (Benjamin’s brother Peter writes-directs, his wife Talisa Soto Bratt has a supporting role) has a bit of a predictable TV-movie feel, but its warm heart is very much in the right place. (1:57) Opera Plaza, Roxie. (Harvey)

*Ondine You want to believe in mermaids, leprechauns, tooth fairies, and Father Christmas — and director Neil Jordan plays with those hopes, and fears, in this unabashedly romantic fable set in a Irish fishing village. Mullet-ed fisherman Syracuse (Colin Farrell), dubbed "Circus," thanks to his days as a drinking fool, is the butt of everyone’s jokes till he happens to catch a mysterious girl (Alicja Bachleda) in his net. She calls herself Ondine, shies away from people, and sings in an unknown tongue to the sea, drawing salmon, lobster, and fortune to the fisherman otherwise down on his luck. His precocious daughter, Annie (Alison Barry), is in need of a kidney transplant — and a measure of hope — and she grows convinced that her father’s hidden-away water baby is a selkie, a mythical Celtic sea creature that can shed its seal skin, bond with humans, and make wishes come true. Unfortunately believing in magic doesn’t always make it so, though Ondine gracefully limns that space between belief and reality, squeezing small moments of pleasure and humor from its rough, albeit attractive, characters and absolutely stunning landscapes in scenes beautifully lensed by onetime Wong Kar Wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Please Give Manhattan couple Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) are the proprietors of an up-market vintage furniture store — they troll the apartments of the recently deceased, redistributing the contents at an astonishing markup — and they’ve purchased the entire apartment of their elderly next-door neighbor (Ann Guilbert). As they wait for her to expire so they can knock down a wall, they try not to loom in anticipation in front of her granddaughters, the softly melancholic Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and the brittle pragmatist Mary (Amanda Peet). Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener has entered this territory before, examining the interpersonal pressures that a sizable income gap can exert in 2006’s Friends with Money. Here she turns to the pangs and blunderings of the liberal existence burdened with the discomforts of being comfortable and the desire to do some good in the world. The film capably explores the unexamined impulses of liberal guilt, though the conclusion it reaches is unsatisfying. Like Holofcener’s other work, Please Give is constructed from the episodic material of mundane, intimate encounters between characters whose complexity forces us to take them seriously, whether or not we like them. Here, though, it offers these private connections as the best one can hope for, a sort of domestic grace accrued by doing right, authentically, instinctively, by the people in your immediate orbit, leaving the larger world to muddle along on its axis as best it can. (1:30) Elmwood. (Rapoport)

The Secret in Their Eyes (2:07) Albany, Lumiere.

Sex and the City 2 Sex and the City 2 couldn’t be anymore brazenly shameless, dizzyingly shallow, or patently offensive if it tried. This is aspiration porn, pure and simple, kitted out in the Orientalist trappings of a Vogue spread and with all the emotional intelligence of a 12 year-old brat. As the first SATC film nearly made short work of any shred of nuance or humanity that Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda carried over from their televised selves, SATC 2 fully embraces the bad pun-spewing, couture-clad clichés the girls have hardened into. Sure they have kids, husbands, career changes, and menopause to deal with, but who cares about those tired signposts of middle age when there is more shit to buy, more champagne to swill, private airlines to fly on, $22,000-a-night luxury suites to inhabit, Helen Reddy songs to butcher, and whole other peoples — specifically, the people of Abu Dhabi, who speak funny, dress funnier, and have craaazy notions about what it means to be "one of the girls" — to alternately boss around, offend, and pity? (Fun SATC2 fact: did you know that in the "new Middle East" women secretly wear designer duds underneath their abayas?) Oh, that one tiny pang of sympathy you feel during the tipsy confessional between Charlotte and Miranda in which they bond over how being a mother and giving up one’s life ambition is difficult? A mirage. Because really, the greater concern is flying back to JFK first class or bust. And let’s not even get into the few bones the film tosses to the homos, such as the opening set piece: a gay wedding only a straight man could’ve thought up, replete with a shopworn Liza Minnelli having her Gene Kelly-in-Xanadu moment. But seriously, Michael Patrick King, don’t get it twisted: Stanford may call it such, but it’s not "cheating" if you’re already in an open relationship. Then again, if being a foil for your straight BFF’s insecurities about the luxe confines of monogamy gets you a gift registry at Bergdorf’s, why not? The laughs are cheaper this time around, but SATC 2‘s fuckery is strictly price-upon-request. (2:24) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Sussman)

Solitary Man Consider this another chapter in a larger recession-era cinematic narrative: a kind of corollary to Up in the Air and another dispatch from the flip side of the American dream — namely, American failure. Wheeling, dealing, disgusting, and charming in turns, Michael Douglas manages the dubious achievement of making a hungry and lecherous BMW dealership honcho compelling, even as we roll our eyeballs in disgust. His Ben Kalmen was once at the top of the world, a fairy-tale self-made star whose luxury auto commercials were all over TV, a sharp-tongued wife (Susan Sarandon) and tenderly tolerant daughter (Jenna Fischer) by his side. After his career lands in the crapper, Ben begins a long climb up, trading favors with his girlfriend Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker) and taking her daughter Allyson (Imogen Poots) to his alma mater for her college interview. During this trip down memory lane he renews his ties with old pal Jimmy (Danny DeVito) and befriends budding schlub Daniel (Jesse Eisenberg), all while making some very bad, reflexively womanizing choices. If you can stomach its morally bereft, perpetually backsliding yet endearingly honest protagonist, you’ll be rewarded with on-point dialogue and a clear-eyed yet empathetic character study concerning the free fall of a self-sabotaging, old-enough-to-know-better prick, individualistic to the core and even more. Is Ben as worthy of a bailout, or a second chance, as the American auto industry? The answer remains up in the air. (1:30) Elmwood, Opera Plaza, Piedmont. (Chun)

*Splice "If we don’t use human DNA now, someone else will," declares Elsa (Sarah Polley), the brash young genetic scientist bent on defying the orders of her benign corporate benefactors in Vincenzo Natali’s pseudo-cautionary hybrid love child, Splice. From that moment on, it’s pretty clear that any ethical conundrums the movie raises aren’t really worthy of debate: what Elsa wants to do in the name of scientific progress — splice human DNA into gooey muscle masses to provide said corporation with proteins for gene therapy — is, you know, deranged. Elsa bucks both corporate policy and sound moral judgment and does it anyway, much to the horror of her husband and fellow hotshot research scientist, Clive (Adrien Brody). Her genetic tinkering soon results in the dramatic birth of something akin to a homicidal fetal chick crossed with a skinned bunny. It grows at an alarming rate, and when human characteristics become apparent, Elsa clings to it with the instinctual vigor of a tigress protecting her cub. When Elsa and Clive are forced to hide their creation at Elsa’s abandoned family farmhouse to escape detection from prying corporate eyes, Splice evolves into another kind of hybrid: a genetically engineered Scenes from a Marriage (1973) crossed with the DNA of The Omen (1976) and grafted onto the most very special My So-Called Life episode ever. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Splice may be a ludicrous, cut-rate exercise in Brood-era David Cronenberg — but it’s a damned entertaining one. (1:45) SF Center. (Devereaux)

Touching Home Hometown boys (Logan and Noah Miller) make good in this based-on-a-true-story tale of identical twins who must divide their time at home between training for major league baseball and looking after their alcoholic father. The brothers, who also wrote and directed the film, aim for David Gordon Green by way of Marin, but fall short of mastering that director’s knack for natural dialogue. Ed Harris is, unsurprisingly, compelling as the alcoholic father, but the actors in the film who are not named Ed Harris tend to contribute to the script’s distracting histrionics. Touching Home has some amazing NorCal cinematography, and I could see how family audiences might enjoy its "feel bad, then feel good" style of melodrama. But while it’s awkward to say that someone’s real-life experiences come off as trite, there are moments here that feel as clichéd as a Lifetime movie. (1:48) Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

*Toy Story 3 You’ve got a friend in Pixar. We all do. The animation studio just can’t seem to make a bad movie — even at its relative worst, a Pixar film is still worlds better than most of what Hollywood churns out. Luckily, Toy Story 3 is far from the worst: it’s actually one of Pixar’s most enjoyable and poignant films yet. Waiting 11 years after the release of Toy Story 2 was, in fact, a stroke of genius, in that it amplifies the nostalgia that runs through so many of the studio’s releases. The kids who were raised on Toy Story and its first sequel have now grown up, gone to college, and, presumably, abandoned their toys. For these twentysomethings, myself included, Toy Story 3 is a uniquely satisfying and heartbreaking experience. While the film itself may not be the instant classic that WALL-E (2008) was, it’s near flawless regardless of a viewer’s age. Warm, funny, and emotionally devastating—it’s Pixar as it should be. (1:49) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Winter’s Bone Winter’s Bone has already won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, but it’s the kind of downbeat, low-key, quiet film that may elude larger audiences (and, as these things go, Oscar voters). Like Andrea Arnold’s recent Fish Tank, it tells the story of a teenage girl who draws on unlikely reserves of toughness to navigate an unstable family life amid less-than-ideal economic circumstances. And it’s also directed by a woman: Debra Granik, whose previous feature, 2004’s Down to the Bone, starred Vera Farmiga (2009’s Up in the Air) as a checkout clerk trying to balance two kids and a secret coke habit.

Drugs also figure into the plot of the harrowing Winter’s Bone, though its protagonist, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), is faced with a different set of circumstances: her meth head father has jumped bail, leaving the family’s humble mountain home as collateral; the two kids at stake are her younger siblings. With no resources other than her own tenacity, Ree strikes out into her rural Missouri community, seeking information from relatives who clearly know where her father is — but ain’t sayin’ a word. It’s a journey fraught with menace, shot with an eye for near-documentary realism and an appreciation for slow-burn suspense; Lawrence anchors a solid cast with her own powerful performance. Who says American independent film is dead? (1:40) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

On the Cheap listings

David Talbot
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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THURSDAY 1

Laborfest At venues throughout the Bay Area. Through July 31, visit www.laborfest.net for more information. Attend one of the many exciting events at this annual labor cultural, film and arts festival featuring talk, movies, walking tours, bike tours, book readings, discussions, and more. Most events are free or donation based.

FRIDAY 2

BAY AREA

Fuck the Fourth Sale AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd St., Oakl.; (510) 208-1700. 4-10pm, free. Head down to the Anarchist Press warehouse and browse discounted shirts, DVDs, CDs, books, and more in dishonor of the 4th of July. AK Press collective members will be there offering companionship and complimentary refreshments.

SATURDAY 3

Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, SF; www.sresproductions.com. Sat.-Sun. 10am-6pm, free. Groove to the sounds of live music, browse arts and crafts, enjoy food from the street vendors, and witness all sorts of new and classic talent from Bay Area performers at this weekend long street festival.

POSIBILIDAD, or Death of the Worker Dolores Park, 18th St. at Dolores, SF; (415) 285-1717. Sat.- Mon. 2pm, free. The San Francisco Mime Troupe is back with a new production about a small U.S. factory about to shut down and how the workers accidentally occupy the factory.

SUNDAY 4

FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATIONS:

All American Concert Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, 55 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF; (415) 831-5500. 1pm, free. The Golden Gate Park Band will perform music of all styles and eras from by American composers.

San Francisco Waterfront Celebration and Fireworks Aquatic Park, Jefferson at Hyde, SF; www.pier39.com. 3pm-9:30pm, free. Featuring live music on Pier 39 and fireworks launching from the foot of the Municipal Pier and barges in the bay starting at 9:30pm. To get there by public transit take the Cable Car, F, 9x, 10, 30, 45, 47, or 49.

BAY AREA

Anti- 4th of July Picnic Carmen Flores Park, 1637 Fruitvale, Oakl.; (510) 848-1196. 1-6pm, $5-$25 suggested donation. Attend this anti-4th of July BBQ and picnic where you can meet other revolutionaries and discuss strategies for putting a national campaign for revolution on the map. Bring a dish to share.

Berkeley Marina Celebration and Fireworks Berkeley Marina, 201 University, Berk; (510) 548-5335. Noon-10pm, free. Enjoy live music, performances, arts and crafts, massages, sail boat rides, and more culminating in a fireworks display off the end of the Berkeley Pier at 9:30pm.

East Bay Symphony and Fireworks Craneway Pavilion, Ford Point Building, Richmond; www.craneway.com. 5pm, free. Enjoy food vendors on the dock, and local jazz and gospel music, followed by a patriotic performance by the Oakland East Bay Symphony at 8pm, culminating in a grand finale fireworks display over the water at 9:15pm.

Frederick Douglass Day Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakl.; (510) 835-5348. 7pm, $15. Attend this alternative 4th of July celebration featuring excerpts from Frederick Douglass’ speech, selections from John Brown’s Truth, a musically improvised opera, the Frederick Douglass Youth Ensemble, Vukani Mawethu, and more.

Oakland Family 4th Jack London Square, Franklin at Water, Oakl.; www.jacklondonsquare.com. Noon-4pm, free. Featuring food, live music, wine bar, DJs, magician and jugglers, Kinetic Art’s Youth Circus Troupe, petting zoom, farmers’ market, bicycle rentals, and more.

Orinda Parade and Celebration Orinda Community Park, Orinda; www.orindaassociation.org. 7:30am-2:30pm, free. Featuring pancake breakfast, family activities, book sale, parade at 11am, and more.

Patriotic Picnic and Stereopticon Ice Cream Social Pardee Home Museum, 672 11 St., Oakl.; (510) 444-2187. Noon-4pm, $10. Pay homage to your grandmother at this costumed patriotic picnic and ice cream social featuring live rag time, croquet, lawn tennis, and more. Period dress (1890-1919) strongly encouraged.

San Jose Fireworks Celebration San Jose Municipal Stadium, 10 St. at Alma, San Jose; www.sjgiants.com. 7pm, $9.75. Enjoy 95.3 KRTY’s All American Country Music Jam followed by a fireworks display starting at 9:30 p.m. Watch for free from the San Jose State campus and neighboring parks.

San Ramon’s Picnic and Fireworks Central Park, 12501 Alcosta, San Ramon; www.sanramon.org. 1pm-10pm, free. Bring family and friends for an early evening picnic and stake out a spot for the fireworks display, which will be synchronized to music, at 9:30 p.m. Accompanying music can also be heard on 101.7 KKIQ radio.

Sausalito Parade and Fireworks Parade begins at 2nd and Main and ends at Dunphy Park, 10am, free; Dunphy Park picnic, Caledonia Street, 10am-5pm, free; Fireworks at Gabrielson Park, Sausalito, 6:30pm, free. Enjoy live music, food, dancing and family activities all day at Dunphy Park followed by fireworks off Spinnaker Point that will be visible from Gabrielson Park.

Summer Festival and Chili Cook-off Mitchell Park, 600 East Meadow Dr., Palo Alto; www.cityofpaloalto.org/recreation. Noon-5pm, free. With live Music, chili tastings, kids area, food and drink vendors, and more.

USS Hornet USS Hornet, 707 W. Hornet, Pier 3, Alameda; (510) 521-8448 ext. 282. 11am-10pm, $25. Celebrate Independence Day on board the USS Hornet and enjoy great views of all the Bay Area fireworks, live music from the ship deck, food, beer, and wine. Tours of the historic ship will be available throughout the day.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

Jane Kim, the San Francisco school board president running for supervisor in District 6, has a tough question to answer. When there’s already a solid progressive in the race, Debra Walker, someone who has lived in the district for years and agrees with Kim on almost all the key issues, why is Kim running?

She gave a hint at her campaign kickoff June 24 on how she’s going to portray herself: "I’m not part of anyone’s machine, and I’m certainly not part of anyone’s master plan." It’s an attractive statement — nobody likes machine politics — and the idea that she’s an independent candidate makes her all the more appealing.

Except that it also says something about the progressive movement in San Francisco — and that’s a little disturbing. Because no matter how you try to spin it, when you say you aren’t part of anyone’s machine, you’re implying that maybe your opponents are.

Let me take a step back here, because this is important stuff. There’s a fine line between an effective, organized political coalition that can actually win elections and a political machine, which stifles political innovation and grassroots candidates. And in part it’s about motivation.

When Willie Brown ran San Francisco, it was all about Willie Brown. I’ve never believed the guy had much of an ideology or that any political cause really mattered to him; he loved power, he knew how to use it and he didn’t want to give it up. That was the bottom line.

Now that he’s pretty much out of the picture — although he was at Kim’s party, he’s not a factor anymore — there’s a very different power balance in this city. There’s nobody at City Hall (or in Sacramento, or Washington, or downtown, or anywhere else) who has machine-style control of local politics.

There are people who can build coalitions that work — Aaron Peskin, for example, did exceptionally well with putting together a campaign to elect progressive Democratic County Central Committee elections. And there are people who would love to be power brokers.

But I’ve been around politics here a long time, and I can tell you: Aaron Peskin doesn’t have a machine. Neither does Mark Leno, or Gavin Newsom, or Tom Ammiano, or David Chiu, or anyone else. Thanks in part to district elections, there aren’t many call-up votes on the Board of Supervisors these days. In fact, the left in San Francisco is famously unable to agree on much of anything half the time. Note, for example, the fact that Chiu — often called a Peskin ally — is not supporting Peskin’s candidate in D-6. He’s with Jane Kim.

The thing is, unlike the players in a typical political machine, most of the progressives care about issues. It’s about a shared ideology more than it’s about power. That’s a hugely important difference.

The way the mainstream media has it, the San Francisco left is either fatally fractured and can’t do anything — or it’s becoming a machine. For the moment — a great moment — neither is true. Let’s all keep that in mind. Because when we beat each other up with words like "machine," we undermine the whole progressive movement.

Bad way to start a campaign.

Alerts

David Talbot
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alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30

Green Corps benefit


Support Green Corps’ mission to train organizers and provide field support for critical environmental campaigns and celebrate the new crop of graduating environmental activists at this reception featuring a speech from environmental journalist Mark Hertsgaard and performance by the California Honeydrops.

6 p.m., $50

Temple Nightclub

540 Howard, SF

(415) 622-0033 ext. 313

Our Land, Our Rights


Hear presentations and updates from Hinewirangi Kohu, Faith Gemmill, and other indigenous women working for the health of the environment and future generations across the world as they report back from the International Women’s Symposium on Reproductive Health and Environmental Toxins.

7 p.m.; free, donations accepted

Eastside Arts Alliance

2277 International, Oakl.

(415) 641-4482

www.treatycouncil.org

Peace Corps information


Learn about how to become a Peace Corps volunteer in one of 76 countries as volunteer and recruiter. Jennifer Clowers shares her experiences volunteering in Guinea and Niger and outlines volunteer opportunities beginning this year and in 2011.

6 p.m., free

San Francisco Library Main Branch

Mary Louise Strong Conference Room

100 Larkin, SF

(510) 452-8442

THURSDAY, JULY 1

Socialism 2010


Attend this four-day conference with new and veteran activists looking for an alternative to capitalism that can bring us out of our current economic crisis and our wars of occupation abroad. Speakers will discuss issues such as "What is the Real Marxist Tradition?," "Race in the Obama Era," capitalism, climate change, abortion, women’s liberation, and more.

Thurs. 7 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 9:30 a.m.–7p.m.,

Sun. 9:30 a.m.–2 p.m.; $15-$90

Oakland Marriott

1001 Broadway, Oakl.

(773) 583-7884

www.socialismconference.org

SATURDAY, JULY 3

Food Justice Farmers Market


Attend this farmers market highlighting small farmers of color and social entrepreneurship with organic, pesticide-free local fruits and vegetables, local bakers, crafts, live music, art, and free cooking demos. Each week offers a community workshop on topics ranging from tenants’ rights to urban agriculture.

9 a.m.–2 p.m., free

Arlington Farmers Market

Arlington Medical Center parking lot

5715 Market, Oakl.
www.phatbeetsproduce.org

SUNDAY, JULY 4

Revolutionary talk


Meet fellow revolutionaries and discuss strategies for putting a national campaign for revolution on the map at this anti Fourth of July BBQ and picnic. Bring a dish to share.

1 p.m.–6 p.m., $5-$25 suggested donation

Carmen Flores Park

1637 Fruitvale, Oakl.

(510) 848-1196

Frederick Douglass Day


Attend this alternative Fourth of July celebration honoring the great American abolitionist, women’s suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman, minister, and reformer. Performances includes readings from Douglass’ speeches and John Brown’s Truth, a musically improvised opera, the Frederick Douglass Youth Ensemble, Vukani Mawethu, and more.

7pm, $15.

Humanist Hall

390 27th St., Oakl.

(510) 835-5348
Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Appetite: Intriguing June openings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Appetite: Intriguing June openings

It’s been an exhausting, thrilling whirl of new openings in SF this month. And it’s not quite over yet… as usual, I hit most new SF openings right away, then continue to revisit as they settle in (if they are worth revisiting, which is often the case). Here’s a quick, initial take on openings of the past week or two, with more to come next week (for more details, check out my upcoming July 1st issue of The Perfect Spot):

SAISON — Walk through the side gate of Stable Cafe, with unique 1800’s carriage house setting, and enter Saison’s newly remodeled garden, evocative of an Italian or Mediterranean villa patio: white lights strung across the courtyard, lemon tree emitting a soft citrus scent, rocking chair and vintage ashtray stand inviting you to linger with a glass of wine, and wood-burning hearth (which will also be a bread baking oven with mention of whole animal cooking to come)? Entirely transporting.

Chef and owner Joshua Skenes has taken his acclaimed weekly “pop-up” and launched a full, Tuesday through Saturday restaurant, opened June 22.  Cooking on the only Molteni stove in the Bay Area, the 30-seat interior is minimalist, but warm and glowing, with open flow between dining room and kitchen. Prices are hefty for this unusual dining experience, from a one nightly seating, $98 per person/8-course tasting menu, to a four-seat chef’s counter at $200 per person, or a two-seat chef’s table with 20 customized courses at $200 to $500 per person (!) They were very smart to add the casual, enchanting patio to the mix with a la carte options for those not partaking in multi-courses. Something for everyone.

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Saison’s garden entrance

At a pre-opening dinner, I sampled possible menu offerings, while Sommelier Mark Bright kept us satiated with wine pairings like affordable 2005 Chateau de Montpezat Coteaux du Languedoc and 2004 Neal Ellis Shiraz. Dishes were delicate, tiny, artistic, and, of course, farm fresh, from hand-picked, local ingredients. Highlights include crispy sweetbreads roasted with caramelized honey and intriguing slant of berbere spicing, as well as a perfect rendition of one of my favorites: rhubarb as a sorbet on milk granite with tart strips of rhubarb decorating the sorbet.
2124 Folsom, SF.
(415)828-7990
www.saisonsf.com

 

PROSPECT — Nancy Oakes, Kathy King and Pamela Mazzola of Boulevard opened the long-anticipated Prospect restaurant with a stellar crew: Ravi Kapur as chef, Brooke Arthur (long a favorite for her cocktail menu at Range), and Amy Currens as Wine Director (formerly of Luce). You couldn’t ask for a better line-up, with all the elegance of Boulevard but more of an experimental, hip approach.

The space is huge, almost corporate-looking, but warmed by brown tones and centered bar. Granted, I haven’t dined fully here yet but at the pre-opening party, I sampled a wide range of the food (at least ten dishes), pretty much all of it stellar, as well as three fine cocktails. The kitchen is impressive, allowing a finely tuned team to crank out Dayboat scallops ($16) with summer truffles and shaved squash, better-than-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches, and whole wheat crepes ($19) stuffed with ricotta, nettles and roasted mushrooms. I love black cod ($14) in red curry with snap peas, shiitakes, and lightly-fried shiso shrimp fritters. Desserts were equally intriguing from a blissfully dark, creamy chocolate mousse/cake topped with berries, to the truly unique presentation and taste of cherries atop a thyme pavlova ($8) with vanilla, black pepper and frozen yogurt.

Cocktails ($10-11) were all high quality from a tart, bracing Mr. White (Pueblo Viejo blanco tequila, St. Germain elderflower, strawberry mint shrub, lime) to a balanced Prospector (Wild Turkey Rye 101, Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur, Drambuie, pineapple gum, lemon). I suspect Prospect is going to become a key SF dining and drinking destination.
300 Spear, SF.
(415) 247-7770
www.prospectsf.com

HOOKER’S SWEET TREATS — The name continually prompts the obvious jokes, but all that aside, Hooker’s Sea Salt Dark Chocolate-covered Caramels are as addictive and bitchin’ as everyone says.

Hooker’s caramel and a capuccino

Visiting opening day, I found it’s not merely a storefront for the caramels (expensive at $2 each, $7 for 3, or $20 for 10), but also for wonderful coffee and capuccinos from Sightglass, serving the first of their own roasted beans here (returning the favor since Sightglass first sold Hooker’s caramels). They bake bread pudding daily (always wins points with me), a nod to the owner’s Louisiana roots (another point!) The space is cozy, with one communal table that gazes lazily out a window framed by a leafy tree, and turn-of-the-century country kitchen decor of dark blue and wood. Along with microscopic Farm:Table, there’s two linger-worthy, coffee mecca cafes in this neck of the ‘Loin.

442 Hyde, SF.
www.hookerssweettreats.com

Hot Issues and vegan treats

John Elberling
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Hot Issues and vegan treats

By Sam Stander

Down a little side street branching off the Piedmont Ave. shopping area in northern Oakland, two locals have combined the fine art of the well-stocked newsstand with the high-class vibe of an artsy boutique. Just past its third birthday, Issues offers and expansive selection of magazines and periodicals, as well as an array of t-shirts, buttons, books, and music, all couched in a warm, welcoming atmosphere. Events held at the store often incorporate other local businesses, and on Sat/26 they’ll play host to the East Bay Vegan Bakesale, with sure to be yummy goods on offer from various local purveryors, to benefit Walk Oakland Bike Oakland and the recently fire-ravaged Berkeley East Bay Humane Society. Details after the jump.

EAST BAY VEGAN BAKESALE

Sat/26, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

Issues

20 Glen, Oakl

(510) 652-5700

www.issuesshop.com

 

Navy’s destruction of Buck’s Beach begins

Mary Magee
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The Navy has begun its promised destruction of Buck’s Beach, a sandy sheltered beach along the India Basin shoreline that’s technically part of Parcel B of the Hunters Point Shipyard. Navy excavators are currently removing all the sand, which will soon be replaced with rocks. 

Local residents who fought this plan are also upset by the installation of what they believe is an ugly anti-Kayak boom thrust out into the Bay, offshore of the beach. 

D. 10 Supervisor candidate Kristine Enea said she understands the installation is temporary, but wishes the Navy had informed the community of this detail before going ahead and implementing it.

“Apparently, it’s to hold curtains that will stop sediment from going out to the Bay,” Enea told us. “But this is another example of the kind of detail that may not seem important to someone sitting in an office in D.C, but is a big deal to folks who live here.”
 

Benefits: June 23-June 29

David Talbot
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Benefits: June 23-June 29

Ways to have fun while giving back this week


Wednesday, June 23

Water Bond Happy Hour
Join the Food and Water Watch team in helping to get people to vote NO on the California Water Bond, which will appear on the November ballot. Meet other people who care about the issues and discuss a sustainable water future for California and how water issues effect us all. Featuring stainless steel water bottle raffles to benefit Food and Water Watch, a local non-profit corporate accountability organization.
6 p.m., free
Elixer Bar
3200 16th St., SF
www.foodandwaterwatch.org

Thursday, June 24

Ecocity Builders Art Auction
Ecocity Builders is a non-profit dedicated to reshaping cities, towns, and villages for the long-term health of human and natural systems. Attend this slient art auction to help raise funds for Ecocity featuring hors d’oeuveres and an artist talk with Richard Register.
6 p.m.; $50 donation, fee goes towards bidding
SPUR Urban Center
654 Mission, SF
(510) 452-9522
www.ecocitybuilders.org

Saturday, June 26

Like Water for Chocolate
Inspired by chapter three of Laura Esquivel’s acclaimed novel, Like Water for Chocolate, this fundraiser will feature the spice of Mexico and the heat of love simmering in this fusion of food and performance. Proceeds to benefit Word for Word and Z Space. There is no parking at the performance site. Guests should park at the Mill Valley Middle School parking lot, where they will be shuttled to Hillside Gardens starting at 4:15 p.m. The event will be held outdoors, so dress warmly and comfortably.
5 p.m., $250
Hillside Gardens, Mill Valley
via Mill Valley Middle School
425 Sycamore, Mill Valley
(415) 626-0453

Walk in the Wild
Attend the Oakland Zoo’s annual fundraiser featuing vendors from over 90 restauants, caterers, bakeries, wineries, and breweries offering beverages and cuisine to be enjoyed while walking around the zoo and live music and dancing. Proceeds support the Oakland Zoo’s conservation, education, and animal enrichment programs. This event is 21 and over.
5 p.m., $150
Oakland Zoo
9777 Golf Links Road, Oakl.
www.oaklandzoo.org
(510) 632-9525

Sunday, June 27

Fundraiser for Alan
Alan, who has worked as a waiter at the historic Old Clamhouse in Bayview for 12 years, was one of the four cyclist who were purposely run down by a driver on June 2nd in the Mission and Potrero Hill neighborhoods. Alan has severe injuries to his head and face and has had to undergo 14 hours of surgery. Help raise money for his medical bills at this fundraiser where a door donation of $20 gets you a plate of food from the buffet, one free drink, and two raffle tickets. Featuring live music and a DJ.
3 p.m., $20 donation
The Old Clamhouse
299 Bayshore, SF
(415) 826-4880


Monday, June 28

Honduras Resiste
Watch three videos presented by the Bay Area Latin America Solidarity Coalition (BALASC) on the one year military coup that happened in Honduras in 2009,starting with The Coup and the Popular Resistance, followed by Exposing a Fraudulent Election, and ending with False Democracy in Honduras, and the U.S. Complicity.  Proceeds to benefit the Popular Resistance in Honduras.
8 p.m., $6
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia, SF
http://balasc.org

The San Francisco Bay Guardian Presents: The Best of the Bay Rock Party!

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Celebrating San Francisco values and the local heroes that represent them!

August 5th, 2010
Doors at 9PM – No Cover

Mezzanine
444 Jessie Street, San Francisco

Chuck Prophet – Headliner
Chuck Prophet shapes his restless career with inimitable subtle flair: a vivid parade of razor-edged one-liners camouflaged in a slack-jawed drawl, songs about heartbreak and everyman heroism, drenched in twisted lines of rude Telecaster.

Stephanie Finch and The Company Men
Stephanie Finch has recently released her new cd ‘Cry Tomorrow,’ a casually stunning love letter to classic song. An album whose sound recalls ‘Loaded’ era Velvet Underground tunes alongside The Modern Lovers and Brill Building pop. But ultimately all revolves around Stephanie Finch’s relaxed, cool, confident presence.  Produced by Chuck Prophet and backed by The Company Men: Prophet, Kelley Stoltz, and Rusty Miller. ‘Cry Tomorrow’ is an instant classic.

Stephanie’s already sung her roots out with Chuck Prophet.  And she has whispered softly with Red House Painters, on ‘Songs for a Blue Guitar’ with Mark Kozelek.  She also popped up as a cameo on the odd tribute for Joe South, and on the soundtrack to Sign Of God with Jonathon Richman. (If your cable’s paid up, you may have seen her playing Judy Collins in HBO’s Chicago 7 biopic).


The Bitter Honeys – Opening
The Bitter Honeys will be opening the show; performing their own original songs, inspired by the vocal harmony groups of the early and mid sixties.

MCing – The Freeze
The Freeze is a stage show like no other.  Six performers will take the crowd on a non-stop, hip-hop improv ride, spinning cues from the audience into instantaneous lyrics and fully realized musical numbers. An MC, a vocalist, and a live band make for an evening of live, kick-ass theater.  Founded by Freestyle Love Supreme’s Anthony Veneziale and the talents of Daveed Diggs (The Getback), Andrew Bancroft (aka Jelly Donut of Killing My Lobster), and Olive Mitra on bass, Mike “Agent” Smith on guitar, and Brian Rodvien on drums.  In simple terms, it’s the Wu Tang Clan meets Who’s Line is it Anyway in a live improvised rap concert. 

DJ set by DJ Ome

August marks the release of KFOG‘s Local Scene 7 CD, a collection of songs from talented musicians living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area that need to be heard.  (Best of the Bay Party headliner, Chuck Prophet, has been prominently featured on past discs, contributing tracks to volumes 1 and 2.)  Proceeds from CD sales benefit Music in Schools Today, a local non-profit that supports, develops and promotes music education for youth in schools and in the community.  Buy your CD for just $5 at the Best of the Bay Rock Party!

Photography by Liza Gershman.  Photobooth by Polite in Public.

In 1974 the Guardian blazed a trail by being the first paper to present “best of” awards. Every year since then we’ve given Best of the Bay recognition to the people, places, and things that make the Bay Area great.

Our 2010 Best of the Bay winners will be revealed in the Guardian’s July 28th issue and will include our annual Readers Poll which categories include: Food and Drink, Arts and Nightlife, Shopping, City Living, and a special reader’s own “Best of the Best.”

Here’s your big gay homo-cone with sprinkles, sugar: a lickable listicle

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Here’s your big gay homo-cone with sprinkles, sugar: a lickable listicle

Alas, we have no year-round Big Gay Ice Cream Truck like they do in the Big Apple. But, as SFist alerted us today (via Haighteration), our own beloved zany-zygote Three Twins Creamery has gone all light in its scoopers for Pride weekend, Fri-Sun offering such lavender lickers as “Rainbow/Gay Sherbet, Pink Triangle (‘a fruity chocolate base with pink chocolate triangles’), Pride Vanilla, Hot Cookie (‘with cookies from the Castro’s favorite cookie shop’), Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (‘vanilla ice cream with blueberry dessert from military rations mixed in’), Rice Milk Harvey Milk and Cookies, and Salted Nuts.” Plus, well, lavender.

Sounds delish. And we have some more ideas.

As SFist editor Brock Keeling suggests, why not “Juanita More Dulce de Leche Please? Sondheim ‘God That’s Good’ Swirl? Bambi Lake‘s Butterscotch Stain?” Here’s our own list of confection suggestions named for notable local homos, beyond Ms. Milk:

Anise Conda
Bevan Marshmallow Fluffty
Carole Migdenscotch
Dan Chipoletta
Mark Praline-o
Tom Amaretto
Clevanilla Jones
Donna Sorbet
Chillvester
The Choclettes
Harry Britt and Nut
Armistead Brownie
Dustin Lance Blackberry
The Sisters of Perpetual Indul-Mint
Cookies and Cream and Phyl and Del
Jose Sa-ripple I, the Strawberry Norton
Cranistat
Brockolate Keeling

 

Anti-war groups disappointed with Obama’s speech

Sasha Cuttler
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Anti-war groups disappointed with Obama’s speech

By Kristen Peters

Bay Area-based anti-war organizations were disappointed that President Barack Obama reaffirmed his support for war in Afghanistan while ousting the commanding general there, saying the doomed and dangerous military intervention is a bigger problem than the generals involved in executing it.

General Stanley McChrystal was today relieved from his post by the president for exhibiting an openly contemptuous view of the Obama administration and other civilian leaders in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, replacing him with General David Petraeus, pending approval from Congress.

“There is a change in personnel, but not a change in policy,” President Obama said during his announcement in the Rose Garden.

That was precisely what the anti-war crowd didn’t want to hear.

“Although there is a personnel change, there is no change in the occupation of Afghanistan,” Nancy Mancias of Code Pink told the Guardian. “The troops are still present. Local groups need to remain focused on bringing our troops home, halt funding and stop the continued occupation overflowing into Pakistan.”

Instead of finding red flags in McChrystal’s insubordinate comments or the RS article’s quotes from disgruntled soldiers and dubious diplomats, Obama simply used the occasion to mix up the staff hierarchy running a war that few think is going well.

“It has proven an incredible waste of resources,” Richard Becker, regional director of the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition, told the Guardian. “No one can pretend that anything resembling progress has been made. In fact, it’s just the opposite.”

More deaths have occurred over the last 10 months than have taken place in the last five years of combat. In addition to the staggering number of casualties accompanying the war, it also boasts a hefty price tag. According to organizational leaders, expenditure on the war has just exceeded the $1 trillion mark with no end in sight.

“The war — which will soon enter its tenth year – has meant a complete disaster for the people of our nation, a continuation of disasters for U.S. policy, and has inflicted disaster on the people of Afghanistan,” Becker said.

SCENE: Shannon and the Clams open up

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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SCENE: Shannon and the Clams open up

 

A long version of the interview in the current issue of SCENE:

If I’m going to stay up late and go as deep as I can into the night, so far that I’m just about lost and in trouble, I want the sounds of Shannon and the Clams with me. The Oakland group’s album I Wanna Go Home (1-2-3-4-Go! Records) is packed with songs that have been there and will shine a light to lead you back into the day, while letting you have a sip or two and an adventure or three along the way. This is rock ‘n’ roll music, electric-charged by bassist Shannon Shaw’s wild wonder of a voice, guitarist Cody Blanchard’s flair for classic crooning and crying, and drummer Ian Amberson’s fierce reliability. See Shannon and the Clams live. You will believe.

SFBG Shannon, when did you start to sing for fun? What singers did you love as a kid? What kind of stuff forms what you’ve called a “rage cage,” and does singing help you break out of it?
SHANNON SHAW I have been making up songs since I could talk at the ripe age of two. The first song I remember in full came about because I was cast off to spend time in my room for being bad. There, I formed a rage cage (rage cage: an explosion of anger you can’t escape from) and sang a song that lasted the duration of my time out. The lyrics were something like: ‘I’m really a princess, and my mom doesn’t know because she’s evil, and I’m a princess, and my gramma is my real mom who is a queen and she loves me and lives in a castle…my castle, I’m a princess, where’s my castle?” Very sophisticated, eh? I think I was 4ish at the time.
My favorite singers growing up were definitely Roy Orbison, Kermit the Frog, the Mouse Girl from An American Tale, Mrs. Brisby from The Secret of N.I.M.H., Eric Burdon, George Strait, Les Claypool, Ronnie Spector, Shelley Fabares, the Supremes, and Connie Francis. I know it’s a strange combo, but it’s true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndApsVCeM54

SFBG Did you all meet at California College of the Arts? What was that experience (meeting and being there) like?
CODY BLANCHARD Yeah, I met Ian and Shannon [during] my second year there. And me and Ian lived in a big house together with 5 people, but we were always really busy with school stuff, so we didn’t even hang out much. We used to have crazy gigantic parties there — that’s where Shannon and the Clams started playing as a band. I wasn’t in the band yet, but I would listen to them practice. 
IAN AMBERSON Cody and I used to live together, but we all joined forces by way of CCA. The music my peers introduced me to had a big impact on my knowledge and taste. CCA is so small that sometimes you form relationships and exchange ideas with people at a higher rate, just by your proximity to others in a context that attempts to promote creativity.

SFBG Cody, you sing an amazing song called “Warlock in the Woods.” Can you tell me a bit about the warlock?
CB The warlock was a child whose mother didn’t want him and ditched him in the forest and tied him up with tree roots. The roots started to grow around him and tell him their secrets and poison his mind. He sort of went into a cocoon of roots, then was released decades later, very mixed-up and manipulated by the dark spirits of the forest. He took a cave as his new home and was convinced that he must capture the hearts of young children and travelers in the woods and put them inside this amulet, which the trees had given him, in order to find his way home and to be free of the forest. In the end, he realizes that all the hundreds of hearts he has taken have done nothing for him and he was still living in a cave, lost in the woods, and that he was tricked by the evil forest into doing their bidding.
I like to write songs about fantastical stuff these days, weird little stories set to song. That’s my favorite kind of song; one that tells a tiny story that you are easily able to follow just by listening.

SFBG What is your favorite item of clothing right now?
CB A rope belt.
SS A ripped-up white Adam Ant V-neck T-shirt that Seth of Hunx and His Punx gave me. While I was on tour with them in France I saw him wearing it one day and said, “I love Adam Ant, I need your shirt.” He took it off of his back and handed it to me. What a good friend! He stood there, nearly naked as a jaybird, to give me the shirt of my dreams. I wear it every Friday night if you ever wanna see it.

SFBG Whose sense of style do you admire?
CB The members of the Lollipop Guild — you know, from The Wizard of Oz. We represent the Lollipop Guild!
SS A really pleasant pie-baking mother of the ’50s, mixed with an ’80s skateboardin’ bad boy.

SFBG What do you like and not like about Oakland?
CB I love that’s it’s not too big or too busy, not overwhelming. All of the neighborhoods are really small and you can find a totally hip fancy neighborhood and then walk a few blocks and be in some scary warehouse district full of abandoned hot dog stands. I like that it’s kind of like San Francisco’s more relaxed little brother. Less freaks here, more quiet — less happening, but still tons of cool stuff. I like a place that doesn’t have too much going on.
I love that there is crazy scary Ghost Town and West Oakland, but then there’s also the Oakland hills with amazing parks like Tilden and Joaquin Miller. I generally wish there were more trees and foliage. I thrive on fauna, and I grew up in a very woodsy suburb. I love the Berkeley Bowl — I guess that’s in Berkeley.
One thing I’m on the fence about is gentrification. On one hand, I don’t like burned-out neighborhoods, but on the other, I hate really expensive stuff and excess and money as an oppressive force. And I know all that stuff is catering to people like me. It makes me feel mixed-up and bad. It sort of destroys the charm of a more naturally evolved neighborhood.
IA Oakland is just a great hub. It sort of feels like being in the middle of a giant cultural sample platter. Having places like Berkeley and San Francisco nearby is nice, while not having to live in those more demanding environments.

SFBG Where do you like to go out at night? 

CB I love movie theaters so much. Usually they’re too expensive, though. My favorite thing is when a theater plays an old movie. I’ve seen Blade Runner, El Topo, The Thing, Jurassic Park, Maximum Overdrive and a bunch of other stuff in the theater. I also love to go to the video store and rent movies. It’s way more fun than Netflix or something, because it’s impulsive and you’re not sure what to get and all these other movies or snacks can catch your eye. Or I love to be around a BBQ or a campfire. My parents have a fire pit. And if there can be fireworks too, then it’s my #1 dream. Or bicycling through the empty night. Or being in a car or a train going across the country, staring out the window.

SS If I had my choice, I would hang out in a wooded area by some railroad tracks with a boombox and a bike.I used to hand out at this old Sunsweet prune factory by train tracks in an old deserted part of downtown Napa. I loved it so much. It was super overgrown with weeds, and surrounded by foliage and abandoned factories. There was a little campfire area nearby and a perfect place to sip on a Friday night sneaky flask. I think I like the feeling of being kind of like a hobo, waiting to hop a train, or camping all hidden in the middle of town. I like having freedom and privacy outside. Part of why Oakland is so rad.

SFBG Shannon, your brothers were at one of your recent shows. What’s it like to have them in the audience?
SS Lucky for me they come to most of my shows. I like them a lot. They are giant and hilarious and love to shake it. They both walk around and seem to have these magic invisible love vests on at all times. It’s really nice to see them dancing around and making people happy.

SFBG Cody, why do think there have been so many great songs about crying?
CB Umm, well crying is something you do instinctively as a baby, and you do it all the time. I guess you laugh and shit and barf a lot too. But maybe when people think of crying it brings them back to that primal state — baby times. It’s a very powerful, uncontrollable emotion. People are drawn to powerful things like that, like when a song has so much power over you it brings you back to a time when you had no control, crying. It is attractive because it is so powerful and so rare. And we try not to cry, so when there’s a song that lets us feel as if we are crying, maybe we love it because we miss that feeling. Or maybe people just want to pretend they are babies. A song about crying might make you feel like a helpless baby, which can be fun. I like to do that. Like Muppet Babies.

SFBG How about death songs, doomed teenage romance or otherwise – do you have any favorites?
SS “Johnny Angel” by Shelley Fabares, “Earth Angel” by the Penguins, “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las, “Little Town Flirt” by Del Shannon, “I Think We’re Alone Now” by Tommy James and the Shondelles, “Last Kiss” by Ricky Nelson, “Patches” by Dickey Lee. So tragic. Listen to those lyrics — oh my!
CB I love “The Gypsy Cried” by Lou Christie as a doomed romance song. Mostly because the music is soooo great. But also because you don’t really get an answer in that song; the man goes to the gypsy to see what the future holds for his love, and the premonition is so sad and devastating that the gypsy can’t even speak, all she can do is cry.
“Snowman” by Diane Ray is awesome, it’s about building a snowman to replace your former lover. “Don’t Drag No More” by Susan Lynne includes death, and the hook and title are grammatically incorrect — that’s awesome.

SFBG Who are your favorite record producers, past and present?
CB I really love Joe Meek. Ian turned me on to him. Such a weirdo, and his stuff is so experimental for the time [when he was recording]. And he was crazy, which is double interesting, also gay and he couldn’t play any instruments or read notation. So I hear.
Also, Giorgio Moroder is incredible, both his crazy awesome stuff with Donna Summer and his solo stuff. I think he produced the theme for The Neverending Story.
Ennio Morricone is so awesome, such an experimental freak. Big influence. I so dearly love the music from Leon Schlesinger and Harman & Ising cartoons, MGM and Warner Bros. studios. Not sure who was in charge of the music.
Also, those Italian synth weirdos who did soundtracks for all those ’70s Lucio Fulci movies, like Fabio Frizzi and Claudio Simonetti.

SFBG Shannon, what were some of your wildest and favorite experiences on the road in Europe with Hunx and the Punkettes, and what were some of your favorite ones?
SS Probably full-group ghost hunting in underwear in Liege, Belgium, in this abandoned college where we had to sleep. Lots of screaming and giggling and inappropriate flashlight shining.
Also, maybe full-band nude sauna with King Khan and his wife and kids. Those Europeans are quite comfortable with nudity. ‘Twas hard for me, because I’m a former Mormon and a bit of a chunker if you haven’t noticed. In the end, no one gave a shit and it was fun! Glad I did it.
In Paris, we played along a canal that was basically a gypsy camp. Seth wore a banana hammock made of candy that broke at a very inconvenient time. Instead of helping him with his suddenly public family jewels, some demon of entertainment overtook me and made me tear the remaining candies off his bod and throw them to the audience. I think he thought it was funny.

SFBG If you could set up a dream bill packed with bands you’ve never played a show with, who would be on it? What place would be the venue?
SS Gene Pitney, Roy Oribson, Gem, Danzig, Lou Christie and the Tammys, and the Muppet Band.
CB Oh boy, Ennio Morricone, the Lollipop Guild, the Ramones, Devo, King Tuff, Best Coast, Mark Sultan, the Ooga Boogas, Pissed Jeans, the Seven Dwarves (from the Disney cartoon), Roger Miller, King Louie (from The Jungle Book), Motorhead, Jonathan Richman, the Monks and the Frogs.

SFBG Rollercoasters or haunted houses?

SS Haunted houses. Not the fake kind at fairs and stuff. Real ones.
IA Haunted houses. Our favorite is in the Enchanted Forest theme park in Salem, Oregon. It has lots of creepy automatons and surprisingly scary uses of compressed air to scar the crap out of ya.
CB Gosh, tough call. Haunted houses. They have more character and their creation and construction is a more nuanced art form I think. They’re longer and more entertaining and weird and freaky. Although I do love rollercoaster art more than almost anything. The glitter and lightbulbs and bold stripes and stuff. So wonderful, so American.

SFBG Hot dogs or hamburgers?
SS Hamdoggers, I think.
IA The process leading up to both is disgusting, but I really prefer a well-cooked brat over a patty of beef. Hot dogs are so much more mysterious, and have a pleasant snap to them.
CB Hamburger, no contest. Hamburgers are bigger and more filling and it’s easier to fit more cool toppings on them, like cheese and mayonnaise and avocado and pickles and onions and stuff. Although Pink’s Hot Dogs in LA makes me think twice about that statement. Also, vegetarian hot dogs taste like a garbage can, and vegetarian burgers come in all types of weird flavors and textures.

SFBG 45 record parties or drive-in double features?
SS Drive-in! I’ve never been to one. Somebody wanna give me a ride?
CB Drive-in for sure. I go to record parties all the time, but I never get to go to the drive-in because they are so rare these days. I love movies so much, and the drive-in is the ultimate movie experience. You’re outside in the magical summer night and you can do whatever you want in your car. It’s very nostalgic for me. I saw Honey, I Shrunk the Kids at a drive-in when it came out. I don’t think I’ve been to one since.

SFBG Have any of you ever had a curfew, and if so, did you break it? Do you like staying up late at night, and if so, why?
SS Our curfew system at both houses was crappy and confusing. My mom only had one if she was mad or awake, so most of the time me and my brothers would stay under the radar because she went to bed so early.
My little brother Paddy and I would sleep way deep out in our field with our dogs at night when it was hot in the summer. We would wait until we were sure Mom was passed out and then go sneak around in the country with sticks to hit stuff, or dig holes, or whatever hilbilly kids do. And at my dad’s house the curfew was always conveniently right before Are You Afraid of the Dark? came on Nickelodeon or X-Files started. He hates “scary stuff” so much. He didn’t want me and my bros exposed to it because he saw the original Mummy in the ’50s when he was little and is still scarred from it.
CB Yes, I had a curfew, and yes, I broke it constantly. I got grounded once because me and my neighbor friends camped in my backyard with a bunch of TVs and video games and Doritos and 2-liter Cokes and we got bored and snuck out of the yard and ran around the neighborhood, hid from cars, and climbed on the roof of the junior high. When we came back to go to sleep, my parents were waiting and came out with flashlights. A flashlight in your face is so disturbing. We got grounded from each other for a month.
I like the late night and early morning equally. The only thing I don’t like about the late night is that you will probably miss the early morning. Both times are really quiet and there are certain things that are off-limits, like calling people and going to the store. It limits your activity in a fun way. You have to find something weird to do. Someone once told me that there’s a theory that, since more people are asleep at night, there’s less “psychic energy” flying around at night, and so your mind feels different, quieter, more focused. I’m not sure, but I like to believe it.

SFBG It’s perfect that you’ve performed at the Stud. Etta James used to sing there, and  Shannon’s vocal on “Troublemaker” reminds me of her. Do either of you ever feel the presence of ghosts or artists or people you love when writing or performing a song? Who would you most like to join you on stage?
IA I think it would be really awesome to jam with Dick Dale or maybe the piano stylings of Zombies-era Rod Argent.
CB I don’t think think about songwriting enough to feel that. Or maybe I think about it too much. I like to think about Marc Bolan when I sing some new thing to myself. He seemed so enchanted and magical and possessed by some uncontrollable musical spirit. I like to think part of his ghost is inside me, like maybe just the ghost of his hair or something. Or I like to think at least that his ghost likes what I’m singing, and he can hear me through all the noise of the astral plane, because we are alike somehow. I would most like to share a stage with Marc Bolan. We would dress like psychedelic elves and do duets.
SS Roy Orbison is totally my #1, Gene Pitney is my #2, Frankie Valli is my #3, the Beach Boys are my #4, Danzig is my #5.
What would I give to do a show with Roy O.? I don’t think I coild ever have enough gold, doubloons, or talent to sign with him or his ghost. He was so special and unique and genuine. You can feel his troubles and pain like they’re yours when you listen. Earthshattering heartache and longing is his forte.

SFBG What are the Clams up to these days? Are you recording a new album? Can you tell me about some of your new songs?
IA We should be recording our new stuff soon, but soon might mean in several months. We are playing with the Pharmacy and Guantanamo Baywatch at Pissed Off Pete’s on 25th. That will be a show worth going to.
CB We’re getting a bunch of material ready for a new album. We have a 7″ of some really old awesome stuff coming out on Southpaw Records, it’s called “Paddy’s Birthday” and it’s so good.
We’re trying to lay off playing so much, we overwork and distract ourselves doing so many shows, although it seems like Oakland loves it when we play two parties a week. We love them!
We’re spending some money on recording equipment. The new stuff has some Buddy Holly-type poppy sparse hop jump fun songs and some dark scary Disney soundtrack haunted forest type stuff, like “Teddy Bear’s Picnic.” Also a lot of ballads like we’ve always done, but they’re vocally weirder, lots of weird doo-wop yelps, Muppet singing and Morricone primal yowling. We’re trying to finally perfect some powerful Everly Brothers/girl group-style harmonies. And we’re experimenting with some super-evil-sounding ’80s punk thrash stuff. I can’t wait to record ’em!


Frameline34: Local drama “The Stranger in Us”

Sue Vaughan
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Frameline34: Local drama “The Stranger in Us”

Local filmmaker Scott Boswell may not have set out to make the film he ended up with, but he stands behind the finished product. The Stranger In Us stars Shortbus’ Raphael Barker as Anthony, a young man who moves from Virginia to San Francisco in order to live with his boyfriend Stephen (Scott Cox). When the relationship turns violent, Anthony finds solace in his friendship with Gavin (Adam Perez), an underage street huster. I spoke to Boswell and Barker about the film’s origins, its unique content, and what this year’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival says about the future of queer cinema.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What was your inspiration for The Stranger In Us? Where did the story come from?

Scott Boswell: Ultimately the story ended up being fairly autobiographical. But it started in a different place. Originally — and Raphael knows this because we talked about it — originally, I had intended to do a much more experimental film, kind of a hybrid documentary-narrative, because of my fascination with the Polk Street, Tenderloin area, which I’ve always had since I moved here in the mid ‘90s. I had considered doing a bit of a portrait of the neighborhood, and kind of infusing actors into it, just shooting a lot of footage and seeing what we came up with. There’s a part of me that wishes I had still done that, but in all honesty, I can say that after Raphael expressed some interest in the project, I suddenly felt like it needed to be more narrative in its scope. He didn’t suggest that. It was just my intuition around the project. So I had been talking to him about doing it for months, without even having a complete script, and continued writing it and auditioning actors. Eventually it became much more traditional in terms of its narrative. It became what it is now.

SFBG: And Raphael, what brought you onto the project?

Raphael Barker: Scott. There wasn’t really a finished script and a lot of it was sort of up in the air, but I was just really comfortable with the process and how it evolved, because it was Scott. He and I just hit it off really well.

SFBG: Did you collaborate at all in terms of creating the character of Anthony or writing the script?

SB: Not so much on the script. I run a screenwriting group, here in the city. It’s a small group and we meet a couple times a month, and they had the most impact on the final script. However, there are quite a few places in the script where it suddenly says, “We’re gonna improv here.” And there are definitely scenes where the actors brought the dialog to the scene. Quite a few, actually, especially between his character and Gavin, the street kid. Largely because they had such wonderful chemistry, and I felt like I could trust them to pull it off.

SFBG: Raphael, can you talk about how the improv process was, as an actor?

RB: Scott would set up the scene and then let us go, and just see what happens. And then would make comments as necessary and readjustments. But I felt very free to just let the scene kind of take over and do its thing. I think Scott and I are just both very instinctual. Like, “That’s not how I planned it, but I kind of like it that way. Let’s play with that.” I think especially when you’re talking about Gavin, there was something almost unwritten about our relationship that was allowed to evolve through improv.

SB: Right, because there’s a piece that’s semi-autobiographical that has a place in history, and then there’s the piece that — I feel like Gavin’s character brings a newness, a sort of unfinished, still to be defined ending. There was something about the energy that really brought novelty to the script.

SFBG: You said originally you wanted to showcase this particular neighborhood in your film, and then it became more of a narrative. But it’s still a very San Francisco film. How did you go about capturing that?

SB: The main thing was choosing that location as his studio that he moves into after leaving Stephen, which actually wasn’t true to my experience. However, the person on which Stephen is most based actually lives there, so I kind of flipped it. And the character on whom Gavin is based actually hung out in the Castro, not the Tenderloin. So I flipped those around, and then because the character is so stuck and lost and wandering, he was able to go out into the street and that became the portrait of the neighborhood right there. We had spent a lot of time trying to work out just how we were going to portray that, and ultimately he’s always in the space. I actually did go out and shoot footage of the neighborhood without Raphael, and none of that is in the film.

SFBG: Anthony moves to San Francisco from Virginia, so he’s experiencing the city from an outsider’s perspective. Why did you decide to write him that way? And Raphael, how did that affect your performance?

SB: I think it’s a very common experience in San Francisco. It seems like the majority of people I meet here have migrated from somewhere else. And I think especially for gay men, when we arrive here, we don’t always quite find what we’re expecting, and especially for queer youth, which is an idea that Gavin embodies. I’m very interested in that sort of push-pull between the desire to be in the city of San Francisco and the challenges that you can face when you arrive. So I was interested in exploring that experience, and I’ve found subsequently that quite a few people — they’re almost always gay men — have come to me and said that they relate to that experience. Different generations of men, and different decades of coming here. It seems to be a continuing phenomenon in a way. In that sense, I think it’s very much a San Francisco story, even though it could probably happen in just about any urban area, especially when someone who doesn’t have experience in an urban environment suddenly arrives and is just thrown into it.

RB: I experienced something very similar coming out here to chase after someone I was pretty in love with, and then being dumped like a week and a half after moving here. And just feeling like I didn’t have that orientation anymore, and everything in the city was associated with this person. I’m sure I’ve one of millions of stories of people — with San Francisco being a kind of pilgrimage, then as soon as we get here we complain about it. But we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, so there’s kind of that love-hate relationship with it. So I could definitely relate to coming out here to be with someone and having all that kind of expectation and hope, and then me kind of losing that central focus and orientation and realizing, “Now what?” I think that’s a theme that’s not just gay or even queer, but it seems like anyone I talk to who comes from a different place has that similar experience. They knew they needed to be out of wherever they were at, but they weren’t sure what they were exactly coming into.

SFBG: The film also deals with an abusive relationship, which is something we don’t see a lot of in queer cinema. I was wondering why you think that is, and also why you wanted to include it in your movie?

SB: I don’t know why it is, but because it is [not often seen] is one of the main reasons I wanted to include it. Hustlers and street kids appear in a lot of gay cinema  — and just to go down that tangent for a second — which is why I chose to not make that character the protagonist but a supporting role. In terms of same sex domestic violence, it is an issue that permeates probably just about any community, but I have seen and heard very little about it among same sex couples. There are some things, some things written and there’s an organization in San Francisco called Community United Against Violence that works to combat and end violence. So there are resources out there, but I wanted to explore it because it’s an issue that’s personal for me, on several levels. It’s something that I’ve experienced and it’s also something that I just personally have always cared about. I volunteered to do work at battered women’s shelters in the past—this was actually in Madison, Wisconsin, long before I’d ever had any kind of experience with it. What I find really interesting is the degree to which people don’t really understand it. No one thinks they’re going to enter a relationship like that. I certainly didn’t think so. I thought I understood it.

RB: Much less something that’s so countercultural in some sense.

SB: Yes, exactly.

RB: Like, “Oh, if I can requite this kind of relationship, that’s kind of the end game.”

SB: The thing is you don’t necessarily recognize it when you’re there. People always say, many people say and have said about this film, “Why does he stay? Why doesn’t he leave?” It’s interesting that people continue to not understand that issue, because it’s clearly a very common human experience. So I guess in a sense, that question to me opens up a dialog on the issue that I find very important. I’ve been asked that a lot from people, and so far, that’s only come from the very limited number of people who have seen [the film].

SFBG: Well, without sounding like I’m trying to justify the abuse at all, these characters are complex enough that you get a sense of why they’re together. You can see how they got to that point. How did you go about creating that, and making sure they weren’t too clear cut or one-dimensional?

RB: I think to show just how much we loved each other is one way to do it.

SB: Yeah, that was important. I approached this very much as a character piece. I mean, that’s what interests me as a filmmaker and as a writer. In terms of the kind of genres I might be able to work in, I think it’s an area I probably have more of a knack for. But I think it’s true for any genre you’re working in, you have to rewrite. You have to be able to get down the ideas and the scenes on paper, and then take a look at them and be open to feedback. And assessing where it is that they’re black-and-white or flat and one-dimensional, and trying to create scenes that are more organic and layered. So that’s what we did. Once I knew what the story was, it still took me a good nine months to write the thing before we started shooting.

SFBG: One last, much broader question. How have you seen queer cinema change over the years, and what is the direction that you see it taking?

SB: In just the past few days, in the films that I’ve seen at Frameline this year, I’m very excited. I think queer cinema has gotten better and better. I have reaffirmed my understanding of the necessity of LGBT festivals, because it has definitely gone through phases. There was kind of an indie new queer cinema in the early ‘90s, when Gus Van Sant was coming on the scene, and Gregg Arraki and Todd Haynes. Then in the later ‘90s and maybe early 2000s, it kind of evolved into a lighter, more mainstream cinema, which I actually don’t relate to as much. But the best of them are actually quite good. What I’ve seen more recently, and I hope our film falls into that, is really kind of the ability to look more closely at ourselves and tell our own stories without any kind of concern about the broader mainstream appeal. I know that those kinds of films still exist. I think that independent cinema has gotten to a place where it’s not just simply seeing ourselves portrayed on screen anymore, but it has to be good cinema now.

RB: I saw a lot of films at the Frameline festival two or three years ago when the documentary about the making of Shortbus came out, and it just made me realize that the quality — instead of it being a kind of niche genre, I don’t want to say the opposite of what you’re saying, but I almost see Frameline as becoming redundant, because the films are good enough to stand on their own. They don’t have to be a genre film or a niche or a sexuality genre film. We have to keep working and working toward the specific, and then eventually the specific becomes universal. And I think that’s the beauty of the films that are starting to come out. In the Frameline context, it’s going to actually make it almost redundant because they’re just going to be good films, period. That’s what excites me, because everyone’s experience is so unique. And sure, we’re working within paradigms and categories, but I think it’s just getting better.

SB: It’s interesting looking at where these films fit in in terms of festivals and markets and things like that. I guess what I was trying to say is that I feel like Frameline still needs to be around in order for these films to get shown, because they’re not all going to fit into SF International, they’re not all going to fit into all of the big festivals. The sort of bigger queer films coming out may not need Frameline. There have been a quite a few in recent years: Bad Education, Mysterious Skin, Capote. They’re playing at the bigger festivals or getting distribution without festivals. There is sort of a distinction there. But when I see something like I Killed My Mother, which just kind of knocked me on my ass because I thought it was so brilliant, I don’t know where else I would have seen it.

THE STRANGER IN US

Wed/23, 6:45 p.m., Roxie

Fri/25, 11 a.m., Castro

www.frameline.org

 

Boom boom boom! SF’s got a horse in the World Cup song race

Andrew Lam
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What’s your favorite World Cup song? We’ve covered some smoothies in Gavin Hardkiss’ “Mundo Via Afrika,” and chatted with Eux Autres about their contribution to the games. Salon.com just poured a cooler of haterade all over Shakira’s head for her “Waka Waka,” (probably because they don’t like Fozzie Bear). But there’s tons of delightfully earnest attempts to encapsulate-cash in on the futbol crazy sweeping the globe for the next month. Angelique Kidjo has hit us up with a Curtis Mayfield cover for Africa, and K’Naan… well I love K’naan. His video has a lot of backflips on beaches, which I support. But did you know that SF has a hat-tricking local troubador of our own?

Yes sir, meet Nader DeAik, who had me believing he was a pop star from Bethlehem who was throwing the Bay a bone with a few shows here and there to entertain us with his greatness. But no! He lives here! He is a curly haired, jovial looking man who wants to entertain us with his smiles and Americanized wardrobe (don’t believe me? check out his earlier video shot at the de Young – now that’s an “international” pop star!). He has recorded a song called “Strike!” that you must set aside your criticism, and just revel in. 

Glory in his greatness. San Francisco, you are now represented at the World Cup. I hear Henry Thierry bumps this in the locker room:

Why’d Nader feel compelled to unleash this into our world? “I’m a huge soccer fan, and a player as well,” the soft spoken pop star told me in a recent phone interview. “I wanted to share my excitement and celebration with soccer fans worldwide. I decided to make a song full of energy and spirit.”

So… did tapping into the billions of soccer fans out there (three billion alone took in the opening game this year) up Nader’s bottom line? “It’s a world sport, it’s one of the biggest events in the world. Its great exposure for me. I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback regarding the song.”

“It’s been playing on radio stations in the Middle East, and it’s been playing in clubs here,” says Nader, who added he wasn’t aware of any other Bay composed World Cup songs this year, and that DJs get hyped to play a local joint to whip up soccer spectators into a frenzy.

Fab, Nader. DeAik’s clearly a big believer in the power of the soccer ball to bring people together, so tell us – is it important for the Bay to be represented by a World Cup song (one at least, right?) “Yes absolutly,” he decided. “Soccer is very popular in the Bay area, and I think it’s great not only for the Bay area, but the US as well. The other day I was at a soccer field and I was shooting parts of the music video with the youth. Watching the youth play soccer, sing along to the song. It was just great.”

Nader DeAik

Aug 8, check website for times and prices

The Bethlehem Association 25th Anniversary Convention

Hyatt Regency Santa Clara

5101 Great American Parkway, Santa Clara

(408) 200-1234‎

www.naderdeaik.com

www.bethlehemassoc.org

Put on a happy face

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Put on a happy face

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Twenty-first-century post-9/11 gay America doesn’t get a makeover in Paul Rudnick’s new collection of short plays, it goes out for one. Rudnick (The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told; Valhalla) surveys the state of the gay nation through four small, broadly comical vignettes in three far-flung American locales — all slouching toward Manhattan — and finds it taking itself and everything else far too seriously.

Admittedly, this is an opportune moment for some accounting. The Proposition 8 battle rages its way toward the Supreme Court; the military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy looks set to become a quaint anachronism; and in another cunning argument for atheism, the bishop of Essen, Germany — hip-deep in an ongoing clerical sexual abuse scandal — has just declared that all gays are bound for hell.

Time sashays on. But The New Century, taking its local bow in director George Maguire’s sporadically effective production at New Conservatory Theatre Center, already feels a bit stale, despite dependable one-liners from its witty playwright.

In the first playlet, "Pride and Joy," well-to-do Jewish mother Helene Nadler (Marie O’Donnell, in a smart skirt and blouse and a less well-fitting New York accent) addresses us from the linoleum floor of a school auditorium. Backed by a banner whose utter inclusiveness demands the most estranging acronym, Helene relates her determination to be "the most loving mother of all time" in the face of three children whose homosexual orientations range from the hum-drum to the downright pootré ("In this house we use the toilet," she tells son David, "not a friend from Tribeca!"). The spirit of can-do parenting achieves a kind of crescendo when David (Seth Michael Anderson) briefly appears in full BDSM attire.

"Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach" opens on the eponymous late-night cable-access flaneur (a solid Patrick Michael Dukeman) in an explosion of pastel finery. He’s a former Manhattanite forced into South Florida exile, we are told, for being "too gay." True to form, Mr. Charles flounces about in unabashed embrace of his self-proclaimed title as the last of the true queens. Answering viewer letters, he reads, "Mr. Charles, do you enjoy gay theater?" and responds, with perhaps too much truth, "I am gay theater!" Assistant Shane (Anderson) brings the beefcake to this on-air party, whose point again has to do with the embrace of radical — if heavily stereotyped — difference over conformity to the dreary American norm.

"Crafty," the third playlet, offers yet another angle, this one from a not so with-it but terribly handy mother from Decatur, Ill., (a sharp, genial Deborah Rucker) addressing the Junior Chamber of Commerce with her eye-poking assortment of craft treasures. "Crafts allow me to express myself," she says sweetly, "to create something worth dusting!" As she reminisces about her gay son Hank, a talented Broadway designer long dead of AIDS, we find an expansive note of acceptance peaking out from an unlikely assortment of tea cozies and sock monkeys.

All points and characters converge in the eponymous closer, set in a Manhattan maternity ward. There, Mr. Charles trains his "gay ray" on the next generation, and Shane describes an epiphany at the site of the old WTC brought on by the Century 21 sign beaming in neon above it. To Shane, the discount chain is like Prozac with parking, offering a way out of everyone’s funk. "It’s like if Patti LuPone were a store," he enthuses. That image of a new material neon dawn rising over the emptiness of ground zero is probably about right. But is it really so great or new?

THE NEW CENTURY

New Conservatory Theatre Center

Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (through July 11), $22–$40

25 Van Ness, SF

www.nctcsf.org

Pulp vicious

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Pulp vicious

arts@sfbg.com

FILM An entirely fake controversy brewed at the Sundance Film Festival three years ago in anticipation of the "Dakota Fanning rape movie," otherwise known as Hounddog. Fanning was then a cloyingly cute, frequently tearful actor known for family-friendly films — ergo, her appearance as a victim of child abuse in a 1950s rural drama got fanned by hysterical pundits and popular media into terrible child actor abuse. Before anyone actually saw the film, of course.

Once they had, however, the scandal quickly slunk into a corner and died. Hounddog was barely released many months later — and not because it was an exploitative shocker. Rather, it turned out to be a ludicrous gumbo of Southern gothic clichés and clumsy good intentions that violated no standards beyond those of intelligence and art.

This January another Sundance controversy broke. It was, coincidentally, over another Deep South period piece, and also wrong-headed. The movie was eclectic English director Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me, the latest screen version of a beloved and spectacularly nasty noir tale by literary pulp hero Jim Thompson. The protest, aired in audience walkouts and complaints, was that the onscreen violence against women was viciously excessive.

In this case, the accusation is as true as the ones against Hounddog were false. But that’s just one reason that Killer is good art while Hounddog is fraudulently bad. In Winterbottom’s film, violence is horribly immediate, sadistic yet matter-of-fact, almost unendurable — everything movie violence almost never is. There’s nothing remotely comfortable about the highly personal, unnecessary cruelty our antihero wreaks. And there’s real deliberateness about the way that brutality escalates when he’s putting down female, as opposed to male, obstacles. S’called misogyny, folks.

The Killer Inside Me is about Sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a good ol’ boy (if not yet so old) in his dusty, back-slappy west Texas hometown of the late 1950s. Lou plays the part so well no one in this sleepily, routinely corrupt berg would ever suspect him of being … complicated. Indeed, he is a world-class sociopath who depends on their lazy small-town gullibility and rote suspicion toward outsiders to literally) get away with murder.

Affleck is oddly cast in that he lacks the innate bully heft or lunacy that made Stacey Keach an ideal embodiment of Thompson’s ultimate unreliable-narrator concept in Burt Kennedy’s 1976 screen version. This Affleck can’t possibly be mistaken for John Wayne 4.0. But could the Duke have played the game-changing weenie in 2007’s The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford?

Winterbottom’s Killer Inside Me is all about antiheroic nightmares hidden beneath blinding Texan skies. Outwardly placid, inwardly paranoid, Lou is shagging local Amy (Kate Hudson) — secretly, because she’s a "nice girl" — but gets distracted by Joyce (Jessica Alba), a probable prostitute he’s asked to bum rush outta town. They discover an S–M bond he’s reluctant to sever. Unless, that is, imminent exposures of a criminal, monetary, or moral kind direct otherwise. Which they rapidly do.

Leading ladies Alba and Hudson are widely perceived as spoiled hotties of little talent — hence perfect battering-rams for pulp-machismo movie violence. What’s cool about Winterbottom’s Killer is that it refuses to let you enjoy the abuse they endure, which is viscerally unpleasant as a fist to the gut. Escapist air sucks from the room every time these long-term starlets (both actually pretty good here) get battered. It’s not slasher-flick funny, entertaining, or otherwise easily dismissed. It’s abrupt, grueling, and horrific.

At once folksy-nostalgic and vicious, The Killer Inside Me is unabashedly about men who hate women. It successfully translates Thompson’s gambit of insinuating us into the seemingly pleasant, reasonable viewpoint of a protagonist we are then surprised to discover is psychotic and without a conscience. Offended Sundance attendees should’ve gotten a clue: deliberately misleading in its pulp-nostalgia trappings, this is one movie that upsets not gratuitously, but exactly as it should.
THE KILLER INSIDE ME opens Fri/25 at the Sundance Kabuki.

Heirloom Cafe

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
Heirloom Cafe

paulr@sfbg.com

DINE The Gospel According to Matthew offers no restaurant commentary I’m aware of, but it does remind us that “you will know them by their fruits” — the King James Version of the holy book gives us the fruitier “ye shall know them by their fruits” — especially (to make a slight inference) heirloom fruits. Or restaurants. If you want to know what a neighborhood is like and how it might be changing, you look at the restaurants.

Recently The Wall Street Journal ran a story suggesting that the Mission District is rapidly being colonized by techsters who live in the city and commute to jobs on the Peninsula in shuttle buses provided by their employers, among them the colossi Google and Apple. The map showed the corporate bus stops, though not the location of Heirloom Café, which opened in April in a gorgeous box of a space at Folsom and 21st streets. But if the shuttle-bus routes are adjusted so that the techsters can be dropped off there and go straight in to dinner, I won’t be surprised.

Heirloom is the kind of place that, five or six years ago, you would have expected to find opening in Glen Park or outer Noe Valley. It is a respectful, conscientious restoration of an old Victorian space, with wood-plank floors, cream-colored walls, lots of natural light, ceiling fans, and tables (including the long communal table) simply but handsomely dressed with white linens. Its menu is refreshingly brief and implies a lineage, at least in spirit, from Chez Panisse and Zuni Café.

But it is an odd experience, I must say, to stand on the sidewalk outside the door and watch the local world go by. Heirloom sits in the very heart of the Mexican Mission, and might as well be the embassy of some faraway country no one has heard of. The neighbors pass by with scarcely a glance at the place or the menu card posted in the window. The people who do pause, and then step inside, all seem to be wearing Dolce & Gabbana eyewear, or at least look as if they’ve tried on a pair or two. Worlds collide, sometimes, but they can also coexist, in the same time and place, as if in parallel universes.

The cooking is as elegant and understated as the interior design. Small touches make a big difference, as in the wonderfully crisp matchstick frites scattered over a salad of smoked trout ($12), frisée, and haricots verts. The fries brought a lovely lightness and crunch to an already complex salad. A mushroom tart ($10) was similarly, subtly enhanced by the tang of bacon. The pastry crust had the tender snap and tastiness of real butter.

On occasion, the magic ingredient goes missing, as with the mussels ($10). These were served with a classic white wine broth, which was a little sharp and sour, especially if you’ve been spoiled (as I have) by such innovations in this area as Thai-style red curry or beer-with-chorizo broths.

And some special ingredients won’t be to every taste. The burger ($12), for instance was served on an English muffin in the presence of pickled carrots, but the dominant reality was the epoisses cheese, whose ripe pungency gave pause. At first bite I wondered if the meat had spoiled — the cheese was that strong. I continue to question the French-style cheeseburger, I must say. High-quality beef generally doesn’t need much support, let alone interference.

A nice illustration of knowing when to leave well enough alone involved the poached halibut ($22), which turned out to be nearly as rich and creamy as the potato purée it was served on. Halibut is something like the perfect fish — meaty and substantial, mild-flavored but not bland, wild but taken from well-managed fisheries. To find it handled with restrained grace is the jewel in the crown.

The menu offers a roaming cheese service from a wooden platter. For $3 per variety, you can treat yourself to such delights as fleur de marquis and tomme de savoie, and you don’t have to do it as dessert. You could have cheese as a starter or intermezzo if you wanted — and if you did it that way, you might scale down to a splendid postprandial cookie ($2), oatmeal with chocolate chips and walnuts. They left out the kitchen sink. Just as well. 

HEIRLOOM CAFÉ

Dinner: Mon.–Sat., 6–10 p.m.

2500 Folsom, SF

(415) 821-2500

www.heirloom-sf.com

Beer and wine

MC/V

Can quickly get noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Danger zone

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Danger zone

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Rita Connolly, a registered nurse who has worked with inmates in San Francisco jails since 1985, says she’ll never forget the time she had to act fast to save a prisoner’s life.

The man had just arrived from a different jail and was waiting to go through intake. He was slumped over and looking ill, too weak to voice a complaint. Several worried inmates beckoned Connolly over, and once she examined him, she realized he was in the midst of a heart attack. He was rushed to the emergency room. He lived — but sustained irreversible heart damage.

“He could have been someone who didn’t live,” Connolly told the Guardian, but he also could have had a better outcome. The inmate had alerted someone that he was having chest pains earlier in the day, she later learned, as he was boarding a bus from an Alameda County Jail. A medical services worker examined him just before the bus left, but allowed him to proceed. By the time he arrived in San Francisco, the warning signals had progressed to a full-blown heart attack.

The story highlights an extreme example of a trend Connolly said she observes regularly — inmates from counties that use privatized jail health services aren’t receiving the same standard of care that San Francisco provides. Sometimes, there are obvious signs that the care is inadequate, placing inmates’ health at risk.

Alameda’s jail health services contractor, Tennessee-based Prison Health Services Inc. (PHS), has made headlines before for a track record marred by inmate deaths and lawsuits alleging negligence. PHS has expressed interest in contracting with San Francisco if the city opened the door to privatization, which Mayor Gavin Newsom has once again proposed in his latest budget.

That budget also calls for cuts to community-based health and human service programs that threaten to erode the safety net for those battling mental health issues, drug addiction, and chronic health problems, all proposals now being weighed by the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee.

But it is the debate over whether to make a $11 million cut to jail health services that raises the most thorny and telling questions about what sacrifices are considered acceptable — and what populations can be the most easily targeted — in the quest to balance a budget without the tax increases that Newsom opposes.

 

OPEN WOUNDS

In San Francisco, the city’s Department of Public Health contracts with the Sheriff’s Department to address inmates’ medical needs. Privatized jail health care would be cheaper, though by how much is a moving target. But nobody is arguing that the care would be better.

Newsom’s budget proposes switching to a private firm as early as January 2011 to help solve a daunting budget deficit. The proposal originated with the Mayor’s Office, and Sheriff Mike Hennessey — whose department would realize the potential savings — went along by including the item in his departmental budget.

In years past, the Board of Supervisors has repeatedly resisted the proposal and is likely to do so again — but rejecting it would mean finding up to $11 million in savings elsewhere.

“The fear is that when you bring privatization into the picture, there is a financial pressure to cut corners. And even though that may end up saving some money … the price that comes with it is too high,” Sup. David Campos said at a recent budget hearing. Referencing stories about inmates who died needlessly in jail under the care of for-profit firms, Campos said he isn’t willing to risk a similar tragedy occurring in San Francisco.

The proposal has been floated repeatedly since as far back as the early 1990s, according to healthcare workers whose jobs have been jeopardized by privatization before. Newsom proposed the cut last year, and the year before.

“In absence of the budget problem, [Hennessey] probably would not have proposed this, nor would we have proposed this,” Newsom’s budget director, Greg Wagner, told members of the Budget and Finance Committee at a May 26 hearing, adding that the mayor shares concerns about prisoner safety. Newsom’s office did not return multiple calls requesting comment for this story.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to a hear an appeal by the state of California to the federal court ruling that substandard medical care in California prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and necessitates the early release of about 40,000 prisoners. At the May 26 hearing, healthcare workers familiar with the interiors of county jails and state penitentiaries came forward with horror stories.

“Every week I receive at least one inmate who has an open gunshot wound. They have not seen medical care in the county jails,” Dr. Elena Tootell, chief medical officer at San Quentin state prison, told committee members. “It’s quite surprising to me that they send inmates with gunshot wounds to prison. They just walk off the bus. They often have paper towels stuck to their bodies, seeping the blood. And then we are obligated to take care of them. This does not happen from San Francisco County, I’m going to tell you that right now.”

Tootell said she’d observed a significant difference between those counties using private firms and those using public health care. “They will have a fracture — they’ve never been splinted, they’ve never seen a doctor. They’re on anticoagulation [medication], but haven’t had their blood checked in weeks and have bruises all over their body.”

Connolly echoed similar concerns. For example, she told the Guardian, she’s found herself asking questions like, “You were on AIDS medication before you got arrested and now you’re not?”

Susanne Paradis, a healthcare research contractor with SEIU Local 1021, rejects the premise that the same services could be provided at a lower price. Under a private model, she says, the priority is to keep costs low — and that means doing less.

A key issue, Paradis said, is that private firms tend to rely more heavily on licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) — lower-paid medical staffers who aren’t trained to assess patient’s medical needs and cannot administer the same care that registered nurses (RNs) can. Using PHS data, Paradis found that in Alameda, there is one RN for every 92 inmates, compared with one RN per 32 inmates in San Francisco.

“An RN has the ability to assess, observe, and determine if there’s emergency care needed,” Paradis explained. “An LVN does not have the ability to do that.”

John Poh, a nurse practitioner stationed at a jail in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, explained the difference this way: “The more RNs you have working for you, the fewer deaths you have.”

PHS, an obvious point of comparison with San Francisco since it serves Alameda, declined to answer questions about its services. Instead, media spokesperson Pat Nolan e-mailed a brief statement. “We are excited to hear that San Francisco is considering the contracting of correctional health care,” he wrote. “Should the city choose to go through an RFP process, we would look forward to participating. We think it is the right thing to do for the city and its taxpayers.”

 

LINES OF DEFENSE

While those incarcerated in San Francisco jails can be thought of by some as criminals, nuisances, or miscreants, those requiring medical attention are patients in the eyes of the jail healthcare workers.

Inmates routinely enter the system with diabetes, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, heart problems, liver disease, and substance abuse issues, Connolly said. On occasion, a woman will arrive in jail only to learn that she is pregnant. Mental health problems are common, and some battle psychiatric issues in combination with physical ailments.

“Overall, our patient population has had little access to health care. For many people, we’re the only show in town,” Connolly noted.

Poh said some problems could spiral out of control if jail health staff didn’t nip them in the bud. If an inmate is exhibiting signs of tuberculosis, for instance, they’ll immediately get a mask and be sent to the hospital for screening. Sexually transmitted diseases are also a priority for treatment. “You don’t want that person going out infected,” Poh explained.

The city takes a proactive stance when it comes to treating inmates, Poh said, because at the end of the day, county jail is a revolving door. “Everybody leaves county jail. They’re either going home, to a program, or to prison.” If people are released back into the community with contagious, untreated health problems, the risk of exposure can spread beyond jailhouse walls.

San Francisco’s current system is considered a first line of defense, in which inmates are “seen as members of the community who happen to be in jail right now,” Paradis said.

Privatizing jail-health services would constitute a blow to a wider public health safety net in San Francisco that is already weathering painful cuts. At a June 15 Beilenson Hearing, a state-mandated opportunity for community members to explain the impacts of proposed health and human services cuts to the Board of Supervisors, people came out in droves to protest cuts to programs serving vulnerable residents.

Kristie Miller, executive assistant of the Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE) Project, told the Guardian that her organization serves 350 clients a year who are victims of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. The organization stands to lose its mental health funding, so Miller had come out to speak against the cut. “It provides trauma-focused psychotherapy for survivors who’ve experienced a lot of abuse, violence, and exploitation,” she said.

Jeff Schindler, chief development officer for the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, said he was there protesting a 79 percent funding cut to his organization’s 108-bed residential program on Treasure Island. “We won’t have a place for people to actually go into residential treatment for their mental health and substance abuse issues,” he said. “These are individuals who are going to get their needs met somehow, somewhere, and generally that’s going to be at San Francisco General Hospital.”

It’s in this context that the proposal to contract out for jail health services is being proposed. “It’s easy to dismiss prisoners as probably the least valued sector of our society,” Deirdre Wilson, of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, noted at a May 26 hearing. “But the right to health care is a human right.”

 

FOR THE RECORD

According to an estimate prepared by the Sheriff’s Department, the city could save anywhere from $11 million to $14 million by contracting out for jail health services, and Newsom’s budget assumes a savings of “over $11 million per year.”

However, the Controller’s Office continues to revise that figure as the debate shifts and concerns are raised about the skill mix that a private firm would use. “We don’t really know what it would cost to contract out, unless there was an RFP and a response to the proposal and some discussion about what the staffing requirements would be,” Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda explained at a June 17 hearing. She added that the potential range of savings spanned from $3 million to $11 million annually, depending on decisions that would have to be made about acceptable staffing levels.

San Francisco’s inmate population has shrunk in the wake of the crime lab scandal, and a city-owned facility in San Bruno has been temporarily shuttered. Sheriff Hennessey told the Guardian he believed medical care in the jails could be provided either by city workers or a private firm, but added that he’s “quite happy” with the status quo. Noting that 25 of the 58 counties in California already use private firms, he added, “It’s not an unusual or unique thing.” Hennessey also said the decision was linked to a broader philosophical and political question, and that he doubted there was support on the board for the proposal to go forward.

Mitch Katz, director of the city’s Department of Public Health, did not directly say whether he supported Newsom’s proposal. “I think our Jail Health Services does a great job, but I do understand that the city is facing an extremely difficult budget year and that ultimately the budget must be balanced,” Katz wrote in an e-mail.

Gabriel Haaland, who represents SEIU Local 1021 union members whose jobs would be affected by the proposal, voiced strong opposition at a June 17 Budget and Finance Committee meeting. “‘We don’t care about these people because they’re poor and they’re in jail.’ That’s the message” in the decision to contract out, Haaland charged. The item was continued and will be revisited as budget deliberations unfold.

Film listings

David Talbot
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0

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

FRAMELINE34

The 34th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival runs through Sun/27 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. Tickets (most shows $8-15) can be purchased at www.frameline.org. All times pm unless otherwise noted.

WED/23

Castro Thy Will Be Done: A Transsexual Woman’s Journey Through Family and Faith 11am. Mädchen in Uniform 1:30. The Golden Pin 4. Beautiful Darling 7. Children of God 9:30.

Roxie The Stranger in Us 6:45. Tough Girls 9:30.

Victoria Bloomington 7. The Adults in the Room 9:30.

Elmwood We Have to Stop Now 7. Going South 9:30.

THURS/24

Castro "Deep Red" (shorts program) 11am. "Says Who? Gender Variant Representation in Media" (free panel discussion) 2. All Boys 4:30. The Sea Purple 6:45. Spring Fever 9:30.

Roxie Stonewall Uprising 7. The Motionless 9:30.

Victoria Plan B 6:30. "Transtastic!" (shorts program) 9:30.

Elmwood The Last Summer of La Boyita 7. The Man Who Loved Yngve 9:30.

FRI/25

Castro TBA 1 11am. Gay Days 1:30. "Worldly Affairs" (shorts program) 4. Elena Undone 6:45. Hideaway 9:30.

Roxie Out in the Silence 7. The Fish Child 9:30.

Victoria The String 7. We Have to Stop Now 9:30.

SAT/26

Castro Out of Annapolis 11am. FIT 1. "Dyke Delights" (shorts program) 3:45. From Beginning to End 6. BearCity 8:30.

Roxie Holding Hands 11am. The Sons of Tennessee Williams 1:30. Uncle Bob 4. Mother Earth 7. "The Experimentals" (shorts program) 9:30.

Victoria Heretics 11am. Other Nature 1:30. The Chorus/HIV Story Project 4:15. Lost in the Crowd 7. TBA 2 9:30.

SUN/27

Castro "Fun in Girls’ Shorts" (shorts program) 11:30. "Fun in Boys’ Shorts" 2. Going South 4:30. Howl 7:30.

OPENING

*Air Doll See "Inflated Meaning." (1:56) Lumiere.

Cyrus See "Sonny Dearest." (1:32)

Grown Ups Another man-child comedy? Is there a time-traveling hot tub in this one? (1:42) Marina, Shattuck.

Have You Heard from Johannesburg? The best word to describe Connie Field’s Have You Heard From Johannesburg? is "impressive." At eight-and-a-half hours, the seven-part documentary series spans nearly five decades of the South African anti-apartheid movement. The individual films are well-researched and thought-provoking. The stories are compelling — that is, until you put them all together. The complete series is just too long for those without a strong, vested interest in South African history. It’s simply not approachable for the mainstream, and the approximately three-hour chunks it’s meant to be consumed in are daunting. These films are better suited to a televised series, where viewers could appreciate hearing about anti-apartheid pioneers like Oliver Tambo and Desmond Tutu in smaller, digestible bites. As it stands, Field’s documentary is not likely to find a wide audience — a real pity, given the 10 years of effort she put into it, and the importance of sharing the South African struggle for equality with the rest of the world. (8:30) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

*The Killer Inside Me See "Pulp Vicious." (1:48) Sundance Kabuki.

*I Am Love I Am Love opens in a chilly, Christmastime Milan and deliberately warms in tandem with its characters. Members of the blue-blood Recchi family are content hosting lavish parties and gossiping about one another, none more than the matriarch Emma (Tilda Swinton). But when prodigal son Edoardo befriends a local chef, Emma finds herself taken by both the chef’s food and his everyman personality, and is reminded of her poor Soviet upbringing. The courtship that follows is familiar on paper, but director Luca Guadagnino lenses with a strong style and small scenes acquire a distinct energy through careful editing and John Adams’ unpredictable score. Swinton portrays Emma’s unraveling with the same gritty gusto she brought to Julia (2008), and her commitment to the role recognizes few boundaries. You’ve probably seen this story before, but it has rarely been this powerful. (2:00) Albany, Embarcadero. (Peter Galvin)

*Knight and Day A Bourne-again Vanilla Sky (2001)? Considerably better than that embarrassingly silly stateside remake, though not quite as fulfilling as director James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007) rework, this action caper played for yuks still isn’t the most original article in the cineplex. But coasting on the dazzling Cheshire grins of its stars, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reunited for the first time since Sky, you can just make out the birth of a beautiful new franchise. Everygirl June Havens (Diaz) is on her way to her sister’s wedding when she collides-cute at the airport with Roy Miller (Cruise). After killing the passengers and pilots on their plane, he literally sweeps her off her feet — thanks to some potent drugs. Picture a would-be Bond girl dragged against a spy-vs.-spy thriller semi-against-her-will — grappling with the subtextual anxiety rushing beneath all brief romantic encounters as well as some very justifiable survival fears. Can June overcome her trust issues? Is Roy the man of her dreams — or nightmares? Mangold and company miss a few opportunities to have more fun with those barely teased out ideas, and the polished, adult-yet-far-from-knowing charisma of the leads doesn’t quite live up to sophisticated interplay of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or even the down-home fun of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, but it’s substantial enough for Knight and Day to coast on, for about 90 minutes tops. (2:10) Four Star, Presidio. (Chun)

The Message This period melodrama-meets-spy thriller is set in 1942 Nanjing. (1:57) Four Star.

ONGOING

The A-Team (1:57) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center.

*Babies (1:19) Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki.

*City Island (1:40) Shattuck.

*Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky (1:55) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Exit Through the Gift Shop (1:27) Lumiere, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

Get Him to the Greek (1:49) Empire, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2:32) Clay, Piedmont, Red Vic, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

*Iron Man 2 (2:05) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

*Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (1:24) Bridge, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

Jonah Hex Based on DC’s dark western comics, Jonah Hex is a jumbled mess of mishandled superhero tropes and obligatory attempts at badass-ery. The title character, a grizzled gunfighter with a distinctive facial scar, could be an engaging outsider antihero, but as portrayed by Josh Brolin, he feels neither as cool nor as tortured as we’re clearly expected to believe. The film has a decidedly ’90s feel to it — think overbudgeted, underthought masterpieces like Wild Wild West (1999) — with its farcically fantastical take on post-Civil War supervillainy. Its ridiculous cast of character actors is almost completely squandered, including archvillain John Malkovich, Aidan Quinn as Ulysses S. Grant, and Will Arnett in an inexplicably serious role. Megan Fox is trying the hardest out of the whole cast, but in a rather sleazy move, her character always seems to appear in soft focus. Oh, and there are a few explosions. (1:81) 1000 Van Ness. (Sam Stander)

The Karate Kid (2:20) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

Killers (1:40) 1000 Van Ness.

Letters to Juliet (1:46) SF Center.

Lovers of Hate (1:33) Roxie.

Micmacs (1:44) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

La Mission (1:57) Opera Plaza, Red Vic.

*Ondine (1:43) California, Opera Plaza.

*Please Give (1:30) Opera Plaza.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2:10) California, 1000 Van Ness.

The Secret in Their Eyes (2:07) Albany, Lumiere.

Sex and the City 2 (2:24) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

Solitary Man (1:30) Empire, Opera Plaza, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Splice (1:45) 1000 Van Ness.

The Sun Behind the Clouds A delicate political subject that penetrates to the roots of a nation’s cultural identity, the Tibetan "issue" most recently re-entered the Western consciousness in 2008, preceding China’s hosting of the Olympics. Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam’s informative documentary addresses the issue from many perspectives, including those of protest marchers, Tibetans dwelling around the world, Chinese anti-Tibetan-independence campaigners, cultural commentators, and the Dalai Lama himself. Thoughtful narration by Sonam elaborates on the difficult ramifications of the Dalai Lama’s pursuit over the past few decades of the "Middle Way Approach," which does not incorporate Tibetan independence from Chinese rule. The film is tinged with great sadness, which gives the proceedings a decidedly biased feel but also a sincere glow. The Chinese state’s continuing suspicion of the Dalai Lama’s intentions led to a breakdown in talks, but the documentary’s very title alludes to a protest song which predicts the inevitability of Tibetan freedom. (1:19) Opera Plaza. (Stander)

Touching Home (1:48) Smith Rafael.

*Toy Story 3 You’ve got a friend in Pixar. We all do. The animation studio just can’t seem to make a bad movie — even at its relative worst, a Pixar film is still worlds better than most of what Hollywood churns out. Luckily, Toy Story 3 is far from the worst: it’s actually one of Pixar’s most enjoyable and poignant films yet. Waiting 11 years after the release of Toy Story 2 was, in fact, a stroke of genius, in that it amplifies the nostalgia that runs through so many of the studio’s releases. The kids who were raised on Toy Story and its first sequel have now grown up, gone to college, and, presumably, abandoned their toys. For these twentysomethings, myself included, Toy Story 3 is a uniquely satisfying and heartbreaking experience. While the film itself may not be the instant classic that WALL-E (2008) was, it’s near flawless regardless of a viewer’s age. Warm, funny, and emotionally devastating—it’s Pixar as it should be. (1:49) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Winter’s Bone Winter’s Bone has already won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, but it’s the kind of downbeat, low-key, quiet film that may elude larger audiences (and, as these things go, Oscar voters). Like Andrea Arnold’s recent Fish Tank, it tells the story of a teenage girl who draws on unlikely reserves of toughness to navigate an unstable family life amid less-than-ideal economic circumstances. And it’s also directed by a woman: Debra Granik, whose previous feature, 2004’s Down to the Bone, starred Vera Farmiga (2009’s Up in the Air) as a checkout clerk trying to balance two kids and a secret coke habit.

Drugs also figure into the plot of the harrowing Winter’s Bone, though its protagonist, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), is faced with a different set of circumstances: her meth head father has jumped bail, leaving the family’s humble mountain home as collateral; the two kids at stake are her younger siblings. With no resources other than her own tenacity, Ree strikes out into her rural Missouri community, seeking information from relatives who clearly know where her father is — but ain’t sayin’ a word. It’s a journey fraught with menace, shot with an eye for near-documentary realism and an appreciation for slow-burn suspense; Lawrence anchors a solid cast with her own powerful performance. Who says American independent film is dead? (1:40) California, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

How SF can get $50 million a year from PG&E

David Talbot
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How SF can get $50 million a year from PG&E

EDITORIAL Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Budget Committee, is looking for ways to bring another $100 million into the city’s coffers this year. There’s a hotel tax initiative headed for the fall ballot. He’s talking about an increase in the real-estate transfer tax for high-end properties. And he and his colleagues are looking into a tax on commercial rents.

Those are all valid ideas. But there’s another way the city can bring in as much as $50 million more a year — without raising anyone’s taxes. It just involves increasing the franchise fee Pacific Gas and Electric Co. pays to the city.

PG&E uses the city’s streets and rights-of-way to run its gas lines and electricity cables; the company doesn’t pay rent for that space. Instead, it pays an annual franchise fee to the city, a percentage of its gross sales. Other utilities pay, too — Comcast, for example, pays 5 percent of its gross to San Francisco every year for its cable-TV franchise.
PG&E pays 0.05 percent for electricity sales, and 1 percent for natural gas.

That deal was reached in 1939. The Board of Supervisors back then gave PG&E the lowest franchise fee in California, a pittance, a fraction of what other cities and counties charge — and the contract has no expiration date. It’s a perpetual deal, something highly unusual.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi wants to open up the 72-year-old contract for renegotiation and raise the fee significantly. It seems like a perfectly reasonable idea — Berkeley charges PG&E 5 percent for electricity. San Diego charges 3.5 percent. If the city is desperately scrambling for money to close the budget gap, why are we leaving so many millions on the table?

The numbers are big. In 2008, according to the Controller’s Office, PG&E paid San Francisco $3.5 million for electricity sales and $3.16 million for gas. If the city raised both fees to the level that cable TV providers pay, the general fund would pick up another $50 million.

It seems crazy that a franchise deal signed seven decades ago, by a board that was in PG&E’s pocket, should tie the hands of elected officials today. Most legislative bodies have rules barring any laws that would tie the hands of future legislators forever.

It’s particularly ironic for this to happen in the only city in the United States that is mandated by federal law (the Raker Act) to run a public power system.

But according to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, raising the fee would be very difficult; California law allows perpetual utility franchises. If Herrera is right (and no city attorney has ever been willing to challenge PG&E on this), then the state Legislature needs to act.

One idea from Mirkarimi’s office: simply mandate that all perpetual utility franchises increase every year by the cost of living index, up to a maximum of, say, 5 percent. If all the years since 1939 were counted, the city would be at the max today.

An even simpler option: the state could outlaw perpetual franchise deals — something that should have been done years ago — and mandate that all existing deals expire on, say, Jan. 1, 2011. That would give San Francisco six months to negotiate a new deal with PG&E, and the money from that deal would save a lot of city services.

Both Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and state Sen. Mark Leno have expressed interest in a bill that would open up San Francisco’s franchise fee, and both told us that they’re looking into it. Leno already has a bill barring PG&E from using ratepayer money on political campaigns; potentially, a franchise fee amendment could be added to it. The deadline for introducing bills for this session has already passed, so it would be a little tricky to find a way to change state law in the next few months. But it’s worth a try: there’s never been a time when PG&E was less popular in Sacramento. The company violated its own agreement with the Legislature, promising to support the law authorizing local community choice aggregation systems then turned around and spent nearly $50 million to overturn it.

Leno and Ammiano should pursue a bill as soon as possible to get rid of one of the great scandals in city history, a sweetheart deal in 1939 that has saved PG&E billions and cost the city dearly.

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