WIth 80 percent reporting, you can take this much to the bank:
Prop A is dead. Prop. B has won. The left will no longer control the local Democratic Party.
Phil Ting will have an actual race in November (although he won more votes than the conservative Dem and the Republican combined and will almost certainly win the seat).
The Padres beat the Giants, 6-5, with a walk-off home run in the ninth.
Hell of a night.
TRASH A primary figure in Philippine folklore dating back centuries, the aswang is a monster that has taken many forms — shape shifting being one constant. But arguably the most prevalent, at least in pop culture today, is that of a vampiric “witch” who uses the guise of a seemingly harmless old woman to ingratiate herself wherever there are pregnant women or young families, with the goal of eventually making a snack of the newborn or not-quite-yet-born. They manage the latter selection by using an extremely long proboscis to suck the … oh, you don’t want to know. (Although surely that image will someday be used by the ever-more-hysterical anti-abortion forces.)
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ “New Filipino Cinema” series (see Film story) features a mockumentary about Lilia Cuntapay, a senior actor whose modicum of local fame has come from playing variations on these mythical creatures, notably in the never-ending Shake, Rattle & Roll horror movie franchise. But for all the aswang’s ongoing ubiquity in the Philippines — a popular costumed Aswang Festival was held for several years in provincial Capiz until the Catholic Church got it shut down as “devil worship” — it’s rarely surfaced in entertainment abroad. Of course other cultures have their own traditional ghouls to play with. But it’s hard to deny that the baby lifeforce-sucking hag is a concept rather low on international-export value
One major exception is among the great underappreciated U.S. indie horrors of the last 20 years: 1994’s Aswang, shot on 16mm in and around Milwaukee for a reported grand total of $70,000, was the first feature for young Midwesterners Wrye Martin and Barry Poltermann. Their screenplay, devised from a story idea by Philippines-raised friend Frank Anderson, was the heartwarming tale of a lass in conventional “trouble” who finds a savior who’ll do what’s best for both her and her unwanted baby. Or so she thinks.
Knocked up by an irresponsible mullet-head boyfriend, barely-legal Katrina (Tina Ona Paukstelis) refuses to abort, instead agreeing to an unusual advertised offer: she will carry the child to term, posing as the bride of Peter Null (James Spader-ish Norman Moses). The last male heir to an aristocratic émigré Filipino clan, he claims he and his actual wife cannot conceive, and must resort to this ruse to inherit the family fortune. In an uncomfortable meeting presided over by a hilariously bored lawyer (John Garekis), the parties meet and sign the necessary contractual documents.
Seven months later, now ready-to-pop Katrina and her “husband” reunite, driving from the city to Chez Null, a rambling, isolated rural property with an aura of going-to-seed grandeur. She’s introduced to regal matriarch Olive (Flora Coker), given a creepy once-over by Tagalog-only-speaking housekeeper Cupid (Mildred Nierras), and pointedly told not to visit a small adjacent house where Peter’s sister Claire (Jamie Jacobs Anderson) is, ahem, not well. An uninvited, unwelcome guest of sorts also shows up, one Dr. Roger Harper (Josh Kishline). He says he’s just renting a vacation cottage nearby, but seems to be poking an investigative nose into some Null family mischief that is most definitely not for public consumption.
It does, however, involve consumption — as Katrina finds out after being put to bed heavily drunk on Cupid’s homemade special cider. Waking groggily, she senses a disturbance under the covers. To her considerable distress, it turns out she’s getting an intrusive visit from what one crew member later called a “50-foot tongue with a mind of its own.” Thus begins, just half an hour into the film’s 82 minutes, a nonstop escalation of grotesquely funny, tasteless mortal crises that rank ought to rank Aswang up there with The Evil Dead (1981) and Re-Animator (1985) for freaky, semi-camp gore-horror ingenuity.
Ought to, but Aswang sort of fell through the cracks, despite gaining some attention (not all favorable) as part of the Sundance Film Festival’s first-ever midnight sidebar. Theatrical release never came to pass; the U.S. video distributor released it cut, redubbed The Unearthing, and dumped into low-end retail outlets. Fame and fortune did not ensue for the filmmakers, who’ve separately stayed active in various capacities — editing, producing, even directing a documentary record of Charles Nelson Reilly’s one-man stage show — but never again created anything remotely like their crazily intense debut
The Mondo Macabro DVD release, out a few years now, has helped Aswang gain a small cult following, as well as regain its original title. Among factoids revealed in the extras are that most cast members were drafted from longtime Milwaukee avant-garde company Theatre X, though male lead Moses was, incongruously, a regional stage musical star. (Despite his memorably unhinged performance here, he seems to have never made another film.)
The making-of documentary is amusingly contentious, with some participants still discomfited by the paces they were put through, others retroactively doubting the directors’ competence, scruples, or whether they even shot particular scenes. They may still not quite know what they got themselves into, but hopefully time will prove it was something perversely great. Aswang does aswangs proud.
arts@sfbg.com
FILM Cinema has had a long and colorful history in the Philippines, with a first “golden age” of home-grown product in the 1950s, a turn toward exportable exploitation films in the ’60s, notable new-wave directors (like Lino Brocka) emerging in the ’70s, and so forth — sustaining one of the world’s most prolific film industries despite difficulties political and otherwise. At the turn of the millennium those wheels were wobbling and slowing, however, hard-hit by a combination of too many low-grade formula films, shrinking audiences, and stiffer competition from slick imported entertainments. The commercial sector stumbled on, but as a shadow of its robust former self.
But there’s something percolating beyond hard consonants on the archipelago these days, signs of a new DIY vigor coming from independent sectors juiced by the inexpensive accessibility of digital technology, undaunted (at least so far) by problems of exhibition and income-generating at home. It’s a sprawling, unpredictable, work-in-progress scene that some figure could well become the next “it” spot for cineaste types seeking one of those spontaneous combustions of fresh talent that arise occasionally where you least expect it — like Romania, to name one recent example.
One person who definitely thinks that’s the case is Joel Shepard, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ longtime Film/Video Curator. He’s traveled to the Philippines several times in recent years (once serving on the jury at CineManila), and has previously programmed a few prime examples of the country’s edgy new voices — particularly Brilliante Mendoza, whose notorious 2009 police-corruption grunge horror Kinatay (a.k.a. Butchered) was one of the most hotly divisive Cannes jury-prize winners in recent history. Now YBCA is presenting “New Filipino Cinema,” Shepard’s first “big fat snapshot” — hopefully to be continued on an annual basis — of a wildly diverse current filmic landscape, assembled in collaboration with Manila critic Philbert Ortiz Dy.
Shepard’s program notes call the Philippines “an extremely fascinating country…but the more I learned about the place and its people, the less I felt like I actually understood anything. The truth felt more and more slippery.” One might get a similar sensation watching the films in this expansive (nearly 30 titles, shorts included) sampler, in that they’re all over the map stylistically and thematically — from lyrical to gritty, satirical to anarchistic — suggesting no single defining “movement” or aesthetic to New Filipino Cinema.
Nor should they, since these movies reflect very different cultures, politics, and issues in regions hitherto underrepresented onscreen. After all, Manila isn’t the only place you can get your hands on a digital camera; and Tagalog is primary language for just one-third of all Filipinos.
The series opener has significant local ties: Loy Arcenas is a lauded stage set designer who’s worked frequently with our own American Conservatory Theater. Unavailable for preview, in description his feature directorial debut Niño (2011) sounds redolent of Luchino Visconti and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (as well as, perhaps, 1975’s Grey Gardens) as it depicts a once grand family of Spanish émigrés living in decrepit splendor, diminished over generations by political inconvenience and a proud, fatal inability to adapt.
Their aristocratic pretensions are a far cry from the rowdier real life captured or depicted in other YBCA selections. A bizarre footnote to the United States’ complicated, incriminating relationship with the Philippines is documented in Monster Jiminez’s Kano: An American and His Harem (2010). Its subject is a Yankee Vietnam vet whose military pension allowed him to construct a sort of one-man imperialist paradise centered around his penis. Whether he was a gracious benefactor, a bullying rapist, or both is a puzzle only clouded further by contradictory input from former/current wives and mistresses (even while he’s in prison), stateside relatives who recall a childhood ideal to shape a sociopath, and the authorities who’ve lately kept him in prison.
War is ongoing, marriage an impractical hope in Arnel M. Mardoquio’s impressive Crossfire (2011), whose young lovers in southern region Mindanao must dodge government-vs.-rebel-vs.-bandit guns as well as a rural poverty sufficient to make our heroine vulnerable to being offered as a lender-debt payoff. Their plight is starkly contrasted with the spectacular scenery of countryside few tourists will ever hazard.
Its atmospheric opposite is Lawrence Fajardo’s Amok (2011), whose thousand threads of seemingly free-floating narrative depict life dedicatedly melting down all race, age, class, and economic divisions during a heat wave passage through one of Manila’s busiest intersections. What birth and development keeps apart gets nail-gunned together, however, once this string of naturalistic vignettes hits a plot device that delivers deus ex machina to all with no melodramatic restraint. Fate also lays heavy hand on the junior protagonists of Mes de Guzman’s At the Corner of Heaven and Earth (2011), a crude but honest neo-realist drama about four orphaned and runaway boys trying to eke out a marginal existence in Nueva Vizcaya.
Should this all sound pretty grim, be informed there’s lots of levity — albeit much of it gallows-humored — on the YBCA slate. Jade Castro’s exuberantly silly Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings (2011) finds the funny in homophobia as its crass young hero (a farcically deft Mart Escudero) is “cursed” by an angry queen he’d insulted to become gay himself; meanwhile somebody goes around their regional burg assassinating cross-dressers via ray-gun. Plus: zombies, and the proverbial kitchen sink. Also on the frivolous side is Antoinette Jadaone’s mockumentary Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay (2011), in which the titular veteran screen thespian struggles for recognition after decades playing bit parts and occasional showier ones, notably as witchy folkloric “aswang” attempting to suck the lifeblood from newborn babes. (See aswang-related coverage in this week’s Trash column, too.)
Yet those are but moderately playful New Filipino Cinema exercises compared to the determined off-map outrages practiced by Mondomanila (2011). This gonzo eruption of spermazoidal huzzah! by multimedia Manila punk underground mover Khavn de la Cruz seeks to leave no societal cavity unexplored, or unoffended. Opening with an infamous quote from Brokedown Palace (1999) star Claire Danes, who characterized Manila as a “ghastly and weird city … [with] no sewage system,” it delivers both fuck-you and fuck-me to that judgment via 75 minutes of mad under caste collage. There isn’t much plot. But there’s variably judged arson, pedophilia, yo-yo trick demonstrations, poultry abuse, upscale mall shopping, voyeuristic pornographia, Tagalog rap, rooftop drum soloing, and limbless-little-person salesmanship of duck eggs.
Further complicating your comprehension of a very complex scene, the YBCA series encompasses avant-garde shorts by veteran John Torres and newer experimentalists. There’s also a free afternoon Indie-Pino Music Fest Sat/9, and on June 17 there’s a postscript: Lav Diaz’s Florentina Hubaldo, CTE, the six-hour latest epic in a career whose patience-testing wide open cinematic spaces make Béla Tarr look like Michael Bay.
“NEW FILIPINO CINEMA”
June 7-17, $8
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission, SF
arts@sfbg.com
MUSIC Nick Waterhouse no longer calls San Francisco home, but the city’s fingerprints are all over Time’s All Gone, his effortlessly fun, debut LP. The retro-minded songwriter-producer crafts perfect little tributes to the punchy 1950s R&B sounds he’s been drawn to since he was a kid, all steeped with an endearing reverence for old-school record culture and recording techniques.
“We cut as live as possible, so a lot of the record is eight people in one room playing at the same time,” he explains. “Everybody’s gotta feel it together, and if they don’t, you really don’t have a song, in my opinion.”
As a Southern California kid growing up in the Costa Mesa area, Waterhouse approached his music listening from a studious angle, soaking up the Van Morrison and John Lee Hooker records of his parents, along with the Descendents and Sonic Youth albums he found. The well-rounded sonic diet can be heard within the frayed edges and garage rock appeal that Time’s All Gone has in spades.
“I listened to everything I could because I wanted to gain as much experience as possible,” he says. “I was the kid staying up for hours with the radio under the covers.”
By 18, Waterhouse had moved to San Francisco and quickly jumped headfirst into the DJ scene, spinning and building a network of like-minded cohorts at the Knockout’s Oldies Night and Saturday Night Soul Party at the Elbo Room, which brought him in touch with folks like Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin. No connection, however, would become as important to him as his relationship with Rooky Ricardo’s, the Dick Vivian-owned oldies-R&B-soul-centric gem of a record store in the Lower Haight.
“Rooky Ricardo’s informed a lot of how I developed as a person, and it’s all in the spirit of the place,” he says. “It’s got that clubhouse feel.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJruQmdlU10
Waterhouse recorded the saxophone-propelled blast of “Some Place” in the summer of 2010, an undertaking that he says was fueled more by a desire to sell vinyl copies to friends and fellow Rooky’s shoppers than to start a full-fledged music project.
“I really had no interest in it at the time,” he explains. “I figured I’d just keep making these 45s for fun and no one would even know who I was.”
After some nagging by friends to put something together for live shows, however, he caved and began recruiting players for the beginnings of what is now the Tarots, his perfectly complementary backing band. Together with Waterhouse’s guitar playing and expressive croon, the group uses horns, piano, drums, and female backing vocals to pay tribute to soulful R&B without ever falling victim to hollow mimicry or self-conscious irony. This is warm music made by passionate people with only the purest of intentions.
When it came time to record an LP, Waterhouse did what anyone who’s heard his music might expect and found an all analog studio in Costa Mesa called the Distillery to work out of. With the use of vintage gear, old ribbon mics, and classic recording techniques, he says that Time’s All Gone was constructed entirely with vinyl in mind.
“I can’t lie and pretend that as somebody born in the late-1980s I haven’t had moments of discovery because of digital music,” he says. And while yes, he has found music digitally over the years, he doesn’t have any vivid, concrete memories of those discoveries, the way he does with physical records. “I can still remember what listening station at Rooky’s I was at when I first heard a record, or what weird flea market I found something at. Having something tangible in front of you helps you associate.”
Waterhouse recently moved back to Southern California due to his quickly escalating, hectic tour schedule, but the plan has always been to officially release his album in San Francisco. In a beautiful bout of planning, Wednesday night’s show will not only mark the release of Time’s All Gone, but will also serve as a celebration for the 25th anniversary of the day Rooky Ricardo’s first opened its doors. Expect the dance party to start early and run late, as Waterhouse has enlisted the help of some of his favorite local DJs to spin before and after his set.
“In my mind, my album was born out of Rooky’s and out of a specific period of time in San Francisco more than anything else,” he says. “So this is my party for all the people and things that really mattered to me there.”
NICK WATERHOUSE
With DJs Carnita, Primo, Matt B, Lucky
Wed/6, 8pm, $12 sold out
Verdi Club
2424 Mariposa, SF (415) 861-9199
emilysavage@sfbg.com
MUSIC A few musicians with slick hair and black-frame glasses are seen setting up their equipment in Chicago’s Hi-Style Studio: amps, a mustard Telecaster, glittering gold drums, a huge stand-up bass, and vintage condenser microphones. What year is this?
The drum hits crack and the bass strings ripple with heavy plucks. The finger-snapping beat is unavoidable, almost cloying in its blitheness. Potent vocals reminiscent of Little Richard suddenly overpower it all. It’s Broken Arrow, Oklahoma’s JD McPherson — singing so hard a craggy vein in his otherwise smooth forehead bulges — in the video for the single that has brought him this far: “North Side Gal.”
It’s due to be inescapable this summer. “The Chicago Cubs have actually been playing that song at the stadium during games,” McPherson says during a phone call from his car, where the singer-songwriter-occasional vegetarian is waiting on an order of red pepper tofu. “It’s really exciting. There’s really no other team I’d rather have that song associated with. It’s the ultimate old ballpark, underdog team.”
Like contemporaries Nick Waterhouse (who, coincidentally, is also playing San Francisco this week, and un-coincidentally is also profiled in this issue) and Nick Curran and the Lowlifes, McPherson is tackling the invigorating rock’n’roll power and bluesy vocals of early R&B and 1950s rock, exploring retro record-making processes,while nonchalantly dressing the part.
It’s another revival, likely to sell well across the mainstream in the Heartland, but also appeal to the underground listeners throughout rockabilly pockets. Though this is beyond classic rockabilly’s precise replications of the past, past kitsch and overwhelming aesthetics. These band leaders with undeniable guitar skills and a very modern drive have something that can only be described, apologetically, as star power. Out of the smoky clubs and into the mind’s eye.
And while rockin’ McPherson may have the sound, the side-parted hair, and the analog recording process back-story like the others in this current resurgence, his own background is fairly different; if the more soulful California boy Waterhouse is Rat Pack wool suits, McPherson is dusty rolled denim.
McPherson was raised on a cattle farm in Buffalo Valley, Southeast Oklahoma — dutifully feeding the cows before school — but later fell into a nearby punk scene, and met his wife (and mother to his two young daughters) at a new wave-goth club night in Tulsa; wearing a Smiths shirt herself, she approached him to say,”You look like a Smiths fan.” She’s now his biggest supporter, sitting patiently while he runs by new guitar parts or song lyrics. She’s also the original “North Side Gal.”
But before all that, before his interest in punk and new-wave, before the wife and kids, and long before the release of his modern reinterpretation of early rock’n’roll record, Signs and Signifiers, he was just a 13-year-old kid in the Midwest learning to play the guitar.
His much older brothers showed him their ’70s-era Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers, and Jimi Hendrix records. He grew obsessed with Led Zeppelin then Van Halen, and later, Nirvana, which led to searches for punk origins records by the Stooges and the Ramones. As a late teen, he discovered early rock’n’roll, the backbeat to all those spinning vinyl dreams.
“I found the Decca recordings of Buddy Holly, and that sort of seemed to marry the exuberance of the Ramones, with the country Arcadian aesthetic that I was growing up around. It made sense…and it got me.”
His teenage punk band began interjecting Buddy Holly’s “Rocking Around with Ollie Vee” into their sets; the sound had a pervasive pull, and he fell backwards, deeper into the roots of rock’n’roll — Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, blues artists his Alabama-born dad loved such as Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, and early jazz musicians.
He looked to Little Richard in particular, to whom he has garnered favorable comparisons (see the beginning of this story). Because of his style, and, perhaps, his skin color, he’s also seen comparisons to Elvis. “I love Elvis, I mean, I lo-ove Elvis,” he stretches out the “of” sound in the word “love” with an endearingly twangy accent. “I don’t know if there’s a huge musical similarity between us and Elvis, maybe instrumentation-wise, but we’re way more Specialty Records than Sun Records.”
“Little Richard is my favorite recording artist,” he continues, “[I’m] way more interested in Elvis’ black counterparts and predecessors. I do love rockabilly, but we don’t interject a lot of hillbilly sounds into our rhythm and blues the way Elvis did.”
In the ’90s Midwest, pop-country was taking over the airwaves, Billy Ray Cyrus and the like — it’s what all McPherson’s high school classmates were popping in the tape decks. It wasn’t for him. Perhaps this is why he shies away from any hillbilly sounds, those that can lead to psychobilly when mixed with the punk roots. Not that he disparages rockabilly.
“There’s a subculture of all these bands that have no intention of doing anything other than just really faithfully reproducing these sounds, there’s a lot more rockabilly and Western swing bands doing that thing, [yet] these are folks that are putting out quality music.”
But in those scenes and beyond he saw a shortage of the more straight-forward rock’n’roll he loved. That’s why he and musical partner Jimmy Sutton (the gray fox thumping those stand-up bass strings in the “North Side Gal” video) decided to make the DIY, all-analog Signs and Signfiers album in the first place. “So our record basically was almost like an art project, like ‘let’s just make this record and do what we always wanted to do.'”
The drummer on the album was Alex Hall, who doubled as the engineer. Now he’s still “in the family,” often playing keyboards with the band; drummer Jason Smay is on the current tour. During the recording process, McPherson and Sutton would run through a song then Hall would head into the control booth to mix. He’d set the levels, start the tape, run in, then get behind the drums. “That was kind of the magic of it, it was essentially mixed as we recorded it. Real fast, instant gratification. It’s the best way to record.”
Like contemporary Waterhouse noted, McPherson of course has his own connections with modern technology and has used digital recording processes in the past, but he prefers the analog way, to extract that authentic sound. “I’ve seen the amazing things you can do in a digital environment, but there’s some special thing to getting a band live in the studio and recording an actual performance. And then you know, the equipment sounds amazing too.”
While the record was originally released in 2010 on Sutton’s tiny Hi-Style label, the “North Side Gal” single and album have really started picking up this year. With the homemade video as the ultimate calling card, Rounder Records signed the band and rereleased the album this spring. The video has gained half a million views as of press time, and the band’s television debut is tonight on Conan. Despite all that, they’re still relatively unknown in the US, but McPherson and his band have a huge following in the UK — they regularly play sold-out shows and festivals, and have daily rotation on BBC Radio.
During the recording process, and up until the end of the 2011 school year, McPherson was still employed in a local Broken Arrow middle school as a computer and arts teacher (he went to college for fine arts). When he was laid off last summer he says he told the band, “well, I’m getting a paycheck through the summer, so let’s tour and try to make some money while I look for another job.” They’ve been touring consistently ever since.
Perhaps this batch of ’50s-inspired rockers and analog R&B crooners will move beyond the past, and into the future musical pantheon, gaining elusive mainstream success. Or maybe they’ll remain lovable underdogs. Only time will tell. For your McPherson fix now, you could always take in a Cubs game. Check back at the end of summer ’12.
JD MCPHERSON
With Toshio Hirano
Thu/7, 8pm, $21
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750
arts@sfbg.com
FILM It’s commonly said of Nathaniel Dorsky’s films that they are beautiful beyond words. Which is true as far as it goes, but then the same could be said of many poems and they are words. What’s clear is that Dorsky is absorbed with a classical fulfillment of form, and as such his films do better with poetics than interpretation (he has himself supplied a fine entry point with his slim volume Devotional Cinema). Poetics in this context means respecting the mystery and proceeding gingerly with gesture, metaphor, and detail. No one ever says of a Dorsky film, “I liked it the more I thought about it.” Conversely, watching a second or third time one marvels to find the beauty springing to life with the same force, subtler and lovelier now for this trick of renewal. No one ever says of a sunset, “I’ve seen this one before.”
A three-part retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive beginning June 10 retraces the last decade of Dorsky’s work. The Return (2011) and August and After (2012) receive local premieres this weekend, accompanied by the delicate Pastourelle (2010). June 17 brings his “Quartet,” to my mind a signal achievement of the young century. The series concludes June 24 with three earlier films confirming Dorsky’s mastery of an open (sometimes called polyvalent) form of montage: Song and Solitude (2006), Threnody (2004), and The Visitation (2002). How fitting that these films should be spaced out over consecutive days of rest! They will be shown on 16mm because that is what they are (last I checked the museums still show the Old Masters in paint).
It’s our good fortune to share a city with Dorsky: opportunities to see the films with him as a guide come a little more frequently, and the phenomena that supply his visual repertoire are that much more familiar. Here are the blossoms, the Chinatown lanterns, the drifting Muni trains, the ocean skies, and the seasons as we only dare to see them in deepest reverie.
Dorsky began making movies under the influence of people like Stan Brakhage and Gregory Markopoulos, filmmakers who strove for an intrinsic cinematic language (while the auteurists chiseled out an essential cinema, they sought cinema’s essence). After relocating to San Francisco in 1971, he reemerged with Hours for Jerome (1980-1982), a dense exercise in spiritual autobiography culled from pastoral years in New Jersey. The films began arriving with greater regularity after Triste (1998) and continue apace even after the desertion of his beloved Kodachrome.
The silence of Dorsky’s films is lush, providing intoxicating accompaniment to the slowed projection of 18 frames per second which dips the photographic action just out of the flow of representation. The crescendos that surge past the finish of his films invariably leave me surprised that I haven’t been listening to music, as the black of the theater seems clarified in the same way silence is after an expressive composition. Pushing the analogy further, the relationship between movement and stillness in his films is akin to that of sound and rest in music, the two leaved together as intonation. We really need a new word to describe the juddering movement of branches and buds that punctuate Dorsky’s films. “Quiver” is close, but it doesn’t capture the spring in the frame, like dancers on a stage.
A couple of months ago, Dorsky showed something called Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 1) at Lincoln Center: Song and Solitude-era footage in the chronological order in which it was shot. The material had a completely distinct character viewed this way. Dorsky talked of it as a journal. The loose form made it easier to relate to his eye being grasped by something in the world, and yet one missed the justice of the cuts.
If pressed for a defining quality of these films, I would say rightness —each shot developing to its fullness, tuned to what comes before and after. The fact that this formal refinement is itself the focus of the films creates a suspension of time which, after all, is a basic condition of paradise. Certainly the films are colored by experience, as August and After for instance is clearly marked by grief, yet this is never what they are “about.” Trust is placed in the self-expression of the film stock — its luster and dusk.
Dorsky’s films will reintroduce you to what branches make of the sky and how the grass gladdens when the sun reappears from its shade. I think this is what people are talking about when they say the films remind them of childhood. “A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full/hands;/How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any/more than he./I guess it must the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful/green stuff woven.” We could choose many lines of verse to say the same, but Whitman’s will do. There is something mystical in Dorsky’s slightly ajar illuminations of worldly objects and features. And yet so too is there something altogether sensible and almost courtly in their formal arrangements. The shots of dogs make us chuckle because we’re in a position to recognize our own recognition, all too human.
On first viewing The Return struck me as a deeply melancholy work, its darkly reflecting surfaces and doublings bearing the impression of lost sleep. August and After, on the other hand, is more immediate in its effect and a superior example of how Dorsky’s style can serve distinct emotional structures (threnody here). Tender impressions taken near the end of George Kuchar’s life, the filmmaker surrounded by family and friends, are framed in the light of long afternoons. Everything that follows is touched by these pictures of intimacy: two workers sliding down a skyscraper, a distant glass door sweeping a ray of light across a café, agitated steps into bramble. A rhythmic montage focuses on packages and fruits carried down the street, the actual things transfigured into pure color. When the film’s ship finally sails, it does so with such grace as to say love without saying.
“AFTERIMAGE: THREE NIGHTS WITH NATHANIEL DORSKY”
June 10, 17, and 24, 7:30pm, $5.50-$9.50
Pacific Film Archive
2575 Bancroft, Berk.
(510) 642-5249
bampfa.berkeley.edu
My usual limited polling sample — my precinct in Bernal Heights — suggests what everyone pretty much knew: Turnout in San Francisco will be very low. Control of the local Democratic Party, and its endorsements, will be determined by a small fraction of the eligible voters.
On the national front, since the presidential primaries are long over and California has long been irrelevant, everyone’s looking at Wisconsin, where the battle to recall Gov. Scott Walker will have national implications. Walker’s trying to survive by blaming public employees for the state’s economic woes; since he ended collective bargaining, he said today, the state budget is running a surplus and property taxes are down.
If by some chance he’s thrown out of office — and it doesn’t look good right now — labor will have one of its greatest victories in years. If he becomes the first governor in US history to survive a recall, he’ll portray it as a confirmation that the public supports his attack on unions. The right-wing types have poured millions into this race — and if they get their way, a lot of labor folks are going to be asking why President Obama (who will be in San Francisco to raise money at Clint Reilly’s office building June 6) didn’t make an appearance in Wisconsin.
Labor came in big for the president in 2008, and this one is hugely important — and the White House has been entirely missing in action. And he may have to answer for it if Walker survives and GOP governors across the country take up the call and attack public-sector unions as the start of a larger attack on organized labor.
In California, I don’t care how much money the tobacco companies spent — Prop. 29, the cigarette tax, is going to win. And I think the term-limits measure squeaks through, too. Locally, we all know that Prop. A will lose under a barrage of Recology money; I hope Prop. B survives the strange last-minute money blitz.
We may not know for days how the Democratic County Central Committee races are shaking out. If it’s close, and control of the panel hangs on a couple of tight races, the absentee votes that get counted over the next few days will make the difference.
We’ll be posting updates all evening.
EDITORIAL The San Francisco Ethics Commission, which is hardly aggressive about cracking down on campaign-finance violations, has suggested some rule changes that would water down the city’s ethics laws. The supervisors should reject most of the suggestions — and start talking about real reform.
The commission has asked Sup. Scott Wiener to bring the changes to the board, and Wiener told us that he has problems with some of them and is going to be working with his colleagues, particularly Sup. David Campos, to fix the package.
It will need a lot of amendments to be acceptable.
The current proposal would make life easier for campaigns and big donors, but would make it harder for the public to figure out who’s putting up the money and where it’s going. For example, it would exempt from the spending cap all money spent complying with the ethics laws. That sounds fair at first glance — but the amounts involved are huge. For a mayoral race, as much as $147,000 would be exempted. That’s a lot of money for “compliance.”
More important, the ethics proposal would eliminate the restrictions on how much a single donor can give in an election season. Right now, the cumulative limit is $500 for each office on the ballot, which limits the impact that a handful of big-money contributors can have on an election. Under the new rule, a wealthy person who wants to make sure that every politician in town owes him or her can donate the maximum to a long list of candidates, giving more power to a few.
Wiener says that under ranked-choice voting, donors should be able to give to more than one candidate for a single office. Fine — but the cap doesn’t have to be eliminated. It could easily be amended to account for RCV.
The plan would somewhat loosen the reporting requirements in the last days of a campaign, eliminating weekend disclosures. It would decrease the transparency rules for campaign committees that shuffle money back and forth to hide its true source. It would aalow more spending by independent committees with less disclosure.
In other words, it would undermine the ability of the voters to know who is funding which candidates and initiative campaigns. There’s no reason to do any of that.
The problem with the current law is not that it requires too much disclosure — it’s that, in many ways, the controls on political money are too weak. And if the supervisors are serious about reform, there’s plenty to be done.
Ethics laws currently bar anyone who is seeking a city contract from donating to local officials. But it’s still perfectly legal for someone seeking a permit or zoning change to throw around cash. And there are endless problems with developers who need city officials on their side. Extending the contribution ban to anyone seeking special zoning or permit approval for any project with construction costs above a certain threshold — say, $10 million — would exclude, say, homeowners who want to build a new deck, but would limit the role of real-estate money in campaigns.
The amendments need eight votes to pass; before it even gets to the full board, the Rules Committee ought to ship this mess back to the Ethics Commission and tell the supposed watchdogs to try again.
virginia@sfbg.com
APPETITE Although Asian outpost Namu Gaji is brand new, the presence of Namu restaurant itself and owners the Lee brothers — Dennis, David and Daniel — has been felt in San Francisco for years. Since 2006, the Lees have been weaving Korean, Japanese, and other Asian cuisines with California spirit in the original, now shuttered Richmond restaurant and eventually Namu’s Ferry Building farmers market stand on Tuesdays and Saturdays. In early April, the brothers opened their Mission incarnation, Namu Gaji.
Its kitchen is in direct view of the small dining room, as Dennis Lee and Chef de Cuisine Michael Kim (Craft Los Angeles, SPQR) cook at a grill fired with bincho-tan, a low smoke, Japanese charcoal. The Lee brothers’ aunt, direct from Korea, will oversee a house fermenting program, bringing with her bacteria strains from the family’s Korean village. The chefs do the usual sourcing from local farms but, in an unusual slant, have commissioned farmer Kristyn Leach to grow exclusively for them on a one-acre plot at Baia Nicchia Farm in Sunol, where she’s raising rare Korean chiles and herbs — quite a treat.
I already miss the chic, spare Richmond dining room compared to the cramped Mission space, despite its striking communal table and tree branch sculpture weaving dramatically from the ceiling. Granted, the Dolores Park location is prime real estate, particularly when it comes to daytime takeout, perfect for picnicking in the park, possibly my favorite way to enjoy Namu Gaji. But the Mission is saturated with hip dining destinations in a way the Richmond, one of our great underrated neighborhoods, is not. This was an understandably strategic move, but the new space gets progressively warmer and noisier as an evening evolves. For those who don’t enjoy yelling through dinner, I’d suggest dining early, although do note the actual dinner menu doesn’t start until 6pm.
In multiple early visits, truly unique dishes flow from the kitchen. The menu is grouped in categories like raw, broth, salad, crispy, grill, and comfort, with a handful of key choices under each heading. The “raw” section is pricey ($18), but raw King salmon, topped with pickled red onion, a dollop of whipped yuzu cream, and shiso (Japanese herb from the mint family) is generously portioned, bright sashimi. Uni sure is fantastic fried — what isn’t? — as tempura ($14) alongside fried shiso leaf, lemon zest, and market veggies, which on a recent visit were fava beans and a yellow onion. Grilled octopus ($14) is a tad bland compared to other grilled octopus dishes around town, though pleasingly plated with English peas, spring onion, fried garlic, and that fabulously pungent Korean chili paste, gochujang.
It gets exciting with an off-menu special of buckwheat gnocchi, pan seared in black garlic gastrique, with English peas and pea shoots (can you tell peas are in season?) This non-traditional gnocchi is earthy, lively, playful. “Fish parts” ($18) arrive on a wood slab, generously portioned and artfully arranged, more hearty than fussy. The fish parts change, but one night I dined on impeccable wild salmon belly and spine, with caramelized, crispy-sweet skin. Its partner requires a more adventurous palate: ahi tuna roe, cured and grilled. A dining companion bluntly called this large hunk of meat what it was: a giant egg sac. If you didn’t know, however, you’d think the pink, meaty fish a more savory, funky cut of salmon. Either way, I was delighted to be served something I’d never had before.
One evening after a 90-minute dinner, I waited nearly 30 minutes after all dishes had been served (and eaten) for a dessert which my sweet, adept server kept informing us was about to arrive. Though next time I’ll skip dessert under those conditions, I was pleased with shaved ice ($8), or shave ice as it’s known in Hawaii, which you can order doused in Four Barrel coffee and cocoa crumbles. My top choice is in coconut cream with coconut crumble and strawberries. The ice is creamy soft, feathery… and quickly devoured.
The brothers’ Korean heritage shines best in their street food-style dishes, available at the Ferry Building Farmers Market as well as during the day at Namu Gaji, ideal taken across the street to Dolores Park. Their beloved nori “tacos” ($3) and okonomiyaki ($10 lunch, $16 dinner) still delight, while BBQ belly and Korean BBQ-style marinated chicken thigh ($10) are packed into pan de mie bun layered with Swiss cheese, soy glazed onions, pickled daikon, aioli, Dijon mustard — a buttery, fatty pleasure of a sandwich. Gamja fries ($10), essentially organic fried potatoes piled with short ribs, kimchee relish, gochujang, kewpie mayo, and green onions, are the fast food of your dreams. KFC ($12) is a quarter of a Marin Sun Farms chicken tossed in sweet and tangy sauce with dashi gravy. Each of these heartwarmers not only satiate but illuminate best why the Lee brothers have become an SF staple.
NAMU GAJI
499 Dolores, SF
(415) 431-6268
Subscribe to Virgina’s twice-monthly newsletter, The Perfect Spot: www.theperfectspotsf.com
WEDNESDAY 6
A preternaturally crunchy, riff-savvy stoner rock band from Tokyo, Japan, whose influences are culled from the back catalogues of ’70s esoterica — think Mountain, Sir Lord Baltimore, and my beloved Captain Beyond, played through the kind of crustified old school black metal sensibilities that seem to inform a number of Japan’s most popular heavy metal exports. There’s also the serial killer thing — the vast majority of Church of Misery’s lyrics treat America’s most infamous murderers and sadists. A sly commentary on our obsession with the vaguely menacing sexuality of our cock rock icons? They do a mean cover of “Cities On Flame with Rock and Roll,” too. (Tony Papanikolas)
With Hail! Hornet, Gates of Slumber
9pm, $18
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
(415) 552-7788
Recalling the Balearic escapism of Air France and the Tough Alliance, Vancouver’s Teen Daze specializes in a blissed-out, beach-bound approach to DIY-electronica. His upcoming full-length, All of Us, Together (to be released June 5 on Lefse Records), sees the producer taking a cleaner, less hazy approach to his chillwavy pop aesthetic than ever before. Laptop-based sets can leave a whole lot to be desired, so let’s hope this one-man project has what it takes to translate its vision to the stage in a compelling way. (Taylor Kaplan)
With the One AM Radio, Giraffage, Slow Magic
8pm, $12
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
THURSDAY 7
In his new “BY Series,” Robert Moses formalizes a process he has engaged in over the years: inviting other choreographers to set work on his dancers. But why put Molissa Fenley, Ramon Ramos Alayo, and Sidra Bell — who probably have never even shared a cup of coffee, much less a stage — together? Like Moses, they speak with powerful 21st century voices from within the African Diaspora. Fenley spent formative years in Nigeria, Alayo in Cuba, and Bell, the youngest of the three, started her company as a community project in Harlem. Yet these artists couldn’t be more different from each other, and that’s the point. Also on the program will be the world premiere of Moses’ “Scrubbing the Dog.” (Rita Felciano)
Through June 17
Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm, $25
ODC Theater
3153 17th St., SF
(415) 863-9834
Neo-rockabilly legends the Polecats formed in London in the late 1970s, and brought back the ’50s rock genre with classic tunes such as “Rockabilly Guy” and “Make A Circuit With Me.” Although the group fractured for several years, with singer Tim Worman performing with 13 Cats, and guitarist Boz Boorer going on to play guitar and write music with Morrissey, they still find time to reunite occasional and play a show here and there. Don’t miss this rare local appearance, a warm-up gig before the Polecats head south to perform at the Ink-N-Iron Festival in Long Beach this weekend. (Sean McCourt)
With This Charming Band, Texas Steve & the Tornadoes
9pm, $12–$15
Uptown
1928 Telegraph, Oakl.
(510) 451-8100
Globe-trotting Welshman Alexander Coe (a.k.a. Sasha) went from underground acid house DJ in the late ’80s to worldwide icon in the early 90’s when he paired with English DJ and producer John Digweed. Sasha and Digweed would go on to become one of electronic music’s most celebrated acts, producing mix albums and performing live together for a decade. The duo broke ground with their ambitious Delta Heavy tour across the US in 2002, proving electronic musicians had gained critical mass stateside. After the pair split, Sasha continued to venture into unchartered territory, becoming among the first DJs to remix tracks during live performances. While he’s bounced around genres throughout his career, his live sets typically carry a 4/4 beat and occupy the space between driving techno and house. (Kevin Lee)
Base Seven-Year Anniversary
10pm, $25
Vessel
85 Campton, SF
(415) 433-8585
FRIDAY 8
Plenty of Americana tunes will be offered at this Starry Plough show thanks to co-headliners the Shants and Sean McArdle. Sit back and enjoy the musical complexity and lyrical beauty of the Shants, then let their faster songs bring you to your feet to dance. Such classically rural sounds as the pedal steel guitar bring their sound a weary and rich twangy soul, and the use of harmonica gets the boots stomping. Their latest album Beautiful Was the Night features Brianna Lea Pruett and Quinn Deveaux on vocal harmonies, as well as violin by Howie Cockrill and horns by Ralph Carney; and in the past they’ve shared the stage with artists such as Canadian alterna-folk autoharpist Basia Bulat. This week they play both the Starry Plough tonight, and the Great American Music Hall Sat/9. (Shauna C. Keddy)
With Paige and the Thousand, Sean McArdle
9:30pm, $7–$10
Starry Plough
3101 Shattuck, Berk.
(510) 841-2082
With Dirty Hand Family Band, the Famous, the Rogers, the Hot Pink Feathers
Sat/9, 8:30pm, $13
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750
Two headliners; two brands of face-melting guitar-rock. Hailing from San Marcos, Texas, self-described “doomgaze” outfit This Will Destroy You is sure to devastate, with its mountains of distortion and extreme dynamic range. A Place to Bury Strangers (a.k.a “The Loudest Band in NYC”) should overwhelm in equal measure, with its suffocating barrage of squalling guitars, insistent basslines, and unrelenting drums. With two distinct walls-of-sound to get lost in, this double-bill should offer up one of the most viscerally affecting evenings of music this town has seen in a while. Bring earplugs… or, don’t. (Kaplan)
With Dusted
10pm, $14
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
(415) 621-4455
SATURDAY 9
Local artist Ben Venom’s signature quilts, stitched from chopped band tees, are spectacular to behold. A featured artist at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ “Bay Area Now 6” exhibit last year, Venom combines traditional hesher motifs (skulls, wolves, Satan, Slayerrr!) with traditional crafting techniques. (As his artist’s statement points out, “even the beasts of metal need a warm blanket to sleep with.”) Venom’s new solo show, “I Call the Shots,” includes wing-themed quilts I Go Where Eagles Dare and War Bird West (you could spend hours staring at each, picking out all the band logos embedded within), plus embroidered jean jackets and pillows suitable for cradling lazy demon heads. And speaking of heads, they will bang: local rockers Hazzard’s Cure and Dalton perform live at the opening. (Cheryl Eddy)
Also featuring work by Adam Feibelman
Through July 7
Opening reception tonight, 7-11pm, free
Guerrero Gallery
2700 19th St., SF
Ever had the urge to watch Christopher Reeve valiantly save a busload of helpless schoolchildren on Golden Gate Bridge… in front of the bridge itself? Well, here’s your chance. In commemoration of the SF landmark’s 75th anniversary, The Presidio Trust and the Walt Disney Family Museum are curating “The Bridge on the Big Screen,” a series of seven bridge-centric films to be screened outdoors over the coming weeks, and Superman: The Movie is the second installment. Stay tuned for Hitchcock’s Vertigo, to be shown next Saturday. And remember to bring a blanket or low lawn chair. (Kaplan)
6pm, free
Main Post Green
Presidio, SF
It’s not every band that can wear two hats, or wear them both as well as Corrosion of Conformity. The Raleigh, NC outfit began in 1982 as a frenzied hardcore band before evolving into a slower, fuzzier stoner rock beast, starting with 1991’s Blind. More than 20 years later, though, the frenzy is back, courtesy of a stripped-down, power trio lineup and a new, self-titled album. With bassist Mike Dean taking over vocal duties from guitarist Pepper Keenan (busy playing in Down), COC have returned to their hardcore roots. Expect high tempos and chaos in the pit. (Ben Richardson)
With Torche, Black Cobra, Gaza
8pm, $21
Slim’s
333 11th St., SF
(415)-255-0333
SUNDAY 10
Now in its fourth year, this annual “electronic music picnic” from the generous party mavens at SUNSET comes with a fee for the first time. But given the music on offer — including live sets from Magda, the always enticing genre-crossing daughter of Berlin and Detroit, and shadowy UK producer BNJMN, who made a double album debut last year with Black Square and Plastic World — the tickets still are coming at a steal. And that’s not factoring in the possibility of nice weather, a pleasant crowd, and an unparalleled view from one of the best venues/lawns in the Bay Area. Just, uh, remember to pick up your trash. (Ryan Prendiville)
With Eddie C, Galen, Solar, J-Bird
Noon, $5–$15
Great Lawn, Treasure Island
TUESDAY 12
A four-piece band of Brooklynites, Here We Go Magic received a notable nod from one Thom Yorke in the summer of 2010 — he said the act was his favorite at Glastonbury that year. Since then, songwriter Luke Temple and friends have continued making saliently synthy music while touring the globe, and even picked up a hitchhiking John Waters along the way. The indie-poppers are performing in support of their third full-length album A Different Ship, a percussion-driven record that is also purely melodic in its nature. Here We Go Magic at the Independent will be a chance to catch this fast-rising band at a smaller venue before the summer festival season is upon us, and before several high-profile tour dates with Coldplay in July. (Julia B. Chan)
With Harriet
8pm, $15
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421
The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, 71 Stevenson Street, Second Floor, SF, CA 94105 or email (paste press release into email body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.
Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, and Lynn Rapoport. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.
OPENING
Bel Ami Judging from recent attempts to shake off the gloomy atmosphere and undead company of the Twilight franchise, Robert Pattinson enjoys a good period piece, but hasn’t quite worked out how to help make one. Last year’s Depression-era Water for Elephants was a tepid romance, and Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s belle epoque–set Bel Ami is an ungainly, oddly paced adaptation of the Guy de Maupassant novel of the same name. A down-and-out former soldier of peasant stock, Georges Duroy (Pattinson) — or "Bel Ami," as his female admirers call him — gains a brief entrée into the upper echelons of France’s fourth estate and parlays it into a more permanent set of social footholds, campaigning for the affections of a triumvirate of Parisian power wives (Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman, and Kristin Scott Thomas) as he makes his ascent. His route is confusing, though; the film pitches forward at an alarming pace, its scenes clumsily stacked together with little character development or context to smooth the way, and Pattinson’s performance doesn’t clarify much. Duroy shifts perplexingly between rapacious and soulful modes, eyeing the ladies with a vaguely carnivorous expression as he enters drawing rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms, but leaving us with little sense of his true appetites or other motivations. (1:42) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)
Double Trouble When crooks nab a priceless painting from a Taipei museum, two security guards — wannabe hero Jay (Jaycee "Son of Jackie" Chan) and Chinese-tourist-on-vacation Ocean (Xia Yu) — reluctantly team up to recover the piece. A road trip of sorts ensues, laden with petty bickering, wacky melees, bonding moments, mistaken identity, gangsters both comical and sinister, and other buddy-comedy trappings. As expected, there are a few high-flying fight scenes; in the film’s production notes, director David Hsun-Wei Chang reveals he was inspired by the Rush Hour movies. Alas, Chan is neither as charismatic nor as breathtakingly nimble as his father (and, obvi, Xia is no Chris Tucker). It should be noted, however, that one of the slithery art thieves is played by underwear model Jessica C., famed in Hong Kong for her "police siren boobs." So there’s that. (1:29) Metreon. (Eddy)
Elena The opening, almost still image of breaking dawn amid bare trees — the twigs in the foreground almost imperceptibly developing definition and the sky gradually growing ever lighter and pinker in the corners of the frame — beautifully exemplifies the crux of this well-wrought, refined noir, which spins slowly on the streams of dog-eat-dog survival that rush beneath even the most moneyed echelons of Moscow. Sixtyish former nurse Elena (Nadezhda Markina) is still little more than a live-in caretaker for Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov), her affluent husband of almost 10 years. She sleeps in a separate bed in their modernist-chic condo and dutifully funnels money to her beloved layabout son and his family. Vladimir has less of a relationship with his rebellious bad-seed daughter (Yelena Lyadova), who may be too smart and hedonistic for her own good. When a certain unlikely reunion threatens Elena’s survival — and what she perceives as the survival of her own spawn — a kind of deadly dawn breaks over the seemingly obedient hausfrau, and she’s driven to desperate ends. Bathing his scenes in chilled blue light and velvety dark shadows, filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (2003’s The Return) keeps a detached but close eye on the proceedings while displaying an uncanny talent for plucking the telling detail out of the wash of daily routine and coaxing magnetic performances from his performers. (1:49) Lumiere. (Chun)
Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted The animated zoo animals (voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith) join a circus. Hence the clown wigs. (1:33)
Peace, Love and Misunderstanding How is that even as a bona fide senior, Jane Fonda continues to embody this country’s ambivalence toward women? I suspect it’s a testament to her actorly prowess and sheer charisma that she’s played such a part in defining several eras’ archetypes — from sex kitten to counterculture-heavy Hanoi Jane to dressed-for-success feminist icon to aerobics queen to trophy wife. Here, among the talents in Bruce Beresford’s intergenerational chick-flick-gone-indie as a loud, proud, and larger-than-life hippie earth mama, she threatens to eclipse her paler, less colorful offspring, women like Catherine Keener and Elizabeth Olsen, who ordinarily shine brighter than those that surround them. It’s ostensibly the tale of high-powered lawyer Diane (Keener): her husband (Kyle MacLachlan) has asked for a divorce, so in a not-quite-explicable tailspin, she packs her kids, Zoe (Olsen) and Jake (Nat Wolff), into the car and heads to Woodstock to see her artist mom Grace (Fonda) for the first time in two decades. Grace is beyond overjoyed — dying to introduce the grandchildren to her protests, outdoor concerts, and own personal growhouse — while urbanite Diane and her kids find attractive, natch, diversions in the country, in the form of Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Cole (Chace Crawford), and Tara (Marissa O’Donnell). Yet there’s a lot of troubled water for the mother and daughter to cross, in order to truly come together. Despite some strong characterization and dialogue, Peace doesn’t quite fly — or make much sense at its close — due to the some patchy storytelling: the schematic rom-com arch fails to provide adequate scaffolding to support the required leaps of faith. But that’s not to deny the charm of the highly identifiable, generous-spirited Grace, a familiar Bay Area archetype if there ever was one, who Fonda charges with the joy and sadness of fallible parent who was making up the rules as she went along. (1:36) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)
Prometheus Ridley Scott returns to Alien (1979) turf with this sci-fi thriller starring Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Noomi Rapace, and Guy Pearce. (2:03)
ONGOING
Battleship During idle moments before the action revs up, the aliens start menacing, and the deadly razor balls-cum-air mines start rampaging, wrap your noggin around these random brainwaves: can Taylor Kitsch be any better named? Is it possible for Alexander Skarsgård’s glassy eyes to get any deader? Where are all the Hawaiians, Asians, and people of color in this white-bread vision of Hawaii? All matters to puzzle over in this toy franchise hopeful directed by ex-Chicago Hope regular Peter Berg. The 2007 Transformers is the best this gung-ho hybrid of up-with-the-military "Army of One" commercial and alien invasion flick — with plenty of blow-’em-up-real-good explosions and a dab of J-monster movies, but the writing never quite rises to the occasion. Here, an international group of navy folk and their ships are convening in Hawaii for playful war games, though the exercises turn somewhat more serious when alien vessels splash down in the middle of the fun —and some mild, no-investment family drama: Alex (Kitsch) is the screw-up younger brother of stony-faced naval man Stone (Skarsgård) and courting the daughter (Brooklyn Decker) of the fleet commander (Liam Neesom), who seems to hate his guts. The ultimate battle with space invaders, however, promises to turn that all around, as Alex is forced to sailor up and lead crew mates like Rihanna and work with former opponents like Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano). Here, at least, in the shadow of Pearl Harbor, U.S. and Japanese naval dudes can heal the wounds of World War II and bond in battle against the last unimpeachable interstellar villains who couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you say "I sunk your battleship." But Berg’s muddled direction doesn’t help when it comes to piecing out the chronology and balancing assorted perspectives in this latest effort to equate militarism with the games big and little kids play. (2:11) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)
Bernie Jack Black plays the titular new assistant funeral director liked by everybody in small-town Carthage, Tex. He works especially hard to ingratiate himself with shrewish local widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), but there are benefits — estranged from her own family, she not only accepts him as a friend (then companion, then servant, then as virtual "property"), but makes him her sole heir. Richard Linklater’s latest is based on a true-crime story, although in execution it’s as much a cheerful social satire as I Love You Philip Morris and The Informant! (both 2009), two other recent fact-based movies about likable felons. Black gets to sing (his character being a musical theater queen, among other things), while Linklater gets to affectionately mock a very different stratum of Lone Star State culture from the one he started out with in 1991’s Slacker. There’s a rich gallery of supporting characters, most played by little-known local actors or actual townspeople, with Matthew McConaughey’s vainglorious county prosecutor one delectable exception. Bernie is its director’s best in some time, not to mention a whole lot of fun. (1:39) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.
The Cabin in the Woods If the name "Joss Whedon" doesn’t provide all the reason you need to bum-rush The Cabin in the Woods (Whedon produced and co-wrote, with director and frequent collaborator Drew Goddard), well, there’s not much more that can be revealed without ruining the entire movie. In a very, very small nutshell, it’s about a group of college kids (including Chris "Thor" Hemsworth) whose weekend jaunt to a rural cabin goes horribly awry, as such weekend jaunts tend to do in horror movies (the Texas Chainsaw and Evil Dead movies are heavily referenced). But this is no ordinary nightmare — its peculiarities are cleverly, carefully revealed, and the movie’s inside-out takedown of scary movies produces some very unexpected (and delightfully blood-gushing) twists and turns. Plus: the always-awesome Richard Jenkins, and in-jokes galore for genre fans. (1:35) Metreon. (Eddy)
A Cat in Paris This year’s Best Animated Film nominees: big-budget entries Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, and eventual winner Rango, plus Chico and Rita, which opened just before Oscar night, and French mega-dark-horse A Cat in Paris. Sure, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s film failed to cash in on 2011’s Paris craze, but it’s still a charming if featherweight noir caper, being released stateside in an English version that features the voices of Marcia Gay Harden and Anjelica Huston. A streetwise kitty named Dino spends his days hanging with Zoey, a little girl who’s gone mute since the death of her father — a cop killed in the line of duty. Zoey’s mother (Harden), also a cop, is hellbent on catching the murderer, a notorious crook named Costa who runs his criminal empire with Reservoir Dogs-style imprecision. At night, Dino sneaks out and accompanies an affable burglar on his prowlings. When Zoey falls into Costa’s clutches, her mom, the thief, and (natch) the feisty feline join forces to rescue her, in a series of rooftop chase scenes that climax atop Notre Dame. At just over an hour, A Cat in Paris is sweetly old-fashioned and suitable for audiences of all ages, though staunch dog lovers may raise an objection or two. (1:07) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)
Chernobyl Diaries Despite the peripheral input of Oren Peli, who scored big with 2009’s Paranormal Activity, this sorry excuse for a horror movie offers up a sample platter of shit we’ve already seen before: the vacation-from-hell genre, the city-slickers-versus-yokels genre, the don’t-poke-around-in-the-abandoned-nuclear-facility genre. Er, all right. I will admit the setting — spooky ghost town Pripyat, which abuts the Chernobyl reactors — is inspired, which actually makes first-time director Bradley Parker’s film even more of a disappointment. Douchey college kids — characters so one-dimensional their names might as well be "I Will Die First," "I Will Make the Obviously Stupid-Ass Decision to Run Into the Woods in the Direction of Those Strange Noises We’ve Been Hearing," and "I Will Be the Guy Who Starts Screaming Right When We’re Trying to Hide" — get in a rickety van with a sketchy guide for an "extreme tour" of you-know-where. Turns out, in addition to providing backdrops for Facebook-wall photo ops, the ‘Nobe is home to quite the cornucopia of beasties. Suggested alternate titles: Chernobyl Hostel. Wrong Turn (Off Chernobyl’s Only Road). Don’t Go In the Basement (of Chernobyl). Piranha-nobyl. Cujo-nobyl. Night of the Things in Chernobyl That Aren’t Dead. The Chernobyls Have Eyes. (1:26) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)
The Color Wheel Carlen Altman, a nervous comedian who moonlights as a Jewish rosary maker, was doing stand-up in Brooklyn when filmmaker Alex Ross Perry approached her about collaborating on a project. The idea for a brother-sister movie came to be: The Color Wheel, a droll and perverse take on vexed lives in transition, tinged with 16mm. Perry directed, produced, and edited the film while co-writing with Altman. When the film begins, a dopey JR (Altman) shows up at the apartment of her misanthropic brother Colin (Perry). JR convinces him to help move her stuff out of her professor ex-boyfriend’s place. Inevitably, their Northeastern road trip follows other tangents, taking the pair on a hilarious and sad journey that raises more questions than answers about their fraught relationship. They meet a lot of jerks, but no one more so than themselves; their characters, filterless with no desire to grow up or shut up, are far behind everyone they encounter. With all its zeitgeisty humor and lovably awful people, The Color Wheel takes some dark turns — it begins as a charming, dour comedy, but ends up viscerally queasy and pitiful, with its two leads as mixed-up as ever. (1:23) Roxie. (Ryan Lattanzio)
Crooked Arrows (1:45) Metreon.
Dark Shadows Conceptually, there’s nothing wrong with attempting to turn a now semi-obscure supernaturally themed soap opera with a five-year run in the late 1960s and early ’70s into a feature film. Particularly if the film brings together the sweetly creepy triumvirate of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Helena Bonham Carter and emerges during an ongoing moment for vampires, werewolves, and other things that go hump in the night. Depp plays long-enduring vampire Barnabas Collins, the undead scion of a once-powerful 18th-century New England family that by the 1970s — the groovy decade in which the bulk of the story is set — has suffered a shabby deterioration. Barnabas forms a pact with present-day Collins matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) to raise the household — currently comprising her disaffected daughter, Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz), her derelict brother, Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), his mournful young son, David (Gulliver McGrath), David’s live-in lush of a psychiatrist, Dr. Hoffman (Carter), and the family’s overtaxed manservant, Willie (Jackie Earle Haley) — to its former stature, while taking down a lunatic, love-struck, and rather vindictive witch named Angelique (Eva Green). The latter, a victim of unrequited love, is the cause of all Barnabas’s woes and, by extension, the entire clan’s, but Angelique can only be blamed for so much. Beyond her hocus-pocus jurisdiction is the film’s manic pileup of plot twists, tonal shifts, and campy scenery-chewing by Depp, a startling onslaught that no lava lamp joke, no pallid reaction shot, no room-demolishing act of paranormal carnality set to Barry White, and no cameo by Alice Cooper can temper. (2:00) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)
The Dictator As expected, The Dictator is, yet again, Sacha Baron Cohen doing his bumbling-foreigner shtick. Said character (here, a ruthless, spoiled North African dictator) travels to America and learns a heaping teaspoon of valuable lessons, which are then flung upon the audience — an audience which, by film’s end, has spent 80 minutes squealing at a no-holds-barred mix of disgusting gags, tasteless jokes, and schadenfreude. If you can’t forgive Cohen for carbon-copying his Borat (2006) formula, at least you can muster admiration for his ability to be an equal-opportunity offender (dinged: Arabs, Jews, African Americans, white Americans, women of all ethnicities, and green activists) — and for that last-act zinger of a speech. If The Dictator doesn’t quite reach Borat‘s hilarious heights, it’s still proudly repulsive, smart in spite of itself, and guaranteed to get a rise out of anyone who watches it. (1:23) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
First Position Bess Kargman’s documentary follows a handful of exceptional young ballet dancers, ranging in age from 10 to 17, over the course of a year as they prepare for the Youth America Grand Prix, the world’s largest ballet scholarship competition. Those who make it from the semifinals (in which some 5,000 dancers aged 9 to 19 perform in 15 cities around the world) to the finals (which bring some 300 contestants to New York City) compete for scholarships to prestigious ballet schools, dance-company contracts, and general notice by both the judges and the company directors in the audience. The film’s subjects come from varied backgrounds — 16-year-old Joan Sebastian lives and studies in NYC, far from his family in Colombia; 14-year-old Michaela was born in civil war-torn Sierra Leone and adopted from an orphanage by an American couple in Philadelphia; 11-year-old Aran, an American, lives in Italy with his mother while his father serves in Kuwait. The common threads in their stories are the daily sacrifices made by them as well as their families, whose energies and other resources are largely poured into these children’s single-minded pursuit. We get a vague sense of the difficult world they are driving themselves, in nearly every waking hour, to enter. But the film largely keeps its focus on the challenges of preparing for the competition, offering us many magnificent shots of the dancers pushing their bodies to mesmerizing physical extremes both on- and offstage. (1:34) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)
For Greater Glory (2:15) SF Center.
Headhunters Despite being the most sought-after corporate headhunter in Oslo, Roger (Aksel Hennie) still doesn’t make enough money to placate his gorgeous wife; his raging Napoleon complex certainly doesn’t help matters. Crime is, as always, the only solution, so Roger’s been supplementing his income by stealthily relieving his rich, status-conscious clients of their most expensive artworks (with help from his slightly unhinged partner, who works for a home-security company). When Roger meets the dashing Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones) — a Danish exec with a sinister, mysterious military past, now looking to take over a top job in Norway — he’s more interested in a near-priceless painting rumored to be stashed in Greve’s apartment. The heist is on, but faster than you can say "MacGuffin," all hell breaks loose (in startlingly gory fashion), and the very charming Roger is using his considerable wits to stay alive. Based on a best-selling "Scandi-noir" novel, Headhunters is just as clever as it is suspenseful. See this version before Hollywood swoops in for the inevitable (rumored) remake. (1:40) Lumiere. (Eddy)
Hide Away Josh Lucas plays a grieving man who buys a substantial sailboat sight unseen (note to self: never do that) and spends months restoring it from decrepitude to a thing of beauty. All while never leaving its Lake Michigan dock — and for a while seeming hellbent on self-destruction via winter cold, alcohol, and cough syrup. Among those witnessing his solitary exile are Ayelet Zurer as a woman keeping an eye peeled from her shorefront diner; and James Cromwell as an old salt (he’s actually billed as "The Ancient Mariner") prone to wearing a kilt, playing bagpipes, and spouting wise groaners like "Sometimes when you get to where you’re s’posed to be, it’s too soon." Peter Vanderwall’s screenplay aims for artful minimalism, but still one might wish there were even less of it — too much of the writing is psychologically undercooked, pretentious, silly, or incongruously over-garrulous. There are too many thankless moments of under-contextualized actor exertion, and narrative elements that do not reward when they need to. But if Smoke Signals (1998) director Chris Eyres’ film is shaky as drama, it still provides aesthetic rewards as an exercise in melancholy poetics, especially via Eliot Davis’ photography of the northern Michigan environ through several seasons, and the persistent keening emotion of Tony Morales and Edward Rogers’ original soundtrack. (1:23) SF Film Society Cinema. (Harvey)
High School (1:40) Metreon.
The Hunger Games Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a teenager living in a totalitarian state whose 12 impoverished districts, as retribution for an earlier uprising, must pay tribute to the so-called Capitol every year, sacrificing one boy and one girl each to the Hunger Games. A battle royal set in a perilous arena and broadcast live to the Capitol as gripping diversion and to the districts as sadistic propaganda, the Hunger Games are, depending on your viewpoint, a "pageant of honor, courage, and sacrifice" or a brutal, pointless bloodbath involving children as young as 12. When her little sister’s name comes up in the annual lottery, Katniss volunteers to take her place and is joined by a boy named Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), with whom she shares an old, unspoken bond. Tasked with translating to the screen the first installment of Suzanne Collins’s rabidly admired trilogy, writer-director Gary Ross (2003’s Seabiscuit, 1998’s Pleasantville) telescopes the book’s drawn-out, dread-filled tale into a manageable two-plus-hour entertainment, making great (and horrifying) use of the original work’s action, but losing a good deal of the narrative detail and emotional force. Elizabeth Banks is comic and unrecognizable as Effie Trinket, the two tributes’ chaperone; Lenny Kravitz gives a blank, flattened reading as their stylist, Cinna; and Donald Sutherland is sufficiently creepy and bloodless as the country’s leader, President Snow. More exceptionally cast are Woody Harrelson as Katniss and Peeta’s surly, alcoholic mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, and Stanley Tucci as games emcee Caesar Flickerman, flashing a bank of gleaming teeth at each contestant as he probes their dire circumstances with the oily superficiality of a talk show host. (2:22) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)
Hysteria Tanya Wexler’s period romantic comedy gleefully depicts the genesis of the world’s most popular sex toy out of the inchoate murk of Victorian quackishness. In this dulcet version of events, real-life vibrator inventor Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) is a handsome young London doctor with such progressive convictions as a belief in the existence of germs. He is, however, a man of his times and thus swallows unblinking the umbrella diagnosis of women with symptoms like anxiety, frustration, and restlessness as victims of a plague-like uterine disorder known as hysteria. Landing a job in the high-end practice of Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), whose clientele consists entirely of dissatisfied housewives seeking treatments of "medicinal massage" and subsequent "parosysm," Granville becomes acquainted with Dalrymple’s two daughters, the decorous Emily (Felicity Jones) and the first-wave feminist Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). A subsequent bout of RSI offers empirical evidence for the adage about necessity being the mother of invention, with the ever-underused Rupert Everett playing Edmund St. John-Smythe, Granville’s aristocratic friend and partner in electrical engineering. (1:35) Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)
I Wish It’s tempting to hold Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish up to that other kids adventure story in the theaters, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, but that’s a disservice to Anderson: his arch look back at an age of innocence comes off as loftily contrived in contrast to this gently empathetic, ground-level view of children’s dreams and desires, one that falls well short of preciousness, thanks to Kore-eda’s acute eye for a changing Japan. Brothers Koichi and Ryunosuke (real-life sibs Koki and Ohshiro Maeda) are living apart like their two parents: the former bunks with his mother (Nene Otsuka) and grandparents in Kagoshima, where he plots to get his parents together again and frets over the ash-spewing still-active volcano; the latter is busy enabling his laid-back guitar-playing father (Jo Odagiri of 2003’s Bright Future) on the other side of the island, where he grows fava beans, eats takeout, and hangs out with pals like budding actress Megumi (Kara Uchida). These offspring of Peter Pan-like parents, who have had a tough time growing up and fulfilling their own dreams, have been forced to grow up fast — but Koichi is pinning his hopes on something faster: the new bullet train line that will link his town with his brother’s. He gets it in his mind that if a wish is made when the first trains pass each other, a miracle, like his bickering parents’ reunion, will occur. The kids conspire to grab to that magical moment, by hook or crook, and a little help from an elderly couple that might have stepped out of an older, more gracious Japan, as rhapsodized by Yasujiro Ozu. And as with his devastating portrait of abandoned kids eking out a living on their own, Nobody Knows (2004), Kore-eda effortlessly coaxes great performances out of his child actors. Like Nobody Knows‘s Akira, Koichi and Ryunosuke are determined to persevere, post-familial meltdown, through all personal Armageddons, be they triggered by volcano, tsunami, or heartbreak. (2:08) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)
The Intouchables Cries of "racism" seem a bit out of hand when it comes to this likable albeit far-from-challenging French comedy loosely based on a real-life relationship between a wealthy white quadriplegic and his caretaker of color. The term "cliché" is more accurate. And where were these critics when 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy and 2011’s The Help — movies that seem designed to make nostalgic honkies feel good about those fraught relationships skewed to their advantage—were coming down the pike? (It also might be more interesting to look at how these films about race always hinge on economies in which whites must pay blacks to interact with/educate/enlighten them.) In any case, Omar Sy, portraying Senegalese immigrant Driss, threatens to upset all those pundits’ apple carts with his sheer life force, even when he’s shaking solo on the dance floor to sounds as effortlessly unprovocative, and old-school, as Earth, Wind, and Fire. In fact, everything about The Intouchables is as old school as 1982’s 48 Hrs., spinning off the still laugh-grabbing humor that comes with juxtaposing a hipper, more streetwise black guy with a hapless, moneyed chalky. The wheelchair-bound Philippe (Francois Cluzet) is more vulnerable than most, and he has a hard time getting along with any of his nurses, until he meets Driss, who only wants his signature for his social services papers. It’s not long before the cultured, classical music-loving Philippe’s defenses are broken down by Driss’ flip, somewhat honest take on the follies and pretensions of high culture — a bigger deal in France than in the new world, no doubt. Director-writer Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano aren’t trying to innovate —they seem more set on crafting an effervescent blockbuster that out-blockbusters Hollywood — and the biggest compliment might be that the stateside remake is already rumored to be in the works. (1:52) Embarcadero. (Chun)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi Celebrity-chef culture has surely reached some kind of zeitgeist, what with the omnipresence of Top Chef and other cooking-themed shows, and the headlines-making power of people like Paula Deen (diabetes) and Mario Batali (sued for ripping off his wait staff). Unconcerned with the trappings of fame — you’ll never see him driving a Guy Fieri-style garish sports car — is Jiro Ono, 85-year-old proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny, world-renowned sushi restaurant tucked into Tokyo’s Ginza station. Jiro, a highly-disciplined perfectionist who believes in simple, yet flavorful food, has devoted his entire life to the pursuit of "deliciousness" — to the point of sushi invading his dreams, as the title of David Gelb’s reverential documentary suggests. But Jiro Dreams of Sushi goes deeper than food-prep porn (though, indeed, there’s plenty of that); it also examines the existential conflicts faced by Jiro’s two middle-aged sons. Both were strongly encouraged to enter the family business — and in the intervening years, have had to accept the soul-crushing fact that no matter how good their sushi is, it’ll never be seen as exceeding the creations of their legendary father. (1:21) Bridge. (Eddy)
Marvel’s The Avengers The conflict — a mystical blue cube containing earth-shattering (literally) powers is stolen, with evil intent — isn’t the reason to see this long-hyped culmination of numerous prequels spotlighting its heroic characters. Nay, the joy here is the whole "getting’ the band back together!" vibe; director and co-writer Joss Whedon knows you’re just dying to see Captain America (Chris Evans) bicker with Iron Man (a scene-stealing Robert Downey Jr.); Thor (Chris Hemsworth) clash with bad-boy brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston); and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) get angry as often as possible. (Also part of the crew, but kinda mostly just there to look good in their tight outfits: Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.) Then, of course, there’s Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) running the whole Marvel-ous show, with one good eye and almost as many wry quips as Downey’s Tony Stark. Basically, The Avengers gives you everything you want (characters delivering trademark lines and traits), everything you expect (shit blowing up, humanity being saved, etc.), and even makes room for a few surprises. It doesn’t transcend the comic-book genre (like 2008’s The Dark Knight did), but honestly, it ain’t trying to. The Avengers wants only to entertain, and entertain it does. (2:23) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
Men in Black III Why not? It’s been ten years since Men in Black II (the one where Lara Flynn Boyle and Johnny Knoxville — remember them? — played the villains), Will Smith has barely aged, and he hasn’t made a full-on comedy since, what, 2005’s Hitch? Here, he does a variation on his always-agreeable exasperated-guy routine, clashing with his grim, gimlet-eyed partner Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones, and in a younger incarnation, a spot-on Josh Brolin) in a plot that involves a vicious alien named Boris (Flight of the Conchords’ Jermaine Clement), time travel, Andy Warhol, the moon (as both space-exploration destination and modern-day space-jail location), and lines that only Smith’s delivery can make funny ("This looks like it comes from planet damn.") It’s cheerful (save a bit of melodrama at the end), crisply paced, and is neither a must-see masterpiece nor something you should mindfully sleep through if it pops up among your in-flight selections. Oh, and it’s in 3D. Well, why not? (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
Monsieur Lazhar When their beloved but troubled teacher hangs herself in the classroom — not a thoughtful choice of location, but then we never really discover her motives — traumatized Montreal sixth-graders get Bachir Lazhar (Fellag), a middle-aged Algerian émigré whose contrastingly rather strict, old-fashioned methods prove surprisingly useful at helping them past their trauma. He quickly becomes the crush object of studious Alice (Sophie Nelisse), whose single mother is a pilot too often away, while troublemaker Simon (Emilien Neron) acts out his own domestic and other issues at school. Lazhar has his own secrets as well — for one thing, we see that he’s still petitioning for permanent asylum in Canada, contradicting what he told the principal upon being hired — and while his emotions are more tightly wrapped, circumstances will eventually force all truths out. This very likable drama about adults and children from Quebec writer-director Philippe Falardeau doesn’t quite have the heft and resonance to rate among the truly great narrative films about education (like Laurent Cantet’s recent French The Class). But it comes close enough, gracefully touching on numerous other issues while effectively keeping focus on how a good teacher can shape young lives in ways as incalculable as they are important. (1:34) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)
Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Michelle Devereaux)
Piranha 3DD (1:23) 1000 Van Ness.
Polisse Comparisons to The Wire are not to be tossed around lightly, but when the Hollywood Reporter likened Polisse to an entire season of the masterpiece cop show packed into a single film, it was onto something. Director, co-writer, and star Maïwenn (the object of desire in 2003’s High Tension) hung out with real officers serving in Paris’ Child Protection Unit, drawing inspiration from their dealings with pedophiles, young rape victims, negligent mothers, pint-sized pickpockets, and the like (another TV show worth mentioning in comparison: Law & Order: SVU). But Polisse (the title is deliberately misspelled, as if by a child) is no simple procedural; it plunges the viewer directly into the day-to-day lives of its boisterous characters, who are juggling not just stressful careers but also plenty of after-hours troubles, particularly relationship issues. Between heart wrenching moments on the job (and off), the unit indulges in massive cut-loose episodes of what amounts to group therapy: charades, dance parties, and room-clearing arguments, most of which involve huge quantities of booze. Watching Polisse is a messy, emotional, rewarding experience; no wonder it picked up the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. (2:07) Lumiere. (Eddy)
Snow White and the Huntsman It’s unclear why the zeitgeist has blessed us this year with two warring iterations of the Snow White fairy tale, one broadly comedic (April’s Mirror Mirror), one starkly emo. But it was only natural that Kristen Stewart would land in the latter rendering, breaking open the hearts of swamp beasts and swordsmen alike with the chaste glory of her mien. As Snow White flees the henchmen and hired killers dispatched by her seriously evil stepmother, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), and traverses a blasted, virulent forest populated with hallucinogenic vapors and other life-threatening obstacles, Stewart need not act so much as radiate a dazzling benignity, weeping the tears of a martyr rather than a frightened young girl. (Unfortunately, when required to deliver a rallying declaration of war, she sounds as if she’s speaking in tongues after a heavy hit on the crack pipe.) It’s slightly uncomfortable to be asked, alongside a grieving, drunken huntsman (The Avengers’ Chris Hemsworth), a handful of dwarfs (including Ian McShane and Toby Jones), and the kingdom’s other suffering citizenry, to fall worshipfully in line behind such a creature. But first-time director Rupert Sanders’s film keeps pace with its lovely heroine visually, constructing a gorgeous world in which armies of black glass shatter on battlefields, white stags dissolve into hosts of butterflies, and a fairy sanctuary within the blighted kingdom is an eye-popping fantasia verging on the hysterical. Theron’s Ravenna, equipped in modernist fashion with a backstory for her sociopathic tendencies, is credible and captivating as an unhinged slayer of men, thief of youth, destroyer of kingdoms, and consumer of the hearts of tiny birds. (2:07) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)
What to Expect When You’re Expecting You needn’t direct what you know, but the first major misstep in this ensemble comedy was tapping a man, Kirk Jones (2005’s Nanny McPhee), to helm. Apparently Nicole Holofcener, Nancy Meyers, and Nora Ephron were too busy — busy making films not based on self-help bestsellers. Instead, What to Expect shows how marginal women can be to certain Hollywood blockbuster decision makers. On the surface, it’s all about the gals and their experiences, as an array of women from somewhat different, if pretty uniformly bourgie, walks of life — fitness star Cameron Diaz, baby store owner Elizabeth Banks, food truck chef Anna Kendrick, and trophy wife Brooklyn Decker — all find themselves knocked up. The odd woman out, surprisingly, is the boho photog played by Jennifer Lopez, who aspires to nest with a baby adopted from Ethiopia. But despite the frantic efforts of Banks, who shoulders the comedy burden here with hormones gone wild and gassy, and the climax, which should choke up all present and wannabe moms, the women are consistently upstaged by the bros, primarily the "Dudes Group" of dads headed up by Chris Rock and Thomas Lennon. Unlike the far-too-prominent, shruggable storyline involving an expectant father and son (Dennis Quaid and Ben Falcone), that crew gets the funniest, and perhaps most perceptive lines, in a baldly patriarchal play to the fellows forced into the cineplexes. Can’t the ladies catch a break, even as their waters are breaking? (1:50) Metreon. (Chun)
Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.
THEATER
OPENING
Aftermath Stagewerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Previews Thu/7, 8pm. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. Theatre, Period presents Jessica Blank and Erik Jenson’s docu-drama, based on interviews with Iraqi civilians forced to flee after the US military’s arrival in 2003.
Lips Together, Teeth Apart New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Terrence McNally’s play about two straight couples spending July 4 amid Fire Island’s gay community.
Reunion SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Previews Wed/6-Thu/7, 7pm; Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. SF Playhouse presents a world premiere drama by local playwright Kenn Rabin.
“Risk Is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. Free ($20 donation for reserved seating; $50 donation for five-play reserved seating pass). Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 14. Cutting Ball’s annual fest of experimental plays features two new works and five new translations in staged readings.
Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Previews Fri/8 and June 15, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm. Opens June 16, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; June 22, 8pm. Through July 21. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.
BAY AREA
Wheelhouse TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through July 1. TheatreWorks’ 60th world premiere is a musical created by and starring pop-rock trio GrooveLily.
ONGOING
A Behanding in Spokane SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through June 30. If Garth Ennis had been asked to write a comic book about a one-handed sociopath with a dark obsession, he might well have written something similar to Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane. And admittedly, approached from that angle, a lot of the script’s dramatic flaws are more easily forgiven. There’s not a whole lot of subtle context or languid metaphor to be found in McDonagh’s criminal caper about the little-known “hand-dealing” trade, but as in Ennis’ best known work, Preacher, the pretty girl (Melissa Quine) is the smartest one in the room; the sociopath (Rod Gnapp) is interested in enacting as vicious a revenge on all humanity while spewing as many blatantly offensive invectives as possible; the boyfriend (Daveed Diggs) has some arrested development issues to work out; and the receptionist (Alex Hurt) takes the caricature of man-child to a whole new level. In fact, while all four actors deliver rock-solid performances of their mostly unsympathetic characters, it’s Hurt’s that impresses most. His spooky intensity and goofily tone-deaf determination plays like a combination of Adam Sandler and Arno Frisch, and if there’s a real sociopath in the room, the evidence suggests it’s probably him. Ultimately though the piece relies too heavily on hollow one-liners to remain interesting — a 20-minute farce stretched to 90 minutes — and quite unlike an Ennis comic, it does not leave one wanting more. (Gluckstern)
The Full Monty Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.roltheatre.com. $25-36. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 30. In desperate times, how far would you go to turn a buck? The central premise of the 1997 movie and its namesake musical comedy The Full Monty, the answer to this question is right in the title, which limits the suspense, but amps up the expectations. Set not in Sheffield, England as in the movie, but the similarly economically challenged climate of Buffalo, New York circa the late nineties, the comical romp follows a group of unemployed steel workers who decide, rather optimistically, that spending one night as exotic dancers will solve their immediate financial woes. Banish all notions of a Hot Chocolate sing-along; the soundtrack of the stage musical has little in common with its cinematic predecessor, but there are a couple of toe-tappers, particularly the songs writ for the ladies: a belter’s anthem for their spry but elderly accompanist Jeanette (Cami Thompson), a snarky commentary on male beauty, “The Goods,” for the ensemble. On opening night, Ray of Light’s production ran about 15 minutes long after a late start, and the tempo seemed sluggish in parts, but once it hits its stride, The Full Monty should provide a welcome antidote to the ongoing, we’re-still-in-a-recession blues, red leather g-strings and all. (Gluckstern) Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu/7, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm; Sun/10, 7pm. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.
100 Saints You Should Know Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.therhino.org. $10-30. Wed-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 17. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Kate Fodor’s comedy-drama about family love, homosexuality, and adolescence.
Othello Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-18. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Ninjaz of Drama performs Shakespeare’s classic in a contemporary setting.
Slipping New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Daniel Talbott’s drama about a gay teen who finds new hope after a traumatic breakup.
Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Extended run: June 14 and 21, 7:30pm; June 15-16 and 22-23, 8pm (also June 16 and 23, 2pm); June 18 and 24, 5pm. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.
The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)
BAY AREA
Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through June 24. Berkeley Rep presents a world premiere from writer-performer Dael Orlandersmith (a Pulitzer finalist for 2002’s Yellowman).
Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. That’s because slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next whose penchant for making lackluster life choices has sentenced them to an indefinite prison term of couch-surfing and Teen Mom marathons in their childhood home. Naturally, they desire change, but it’s not until their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man that things do. In an egregious breach of the TMI line, it appears that Mom’s orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz subsequently fall into. Thus removed from the entropy of their former reality they begin testing the parameters of their new one, quickly coming to the realization that sometimes the alternatives to what you already have are even worse. Getting home again is a convoluted, not fully mapped-out process, but in the interim, their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern)
God of Carnage Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also June 16, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 17. Marin Theatre Company performs Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning comedy about two sets of parents who meet after their children get into a schoolyard fight.
The Great Divide Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 24. Shotgun Players performs Adamn Chanzit’s drama about the hot topic of fracking, inspired by Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.
Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)
The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.
The Tempest Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; (510) 809-3290, www.calshakes.org. $35-71. Tue-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also June 23, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through June 25. California Shakespeare Theater opens its season with this dance-filled interpretation of the Bard’s classic tale.
The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Fri, 6pm; Sun/10, June 16, 24, and 30, 11am. Through June 30. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.
PERFORMANCE/DANCE
American Foundation for Equal Rights benefit Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon/11, 8pm. $25-50. BATS Improv and Tom Bruett of marriageequalityplays.com present short plays by local playwrights, plus an improvised short play, on the theme of marriage equality.
“Beef Cake Comedy Show” Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; www.decosf.com. Sun/10, 8pm. $10. Comedy music group Saw Dem Eyes headlines this night of “straight guys telling jokes with their shirts off.”
“The BY Series” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 17. $25. Robert Moses’ Kin Dance Company presents work by guest choreographers Molissa Fenley, Ramon Ramos Alayo, and Sidra Bell, plus the world premiere of Moses’ Scrubbing the Dog.
“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.
“Elementary, My Dear Watson, It Was Crack” Purple Onion, 140 Columbus, SF; (415) 956-1653. Thu/7, 9pm. $20. Comedian Will Franken performs his latest one-man sketch comedy show.
“A Funny Night for Comedy” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.natashamuse.com. Sun/10, 7pm. $10. Natasha Muse and Ryan Cronin host a comedy talk show, followed by “A Funny Night for Improv” at 9pm.
“Feel the Power of the Dork Side” Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm. $15. Engineering professor by day, stand-up comedian by night: Dr. Pete Ludovice performs his solo show.
“Get In Front” Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.getinfront.org. Wed/6, 7pm. $35-250. A benefit for Cancer Prevention Institute of California, this event features performances by principal dancers from San Francisco Ballet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, ODC/Dance, and more.
“House of Matter” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 7pm. $15-25. Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project presents its latest installment of urban dance theater.
“Idina Menzel: Barefoot at the Symphony” Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; (415) 864-6000. Thu/7, 8pm. $69.50-125. The Tony winner performs a show of Broadway and modern pop songs.
“Kunst-Stoff Arts/Fest 2012” Kunst-Stoff Arts, One Grove, SF; kunststoffartsfest2012.eventbrite.com. Thu/7-Sat/9 (Program One) and June 14-16 (Program Three), 8:30pm; Tue/12, 8pm (Program Two). $15. Program one: Dance Elixir and Kunst-Stoff Dance Company; program two: Silvia Girardi performing multimedia theater work All I Wanted to Say; program three: Bruno Augusto and Meisha Bosma.
“Performance Night at the Strand” Strand Theater, 1127 Market, SF; maryarmentroutdancetheater.com. Fri/8, 8:15pm. Free (donations accepted). Mary Armentrout Dance Theater, Oakland’s Milkbar, and Paz de la Calzada present an evening of site-specific performances and installations inspired by de la Calzada’s mural on the shuttered Strand Theater.
“R16 North American B-Boy Championships” Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.r16usa.com. Sat/9, 2-6pm. $10-25. Come check out dancers popping, locking, and otherwise vying to represent North America at the Supreme World Championship finals in South Korea.
San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.worldartswest.org. Sat/9, 2pm. $15. Artist dialogue with “American Tribal Style Belly Dance” creator Carolena Nericcio, followed by a performance by FatChanceBellyDance. Also Sun/10, 2pm, Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin, SF; www.worldartswest.org. Sun/10, 2pm. Free with museum admission ($7-12). Shamanic dance performace by Korean dance master Il Hyun Kim.
“Sex and the City: Live!” Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Tue, 7 and 9pm. Through June 26. $25. Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger, Lady Bear, Trixxie Carr play the fab four in this drag-tastic homage to the HBO series.
“Talkies” Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. Fri/8, 8pm. $6. Stand-up comedy and short comedic films hosted by Anna Seregina and George Chen.
“Voca People” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com. Tue-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6:30 and 9:30pm; Sun, 3 and 6pm. Through June 17. $49-75. A capella from outer space.
“X” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/6-Thu/7, 8pm. $10-20. Australian performer Sunny Drake presents his new show in conjunction with the National Queer Arts Festival.
BAY AREA
“Jazz Hams” Odell Johnson Performing Arts Center, Laney College, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 1pm. $10. The plus-sized performers of Big Moves present a new, full-scale production featuring an array of dance styles.
Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. Complete listings are located at www.sfbg.com.
THEATER
OPENING
Aftermath Stagewerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Previews Thu/7, 8pm. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. Theatre, Period presents Jessica Blank and Erik Jenson’s docu-drama, based on interviews with Iraqi civilians forced to flee after the US military’s arrival in 2003.
Lips Together, Teeth Apart New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Terrence McNally’s play about two straight couples spending July 4 amid Fire Island’s gay community.
Reunion SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Previews Wed/6-Thu/7, 7pm; Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. SF Playhouse presents a world premiere drama by local playwright Kenn Rabin.
“Risk Is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. Free ($20 donation for reserved seating; $50 donation for five-play reserved seating pass). Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 14. Cutting Ball’s annual fest of experimental plays features two new works and five new translations in staged readings.
Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Previews Fri/8 and June 15, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm. Opens June 16, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; June 22, 8pm. Through July 21. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.
BAY AREA
Wheelhouse TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through July 1. TheatreWorks’ 60th world premiere is a musical created by and starring pop-rock trio GrooveLily.
ONGOING
The Full Monty Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.roltheatre.com. $25-36. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 30. Ray of Light Theatre performs the hit musical.
Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu/7, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm; Sun/10, 7pm. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.
100 Saints You Should Know Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.therhino.org. $10-30. Wed-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 17. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Kate Fodor’s comedy-drama about family love, homosexuality, and adolescence.
Othello Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-18. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Ninjaz of Drama performs Shakespeare’s classic in a contemporary setting.
Slipping New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Daniel Talbott’s drama about a gay teen who finds new hope after a traumatic breakup.
The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)
BAY AREA
Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through June 24. Berkeley Rep presents a world premiere from writer-performer Dael Orlandersmith (a Pulitzer finalist for 2002’s Yellowman).
Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. Slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next; when their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man, her orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz fall into. Their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern)
Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)
The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.
Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, and Lynn Rapoport. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.
OPENING
Bel Ami Judging from recent attempts to shake off the gloomy atmosphere and undead company of the Twilight franchise, Robert Pattinson enjoys a good period piece, but hasn’t quite worked out how to help make one. Last year’s Depression-era Water for Elephants was a tepid romance, and Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s belle epoque–set Bel Ami is an ungainly, oddly paced adaptation of the Guy de Maupassant novel of the same name. A down-and-out former soldier of peasant stock, Georges Duroy (Pattinson) — or “Bel Ami,” as his female admirers call him — gains a brief entrée into the upper echelons of France’s fourth estate and parlays it into a more permanent set of social footholds, campaigning for the affections of a triumvirate of Parisian power wives (Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman, and Kristin Scott Thomas) as he makes his ascent. His route is confusing, though; the film pitches forward at an alarming pace, its scenes clumsily stacked together with little character development or context to smooth the way, and Pattinson’s performance doesn’t clarify much. Duroy shifts perplexingly between rapacious and soulful modes, eyeing the ladies with a vaguely carnivorous expression as he enters drawing rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms, but leaving us with little sense of his true appetites or other motivations. (1:42) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)
Double Trouble When crooks nab a priceless painting from a Taipei museum, two security guards — wannabe hero Jay (Jaycee “Son of Jackie” Chan) and Chinese-tourist-on-vacation Ocean (Xia Yu) — reluctantly team up to recover the piece. A road trip of sorts ensues, laden with petty bickering, wacky melees, bonding moments, mistaken identity, gangsters both comical and sinister, and other buddy-comedy trappings. As expected, there are a few high-flying fight scenes; in the film’s production notes, director David Hsun-Wei Chang reveals he was inspired by the Rush Hour movies. Alas, Chan is neither as charismatic nor as breathtakingly nimble as his father (and, obvi, Xia is no Chris Tucker). It should be noted, however, that one of the slithery art thieves is played by underwear model Jessica C., famed in Hong Kong for her “police siren boobs.” So there’s that. (1:29) Metreon. (Eddy)
Elena The opening, almost still image of breaking dawn amid bare trees — the twigs in the foreground almost imperceptibly developing definition and the sky gradually growing ever lighter and pinker in the corners of the frame — beautifully exemplifies the crux of this well-wrought, refined noir, which spins slowly on the streams of dog-eat-dog survival that rush beneath even the most moneyed echelons of Moscow. Sixtyish former nurse Elena (Nadezhda Markina) is still little more than a live-in caretaker for Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov), her affluent husband of almost 10 years. She sleeps in a separate bed in their modernist-chic condo and dutifully funnels money to her beloved layabout son and his family. Vladimir has less of a relationship with his rebellious bad-seed daughter (Yelena Lyadova), who may be too smart and hedonistic for her own good. When a certain unlikely reunion threatens Elena’s survival — and what she perceives as the survival of her own spawn — a kind of deadly dawn breaks over the seemingly obedient hausfrau, and she’s driven to desperate ends. Bathing his scenes in chilled blue light and velvety dark shadows, filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (2003’s The Return) keeps a detached but close eye on the proceedings while displaying an uncanny talent for plucking the telling detail out of the wash of daily routine and coaxing magnetic performances from his performers. (1:49) Lumiere. (Chun)
Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted The animated zoo animals (voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith) join a circus. Hence the clown wigs. (1:33)
Peace, Love and Misunderstanding How is that even as a bona fide senior, Jane Fonda continues to embody this country’s ambivalence toward women? I suspect it’s a testament to her actorly prowess and sheer charisma that she’s played such a part in defining several eras’ archetypes — from sex kitten to counterculture-heavy Hanoi Jane to dressed-for-success feminist icon to aerobics queen to trophy wife. Here, among the talents in Bruce Beresford’s intergenerational chick-flick-gone-indie as a loud, proud, and larger-than-life hippie earth mama, she threatens to eclipse her paler, less colorful offspring, women like Catherine Keener and Elizabeth Olsen, who ordinarily shine brighter than those that surround them. It’s ostensibly the tale of high-powered lawyer Diane (Keener): her husband (Kyle MacLachlan) has asked for a divorce, so in a not-quite-explicable tailspin, she packs her kids, Zoe (Olsen) and Jake (Nat Wolff), into the car and heads to Woodstock to see her artist mom Grace (Fonda) for the first time in two decades. Grace is beyond overjoyed — dying to introduce the grandchildren to her protests, outdoor concerts, and own personal growhouse — while urbanite Diane and her kids find attractive, natch, diversions in the country, in the form of Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Cole (Chace Crawford), and Tara (Marissa O’Donnell). Yet there’s a lot of troubled water for the mother and daughter to cross, in order to truly come together. Despite some strong characterization and dialogue, Peace doesn’t quite fly — or make much sense at its close — due to the some patchy storytelling: the schematic rom-com arch fails to provide adequate scaffolding to support the required leaps of faith. But that’s not to deny the charm of the highly identifiable, generous-spirited Grace, a familiar Bay Area archetype if there ever was one, who Fonda charges with the joy and sadness of fallible parent who was making up the rules as she went along. (1:36) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)
Prometheus Ridley Scott returns to Alien (1979) turf with this sci-fi thriller starring Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Noomi Rapace, and Guy Pearce. (2:03)
ONGOING
Bernie Jack Black plays the titular new assistant funeral director liked by everybody in small-town Carthage, Tex. He works especially hard to ingratiate himself with shrewish local widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), but there are benefits — estranged from her own family, she not only accepts him as a friend (then companion, then servant, then as virtual “property”), but makes him her sole heir. Richard Linklater’s latest is based on a true-crime story, although in execution it’s as much a cheerful social satire as I Love You Philip Morris and The Informant! (both 2009), two other recent fact-based movies about likable felons. Black gets to sing (his character being a musical theater queen, among other things), while Linklater gets to affectionately mock a very different stratum of Lone Star State culture from the one he started out with in 1991’s Slacker. There’s a rich gallery of supporting characters, most played by little-known local actors or actual townspeople, with Matthew McConaughey’s vainglorious county prosecutor one delectable exception. Bernie is its director’s best in some time, not to mention a whole lot of fun. (1:39) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)
A Cat in Paris This year’s Best Animated Film nominees: big-budget entries Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, and eventual winner Rango, plus Chico and Rita, which opened just before Oscar night, and French mega-dark-horse A Cat in Paris. Sure, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s film failed to cash in on 2011’s Paris craze, but it’s still a charming if featherweight noir caper, being released stateside in an English version that features the voices of Marcia Gay Harden and Anjelica Huston. A streetwise kitty named Dino spends his days hanging with Zoey, a little girl who’s gone mute since the death of her father — a cop killed in the line of duty. Zoey’s mother (Harden), also a cop, is hellbent on catching the murderer, a notorious crook named Costa who runs his criminal empire with Reservoir Dogs-style imprecision. At night, Dino sneaks out and accompanies an affable burglar on his prowlings. When Zoey falls into Costa’s clutches, her mom, the thief, and (natch) the feisty feline join forces to rescue her, in a series of rooftop chase scenes that climax atop Notre Dame. At just over an hour, A Cat in Paris is sweetly old-fashioned and suitable for audiences of all ages, though staunch dog lovers may raise an objection or two. (1:07) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)
The Color Wheel Carlen Altman, a nervous comedian who moonlights as a Jewish rosary maker, was doing stand-up in Brooklyn when filmmaker Alex Ross Perry approached her about collaborating on a project. The idea for a brother-sister movie came to be: The Color Wheel, a droll and perverse take on vexed lives in transition, tinged with 16mm. Perry directed, produced, and edited the film while co-writing with Altman. When the film begins, a dopey JR (Altman) shows up at the apartment of her misanthropic brother Colin (Perry). JR convinces him to help move her stuff out of her professor ex-boyfriend’s place. Inevitably, their Northeastern road trip follows other tangents, taking the pair on a hilarious and sad journey that raises more questions than answers about their fraught relationship. They meet a lot of jerks, but no one more so than themselves; their characters, filterless with no desire to grow up or shut up, are far behind everyone they encounter. With all its zeitgeisty humor and lovably awful people, The Color Wheel takes some dark turns — it begins as a charming, dour comedy, but ends up viscerally queasy and pitiful, with its two leads as mixed-up as ever. (1:23) Roxie. (Ryan Lattanzio)
I Wish It’s tempting to hold Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish up to that other kids adventure story in the theaters, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, but that’s a disservice to Anderson: his arch look back at an age of innocence comes off as loftily contrived in contrast to this gently empathetic, ground-level view of children’s dreams and desires, one that falls well short of preciousness, thanks to Kore-eda’s acute eye for a changing Japan. Brothers Koichi and Ryunosuke (real-life sibs Koki and Ohshiro Maeda) are living apart like their two parents: the former bunks with his mother (Nene Otsuka) and grandparents in Kagoshima, where he plots to get his parents together again and frets over the ash-spewing still-active volcano; the latter is busy enabling his laid-back guitar-playing father (Jo Odagiri of 2003’s Bright Future) on the other side of the island, where he grows fava beans, eats takeout, and hangs out with pals like budding actress Megumi (Kara Uchida). These offspring of Peter Pan-like parents, who have had a tough time growing up and fulfilling their own dreams, have been forced to grow up fast — but Koichi is pinning his hopes on something faster: the new bullet train line that will link his town with his brother’s. He gets it in his mind that if a wish is made when the first trains pass each other, a miracle, like his bickering parents’ reunion, will occur. The kids conspire to grab to that magical moment, by hook or crook, and a little help from an elderly couple that might have stepped out of an older, more gracious Japan, as rhapsodized by Yasujiro Ozu. And as with his devastating portrait of abandoned kids eking out a living on their own, Nobody Knows (2004), Kore-eda effortlessly coaxes great performances out of his child actors. Like Nobody Knows‘s Akira, Koichi and Ryunosuke are determined to persevere, post-familial meltdown, through all personal Armageddons, be they triggered by volcano, tsunami, or heartbreak. (2:08) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)
Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Michelle Devereaux)
Snow White and the Huntsman It’s unclear why the zeitgeist has blessed us this year with two warring iterations of the Snow White fairy tale, one broadly comedic (April’s Mirror Mirror), one starkly emo. But it was only natural that Kristen Stewart would land in the latter rendering, breaking open the hearts of swamp beasts and swordsmen alike with the chaste glory of her mien. As Snow White flees the henchmen and hired killers dispatched by her seriously evil stepmother, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), and traverses a blasted, virulent forest populated with hallucinogenic vapors and other life-threatening obstacles, Stewart need not act so much as radiate a dazzling benignity, weeping the tears of a martyr rather than a frightened young girl. (Unfortunately, when required to deliver a rallying declaration of war, she sounds as if she’s speaking in tongues after a heavy hit on the crack pipe.) It’s slightly uncomfortable to be asked, alongside a grieving, drunken huntsman (The Avengers’ Chris Hemsworth), a handful of dwarfs (including Ian McShane and Toby Jones), and the kingdom’s other suffering citizenry, to fall worshipfully in line behind such a creature. But first-time director Rupert Sanders’s film keeps pace with its lovely heroine visually, constructing a gorgeous world in which armies of black glass shatter on battlefields, white stags dissolve into hosts of butterflies, and a fairy sanctuary within the blighted kingdom is an eye-popping fantasia verging on the hysterical. Theron’s Ravenna, equipped in modernist fashion with a backstory for her sociopathic tendencies, is credible and captivating as an unhinged slayer of men, thief of youth, destroyer of kingdoms, and consumer of the hearts of tiny birds. (2:07) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport) *
Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.
WEDNESDAY 6
Tribute to a radical poet Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF. www.thegreenarcade.com. 7pm, free. Committed political radical and award-winning writer-poet Marilyn Buck was imprisoned over 30 years for her revolutionary activities, and freed less than a month before her death from cancer at age 62. Join local author Sin Soracco (who has penned Low Bite and Edge City) in celebrating the release of Buck’s posthumous release Inside/Out: Selected Poems.
“Sex Money Power” exhibition Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF. www.p1sf.com. Also Thu/7, 7pm-noon, free. This contemporary art show is about the things we all crave — sex, money, and power. Glossy and glamorized paintings by Nick Flatt depict images of these vices using a modern, graphic style.
THURSDAY 7
“Sustainable Catch”: Cooking and wine pairing at NightLife California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF. calacademy.org/events. 6pm-10pm. $12. Celebrate World Oceans Day with food and wine from Sausalito’s sustainable seafood joints, Fish and Ki. Watch as chefs wield their fish expertise and razor-sharp knives as they teach on how to pair dishes with wine. Schmooze with members of local ocean conservation organizations, who will also be in attendance and available to answer all your wet ‘n’ wild questions.
SATURDAY 9
World Naked Bike Ride Justin Herman Plaza, SF. Facebook: World Naked Bike Ride San Francisco. 11am-4pm, free. It’s that time again — time to get undressed to the nines and pedal alongside tens of thousands of nude crusaders the world over, who will be joining similar rides in other cities in protest of global dependency on oil cartels. Naked protests, our favorite.
Maddie’s Matchmaker Adoptathon Various San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa County shelters. www.maddiesadoptathon.org. Also Sun/10. Today, visit 13 Bay Area pet shelters and rescue groups who are offering free canine and feline adoptions — it’s the perfect day to find your new best friend. Whatever shelter you choose will benefit as well — local nonprofit Maddie’s Fund will give each organization $500 to $2,000 for every furry friend that gets taken home.
Beer cooking with Top Chef‘s Ryan Scott Pyramid Alehouse, 1410 Locust, Walnut Creek. www.pyramidbrew.com. 4pm-6pm, free. Arrive early to snag a seat for this live broadcast of Cooking with Ryan Scott on KGO 18 AM. Using his favorite suds, Top Chef‘s Scott will cook and grill, discuss pairings, and explore the beer cocktail. Pyramid will be serving up samples of the ales and infused treats featured.
Urban Agriculture coming of age farm tours Various Bay Area farms. www.iuhoakland.com. 11am-6pm, last tour starts at 5pm, $5 per tour. The urban agriculture movement is expanding and the Institute of Urban Homesteading is inviting you to tour private backyards, frontyards, yards of every size really, to see what established urban farmers in the Bay Area are up to. Take a gander at what productive urban agriculture can look like on a small, medium, large, or extra-large urban lot by signing up for one of these home garden tours.
Writers With Drinks literary night Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. 7:30pm-9:30pm, $5–$10 sliding scale. Enjoy a spoken word variety show featuring poetry, stand-up comedy, and readings from literature of many genres at an event that raises money for important local causes. Come see why Guardian readers have given it the Best of the Bay award for “Best Literary Night” six years in a row.
SUNDAY 10
Nice Collective sample sale 1999 Bryant, SF. www.nicecollective.com, www.blasthaus.com. Noon-5pm, free. Calling all fashionistas, listen to live DJ sets while you muse over temporary art installations and the modern fashion collections of this local brand. Today’s shopping event includes reduced-price garments from past and present seasons, plus limited edition and prototype items.
Record your story with StoryCorps Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF. www.storycorps.org. 11am-4pm, free. This year marks the 45th anniversary of the Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage in the US — a day that we now honor as Loving Day. To honor this monumental ruling, StoryCorps hosts a special community recording day for multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and mixed heritage individuals, couples, and families. Come share the story of your family — it might be chosen to become one of StoryCorps animated narrations.
MONDAY 11
Bryan Gruley whodunit author reading Book Passage Bookstore, 51 Tamal Vista, Corte Madera. www.bryangruley.com. 7pm, free, $25 for hardcover book. While elderly residents enjoy bingo night in the small town of Starvation Lake, mysterious break-ins plague their homes. Someone is rifling through their financial and personal files, but taking nothing. When the break-ins escalate to murder, worry turns to panic. Follow the protagonist — a journalist forced to investigate the case — as author Bryan Gruley describes his new mystery novel.
Credit where it’s due: My competitor and sometimes journalistic adversary Joe Eskenazi has a nice little piece on the weird money behind the campaign against Prop. B, a policy statement about the privatization of Coit Tower. He points out that such varied groups as the California Dental Association and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians have coughed up money to protect the right of San Francisco officials to close Coit Tower to the public and rent it out for fancy corporate parties.
And how exactly did that happen?
Well, Eskenazi manages to tie Willie Brown into it. (He also calls this “Nimby against the Swells,” which isn’t quite fair — I don’t think the supporters of Prop. B are trying to keep anything out of their back yards. If anything, they want more noisy tourists and fewer quiet, subdued rich-people events. And I don’t think the “swells” are against it as much as the mayor, his Rec-Park director and big businesses that generally back the privatization of public resources.)
But there’s another interesting twist: I’m not sure the folks who gave to the Golden State Leadership Fund Political Action Committee, which is running a No on B independent expenditure, had any clue where their money was going.
Sure, the Chamber of Commerce and BOMA know what’s up, and it’s pretty clear why they like the idea of raising money for the parks by holding exclusive private events instead of by raising taxes. But the Indians? And the dentists? By what possible stretch do they care about a San Francisco ballot measure that has nothing to do with Native American rights or oral health?
Eskenazi may be right — maybe Brown called the Indians and asked, and they threw the money his way to help his buddy the mayor (while keeping the mayor’s fingers out of this particular political pie). But the Golden State Leadership PAC, through which all this money flowed, has been around for years and gives money to candidates all over the state. (It’s definately something of a slush fund for local races — files in the Secretary of State’s office show that in 2008, money from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. flowed in and out of the PAC as it ran a campaign against the San Francisco public-power measure, Prop. H. PAC money went to David Chiu, Phil Ting and Ed Lee for mayor.) It’s based in West Hollywood and the treasurer is a guy named William Molina.
I called the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and the California Dental Association and asked them why there were helping fund a campaign against Prop. B in San Francisco. The press person at the dental group apparently had no idea what I was talking about and asked for more details about the contribution. I gave her the date and the PAC and I haven’t heard back.
The Indians didn’t seem to clear on Prop. B, either. Kenneth Shoji, a spokesperson for the group, told me by email:
The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians made a contribution of $25,000 to the Golden State Leadership Fund PAC with the expectation of helping to support candidate(s) for public office in the 2012 elections. We do not control where or how the PAC might extend its support beyond that.
In other words: This Coit tower thing is news to us.
UPDATE: I got essentially the same message from the dentists. Alicia Malaby at the CDA writes:
When an organization such as CalDPAC contributes to an independent expenditure committee, that committee may spend money on races and issues that CalDPAC supports, but may also spend money on other campaigns. CalDPAC does not control how those committees spend money, and in this case, CalDPAC has no interest in and no position on Proposition B.
UPDATE TWO: Ron Cottingham at PORAC just called me and said his group has no position on or interest in Prop. B. The money that went to the PAC was earmarked to support Rob Bonta for Assembly in the East Bay. Presumably the PAC folks keep track of such things.
Maybe not. Maybe Willie or someone else made a call. It happens all the time. I mean, somebody clearly was raising money for this PAC, which right now isn’t doing a hell of a lot besides No on B in San Francisco. (Oh, I called Brown, too. He hasn’t called back. He never does. I still always try.)
Either way, it’s a classic San Francisco political story — and it reflects how muddy and corrupt local politics can still be, even in an era of electronic disclosure and ethics laws. Why, if the dentists and Indians don’t like Prop. B, didn’t they (or any of the others in the PAC) create a No on B committee, disclose who was behind it and let the voters know a little more about the real money trail? Why funnel all this cash through a little-known Southern California PAC?
And for that matter, why is there a sudden influx of late money in this race? Has the mayor and the Chamber types suddenly discovered that Prop. B might pass — and might set a precedent against future privatization efforts?
June 5 is Election Day. Vote early and often.
It really just so happens that a few of this week’s obligatory shows are at club nights (Jel, Friendzone, and Antwon at Future Perfect, Yalls at Push the Feeling) featured in last month’s post-everything cover story, my article profiling local experimental party curators.
What’s more, there are other shows in this stretch that recall the vibes of those featured: great lineups with weird, beats-plus-chords, hi-fi meets lo-fi, robot with a heart of gold overarching themes (Maus Haus and more at Rickshaw, Owen Ashworth’s Advance Base at Café Du Nord).
And then there are your classic rock’n’rollers; we’ve got some of those for you too – it’s just a banner batch all around this time, folks.
Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:
Tim Cohen
Scruffy singer-songwriter Tim Cohen, of popular local psych-garage band the Fresh & Onlys, is about to release his second full-length under the solo Magic Trick moniker, the lush and folky Ruler of the Night (Hardly Art, June 12) – an album that somehow weaves in synth, surf guitar, back-up vocals from the Aislers Set’s Noelle Cahill and Alicia Van Heuvel, and surreal beats. Plus, this show is totally free. Rather hard to resist.
With Survival Guide, 8th Graders
Tue/5, 9pm, free
Brick and Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission, SF
(415) 371-1631
www.brickandmortarmusic.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg5zFruYc_E
Nick Waterhouse
“The retro-minded songwriter-arranger-producer crafts perfect little tributes to the punchy 1950s R&B sounds he’s been drawn to since he was a kid, all steeped with an endearing reverence for old-school record culture and recording techniques.” – Landon Moblad
Wed/6, $12 sold out
Verdi Club
2424 Mariposa, SF
(415) 861-9199
www.verdiclub.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJruQmdlU10
Advance Base
Formerly the Bay Area-born solo keyboard entity known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Owen Ashworth ended his longterm project in 2010 to focus all his musical efforts on Advance Base – a less delicate evolutionary step for the lyric-driven, minimalist singer-songwriter/growing family man. Advance Base released debut album, A Shut-In’s Prayer, last month. Ashworth describes the new offerings as “Dreamy waltzes, American folk traditionals, & minimalist electro pop torch songs.”
With Nicholas Krgovich, David and Joanna
Thu/7, 8pm, $12
Cafe Du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyNCaitW96I
Yalls
Yalls – Berkeley’s Dan Casey – sounds like the tape ending, unraveling to the ground, like the world falling apart and then picking itself up, dusting itself off, and rising to the dancefloor. Basically: weird-flowing synth, trippy samples, and twitchy beats with spooky echoing vocals. Here’s hoping he plays the dreamy tracks off February’s Fantasy seven-inch.
Push the Feeling
Fri/8, 9pm, Free with Facebook RSVP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-S1JnP8d1E
Maus Haus, Mwahaha, Exray’s, Devonwho
It’s rare to find a set of bands so thoroughly watchable as this lineup at the Rickshaw Stop. Let’s break it down. There’s Maus Haus (always a futuristic digi-treat), psych-rockers Mwahaha, along with producer Devonwho, who recently remixed “Ancient Thing,” a song by the last piece in this awesome post-modern puzzle: Exray’s. The single is a cut from the upcoming Exray’s dystopian electro-pop record Trust a Robot, out June 26 on Howells Transmitter.
Fri/8, $10
155 Fell, SF
www.rickshawstop.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gFhCqmE7EY
Jel
Anticon-co-founder, rapper, and producer Jel is known for creating drum beats with little or no sequencing – as in, playing the drums live via sampler pads, and killing it. His hands disappear over those illuminated little squares, and fresh beats emerge, seemingly effortlessly (though we all know the precision and sweat likely involved).
Future Perfect with GuMMy Bear, Antwon, Friendzone, Jaycasio
Fri/8, 10pm, $5
Public Works
161 Erie, SF
www.publicsf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twHhcB4D-po
Corrosion of Conformity
“With bassist Mike Dean taking over vocal duties from guitarist Pepper Keenan (busy playing in Down), COC have returned to their hardcore roots. Expect high tempos and chaos in the pit.” – Ben Richardson
With Torche, Black Cobra, Gaza
Sat/9, 8pm, $21
Slim’s
333 11th St., SF
(415)-255-0333
www.slimspresents.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2I2mK_3_ns
Balkan Beat Box at Israel in the Gardens
An Israeli dude walking along the boardwalk of a somewhat scuzzy coastal beach town — maybe like the dark vision of Santa Cruz in Lost Boys — with a boombox on his shoulder, blasting classic hip-hop and bouncy dancehall beats, passes a world music trio performing Mediterranean and Balkan roots music on percussion and hot brass with a whirling dervish spinning out front. They all collide, and out comes Balkan Beat Box.
Sun/10, 11am festival, 3pm performance; free
Yerba Buena Gardens
750 Howard, SF
www.jewishfed.org
Facebook: Israel in the Gardens 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWbqcV8HqbI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qqwtrd8PzA
East Bay Open Studios, presented by Oakland’s Pro Arts, is the largest and most exciting arts event in the region!
This year, over 400 artists from 16 cities in the East Bay open their studiosto the public, offering an opportunity for art fans of all ages to visit artists’ studios, to glimpse their creative process, and purchase works directly from local artists. Since 1979, this event remains the largest art event in the region and draws an annual audience over 50,000!
Pro Arts invites critics, writers, and gallerists to curate their own tour picks to offer studio-goers new starting points for their East Bay Open Studios experience. The curated tour itineraries will be available at Pro Arts and online.
Saturdays and Sundays, June 2 & 3 and June 9 & 10 from11am-6pm. Call (510) 763-4361 or visit this website for more info.
If they held an election and nobody noticed, would it still count? Because that’s what this Tuesday’s presidential primary election is starting to feel like: the election that everyone ignored.
Okay, okay, not everyone is ignoring this election. San Francisco Elections Director John Arnst tells us that his department has received about 55,000 mail-in ballots so far out of the nearly 217,000 they sent out, a turnout of about 25 percent. And 1,110 voters have cast their ballots in person during early voting at City Hall as of this afternoon, a level lower than the 2010 or 2008 primaries “by quite a bit,” Arnst said.
That’s not really surprising given that both major political parties have already chosen their presidential candidates, there are no other offices being seriously contested, and the rest of the ballot consists of the Democratic County Central Committee (and its Green and Republican parties counterparts) races and a pair each of ho-hum statewide and local ballot measures. The most interesting one is Proposition A, which seeks to break Recology’s waste collection monopoly in San Francisco by requiring competitive bidding.
“If the garbage issue is the most exciting issue on the ballot, you know it’s the most boring election ever,” says Tony Kelly, who is leading the campaign for Prop. A.
With the exception of a press conference that Kelly and other Prop. A supporters held last week to accuse Recology of being complicit in an alleged recycling kickback scheme by some of its employees, there’s been little to indicate Prop. A has much chance of success given that almost every endorsing group (except the Guardian) opposes the measure.
“Goliath doesn’t lose very often, and we’re being outspent 100 to one,” Kelly said, expressing hopes that the measure can at least garner 35-40 percent of the vote to send a message that Recology should work with the city to allow competitive bidding on some of its contracts.
But with turnout expected to be low, Recology isn’t taking any chances. Its political consultant, Eric Potashner, says the campaign has been assembling up to a couple hundred volunteers and its SoMa headquarters each weekend and “we’re doing the full grassroots outreach.” He expressed confidence that the measure will be defeated: “Folks have been well educated on this issue.”
Arnst estimates that this will be a historically low turnout election: “Top end right now, comparing the last three presidential primaries, I’m looking at 40 percent as the top turnout possible.”
But you know what that means, right? Your vote could be more decisive than ever, particularly for the 24 members of the DCCC, the outcome of which could move the ideological center of that body before its important endorsements in the fall Board of Supervisors races. So click here to take a look at the Guardian’s endorsements and don’t forget to vote.
Our Bar of the Week guide profiles taverns, lounges, pubs, canteens, and dives around town to expand your lexicon of bar knowledge. Keep reading to discover your new favorite watering hole.
Abbey Tavern
Neighborhood: Inner Richmond – 4100 Geary Blvd. SF, (415) 221-7767
What you’ll find: A neighborhood favorite Irish Pub and Sports bar that has been serving local Guinness drinkers some of “San Francisco’s Best Pints” since 1997.
What to order: Order the August beer of the month – Newcastle.
Fun Fact: There is live music from local and touring bands on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights, as well as one of the longest running Euro-Disco DJ nights in the Bay Area.
Crowd: Mostly locals – make Abbey your home away from home for world sports!
Drink specials not to miss: Try their famous Sunday bloody mary special.
Wreck Room
Neighborhood: Nob Hill – 1390 California St., SF, (415) 823-2337
What you’ll find: The bar boasts a pool table, Pop-a-Shot, shuffleboard, ten TVs, jukebox, and a super plush women’s bathroom stocked with US Weekly magazines.
What to order: Order one of the daily a drink specials and hit up the hoops or dartboard.
Fun Fact: All of the wood in the bar is salvaged maple from the gym floor at Carlmont High in Belmont.
Greens Sports Bar
Neighborhood: Nob Hill/Russian Hill/Cow Hollow – 2239 Polk, SF, (415) 775-4287
What you’ll find: Aside from the many TVs and sports memorabilia that line the walls, there’s much to like about Green’s including the pool table, video games, and plenty of seating.
What to order: We have a great selection of beers on tap, including Shock Top!
Fun Fact: Greens is the best place to catch a game or ponder life.
Crowd: Happy hour patrons from the neighborhood and rowdy, fun sports fans on game nights.
Drink specials not to miss: We have cheap beer specials – just ask!
Aces Bar
Neighborhood: Tender Nob – l998 Sutter St. in San Francisco, on the corner of Sutter and Hyde.
What you’ll find: We are a neighborhood bar with a little bit of everything, including nine flat screen TVs so you dont miss a game, a brand new golden T, a jukebox that usually has the Rolling Stones or Springsteen coming out of it. We have cheap drink prices, friendly bartenders and clean bathrooms. Home base for all four major New York sports teams as well as the Wisconsin badgers Alumni group.
What to order: Our Favorite order is a BJ, i.e. Budweiser or Bud light and a shot of Jameson for $8
Fun fact: We open at 6 A.M. everyday of the year! Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years day. No, we don’t serve food and yes we’re serious!
Crowd: Being open 20 hours a day a wide range of characters come in. Midnight shift workers, FiDi people for happy hour, sports enthusiasts, east coasters, and restaurant and bar industry folks.
Upcoming events: We have done bus trips to games, brewerys, and Golden Gate Fields as well as boat trips to McCovey Cove. Best way to stay informed is through our Facebook page.
Drink specials not to miss: Take your pick! Well drinks are $4 everyday from 6am-8pm. Monday’s special is a $4 Jameson shot, and Wednesday is ladies night where women get two-for-one drinks.
Tope Bar
Neighborhood: North Beach – 1326 Grant Ave. in San Francisco.
What you’ll find: When you walk in you’ll notice the old-fashioned lighting, tin ceiling, funky wallpaper, rotating artwork, and the old school back bar. You may also notice the deep and balanced bass urging you to get your groove on, or the unique and expansive selection of draft and bottled beers.
What to order: If creative cocktails are your thing, then try one of our artisinal cocktails. You will appreciate the fresh herbs, fruit compotes, and wide selection of bitters.
Fun Fact: The word “tope” is a verb that means to drink alcohol habitually and in excess. So, get toping!
Crowd: It’s a casual, mixed crowd with locals and tourists alike.
Drink specials not to miss: We have a late happy hour until 10pm every day that includes $3 wells and beers on tap.
Bus Stop Bar
Neighborhood: Marina – 1901 Union Street
What you’ll find: There’s something for everyone – friendly bartenders, pool, Big Buck Hunter, Ms. PacMan, 17 big screen TVs so you will never miss a game, and much, much more.
What to order: Choose from a great selection of inexpensive drinks.
Fun Fact: Bus Stop is one of the oldest bars in San Francisco and was founded in 1900!
Crowd: Casual atmosphere with plenty of big-time sports fans.
Drink specials not to miss: We’re known for our tasty Bloody Marys
Gussie’s Chicken and Waffles
Neighborhood: Western Addition – 1521 Eddy in San Francisco
What you’ll find: True home cooking with a crazy mix of flavors
What to order: Taste of the South fried chicken special.
Fun Fact: Sunday dinner every night!
Clientele/ crowd: casual
Drink specials not to miss: Happy Hour M-F, 4-7:30pm with specials on drinks and 1/2 off appetizers.
Pilsner Inn
Neighborhood: Castro — 225 Church St. in San Francisco
What you’ll find: Since 1980, Pilsner Inn has been entertaining and quenching the thirsts of San Francisco’s gay (and straight!) community
What to order: huge selection of our best draft and bottled beers at unbelievable prices.
Fun Fact: You could say every hour is happy hour here!!
Clientele/ crowd: casual
Drink specials not to miss: Variety of specials on cocktails along with shot specials.
Cable Car City Pub & Cafe
Neighborhood: Downtown- 1 Hallidie Plaza, 5th and Market in San Francisco
What you’ll find: A great place to catch your favorite teams on our 10 tv’s.
What to order: Try our Effen cucumber bloody Mary made with our own bloody Mary mix and fresh basil.
Fun Fact: We have outdoor seating and serve breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Clientele/ crowd: A mix of locals and out of towners.
Drink specials not to miss: Generous $5 Jameson shots all day and happy hour 3-6 Monday- Saturday.
El Rio
Neighborhood: Mission/BernalHeights- 3158 Mission St in San Francisco
What you’ll find: Organized mayhem under the sky and often involving clowns…
What to order: Something with booze in it!!!
Fun Fact: There’s a bicycle hanging in a tree on the patio, can you find it?
Clientele/ crowd: Freaks, weirdos, loads of queers and some of the nicest people you will ever meet.
Drink specials not to miss: Best one… Come in on your birthday and we will hook you up!
McTeague’s Saloon
Neighborhood: 1237 Polk Street SF, (415) 776-1237, Polk Gulch
What you’ll find: We are currently in the process of our second round of renovations since we opened in 2008. In our first expansion, we added a 2nd bar in the middle “lounge” section. With a few extra flat-screen’s and a pool table.
What to order: We have one of best beers selections on Polk street and we are always trying out new local and other various micro brews from time to time just to mix it up.
Fun Fact: Since we opened our doors in 2008, we’ve been working hard to become a Polk Street institution. Even our name derives from a book about a San Francisco dentist who set up shop on Polk street in nearly our exact same location.
Clientele/ crowd: We are the #1 stop on Polk Street for all your sporting needs, NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, English Premier Soccer the list goes on.
Drink specials not to miss: We have weekly & monthly specials and even special free product tastings.
About 40 gathered outside Chevron’s San Francisco offices yesterday to mark its annual shareholder meeting. The demonstration was organized by OccupySF’s environmental justice working group, and used art and street theater to criticize Chevron’s involvement in hydraulic fracturing, a natural gas extraction process that may threaten parts of California’s water supply.
The afternoon protest came after a larger group showed up to Chevron’s world headquarters in San Ramon for the shareholder meeting that morning. According to Ginger Cassady of Rainforest Action Network (RAN), who helped organize the protest, it was a “big, colorful demonstration” with “over 100” in attendance.
Groups like the True Cost of Chevron and RAN’s Change Chevron campaign have been pressuring the company for years on a variety of issues. This year, workers and residents in areas where Chevron operates from Ecuador, Brazil, Angola and Nigeria travelled to San Ramon to voice their concerns. These ranged from oil-contaminated land in the Ecuadorian Amazon to an explosion on an oil rig off the shore of Nigeria in January. In that explosion, two workers were killed and more than 100 local people left the city for fear of contamination and other health risks caused by a fire that burned for months before going out on its own, despite Chevron’s efforts to contain the flames.
About 30 activists from around the world entered the meeting with proxy votes, according to Cassady. None interrupted the meeting, instead waiting their turn to speak. There were no arrests.
Some people with proxy votes, however, were not allowed access to the meeting. João Antonio de Moraes, national coordinator of Brazil’s United Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), was not allowed access, along with two representatives from United Steel Workers. Another worker, at the meeting to present in support of a resolution for worker safety, was initially blocked from entering but allowed access after a dispute, but had his presentation notes confiscated.
At the meeting, Chevron CEO John Watson announced “tremendous performance momentum” for the company, with “earnings of $26.9 billion” in the past year, according to a press release.
“Watson reinforced Chevron’s long-standing culture of safety and environmental stewardship, and resulting industry-leading performance,” the press release states. “He also highlighted Chevron’s commitment to partnerships that address health, education and economic development issues in the communities where the company operates, and Chevron’s global social investments of approximately $1 billion over the past six years.”
But Chevron is also suffering financially due to liability following oil spills, explosions, and contamination, a concern protest organizers say Watson failed to address. Representatives from Chevron did not return calls for comment.
The company recently settled with plaintiffs in Ecuador after an appeals court there ordered that they pay $18 billion in fines for spilling and deliberately dumping a total of 345 million gallons of crude oil in the Amazon rainforest of northeastern Ecuador.
Stockholders in attendance voted on eleven proposals, including seven submitted by shareholders, at the meeting. All of the votes went with the recommendation of the Board of Directors- including a proposal to reform the Board of Directors itself. That proposal asked that the Board of Directors find an independent Chair to head it up, as the current Chair is Chevron’s CEO, John Watson. The Board of Directors has the authority to incentivize and, if necessary, fire CEOs.
“We believe this presents a conflict of interest that can result in excessive management influence on the board of weaken the board’s management oversight,” read the proposal.
The proposal, along with several others, mentioned the Ecuador lawsuit, saying “we believe that independent board leadership is key at Chevron, given the questions raised about the oversight by the board of the CEO’s management and disclosure to shareholders of the financial and operational risks to the company from the $18 billion dollar judgment in the Ecuadorian courts in 2011.”
“With all these major legal liabilities that Chevron is facing a lot of people are concerned,” said Cassady. “Chevron is profitable at the expense of worker safety, the environment, human rights and our economy.”
Other stockholder proposals dealt with safety, transparency, and the environmental impacts of Chevron’s international operations. A proposal asking Chevron to disclose money spent on lobbying received approximately 23 percent of votes, a proposal asking for a report on what the company has done to reduce the risk of accidents like the Niger Delta explosion received only eight percent of the vote, and a proposal that Chevron nominate a new board member with environmental expertise failed as well with 23 percent of votes cast.
Shareholders also voted on a proposal that Chevron release a report on the financial, environmental, and community impacts of hydraulic fracturing, the focus of the afternoon protest in San Francisco. The proposal received about 27 percent of the vote.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of extracting natural gas by injecting dense underground rock formations with a pressurized mixture of water, sand and chemicals. It has been hailed as an environmentally friendly alternative to oil drilling, as natural gas burns cleaner than oil.
But protest movements have coalesced around fracking practices in the Appalachian mountains region and above the Marcellus Shale, as residents report toxic chemicals in their water supplies, endangering drinking water as well as water used for raising livestock and growing food.
The 2010 documentary Gasland included now notorious footage of residents near a Pennsylvania fracking operations whose tap water bursts into flames.
Fracking operations in California are less well known. The protest outside of Chevron’s San Francisco offices yesterday drew attention to this issue- and the extensive list of chemicals present in fracking solution.
“It’s happening in California, but it’s not really talked about” said Ellen Osuna. Osuna now lives in San Francisco, but moved from New York, where she says she worried about her water supply since it comes from aquifers near the Marcellus Shale.
The protest featured an 180-foot banner, painted by artist Ruthie Sakheim. The banner listed more than 70 chemicals found in fracking fluid, in alphabetical order.
“It’s not even halfway through the A’s” said Sakheim.
She also handed out bottles of water oil-colored water labeled “Frackelicious Frackwater Unsustainable Energy Drink.” The label listed some of the more toxic chemicals involved in the process under “ingredients” along with “no preservatives, no artificial flavors, 100 percent poison.”
According to a report released by the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce, fracking fluid contains 750 chemicals, which “ranged from generally harmless and common substances, such as salt and citric acid, to extremely toxic substances, such as benzene and lead” as well as many carcinogens, according to the report.
These chemicals, along with gas itself, can enter water supplies when the casing on wells cracks or when wastewater containers spill.
The Safe Drinking Water Act of 2005 specifically exempts hydraulic fracturing, a lack of regulation known as the Halliburton Loophole.
Fracking currently takes place in nine California counties, including Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Monterey. But the extent of hydraulic fracturing in California isn’t well known, and yesterday, the California Senate rejected SB1054, which would have required energy companies to notify landowners before using hydraulic fracturing on or near their land.
In between chants of “ban fracking now!” Sakheim told me that she spent several months painting the banner, and plans to continue the project of listing the chemicals involved in fracking in artistic form.
“I have three kids,” said Sakheim. “I really worry about what will happen to them with these corporations having so much control to influence government.”
When Mayor Ed Lee unveiled his proposed $7.3 billion city budget today, it was a sharp contrast to the annual budget rituals of his predecessor, Gavin Newsom, both in style and substance. Not only did Lee present a budget without employee layoffs or cuts to critical social services, but he capped months of collaborative work with the Board of Supervisors by presenting his proposal in Board Chambers.
Newsom preferred to offer his budgets during press conferences in his office or at media-friendly events outside City Hall, and his budgets were developed with little input from supervisors and almost always included controversial cuts to programs favored by progressive supervisors or constituencies, triggering an angry backlash that created an air of acrimony around the board’s budget hearings.
“It’s a very good budget. We’re very pleased with the process the mayor followed, and with the outcome in most cases,” Sup. David Campos told us, later adding, “The fact that the budget was presented in chambers was a good thing and a real change.”
Flanked at the podium by Board President David Chiu and Budget Committee Chair Carmen Chu, Lee began his address to the capacity crowd of department heads and other interested parties by noting, “As many of you know, I’m a person who does not like a whole lot of drama.”
He thanked those who have worked on the budget over the last six months – which included tough negotiations with labor unions that were tempered by higher-than-expected city revenues – and said the budget “really is an expression of our values as a city.” And this time, it was a statement and set of priorities that even progressives could agreed with.
“At a time of state cuts, protecting our social safety net is more important than ever,” Lee said as he announced that his budget included full funding for public health, human services, and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs, all of which were cut by Newsom, with the supervisors then having to find funding to restore them.
Lee credited his economic development programs with this year’s budget turnaround – commenting that “San Francisco’s economy has recovered and our reserves are growing” – and it is true that the payroll taxes paid by businesses came in about $65 million above projections.
But an even bigger factor in this year’s projected budget deficit shrinking from $263 million to $170 million was the increase in the real estate transfer tax on properties over $5 million, proposed by progressives and approved by voters in 2010. The real estate transfer tax is expected to bring in more than $200 million in the coming fiscal year, $85 million more than this year. By comparison, the 5 percent across-the-board budget cuts that Lee ordered earlier this year amounted to just $58 million.
How to view the improving city budget situation is critical right now as Lee and his business community allies finalize negotiations over their fall ballot proposals to reform the city’s business tax structure and to create a housing trust fund to subsidize affordable residential development. Each needs to be in final form by the end of June, and Lee told us both are still being negotiated behind closed doors.
Lee has insisted the business tax reform be revenue-neutral, but SEIU Local 1021, the largest city employee union, wants it to bring in an additional $30-50 million per year, which represents how much the city has lost every year since 2001 when the biggest downtown corporations sued to invalidate the city’s gross receipts tax.
That union recently commissioned a study from researcher David Kersten of Kersten Communications that shows the city’s budget picture is actually better than presented in the mayor’s budget, which relies on revenue projections from March even though revenues have continued to increase since then. “I think it’s a little dishonest to put out deficit figures that are so out of date,” Kersten told us, arguing that it was a deliberate effort to maintain a sense of fiscal crisis in the city.
“We know that revenues are coming in higher than it was in March,” the union’s Gabriel Haaland told us. “They need to be honest with what the fiscal picture is.”
Indeed, despite the absence of the major doom-and-gloom that has marked past budget proposals, this year’s budget – the city first two-year budget proposal, thanks to voters approving Prop. A last year – continues to project a city government in decline in the coming years.
While Lee managed to avoid deep social service cuts, and propose a beefing up of the Police and Fire departments, it predicts that “General Administrative and Finance” functions will drop to $834.3 million in 2012-13 and $831.1 million in 2013-14, and that “General City Responsibilities” will fall to $615.2 million in 2012-13 and $579.7 million in 2013-14.
Campos said that it’s important to reverse the deep cuts that city government has undergone every year for more than decade, starting with a business tax reform measure that brings in new revenue as it broadens the tax base. “We can’t forget there have been sacrifices that have been made,” he said. “Revenue enhancement has to be part of the solution.”
Lee and his supporters in the business community have portrayed the stimulation of economic growth as the key to the city’s fiscal salvation, even as they create business tax exemptions for Twitter and other companies to create that growth. But tech companies with venture capital funding can end up increasing rents and other costs on the rest of the economy, as Lee acknowledged in his speech.
“I know there are anxieties out there because rents are starting to sneak up,” Lee said, arguing for a housing trust fund to subsidize “more housing for people at every income level.”
After his speech, Lee acknowledged that he still hasn’t struck a deal on the proposal – which commercial landlords are opposing because it would be funded by an increase in the real estate transfer tax – saying they were discussing the possibility of a new funding mechanism. “We have a little gap and we’re trying to figure that out,” Lee said.
Asked by reporters how he was able to avoid the deep cuts of previous budgets, Lee credited the improving revenue situation and said, “I think we’re incredibly lucky.”
I stumbled on the oddest deal on a union-gossip website, but I’ve checked it out and it’s really happening — and it could be a total trainwreck for progressive politics in San Francisco.
The deal, still in draft form, is an “agreement on political unity” between SEIU Local 1021, one of the most progressive unions in the state and part of the voice of the left in San Francisco, and SEIU-UHW, a much more moderate union that has been taken over by the international. (One example of the tension between the two: Local 1021 has been and remains a strong supporter of Sup. John Avalos, and UHW leader Leon Chow is challenging him in District 11, something that even Randy Shaw, who increasingly disagrees with my politics, finds distasteful.) UHW has attacked the hotel workers union and split with most of the rest of labor around CPMC.
The way the deal would work is this: Both unions would choose a candidate. If they disagreed, the head of the international, Mary Kay Henry, would appoint a mediator to essentially break the tie. That person could unilaterally “direct the joint endorsment of one candidate.”
It would be a radical change — for the first time, the members of Local 1021 would cede final control of their endorsements to the international.
Ed Kinchley, a co-chair of Local 1021’s political action commitee, told me he finds the proposal troubling. “I’m not at all interested in having the international have a say in who we endorse,” he said. “Decisions about endorsements should be in the hands of our members.”
He said he’s all in favor of trying to find areas of agreement between the two SEIU locals — “but do I want to have something enforced on us if we can’t agree? No.”
The agreement specificially exempts the Avalos-Chow race and it calls for UHW to endorse Eric Mar and David Campos. Campos is basically unbeatable, so that doesn’t matter. The nod from UHW to Mar will be helpful to him.
But overall, this could dilute the progressive force of one of the most important voices in local politics. Local 1021 is more than just a city employee union; it’s a part of the progressive coalition, part of the left in this town. Forcing a joint endorsement with a union that is distinctly not part of the progressive coalition can only undermine Local 1021’s historical role.
And it’s odd; as the Stern Burger with Fries blog puts it:
If you’re Local 1021, why would you sign this deal? Local 1021 is a big political player in San Francisco with lots of members, money and foot soldiers. [UHW leader Dave] Regan has shown again and again that he’s hostile to the priorities of Local 1021’s members. Basically, he’s bedded down with the business community. So, if you’re [Local 1021’s Roxanne] Sanchez, why would you agree to this so-called “unity” deal? It hands over control of Local 1021’s political destiny to Regan and some SEIU bureaucrat in DC. Plus, when push comes to shove, everyone knows that [International head] Mary Kay Henry is going to back Regan over Sanchez. If Local 1021 accepts this deal, they’re basically declaring unilateral disarmament as far as their political future.
I couldn’t reach Sanchez and her phone isn’t taking messages. But I spoke with Chris Daly, the former supervisor and now Local 1021 political director, who told me he wasn’t there when the deal was negotiated. But he said “we’ve had many internal discussions on this” and that “the policy of speaking with one voice makes sense.”
When I told him I thought this was a progressive fumble, he said: “I disagree with your analysis.”
The proposal is scheduled to come before the SEIU 1021 COPE June 7.
