Mission

Video Premiere: Uzi Rash “Garbageland”

Tony Robles
-
0

Beach squelch shimmy is back.

Just in time for its Halloween show at Brick & Mortar Music Hall, where it will take part in punk rock tradition alongside the likes of Nobunny and Ty Segall, Oakland’s Uzi Rash has gifted us this exclusive peek at its next album, a video directed Dan Shaw (big brother of Shannon of Shannon & the Clams).

I Was 30 in 2012, due out in November after some delay, features the song “Garbageland.” Enjoy scenes of what appears to be the band giving “Ring Around the Rosie” a go, mixed with horrifying images of half-human, half-beasts foraging for rotten foods. I would say that this is reminiscent of the “I am The Walrus” segment from Magical Mystery Tour on acid, but it’s fair to assume that was already the case. So take a gander here at this bum trip version — or perhaps it’s Uzi Rash’s take of a dystopian future, and remember to catch the band covering the Undertones for Halloween this Friday, Oct.28.

Uzi Rash
With Nobunny,Ty Segall, Apache, and Zulus
Friday/28, 8 p.m. $10, 18+
Brick & Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission, SF
(415) 800-8782.
www.brickandmortarmusic.com

Marc Bamuthi Joseph gets the green movement to live, already

Andrew Lam
-
0

Consider, if you will, the prosaic class issues in the green movement. The price of BART vs. driving, the utility of feeding one’s children McDonald’s after one’s shift is order so you can play with them outside the kichen, the inconvinient truth of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Now add race, and stir. 

Dancer-community activist-poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph did. The result was the Life is Living festival, which he stages in underserved ‘hoods throughout the country (and took place in West Oakland Oct. 8). The festival’s amazing, but its creation was a journey — which Bamuthi has brilliantly set to stage with dancing and singing at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through Sat/22. It’s called red, black & GREEN: a blues“I’ve got this male Liz Gilbert eat-pray-hip-hop kind of thing,” recounts Bamuthi onstage during opening night at YBCA. Around him, bisected sharecropper’s cabins swing open and shut, revealing their innards and front porches by turns. The set was made from repurposed materials and clay by Theaster Gates (new favorite name), who is participating in double-time — Gates is one of three supporting characters in the play, mainly contributing those eponymous blues in a rich voice from a porch.

Bamuthi’s flip remark (it reaps a guffaw from the audience, one of many garnered from the play’s dealings with race and class) evokes the difficulties that he and his “do-gooder” team faced in cobbling together Life is Living. Originally meant as an eco-festival — Bamuthi’s account of meeting with New Age Oakland environmental activists is gold — the group shifted the traveling events focus to “the celebration of living.” 

The cast of red, black & GREEN: the blues. Photo by Bethanie Hines

The play could be read as an explanation of why this transformation took play. In the scene that serves as the performance’s chorus, repeating through the play, Bamuthi talks to a grieving mom about his festival. “I ask a mother about environment/She tells me of guns/Of emotionally disabled boys.”

She’s got bigger fish to fry than hydroponic gardens. As does a sculptor: “He speaks to me of misters/Old men gathered to pastime/Play young/men games/Share news/Insult/Seed comfort/Cultivate friendship.” A freezing crackhead in the New York winter: “I’m calling collect from tomorrow/track riding.”

And you forget you’re being taught (Bamuthi is fond of likening himself to a 10th grade teacher) because it’s all gorgeous, real artists doing their real artist things. Characters recreate sunny day hip-hop cut-ups, but they also morph their bodies to evoke addiction, old age — two miraculous transformations that showcase the talent in their bodies through the way they restrict their own mobility.

Asking about “what sustains life” instead of “what is sustainable” could be an important cognitive shift for the green movement — one that would reactivate the choir and provide an entry point for people just coming to the green movement. Bamuthi was a featured artist for the NAACP’s centennial anniversary celebration during Barack Obama’s inauguration exercises. President Obama… I hear you’re having some PR troubles. Were you listening to this guy? 

 

red, black & GREEN: a blues

Thu/20-Sat/22 7:30 p.m., $10-$25

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

The bad old days

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
The bad old days

tredmond@sfbg.com

Willie L. Brown, according to the Chronicle’s John Cote, is “a tremendously popular figure in the city, viewed by many as an avuncular man-about-town, elder statesman and a uniquely San Franciscan character.” The Ed Lee Story, a hagiographic campaign book, refers to Brown’s “characteristic showmanship and hypnotic charm.” Even Randy Shaw, the housing activist who clashed with Brown over gentrification once upon a time, now says in BeyondChron that Brown’s first term “was the most progressive of any mayor in modern San Francisco history.”

I feel as if I’m living in some sort of strange parallel universe, something out of Orwell or North Korea or the Soviet Union of the 1950s. It’s as if history never happened, as if the years between 1996 and 2004 have just vanished, have been deleted from San Francisco’s collective memory. It’s crazy.

I wonder:

What about the thousands and thousands of people who lost their homes and were tossed out of the city like refugees from a war? What about the rampant corruption at City Hall? What about the legions of unqualified political cronies who got good jobs and commission posts? What about the iron-fisted machine rule that kept local politics closed to all but the loyal insiders? Doesn’t any of that count?

Here are some things that absolutely, undeniable, demonstrably happened while Willie Brown was mayor:

Rents on the East Side of town, particularly in the Mission, tripled and sometimes quadrupled between 1996, when Brown took office, and 2004, when he left. Evictions more than tripled, too, and at one point more than 100 people a month were losing their homes. Most of those people were low-income, long-term tenants. They were forced out because richer people were moving into town during the dot-com boom and could pay more for those apartments. We called it the “Economic Cleansing of San Francisco.”

Every day, it seemed, we’d be out at another rally as the Tenants Union and the Mission Antidisplacement Coalition tried to save another family from the forces of gentrification. Every week, it seemed, another group house full of artists would be served an eviction notice. Everywhere you looked, nonprofits and small businesses were losing space to high-tech companies with plenty of money.

I watched the wrecking crew tear down a studio complex on Bryant Street, forcing more than 100 painters and photographers to leave, to make way for a high-tech office project that was approved even though it violated the local zoning laws — and then was never built. For two years, I walked to get my lunch past the empty hole in the ground that had once been a thriving community.

That was typical. Every developer who waved money in front of the mayor got a building permit, no matter how crazy, illogical or illegal the project was. The Planning Department and the Bureau of Building Inspection were little more than fronts for the lobbyists and Brown cronies who determined development policy in the city.

In October, 1999, the author Paulina Borsook wrote a famous piece in Salon called “How the Internet Ruined San Francisco.” I agreed with the sentiment; the influx of the dot-commers was wrecking all that was cool and weird about the city. But she got one point wrong: The Internet didn’t ruin anything. The Internet was, and is, a technology, a tool, something that, like most technological advances, can be used for good or evil.

Mayor Brown didn’t create the dot-com boom. Although he took credit for an awful lot of things, even Willie didn’t claim to have invented the Internet.

But what he did — and what ruined many San Francisco neighborhoods, and ruined the lives of many San Franciscans — was to let the economic cleansing of the city happen, without raising a finger to slow it down or prevent the evictions or protect the most vulnerable people in the city. Over and over, he encouraged it — by appointing commissioners and supervisors and department heads who allowed evictions and development and displacement in the name of growth and prosperity.

In fact, when reporters from the zine Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll asked Brown about the problems facing poor people, he told them that the city had become so expensive that poor people would be better off living somewhere else.

Because he didn’t care about poor people, or tenants, or artists, or anyone who lacked money and flash and dazzle and clout. He was the worst kind of imperial mayor.

Here’s how we put in it in our 33rd anniversary issue in 1998:

“Let’s say the next major earthquake that hits San Francisco is of roughly the same magnitude of the Loma Prieta quake of 1989, or maybe just a bit stronger. Let’s say it wipes out right 1,000 houses and leave some 5,000 people homeless … and lets say a few unscrupulous profiteers take advantage of the shortages of critical supplies and charge desperate residents triple the normal rate for food, blankets and drinking water….

“The profiteers, speculators and charlatans would be exposed in the press and roundly, loudly denounced by every political and community leader in the city. The ones who didn’t wind up in jail would be forced to leave town in disgrace.”

Or else they wouldn’t. Because when an economic earthquake ravaged San Francisco during his term, Brown — the most powerful mayor in modern history, a guy who could have had an immense impact on what was happening — went to meet the speculators and profiteers with outstretched arms, welcomed them to the city and partied with them at night.

And when he ran for re-election, they thanked him by funding an astonishing $5 million campaign.

Then there was the corruption. Not only did Brown raise pay-to-play to a new art form, he filled the city payroll and key commissions with campaign workers, former political allies, and cronies, subverting the civil service system and undermining both the function of city agencies and public respect for local government. At least seven Brown appointees were indicted or investigated for criminal misconduct. While sentencing a Housing Authority official to five years in prison, U.S. District Judge Charles Legge decried what he called Third World-style corruption at San Francisco City Hall.

When Mayor Ed Lee, who is now seeking a full four-year term, was asked to give Brown a grade for his eight years in Room 200, Lee said: A-Plus.

Which makes us a little nervous. To say the least.

I’ve been going back through the Guardian archives over the past couple of weeks, picking out some great covers to reproduce (see page 18) and looking at four and a half decades of alternative news coverage of San Francisco. And if there’s one theme that emerges from the stacks and stacks and stacks of papers, it’s that local government matters.

In the 1960s, when the underground press was talking about sex, drugs and dropping out, the Guardian was talking about the ways big corporations were stealing the taxpayers’ money at City Hall. (Okay, the Guardian wrote about sex and drugs too. But sex and drugs and political scandals.)

The difference between the independent alternative press and the underground papers of the era was more than just thematic. The underground publishers were having a great time and celebrating culture, but none of those publications was built to last. From the day they published their first issue in October, 1966, Guardian founders Bruce Brugmann and Jean Dibble intended their paper to become a permanent part of San Francisco.

The Guardian quickly demonstrated that it had a different approach than a lot of the “New Left” — particularly when it came to electoral politics. At a time when some were saying that it made no difference whether Ronald Reagan or Pat Brown won the 1966 governor’s race, the Guardian made the key point about Reagan.

“California cannot afford the luxury of this kind of conservatism,” a Nov. 7, 1966 editorial stated. “Because of the millions of people coming to California, because San Francisco and Los Angeles soon will have the greatest concentration of urban power in history, because farm land and open space is vanishing at a suicidal rate, because technology is putting vast populations out of work, because of the social neglect of our cities and the uglification of our countryside, because we now have the knowledge to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.”

And while the paper devoted considerable space to reporting on and opposing the war in Vietnam, it was also developing a reputation for local investigative reporting. One June 7, 1971 story showed how the city had all of its short-term deposits in local banks that paid no interest at all. The story parked an investigation by the city’s budget analyst, the resignation of the city treasurer — and a new investment policy that brought the city at least $1 million more revenue a year. (Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $5 million a year, times 40 years is a lot of money that the Guardian brought into the city coffers).

And from the start, the Guardian was a nonpartisan, independent foe of corruption, secrecy and undue influence at City Hall. So while the paper eagerly endorsed Phil Burton (and later his brother, John) for Congress and lauded their antiwar and environmental policies, the Guardian also blasted the Burtons for exercising undue influence back home. The paper strongly endorsed George Moscone for mayor — then denounced him when he fired Harvey Milk from a commission post after Milk had the gall to challenge the Moscone/Burton candidate for state Assembly.

The 1999 Sunshine Ordinance, which dramatically opened up City Hall records, was sponsored and promoted by the Guardian. Willie Brown and his cronies hated it.

It’s probably a misnomer to say that the Burtons, who were a dominant force in local politics in the 1970s and 1980s, ran an old-fashioned machine. They didn’t have the iron control over local politics and the patronage jobs system that the word “machine” implies.

But when Brown became mayor of San Francisco, he had all of that. Brown controlled eight solid votes on the Board of Supervisors (and through various political machinations, had managed to appoint most of them). “He ruled the building,” Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who was a supervisor during those years, recalled. “If you defied him, you were radioactive.”

And one of the people who rose through the ranks as a loyal Brown appointee was Ed Lee. Who to this day thinks things in that administration were just dandy.

 

The Lee campaign complains about “guilt by association,” and that’s a legitimate point. Ed Lee isn’t Willie Brown. He’s a lot more open, a lot (a lot) more humble, and as numerous progressives have pointed out to us, his door is open. He doesn’t have the history of sleaze that pretty much defined Brown’s political career.

There will be no “Ed Lee Machine.” In fact, with district elections of supervisors pretty much guaranteeing more diffuse political power in the city, there will never be another mayor able to rule the way Brown did.

And these days, Brown’s clout could easily be overstated. Until he engineered the selection of Ed Lee as mayor, his power seemed to be waning. And even Mayor Lee hasn’t done everything that Brown wanted.

Of course, the Chronicle, which he helped immensely when Hearst Corp. bought the paper and had trouble with federal regulators, has helped Brown by giving him a column that created a new, sanitized persona.

But the important thing about the Brown administration was not so much who was in charge but who benefited. The landlords, the developers, the big corporations got pretty much what they wanted from City Hall. The rest of us got screwed.

And now those same interests — in some cases, the exact same people — who supported, promoted and worked with Willie Brown are backing Lee for mayor. If they thought he was going to be an independent progressive, that money and support wouldn’t be coming in. There are people who miss the machine days — and if they think Ed Lee is their guy, it’s reason to worry.

Corruption matters. When people lose faith in local government because they see the kind of sleaze that was daily business under Brown, then they stop wanting to pay taxes for public services. After all, the mayor is wasting our money already. Lee may be a decent guy — but some of the people he hangs out with, some of the people who are supporting him, have a long and very unpleasant history in this town. And all the time he was sitting there at City Hall, while Brown was running a corrupt operation that did lasting damage, Lee never raised a public finger in protest. I hate to see all the history forgotten when people decide who to support for mayor in November, 2011.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
-
0

Schedules are for Wed/19-Tues/25 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $7-35. ATA Film and Video Festival: opening reception, Wed, 7; short film screenings, Thurs-Fri, 8; Super 8 film workshop, Sun, 1-4. “Other Cinema:” “Anomalies of the Archive,” Sat, 8:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-15. •Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968), Wed, 2:20, 7, and Inferno (Argento, 1980), Wed, 4:50, 9:30. “Berlin and Beyond Film Festival:” Almanya: Welcome to Germany (Samdereli, 2011), Thurs, 7; Mount St. Elias (Salmina, 2009), Fri, 3:30; Joschka & Mr. Fischer (Danquart, 2011), Fri, 6; How About Love (Haupt), Fri, 9:15; Winter’s Daughter (Schmid), Sat, 1 and Mon, 4; Little Alien (Kusturica, 2009), Sat, 3; The Poll Diaries (Kraus, 2010), Sat, 6:45; Sennentuntschi (Steiner, 2010), Sat, 6:45; The Tigerduck Gang (Probost), Sun, 11am; Face the Wall (Weinert, 2010), Sun, 1; The Fatherless (Kreutzer, 2011), Sun, 3:30; Bold Heroes (Schaerer), Sun, 6; The Day I Was Not Born (Cossen, 2010), Sun, 8:45; Stopped On Track (Dresen, 2011), Mon, 6:30; Klitschko (Dehnhardt, 2011), Mon, 9:15; Jane’s Journey (Knauer, 2010), Tues, 3:30; Remembrance (Justice, 2011), Tues, 6; The Sandman (Luisi, 2011), Tues, 8:30. For tickets (most shows $12) and more information, visit www.berlinbeyond.com.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. Call for program information.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10 (reservations required as seating is limited). “CinemaLit Film Series: Discovering Myrna Loy:” Manhattan Melodrama (Van Dyke, 1934), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” “Jordan Belson: Films Sacred and Profane” (1959-2005), Wed, 7:30. “The Outsiders: New Hollywood Cinema in the Seventies:” Bush Mama (Gerima, 1975), Thurs, 7; The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich, 1971), Sat, 8:40. “Rainer Werner Fassbender: Two Great Epics:” Berlin Alexanderplatz, Parts IV-VII (1979-80), Fri, 7; Parts VIII-XI (1979-80), Sun, 2. “UCLA Festival of Preservation:” Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Altman, 1982), Sat, 6:30. “Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov:” “Kino-Pravda Nos. 14-17” (1922-23), Tues, 7.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, through Oct 27. For tickets (most shows $11) and more info, visit www.sfindie.com. SFFS | NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $8-25. “NY/SF International Children’s Film Festival,” Sat-Sun, 10am. (This event also has programming Fri, 5pm, Premier Theater, Letterman Digital Arts Center, Presidio, SF). •An Injury to One (Wilkerson, 2002), Mon, 6:30, and “Orbit(film)” (curated by Mike Plante), Mon, 8. “Behind the Story: Under Suspicion,” presented by the Center for Investigative Reporting, Tues, 7. SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. “Thursdays at Noon Film Series: When Women Got the Vote:” •Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema (2008), Give the Ballot to the Mothers (1996), and The Sixth Star (2011), Thurs, noon. “Bay Area Community Cinema Series:” Deaf Jam (Lieff), Tues, 5:45. VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $5 donation. “The Vortex Incarnate:” •Image of the Beast (Thompson, 1980), Thurs, 9, and Devil Dog: Hound of Hell (Harrington, 1978), Thurs, 11. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Mexico Rising: The Films of Nicolás Pereda:” Juntos (Together) (2009), Thurs, 7:30; •Where Are Their Stories? (2007), and All Things Were Now Overtaken By Silence (2010), Sun, 2.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

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

Fear SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $12-25. Opens Tues/25, 8pm. Runs nightly through Oct 31, 8pm. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs improvised horror stories.

Pellas and Melisande Cutting Ball Theater, Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Previews Fri/21-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 5pm. Opens Oct 27, 8pm. Runs Thurs, 7:30; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Nov 27. Cutting Ball Theater performs Rob Melrose’s new translation of Maurice Maeterlinck’s avant-garde classic.

Race American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-85. Previews Fri/28-Sat/22 and Tues/25, 8pm (also Sat/22, 2pm); Sun/23, 7pm. Opens Oct 26, 8pm. Runs Tues-Sat, 8pm (Nov 1, performance at 7pm; also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm (no matinee Oct 26; additional show Nov 6 at 7pm). Through Nov 13. ACT performs David Mamet’s wicked courtroom comedy.

Richard III Curran Theatre, 445 Geary, SF; 1-888-746-1799, www.shnsf.com. $35-150. Opens Wed/19, 7:30pm. Runs Tues-Fri, 7:30pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 29. Kevin Spacey plays the lead in this Sam Mendes-directed production of the Shakespeare classic.

The Rover, or the Banish’d Cavaliers, The American Clock Hastings Studio Theater, 77 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10 ($15 for both productions). Oct 19-Nov 5, performance times vary. American Conservatory Theater’s Masters of Fine Arts program presents plays in repertory by Aphra Behn and Arthur Miller.

Savage in Limbo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Opens Wed/21, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs John Patrick Shanley’s edgy comedy.

You Will Gonna Go Crazy Bayanihan Community Center, 1010 Mission, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $7-17. Opens Fri/21, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 30. Kularts presents a multimedia dance-theater play.

BAY AREA

Doubt: A Parable Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Opens Fri/21, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Nov 13, 2pm. Through Nov 19. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer-winning drama.

Rambo: The Missing Years Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Thurs/20, 7pm. Runs Thurs-Fri, 7pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Dec 10. Howard “Hanoi Howie” Petrick presents his solo show about being an anti-war demostrator — while also serving in the Army.

Sam’s Enchanted Evening TheaterStage at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Thurs/20, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through Nov 26. The Residents wrote the script and did the musical arrangements for this musical, featuring singer Randy Rose and pianist Joshua Raoul Brody.

ONGOING

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Thurs/20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

Almost Nothing, Day of Absence Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 20. Lorraine Hansberry Theatre performs one-act plays by Marcos Barbosa and Douglas Turner Ward.

Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $15-35. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 5. Written in 1979 by a 28-year-old Paula Vogel, Desdemona retells a familiar Shakespearean tragedy, Othello, through the eyes of its more marginalized characters, much as Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead did with Hamlet in 1966. In Vogel’s play, it is the women of Othello — Desdemona the wife, Emilia her attendant (demoted down to washer-woman in Vogel’s piece), and Bianca, Cassio’s lover, and the bawdy town pump — who are the focus, and are the play’s only onstage characters. Whiling away an endless afternoon cooped up in the back room of the governor’s mansion, the flighty, spoiled, and frankly promiscuous Desdemona (Karina Wolfe) frets over the loss of her “crappy little snot-rag,” while her subservient, pious, but quietly calculating washer-woman Emilia (Adrienne Krug) scrubs the sheets and mends the gubernatorial underpants with an attitude perfectly balanced between aggrieved, disapproving, and cautiously optimistic. Though the relationship between the two women often veers into uncomfortable condescension from both sides, their repartee generally feels natural and uncontrived. Less successfully portrayed is Theresa Miller’s Bianca, whose Cockney accent is wont to slip, and whose character’s boisterous nature feels all too frequently subdued. Jenn Scheller’s billowing, laundry-line set softens the harsh edges of the stage, just as Emilia’s final act of service for her doomed mistress softens, though not mitigates, her unwitting role in their mutual downfall. (Gluckstern)

Honey Brown Eyes SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-50. Tues-Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Nov 5. Bosnia in 1992 is divided in a horrifying civil war, some characteristics of which play out in parallel circumstances for two members of a single rock band in SF Playhouse’s west coast premiere of Stefanie Zadravec’s new play. In the first act, set in Visegrad, a young Bosnian Muslim woman (Jennifer Stuckert) is held at gunpoint in her kitchen by a jumpy soldier (Nic Grelli) engaged in a mission of murder and dispossession known as ethnic cleansing. The second act moves to Sarajevo and the apartment of an elderly woman (Wanda McCaddon) who gives shelter and a rare meal to an army fugitive (Chad Deverman). He in turn keeps the bereaved if indomitable woman company. Director Susi Damilano and cast are clearly committed to Zadravec’s ambitious if hobbled play, but the action can be too contrived and unrealistic (especially in act one) to be credible while the tone — zigzagging between the horror of atrocity and the offbeat gestures of romantic comedy — comes over as confused indecision rather than a deliberate concoction. (Avila)

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Nov 13. Acclaimed solo performer Don Reed (East 14th) premieres his new show, based on his post-Oakland years living in Los Angeles.

Making Porn Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-50. Thurs, 8pm; Fri-Sun, 7pm (also Fri-Sat, 10pm). Through Oct 29. Ronnie Larsen brings back his crowd-pleasing comedy about the gay porn industry.

“Master Harold” … and the Boys Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $18-40. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Off Broadway West Theatre Company performs Athol Fugard’s South African-set drama.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs/19-Fri/21, 8pm; Sat/22, 8:30pm; Sun/23, 3pm. 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. (Avila)

Nymph Errant Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Wed, 7pm; Thurs/19-Fri/21, 8pm; Sat/22, 6pm; Sun/23, 3pm. 42nd Street Moon performs Cole Porter’s madcap 1933 musical.

*The Odyssey Aboard Alma, Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, SF; www.weplayers.org. $160. Oct 28-29, Nov 4-6, 11-12, and 18, 12:30pm. Heralding their hugely ambitious Spring 2012 production of The Odyssey, which will take place all over Angel Island, the WE Players are tackling the work on a slightly smaller scale by staging it on the historic scow schooner Alma, which is part of the Maritime National Historical Park fleet docked at the end of Hyde Street Pier. Using both boat and Bay as setting, the essential chapters of the ten-year voyage — encounters with the Cyclops, Circe, the Underworld, the Sirens, Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, and Calypso — are enacted through an intriguing mash-up of narration, choreography, sea chanteys, salty dog stories (like shaggy dog stories, but more water-logged), breathtaking views, and a few death-defying stunts the likes of which you won’t see on many conventional stages. High points include the casual swapping of roles (every actor gets to play Odysseus, however briefly), Ross Travis’ masked and flatulent Prometheus and sure-footed Hermes, Ava Roy’s hot pants-clad Circe, Charlie Gurke’s steady musical direction and multi-instrumental abilities, and the sail itself, an experiential bonus. Landlubbers beware, so much time facing the back of the boat where much of the action takes place can result in mild quease, even on a calm day. Take advantage of the downtime between scenes to walk around and face forward now and again. You’ll want to anyway. (Gluckstern)

On the Air Pier 29 on the Embarcadero (at Battery), SF; (415) 438-2668, love.zinzanni.org. $117 and up (includes dinner). Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Dec 31. Teatro ZinZanni’s final performance at Pier 39 riffs on the company’s own struggles to stay in San Francisco. Geoff Hoyle and Duffy Bishop are the headlining guest stars.

*red, black & GREEN: a blues (rbGb) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $5-25. Thurs/19-Sat/22, 7:30pm. This remarkably protean new piece from Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project searches for common ground between the environmental movement at large and movements for social justice rooted in poor communities of color (where ecological crisis is only one among multiple life-threatening issues). Structured as a vibrant multimedia installation and performance work at once, red, black & green transforms co-commissioner YBCA’s Forum stage into an evolving environment audiences can walk through and linger in, as performers Bamuthi Joseph, Theaster Gates, Tommy Shepherd, and Traci Tolmaire deliver a multifaceted narrative road-trip through Chicago, Huston, New York, and West Oakland, following the “Life Is Living” festivals bringing arts, education, and activism to urban parks. The highly attuned ensemble conveys and accentuates this narrative with a commanding mix of firsthand accounts, poetry, dance, song, and percussion (tapped out on surfaces with fingers, palms, or carving knives). Theaster Gates’ gorgeous set design, meanwhile, blends repurposed materials into mobile environments — floating island habitats beautifully lit by James Clotfelter, decorated with sculpture and video designs (evocative media collages composed by David Szlasa), and continually reconfigured as neighborhoods, shotgun houses, storefronts, and other environs. Intended to provoke discussion about social justice struggles in the age of environmental crisis, the production’s ambitious balancing of history, contemporary politics, center and periphery, personal idealism and doubt, and individual voices feels perhaps inevitably uneven and incomplete, but the attempt is frequently bracing and the delivery as sure as it is urgent. (Avila)

“San Francisco Olympians Festival” Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sfolympians.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 28. No Nude Men Productions presents a festival of 12 new full-length plays written by 14 local writers. Each play focuses on one of the Olympian characters from ancient Greece.

ShEvil Dead Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Fri/21 and Oct 28-29, 8pm. Primitive Screwheads return with a horror play (in which the audience is literally sprayed with blood, so leave the fancy suit at home!) based on the Evil Dead movies.

“Shocktoberfest 12: Fear Over Frisco” Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $25-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. In its annual season-scented horror bid, Thrillpeddlers joins forces with SF’s Czar of Noir, writer-director Eddie Muller, for a sharply penned triplet of plays that resurrect lurid San Francisco lore as flesh-and-blood action. In the slightly sluggish but intriguing Grand Inquisitor, a solitary young woman modeling herself on Louise Brooks in Lulu (an alluringly Lulu-like Bonni Suval) believes she has located the Zodiac killer’s widow (a sweet but cagey Mary Gibboney) — a scenario that just can’t end well for somebody, yet manages to defy expectations. An Obvious Explanation turns on an amnesiac (Daniel Bakken) whose brother (Flynn de Marco) explains the female corpse in the rollaway (Zelda Koznofski) before asking bro where he hid a certain pile of money. Enter a brash doctor (Suval) with a new drug and ambitions of her own vis-à-vis the hapless head case. Russell Blackwood directs The Drug, which adapts a Grand Guignol classic to the hoity-toity milieu of the Van Nesses and seedy Chinatown opium dens, where a rough-playing attorney (an ever persuasive Eric Tyson Wertz) determines to turn a gruesome case involving the duplicitous Mrs. Van Ness (an equally sure, sultry Kära Emry) to his own advantage. The evening also offers a blackout spook show and some smoothly atmospheric musical numbers, including Muller’s rousing “Fear Over Frisco” (music composed by Scrumbly Koldewyn; accompaniment by Steve Bolinger and Birdie-Bob Watt) and an aptly low-down Irving Berlin number — both winningly performed by the entire company. (Avila)

Sorya! A Minor Miracle (Part One) NOHSpace, Project Artaud, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $12-18. Sun/23-Mon/24, 7pm. Each year, NOHspace residents Theatre of Yugen present a program of short Kyogen and Noh pieces, demonstrating the building blocks that define their unique approach. Blending classical Japanese theatrical styles with original and contemporary works, the company’s multi-cultural ensemble has been performing their specialized brand of East-West fusion since 1978. This year’s Sorya! program includes two modern-day works written by Greg Giovanni, a Philadelphia-based playwright and Noh artist, directed by Theatre of Yugen artistic director Jubilith Moore, and one traditional comedy, Boshibari (Tied to a Pole), directed by company founder Yuriko Doi. This piece is by far the strongest of the three, a tale of two servants pulling one over their master, who has tied them up in order to prevent them from breaking into the sake cellar. Lluis Valls and Sheila Berotti as Taro and Jiro execute the highly-ritualized aspects of the Kyogen farce with deft mobility and expressiveness, working together to overcome their captivity just enough to enjoy a few drinks before being discovered by their irate master (Sheila Devitt). The other two pieces, one set in Narnia and the other based on an Irish folk ballad, are less compelling, though no less ambitious, and Stephen Siegel and Karen Marek’s joint performance as a pair of squabbling dwarves is worthy of praise. (Gluckstern)

*Tutor: Enter the Enclave Exit Studio, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.darkporchtheatre.com. $15-25. Thurs/19-Sat/22, 8pm. Dark Porch Theatre performs Martin Schwartz’s play, inspired by an 18th century German drama, about a tutor who realizes the creepy family he works for is not quite what they seem.

*Wallflower Little Theatre, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway, SF; creativearts.sfsu.edu. $8-12. Thurs/20-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 2pm. One by one a baker’s dozen appears in the otherwise abandoned gymnasium: high schoolers in their awkward finery all fleeing prom night, which rages away on the other side of the wall like a blast furnace and shrieks like a jet engine every time the double doors are thrown open in escape. Here, in relative silence and stillness, begins a dream-dance of its own, largely wordless but speaking volumes through a brilliantly devised choreography of hesitation, alienation, attraction, and repulsion — the push-and-pull of fear and desire epitomized by adolescence in all its desperate and beautiful vulnerability (but of course from this school no one ever really graduates). At turns hilarious, raucous, wrenching, and sweetly, smolderingly sensual, Wallflower is another must-see collaboration between Bay Area director Mark Jackson and a remarkably adept cast and crew from San Francisco State’s theater department — collaborations that have blazed a regular path out to Lakeside for discriminating theatergoers. Like last year’s stunning Juliet, Wallflower draws equal inspiration from Shakespeare (here A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and the personal insecurities and compulsions offered up by the performers themselves. Impressively designed throughout — including a choice and supple sound design by Teddy Hulsker — this dance-theater performance is an elating mixture of flooring choreography and the mesmerizing personalities and relationships registered in the subtlest of words and gestures. It’s all as enchanting and revelatory as the intoxicating dream it describes. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Bellwether Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs/20, 1pm; Oct 29, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 30. Marin Theatre Company performs Steve Yockey’s spooky fairy tale for adults.

Clementine in the Lower 9 TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 30. TheatreWorks presents the world premiere of Dan Dietz’s post-Katrina New Orleans drama.

*A Delicate Balance Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-48. Wed/19-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 2 and 7pm. Aurora Theatre performs Edward Albee’s comedy of manners.

How to Write a New Book for the Bible Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm; no matinee Sat/22; no show Nov 18); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through Nov 20. Berkeley Rep performs a world premiere by Bill Cain.

Inanna’s Descent Codornices Park, 1201 Euclid, Berk; www.raggedwing.org. Free. Sat-Sun, 1pm. Through Oct 30. Special Halloween show Oct 31, 5-8pm. After last year’s memorable presentation of the Persephone myth as a site-specific, Halloween-heralding, multi-disciplinary performance in the wooded glades of Codornices Park, it seemed inevitable that Ragged Wing Ensemble would want to build on that success by following it up with an equally memorable exploration of another mythological underworld. This year’s chosen subject, the descent of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, Queen of the Heavens into the Underworld where her jealous sister Ereshkigal reigns, is enacted as a half-hour play as well as a self-guided, seven-station circuit around the park, from the tunnel to the fire pit, where the central performance is held. Each station is hosted by a different character from the play, who engages each passing audience member in a series of activities: from wishing on the future to coloring in a self-portrait of “meat.” The play itself stars Kelly Rinehart as Inanna, “the bombshell of the story,” who appears onstage clad in a dress of shredded reflective insulate and a giant leonine headdress. The other ensemble-created costumes are cleverly constructed of equally non-biodegradable materials: a faux-fur cloak decorated with remote controls, robes of state made entirely from rustling plastic shopping bags, a bandolier of empty water bottles. More genial and thought-provoking than a typical trip to a haunted house, Inanna’s Descent is an inventive Halloween expedition for children of most ages, and adults with young hearts. (Gluckstern)

*Phaedra Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $17-26. Wed/19-Thurs/20, 7pm; Fri/21-Sat/22, 8pm; Sun/23, 5pm. Catherine (Catherine Castellanos) is the loveless matron in the impeccably tidy, upper-class home of middle-aged right-wing judge Antonio (Keith Burkland), secretly infatuated with her stepson (Patrick Alparone), the prodigal returning home from jail and rehab for a new start. Catherine’s cold, obsessively ordered run of the household — with heavy-lifting by her cheerful, steadfast housekeeper (a wonderfully genuine Trish Mulholland) — masks a desolation and chaos inside her, a churning emptiness evoked in the deliberately listless pace of act one and the skudding clouds we can see reflected in the walls of designer Nina Ball’s impressively stolid, icily tasteful living room. Portland Center Stage’s Rose Riordan directs a strong cast (which includes Cindy Im, as the stepson’s rehab partner and sexual interest) in a modern-day adaptation of the Greek myth by Adam Bock (The Shaker Chair, Swimming in the Shallows), in a worthy premiere for Shotgun Players. The drama comes leavened by Bock’s well-developed humor and the dialogue, while inconsistent, can be eloquent. The storm that breaks in the second act, however, feels a bit compressed and, especially after the languid first act, contributes to a somewhat pinched narrative. But whatever its limitations, Catherine’s predicament is palpably dramatic, especially in Castellanos’s deeply moving performance — among her best work to date and alone worth giving Phaedra a chance. (Avila)

*Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues-Sun, showtimes vary. Through Oct 30. The life of stage and screen legend Rita Moreno is a subject that has no trouble filling two swift and varied acts, especially as related in anecdote, song, comedy, and dance by the serene multiple–award-winning performer and Berkeley resident herself. Indeed, that so much material gets covered so succinctly but rarely abruptly is a real achievement of this attractively adorned autobiographical solo show crafted with playwright and Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Through Nov 20. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

DANCE/PERFORMANCE

*”PanderFest 2011″ Stage Werx 446, 446 Valencia, SF; www.panderexpress.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 29. $20. San Francisco’s Crisis Hopkins and (PianoFight’s S.H.I.T. Show makers) Mission Control join forces for a tag-team evening of sketch and “improv” (quotes kind of necessary this time). Claiming dubiously to fill a need for yet another festival in this city (though at the same time striving for above-average fawning of the public), the show delivers two acts of mostly spot-on comedy by two agreeable ensembles and is thus a fine night out anyway. The program (based rather loosely on online-video–generated audience suggestions, interspersed with the sneezing Panda baby and other YouTube perennials) also inaugurates Stage Werx’s cozy new Mission District venue — the former digs of Intersection for the Arts and a huge improvement over Stage Werx’s old subterranean lair on Sutter Street. Highlights of a ridiculous evening include a two-part Crisis Hopkins sketch detailing a site visit by a ball-wrecking contractor (Christy Daly) to her chary foreman (Sam Shaw) and his withering cherries; and Mission Control’s pointed ’70s TV show homage with a twist, Good Cop, Stab Cop. (Avila)

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

SAN FRANCISCO DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

The 10th San Francisco DocFest runs through Oct. 27 at the Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF, and the Shattuck Theatre, 2230 Shattuck, Berk. Tickets ($11) and complete schedule available at www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

*”ATA Film and Video Festival” Paul Clipson’s Caridea and Icthyes is an abstract feast of color, light and water, complemented by a space like ambience, and interspersed with shots of sea life. Zooming in and out of the abstract, it feels as though the viewer is pushing through water (like a fish) until the abstraction becomes clearly defined as oncoming car traffic. That contrast is surprising, however ambiguous. Dream-like, Clipson’s film can feel hypnotic, like an unsettling tranquility. Watching it is like being pushed under an ocean’s wave and kept from going back up for air – like a euphoric drowning where time has slowed down to the point of almost not being there at all. The music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma heightens this feeling with vague, otherworldly tinkling sounds and echos. The film, though, doesn’t progress forward toward any particular point or idea. It ends where it begins. In David Baumflek’s Earthrise, the filmmaker’s father looks back on personal life-changing events that took place in the year 1968, including his own father’s death, and coming to know the woman who he’d later marry. “1968 seemed to be the most important year of my life,” he states in the beginning. As his his story reluctantly unfolds (the recording stops and starts several times), video filmed in 1968 by astronauts circling the moon is shown, subsequently drawing connections between the man’s life and larger events in the world. A moving and honest short, Baumflek makes these broad connections between the mysteriousness of life and fate, and the mysteriousness of the universe, and in way that feels natural. The connections never feel forced or exaggerated, and, more importantly, they are revealing. The film places a personal life in the larger context of cosmic events, and you watch the film with equal astonishment at both. For more ATA fest reviews, visit the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com. Artists’ Television Access. (James H. Miller)

*Hell and Back Again This emotionally jagged documentary mingles footage from the war and home fronts to rather nightmarishly evoke one soldier’s very stressful experiences on both. Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris is seen in combat, patrolling Afghan terrain, communicating — sometimes earnestly, sometimes exasperatedly — with skeptical local villagers who are themselves wedged between foreign forces and the Taliban. After surviving a serious injury during his third tour, he has a rough time re-adjusting to civilian life in North Carolina — undergoing physical therapy, often in pain or zonked on prescription drugs, his anger straining relations with wife Ashley. Seldom articulate, forever creepily playing with his handgun, Nathan doesn’t automatically win sympathy. That lends Danfung Dennis’ film a certain extra veracity: with all his foibles (and all the blanks left in his biography), the protagonist here is probably a more typical representation of today’s U.S. fighting forces than most similar recent docs have offered. The director’s soundtrack and editorial strategies further intensify a movie that tries to get inside the unsettled mind within an (at least temporarily) broken body, and to a discomfiting extent succeeds. (1:28) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Image of the Beast and Devil Dog: The Hound from Hell This “Special Rapture Edition” of the Vortex’s six-week Satanic-themed series offers doses of both salvation and demonic possession. First up is Image of the Beast (1980), third in early indie Christian filmmaker David W. Thompson’s Left Behind-anticipating quartet of features about a very American Biblical apocalypse. The devil has turned the U.S. into a military police state where all legal worship has been reduced to “one big sin-infested body, the World Church.” Stubborn Jesus-loving holdouts are executed by guillotine, and computers are the new “golden calf.” There’s a lot of Revelations-warping explanatory yakkety yak and not much action (though there’s one decent living room car crash stunt). But sincerity counts — as does the eccentricity that goes with it — in this precursor to today’s “faith-based entertainment” industry. Lacking any authentic impulse whatsoever is 1978’s strictly Mammon-worshipping Devil Dog: The Hound From Hell, in which a So. Cal. suburban family unknowingly adopts … well, you know. It promptly possesses mom Yvette Mimieux (she turns bitchy ‘n’ slutty) and the kids (Real Housewife Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, both of 1975’s Escape from Witch Mountain, become school bullies ruthlessly rigging Student Council elections). Meanwhile Richard Crenna’s Satan-resisting dad tries not to let Fido’s glowing eyes force his hands into lawn mower blades. An early casualty, the Mexican maid, warns “There ees a feeeling of eeeveel!” just before the puppy sets her on fire. You might think any movie that starts with the suggested witch-coven rape of a German Shepherd would be the height (or nadir) of outrageousness, but Devil Dog‘s clock-punching direction, disjointed script and bad performances by decent performers prove otherwise. A TV movie fit to make Satan’s School for Girls (1973) look like The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), it can be explained only as definitive proof that a whole lotta cocaine was impairing a whole lot of judgment in mid-late 70s Hollywood. Vortex Room. (Harvey)

Johnny English Reborn Rowan Atkinson returns at the comedic super-spy. (1:41)

*Margin Call Think of Margin Call as a Mamet-like, fictitious insider jab at the financial crisis, a novelistic rejoinder to Oscar-winning doc Inside Job (2010). First-time feature director and writer J.C. Chandor shows a deft hand with complex, writerly material, creating a darting dance of smart dialogue and well-etched characters as he sidesteps the hazards of overtheatricality, a.k.a. the crushing, overbearing proscenium. The film opens on a familiar Great Recession scene: lay-off day at an investment bank, marked by HR functionaries calling workers one by one into fishbowl conference rooms. The first victim is the most critical — Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a risk-management staffer who has stumbled on an investment miscalculation that could potentially trigger a Wall Street collapse. On his way out, he passes a drive with his findings to one of his young protégés, Peter (Zachary Quinto), setting off a flash storm over the next 24 hours that will entangle his boss Sam (Kevin Spacey), who’s agonizing over his dying dog while putting up a go-big-or-go-home front; cynical trading manager Will (Paul Bettany); and the firm’s intimidating head (Jeremy Irons), who gets to utter the lines, “Explain to me as you would to a child. Or a Golden Retriever.” Such top-notch players get to really flex their skills here, equipped with Chandor’s spot-on script, which manages to convey the big issues, infuse the numbers with drama and the money managers with humanity, and never talk down to the audience. (1:45) Shattuck. (Chun)

The Mighty Macs I can’t be the first reviewer to dub The Mighty Macs “Sister Act 2 meets Hoosiers,” but it can’t be avoided — that’s exactly what this movie is. It’s 1971 at Immaculata College, a tiny school in financial trouble staffed by nuns and populated by female students who made it through the 1960s seemingly untouched by any rebellious spirit. Into this uptight milieu strides Sister Mary Clarence, er, Cathy Rush (Carla Gugino), an ambitious young basketball coach determined to make winners out of a team so undervalued they practice in a basement and play games wearing outdated, skirted uniforms. Based on a pretty incredible true story, The Mighty Macs is a completely clichéd sports movie, with locker-room pep talks, a disapproving authority figure (a be-wimpled Ellen Burstyn), last-minute free throws deciding crucial games, etc. But it also offers a gentle lesson about the early days of feminism, not to mention a scene featuring an elderly nun yelling “Watch out for the pick and roll!” from the sidelines. (1:38) (Eddy)

Paranormal Activity 3 Who you gonna call? (1:24) California.

The Skin I Live In I’d like to think that Pedro Almodóvar is too far along in his frequently-celebrated career to be having a midlife crisis, but all the classic signs are on display in his flashy, disjointed new thriller. Still mourning the death of his burn victim wife and removed from his psychologically disturbed daughter, brilliant-but-ethically compromised plastic surgeon Robert (played with smoldering creepiness by former Almodóvar heartthrob Antonio Banderas) throws himself into developing a new injury-resistant form of prosthetic skin, testing it on his mysterious live-in guinea pig, Vera (the gorgeous Elena Anaya, whose every curve is on view thanks to an après-ski-ready body suit). Eventually, all hell breaks loose, as does Vera, whose back story, as we find out, owes equally to 1960’s Eyes Without a Face and perhaps one of the Saw films. And that’s not even the half of it — to fully recount every sharp turn, digression and MacGuffin thrown at us would take the entirety of this review. That’s not news for Almodóvar, though. Much like Rainer Werner Fassbinder before him, Almodóvar’s métier is melodrama, as refracted through a gay cinephile’s recuperative affections. His strength as a filmmaker is to keep us emotionally tethered to the story he’s telling, amidst all the allusions, sex changes and plot twists torn straight from a telenovela. The real shame of The Skin I Live In is that so much happens that you don’t actually have time to care much about any of it. Although its many surfaces are beautiful to behold (thanks largely to cinematographer José Luis Alcaine), The Skin I Live In ultimately lacks a key muscle: a heart. (1:57) Embarcadero. (Sussman)

The Three Musketeers 3D All for one and one for all. Again. (1:50)

The Way Emilio Estevez directs his pop, Martin Sheen, in this drama about a man on a modern-day odyssey. (1:55)

The Woman on the Sixth Floor There is a particular strain of populist European comedy in which stuffy northerners are loosened up by liberating exposure to those sensual, passionate, loud, all-embracing simple folk from the sunny south. The line between multicultural inclusion and condescension is a thin one these movies not infrequently cross. Set in 1960, Philippe Le Guay’s film has a bourgeoisie Paris couple hiring a new maid in the person of attractive young Maria (Natalia Verbeke). She joins a large group of Spanish women toiling for snobbish French gentry in the same building. Her presence has a leavening effect on investment counselor employer Jean-Louis (Fabrice Luchini), to the point where he actually troubles to improve the poorly housed maids’ lot. (Hitherto no one has cared that their shared toilet is broken.) But he also takes an inappropriate and (initially) unwanted romantic interest in this woman, lending a creepy edge to what’s intended as a feel-good romp. (For the record, Verbeke is about a quarter-century younger than Luchini — a difference one can’t imagine the film would ignore so completely if the genders were reversed.) Le Guay’s screenplay trades in easy stereotypes — the Spanish “help” are all big-hearted lovers of life, the Gallic upper-crusters (including Sandrine Kiberlain as J-L’s shallow, insecure wife) emotionally constipated, xenophobic boors — predictable conflicts and pat resolutions. As formulaic crowd-pleasers go, it could be worse. But don’t be fooled — if this were in English, there’d be no fawning mainstream reviews. In fact, it has been in English, more or less. And that ugly moment in cinematic history was called Spanglish (2004). (1:44) Albany, Clay. (Harvey)

ONGOING

The Big Year The weird, kind of wonderful world of bird watching has to be the most unlikely subject to get the mainstream Hollywood movie treatment this year, yet to director David Frankel and his cast’s credit, this project based on the book by Mark Obmascik takes flight with seemingly feather-light effortlessness. The Big Year entwines itself around three birding obsessives: the cocky Kenny (Owen Wilson), the record holder of the most birds sighted in one year, an achievement known as a Big Year; Stu (Steve Martin), a captain of industry who has eschewed corporate life in his pursuit of choice avian specimens; and Brad (Jack Black), the every guy determined to max out his, and his parents’, credit cards to take a stab at Kenny’s record. Frankel winningly seeds his yarn with playful visual devices (scribbling on the screen, say, to point out the sites of key sightings) but in the end, the human back stories of his absurdly driven characters provide the real foundation for The Big Year, while actors Black, Martin, and Wilson — all fully capable of tumbling into too-cute or too-hammy quagmires — respond with empathy to the story’s delicate handling. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Blackthorn This low-key neo-Western imagines what would’ve happened if Butch Cassidy had survived that shootout in 1908 Bolivia and retreated into anonymity as a rural rancher. Sam Shepard stars as the outlaw turned grizzled gringo (in flashbacks to the Sundance Kid days, he’s played by Game of Thrones‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Butch, now known as James Blackthorn, longs to return to America, so he empties his bank account and sells off his horses. His plan runs afoul when he loses his cash stash, thanks to a series of unfortunate events set into motion by gentleman bandit Eduardo (Eduardo Noriega), who’s just ripped off a nearby mine but is ill-suited for survival in the harsh backcountry. Determined to recoup his losses, Butch reluctantly teams up with Eduardo; there are shoot-outs and escapes on horseback and a nice series of scenes with Stephen Rea as an aging, frequently soused Pinkerton detective. Director Mateo Gil (writer of 1997’s Open Your Eyes, which starred Noriega) delivers an unpretentious spin on a legend highlighted by gorgeous landscapes and, of course, Shepard’s true-gritty performance. (1:38) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*Contagion Tasked with such panic-inducing material, one has to appreciate director Steven Soderbergh’s cool head and hand with Contagion. Some might even dub this epic thriller (of sorts) cold, clinical, and completely lacking in bedside manner. Still, for those who’d rather be in the hands of a doctor who refuses to talk down to the patient, Contagion comes on like a refreshingly smart, somewhat melodrama-free clean room, a clear-eyed response to a messy, terrifying subject. A deadly virus is spreading swiftly — sans cure, vaccine, or sense — starting with a few unlikely suspects: globe-trotting corporate exec Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), a waiter, a European tourist, and a Japanese businessman. The chase is on to track the disease’s genesis and find a way to combat it, from the halls of the San Francisco Chronicle and blog posts of citizen activist-journalist Alan (Jude Law), to the emergency hospital in the Midwest set up by intrepid Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet), to a tiny village in China with a World Health investigator (Marion Cotillard). Soderbergh’s brisk, businesslike storytelling approach nicely counterpoints the hysteria going off on the ground, as looting and anarchy breaks out around Beth’s immune widower Mitch (Matt Damon), and draws you in — though the tact of making this disease’s Typhoid Mary a sexually profligate woman is unsettling and borderline offensive, as is the predictable blame-it-on-the-Chinese origin coda. (1:42) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) Piedmont. (Louis Peitzman)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2:02) Lumiere.

Dolphin Tale (1:53) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Dream House (1:33) SF Center.

*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

50/50 This is nothing but a mainstream rom-com-dramedy wrapped in indie sheep’s clothes. When Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns he has cancer, he undergoes the requisite denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance like a formality. Aided by his bird-brained but lovable best friend Kyle (Seth Rogan), lovable klutz of a counselor Katherine (Anna Kendrick), and panicky mother (Anjelica Huston), Adam gets a new lease on life. This comes in the form of one-night-stands, furious revelations in parked cars, and a prescribed dose of wacky tobaccy. If 50/50 all sounds like the setup for a pseudo-insightful, kooky feel-goodery, it is. The film doesn’t have the brains or spleen to get down to the bone of cancer. Instead, director Jonathan Levine (2008’s The Wackness) and screenwriter Will Reiser favor highfalutin’ monologues, wooden characters, and a Hollywood ending (with just the right amount of ambiguity). Still, Gordon-Levitt is the most gorgeous cancer patient you will ever see, bald head and all. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Finding Joe Think of Finding Joe as a noob’s every-hero introduction to mythologist Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Director Patrick Takaya Solomon assembles a diverse group of Campbell experts and acolytes such as Joseph Campbell Foundation president Robert Walter, author Deepak Chopra, tai chi master Chungliang Al Huang, A Beautiful Mind (2001) screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, and skater Tony Hawk, who expound on every aspect of the hero’s journey, from experiencing spiritual death to finding bliss to summoning the courage to slay dragons. Somewhat predictable clips from Star Wars (1977) and other cinematic sources bring home the ways that pop culture has incorporated and been read through the filter of Campbell’s ideas. All of which makes for an accessible survey of our bro Joe’s work — though despite the inclusion of a few token female talking heads like actress Rashida Jones and Twilight (2008) director Catherine Hardwicke, Solomon’s past shooting action sports and commercials gives the doc a distinctly macho cast. (1:23) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Fireflies in the Garden Don’t let the A-list cast (Willem Dafoe, Ryan Reynolds, Emily Watson, Julie Roberts) fool you: this is a minor-key melodrama that would be just as unmemorable with a cast of unknowns. Writer-director Dennis Lee tosses a co-writing credit to Robert Frost, whose poem lends the film its title and plays a part in a pivotal scene. Scarred by a childhood made miserable by his cruel father (Dafoe) — who, as onscreen dads go, really isn’t that terrible (see The Woman, below) — a successful writer (Reynolds) returns home for a family celebration that turns (wait for it) tragic. This is the kind of movie that attempts to hit big emotional notes without actually earning them; if the lure of Reynolds as a hunky sad sack is too great to resist, prepare to feel either completely unmoved or totally manipulated. Not sure which is worse. (1:39) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Footloose Another unnecessary remake joins the queue at the box office, aiming for the pockets of ’80s-era nostalgics and fans of dance movies and naked opportunism. A recap for those (if there are those) who never saw the 1984 original: city boy Ren McCormack moves to a Middle American speck-on-the-map called Bomont and riles the town’s inhabitants with his rock ‘n’ roll ways — rock ‘n’ roll, and the lewd acts of physicality it inspires, i.e., dancing, having been criminalized by the town council to preserve the souls and bodies of Bomont’s young people. Ren falls for wayward preacher’s daughter Ariel Moore — whose father has sponsored this oversolicitous piece of legislation — and vows to fight city hall on the civil rights issue of a senior prom. Ren McCormack 2.0 is one Kenny Wormald (prepped for the gig by his tenure in the straight-to-cable dance-movie sequel Center Stage: Turn It Up), who forgoes the ass-grabbing blue jeans that Kevin Bacon once angry-danced through a flour mill in. Otherwise, the 2011 version, directed and cowritten by Craig Brewer (2005’s Hustle & Flow), regurgitates much of the original, hoping to leverage classic lines, familiar scenes, and that Dance Your Ass Off T-shirt of Ariel’s. It doesn’t work. Ren and Ariel (Dancing with the Stars‘ Julianne Hough) are blandly unsympathetic and have the chemistry of two wet paper towels, the adult supporting cast should have known better, and the entire film comes off as a tired, tuneless echo. (1:53) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

*Happy, Happy Sigve (Henrik Rafaelsen) and Elisabeth (Maibritt Saerens) seem like very exciting new neighbors to Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen) — she’s almost hysterical with welcoming enthusiasm, perhaps overcompensating for the frigidity of her union to dour Eirik (Joachim Rafaelsen). But it soon emerges that the urban, urbane newcomers to this snowy country community also have more than their share of domestic woes. When those unpleasant facts tumble out over a rather disastrous dinner party, the revelation somehow throws Kaja and Sigve together as not just the injured parties in their respective marriages, but potential soulmates. This first feature for both director Anne Sewitzky and scenarist Ragnhild Tronvoll nearly passed unnoticed at Sundance this January — being so good-natured and, well, Norwegian — but dang if it wasn’t just too much of a genuine (as opposed to contrived) crowdpleaser to go ignored. The characters behave badly (as well as irresponsibly, since there are children involved), yet their fates develop real rooting interest through a number of clever, complex, sometimes hilarious narrative developments. It would be a delight even without the slam-dunk inspiration of an unlikely Greek chorus: four vanilla gents singing African-American spirituals a cappella as incongruous yet strangely perfect external commentary on our protagonists’ hapless entanglements. (1:28) Lumiere. (Harvey)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) SF Center, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Ides of March Battling it out in the Ohio primaries are two leading Democratic presidential candidates. Filling the role of idealistic upstart new to the national stage — even his poster looks like you-know-who’s Hope one — is Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), who’s running neck-and-neck in the polls with his rival thanks to veteran campaign manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and ambitious young press secretary Steven (Ryan Gosling). The latter is so tipped for success that he’s wooed to switch teams by a rival politico’s campaign chief (Paul Giamatti). While he declines, even meeting with a representative from the opposing camp is a dangerous move for Steven, who’s already juggling complex loyalties to various folk including New York Times reporter Ida (Marisa Tomei) and campaign intern Molly (Evan Rachel Wood), who happens to be the daughter of the Democratic National Party chairman. Adapted from Beau Willimon’s acclaimed play Farragut North, Clooney’s fourth directorial feature is assured, expertly played, and full of sharp insider dialogue. (Willimon worked on Howard Dean’s 2004 run for the White House.) It’s all thoroughly engaging — yet what evolves into a thriller of sorts involving blackmail and revenge ultimately seems rather beside the point, as it turns upon an old-school personal morals quandary rather than diving seriously into the corporate, religious, and other special interests that really determine (or at least spin) the issues in today’s political landscape. Though stuffed with up-to-the-moment references, Ides already feels curiously dated. (1:51) California, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Lion King 3D (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Bridge. (Harvey)

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

*The Mill and the Cross One of the clichés often told about art is that it is supposed to speak to us. Polish director Lech Majewski’s gorgeous experiment in bringing Flemish Renaissance painter Peter Bruegel’s sprawling 1564 canvas The Procession to Calvary to life attempts to do just that. Majeswki both re-stages Bruegel’s painting –which draws parallels between its depiction of Christ en route to his crucifixion and the persecution of Flemish citizens by the Spanish inquisition’s militia — in stunning tableaux vivant that combine bluescreen technology and stage backdrops, and gives back stories to a dozen or so of its 500 figures. Periodically, Bruegel himself (Rutger Hauer) addresses the camera mid-sketch to dolefully explain the allegorical nature of his work, but these pedantic asides speak less forcefully than Majeswki’s beautifully lit vignettes of the small joys and many hardships that comprised everyday life in the 16th century. Beguiling yet wholly absorbing. (1:37) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

Moneyball As fun as it is to watch Brad Pitt listen to the radio, work out, hang out with his cute kid, and drive down I-80 over and over again, it doesn’t quite translate into compelling cinema for the casual baseball fan. A wholesale buy-in to the cult of personality — be it A’s manager Billy Beane or the actor who plays him — is at the center of Moneyball‘s issues. Beane (Pitt) is facing the sad, inevitable fate of having to replace his star players, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, once they command the cash from the more-moneyed teams. He’s gotta think outside of the corporate box, and he finds a few key answers in Peter Brand (a.k.a. Paul DePodesta, played by Jonah Hill), who’s working with the sabermetric ideas of Bill James: scout the undervalued players that get on base to work against better-funded big-hitters. Similarly, against popular thought, Moneyball works best when director Bennett Miller (2005’s Capote) strays from the slightly flattening sunniness of its lead actor and plunges into the number crunching — attempting to visualize the abstract and tapping into the David Fincher network, as it were (in a related note, Aaron Sorkin co-wrote Moneyball‘s screenplay) — though the funny anti-chemistry between Pitt and Hill is at times capable of pulling Moneyball out of its slump. (2:13) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Mozart’s Sister Pity the talented sister of a world-shaking prodigy. Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart, who may have had just as much promise as a composer as her younger brother, according to Rene Féret’s Mozart’s Sister. A scant five years older, enlisted in the traveling family band led by father-teacher Leopold (Marc Barbe), yet forced to hide her music, being female and forbidden to play violin and compose, Nannerl (Marie Féret, the filmmaker’s daughter) tours the courts of Europe and is acclaimed as a keyboardist and vocalist but is expected to share little of her brother’s brilliant future. Following a chance carriage breakdown near a French monastery, Nannerl befriends one of its precious inhabitants, a daughter of Louis XV (Lisa Féret, another offspring), which leads her to Versailles, into a cross-dressing guise of a boy, and puts her into the sights of the Dauphin (Clovis Fouin, who could easily find a spot in the Cullen vampire clan). He’s seduced by her music and likewise charms Nannerl with his power and feline good looks — what’s a humble court minstrel to do? The conceit of casting one’s daughters in a narrative hinging on unjustly neglected female progeny — shades of Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III (1990)! — almost capsizes this otherwise thoughtful re-imagination of Maria Anna’s thwarted life; despite the fact Féret has inserted his children in his films in the past, both girls offer little emotional depth to their roles. Nevertheless, as a feminist rediscovery pic akin to Camille Claudel (1988), Mozart’s Sister instructs on yet another tragically quashed woman artist and might inspire some righteous indignation. (2:00) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*My Afternoons with Margueritte There’s just one moment in this tender French dramedy that touches on star Gerard Depardieu’s real life: his quasi-literate salt-of-the-earth character, Germain, rushes to save his depressed friend from possible suicide only to have his pretentious pal pee on the ground in front of him. Perhaps Depardieu’s recent urinary run-in, on the floor of an airline cabin, was an inspired reference to this moment. In any case, My Afternoons With Margueritte offers a hope of the most humanist sort, for all those bumblers and sad cases that are usually shuttled to the side in the desperate ’00s, as Depardieu demonstrates that he’s fully capable of carrying a film with sheer life force, rotund gut and straw-mop ‘do and all. In fact he’s almost daring you to hate on his aging, bumptious current incarnation: Germain is the 50-something who never quite grew up or left home. The vegetable farmer is treated poorly by his doddering tramp of a mother and is widely considered the village idiot, the butt of all the jokes down at the cafe, though contrary to most assumptions, he manages to score a beautiful, bus-driving girlfriend (Sophie Guillemin). However the true love of his life might be the empathetic, intelligent older woman, Margueritte (Gisele Casadesus), that he meets in the park while counting pigeons. There’s a wee bit of Maude to Germain’s Harold, though Jean Becker’s chaste love story is content to remain within the wholesome confines of small-town life — not a bad thing when it comes to looking for grace in a rough world. (1:22) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Real Steel Everybody knows what this movie about rocking, socking robots should have been called. Had the producers secured the rights to the name, we’d all be sitting down to Over The Top II: Child Endangerment. Absentee father Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) and his much-too-young son Max (Dakota Goyo) haul their remote-controlled pugilists in a big old truck from one underground competition to the next. Along the way Charlie learns what it means to be a loving father while still routinely managing to leave cherubic Max alone in scenarios of astonishing peril. Seriously, there are displays of parental neglect in this movie that strain credulity well beyond any of its Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em elements. Fortunately the filmmakers had the good sense to make those elements awesome. The robots look great and the ring action can be surprisingly stirring in spite of the paper-thin human story it depends on. And as adept as the script proves to be at skirting the question of robot sentience, we’re no less compelled to root for our scrappy contender. Recommended if you love finely wrought spectacle but hate strong characterization and children. (2:07) 1000 Van Ness. (Jason Shamai)

The Sleeping Beauty Fairytales are endemically Freudian; perhaps it has something to with their use of subconscious fantasy to mourn — and breathlessly anticipate — the looming loss of childhood. French provocateuse Catherine Breillat’s feminist re-imagining of The Sleeping Beauty carries her hyper-sexualized signature, but now she also has free reign to throw in bizarre and beastly metaphors for feminine and masculine desire in the form of boil-covered, dungeon-dwelling ogres, albino teenage princes, and icy-beautiful snow queens. The story follows Anastasia, a poor little aristocrat, who longs to be a boy (she calls herself “Sir Vladimir”). When her hand is pricked with a yew spindle (more of a phallic impalement, really), Anastasia falls into a 100-year adventurous slumber, eventually awakening as a sexually ripe 16-year-old. It all plays like an anchorless, Brothers Grimm version of Sally Potter’s 1992 Orlando. And while it’s definitely not for the kiddies, it’s hard to believe that many adults would find its overt symbolism and plodding narrative any more than a sporadically entertaining exercise in preciousness. Your own dreams will undoubtedly be more interesting — perhaps you can catch a few zzz’s in a theater screening this movie. (1:42) SFFS New People Cinema. (Michelle Devereaux)

*Take Shelter Jeff Nichols directed Michael Shannon in 2007’s Shotgun Stories, released right around the time the actor’s decade-plus prior career broke huge with an Oscar nom for 2008’s Revolutionary Road. Their second collaboration, Take Shelter, is a subtle drama that succeeds mostly because of Shannon’s strong star turn, with an assist from Jessica Chastain (suddenly ubiquitous after The Help, The Debt, and Tree of Life). Curtis (Shannon) and Samantha (Chastain) live paycheck to paycheck in a small Midwestern town; the health insurance associated with his construction job is the only reason they’ll be able to afford a cochlear implant for their deaf daughter. When Curtis starts having horrible nightmares, he can’t shake the feeling that his dreams prophesize an actual disaster to come — or are an indicator that Curtis, like his mother before him, is slowly losing touch with reality. Curtis does seek professional help, but he also starts ripping up his backyard, making expensive improvements to the family’s tornado shelter. You know, just in case. Domestic turmoil, troubles at work, and social ostracization inevitably follow. Where will it all lead? Won’t spoil it for you, but Take Shelter‘s conclusion isn’t nearly as gripping as Shannon’s performance, an skillfully balanced mix of confusion, anger, regret, and white-hot terror. (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Thing John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing is my go-to favorite film (that and 1988’s They Live — I’m a little bit Carpenter-obsessed). So this prequel-which-is-actually-more-like-a-remake is already treading on holy cinematic ground with me. My expectations were low. Pleasantly, first-time director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. doesn’t deliver a total suckfest (as most remakes of sacred movies do, like the abominable 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre); his Thing is rated R, is not in 3D, casts a few actual Norwegians to play the inhabitants of Norway’s Antarctic research lab, etc. It also tries to create continuity with Carpenter’s film by ending exactly where the 1982 film begins. However, all that comes before is basically a weak imitation of Carpenter, whose own film was heavily inspired by 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing from Another World (all three versions list John W. Campbell Jr.’s story “Who Goes There?” as source material). Van Heihningen Jr. offers nothing new except for CG (the 1982 organic FX were creepier, though). Oh, there’s also a “we need a final girl” plot device that shoehorns Mary Elizabeth Winstead into the mix. Both this version and Carpenter’s film build up dread with paranoia. But Carpenter’s was also heavy with the Antarctic-long-haul side effects of cabin fever and extreme isolation. Not really a factor when your main character has just jetted in from New York. (1:43) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Toast Oh, what a tasty dish Helena Bonham Carter has become, not afraid to look bad, mumsy, frazzled, or even like a fashion icon (as in recent Marc Jacobs ads). Watching her clean, cook, and spar with the young, preternaturally snobbish food writer Nigel Slater (played as a child by Oscar Kennedy, then as a teenager by Freddie Highmore) is the central, entirely edible joy of this changeable, not-quite-cozy journey back to a damp, dour ’60s-era Britain. Swinging London is more than simply a few miles away from Nigel’s sad childhood in this film based on Slater’s memoir: he fantasizes about lavish spreads of food while his aggro dad (Ken Stott) blusters hopelessly and his sickly mum (Victoria Hamilton) cringes at even spaghetti Bolognese and relies on the culinary fallback of toast. The arrival of the blowsy, earthy and, in Nigel’s eyes, unendingly tacky housekeeper, Mrs. Potter (Carter), brings genuinely good food — and welcome comedy — into Nigel’s life while stirring a sense of indignant competition. The way to a dad’s, or rather, a man’s, heart is obviously through a lofty, majestic lemon meringue pie. Too bad young Nigel is such an elitist bitch, making for a repugnant protagonist that’s hard to sympathize with. Likewise Highmore and Kennedy are outclassed when it comes to Bonham Carter, who snatches the entire film away with her undeniable sass, manic scrubbing, and sorrowful looks. (1:36) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Weekend In post-World War II Britain, the “Angry Young Man” school excited international interest even as it triggered alarm and disdain from various native bastions of cultural conservatism. Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) discomfited many by depicting a young factory grunt who frequently wakes in a married woman’s bed, chases other available tail, lies as naturally as he breathes, and calls neighborhood busybodies “bitches and whores.” Today British movies (at least the ones that get exported) are still more or less divided by a sort of class system. There’s the Masterpiece Theatre school of costumed romance and intrigue on one hand, the pint-mouthed rebel yellers practicing gritty realism on another. Except contemporary examples of the latter now allow that Angry Young Men might be something else beyond the radar once tuned to cocky, white male antiheroes. The “something else” is gay in Weekend, which was shot in some of the same Nottingham locations where Albert Finney kicked against the pricks in the 1960 film version of Saturday Night. The landscape has changed, but is still nondescript; the boozy clubs still loud but with different bad music. It’s at one such that bearded, late-20s Russell (Tom Cullen) wakes up next morning with a hangover next to no married lady but rather Glen (Chris New). It would be unfair to reveal more of Weekend‘s plot, what little there is. Suffice it to say these two lads get to know each other over less than 48 hours, during which it emerges that Russell isn’t really “out,” while Glen is with a vengeance — though the matter of who is more emotionally mature or well adjusted isn’t so simple. Writer-director Andrew Haigh made one prior feature, a semi-interesting, perhaps semi-staged portrait of a male hustler called Greek Pete (2009). It didn’t really prepare one for Weekend, which is the kind of yakkety, bumps and-all romantic brief encounter movies (or any other media) so rarely render this fresh, natural, and un-stagy. (1:36) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Woman Writer-director Lucky McKee scored a cult hit with 2002’s May; his latest, The Woman (co-written with novelist Jack Ketchum), arrived in my mailbox packaged in a barf bag, “just in case.” This bit of Herschell Gordon Lewis-style gimmickry had me expecting great things, and indeed, McKee’s love of gore goes to 11, with gnawed-off digits, ripped-out entrails, and other squishy moments aimed squarely at shock-horror enthusiasts. All is not well in the household headed up by cheerful misogynist-sadist Chris (Sean Bridgers of Deadwood): his wife (May‘s Angela Bettis) is a quivering wreck; his older daughter (Lauren Ashley Carter) is concealing a growing secret; and his son (Zach Rand) is a middle-school sociopath. When Chris captures a Nell-by-way-of-Leatherface feral woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) in the woods near his home, he chains her up in a storm shelter and sets about “civilizing” her — which basically means keeping her as his own personal torture puppet. McKee, who never met a slo-mo shot he didn’t like, seems to be aiming for black comedy at least part of the time, but The Woman is so mean-spirited that by the time its inevitable tidal wave of revenge crashes down, it’s hard to feel any kind of satisfaction or release. Revulsion, however: yes. (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

SFPD raids OccupySF again, using more force this time (PHOTOS AND VIDEO)

Sasha Cuttler
-
10

2:10 pm UPDATE: OccupySF plans to march on City Hall today (Mon/17) starting at 5 pm at Justin Herman Plaza.

Police raided the OccupySF encampment for the second time last night. The events were similar to the Oct. 5 incident, where police stood in riot gear while the protesters’ materials were loaded into Department of Public Works trucks, then protesters sat, lay, and stood on the street around the trucks in an attempt to prevent them from leaving. In both cases, a kitchen and medical tent that had been set up by protesters were dismantled.

Police were by many accounts more aggressive than in the previous raid, which was the first direct police attack on an Occupy encampment in a major U.S. city. Last night, protesters were dragged, kicked, and struck by police officers, prompting the dispatch of an ambulance to take an injured protester to the hospital. There were at least five arrests.

Journalist Josh Wolf shot some excellent footage of the raid:

San Francisco Police Department spokespersons didn’t answer calls from the Guardian. Police Chief Greg Suhr told us after the last raid (which was also approved by Mayor Ed Lee) that they were only removing public safety hazards and “we will surgically and as best as possible and with as much restraint as possible try to deal with the hazards while protecting people’s First Amendment rights.” Yet last night’s raid shows the city is actually dealing more harshly with the Occupy movement than most cities. 

Around 10:15 pm, the group received a warning that police planned to enforce 10 pm curfew in Justin Herman Plaza. The camp had moved there on Saturday to accommodate growing numbers. Police informed protesters that they could not sleep in the park and that they would need to take down a few tarps that had been propped up, providing a roof for the kitchen and communications area in camp. They claimed that there would be no trouble if the camp moved back to their previous location at nearby 101 Market Street, on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Reserve Building.

Protester Katt Hobin served as a liaison with police throughout the night. She was skeptical of police claims that 101 Market Street was an “agreed upon spot.” Hobin told us, “We were encouraged to relocate. We were never told we could be at 101, or that we could be here.”

There were about 100 protesters gathered. In response to warnings of arrest for those who stayed at Justin Herman Plaza, about 30 moved to 101 Market Street. Protesters began texting, calling and tweeting supporters to come join, and by 11:30 pm there were about 200 protesters at camp.

At first, when asked, police could not provide any written statement detailing reasons for disturbing the camp or arresting participants. An officer whose nametag read G. Tom said they were there based on grievances from the Recreation and Parks Department, but that he could not name a specific individual who had complained. After some deliberation, police produced a copy of San Francisco Park Code Section 3.13, which prohibits sleeping in public parks during certain hours.

Sup. John Avalos, the mayoral candidate who has been most actively engaged with the OccupySF movement, negotiated with officers and protester representatives on speakerphone. Avalos suggested that the police come back during the day; Officer Tom replied, “It works better for us to do this in the middle of the night.”

After some negotiations, officers warned that if the tarps that had been erected were not taken down, they would have to proceed with the raid.

Around 11:30 pm, protesters met briefly and agreed not to comply with that order. Said one protester, “We took down the tents last time, and they still took our stuff and arrested people. We can’t trust them. We need to stand our ground.”

At 11:47, about 70 police in riot gear marched on to the scene. They surrounded the camp and began dismantling structures. At 11:53, Department of Public Works trucks pulled in and police began loading them with items from the camp. This included food, tarps, signs, and personal and communal items.

One protester had duct taped himself to a poll within the camp structure. Police ripped him off the poll, threw him to the ground and struck him in the head and ribs. When he left by ambulance a few hours later, he appeared to be convulsing or seizing.

As they had on Oct. 5, protesters poured into the street in an attempt to block trucks from leaving with their possessions. But the street next to Justin Herman Plaza, the southbound side of Embarcadero, separated from the northbound side by a large concrete platform, is quite narrow compared to Market Street where a similar confrontation happened last Wednesday.

Protesters were much more successful last night in blocking the trucks from leaving, and it took about an hour before the four DPW trucks were able to exit. Protesters sat, lay, and stood in the way of trucks, chanting “the people united shall never be divided” and “we shall not be moved.”

Between about midnight and 1:30 am, police tactics escalated. At first, they attempted to back the trucks out, but protesters ran to block all paths. Then one truck lurched forward onto the sidewalk dividing area, where protesters ran to block it as well as talk with the driver about why he was participating in confiscating their belongings.

Soon, police began dragging and pulling protesters who were in their way and the way of the trucks, throwing them from the street to the sidewalk. They also arrested four of those sitting in on the street.

Protester Ryan Hadar, 19, told us: “They bent back my thumbs, trying to pry me away from the people I was locking arms with. When I asked if they were trying to break my thumbs [one officer] replied, ‘only if I have to.’ Then they dragged me to the sidewalk by my index finger. I asked if they were trying to break my finger, and this time they replied, ‘Yes.’”

This level of activity continued about an hour. Protesters sprinted and zoomed back and forth on skateboards, blocking trucks from leaving in all directions. Police pushed protesters out of their path as they marched back and forth, trying to maintain hold of the situation.

At 1 am, the last truck successfully left. Police who had been behind the truck, pushing protesters away from it, were suddenly alone in a sea of OccupySF particpants. They quickly formed into a block, batons poised, as protesters encircled them. A tense moment passed before protesters broke out in cries of “the whole world is watching!”

There were reportedly 2,100 people viewing the live video stream of the events.

The altercation ended in a bizarre fashion, as police marched across Justin Herman Plaza, stopped in the tracks, then seemingly changed their minds and marched back towards the Embarcadero. A smaller contingent then reappeared at the corner of Mission and Steuart streets. Protesters formed a line confronting them and demanding that they release those arrested; a man who had been arrested at the previous week’s altercation had been held 10 days before he was released on bail funds raised by OccupySF.

One officer said that police would continue standing there until protesters left; many protesters were determined to stand until the police left. Eventually, around 1:40 am, police did decide to exit first. A chorus burst out, singing “Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye” as they left.

Ten minutes after the incident ended, about four tarps had been restrung and the camp had begun to rebuild its food and water supply. Protesters surveyed the aftermath, including loads of fresh vegetables and other food strewn on the ground near the former kitchen. Many picked up brooms and began cleaning, while others got to work compiling media information.

Those arrested were released around 3 am and arrived back at camp at 3:30. Xander, a protester who had been sleeping at the camp since its first night on Sept. 17, was one of those arrested. He recounted, “They hit me a couple of times on my shoulders and put me in the truck. We weren’t able to leave because our brothers and sisters had surrounded the truck. We were singing and banging on the walls.”

Those arrested were charged with resisting arrest and impeding traffic.

 

 

Spike salute: Showing love for Mission High volleyball team

Andrew Lam
-
3

When head coach Geraldine Poon and assistant coach Kris Thomas got involved with Mission High School’s volleyball program two years ago, their goal was to significantly improve the team’s attitude on the court and in the classroom. They did. 

The young women on the team made such strides on and off the court, in fact, that Thomas got in touch with the Guardian to ask if we could show them some love. We would love to!

“Over the years our student athletes have really put in tons of effort and it really does show,” Thomas told the Guardian in an email. This year has been the strongest start of a season in the history of Mission High School’s volleyball program with a 5-1 record.  

When Poon and Thomas came aboard as the team’s coaches, they started teaching skills that had nothing to do with volleyball. The two thought that for this team, communication skills were more important. The 12 girls on the roster learned how to offer constructive criticism, how to identify a problem and fix it, how to be supportive of their teammates, and how to play with composure and poise. Their new set of skills improved their playing and their schoolwork. 

Most of Mission High School’s student body is made up of students who know or are learning English as a second language and live in underprivileged neighborhoods such as Bayview, Hunters Point, Fillmore, and the Tenderloin. The school is not known for high levels of academic achievement, but the volleyball team has improved its GPA from 3.06 in 2008 to 3.65 in 2010. Many of the girls received straight A’s. 

On the court, the girls have shown a great amount of improvement as well. Middle blocker junior Leonida Radford has been dominating at the net in kills and blocks, totaling 27 kills for the season. 

Thomas offered specific commendations for many of the young women. He expects co-captain and outside hitter sophomore Katie Regalia to continue to post big numbers for the team in kills, digs and aces. She totals 137 service aces and 62 assists for the season. “She is by far the biggest asset to the team,” Thomas wrote. “[Her] undying effort and sheer selflessness …She is the glue that holds the team together.”

Sisters seniors Tianna, middle blocker and Nailafou Mitchell, outside hitter have significantly improved their grades and have both boasted a formidable offense when attacking. “They both had a rocky start to the season, but have both made major adjustments and are also huge assets to the team,” Thomas wrote. 

Coaches also commended junior captain and setter Michelle Li for the way she rallies and holds her teammates responsible. 

Despite its success, the team still has to deal with challenges they have no control over: it’s had to wear the same uniforms for three years and there is no funding to purchase new ones. “Some of the uniforms have holes in the sleeves and are worn and discolored,” Thomas wrote. But that doesn’t discourage the girls when playing volleyball powerhouse high schools like Washington, Lowell, or Lincoln.

There is still a month of games left on their schedule, but next Tuesday is the team’s last home game. “We have full confidence in making playoffs this year,” Thomas wrote. “In fact, I think it would be quite a disappointment if we don’t. A championship would be the proverbial icing on the cake.”

 

 

Period Piece: A Carnegie library reopens in the Marina

Andrew Lam
-
0

Period Piece is Lucy Schiller’s recurring feature on the hidden histories of San Francisco. Give her a shout at culture@sfbg.com if you know of some hot dirt on olden times in the city

About a hundred years ago, Andrew Carnegie was giving away most of the money he had amassed from a gargantuan steel empire. Eight libraries in San Francisco directly resulted from Carnegie’s efforts, including the Marina’s Golden Gate Valley branch – the recipient of a much needed facelift that concluded last week.

The library was the eighth branch to open in San Francisco. It was born in 1918 to a city less than thrilled about accepting money from a man with a terrible labor rights record. Various arguments at City Hall had already played out over whether to accept the dirty money or refuse it, dedicate most of the funds to a main library or allocate more to several branches, elect trustees or keep the wealthy, elite ones around. 

After years of stalling, it was decided. Half of Carnegie’s grant went to the Main Library, the other half to seven branches. Last week, the Golden Gate Valley branch reopened after an extensive renovation thanks to B.L.I.P. (the inauspicious acronym for the Branch Library Improvement Project).

You can sense the money that went into this place’s initial construction. Shaped like a big wedge of cake, the Golden Gate Valley branch nestles into the corner of Octavia and Green and is decked out with stately columns, heavy copper doors, and high ceilings. 

Libraries have come a long way from their original intended purpose of providing literature to the masses. There are books here, of course — lots and lots of them. But the Golden Gate Valley branch also holds features for kids who can’t even read yet, digital signage in the teens’ area, a program room for community events, and of course, rows of computers for what is perhaps the library’s most salient role in today’s society: free Internet access. 

“Part of the mission of the library is to be a family destination,” says Mindy Linetzky, bond program administrator for BLIP. “We really want teens to come, for example.” With the library’s plans to hold occasional Wii gaming days, you can be sure they will, in droves.

B.L.I.P. has seen marked increase in community engagement since the start of the renovations. According to Michelle Jeffers, public relations officer at SFPL, the Visitation Valley branch’s recent renovation was met with a 406 percent increase in library card registration. 

BLIP’s job is almost done now with twenty-two refurbished libraries under its belt and only two more on the docket. Safer (with seismic bracing), greener (with solar panels), and more accessible (with elevators), our new libraries hold a lot of their former glory but also some fancy new swag.

Golden Gate Valley Public Library
 1801 Green, SF
(415) 355-5666

 

Get lit! A handy guide to Saturday night’s LitCrawl

Sue Vaughan
-
0
Get lit! A handy guide to Saturday night’s LitCrawl

LitQuake has been rough. You’ve been dashing out of work, shoving people away from their cabs to make it to the Chuck Klosterman event and sprinting after buses to catch Karen Russell; you’ve had to make the hard decision between “Kafkaesque” and “Rock Out with your Book Out;” and all the while, you keep thinking Jeffrey Eugenides has just passed you on the street. With LitCrawl coming up Sat/15, things become even more overwhelming and terrific. In the Mission, bars, cafes, and bookstores together host 450 readers in 79 readings, all free and open to the public. One way to navigate the event might be to pick your favorite bar or cafe, find a chair, order a drink and wait for something to happen. Or, you can check these readings out:
 
I Live Here: SF. How We Got Here, Why We Stay
Not a lot of us can say we were born and raised in San Francisco. Most of us fled here from elsewhere for one reason or another: failed relationships, parents kicked you out, a nervous breakdown, a mid-life crisis, you formed an indie-rock band. Maybe you came for LoveFest and simply forgot whom you were. There are a thousand reasons for arriving and a thousand more for staying. In Clarion Alley, writers and non-writers alike including Mark Bittner and M.C. Mars talk about what brought them here and why they haven’t budged. 6 p.m., Clarion Alley, between Mission and Valencia, and 17th and 18th Sts, SF

BARTab’s Blame it on the a a a a a Alcohol: Tall Tales of Inebriated Adventures
Alcohol and writers have always had a vital, if tumultuous relationship. Hemingway said that when you worked in your head day after grueling day, the only viable remedy was whiskey; that “The only time it isn’t good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold.” Luckily, a drunken night can become a source of inspiration, if not the next morning, sometime when you’re “cold.” At this reading, writers like Daphne Gottlieb, Jon Ginoli, Brenda Knight, and the editor of BARtab, Joe Provenzano, read about nights of drunken debauchery. 6 p.m., Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF
 
Come Cheer the Reaper: Readings from the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto
The San Francisco Writers’ Grotto was founded because, dammit, this writing business can be agonizing, but it’s more manageable when others surround you with whom you can collectively suffer. Convening at the Elbo Room for a night of readings tied around death, you might think that collectively suffering wasn’t working out so well for the Grotto. However, tonight is not a night for morbidity and gloom. Nine writers, including Janis Cooke Newman, Marianna Cherry, Gerard Jones, and Chris Colin read work that looks at death with humor and lightheartedness. 7:15 p.m., Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF
 
The Three-Penny Review Presents…
The Three-Penny Review, based out of Berkeley, would naturally host a night of premium writers at LitCrawl. The journal has been hosting the best authors, poets, and critics in its pages since 1980, and it publishes reviews and essays about everything under the sun (their recent issue features 3 great essays about live music). A good way to gauge the journal’s breath is looking at tonight’s lineup at the Summit. Kay Ryan is, of course, the former Poet Laureate of the U.S. and the Pulitzer Prize winner for The Best of It: New and Selected Poems; Walter Murch is a three-time Oscar-winning film and sound editor famous for his work on Apocalypse Now and The English Patient; Louis B. Jones is an author whose most recent novel is Radiance. Others tonight are poet Victoria Chang and the playwright and screenwriter Erik Tarloff. 7:15 p.m., Summit, 760 Valencia, SF
 
Zyzzyva Presents…
If you’ve taken a look at the West Coast writers and artists magazine Zyzzyva lately, you probably noticed some substantial changes: a new design, a full color art spread, an additional 40 pages of content. The changes are credited to the magazine’s first new editor since its founding in 1985, Laura Cogan. At 29, Cogan has breathed new life into the magazine and given it more presence in the community by doing, among other things, events like this one. Contributors to the fall issue of the magazine W.S. Di Piero and Troy Jollimore are joined by Heather Altfeld, and Malena Watrous. 7:15 p.m., Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF
 
From Buddha to Batman
If you’re a fan of comic superheroes and also have a costume you’re dying to wear before Halloween, this event is most certainly for you. Gotham Chopra, co-founder of Liquid Comics and co-author of the comic Bullet Proof Monk, discusses our persistent fascination with muscles, spandex, super powers, and sidekicks. If you’re one of the first 20 to arrive to the event in a superhero costume, you get a free drink, while the best three costumes win signed books. 8:30 p.m., Laszlo Bar, 2526 Mission, SF

McSweeny’s and The Believer Present…
McSweeny’s and The Believer need no introduction. They are of what they are, and everyone knows that, together, the publisher and magazine support the very best writing. This event features a handful of those talent writers and personalities: poets Matthew Zapruder and Tess Taylor, columnist Daniel Handler (known by some as Lemony Snicket), and Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz, founders of Mission Street Food, and authors of the book Mission Street Food: Recipes and Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant. 8:30 p.m., Latin American Club, 3286 22nd St., SF

The World Cries Out for Revolution
Some, like the protestors defiantly camping outside the Federal Reserve Building for OccupySF, get their voices heard by taking to the streets. Others, like us at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, stir things up with the written word. You can see this every week in the articles written by our own Steven T. Jones (check out his article on the pot club crackdowns in this week’s issue). At Cafe La Boheme, Jones reads in the spirit of dissent with former Black Panther Richard Brown, as well as Larry Everest, the author of Oil Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda.
8:30 p.m., Cafe La Boheme, 3318 24th St., SF

Get on the bus: St. James Infirmary’s new sex worker PSAs are

Andrew Lam
-
3

St. James Infirmary has been providing free, non-judgmental medical and social services for sex workers since 1999. This week, it’ll take the next step. The clinic is putting ads up in Muni buses throughout the city this month meant to educate and inspire Muni riders throughout the city.  

But the campaign, entitled “Someone you know is a sex worker,” won’t be seen on a billboard near you. The ads, which feature actual sex workers, were rejected outright by both Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor before transit ad company Titan 360 agreed to the bus campaign.

You can preview the controversial images — as well as mingle with fabulous people who work for the health and safety of Bay Area sex workers every day — at an exhibit and launch party on Sun/16.

Artist Rachel Schreiber — who created the campaign with photographer Barbara DeGenevieve, and whom the Guardian reached by phone yesterday — thinks advertisers may be hesitant to seem aligned with sex workers rights.

“The anti-trafficking community has such a monopoly on the voice of the issue that I think people are afraid to speak out in another way. People are afraid of being perceived as not supporting that position. Anti-trafficking campaigns are really well funded, often overstated and under researched. Of course we are anti-trafficking and one of our big goals is to fight violence against sex workers”

“There are a lot of people who work in the industry by choice,” she continues. “And everyone deserves access to labor rights and health care and shouldn’t be stigmatized.”

The 27 individuals — sex workers as well as friends and family members of sex workers — who agreed to have their portraits and quotes displayed are taking a risk. It can be dangerous for sex workers to let their identities be known to the public. But Schreiber praised the participants for taking that risk for the good of the sex workers rights movement.

“There are a lot of activists in the community who are willing to go out on a limb…one impressive feature of this community is their support for one another, their willingness to go public to make the topic less secretive and stigmatized,” she says. 

Campaign slogans include “sex work is real work” and “sex workers rights are human rights.” Those are central tenets of the sex worker rights movement, which strives to gain respect and rights for everyone from legal workers like adult film performers and dancers to people who work illegally, including those who exchange sex for survival or sustenance. 

Most sex workers go to great lengths to separate their sex work from the rest of their lives. Schreiber notes a case where a high school teacher in Berkeley was outed, and lost her teaching job as a result. 

“We have a really intense social and cultural taboo against the notion that people trade sex for any kind of money,” says Schreiber. “It’s really deeply ingrained.” She says other, legal occupations, present similar challenges. 

“Agricultural workers, they’re using their bodies and their bodies are in harm’s way. Same with construction workers,” she goes on to say. “Sex work, yes it’s a form of labor that uses the body, but just because it involves sexuality its taboo is blown out of proportion.”

 

“Someone you know is a sex worker” campaign launch

Sun/16 5-8 p.m., $10 suggested donation

 Intersection for the Arts

925 Mission, SF

www.stjamesinfirmary.org

 

Hot sexy events: October 12-18

Andrew Lam
-
0

What does the future look like for our alternative sexuality community? While the political system borders on redundancy and no one cares about it anymore, perhaps now’s the time to turn our focus inward. Two projects are in the works to look at the interior world of queers – and they both could use a hand from you.

First up, Madison Young and Femina Potens’ “Building Our Own Picket Fences,” a group art show that will turn FP’s new gallery space into a series of experiencial multimedia projects. Young, Midori, Monica Canilao, Mev Luna, Amelia Reiff Hill, and Harrison Bartlett have been selected to depict what their new family traditions look like. 

“As a child I knew I didn’t want to exist within that traditional construct of that white picket fence,” says Young in her Kickstarter video (yep, the project is looking for $5,000). “I want the white picket fence, but I want it my way.”

Wanting it your way is a prerequisite if you’re going to help out filmmaker Danielle Fernández.  Fernández is creating a documentary called In My Room for the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, and – shocking, San Francisco! – needs your help in tracking down queers of color to invite her and her crew into their bedroom. Got what it takes? She’s asking interested party to send her a photo of themselves, their room, and a list of three things they do in their bedroom on a regular basis. Find more info here.  

Now, sex events. 

 

“Bawdy Storytelling: Infomaniac”

Semantics? Maybe, but words have power, baby – the power to entertain and arouse, in this event’s case. This month’s Bawdy features a Good Vibrations strap-on fashion show, and cerebral stories from Carol Queen, transgender comedian Morgan, Mollena, and slutty blogger Fleur De Lis.

Wed/12 8 p.m., $15

The Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com


Jack Davis’ Penis Show

Look at it – Jack Davis’ singular passion, the crocheted penis. Struck by the number of women creating vulva art in his college art classes, Davis has been building the pincushion phalli for decades. View whole walls of them at this art opening in Good Vibes’ back gallery space. 

Thu/13 6-8 p.m., free

Good Vibrations

1620 Polk, SF

www.goodvibes.com


“Exploring the Taboos of Intimate Fun” with Frank Moore

Rub one out at this presentation by shaman-performer Frank Moore. He’s seeking to unlock a state of erotic friction called Lila. Finally, an excuse to dry hump like you mean it. 

Sat/15 8 p.m., sliding scale $5-$25

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org


Beatpig one-year anniversary

Walter Gomez and Juanita More take their drag-BDSM slutfest into its second year of existence tonight. Break down to More’s beats and knock back $1 shot specials. Even better? Your five bucks of cover go to fund the Transgender Law Center. See, it feels good to feel good – or bad, as the case might be. 

Sat/15 9 p.m.-2 a.m., $5

Powerhouse

1347 Folsom, SF

Facebook: Beatpig One-Year Anniversary


St. James Infirmary ad campaign launch 

The peer-based sex worker clinic is taking a bold move in its quest for justice for those that trade sex for funds. They’ll be placing ads featuring real sex workers on Muni buses all over town – putting them in the public eye and boldly asserting “You know a sexworker” (that’s the campaign’s title). Come eat, drink, and be merry with those involved at this reception. 

Sun/16 5-8 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Intersection for the Arts

925 Mission, SF

www.stjamesinfirmary.org

 

 

The odd twist to the Chron’s Chiu endorsement

Zelda Bronstein
-
18
The odd twist to the Chron’s Chiu endorsement

The most obvious interpretation of the San Francisco Chronicle’s endorsement of David Chiu is that the Chron thinks Chiu has completely left the progressive camp and is now aligned with the political wing the daily paper calls “moderates:”

What is impressive about Chiu is that “change” and “jobs” are not just campaign slogans for him. He can go into detail about the redundancies and red tape at City Hall that are holding back economic development: the 15 departments that regulate the private sector, the hundreds of fees that burden businesses big and small, a payroll tax that is a disincentive to hire … If elected, he would have a mandate to make city government more efficient and effective.

(I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but the payroll tax is NOT a disincentive to hire.)

The Chron — which, on economic issues like taxes and development, is a very conservative paper — clearly thinks Chiu can be trusted, which ought to make progressives nervous.

But here’s the other interesting twist.

Hearst Corporation bought the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, at the top of the market, for more than $500 million. I guarantee the paper isn’t worth more than a tiny fraction of that today. It’s still losing money, and has been for years, and nobody’s buying daily newspapers any more, and if Hearst wanted to unload the Chron, the New York publishing chain would be lucky to get $50 million. Hell, they’d be lucky to get $25 million.

So the bean counters in New York have this nonperforming half-billion-dollar asset on their balance sheets, and there’s no way to recover that money — except for one thing: The Chron owns a bunch of land around Fifth and Mission, including its own historic building. And that property is potentially worth a whole lot of money. When the economy picks up, Hearst can develop the parking lots, old press facilities and even its HQ; turn it all into condos and office space, and suddenly there’s a real chance of recouping some of those deep losses.

The process is already underway — the Chron’s been moving tech firms into vacant space in its building, and is working with developers on the shape of what could be a major project still to come.

And guess what? In June, William Randolph Hearst III — heir to part of the Hearst fortune and a member of the Hearst Corp. board — made a rare campaign contribution to a San Francisco political candidate. He gave the maximum allowable $500 to … David Chiu. Around the same time, Michael Cohen and Jesse Blout, the partners in a firm called Strada that’s working on the redevelopment of the Chron’s property, also gave Chiu the maxiumum $500.

I figured the top people at the Chron would back Ed Lee because they figured he’d be down with whatever they wanted to do with that land — particularly since Lee’s good buddy Willie Brown is now a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. But it appears they’ve cast their lot with Chiu. As Mr. Spock would say, fascinating.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
-
0

Schedules are for Wed/12-Tues/18 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Other Cinema:” “Gerry Fialka’s PXL This 20!,” films made with the Fisher-Price PXL 2000, Sat, 8:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-15. •Dinner at Eight (Cukor, 1933), Wed, 2:50, 7, and Libeled Lady (Conway, 1936), Wed, 4:55, 9:05. Arab Film Festival: Egyptian Maidens (Amin, 2010), Thurs, 7:30. For tickets ($25) and complete festival information (festival runs through Oct 23 in SF, San Jose, and Berkeley), visit www.arabfilmfestival.org. •Fright Night (Holland, 1985), Fri, 7:30, and Child’s Play (Holland, 1988), Fri, 9:30. “Marc Huestis Presents:” The Bad Seed (LeRoy, 1956), noon, 7:30, 9. With star Patty McCormack in person at noon and 7:30pm shows; for tickets ($10-35), call (415) 863-0611 or visit www.ticketfly.com. •The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973), Sun, 2:20, 7, and The Exorcist III (Blatty, 1990), Sun, 4:45, 9:25. Pearl Jam Twenty (Crowe, 2011), Tues, 8. Free screening presented by KQED; for reservations (recommended) visit kqed.org/pearljam.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. Mill Valley Film Festival, through Sun/16. Tickets (most shows $13.50) and more info at www.mvff.com.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10 (reservations required as seating is limited). “CinemaLit Film Series: Discovering Myrna Loy:” Penthouse (Van Dyke, 1933), Fri, 6.

OAKLAND METRO OPERA HOUSE 630 Third St, Oakl; www.bloodsweatvinyl.com. $18. Blood, Sweat + Vinyl: DIY in the 21st Century (Thomas), Sat, 6. With performances by Oxbow and Evangelista, two of 20 bands featured in the documentary.

OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA James Moore Theater, 1000 Oak, SF; www.museumca.org. Free with museum admission ($6-12). “Home Movie Day,” movies submitted by the public as well as from the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, Sat, 1-5.

ODDBALL FILM AND VIDEO 275 Capp, SF; (415) 558-8112, rsvp@oddballfilm.com. $10. “Media Ecology Soul Salon (MESS) with Joey Bishop (aka Ed Holmes),” rare film clips and interview with Holmes by Gerry Fialka, Fri, 8:30.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Paul Sharits: An Open Cinema:” “Paul Sharits: Midcareer Work” (1973-76), Wed, 7:30; “Late Work” (1975-82), Thurs, 7:30. “Rainer Werner Fassbender: Two Great Epics:” World on a Wire (1973), Fri, 7; Berlin Alexanderplatz, Parts I-III (1979-80), Sun, 2. “Home Movie Day:” “Amateur Night: Home Movies from American Archives,” Sat, 6:30. “UCLA Festival of Preservation:” Sleep, My Love (Sirk, 1948), Sat, 8:45. “Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov:” “Kino-Pravda Nos. 9–11, 13 (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: A Film Poem Dedicated to the October Celebrations)” (1922), Tues, 7.

PIEDMONT 4186 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 464-5980, www.landmarktheatres.com. $15. The Room (Wiseau, 2003), Fri-Sat, midnight. Director and star Tommy Wiseau and co-star Greg Sestero in person.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. American Teacher (Roth, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 8:45 (also Wed, 6:30). Sleep Furiously (Koppel, 2008), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, Oct 14-27. For tickets (most shows $11) and more info, visit www.sfindie.com.

SFFS | NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $13. “Taiwan Film Days:” Formosa Mambo (Wang, 2011), Fri, 7; Taivalu (Huang, 2011), Sat, 1:30; Pinoy Sunday (Ho, 2009), Sat, 4 and Sun, 7; You Are the Apple of My Eye (Giddens, 2011), Sat, 6; Honey Pupu (Chen, 2011), Sat, 9; The Coming of Tulku (Cheng), Sun, 1; Bear It (Cheng, 2011), Sun, 4:15; Ranger (Chienn, 2010), Sun, 9. SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. “Thursdays at Noon Film Series: When Women Got the Vote:” Iron-Jawed Angels (von Garnier, 2004), Thurs, noon. SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY Coppola Theater, 1700 Holloway, SF; cinema.sfsu.edu. Free. “SFSU MFA Film Screening,” Thurs, 7:30. VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $5 donation. “The Vortex Incarnate:” •Masque of the Red Death (Corman, 1964), Thurs, 9, and Doctor Faustus (Burton and Coghill, 1967), Thurs, 11. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Mexico Rising: The Films of Nicolás Pereda:” Summer of Goliath (2010), Thurs, 7:30 and Sun, 2.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

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

“Master Harold” … and the Boys Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $18-40. Opens Sat/15, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. Off Broadway West Theatre Company performs Athol Fugard’s South African-set drama.

On the Air Pier 29 on the Embarcadero (at Battery), SF; (415) 438-2668, love.zinzanni.org. $117 and up (includes dinner). Opens Thurs/13, 6pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 6pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Dec 31. Teatro ZinZanni’s final performance at Pier 39 riffs on the company’s own struggles to stay in San Francisco. Geoff Hoyle and Duffy Bishop are the headlining guest stars.

red, black & GREEN: a blues (rbGb) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $5-25. Opens Thurs/13, 7:30pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm. Through Oct 22. Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s world premiere is a collaborative, multimedia performance work and installation addressing environmental racism, social ecology, and other topics.

BAY AREA

Inanna’s Descent Codornices Park, 1201 Euclid, Berk; www.raggedwing.org. Free. Opens Sat/15, 1-5pm. Runs Sat-Sun, 1pm. Through Oct 30. Special Halloween show Oct 31, 5-8pm. Ragged Wing Ensemble presents its second annual “outdoor, site-specific, ritual performance event for Halloween.”

ONGOING

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Oct 20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

Alice Down the Rwong Wrabbit Whole Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF; (415) 500-2323, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15. Fri/14-Sat/15, 9pm. Karen Light and Edna Barrón perform their new comedy based on Alice in Wonderland.

Almost Nothing, Day of Absence Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Previews Wed/12-Thurs/13, 8pm. Opens Fri/14, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Nov 20. Lorraine Hansberry Theatre performs one-act plays by Marcos Barbosa and Douglas Turner Ward.

Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief Boxcar Theatre Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $15-35. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Nov 5. Boxcar Theatre performs Pauls Vogel’s dark comedy, inspired by the three female characters from Shakespeare’s Othello.

Honey Brown Eyes SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-50. Tues-Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Nov 5. Bosnia in 1992 is divided in a horrifying civil war, some characteristics of which play out in parallel circumstances for two members of a single rock band in SF Playhouse’s west coast premiere of Stefanie Zadravec’s new play. In the first act, set in Visegrad, a young Bosnian Muslim woman (Jennifer Stuckert) is held at gunpoint in her kitchen by a jumpy soldier (Nic Grelli) engaged in a mission of murder and dispossession known as ethnic cleansing. The second act moves to Sarajevo and the apartment of an elderly woman (Wanda McCaddon) who gives shelter and a rare meal to an army fugitive (Chad Deverman). He in turn keeps the bereaved if indomitable woman company. Director Susi Damilano and cast are clearly committed to Zadravec’s ambitious if hobbled play, but the action can be too contrived and unrealistic (especially in act one) to be credible while the tone — zigzagging between the horror of atrocity and the offbeat gestures of romantic comedy — comes over as confused indecision rather than a deliberate concoction. (Avila)

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Nov 13. Acclaimed solo performer Don Reed (East 14th) premieres his new show, based on his post-Oakland years living in Los Angeles.

Making Porn Box Car Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25-50. Thurs, 8pm; Fri-Sun, 7pm (also Fri-Sat, 10pm). Through Oct 29. Ronnie Larsen brings back his crowd-pleasing comedy about the gay porn industry.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 23. 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. (Avila)

Nymph Errant Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Oct 23. 42nd Street Moon performs Cole Porter’s madcap 1933 musical.

*The Odyssey Aboard Alma, Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, SF; www.weplayers.org. $160. Oct 28-29, Nov 4-6, 11-12, and 18, 12:30pm. Heralding their hugely ambitious Spring 2012 production of The Odyssey, which will take place all over Angel Island, the WE Players are tackling the work on a slightly smaller scale by staging it on the historic scow schooner Alma, which is part of the Maritime National Historical Park fleet docked at the end of Hyde Street Pier. Using both boat and Bay as setting, the essential chapters of the ten-year voyage — encounters with the Cyclops, Circe, the Underworld, the Sirens, Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, and Calypso — are enacted through an intriguing mash-up of narration, choreography, sea chanteys, salty dog stories (like shaggy dog stories, but more water-logged), breathtaking views, and a few death-defying stunts the likes of which you won’t see on many conventional stages. High points include the casual swapping of roles (every actor gets to play Odysseus, however briefly), Ross Travis’ masked and flatulent Prometheus and sure-footed Hermes, Ava Roy’s hot pants-clad Circe, Charlie Gurke’s steady musical direction and multi-instrumental abilities, and the sail itself, an experiential bonus. Landlubbers beware, so much time facing the back of the boat where much of the action takes place can result in mild quease, even on a calm day. Take advantage of the downtime between scenes to walk around and face forward now and again. You’ll want to anyway. (Gluckstern) *Once in a Lifetime American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-85. Wed/12-Sat/15, 8pm (also Wed/12 and Sat/15, 2pm); Sun/16, 2pm. Three enterprising small-time New York theater makers head to Hollywood as voice coaches for silent screen actors fumbling the transition to talkies in American Conservatory Theater’s revival of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s first Broadway collaboration. Originally premiered in 1930, the satirical take on the industry and its corruption of art and more is ever apt if not exactly fresh, and not all the comedy in its hefty three acts still lands where it should. That said, you probably couldn’t ask for a better revival of the piece, which retains much to admire and enjoy. Beautifully designed in grand fashion (including wowing sets by Daniel Ostling and snazzy costuming by Alex Jaeger), director Mark Rucker’s slick and savvy production ensures a perfect pace and wonderfully sharp ensemble acting led by the terrific trio of Julia Coffey, Patrick Lane, and John Wernke — but including some notable turns in multiple roles, including by René Augesen, Margot Hall, and Will LeBow. Rucker inserts some choice period film clips (the mesmerizing moments speaking with perhaps inadvertent force to the power of the celluloid medium and its tensions with theater, a sub-theme of the story), while Alexander V. Nichols’ video design adds further moment to this continent-crossing Hollywood escapade. (Avila)

“San Francisco Olympians Festival” Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sfolympians.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 28. No Nude Men Productions presents a festival of 12 new full-length plays written by 14 local writers. Each play focuses on one of the Olympian characters from ancient Greece.

ShEvil Dead Cellspace, 2050 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Sat/15, Oct 21, and 28-29, 8pm. Primitive Screwheads return with a horror play (in which the audience is literally sprayed with blood, so leave the fancy suit at home!) based on the Evil Dead movies.

“Shocktoberfest 12: Fear Over Frisco” Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $25-35. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Nov 19. In its annual season-scented horror bid, Thrillpeddlers joins forces with SF’s Czar of Noir, writer-director Eddie Muller, for a sharply penned triplet of plays that resurrect lurid San Francisco lore as flesh-and-blood action. In the slightly sluggish but intriguing Grand Inquisitor, a solitary young woman modeling herself on Louise Brooks in Lulu (an alluringly Lulu-like Bonni Suval) believes she has located the Zodiac killer’s widow (a sweet but cagey Mary Gibboney) — a scenario that just can’t end well for somebody, yet manages to defy expectations. An Obvious Explanation turns on an amnesiac (Daniel Bakken) whose brother (Flynn de Marco) explains the female corpse in the rollaway (Zelda Koznofski) before asking bro where he hid a certain pile of money. Enter a brash doctor (Suval) with a new drug and ambitions of her own vis-à-vis the hapless head case. Russell Blackwood directs The Drug, which adapts a Grand Guignol classic to the hoity-toity milieu of the Van Nesses and seedy Chinatown opium dens, where a rough-playing attorney (an ever persuasive Eric Tyson Wertz) determines to turn a gruesome case involving the duplicitous Mrs. Van Ness (an equally sure, sultry Kära Emry) to his own advantage. The evening also offers a blackout spook show and some smoothly atmospheric musical numbers, including Muller’s rousing “Fear Over Frisco” (music composed by Scrumbly Koldewyn; accompaniment by Steve Bolinger and Birdie-Bob Watt) and an aptly low-down Irving Berlin number — both winningly performed by the entire company. (Avila)

Sorya! A Minor Miracle (Part One) NOHSpace, Project Artaud, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $12-18. Sun-Mon, 7pm. Through Oct 24. Each year, NOHspace residents Theatre of Yugen present a program of short Kyogen and Noh pieces, demonstrating the building blocks that define their unique approach. Blending classical Japanese theatrical styles with original and contemporary works, the company’s multi-cultural ensemble has been performing their specialized brand of East-West fusion since 1978. This year’s Sorya! program includes two modern-day works written by Greg Giovanni, a Philadelphia-based playwright and Noh artist, directed by Theatre of Yugen artistic director Jubilith Moore, and one traditional comedy, Boshibari (Tied to a Pole), directed by company founder Yuriko Doi. This piece is by far the strongest of the three, a tale of two servants pulling one over their master, who has tied them up in order to prevent them from breaking into the sake cellar. Lluis Valls and Sheila Berotti as Taro and Jiro execute the highly-ritualized aspects of the Kyogen farce with deft mobility and expressiveness, working together to overcome their captivity just enough to enjoy a few drinks before being discovered by their irate master (Sheila Devitt). The other two pieces, one set in Narnia and the other based on an Irish folk ballad, are less compelling, though no less ambitious, and Stephen Siegel and Karen Marek’s joint performance as a pair of squabbling dwarves is worthy of praise. (Gluckstern)

*Tutor: Enter the Enclave Exit Studio, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.darkporchtheatre.com. $15-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 22. Dark Porch Theatre performs Martin Schwartz’s play, inspired by an 18th century German drama, about a tutor who realizes the creepy family he works for is not quite what they seem.

BAY AREA

Attempts on Her Life Zellerbach Playhouse, Bancroft at Telegraph, UC Berkeley, Berk; tdps.berkeley.edu. $15. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 2pm. “Annie” never appears onstage but is the much discussed, indeterminate subject of British playwright Martin Crimp’s dazzling 1997 play, which spins the titular “her” into a postmodern cipher-self coughing up — in a shrewd, caustic, at times hilarious slew of discrete but interrelated scenes — the detritus of an international world/netherworld of consumerism, terrorism, media, and murder. The play, which premiered at the cusp of the millennium (and locally in a memorable 2002 production by foolsFURY), retains perhaps all of its original force in these menacing times, but unfortunately much of it is lost or diluted in director Scott Wallin’s production for UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. The staging (set within a large initially bare stage with audience members on either side arena-style) holds some effective surprises, but is unhelpfully diffused or static at times, while the performance of the polyglot 10-actor ensemble is generally weak (the monologue “Kinda Funny” is one among a handful of notable exceptions), especially when the cast attempts singing and moving together. The decidedly mixed success here leaves room for another attempt soon on this elusive and stimulating work. (Avila)

Bellwether Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/15 and Oct 29, 2pm; Oct 20, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 30. Marin Theatre Company performs Steve Yockey’s spooky fairy tale for adults.

Clementine in the Lower 9 TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Oct 30. TheatreWorks presents the world premiere of Dan Dietz’s post-Katrina New Orleans drama.

*A Delicate Balance Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-48. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Extended through Oct 23. Aurora Theatre performs Edward Albee’s comedy of manners.

*Phaedra Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $17-26. Wed-Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Oct 23. Catherine (Catherine Castellanos) is the loveless matron in the impeccably tidy, upper-class home of middle-aged right-wing judge Antonio (Keith Burkland), secretly infatuated with her stepson (Patrick Alparone), the prodigal returning home from jail and rehab for a new start. Catherine’s cold, obsessively ordered run of the household — with heavy-lifting by her cheerful, steadfast housekeeper (a wonderfully genuine Trish Mulholland) — masks a desolation and chaos inside her, a churning emptiness evoked in the deliberately listless pace of act one and the skudding clouds we can see reflected in the walls of designer Nina Ball’s impressively stolid, icily tasteful living room. Portland Center Stage’s Rose Riordan directs a strong cast (which includes Cindy Im, as the stepson’s rehab partner and sexual interest) in a modern-day adaptation of the Greek myth by Adam Bock (The Shaker Chair, Swimming in the Shallows), in a worthy premiere for Shotgun Players. The drama comes leavened by Bock’s well-developed humor and the dialogue, while inconsistent, can be eloquent. The storm that breaks in the second act, however, feels a bit compressed and, especially after the languid first act, contributes to a somewhat pinched narrative. But whatever its limitations, Catherine’s predicament is palpably dramatic, especially in Castellanos’s deeply moving performance — among her best work to date and alone worth giving Phaedra a chance. (Avila)

*Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues-Sun, showtimes vary. Through Oct 30. The life of stage and screen legend Rita Moreno is a subject that has no trouble filling two swift and varied acts, especially as related in anecdote, song, comedy, and dance by the serene multiple–award-winning performer and Berkeley resident herself. Indeed, that so much material gets covered so succinctly but rarely abruptly is a real achievement of this attractively adorned autobiographical solo show crafted with playwright and Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone. (Avila)

The Taming of the Shrew Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Wy, Orinda; (510) 809-3290, www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Wed/12-Thurs/13, 7:30pm; Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 4pm. California Shakespeare Theatre’s last show of the season is a high-fashion, pop-art take on Shakespeare’s battle of the sexes.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Through Nov 20. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

DANCE/PERFORMANCE

Alonzo King LINES Ballet Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; www.linesballet.org. Fri/14-Sat/15 and Oct 21-22, 8pm; Sun/15 and Oct 23, 5pm; Oct 19-20, 7:30pm. $15-65. The company performs its fall home season, featuring two world premieres.

“Hula Show 2011” Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Sat/15, Oct 21-22, 8pm; Sun/16, 4pm; Oct 23, noon (family matinee) and 4pm. $10-45. Patrick Makuakane’s Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu performs its annual show mixing traditional and contemporary forms of hula, with special guests Golden Gate Men’s Chorus.

*”PanderFest 2011″ Stage Werx 446, 446 Valencia, SF; www.panderexpress.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 29. $20. San Francisco’s Crisis Hopkins and (PianoFight’s S.H.I.T. Show makers) Mission Control join forces for a tag-team evening of sketch and “improv” (quotes kind of necessary this time). Claiming dubiously to fill a need for yet another festival in this city (though at the same time striving for above-average fawning of the public), the show delivers two acts of mostly spot-on comedy by two agreeable ensembles and is thus a fine night out anyway. The program (based rather loosely on online-video–generated audience suggestions, interspersed with the sneezing Panda baby and other YouTube perennials) also inaugurates Stage Werx’s cozy new Mission District venue — the former digs of Intersection for the Arts and a huge improvement over Stage Werx’s old subterranean lair on Sutter Street. Highlights of a ridiculous evening include a two-part Crisis Hopkins sketch detailing a site visit by a ball-wrecking contractor (Christy Daly) to her chary foreman (Sam Shaw) and his withering cherries; and Mission Control’s pointed ’70s TV show homage with a twist, Good Cop, Stab Cop. (Avila)

“San Francisco Trolley Dances 2011” Tours leave from SF Public Library, 100 Larkin, SF; (415) 226-1139, www.epiphanydance.org. Sat/15-Sun/16, every 45 minutes from 11am-2:45pm. Free with Muni fare ($2). Ephiphany Productions presents its eighth annual moving festival of local dance companies performing site-specific, outdoor pieces.

“To Bury a Cat: A Clown Show” NOHspace in Project Artaud, 2840 Mariposa, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. $10. Theatre of Yugen’s ARTburst Program presents this performance by Clowns On a Stick.

“Witches of Wonder” Big Umbrella Studios, 960 Divisadero, SF; www.bigumbrellastudios.com. Fri, 7pm. Free. All all-female cast sends up Halloween, Day of the Dead, and “all things goth” in this performance.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

SAN FRANCISCO DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

The 10th San Francisco DocFest runs Oct 14-27 at the Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF, and the Shattuck Theatre, 2230 Shattuck, Berk. Tickets ($11) and complete schedule available at www.sfindie.com. For commentary, see “A Decade of DocFest.”

OPENING

The Big Year Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson star as bird-watching frenemies in this road-trip comedy. (1:30)

*Blackthorn This low-key neo-Western imagines what would’ve happened if Butch Cassidy had survived that shootout in 1908 Bolivia and retreated into anonymity as a rural rancher. Sam Shepard stars as the outlaw turned grizzled gringo (in flashbacks to the Sundance Kid days, he’s played by Game of Thrones‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Butch, now known as James Blackthorn, longs to return to America, so he empties his bank account and sells off his horses. His plan runs afoul when he loses his cash stash, thanks to a series of unfortunate events set into motion by gentleman bandit Eduardo (Eduardo Noriega), who’s just ripped off a nearby mine but is ill-suited for survival in the harsh backcountry. Determined to recoup his losses, Butch reluctantly teams up with Eduardo; there are shoot-outs and escapes on horseback and a nice series of scenes with Stephen Rea as an aging, frequently soused Pinkerton detective. Director Mateo Gil (writer of 1997’s Open Your Eyes, which starred Noriega) delivers an unpretentious spin on a legend highlighted by gorgeous landscapes and, of course, Shepard’s true-gritty performance. (1:38) Albany, Bridge. (Eddy)

Finding Joe Think of Finding Joe as a noob’s every-hero introduction to mythologist Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Director Patrick Takaya Solomon assembles a diverse group of Campbell experts and acolytes such as Joseph Campbell Foundation president Robert Walter, author Deepak Chopra, tai chi master Chungliang Al Huang, A Beautiful Mind (2001) screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, and skater Tony Hawk, who expound on every aspect of the hero’s journey, from experiencing spiritual death to finding bliss to summoning the courage to slay dragons. Somewhat predictable clips from Star Wars (1977) and other cinematic sources bring home the ways that pop culture has incorporated and been read through the filter of Campbell’s ideas. All of which makes for an accessible survey of our bro Joe’s work — though despite the inclusion of a few token female talking heads like actress Rashida Jones and Twilight (2008) director Catherine Hardwicke, Solomon’s past shooting action sports and commercials gives the doc a distinctly macho cast. (1:23) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Fireflies in the Garden Don’t let the A-list cast (Willem Dafoe, Ryan Reynolds, Emily Watson, Julie Roberts) fool you: this is a minor-key melodrama that would be just as unmemorable with a cast of unknowns. Writer-director Dennis Lee tosses a co-writing credit to Robert Frost, whose poem lends the film its title and plays a part in a pivotal scene. Scarred by a childhood made miserable by his cruel father (Dafoe) — who, as onscreen dads go, really isn’t that terrible (see The Woman, below) — a successful writer (Reynolds) returns home for a family celebration that turns (wait for it) tragic. This is the kind of movie that attempts to hit big emotional notes without actually earning them; if the lure of Reynolds as a hunky sad sack is too great to resist, prepare to feel either completely unmoved or totally manipulated. Not sure which is worse. (1:39) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Footloose Another unnecessary remake joins the queue at the box office, aiming for the pockets of ’80s-era nostalgics and fans of dance movies and naked opportunism. A recap for those (if there are those) who never saw the 1984 original: city boy Ren McCormack moves to a Middle American speck-on-the-map called Bomont and riles the town’s inhabitants with his rock ‘n’ roll ways — rock ‘n’ roll, and the lewd acts of physicality it inspires, i.e., dancing, having been criminalized by the town council to preserve the souls and bodies of Bomont’s young people. Ren falls for wayward preacher’s daughter Ariel Moore — whose father has sponsored this oversolicitous piece of legislation — and vows to fight city hall on the civil rights issue of a senior prom. Ren McCormack 2.0 is one Kenny Wormald (prepped for the gig by his tenure in the straight-to-cable dance-movie sequel Center Stage: Turn It Up), who forgoes the ass-grabbing blue jeans that Kevin Bacon once angry-danced through a flour mill in. Otherwise, the 2011 version, directed and cowritten by Craig Brewer (2005’s Hustle & Flow), regurgitates much of the original, hoping to leverage classic lines, familiar scenes, and that Dance Your Ass Off T-shirt of Ariel’s. It doesn’t work. Ren and Ariel (Dancing with the Stars‘ Julianne Hough) are blandly unsympathetic and have the chemistry of two wet paper towels, the adult supporting cast should have known better, and the entire film comes off as a tired, tuneless echo. (1:53) Balboa. (Rapoport)

*Happy, Happy Sigve (Henrik Rafaelsen) and Elisabeth (Maibritt Saerens) seem like very exciting new neighbors to Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen) — she’s almost hysterical with welcoming enthusiasm, perhaps overcompensating for the frigidity of her union to dour Eirik (Joachim Rafaelsen). But it soon emerges that the urban, urbane newcomers to this snowy country community also have more than their share of domestic woes. When those unpleasant facts tumble out over a rather disastrous dinner party, the revelation somehow throws Kaja and Sigve together as not just the injured parties in their respective marriages, but potential soulmates. This first feature for both director Anne Sewitzky and scenarist Ragnhild Tronvoll nearly passed unnoticed at Sundance this January — being so good-natured and, well, Norwegian — but dang if it wasn’t just too much of a genuine (as opposed to contrived) crowdpleaser to go ignored. The characters behave badly (as well as irresponsibly, since there are children involved), yet their fates develop real rooting interest through a number of clever, complex, sometimes hilarious narrative developments. It would be a delight even without the slam-dunk inspiration of an unlikely Greek chorus: four vanilla gents singing African-American spirituals a cappella as incongruous yet strangely perfect external commentary on our protagonists’ hapless entanglements. (1:28) Lumiere. (Harvey)

The Sleeping Beauty Fairytales are endemically Freudian; perhaps it has something to with their use of subconscious fantasy to mourn — and breathlessly anticipate — the looming loss of childhood. French provocateuse Catherine Breillat’s feminist re-imagining of The Sleeping Beauty carries her hyper-sexualized signature, but now she also has free reign to throw in bizarre and beastly metaphors for feminine and masculine desire in the form of boil-covered, dungeon-dwelling ogres, albino teenage princes, and icy-beautiful snow queens. The story follows Anastasia, a poor little aristocrat, who longs to be a boy (she calls herself “Sir Vladimir”). When her hand is pricked with a yew spindle (more of a phallic impalement, really), Anastasia falls into a 100-year adventurous slumber, eventually awakening as a sexually ripe 16-year-old. It all plays like an anchorless, Brothers Grimm version of Sally Potter’s 1992 Orlando. And while it’s definitely not for the kiddies, it’s hard to believe that many adults would find its overt symbolism and plodding narrative any more than a sporadically entertaining exercise in preciousness. Your own dreams will undoubtedly be more interesting — perhaps you can catch a few zzz’s in a theater screening this movie. (1:42) SFFS New People Cinema. (Michelle Devereaux)

The Thing A remake of a remake? Or a prequel to a remake? Whatever. Kurt Russell forever! (1:43) Shattuck.

Toast Oh, what a tasty dish Helena Bonham Carter has become, not afraid to look bad, mumsy, frazzled, or even like a fashion icon (as in recent Marc Jacobs ads). Watching her clean, cook, and spar with the young, preternaturally snobbish food writer Nigel Slater (played as a child by Oscar Kennedy, then as a teenager by Freddie Highmore) is the central, entirely edible joy of this changeable, not-quite-cozy journey back to a damp, dour ’60s-era Britain. Swinging London is more than simply a few miles away from Nigel’s sad childhood in this film based on Slater’s memoir: he fantasizes about lavish spreads of food while his aggro dad (Ken Stott) blusters hopelessly and his sickly mum (Victoria Hamilton) cringes at even spaghetti Bolognese and relies on the culinary fallback of toast. The arrival of the blowsy, earthy and, in Nigel’s eyes, unendingly tacky housekeeper, Mrs. Potter (Carter), brings genuinely good food — and welcome comedy — into Nigel’s life while stirring a sense of indignant competition. The way to a dad’s, or rather, a man’s, heart is obviously through a lofty, majestic lemon meringue pie. Too bad young Nigel is such an elitist bitch, making for a repugnant protagonist that’s hard to sympathize with. Likewise Highmore and Kennedy are outclassed when it comes to Bonham Carter, who snatches the entire film away with her undeniable sass, manic scrubbing, and sorrowful looks. (1:36) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Trespass It’s a shame that director Joel Schumacher has to take the blowtorch of bad taste to this promising if melodramatic and theatrically static home-invasion thriller, especially considering the competence and likeability of the cast; the blood, sweat, and tears they shed; the pots boiled; and the scenery chomped, stomped, and summarily destroyed. Assembled in their set piece of a McMansion like sleek figurines all set to be knocked down, the affluent Miller family already appears to be a fairly dysfunctional lot: dad Kyle (Nicolas Cage) is more interested in cutting deals for his diamonds than paying any attention to his neglected, ineffectual wife, Sarah (Nicole Kidman), and his rebellious daughter, Avery (Liana Liberato). As Avery slips out for a clandestine teen party, in slithers a whole ‘nother screwed-up clan, led by Elias (Ben Mendelsohn) and Jonah (Cam Gigandet). This all-American fortress has been breached, but with little of the gut-level, primal genius of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971). Broken glass, shattered bones, multiple death threats, and far too many cheesy, curtain-fluttering flashbacks ensue — the type that set you at the edge of your seat, simultaneously wondering what plot twist will materialize next and when the agony will be over, namely the Millers’, who Cage and Kidman invest with admirable bushels of conviction, and your own. (1:31) (Chun)

The Woman Writer-director Lucky McKee scored a cult hit with 2002’s May; his latest, The Woman (co-written with novelist Jack Ketchum), arrived in my mailbox packaged in a barf bag, “just in case.” This bit of Herschell Gordon Lewis-style gimmickry had me expecting great things, and indeed, McKee’s love of gore goes to 11, with gnawed-off digits, ripped-out entrails, and other squishy moments aimed squarely at shock-horror enthusiasts. All is not well in the household headed up by cheerful misogynist-sadist Chris (Sean Bridgers of Deadwood): his wife (May‘s Angela Bettis) is a quivering wreck; his older daughter (Lauren Ashley Carter) is concealing a growing secret; and his son (Zach Rand) is a middle-school sociopath. When Chris captures a Nell-by-way-of-Leatherface feral woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) in the woods near his home, he chains her up in a storm shelter and sets about “civilizing” her — which basically means keeping her as his own personal torture puppet. McKee, who never met a slo-mo shot he didn’t like, seems to be aiming for black comedy at least part of the time, but The Woman is so mean-spirited that by the time its inevitable tidal wave of revenge crashes down, it’s hard to feel any kind of satisfaction or release. Revulsion, however: yes. (1:45) (Eddy)

ONGOING

*American Teacher Public school teachers have one of the most important jobs in America — and most of them are paid very little in proportion to the long, difficult hours they put in (truth, no matter what Tea Partiers say). Vanessa Roth’s American Teacher — narrated by Matt Damon, co-produced by Dave Eggers, and spurred by the nonprofit Teacher Salary Project — examines the current state of the teaching profession, from its many drawbacks (like those mentioned above) to its chief rewards, namely, the feelings of joy that come from helping to expand young minds. As education experts lament the fact that top college grads gravitate toward big-bucks careers in law and medicine instead of teaching, the film profiles four teachers who’re struggling to stay in the career they love (one of them reluctantly quits his job at San Francisco’s Leadership High School in favor of a higher-paying gig with his family’s real-estate business). There’s also the Harvard grad tempted by a magnet school that pays its teachers over $100,000 a year; the pregnant first-grade teacher worried about the intricacies of maternity leave; and the most devastating tale, of a small-town Texas teacher and coach forced to take on a second job to support his family, at the eventual expense of his marriage. It’s likely that American Teacher will play mostly for audiences already sympathetic to its message, but there’s always hope a film like this will inspire an angry Fox News-er to have a change of heart. (1:21) Roxie. (Eddy)

*The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 Cinematic crate-diggers have plenty to celebrate, checking the results of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. Swedish documentarian Göran Hugo Olsson had heard whispers for years that Swedish television archives possessed more archival footage of the Black Panthers than anyone in the states — while poring through film for a doc on Philly soul, he discovered the rumors were dead-on. With this lyrical film, coproduced by the Bay Area’s Danny Glover, Olsson has assembled an elegant snapshot of black activists and urban life in America, relying on the vivid, startlingly crisp images of figures such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton at their peak, while staying true to the wide-open, refreshingly nonjudgmental lens of the Swedish camera crews. Questlove of the Roots and Om’Mas Keith provide the haunting score for the film, beautifully historicized with shots of Oakland in the 1960s and Harlem in the ’70s. It’s made indelible thanks to footage of proto-Panther school kids singing songs about grabbing their guns, and an unforgettable interview with a fiery Angela Davis talking about the uses of violence, from behind bars and from the place of personally knowing the girls who died in the infamous Birmingham, Ala., church bombing of 1963. (1:36) Shattuck. (Chun)

*Contagion Tasked with such panic-inducing material, one has to appreciate director Steven Soderbergh’s cool head and hand with Contagion. Some might even dub this epic thriller (of sorts) cold, clinical, and completely lacking in bedside manner. Still, for those who’d rather be in the hands of a doctor who refuses to talk down to the patient, Contagion comes on like a refreshingly smart, somewhat melodrama-free clean room, a clear-eyed response to a messy, terrifying subject. A deadly virus is spreading swiftly — sans cure, vaccine, or sense — starting with a few unlikely suspects: globe-trotting corporate exec Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), a waiter, a European tourist, and a Japanese businessman. The chase is on to track the disease’s genesis and find a way to combat it, from the halls of the San Francisco Chronicle and blog posts of citizen activist-journalist Alan (Jude Law), to the emergency hospital in the Midwest set up by intrepid Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet), to a tiny village in China with a World Health investigator (Marion Cotillard). Soderbergh’s brisk, businesslike storytelling approach nicely counterpoints the hysteria going off on the ground, as looting and anarchy breaks out around Beth’s immune widower Mitch (Matt Damon), and draws you in — though the tact of making this disease’s Typhoid Mary a sexually profligate woman is unsettling and borderline offensive, as is the predictable blame-it-on-the-Chinese origin coda. (1:42) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*The Dead Most zombie movies tell the same basic story, some variation of “survivors on the run.” Sometimes, the repetition is forgivable, as when the special effects are particularly juicy, or there’s totally unique plot twist (2009’s Zombieland set a new gold standard for that one), or there’s some other special thing that makes the film stand out from the brains-gobbling pack. For British directing brothers Howard J. and Jon Ford, that thing is the setting, which is neither backwoods America nor empty London, but West Africa. When The Dead begins, the outbreak (never explained) has already commenced; in an abandoned village, a grizzled American soldier (Rob Freeman) encounters a grim African soldier (Prince David Osei). Since they’re the only two living humans for miles, logic dictates they should team up; much of the film follows the pair on a surreal road trip through a rural landscape populated only by slow-moving, staring, ever-hungry undead. Despite some flaws (uneven acting, plus a few culturally iffy points — isn’t “witch doctor” kind of an outdated turn of phrase?), The Dead delivers where it matters, with moments of genuine suspense and some satisfyingly gross-outs. A+ in the ripped-off limbs department, Ford brothers. (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) Piedmont. (Louis Peitzman)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2:02) Lumiere.

Dirty Girl The teenage heroine and hero of Dirty Girl, a self-possessed, unabashed slut and a chubby, diva-loving gay boy, were clearly meant for better things than life in the small-minded town of Norman, Okla., where they seem destined for a succession of beat-downs and shunnings. But as writer-director Abe Sylvia’s sweet-tart 1987-set story opens, Danielle (Juno Temple) and Clarke (Jeremy Dozier) have been wedged by a high school administration ill-equipped to handle square pegs into a remedial-track classroom that resembles the Island of Misfit Toys. There they are paired up for a “life skills” project as unenthusiastic new parents to a five-pound sack of flour (christened Joan after the pair’s respective idols, Jett and Crawford). Parenting missteps loom uncomfortably large in their lives: on Danielle’s home front, an ineffectual mother (Milla Jovovich), feebly deflecting her daughter’s rancor and clinging to her cheery Mormon boyfriend (William H. Macy); on Clarke’s, a homophobic father (Dwight Yoakam) and a recessive mother (Mary Steenburgen) passively witnessing his abuses. With none of the adults seeming up to the task of competently raising these misfit teenagers, it’s something of a relief when they acquire some wheels and Dirty Girl turns into a road movie — destination: Danielle’s mystery birth father, now living in California. With Danielle narrating — and penning diary entries in baby Joan’s name — Sylvia’s skillfully made first feature maps the high and low points of the journey with a comic eye and compassion, depicting a girl and her (flour)baby daddy’s deepening relationship and the complications attending any attempt to draw a family tree from scratch. (1:45) Lumiere, Metreon, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Dolphin Tale (1:53) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Dream House (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

50/50 This is nothing but a mainstream rom-com-dramedy wrapped in indie sheep’s clothes. When Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns he has cancer, he undergoes the requisite denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance like a formality. Aided by his bird-brained but lovable best friend Kyle (Seth Rogan), lovable klutz of a counselor Katherine (Anna Kendrick), and panicky mother (Anjelica Huston), Adam gets a new lease on life. This comes in the form of one-night-stands, furious revelations in parked cars, and a prescribed dose of wacky tobaccy. If 50/50 all sounds like the setup for a pseudo-insightful, kooky feel-goodery, it is. The film doesn’t have the brains or spleen to get down to the bone of cancer. Instead, director Jonathan Levine (2008’s The Wackness) and screenwriter Will Reiser favor highfalutin’ monologues, wooden characters, and a Hollywood ending (with just the right amount of ambiguity). Still, Gordon-Levitt is the most gorgeous cancer patient you will ever see, bald head and all. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Ryan Lattanzio)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence (1:28) Bridge, Shattuck.

The Ides of March Battling it out in the Ohio primaries are two leading Democratic presidential candidates. Filling the role of idealistic upstart new to the national stage — even his poster looks like you-know-who’s Hope one — is Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), who’s running neck-and-neck in the polls with his rival thanks to veteran campaign manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and ambitious young press secretary Steven (Ryan Gosling). The latter is so tipped for success that he’s wooed to switch teams by a rival politico’s campaign chief (Paul Giamatti). While he declines, even meeting with a representative from the opposing camp is a dangerous move for Steven, who’s already juggling complex loyalties to various folk including New York Times reporter Ida (Marisa Tomei) and campaign intern Molly (Evan Rachel Wood), who happens to be the daughter of the Democratic National Party chairman. Adapted from Beau Willimon’s acclaimed play Farragut North, Clooney’s fourth directorial feature is assured, expertly played, and full of sharp insider dialogue. (Willimon worked on Howard Dean’s 2004 run for the White House.) It’s all thoroughly engaging — yet what evolves into a thriller of sorts involving blackmail and revenge ultimately seems rather beside the point, as it turns upon an old-school personal morals quandary rather than diving seriously into the corporate, religious, and other special interests that really determine (or at least spin) the issues in today’s political landscape. Though stuffed with up-to-the-moment references, Ides already feels curiously dated. (1:51) Balboa, California, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Killer Elite Jason Statham has a lot going on, in addition to devastatingly attractive male-pattern balding: along with fellow Brit Daniel Craig, he’s one of the most believable action heroes in the cineplex today. This continent-hopping, Bourne-ish exercise, kitted out with piercingly loud sound design, comes chock-full of promise in the form of Statham, Robert De Niro, and Clive Owen, wielding endless firearms and finding new deadly uses for bathroom tile — you don’t want to be caught solo in anger management class with these specialists in cinematic rageaholism. Mercenary assassin Danny (Statham) wants out of the game after a traumatic killing involving way too much eye contact with a small child. Killer coworker Hunter (De Niro) pulled him out of that tight spot, so when the aging gunman is held hostage, Danny must emerge from hiding in rural Australia and take on a seemingly impossible case: avenge the deaths of a dying sheik’s sons, who were gunned down by assorted highly trained British military hotshots, get them to confess, and make it all look like an accident. Oh, yes, and try to make sure his own loved ones aren’t killed in the process. Dancing backwards as fast as he can is those retired Brits’ guardian angel-of-sorts, Spike (Owen), another intense, dangerous fellow with too much time on his hands. Throw in my favorite Oz evil-doer Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Danny and Hunter’s boss, some welcome been-there twinkle from De Niro, as well as a host of riveting fight scenes (and that ’00s cliché: sudden death by bus/truck/semi), and you have diverting popcorn killer. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Lion King 3D (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Clay, Shattuck. (Harvey)

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

*The Mill and the Cross One of the clichés often told about art is that it is supposed to speak to us. Polish director Lech Majewski’s gorgeous experiment in bringing Flemish Renaissance painter Peter Bruegel’s sprawling 1564 canvas The Procession to Calvary to life attempts to do just that. Majeswki both re-stages Bruegel’s painting –which draws parallels between its depiction of Christ en route to his crucifixion and the persecution of Flemish citizens by the Spanish inquisition’s militia — in stunning tableaux vivant that combine bluescreen technology and stage backdrops, and gives back stories to a dozen or so of its 500 figures. Periodically, Bruegel himself (Rutger Hauer) addresses the camera mid-sketch to dolefully explain the allegorical nature of his work, but these pedantic asides speak less forcefully than Majeswki’s beautifully lit vignettes of the small joys and many hardships that comprised everyday life in the 16th century. Beguiling yet wholly absorbing. (1:37) Opera Plaza. (Sussman)

Moneyball As fun as it is to watch Brad Pitt listen to the radio, work out, hang out with his cute kid, and drive down I-80 over and over again, it doesn’t quite translate into compelling cinema for the casual baseball fan. A wholesale buy-in to the cult of personality — be it A’s manager Billy Beane or the actor who plays him — is at the center of Moneyball‘s issues. Beane (Pitt) is facing the sad, inevitable fate of having to replace his star players, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, once they command the cash from the more-moneyed teams. He’s gotta think outside of the corporate box, and he finds a few key answers in Peter Brand (a.k.a. Paul DePodesta, played by Jonah Hill), who’s working with the sabermetric ideas of Bill James: scout the undervalued players that get on base to work against better-funded big-hitters. Similarly, against popular thought, Moneyball works best when director Bennett Miller (2005’s Capote) strays from the slightly flattening sunniness of its lead actor and plunges into the number crunching — attempting to visualize the abstract and tapping into the David Fincher network, as it were (in a related note, Aaron Sorkin co-wrote Moneyball‘s screenplay) — though the funny anti-chemistry between Pitt and Hill is at times capable of pulling Moneyball out of its slump. (2:13) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Mozart’s Sister Pity the talented sister of a world-shaking prodigy. Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart, who may have had just as much promise as a composer as her younger brother, according to Rene Féret’s Mozart’s Sister. A scant five years older, enlisted in the traveling family band led by father-teacher Leopold (Marc Barbe), yet forced to hide her music, being female and forbidden to play violin and compose, Nannerl (Marie Féret, the filmmaker’s daughter) tours the courts of Europe and is acclaimed as a keyboardist and vocalist but is expected to share little of her brother’s brilliant future. Following a chance carriage breakdown near a French monastery, Nannerl befriends one of its precious inhabitants, a daughter of Louis XV (Lisa Féret, another offspring), which leads her to Versailles, into a cross-dressing guise of a boy, and puts her into the sights of the Dauphin (Clovis Fouin, who could easily find a spot in the Cullen vampire clan). He’s seduced by her music and likewise charms Nannerl with his power and feline good looks — what’s a humble court minstrel to do? The conceit of casting one’s daughters in a narrative hinging on unjustly neglected female progeny — shades of Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III (1990)! — almost capsizes this otherwise thoughtful re-imagination of Maria Anna’s thwarted life; despite the fact Féret has inserted his children in his films in the past, both girls offer little emotional depth to their roles. Nevertheless, as a feminist rediscovery pic akin to Camille Claudel (1988), Mozart’s Sister instructs on yet another tragically quashed woman artist and might inspire some righteous indignation. (2:00) Embarcadero. (Chun)

*My Afternoons with Margueritte There’s just one moment in this tender French dramedy that touches on star Gerard Depardieu’s real life: his quasi-literate salt-of-the-earth character, Germain, rushes to save his depressed friend from possible suicide only to have his pretentious pal pee on the ground in front of him. Perhaps Depardieu’s recent urinary run-in, on the floor of an airline cabin, was an inspired reference to this moment. In any case, My Afternoons With Margueritte offers a hope of the most humanist sort, for all those bumblers and sad cases that are usually shuttled to the side in the desperate ’00s, as Depardieu demonstrates that he’s fully capable of carrying a film with sheer life force, rotund gut and straw-mop ‘do and all. In fact he’s almost daring you to hate on his aging, bumptious current incarnation: Germain is the 50-something who never quite grew up or left home. The vegetable farmer is treated poorly by his doddering tramp of a mother and is widely considered the village idiot, the butt of all the jokes down at the cafe, though contrary to most assumptions, he manages to score a beautiful, bus-driving girlfriend (Sophie Guillemin). However the true love of his life might be the empathetic, intelligent older woman, Margueritte (Gisele Casadesus), that he meets in the park while counting pigeons. There’s a wee bit of Maude to Germain’s Harold, though Jean Becker’s chaste love story is content to remain within the wholesome confines of small-town life — not a bad thing when it comes to looking for grace in a rough world. (1:22) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Real Steel Everybody knows what this movie about rocking, socking robots should have been called. Had the producers secured the rights to the name, we’d all be sitting down to Over The Top II: Child Endangerment. Absentee father Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) and his much-too-young son Max (Dakota Goyo) haul their remote-controlled pugilists in a big old truck from one underground competition to the next. Along the way Charlie learns what it means to be a loving father while still routinely managing to leave cherubic Max alone in scenarios of astonishing peril. Seriously, there are displays of parental neglect in this movie that strain credulity well beyond any of its Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em elements. Fortunately the filmmakers had the good sense to make those elements awesome. The robots look great and the ring action can be surprisingly stirring in spite of the paper-thin human story it depends on. And as adept as the script proves to be at skirting the question of robot sentience, we’re no less compelled to root for our scrappy contender. Recommended if you love finely wrought spectacle but hate strong characterization and children. (2:07) 1000 Van Ness. (Jason Shamai)

*Sleep Furiously Gideon Koppel’s poetical feature takes a snapshot of an ebbing agricultural hamlet in middle Wales where his parents now live, one near in flavor and geography to Dylan Thomas’ fictive “Llareggub” in Under Milk Wood. Not that any background information is laid out here — this is the kind of documentary that eschews narrative and informational elements for an impressionist approach, little fragments of artfully arranged life adding up to a flavorsome if incomplete whole picture. Koppel is attracted to the way things haven’t changed — we never see a TV on, let alone somebody using a cell phone — yet we soon glean that things in Trefeurig are changing whether he likes it or not. The local residents we meet don’t: a dwindling populace has already shuttered the post office and other basic lifelines, with the schoolhouse scheduled next. What’s at issue here is the extinction of a community, though despite the attempts we see at sustaining local traditions, that may already be a foregone conclusion. Still, life goes on, from livestock birthings and shearings to the rain-or-shine route of John the mobile librarian, whose monthly visits to isolated pensioners provides Sleep‘s closest thing to a connecting thread. Some may be frustrated by the film’s opacity, and Koppel’s directorial choices can be pointlessly mannered. Yet there’s a lovely, lyrical warmth of observation that makes this perversely named (after a Noam Chomsky quote) nonfiction work a real pleasure to watch. It’s also a pleasure to hear, thanks to one exceptional local choir (featured in a rehearsal segment) and an original ambient soundtrack by Aphex Twin. (1:34) Roxie. (Harvey)

*Take Shelter Jeff Nichols directed Michael Shannon in 2007’s Shotgun Stories, released right around the time the actor’s decade-plus prior career broke huge with an Oscar nom for 2008’s Revolutionary Road. Their second collaboration, Take Shelter, is a subtle drama that succeeds mostly because of Shannon’s strong star turn, with an assist from Jessica Chastain (suddenly ubiquitous after The Help, The Debt, and Tree of Life). Curtis (Shannon) and Samantha (Chastain) live paycheck to paycheck in a small Midwestern town; the health insurance associated with his construction job is the only reason they’ll be able to afford a cochlear implant for their deaf daughter. When Curtis starts having horrible nightmares, he can’t shake the feeling that his dreams prophesize an actual disaster to come — or are an indicator that Curtis, like his mother before him, is slowly losing touch with reality. Curtis does seek professional help, but he also starts ripping up his backyard, making expensive improvements to the family’s tornado shelter. You know, just in case. Domestic turmoil, troubles at work, and social ostracization inevitably follow. Where will it all lead? Won’t spoil it for you, but Take Shelter‘s conclusion isn’t nearly as gripping as Shannon’s performance, an skillfully balanced mix of confusion, anger, regret, and white-hot terror. (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*Weekend In post-World War II Britain, the “Angry Young Man” school excited international interest even as it triggered alarm and disdain from various native bastions of cultural conservatism. Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) discomfited many by depicting a young factory grunt who frequently wakes in a married woman’s bed, chases other available tail, lies as naturally as he breathes, and calls neighborhood busybodies “bitches and whores.” Today British movies (at least the ones that get exported) are still more or less divided by a sort of class system. There’s the Masterpiece Theatre school of costumed romance and intrigue on one hand, the pint-mouthed rebel yellers practicing gritty realism on another. Except contemporary examples of the latter now allow that Angry Young Men might be something else beyond the radar once tuned to cocky, white male antiheroes. The “something else” is gay in Weekend, which was shot in some of the same Nottingham locations where Albert Finney kicked against the pricks in the 1960 film version of Saturday Night. The landscape has changed, but is still nondescript; the boozy clubs still loud but with different bad music. It’s at one such that bearded, late-20s Russell (Tom Cullen) wakes up next morning with a hangover next to no married lady but rather Glen (Chris New). It would be unfair to reveal more of Weekend‘s plot, what little there is. Suffice it to say these two lads get to know each other over less than 48 hours, during which it emerges that Russell isn’t really “out,” while Glen is with a vengeance — though the matter of who is more emotionally mature or well adjusted isn’t so simple. Writer-director Andrew Haigh made one prior feature, a semi-interesting, perhaps semi-staged portrait of a male hustler called Greek Pete (2009). It didn’t really prepare one for Weekend, which is the kind of yakkety, bumps and-all romantic brief encounter movies (or any other media) so rarely render this fresh, natural, and un-stagy. (1:36) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

What’s Your Number? Following some sage relationship advice from Marie Claire about the perils of a lengthy sexual résumé, Ally (Anna Faris) resolves to cut off her partner roster at 20, too late to avoid getting tagged a slut by her friends but not, she hopes, to secure her soul mate — if she can cast back over a storied career of failed relationships and hook the one who might not have been a total douche after all. Aiding her in this sad, misguided quest is her far sluttier across-the-hall neighbor, Colin (Chris Evans), whose main selling point other than P.I. skills and a well-defined set of obliques seems to be that he’s virtually the only person in the movie who doesn’t think Ally is doomed to solitude for having slept with 20 people. Faris is a charmer, and — no mean feat given the modest claims of the material at hand — she injects a comic exuberance into Ally’s reunions with a succession of impossibles, who are either engaged to be married, still not interested, or a gay politico seeking a beard. For jokes not revealed in the trailer, see: the inexorable progression of Ally and Colin’s friendship (they have plenty of time to hang out, cyber-stalk people, and play games of strip H-O-R-S-E since she’s just been laid off and he has no visible source of income), which leaves Ally with a couple of insights into Colin’s character and motivations and the viewer shrugging, only half-convinced of the merits of bachelor number 21. (1:46) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

 

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

WEDNESDAY 12

“Hoarding in the Digital Age” lecture Scanners bookstore, 312 Valencia, SF. www.scannersproject.com. 6:30 p.m., free. Renaissance woman Rebecca Falkoff is a Ph.D. candidate in Italian studies at UC Berkeley, but today she’s talking about her other passion: hoarding. Falkoff examines hoarding as a symptom of anxiety in our transient digital age in today’s lecture at flash new pop-up print bookshop Scanners.

THURSDAY 13

“Jack Davis’ Penis Show” Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. (415) 345-0400, www.goodvibes.com. 6-8 p.m., free. Crochet artist Jack Davis finds inspiration below the belt. The man has been creating foreskinned wonders (they come with drawstrings and double as nifty sacks!) for decades, and his phallic work is a sight to be seen. Look it up and down at this free reception at your friendly neighborhood sex shop Good Vibrations.

“A Simple Revolution” Group Reading with Judy Grahn Francis of Assissi, 145 Guerrero, SF. www.auntlute.com. 5:30 p.m., free. Foundational activist, author, and scholar Judy Grahn revisits the 1960s roots of San Francisco’s lesbian community along with four other reading panelists. A Q and A with the revolutionary ladies will follow.

FRIDAY 14

Green Empowerment Party and Discussion Luminalt Warehouse, 1320 Potrero, SF. (415) 641-4000. www.greenempowerment.org. 6:30-9 p.m., free with RSVP to greenempowerment@luminalt.com. Bike, bus, walk, or Prius down to the Mission for a casual discussion of renewable energy’s potential across the world. Meet fellow solar enthusiasts, check out Luminalt’s organic garden, and hear about some recent work in the Philippines before walking out a little greener.

“2 Blocks of Art” art walk Sixth St. between Market and Howard, SF. www.urbansolutionssf.org. 4-8 p.m., free. Hobnob with upwards of 50 local artists and musicians in some nontraditional spots – a laundromat, optometry office, and of course, the sidewalk. Maybe not the best time to tackle that load of laundry, but definitely a good one to wander out in search of cheap eats and eye-pleasing sights.

SATURDAY 15

Potrero Hill Festival 20th St. between Wisconsin and Missouri, SF. www.potrerofestival.com. 1 a.m.-4:30 p.m., free. Ah, to be young and have unquestioned admittance to bouncy castles. No matter. One of our favorite neighborhood festivals – now in its 21st year – holds plenty for those lucky tykes as well as anyone deemed too old for petting zoos. Bring your little one, find a goat, and wander through the food, music, and art.

Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival Main, Half Moon Bay. www.miramarevents.com. Also Sun/16. 9 a.m.-5 p.m., free. Grab some gourds in Half Moon Bay, our lovely little neighbor and (who knew?) pumpkin capital of the world. Gargantuan orange beasts are the theme of this festival; you can expect weigh-offs, tasty pies, carving, ale, and lots of “smashing” jokes, not to mention live music, contests, a parade, tons of arts and crafts, and a haunted house.

Hackmeet 2011 Noisebridge Hackerspace, 2169 Mission, third floor, SF. www.hackmeet.org. Also Sun/16. 11 a.m., free. The West Coast hackmeet, a conference and workshop session exploring the overlaps between technology and social change, goes underway this weekend. Topics include digital security and rights, privacy, Wikileaks, and way more. Food is provided to fuel all those radical typing fingers.

Jimmy’s Old Car Picnic Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.jimmyspicnic.com. 7 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Dust off that barbeque grill. Everyone is welcome to roast and roam among Mustangs and motorized barstools alike at the not-for-profit picnic event now in its 22nd year. Jimmy scours the meadow with an eagle eye for the car he deems worthy of the “Jimmy’s Choice” award.

Children’s Creativity Museum Opening Weekend 221 Fourth, SF. www.creativity.org. Also Sun/16. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Zeum, reopening as the Children’s Creativity Museum, houses wonders that rival anything out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Exhibits are highly interactive and extremely creative: animation, music, design, and movie studios in which your child can play around to their little heart’s content. Plus, free carousel rides throughout the weekend.

“An Afternoon of Soccer Culture” reading with Simon Kuper Edinburgh Castle Pub, 950 Geary, SF. www.castlenews.com. 3-5 p.m., free. Reading from his new book “The Soccer Men,” Simon Kuper discusses the secret lives of all-star soccer players. Classic matches will play in the background. This all takes place in a castle-themed pub. If you don’t feel British, order a Newcastle.

Vagabond Indie Craft Fair Urban Bazaar, 1371 Ninth, SF. www.urbanbazaarsf.com. Also Sun/16. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., free. The boutique, already known for supporting local arts and craftspeople, hosts 30-plus folks selling their work. Perfect for snagging tons of gifts to sort through later come the holidays.

SUNDAY 16

Textile Bazaar: Treasures from Around the World St. Anne’s of the Sunset Church, 1300 Funston St., SF. (415) 750-3627. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Run your hands over this. Woven goodies from across the globe, brought to you by nearly thirty members of the Textile Arts Council.

23rd Annual Fiesta on the Hill Cortland Ave., SF. www.bhnc.org. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Can’t make it to Saturday’s Potrero Hill Festival? Can, but just want to support another beloved SF neighborhood? Really like petting zoos and great music? Take in the sights and eats in Bernal Heights with over 20,000 others.

 

On the Cheap listings by Lucy Schiller. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

‘Tis better to dip

Andrew Lam
-
0

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP One of the first things I did when I got back was I got on the football field.

“Welcome back,” said the referee.

“Welcome back,” said the other team’s captain. And she called “red” and it was red so we’d lost the toss.

“Good luck,” their captain said to me.

“Good luck,” I said.

The ref said good luck to both of us and just like that — after three months in cars, planes, small dark hotel rooms and foreign countries, but mostly cars — I was back where I belong: on defense.

I love defense because it’s got more dirty work than glory. You have to do things like “dig in,” “cover,” and “bend-don’t-break” while the offense is basically sticking it to you.

And, as if that weren’t sexy sounding enough, on my particular San Francisco Women’s Flag Football League team, the defense scores more often than the offense. This season, for example, to date, our defense has outscored our offense 2-0. That’s after four games, mind you. We have scored a grand total, in four games, of exactly one safety!

My first game back ended in a 0-0 tie.

“Good game,” we all said to the other team, and they said to us, and you know what? It was! Except from a fan’s perspective, probably, it was a great game. I love 0-0 ties.

Out of habit, I went to Benders. Coach couldn’t make it because she was helping people, so it was just me and Hedgehog and Earl Butter. The big idea being to drink the beer, eat tater tots, and just generally watch baseball; but Benders was only cooperating on one of those fronts. Something goofy was on TV. The kitchen wasn’t open.

We started walking toward the Phoenix, and at roughly Mission Street I remembered about Giordano Brothers taking over Ti Couz’s spot on 16th and Valencia. Remember? I even told you about it from the road and promised to check it out for myself as soon as I was back.

Which I forgot. Then remembered. So, OK … so, Giordano’s. Yeah yeah yeah, the all-in-one sandwiches with French fries and cole slaw in them, a la Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh. But mostly we were interested in the pierogi. Because there aren’t a lot of places in San Francisco, let alone the Mission, to get a plate of pierogi.

We got a large combo: two regular old potato ones, two sweet potato ones, and two with serrano peppers and cheese — and potatoes. And those two were of course the best. But we had to advocate for them because at first there were only potato and sweet potato ones.

Hedgehog was already all a-bristle over they didn’t have Yuengling beer. Although, technically, the problem was that they did have a neon sign saying Yuengling, but didn’t have the beer. The sign was just for atmosphere.

So when she realized there were only two kinds of pierogi in our three-kind-of-pierogi combo plate, she had a little talk with the waiterguyperson, who had a little talk with the kitchen, who had a little talk with the butter and onions, then brought us two more pierogi. With serrano peppers and cheese, and they were delicious.

Earl Butter was beside himself with comfort and joy. He kept talking about how happy he was just to be out of his apartment. And I’ve been in his apartment. The TVs are not as big.

We had Sunday night football in one eyeball, and baseball playoffs in the other. I’m not so sure about the sandwiches though. I had promised Hedgehog, based on a visit to North Beach five years ago, that Giordano’s was better than its inspiration, Primanti’s, on a strictly sandwich-y level. My argument was that their French fries were better and the cole slaw was fresher, and while those facts may be true, in themselves, the problem is that putting French fries and cole slaw inside a sandwich with the meat and the cheese is just a flawed idea to begin with. Beyond the good ol’ goofy sportiness of it, I mean, you are left with a mouth full of pretty much starch.

The kielbasa was good, but lost in the rest of it all. And I like to dip my fries into things.

Ketchup. Hot sauce.

GIORDANO BROTHERS

Mon.-Tue.: 11:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m.; Wed.-Thu.: 11:30 a.m.-midnight; Fri.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-1:30 a.m.; Sun. depends on football schedule

3108 16th St., SF

(415) 437-2767

MC/V

Beer & wine

 

The Performant: They Might be Giants

Andrew Lam
-
0

Stagewerx and SF Olympians Festival go big

It’s been a turbulent year for independent theatre and its venues. In truth, every year is. But there have been some notable successes too. Boxcar Theatre’s addition of a new studio space on Hyde Street. Bindlestiff Theatre’s move into a new permanent space. Pianofight’s acquisition of the old Original Joe’s in order to create a hybrid performance space-kitchen-bar right on the cutting edge of the downtown theatre district. 

And just in case you’d missed it, this is the month that Stagewerx, which has been occupying the literal theatrical underground in the basement of 533 Sutter since 2007, has opened the doors of its community-supported digs at 446 Valencia — the old Intersection for the Arts space. 

Following a big-ticket Kickstarter campaign* and months of hard labor, rebuilding one venue from scratch while running another, the Stagewerx crew’s labor of love has finally put down its expansive roots in the Mission District.

It was a low-key but convivial christening, a bevy of Stagewerx supporters and performers (and supporter-performers) poking around the nooks and crannies of the strangely familiar, yet revitalized space. The evening’s emcee, Mikl-em, presided over a variety show of musicians and comedians (and musician-comedians), including a special guest appearance from Carol Channing, as well as one by Sean Owens, who mysteriously often appears on the same bill as Channing. (It’s rumored they share a booking agent.) 

Other acts included Circus Finelli, Tom Sway from Undergroud Sound, Joe Klocek from Previously Secret Information, Tom Jonesing, Don Seaver, and Gerri Lawlor. No sooner was the party over, Stagewerx hit the ground running with a Monday performance of the Picklewater Clown Cabaret and a four-weekend whirlwind of sketch comedy dubbed PanderFest 2011, co-starring Pianofight’s Mission CTRL and Crisis Hopkins. 

Meanwhile downtown, another theatre festival of quietly epic proportions. The SF Olympians Festival, opened with staged readings of new full-length plays by Thunderbird Theatre Company and Megan Cohen and a veritable constellation of shorts, kicking off a four-weekend run of its own on the EXIT Theatre mainstage. 

In its second year, the SF Olympians Festival uniquely fuses ancient Greek mythology with modern-day theatre-making, with each play featuring a different mythological figure—from Andromeda to Zephyrus—and a different local playwright (there are 29 represented in this festival of 32 plays). 

On Friday, a three-play bill of two shorts and one full-length work debuted, thematically clustered around Orion, one of the most recognizable of all constellations. Claire Rice’s very short, “Dog Day”, starred Benji Cooper as Canis, who morphed into the narrator of stage directions for Megan Cohen’s full-length “Hunter and Hunted,” which turned the Orion myth into an updated crime noir. 

Starring Matt Gunnison as the beleaguered “Joe Ryan,” an old-school detective on the trail of the Scorpio gang, Cohen’s often humorous play turned the otherwise familiar streets of San Francisco, from North Beach to the Panhandle, into a giant playground for the infamous Scorpio gang. 

Rounding out the evening with a case of constellation envy was “Scorpio,” a short penned by Seanan Palermo, starring an exasperated John Lennon Harrison as the titular character, fruitlessly pursuing Orion across the deserts of Arizona. There’re still three weekends left of the festival, each night more ambitious than the last, and at just ten bucks a pop, repeat visits are not only possible, but recommended.   

*Full disclosure, the author of this piece made a kickstarter donation to the Stagewerx campaign.


PanderFest 2011

Through Oct. 29

Various times, $20

Stagewerx

446 Valencia, SF

www.stagewerx.org/446.html

www.panderexpress.com

 

SF Olympians Festival

Through Oct. 29

 Various times, $10

Exit Theatre

156 Eddy, SF

www.sffringe.org

www.sfolympians.com

 

 

Really living at the Life is Living Festival (and now there’s a stage show too!)

Andrew Lam
-
0

Every once in awhile, an festival comes along that seems so seamless, so positive, and so needed that it’s like it sprang from the Bay Area gods. Such an event is the Life is Living Festival, which took over West Oakland’s De Fremery Park last Sat/8 in big, happy puppy pile of art and kids and music. “We began this, but as you can see, it’s expanded so that it’s kind of everyone’s thing now,” says Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the founder of the Life is Living organization which has overseen the event’s growth into yearly happenings in Harlem, Houston, and Harlem. Bamuthi, who helped start the Bay’s pioneering spoken word nonprofit Youth Speaks, seemed as gleeful to be out in the Oakland sunshine as the kids flipping head over heels at the padded beginner’s parkour course set up in one side of the park.

In another corner, a spoken word stage pedal-powered by the velo-minded geniuses of Rock the Bike. In another, a simple floor set up on the grass where drummers pounded away for an all-are-welcome dance show-and-tell. A woman in her forties gyrated joyously in precisely free African patterns. A kid that didn’t go up to my waist breakdanced to thunderous applause, finally sitting down in a folding chair just offstage, rubbing the spot on the back of his head that had just been supporting his entire body in an upside-down spin. 

In between stellar sets by Panamanian-cum-Oaklanders Los Rakas and Questlove, a man took the stage to vocalize what it seemed like many in the crowd were already feeling — that this day, with its serenity and family-friendly vibes, was a big deal for West Oakland. He talked about how we were all standing on a corridor of public land. Across the street was a senior citizen’s center. It was a Saturday and its doors were locked. Was this, the man asked the crowd, acceptable? He encouraged us all to utilize public land as something that could nurture community, not to let it lie fallow. 

Such was the overall message of Life is Living — doing stuff with what we have, while we strengthen our voices to ask for more. What we had wasn’t too shabby — a food justice information area, a health and wellness zone that offered free HIV testing, shows from local hip-hop duo the Coup and Haitian dance troupe Ra Ra Loumen. 

Not to mention another of the festival’s major draws: the Estria Invitational Graffiti Battle. Around the country, Bay Area graff legend Estria Miyashiro has been organizing themed graffiiti contests. Competitors hear the word of the day’s showdown (Saturday’s was “proud”) and create vivid works of aerosol cleverness in an alloted time. When the panel of expert street artist-judges had tallied up their impressions Los Angeles artist Vyal received the day’s top honors for the second year in a row. 

The feel-good event of the year, I’m calling it. And community organizers are in luck: Life is Living directors and artists have come together to produce a performance piece about the festival that will combine its environmental agency, a call to arms for members of underserved communities across the country, and the festival’s graffiti art for visual punch. It starts on Thursday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Especially if you missed the message on Saturday, it’s a production that demands attention. 

 

“Red Black and Green: A Blues”

Thu/13-Sat/15 and Thu/20-Sat/22 7:30 p.m., $25 ($5 on Thursdays)

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-ARTS

www.ybca.org

 

Jeb Bush, Rupert Murdoch bound for S.F.

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
-
39
Jeb Bush, Rupert Murdoch bound for S.F.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education, a Florida-based nonprofit led by Jeb Bush, will host its National Summit on Education Reform at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco Oct. 13 and 14.

Bush, former Florida governor and the brother of former President George W. Bush, will deliver a welcome address Thursday. Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire head of News Corporation who came under pressure in recent months as the News of the World phone-hacking scandal erupted, will deliver a keynote address Friday.

Washington Post columnist Valerie Strauss sums up the irony of having Murdoch as the guest of honor at the conference here:

“Yes indeed, the Rupert Murdoch set to speak on technology’s power to transform education is the same Rupert Murdoch recently hauled before a British parliamentary committee to explain why a newspaper he owned had used technology to hack the phones of thousands of British citizens for years — including the phone of a murdered 13-year-old girl, thus interfering with the police investigation. (Murdoch closed the newspaper.)”

Panelists at the event will include News Corporation executives, CEOs of for-profit schools, state senators from Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma, and the author of a book titled School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy.

The conference will feature a number of “strategy sessions,” and one is actually called, “Don’t Let a Financial Crisis Go To Waste.” The session will focus on education funding formulas and purports to explain “just what lawmakers and policymakers can do to get a better return-on-investment for their education dollars,” according the conference agenda. It will be moderated by a director of education policy at the George W. Bush Institute, which “champions change” based on the educational policies of No Child Left Behind.

The first strategy session is called “The Teaching Profession 2.0,” and hints of an anti-union agenda: “During the last two years, states across the country have ushered in the most sweeping reforms of the teaching profession in our nation’s history,” according to the workshop description. “More meaningful evaluations. An end to tenure and destructive last-in, first-out policies. Salaries that reflect student learning rather than seniority. Learn how lawmakers and policymakers from states around the nation are changing the paradigm of the teaching profession.”

Another segment will focus on digital learning, or teaching through technology, which the Foundation for Excellence in Education seems dedicated to advancing. A video on a newly launched website touted by the foundation features Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Open Education Solutions, explaining, “Our mission is to advance digital learning in every classroom, in every school, in every state in America.” But Vander Ark’s recent vision for opening charter schools in New York City did not go so well, according to this New York Times story. Murdoch delivered an address at the e-G8 in Paris last year titled, “Digital’s Next Frontier: Education.”

In any case, San Francisco — famed for its left-leaning politics — seems an odd choice for Bush and Murdoch, especially during a week when the streets are likely to be filled with protesters marching in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

1...909192...201Page 91 of 201

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