Music

The Performant: Forever young

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Rocky Horror turns 40, still crazy after all these years.

Who doesn’t have fond memories of their first Rocky Horror Picture Show experience? Ok, mine are mixed since the first time I saw it was on an old black-and-white television with my father, avoiding eye contact and trying not to laugh too hard at the ribald bits. It wasn’t until I finally saw it on the big screen in the company of peers — armed with rice, noisemakers, and snarky quips — that the full potential of its subversive pleasures revealed themselves more fully.

Part of the fun of repeated viewings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show is emulating the character you most want to be, and for a curly-haired, goth-inclined teenager, the clear choice was Magenta, whose stone-faced cool and extraterrestrial sensuality were so beyond the straitjacket of smalltown teenhood, that to walk an evening in her spike-heeled shoes was akin to a declaration of, well, something. Call it freedom. Peaches Christ does.


“The Rocky Horror Picture Show was my ‘It Gets Better’ video,’ she told the cheering oddience assembled at the Victoria Theatre for the 40th anniversary of the original Rocky Horror Show, the slapstick, Ed-Wood-meets-Charles-Ludlam Rock Musical that, two years later, became a film destined to be the best known midnight movie of all time.

Deviating from the tried-and-true Midnight Mass formula of movie screenings, this Rocky Horror birthday bash took the form of a tribute concert at a respectable 8pm, with multiple singers cast in the iconic roles of the universes’ best-beloved Transylvanians, live music provided by the Whoa Nellies, and quick-and-dirty narration by Peaches Christ herself, synopsizing the negligee-thin plotline that happens between all of those undeniably catchy songs: “The Time Warp,” “Touch-a Touch-a-Touch Me,” and “Hot Patootie, Bless my Soul”. Channeling her inner Tim Curry, PC also provided the vox and corseted eye candy on “Sweet Transvestite” slyly replacing her planet of origins, “Transsexual, Transylvania,” with “San Francisco, California”.

But by far the highlight was the moment that the original Magenta — Patricia Quinn — stepped onstage in a sleek leather suit and handfuls of glitter, to sing the opening song she’d been cheated out of 38 years ago when Richard O’Brien took it over for the movie version, accompanied by a visual of her bright red “stunt lips.” My still-practically-teenaged heart be still. Quinn’s still got. It. That elusive, effusive cool. As does the whole freaking musical, which, stripped of the mostly laughable dialogue and B-Movie special effects, really rocks. Not bad for a 40-year-old who regularly stays up until 3am and can’t ever seem to remember to wear pants. Oh, Rocky!

Lest a single inch of stage space go wasted, almost every role was played by a minimum of two performers, including Dr. Frank-N-Furter portrayed mainly by seasoned Rocky Horror vet Jef Valentine, with a counter-point appearance by former X Factor contestant, Jason Brock, who sang a soulful “I’m Going Home” to an interstellar techno backing track provided by Marc Kate aka Never Knows. Exceptions were Musical Director Peter Fogel who pulled double duty as the titular boy toy and the imitable Leigh Crow as Eddie, ‘cause there can only be one Eddie, and really, that Eddie can only be Leigh Crow. And now that such a stellar lineup is already in place, here’s hoping Peaches will do a 40-year bash for the film version, too, come 2015. Don’t dream it, darlings. Be it!

Pick-up bball legends tell the tale of the game outside

Andrew Lam
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We’re talking about basketball, NYC pick-up announcer legend Bobbitio “Kool Bob Love” and I, but our conversation is hardly hinging on the Warriors-Spurs match-up or LeBron James’ shot at MVP this year. Rather, we’re discussing the power of the men and women ballers on the playground — a culture that Garcia and French filmmaker Kevin Couliau painstakingly documented for their film Doin’ it in the Park, which begins its Bay Area run at the Clay Theatre on Thu/16. 

“There wouldn’t be an NBA without pick-up basketball,” Garcia tells me in the voice made famous by his narration of countless pick-up tournaments, his pioneering ESPN feature on sneaker culture, and his turn as the New York Knicks’ first Latino broadcast team member. “Our culture and movement has informed every level of organized basketball. It’s informed even hip-hop fashion — all the iconic sneakers have taken their cues from pick up basketball.”

Pick-up powerhouse Niki Avery takes it to the boys in a shot from Doin’ it in the Park

Given the subject matter, the DIY style in which the duo shot Doin’ It was fitting. “I was sleeping on Bobbito’s couch,” while filming the movie, says Couliau, checking in via phone from France. The videographer grew up on the ball courts of his homeland, and learned about NYC’s thriving basketball scene — the metropolitan area is home to no less than 700 outside courts — through the Internet. Small wonder that the Frenchman eventually wound up in the Big Apple documenting the game in the gorgeously shot music video for rapper Red Cafe’s “Heart & Soul of New York City”.

Garcia caught wind of the short and proposed a feature-length project that turned into Doin’ it in the Park. To shoot the film, the duo traveled (“90 percent by bike,” says Bobbito) to 180 borough courts.

The film lands candid commentary that assesses playground ball going back decades from court legends like James “Fly” Williams, takes viewers to the court at the Rikers Island jail complex, investigates court-side style (be careful where you wear your NBA jersey, let’s just say), talks to women who’ve found their home under hoop like Niki “the Model” Avery, and documents game from all kinds of players.

Garcia says diversity in age, race, and social standing on court is a trademark of pick-up ball. To illustrate his point, he tells me about a game he ran in which his teammates were, “a Wall Street banker, a priest, and two homeless dudes. Where are you going to find that variety engaging in physical activity anywhere?”

Doin’ it in the Park, Garcia says, is one the most important projects he’s worked on — which is saying something. The man created Bounce Magazine, the first magazine devoted to the art of pick-up. He’s the voice on the NBA Street and NBA 2K videogames, written for Vibe, has turned guest roles in Summer of Sam and Above the Rim. His half-time commentary at Madison Square Garden for the Knicks was a crowd favorite. His hip-hop radio show with Stretch Armstrong in the early ’90s was called the best ever and gave airtime to an unsigned Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z. 

Garcia says that pick-up courts in New York dispell the notion that young people eschew sports for smart phones these days. If you’re gotten your fill for the day of Stephan Curry’s three-point percentage, one of this week’s Bay Area screenings of Doin’ It would be a fresh look at the streetside passion for b-ball. 

“It’s hard to say who are the [current pick-up] stars,” says Garcia. “If I go to Staten Island and destroy everybody, it’s not going to show up on ESPN. There’s a lot of great players, but most of them aren’t really known.”

Doin’ it in the Park Bay Area screenings

SF premiere and Q&A:

Thu/16, 8pm, $10-15

Clay Theatre

2261 Fillmore, SF

After-party:

Thu/16, 10pm-2am, free

Social Study

1795 Geary, SF

diitpmovie.eventbrite.com


Fri/17 screening and reception, 7pm; Sat/18, 3:30pm; Mon/20-May 22, 9:15pm; $8-10

New Parkway Theater

474 24th St., Oakl

www.thenewparkway.com

Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles
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This video has been floating around of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield floating in space, slowly turning inside his vessel, playing the acoustic guitar and singing Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie (“Space Oddity,” naturally). It’s an arresting image, melding science, sound, nerd culture, and pop culture together in the coolest of ways. And it was his goodbye love letter to space, as he returned back down to earth yesterday.

Outside the spaceship, and also back here on earth (and playing San Francisco this week, naturally) there are bands that are grounded by gravity, though little else — the celestial atmospheric head case of Kisses, larger-than-life Big Boi, otherworldly solo pounder Black Pus (Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt), cosmic soul duo Myron and E, and more invade our shores in the coming days. Maintain your curiosity, and greet them live in the flesh, eyes and ears wide with wonder.

Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Kisses
Los Angeles dream-poppers Kisses (a.k.a Jesse Kivel and Zinzi Edmundson) have sonically stripped down for their sophomore album, Kids in LA. But the electro duo (analog keyboards, drum machines, robot moans) remains dedicated to breezy synth-pop with hints of the bleak LA underbelly peaking through the palm trees in the form of chilly vocals and anxious beats.
With Sister Crayon, Astronauts etc.
Tue/14, 8pm, $10-$12
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
www.rickshawstop.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO9KZQRZ0H8

Big Boi
“Any lingering notions of Big Boi as the “conventional” half of legendary Atlanta hip-hop duo Outkast should be dispelled by his two solo albums, including his most recent effort Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors, released last November. Aided by cameos from Phantogram and Little Dragon in “Vicious,” Big Boi dives into rock guitars, female vocalists, and electronic bass to present a fearless, kaleidoscopic vision of rap.” — Kevin Lee
With Killer Mike, Fishhawk, Goast
Thu/16, 8:30pm, $35
Mezzanine
444 Jessie
www.mezzaninesf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRUVMg6yvCs

Midi Matilda
“Midi Matilda is the embodiment of everything that’s missing from contemporary twee-pop. It has a sense of intimacy, soul, and joy, embodied by great hooks and hilarious choreographed dances that are absolutely infectious. Operating backward from most bands, Midi Matilda wrote and recorded music before it ever established a live presence, gaining attention on the web with its “Day Dreams” music video.” — Haley Zaremba
With OONA, holychild
Fri/17, 8:30pm, $12
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzdyhuhE694

KFJC’s Battle of the Surf Band
Alameda-based trio Aloha Screwdriver will play this yearly event for the second time. And the 16-band battle also includes Beachkrieg, Deadbeats, Mighty Surf Lords, Tomorrowmen, Frankie and the Pool Boys, Meshugga Beach Party, and more surf acts with cheeky names. The event benefits the station itself, and also will be broadcast using Live Cam.
Sat/18, noon, $10, all ages
Surf Spot
4627 Coast Hwy., Pacifica
www.kfjc.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RKqyITE7zk

Myron and E
Listen to Myron and E’s single “If I Gave You My Love” and you’ll start to feel some involuntary movements, your head bouncing in agreement, shoulders shimmying side to side. It’s the nature of the solid gold soul beast. The duo was recently signed to tastemaker Stones Throw, and will release newest album Broadway, backed by Timmion Records house band the Soul Investigators, on the label July 2. With a handful of 45s already out there, the two — Bay Area bred Myron Glasper and Eric “E da Boss” Cooke — have successfully maneuvered an authentic soul sound that’s at once smooth and celebratory (with the help of some well-placed horns).
East Bay Soul Stomp 2 with Bang Girl Group Revue, New Love Soul Revue, DJ Derek See, DJ Der.
Sat/18, 8pm, $9–<\d>$12
Starry Plough
3101 Shattuck, Berk
www.starryploughpub.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkkCRD0pLnI

Black Pus
The first thing you need to know about Black Pus is that it’s just a looping Brian Chippendale — he of Lighting Bolt fame. For this project, the madman drummer (and forever art-school kid at heart) uses percussion, a triggered oscillator, and those echoing, distorted Lightning Bolt style vocals you’d expect. Most tracks sound like a spaceship lifting off and exploding into starry darkness, repeatedly.
With CCR Headcleaner, Reptilian Shape Shifters.
Sat/18, 9:30, $10
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
www.hemlocktavern.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZKJs2tAayg

Gothic Tropic
“For a band that has released so little music — only the 2011 EP Awesome Problems — Gothic Tropic has a developed sense of itself. Part of it is in frontperson Cecilia Della Peruti’s tendency to perform shoeless so as not restrict her dance moves. The primary feature, though, is the band’s sound. As its name suggests, Gothic Tropic plays sunny and exotic psych-pop tinted with some grit and darkness, and it plays it well. See the band in all of it’s fully-formed glory at Brick and Mortar.” — Laura Kerry
With Seatraffic, Cruel Summer
Sun/19, 9pm, $10
Brick and Mortar
1710 Mission, SF
(415) 800-8782
www.brickandmortarmusic.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU-QqrMApDQ

The bagpipe squawks for thee: first thoughts on ‘Black Watch’

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The bagpipe squawks for thee: first thoughts on ‘Black Watch’

If you thought the theatricalized story of a jaunty and imperiled Scottish regiment in Iraq in 2004 would come off as a sort of “Trainspotting meets Black Hawk Down,” you wouldn’t be too far off the mark — in a very positive way. I’ll leave the nuts and bolts reviewing of full-force National Theatre of Scotland via American Conservatory Theater’s spectacular “Black Watch,” (through June 16) presented at the huge Mission Armory, to my colleague Robert Avila in next Wednesday’s Guardian. But my first thoughts upon emerging from Sunday night’s opening performance, after I cleaned the constant stream of expletives from my ears (and a bit of something from my eye) is that yae fookin’ coonts moost sae this pish, i.e. the production and performances are well worth the gasp-inducing $100 ticket price.

As is, I guess, a reminder of the — hey, ongoing! — sorry state of our “misadventures” in that part of the world. Ten years later, we have to drop a Benjamin for a complex, moving, and engrossing take on what just happened, or any take whatsoever, pretty much. That it also includes a lot of nifty multimedia effects (a surprisingly malleable pool table basically co-stars), affecting and thrillingly performed choreography, a bit of fascinating history, and some old Scottish ballads — oh yes, there will be bagpipes — is icing on the erroneous Occupation. 

Less plot-driven than situation-oriented (within the framing device of a “researcher” interviewing former squadron-mates at a pub, the story of the 300-year-old Black Watch Scottish fighting force’s dissolution in Iraq is told through clever reenactments), Gregory Burke’s play, first performed in 2007, keeps its ideological cards tucked slightly up its sleeve. But it pulls no punches when it comes to the hella screwy “facts” on the ground. It also toys with the Mametian trope that language is a real sharp double-edged sword, especially the language of power in crisis, when all the misogyny, homophobia, sexphobia, and racism comes howling through the seams of ballsy mens’ speech. One wondered how the more delicate members of A.C.T.’s regular subscription audience was taking all the “fucks,” “cunts,” and every other realistically used expletive, all fenced in by a true yet penetrable thicket of brogue.

One also wondered how many of them knew they were sitting in a giant BDSM porn studio — a famous fact left out of the program’s introduction to the “Armory Community Center,” a.k.a. Kink.com HQ, the timeline of which conveniently ends in the late 1970s, and has the gall to state that “plans to convert the building into a full-time film studio did not come to fruition.” Ahem. Aaanyways. For those of us in the know, it made the porn jokes a lot more funny.

The location also resonates with military history, of course. It was built in the early 1900s to help quell any union strikes or labor demonstrations downtown  … with hundreds of troops armed to the teeth. The wee irony of a play about an occupation staged here isn’t lost. But the genius of the location comes through in other ways. On first hearing ACT was hosting the play here, I immediately thought it would involve dozens of extras and a full orchestra. The play, however takes place in a modest (if very large compared to other locations) draped off part of the armory, and the often-eerie backing music is recorded. It is up to the cast, numbering a mere 10, to bring a full war and its aftershocks to a life big enough to fill the physical and mental space, which they do with aplomb.

They’re aided by a panoply of well-executed mulitmedia efects, culminating in a series of tragic explosions that ripple outward into the Armory’s enormous space. Those explosions can’t help but remind of the recent Boston marathon explosions, permanently televised into our senses. So much blood, so many severed limbs, the media and government weren’t afraid to show us in that bombing earlier this year. And yet 10 years ago, I remember seeing hardly any blood at all, let alone any troops’ bodies, in the long, long, then too-short coverage of the “Iraq War.” How far we’ve come, and haven’t come at all since then, “Black Watch” reminds us.      

Jamaican Queens on major influences, ‘Wormfood,’ and Detroit

Tony Robles
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The Detroit-based trio, Jamaican Queens, makes instantly catchy, hip-hop-influenced, electronic-soaked pop gems and performs them in a dance-inducing glam pop fashion. Although Ryan Spencer, Adam Pressley, and Ryan Clancy have been laying down beats together for less than a year, they have already released a full-length album – Wormfood – hit their hundredth show, and written album number two (which they’ll record once they’ve concluded their lengthy West Coast and summer tours).

I spoke with Jamaican Queens before they opened for Javelin at the New Parish in Oakland last week. After the boys grabbed a few local brews (Anchor Steam, of course), we went up to the roof and talked about their eclectic sound, living in Detroit, and the projects in the works. If you missed the Oakland show, catch them this Sunday at Brick and Mortar as Jamaican Queens could quickly become your favorite new band. (That’s been the case for yours truly.)

SF Bay Guardian How would you describe your sound?

Adam Pressley It’s hip-hop influenced and really abrasive.

Ryan Spencer It’s also experimental, but at the same time in the veil of pop. And lyrically, it’s very glam. We want to make music that makes people feel some sort of emotion – whether it be good or bad.

SFBG Who are some of your chief influences?

RS Most of the vocals I’m influenced by are dramatic – like the way David Bowie sings or the way the London Suede sings or T. Rex.

AP When we were making Wormfood, I started listening to the Magnetic Fields, and I was heavily influenced by what they were doing production-wise.

RS Yeah, they make very exaggerated pop music and can wrap up a huge amount of emotion in a two and a half minute song.

SFBG What type of music do you tend to listen to on your own?

AP I listen to only pop.

RS I listen to some more avant-garde stuff. I like Cambodian music and Jamaican Dancehall. That’s kind of where “Jamaican Queens” came from: Dancehall music. I love that stuff. But I like music that’s all across the board. Reggaeton. Insane punk rock. Everything. As long as it can make you feel something.

SFBG Do you guys have a favorite song to perform?

Ryan Clancy The dexterity and movement our songs require make them all really fun to play.

AP Our songs could be performed by six people, but we’ve got it so that we can all perform two instruments at once, so I’m playing a bass and a drum pad, Ryan Clancy is playing electronic drums and real drums, and Ryan Spencer is playing guitar and sampler. That’s “Water” right there.

SFBG Who’s behind your “Caitlin” video? The cinematography is unbelievable.

RC The cinematographer is our good friend Dan DeMaggio.

RS Our friend Caitlin, who the song is about, is the main character in the video. It’s a really dark story. She was living with Adam at the time, and her great aunt got murdered. A team of con artists started working for her great aunt and then ended up breaking into her house and murdering her. This is the song we wrote for her when she was going through that. It was a really intense time.

SFBG So, what’s it like living in Detroit?

RS I imagine it’s a little bit like Oakland. It’s a really supportive community, and the art and music scenes are very small so everyone knows each other and all of the bands that seem to be cool work together and help each other. Most of our friends don’t really have jobs, so you’ve got a lot of creative people working really hard on their art.

RC Yeah, I think one of the reasons we have such cool videos is because the art and the music scene are very incestuous. Everyone who’s a good photographer is also probably in a band or something.

SFBG What are you guys up to this summer and fall?

RS We’re doing a lot of festivals throughout the summer as well as working on going to Europe for the first time. We’re also making remixes, releasing some vinyl stuff in the UK, and recording a new album, which will be a long time coming because Wormfood just came out last month.

SFBG What do you think of the Bay Area so far?

RS The weather’s amazing, the people are cool, and it’s really liberal. It’s great.

Jamaican Queens
With Maus Haus, Black Jeans
Sun/12, 9pm, $7
Brick and Mortar
1710 Mission, SF
(415) 371-1631
www.brickandmortarmusic.com

Hey, you! “Tech people” are not the douchebags you think we are

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Hey, you! “Tech people” are not the douchebags you think we are

I hear a lot of talk, especially from my own queer community, about how “tech people” are ruining San Francisco. From skyrocketing rent prices and disappearing diversity to economic and cultural ruination, the tech community has become the scapegoat for a lot of the problems we are facing in the city as a whole. As a tech worker, I’m writing this to say: wake up and direct your anger at the real sources of these problems.

First of all, let’s get one thing straight. The vast majority of “tech people” in San Francisco don’t make nearly as much money as you think they do. We are not making six-figure salaries, we are not personally driving up rent costs, and we are not killing the cultural community here. Simply put, we are trying to further our careers and make the city we call home a nicer place to live. 

From day one of living in San Francisco, I’ve put blood sweat and tears into building the cultural community in SF (music, mostly), and I’ll never stop doing that. I first moved here with my husband in 2006 from Indiana. We fell deeply in love with the city while visiting several times early on in our relationship, and knew this was where we wanted to call home. Of course queer acceptance came into play, but I loved the fact that the city had a life of its own, an entity with which I felt a kinship. I immediately immersed myself in the music scene here, forming a touring band and quickly becoming a booker and promoter for live shows. It wasn’t until several years into my time here that I snuck my way into the tech industry. Thankfully all those hours spent in my parent’s basement as a child on the computer helped! Here I am, five years into my tenure at Bay Area music tech startup Thrillcall, hustling every day to help build music communities not only in SF, but across the country.

I bust my ass doing this for modest pay just to get ahead and know I’m working in a field (music) that I love. I know many others like myself who have day jobs in the tech community that do the same.

However, accusations that I’ve been hearing lately would have you believe otherwise. Claims that “people like us” are ruining San Francisco by gentrifying everything and pushing out what San Francisco truly is. Protip: the Bay Area has, for quite some time now, been a hub for technology. This is not a new thing. Stop acting like it is. Directing anger towards us for what you consider woes to the community at large here is way off base. Bubbles have happened constantly since the early 1990s (or hey, 1840s), and anyone who has lived here for long can tell you this is true. 

The tipping point for me, to be honest, was the nonsense of people beating up a “Google Bus” piñata in the Mission, shouting epithets about how they’re the bane of San Francisco. The people that ride those buses are not to blame. They are not heading up that company, they don’t make millions of dollars, and they certainly don’t deserve the hatred being directed at them by many people here in San Francisco.

They’re utilizing a method of mass transportation (cutting down on carbon footprint) provided by their employer. If you want to be angry about something, be angry at the company, not the people who work for it. If you want to actually do something about it (beating a piñata in a public place solves nothing), then take your grievances to the heads of the companies you think are responsible for the predicament that San Francisco currently finds herself in.

You know what is ruining San Francisco? Complacency. Apathy. Misguided hate. Inaction. Put some energy into making change, not senseless whining.

If you’re upset about rising rent costs, be angry at the money-hungry landlords that do absolutely nothing to put money back into the city or help build culture. Want SF prices to stop skyrocketing? Let’s organize and drive proposals with our city government. Upset about the recent sanitization of many of the lovely traditions and values of San Francisco? Get mad at a-holes like Scott Weiner, who is actually supported by a lot of longtime, non-tech residents. Want more culture, arts, music? Maybe try reaching out to people that can help in the tech world instead of complaining about everything going downhill. 

A vast majority of the tech workers here in SF are upwardly mobile, culturally involved people. We are not ruining this city. We live here for much more than just the jobs we have. We love it, and it’s where we call home. We have as much control over the cost of living here as everybody else. And we are not the companies we work for, however large or small. Corporations, for the most part, suck. We all know that. Demonizing the people that work for them (while contributing to this wonderful city) is baseless, classless, and makes you look like a total dick.

We’re not the douchebags you think we are. Let’s put our energy toward doing good, instead of just pointing fingers. A great deal can be accomplished if people took an active role toward coexisting, rather than shouting “ENEMY!” to anyone who will listen. 

 

Live Shots: Marina and the Diamonds at the Warfield

Tony Robles
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I like a little grit. Usually I feel that a great show combines unpredictability, recklessness, and some raw, unpolished vulnerability. That’s what makes live music exciting and dynamic. If we wanted flawless vocals and sonically airbrushed instrumentals, we’d just stay at home and listen to the music on iTunes. So I’m trying to figure out why Marina and the Diamonds’ shiny, choreographed, factory-sealed set at the Warfield Sunday night felt so right.
 
Marina looks like an actual Barbie doll, with the kind of proportions people go under the knife for and a no-hair-out-of-place look straight out of a Bettie Page photo shoot. Her live persona is a hyperbolic take on teen idolhood, oozing confidence as she strutted, posed, and gracefully reclined on the daybed featured in her onstage bedroom set (complete with a coat rack, television, and stuffed animals.)
 
As Marina ripped through a packed setlist studded with costume changes and flawlessly executed pop routines, the sold-out audience — 1/3 tween girls, 1/3 their mothers, 1/3 Castro on a Saturday night — screamed and gushed at every opportunity. Fans wore homemade sashes bearing the Marina slogans “teen idle” and “heartbreaker” and nearly everyone had her trademark little black heart painted on their cheeks. And I can see why.
 
Marina is insanely talented. Her rich, clear voice is pitch-perfect. Her songs are catchy, extremely danceable, and overall just good, old-fashioned fun. She shone brightest when the camp factor was turned up to eleven, as it often was, with prop martini glasses full of glitter and neon lighting. Her more stripped down moments, featuring just Marina and a keyboard, lacked the punch and glamour that makes her presence so awesome.
 
But I think what makes Marina so likeable, despite her unbelievable precision and Mattel-like beauty, is that when she sings “I am not a robot,” you believe her. There is something very genuine about Marina’s hyperfeminine persona. When she said, “San Francisco, are you living in this moment right now? Because I am,” it rings true.
 
Usually my feminist blinkers would be going off at the sight of this woman in a crop top singing to tweenage girls about being a prima donna, but instead I found myself singing along with thousands of devoted fans, “Oh my God, you look just like Shakira/ No, no, you’re Catherine Zeta/ Actually, my name’s Marina!”

The simple fact is that Marina knows what she’s doing. Her image doesn’t seem contrived or commercially driven — it seems like a reclaiming of the femme fatale.
 
Marina may not be redefining dance music or pushing any major envelopes, but she rules at what she does. She absolutely dominates the stage, reminding everyone that there’s no shame in letting yourself enjoy a great pop hook, and that a powerful woman can still totally rock a pink vinyl minidress.

The Rolling Stones rock hard, bring surprise guests, almost make up for outrageous ticket prices

Tony Robles
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It’s one of those things about attending a concert – any concert – at HP Pavilion in San Jose: no matter how you approach the venue, you’re likely to run into those hardline Jesus freaks waving signs and condemning you to hell for whatever music you’re about to enjoy. So, like clockwork, last night as I walked towards the ticket office outside the arena, one of them turned his bullhorn on the bunch of us crossing the intersection and, in full brimstone righteousness, shouted – “what are you gonna tell the lord after you die?” To which, a lone voice from the crowd responded – “I’m gonna tell him I saw the Rolling Stones.”
 
It pretty much summed up the enthralled vibe of last night’s crowd, even before the group got into the venue. Neither obscene ticket prices nor the threats of judgment day were going to stop the concert-goers from catching the Stones one last time, and the enthusiasm was clearly palpable (if not heavily intoxicated) inside the arena from the start.
 
I went into HP last night with a million things on my mind about this show, and left with a million more. I could likely write a doctoral thesis about all the issues that surfaced in my brain surrounding the Stones and their half-century legacy: of what it means to grow old in rock’n’roll, or whether there’s any rebellion left in music (“punk rock” gala at the Met, anyone?), and most of all, this time around, of what we’re willing to spend for a concert experience versus the integrity of what we’re actually getting. But if we push all of that to the side for the minute and just attend to the million-dollar question, about the quality of the band’s performance last night, I’d say that the Rolling Stones were (excuse me Jesus freaks) pretty goddamn fantastic.
 
I can’t speak for their show last week in Oakland, or the earlier East Coast dates of this tour, or for that matter….whatever the hell happened to you that night when you went to see them at Madison Square Garden in ’75.  But last night, at the Shark Tank…the Stones seemed like they were out for blood.
 
Kicking off a 22-song set that would run close to two-plus hours, the band quickly blazed through a few big hits – including “Paint It Black” and “Get Off of My Cloud” – with Mick Jagger immediately charging around the length of the stage in dervish-like blurs of energy. The Stones were all smiles when they pulled up guest John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater fame to turn out a rowdy cover of the Valentinos “It’s All Over Now” early in the set.
 
The show really got traction towards the middle of the night as the band stepped away from its biggest hits and settled into developing lesser known tracks (well…in comparison, at least), including riveting takes on “No Expectations,” “Bitch,” and “Emotional Rescue,” before calling up Bonnie Raitt to play slide guitar and duet with Mick on an epic rendition of “Let It Bleed.”
 
Yet, for however much the band sent the place ape-shit with “Honky Tonk Women,” the show-stopping cold blooded killer of the evening was clearly a ferocious 12-minute version of “Midnight Rambler” with former guitarist Mick Taylor surfacing to add formidable contributions to the already impressive mix. At any other concert, it was the slam dunk moment to shake your head and feel like you’ve officially gotten your money’s worth. But on this tour, the band really upped the ante on when and if that moment could occur.
 
Of all those peripheral issues surrounding the Stones performance, the ticket price was the one that –rightfully – dominated the conversation since this leg of the tour was announced. And since the moment we all realized that the $1200 asking price for a pair of lower tier seats didn’t include a four-night stay in Hawaii, Stones fans began to determine their threshold for paying to see the band, possibly for the last time.

Those prices (officially termed “dynamic pricing,” which really just means institutionalized scalping) were criticized in editorials, and kicked around in chat rooms. It was a horrendous strategy for the band on what really is a victory lap of its 50-year legacy, being both a betrayal of its fans and far cry from what is supposed to be to its roots as a group of bluesmen.
 
But it still brings us back to the same point, anchored off the actual performance, and whether or not the band’s showing could live up to those prices. And last night, Mick and Keith sounded pretty savage on that third verse of “Jumping Jack Flash,” and Ron Wood did more than his share of heavy lifting on some big tracks (in addition to just being the coolest guy on stage), while Charlie’s backbeat kept the house ushers busy all night trying to quell the manic dancing in the aisles from song to song. There was even a local choir (from SJ State) to properly deliver “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” And maybe most of all, Mick was still moving 900 miles per hour during the last few songs, even as much of the crowd watched the encore half-exhausted from the non-stop energy he exhibited all night.
 
So in this sense, the question regarding the quality of the Stones’ performance seemed to be pretty much a no-brainer to last night’s crowd.
 
But as far as the tour’s big question, of what you’re willing to pay to see such a show, well, I’ll leave you to answer that one for yourself.

Catch up!

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Catch up!

SUPER EGO Happy 45th birthday to Specs, my favorite bar in the city. The Capitan cocktail at La Mar is drink of the year so far. I think I finally get Daft Punk. There will probably soon be a “high-end” “gay” “strip” club called the Randy Rooster in the Castro, but you can’t make it rain — tips are donated at entry to a favorite charity, the dancers only strip to g-strings, and there’ll be upscale food. (It sounds positively Mormon.)

The winner of How Weird Street Faire was homegrown genius Larry Gonnello Jr.’s Boombox Affair, the back alley stage with the wired-together boomboxes, this killer six-hour set, and a perfect respite from the overflow of looky-loos this year. And that proposal by Mark Leno for bars in Cali to stay open until 4am? It died in committee, much like Roxxxy Andrews’ hair (I don’t even know who that is) — mostly due to the twisted machinations of the California Police Chiefs Association, who said it would mean more drunks on the road. Absolutely untrue! And this is why we can’t ever have nice things. My goddess, even the bars in Anchorage, Alaska can stay open longer than ours. Guess I’ll just have to keep my Scooby Doo flask polished and at the ready in my tubesock.

 

BOO WILLIAMS

I am so very excited for this. A Chicago house legend and true sweetie who knows soul biz like nobody — except maybe his Strictly Jazz Unit partner in crime Glenn Underground. The Housepitality weekly does it again.

Wed/8, 9pm, $10. f8, 1192 Folsom, SF. www.housepitalitysf.com

 

AFROLICIOUS 6-YEAR

Six years of this awesome Latin funk and Afro jazz collective’s dance floor vibes. As always, groovy brothers Pleasuremaker and Senor Oz preside over the festivities, full of live goodies and sweaty hotties, so good it’s taking over two nights.

Thu/9 and Fri/10, $8–$15 per night. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

 

DERRICK MAY

Oh hi, Detroit originator of techno.

Fri/10, $20. 9:30pm-3:30am. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

KITSUNE CLUB NIGHT

Poof! It’s the return of that special-smart French hyperdisco feeling, as beloved label Kitsune spreads its pixie dust around with Fred Falke, Chrome Sparks, and our own Aaron Axelsen.

Fri/10, 9pm, $17. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

 

ODYSSEY

The best and most freakish roving house party is at it again, this time bringing in the energetic and gorgeous W. Jeremy and Christy Love of NYC’s House of Stank and Get Up Recordings.

Fri/10, $10, 9:30pm-3:30am. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

PUSH THE FEELING

“An all locals, disco-heavy night of music,” too-cute promoter Kevin Meenan promises, somewhat surprisingly, for this installation of his monthly boundary pushing night, with Beat Broker on decks and plaza performing live.

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

Fri/10, 9pm, $5. UndergroundSF. 424 Haight, SF.

 

TORMENTA TROPICAL

Everyone’s favorite 808cumbia, electro-salsa, and tech-bachata monthly celebrates a bangin’ new release on its Bersa Discos label from Mexican DJ Quality, with DJ Quality! Sat/11, $5–$10, 10pm. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

 

WOLF + LAMB, SOUL CLAP

The two greatest bromances of the retro-rebuild decade, these male duos melted minds when they Frankensteined tunes from the 1950s-2000s (emphasis on the ’90s) into exotic-sounding hybrids of moody funk and deep house. Now everyone’s taken their cues — what will they pull off next?

Sat/11, 9pm, $20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

 

KIM ANN FOXMAN

She has the tightest style — sound + vision — of anyone going right now, melting late ’80s and early ’90s sonic signifiers into a sophisticated semiotic code that packs the dance floor every time. Funky Mother’s Day!

Sun/12, 10pm, $10. Holy Cow, 1535 Folsom, SF. www.honeysoundsystem.com

 

Not from around here

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Not from around here

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC It was a case of the French pop love that dared not speak its name, as earlier this month rumors roiled about a Coachella coupling — mon dieu, deux! — to truly rave about: headliner Phoenix along with possibly, just maybe, hush-hush special guest Daft Punk, returning to stage de triomphe that it dominated seven years ago. The Phoenix guest that materialized, R. Kelly, wasn’t exactly the faceless freak the audience had imagined springing from the closet, and instead the mob had to cool its jets and content itself with an old-school LP ad from Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo.

The abbreviated 102-second spot saw the duo in glittery soft focus performing new single “Get Lucky” alongside Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers — the kind of clip you’d uncover on late-night TV during Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert — and announcing Daft Punk’s own special guest stars, including Giorgio Moroder, Panda Bear, past Daft Punk collaborator Todd Edwards, Paul Williams (who must have had Phantom of Paradise-tinged flashbacks), and Pharrell Williams. Just a taste, but enough to stir the pot in the lead up to the May 21 release of Daft Punk’s fourth studio full-length, Random Access Memories, on Columbia.

Is it so strange that Daft Punk and Phoenix should find their fortunes so intertwined out in the Cali desert, so far from Old World Paris and Versailles? After all, the two share a past — and a future: Phoenix guitarist Laurent Brancowitz, Bangalter, and de Homem-Christo all started out in a Beach Boys-inspired combo called Darlin’. And much like fellow French native Anthony Gonzalez’s M83, the two groups are managing to find creative juices to grease their wheels out west, in the fantasy industrial complex of LA — with Daft Punk stressing the importance of a West Coast feel à la Fleetwood Mac to Memories guest Edwards, and Phoenix telling MTV that its new CD, Bankrupt!, was inspired by its work on Thomas Mars spouse Sofia Coppola’s 2010 movie Somewhere.

Not to mention the fact that Bankrupt! and Memories are two of the most buzz-ridden releases of the year, particularly judging from the homemade “Get Lucky” remixes and videos already proliferating online. Long gone are the old rockist daze — the same that slurred “Disco sucks” — when French rock was derided as just another thing an entire country does wrong, like loving Jerry Lewis. Thoughts surely far from the minds of Daft Punk obsessives, though from the start the duo’s vocoder-obscured vocals and helmeted visages proudly proclaimed, “We’re alien, a.k.a. not from around here.” That tease is the name of Daft Punk’s space-rockin’ game this time around, taking control with a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign after a humbling day job scoring a sorry Tron sequel.

Working with its biggest crowd of collaborators yet, Daft Punk appears to be bursting the mythic bubble of an enigmatic twosome working solo behind the decks, letting others into the party, circling back to its clubland origins, and reaffirming that, as “Get Lucky” goes, its “ends were beginnings.”

And though indie seems leached of meaning, Phoenix sounds far deprived when it came to ideas for Bankrupt! Nate Chinen of the New York Times may quibble with Mars’s Dadaist “word salad” — why not attack a fellow for singing with an accent? — but then Phoenix isn’t the first band to privilege the sound of lyrics over content. Bankrupt! isn’t as “experimental” as promised early on, but it’s by no means as polished and predictable as your average Killers or Imagine Dragons product.

Starting with title and extending to the cover symbolism of a lucky peach, and the busy little rickshaw of an orientalist motif on opener “Entertainment,” Phoenix sounds as if it’s grappling with a Daft Punky notion of alien-ness, too — and the global economics of pop success, having hit it big at the height of an economic downtown with 2009’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. The distorted, bristling synths grinding beneath songs like “The Real Thing,” in fact, make Bankrupt! one of the noisier mainstream rock albums of recent years. Scope out the lonely cries of the entitled asking to have their names put on lists on “SOS in Bel Air,” the fluty synths opening the languorous “Trying to Be Cool,” and hear the sound of a band conveying the seduction — and anxiety — of too many bright lights, big cities, and marathon tours and responding by mainly turning up on the volume.

So why French pop and why now? In fits and starts, leaps and stumbles, Daft Punk and Phoenix are creating less a pop language of diplomacy than a kind of lingua franca between classic sunny pop hooks, Beach Boys style, and the all-mighty often-electronic groove, be it analog or digital, IDM or EDM, boyish or girlish, human or alien.

LPs like Memories hark to another time, while satisfying on the primal level of da funk. As Pharrell Williams has said of “Get Lucky,” “The only click track they had was the human heartbeat, which makes it really interesting because these are robots.” So how does the sunlit, smoggy terroir of the west touch two French aliens and a band of Versailles refugees? Perhaps we’ll know when Daft Punk unveils Memories even further out West: May 17, at the the 79th Wee Waa Regional Show in Wee Waa, Australia.

Let it all out

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Let it all out

VISUAL ART Dottie Guy had a difficult time in 2006. In addition to the death of her grandfather, she was recovering from surgery for an injury to her ankle and foot that she had sustained on duty in Iraq. She started taking pictures as motivation to walk around and to reclaim a sense of purpose.

This year, Guy is one of the artists participating in a one-night art exhibition presented by Shout!, an initiative to support female veterans in the Bay Area. Primary organizer Star Lara asked Guy to submit a photo to an event that, in its fifth year, will include several different media — photography, painting, sculpture, drawing, writing, and music — made by 22 vets. As a result of Lara’s outreach efforts, this year’s event has grown so much that she had to turn artists away.

Lara is the Women Veterans Coordinator at Swords to Plowshares, a nonprofit that helps veterans transition back to civilian life. Leaving the military in 2007 after serving on active duty for 12 years, she knows the hardships of adapting, particularly those that affect women. As more women enlist, she explains, the gender-specific problems become increasingly defined. Female veterans now represent the fastest growing homeless population, yet they seek help through Veteran Affairs at far lower rates than men do.

Issues also stem from public perception. People understand what it means when they see a man with a military pin, but Lara often hears the question, “Is your dad in the military?” Society resists the idea of a female veteran.

And when civilians do know about a woman’s military service, another problem arises: the tendency to reduce all aspects of her persona to her veteran identity. For Guy, the exhibition provides an opportunity to showcase another side of herself. Though her life revolves around veterans — she works at the VA — she is also a photographer, and her photography does not directly address military service.

Guy snapped her Shout! photo at Bay to Breakers a couple of years ago when she stumbled across a woman in a top hat and fake moustache shouting into a bullhorn next to a man wearing a polar bear mask. It is a quirky image one could find in few places besides San Francisco. “I embrace the ridiculous stuff,” says Guy. “Being in the military, there’s not much room to celebrate that. You’d never see somebody walking around in a mask like that, unless it meant trouble.”

Another Shout! artist, JoAnn Martinez, has only recently begun to experiment with military subjects. For her second year in the show, she has submitted comics derived from dialogues she has heard within the female veteran community. By undertaking this new comedic mode of art, she hopes she can not only share a creation she’s proud of besides her family and work (she started the nonprofit Women Veterans Connect), but also communicate a digestible message to the non-veteran community. “Instead of complaining, let’s laugh about it,” she says.

Not only do Martinez’s comics convey a therapeutic levity, but they also contain an expressive subtext; they are printed on homemade paper created in response to the Combat Paper Project, in which workshops instruct veterans how to create paper pulp from their shredded military uniforms.

Extending the practice beyond Shout!, Martinez is seeking female veterans to submit stories about their uniforms for a Shotwell Paper Mill limited-edition book created using the same fabric-turned-paper method. So far, the stories range in tone, some reflecting a similar lightness to Martinez’s comics; one woman tells how after she painted her toenails, the Iraqi heat melted the polish and she had trouble removing her socks.

Lara has also participated in the project, an experience she found restorative in part because it involved breaking down and reclaiming an object laden with intense experiences, but primarily because of the work’s collectivity. After talking with fellow female veterans while their hands were busy cutting, she says, “It was no longer about the trauma that brought you to the table — it was about what you took from the table.” (The Combat Paper Project also inspired Lara’s contribution to this year’s Shout!, a piece that involved her “painting the shit out of” her last uniform.)

Though Lara does not consider herself a fine artist, Shout! presents an opportunity to share the voice of her small group within a greater context. In the Women’s Building, a hub of action in the Mission, the event will enact her idea that women veterans comprise a subset of larger existing communities and should be reached as such.

Lara says that without focusing on trauma, without involving policy, services, or outreach, Shout! offers a chance for artists like Guy and Martinez to declare, “I am a woman and a veteran, and here’s how I express myself.”

SHOUT!: ART BY WOMEN VETERANS

Wed/8, 6-9pm, free

San Francisco Women’s Building

3543 18th St, SF

swords-to-plowshares.org/shout

 

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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Schedules are for Wed/8-Tue/14 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ANSWER COALITION 2969 Mission, SF; www.answersf.org. $5-10 (no one turned away for lack of funds). The Battle of Chile: The Power of the People (Guzmán), Wed, 7.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. "Revelcade Applause Night," shorts by Bay Area filmmakers, Fri, 8.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-13. •Badlands (Malick, 1973), Wed, 7, and Electra Glide in Blue (Guercio, 1973), Wed, 8:50. San Francisco International Film Festival, Thu. See festival.sffs.org for schedule. •John Dies at the End (Coscarelli, 2012), Fri, 7, and The Rambler (Reeder, 2013), Fri, 8:55. "Marc Huestis presents: Mother’s Day with Mommie Dearest:" Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945), Sat, 2; Mommie Dearest (Perry, 1981), Sat, 7:30. Evening event ($15; www.ticketfly.com) includes a live appearance by actress Rutanya Alda, with host Matthew Martin. •The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948), Sun, 2:55, 8, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell and Pressburger, 1943), Sun, 5. The Master (Anderson, 2012), Tue, 2, 5, 8.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. The Angels’ Share (Loach, 2012), call for dates and times. Blancanieves (Berger, 2012), call for dates and times. In the House (Ozon, 2012), call for dates and times. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Nair, 2012), call for dates and times. Renoir (Bourdos, 2012), call for dates and times.

GREAT WALL OF OAKLAND West Grand between Broadway and Valley, Oakl; www.oaklandcatvidfest.com. $10-75. "Oakland Internet Cat Video Festival," benefit for the East Bay SPCA with pre-screening events (cat-themed music, animal rescue groups, food trucks, and more), plus an appearance by special guest Dusty the Klepto Kitty, Sat, 3-10.

JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF SAN FRANCISCO Kanbar Hall, 3200 California, SF; www.jccsf.org. $8-12. Under African Skies (Berlinger, 2012), Mon, 7.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, milibrary.org/events. $10 (reservations required as seating is limited). "CinemaLit Film Series: Paddy Chayefsky: Scenes from American Lives:" The Catered Affair (Brooks, 1956), Fri, 6.

NEW PARKWAY 474 24th St, Oakl; www.thenewparkway.com. $6-10. "New Parkway Classics:" Wild at Heart (Lynch, 1990), Thu, 9pm. "Thrillville:" Mothra (Honda, 1961), Sun, 6.

OAKLAND PUBLIC LIBRARY 1021 81st Ave, Oakl; www.oaklandlibrary.org. Free. Just a Piece of Cloth (Henze), Sat, 2.

"PLAYGROUND FILM FESTIVAL" Various Bay Area venues; playground-sf.org/filmfest. $10-25. Showcasing Bay Area filmmakers and writers and their short work. Through May 25.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. San Francisco International Film Festival, Wed-Thu. See festival.sffs.org for schedule. "Film and Video Makers at Cal: Works from the Eisner Prize Competition," Fri, 7. PFA closed through June 5.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. CXL (Gillane, 2012), Wed, 7:15. The Source Family (Demopoulos and Wille, 2012), Wed-Thu, 7, 9:30. Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013), Wed-Thu, 9. The Crumbles (Boch, 2012), Sat, 3, 5, 7, 9. "I Wake Up Dreaming 2013:" •I Wake Up Screaming (Humberstone, 1941), Fri, 6:15, 9:45, and Blues in the Night (Rossen, 1941), Fri, 8; •Under Age (Dmytryk, 1941), Sat, 2, 6:30; Johnny O’ Clock (Rossen, 1947), Sat, 3:15, 8; and The Monster and the Girl (Heisler, 1941), Sat, 5, 9:45; •Fall Guy (Le Borg, 1947), Sun, 1:30, 6:15; Night Has a Thousand Eyes (Farrow, 1948), Sun, 2:50, 7:45; •Club Havana (Ulmer, 1945), Mon, 6:40, 9:30, and Island of Doomed Men (Barton, 1940), Mon, 8; •Nightmare (Whelan, 1942), Tue, 6:15, 9:50, and All Through the Night (Sherman, 1942), Tue, 8.

VICTORIA THEATRE 2961 16th St, SF; www.peacheschrist.com. $30-35. "The Rocky Horror Show 40th Anniversary Concert Tribute," with Patricia "Magenta" Quinn performing live and other special guests, Fri-Sat, 8 (also Sat, 3).

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. "Girls! Guns! Ghosts! The Sensational Films of Shintoho:" Ghost Story of Yotsuya (Nakagawa, 1959), Thu, 7:30; Flesh Pier (Ishii, 1958), Sun, 2.

Stage listings

Andrew Lam
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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.

THEATER

OPENING

Black Watch Drill Court, Armory Community Center, 333 14th St, SF; www.act-sf.org. $100. Previews Thu/9-Sat/11, 8pm. Opens Sun/12, 7pm. Runs Tue-Sat, 8pm (Tue/14, show at 7pm; also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 16. American Conservatory Theater presents the National Theatre of Scotland’s internationally acclaimed performance about Scottish soldiers serving in Iraq.

Vital Signs: The Pulse of an American Nurse Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Sun/12, 7pm. Runs Sun, 7pm. Through June 16. Registered nurse Alison Whittaker returns to the Marsh with her behind-the-scenes show about working in a hospital.

ONGOING

Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm (Sat/11, show at 8pm). Through May 18. Playwright Lynne Kaufman invites you to take a trip with Richard Alpert, a.k.a. Ram Dass (Warren David Keith), as he recounts times high and low in this thoughtful, funny, and sometimes unexpected biographical rumination on the quest for truth and meaning in a seemingly random life by one of the big wigs of the psychedelic revolution and (with his classic book, Be Here Now) contemporary Eastern-looking spirituality. Directed by Joel Mullennix, the narrative begins with Ram Dass today, in his Hawaiian home and partly paralyzed from a stroke, but Keith (one of the Bay Area’s best stage actors, who is predictably sure and engagingly multilayered in the role) soon shakes off the stiff arm and strained speech and springs to his feet to continue the narrative as the ideal self perhaps only transcendental consciousness and theater allow. Nevertheless, Kaufman’s fun-loving and extroverted Alpert is no saint and no model of perfection, which is the refreshing truth explored in the play, but rather a seeker still, ever imperfect and ever trying for greater perfection or at least the wisdom of acceptance. As the privileged queer child of a wealthy Jewish lawyer and industrialist, Alpert was both insider and outsider from the get-go, and that tension and ambiguity makes for an interesting angle on his life as well as the complexities of his relationships with a homophobic Leary, for instance, and his conservative but ultimately loving father. Perfection aside, the beauty in the subject and the play is the subtle, shrewd cherishing of what remains unfinished. (Avila)

Boomeraging: From LSD to OMG Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Tue, 8pm. Through May 28. Comedian Will Durst performs his brand-new solo show.

Dirty Dancing: Live! Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; dirtydancinglive-fbe.eventbrite.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through May 25. Watermelons will be carried, lifts will be attempted, eyes will be hungry, and nobody better put Baby in a corner.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

Last Love Mojo Theatre, 2940 16th St, SF; www.mojotheatre.com. $17-30. Thu-Sun, 8pm. Through May 19. Will the apocalypse save us from ourselves? Mojo Theater again raises that question as it presents the second installment in director-playwright Peter Papadopoulos’ Love-Gone-Wrong-at-the-End-of-the-World trilogy, the follow-up to last season’s fertile and funny Lost Love. The story centers on a George and Martha-esque couple, Charles (Jonathan Bender) and Lucida (Kimberly Lester), who on the eve of their fifth wedding anniversary declare all-out war, lobbing younger lovers at each other only to find their new partners (played by an increasingly endearing Michael Saenz and an unexpectedly powerful Gloria McDonald) have a past together and unresolved issues of their own. The grimly romantic comedy returns to, without greatly elaborating on, a familiar fantasy: blowing away the haze of our fractious, insecure, and muddled love lives in the clarifying immediacy of disaster. That this may be more than pure fantasy — that the seemingly discrete realms of personal and political trauma may be in some subtle and profound way connected — is an animating dimension of the trilogy, but here in a more superficial and perfunctory fashion than in Lost Love. The strength of the production lies less in its premise than in the penetrating humor and emotional veracity in Papadopoulos’ sure, heightened dialogue, which is played generally well by the cast and exceptionally so by a vibrantly intelligent Lester, Mojo’s co–artistic director. The staging also benefits, albeit inconsistently, from a stylized approach that revels in self-conscious artifice (including a trio of stage managers from “Command Center Communications,” a video-backdrop by Micah Stieglitz, and some light choreography by Lester). These strengths lend a restless, occasionally inspired production a slow-burning charm, but leave one wondering what might be left when all the dust settles. (Avila)

Little Me Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstreetmoon.org. $25-75. Wed, 7pm; Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm. Through May 19. 42nd Street Moon performs Neil Simon’s outrageous musical.

The Lost Folio: Shakespeare’s Musicals Un-Scripted Theater, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 18. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs a fully-improvised, full-length musical inspired by Shakespeare.

The Merry Wives of Windsor Buriel Clay Theater, African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; www.african-americanshakes.org. $10-35. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 26. African-American Shakespeare Company performs a twist on the Shakespeare classic, set in an urban neighborhood in the 1950s.

“PlayGround Festival of New Works” Various venues, SF and Berk; www.playground-sf.org. $15-40. Through May 26. The 17th fest presented by “San Francisco’s incubator for a new generation of playwrights” includes the PlayGround Film Festival, staged readings of four new full-length plays, a fully-produced program of six short plays, panel discussions, and more.

reasons to be pretty San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-100. Wed/8-Thu/9, 7pm; Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat/11, 3pm). Completing a trilogy of plays about body awareness and self-image (along with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig), Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty begins with a misconstrued remark that quickly gathers enough weight and momentum to tear three sets of relationships apart in the span of a two-hour play. The SF Playhouse production begins with a bang, or rather an awesomely knock-down, blow-out breakup fight between a righteously pissed-off Steph (Lauren English) and her awkwardly passive boyfriend Greg (Craig Marker), who has inadvertently referred to her as “regular” in a conversation with his jerkish buddy Kent (Patrick Russell), which she takes to mean he finds her ugly. English’s Steph is at turns ferocious and fragile, and her comic timing as she eviscerates Greg’s looks in a mall food court zings, while the hyperkinetic Russell elevates the condition of noxiously irredeemable douchebag to an art form. But terrific acting and polished design can only make up so much for a script that feels not only flawed, barely scratching the surface of the whys and wherefores each character has internalized an unrealistic view of the importance of conventional beauty standards, but also already dated, with its circa-2008 pop culture references. Ultimately it gives the impression of being a rerun of a Lifetime television drama that wraps itself up into a too-neat package just in time for the final credits to roll to its admittedly kickass soundtrack (provided by Billie Cox). (Gluckstern)

Sam I Am: A Processional of Short Plays and Prose About Samuel Beckett Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.pustheatre.com. $10-20. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm. Performers Under Stress remounts and revamps its series of short plays and pieces by Samuel Beckett, this time staging it throughout the basement quarters of Bindlestiff Studio, where audiences are led around an economical maze of performance spaces. Opening weekend consisted of too much text and too little in way of staging ideas, especially with several spoken selections of Beckett prose (which have reportedly since been dropped from the program). The best of what remains (in a program of six short plays total) includes Valerie Fachman’s respectable performance as the disembodied “mouth” of the brilliant Not I; and James Udom and Geo Epsilany’s duet in Rough for Theatre I, in which a wheelchair-bound food-hoarder (a softly eccentric Epsilany) strikes up a doomed friendship with a blind beggar (a solid Udom) amid a colorless and barren landscape. The bucket of Beckett dreary gets less satisfying from there, though director Scott Baker’s wordless performance as the titular Joe in Eh Joe proves poised and the doubled voices in his head (by Melissa Clason and Allison Hunter Blackwell) both haunting and intriguing. (Avila)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. It seems a no-brainer. Not just the HBO series itself — that’s definitely missing some gray matter — but putting it onstage as a drag show. Mais naturellement! Why was Sex and the City not conceived of as a drag show in the first place? Making the sordid not exactly palatable but somehow, I don’t know, friendlier (and the canned a little cannier), Velvet Rage Productions mounts two verbatim episodes from the widely adored cable show, with Trannyshack’s Heklina in a smashing portrayal of SJP’s Carrie; D’Arcy Drollinger stealing much of the show as ever-randy Samantha (already more or less a gay man trapped in a woman’s body); Lady Bear as an endearingly out-to-lunch Miranda; and ever assured, quick-witted Trixxie Carr as pent-up Charlotte. There’s also a solid and enjoyable supporting cast courtesy of Cookie Dough, Jordan Wheeler, and Leigh Crow (as Mr. Big). That’s some heavyweight talent trodding the straining boards of bar Rebel’s tiny stage. The show’s still two-dimensional, even in 3D, but noticeably bigger than your 50″ plasma flat panel. (Avila)

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through May 18. Self-awareness, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement — for these things we turn to the professionals: the self-empowerment coaches, the self-help authors and motivational speakers. What’s the good of having a “self” unless someone shows you how to use it? Writer-performer Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook wants to sell you on a better you, but his “Better Than You” weekend seminar (and tie-in book series, assorted CDs, and other paraphernalia) belies a certain divided loyalty in its own self-flattering title. The bitter fruit of the personal growth industry may sound overly ripe for the picking, but Bodden’s deftly executed “seminar” and its behind-the-scenes reveals, directed by Mark Kenward, explore the terrain with panache, cool wit, and shrewd characterization. As both writer and performer, Bodden keeps his Steve Seabrook just this side of overly sensational or maudlin, a believable figure, finally, whose all-too-ordinary life ends up something of a modest model of its own. (Avila)

Talk Radio Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 15. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs Eric Bogosian’s breakthrough 1987 drama.

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 1. Thrillpeddlers and director Russell Blackwood continue their Theatre of the Ridiculous series with this 1971 musical from San Francisco’s famed glitter-bearded acid queens, the Cockettes, revamped with a slew of new musical material by original member Scrumbly Koldewyn, and a freshly re-minted book co-written by Koldewyn and “Sweet Pam” Tent — both of whom join the large rotating cast of Thrillpeddler favorites alongside a third original Cockette, Rumi Missabu (playing diner waitress Brenda Breakfast like a deliciously unhinged scramble of Lucille Ball and Bette Davis). This is Thrillpeddlers’ third Cockettes revival, a winning streak that started with Pearls Over Shanghai. While not quite as frisky or imaginative as the production of Pearls, it easily charms with its fine songs, nifty routines, exquisite costumes, steady flashes of wit, less consistent flashes of flesh, and de rigueur irreverence. The plot may not be very easy to follow, but then, except perhaps for the bubbly accounting of the notorious New York flop of the same show 42 years ago by Tent (as poisoned-pen gossip columnist Vedda Viper), it hardly matters. (Avila)

The Waiting Period Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through May 18. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events` in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. Note: review from an earlier run of the same production. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Through July 21. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns after a month-long hiatus with his popular, kid-friendly bubble show.

BAY AREA

The Arsonists Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $35-60. Wed/8-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 2 and 7pm. There’s a lot of humor to be found in Alistair Beaton’s crackling translation of Max Frisch’s The Arsonists, playing now at the Aurora Theatre, but much of the laughter it elicits is of the nervous variety, as the play’s mostly protagonist, the effete, bourgeois Herr Biedermann (Dan Hiatt) inadvertently signs off on his own destruction when he invites an uncouth arsonist to come and stay in his attic (Michael Ray Wisely). “If we assume everyone is an arsonist, where does that get us?” becomes his standard deflection, as one arsonist becomes two (adding in the unctuous, nihilistic Tim Kniffin), and the empty attic a repository for giant drums of gasoline, a detonator, and fuse wire — arousing the suspicions of a chorus of firefighters (Kevin Clarke, Tristan Cunningham, Michael Uy Kelly), who act as the conscience and guardians of the township. Although on the surface the scenario is patently absurd, the message that passivity in the face of evil is like helping to measure out the fuse wire that will eventually claim your life, is relatively clear. “Not every fire is determined by fate,” point out the firefighters right in the first act. Hiatt, as Biedermann, strikes an admirable balance between loathsome and powerless, while Gwen Loeb shines as his socialite wife, Babette, as does Dina Percia as his agitated housemaid, Anna. (Gluckstern)

The Dead Girl Avant Garde, 1328 Fourth St, San Rafael; www.altertheater.org. $25. Wed, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 19. AlterTheater performs 90-year-old playwright Ann Brebner’s new family drama.

A Killer Story Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu-Sat, 8pm (pre-show cabaret at 7:15pm). Through May 18. Dan Harder’s film noir-inspired detective tale premieres at the Marsh Berkeley.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-77. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and May 23, 2pm; no show May 24); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2). Through May 26. Mark Wing-Davey directs Berkeley Rep’s take on the Bard.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Bailout! Or can you picture this prophecy? The temperatures are too hot for me.” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/10-Sun/12, 8pm. Pay what you can. Navarrete x Kajiyama Dance Theater perform a site-specific multidisciplinary performance inspired by environmental disasters.

“Bitch and Tell: A Real, Funny Show” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.ftloose.org. Sat/11, 8pm. $8-10. Comedy with Tracy Shapiro, Carolé Acuña, Allison Mick, and more.

“Bob’s Burgers Live!” Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium, 1111 California, SF; http://bit.ly/bobssanfrancisco. Sat/11, 8pm. $32.50. The cast of the animated series performs.

“Bound for Glory” Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. Fri/10, 7:30pm; Sat/11, 2pm. $8-50. Marsh Youth Theater’s MainStage Performance Ensemble presents a musical (written by the ensemble with director Lisa Quoresimo) about a Dust Bowl-era family.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sun/12, 3 and 6:15pm. $29.95-49.95 (includes meal). Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Comedy Returns to El Rio” El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.elriosf.com. Mon/13, 8pm. $7-20. Fourth anniversary show with Frankie Quiñones, Dan St. Paul, Aundre the Wonderwoman, and more.

“The Fantasticks” Mission Dolores Academy Auditorium, 3371 16th St, SF; www.16thstreetplayers.org. Fri/10 and Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat/11, 3pm); Sun, 3pm. Through May 19. Free. The 16th Street Players perform the classic musical.

“I Am a Lie that Always Tells the Truth” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.kingdomofnot.com. Fri/10, 8pm. $10-20. The Kingdom of Not (Dan Carbone and Andrew Goldfarb) perform “music, monologues, and emergency dispatches.”

“ImmigraNation” Punchline Comedy Club, 444 Battery, SF; www.punchlinecomedyclub.com. Tue/14, 8pm. $15. Comedy about the immigrant experience with Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, Samson Koletkar, and more.

“Mission Position Live” Cinecave, 1034 Valencia, SF; www.missionpositionlive.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Stand-up comedy with rotating performers.

“Mortified” DNA Lounge, 373 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Fri/10, 7:30pm. $21. Also Sat/11, 7:30pm, $20. Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. The storytelling series, which specializes in all things embarassing, ups the ante with a Mother’s Day theme this month.

“Mutant Creatures and Unlikely Teachers: Short Plays by Short People” Koret Auditorium, De Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.stagewright.org. Tue/14, 11am. Free (advance reservations required). Also May 16, 6:30pm ($10) and May 17, 7pm ($50; fundraiser for StageWright program), Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.stagewright.org. StageWright presents plays by fifth graders at Starr King Elementary School, performed by professional actors and museums.

“Once in Love with Loesser” Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstreetmoon.org. Mon/13-Tue/14, 7pm. $45-70. 42nd Street Moon presents Tony nominee Emily Skinner performing songs by Frank Loesser.

Red Hots Burlesque El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.redhotsburlesque.com. Wed, 7:30-9pm. Ongoing. $5-10. Come for the burlesque show, stay for OMG! Karaoke starting at 8pm (no cover for karaoke).

San Francisco Ballet War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, SF; www.sfballet.org. Wed/8, 7:30pm; Thu/9-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat/11, 2pm); Sun/12, 2pm. $45-250. Performing the US premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella.

“San Francisco Magic Parlor” Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

Smuin Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.smuinballet.org. Fri-Sat and May 16, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through May 19. $24-65. Also May 22-25, 8pm (also May 25, 2pm); May 26, 2pm. $52-68. Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View. Also May 31-June 1, 8pm (also June 1, 2pm). $54-70. Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek. The company presents the West Coast premiere of Helen Pickett’s Petal and Darrell Grand Moultrie’s JAZZIN’, among other works.

“A Spaghetti Western” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.clownsnotbombs.com. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat/11, 2pm). $15-20. ClownSnotBombs performs a circus adventure about pasta and the Wild West.

“Stretchmarks” Creativity Theater, Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Fourth St, SF; www.themommadrama.com. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm. $25. The Momma Drama presents this play as part of a mom-centric event on Mother’s Day.

“Union Square Live” Union Square, between Post, Geary, Powell, and Stockton, SF; www.unionsquarelive.org. Through Oct 9. Free. Music, dance, circus arts, film, and more; dates and times vary, so check website for the latest.

“Yerba Buena Gardens Festival” Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission between 3rd and 4th Sts, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. Through Oct 15. Free. This week: “Asian Improv aRts: 25th Anniversary: Traditions in Transformation,” Sat/11, 1-3pm; “Taiwan in the Gardens,” Sun/12, 1-2:30pm.

BAY AREA

Company C Contemporary Ballet Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; www.lesherartscenter.org. Thu/9-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 1pm. $23-45. The company’s spring program features Natoma, a world premiere by Company C dancer David von Ligon.

Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg Zellerbach Hall, Bancroft at Telegraph, UC Berkeley, Berk; www.calperformances.org. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 3pm. $30-92. The company performs the Bay Area premiere of its latest ballet, Rodin.

“A History of the Body” Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St, #290, Oakl; historyofbody.eventbrite.com. Sat/11, 7:30pm. $15-25. Work-in-progress performance of Aimee Suzara’s new play.

Oakland Ballet Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice, Oakl; www.oaklandballet.org. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). $20-35. The company performs its spring season program, “Diaghilev Imagery.”

“The Shout: Life’s True Stories” Grand Lake Coffee House, 440 Grand, Oakl; www.theshoutstorytelling.com. Mon/13, 7:30pm. $5-20. Ten-minute tales from a variety of storytellers.

“Swearing in English: Tall Tales at Shotgun” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. June 3 and 17, 8pm. $15. Shotgun Cabaret presents John Mercer in a series of three stranger-than-fiction dramatic readings.

Film listings

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

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The San Francisco International Film Festival runs through Thu/9 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; New People Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Sundance Kabuki Cinemas 1881 Post, SF. For tickets (most shows $10-15) and complete schedule, visit festival.sffs.org.

OPENING

The Crumbles The awkward slackers and damaged hipsters of The Crumbles live in a sun-strafed, paved-over Los Angeles habitat of coffee shops, taco trucks, bookstores, budding filmmakers, and living room band practice. Darla (Katie Hipol) is slouching nowhere fast when her zany, charismatic cool-girl chum Elisa (Teresa Michelle Lee) enters the picture, looking for a place to crash. Elisa’s wacky, erratic, and unreliable, but she’s also capable of generating real excitement — and a mean little keytar hook — and the girls’ band, the Crumbles, gets off the couch and threatens to get all involved to bust out of their shells. Though director Akira Boch never quite dips into the deep background of his characters’ various dysfunctions — the threatened readings of Darla and Elisa’s psychic friend never quite sheds light — the first-time feature filmmaker has a real feel for the drifting, up-for-anything quality of Cali 20-somethings and an appreciation for their highs and lows that makes this familiar, loving, lets-put-on-show-kids update compelling. (1:13) Roxie. (Chun)

The Great Gatsby Baz Luhrmann reunites with his Romeo + Juliet (1996) star Leonardo DiCaprio for this long-awaited 3D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel. (2:22) California, Four Star, Marina, Presidio, Vogue.

Kiss of the Damned This first feature by Xan Cassavetes isn’t remotely like the Method-y angstfests her late father John used to direct (although he did act in upscale genre movies like 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby and 1978’s The Fury). Instead, it’s an homage to the erotic European horror movies of the late 1960s through early ’80s, with further nods to Dario Argento, 1983’s The Hunger, and other fan-bait. Mysterious Djuna (Joséphine de La Baume) is immediately attracted to hunky screenwriter Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia), and vice versa. But she’s reluctant to follow through, and when he presses, she explains why: she’s a vampire, albeit the respectable kind who only "hunts" wild animals. When he decides that is a drawback he can deal with, they seem set to spend an undead eternity together. Unfortunately, they soon get an unwelcome guest in Djuna’s sister Mimi (Roxane Mesquida), a classic "bad girl" type who has no such compunctions about feasting on "stupid humans," and whose recklessness threatens the cover of any associated fellow vampire. Like its models, Kiss drags at times, and probably will seem too arty and slow to those attuned to mainstream current horror cinema. But if you’re a dweeb enough to know who the likes of Jean Rollin and Jess Franco are, this aesthetically slavish (on a faithfully low budget) salute to their sexy-bloody vintage schlock should amuse, with Steven Hufsteter’s original score an encyclopedia of vintage Eurotrash soundtrack tropes. (1:37) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Love is All You Need Copenhagen hairdresser Ida (Trine Dyrholm) has just finished her cancer treatments — with their success still undetermined — when she arrives home to find her longtime husband Leif (Kim Bodnia) boning a coworker on their couch. "I thought you were in chemo" is the closest he comes to an apology before walking out. Ida is determined to maintain a cheerful front when attending the Italian wedding of their daughter Astrid (Molly Blixt Egelind) — even after emotionally deaf Leif shows up with his new girlfriend in tow. Meanwhile brusque businessman and widower Philip (Pierce Brosnan), the groom’s father, is experiencing the discomfort of returning to the villa he once shared with his beloved late wife. This latest from Danish director Susanne Bier and writing partner Anders Thomas Jensen (2006’s After the Wedding, 2004’s Brothers, 2010’s In a Better World) is more conventionally escapist than their norm, with a general romantic-seriocomedy air reinforced by travel-poster-worthy views of the picturesque Italian coastline. They do try to insert greater depth and a more expansive story arc than you’d get in a Hollywood rom com. But all the relationships here are so prickly — between middle-aged leads we never quite believe would attract each other, between the clearly ill-matched aspiring newlyweds, between Paprika Steen’s overbearing sister in-law and everyone — that there’s very little to root for. It’s a romantic movie (as numerous soundtracked variations on "That’s Amore" constantly remind us) in which romance feels like the most contrived element. (1:50) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Peeples Kerry Washington and Diahann Carroll star in this Tyler Perry-produced family drama set in the Hamptons. (1:35)

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s This glossy love letter to posh New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman — a place so expensive that shopping there is "an aspirational dream" for the grubby masses, according to one interviewee — would offend with its slobbering take on consumerism if it wasn’t so damn entertaining. The doc’s narrative of sorts is propelled by the small army assembled to create the store’s famed holiday windows; we watch as lavish scenes of upholstered polar bears and sea creatures covered in glittering mosaics (flanking, natch, couture gowns) take shape over the months leading up to the Christmas rush. Along the way, a cavalcade of top designers (Michael Kors, Vera Wang, Giorgio Armani, Jason Wu, Karl Lagerfeld) reminisce on how the store has impacted their respective careers, and longtime employees share anecdotes, the best of which is probably the tale of how John Lennon and Yoko Ono saved the season by buying over 70 fur coats one magical Christmas Eve. Though lip service is paid to the current economic downturn (the Madoff scandal precipitated a startling dropoff in personal-shopper clients), Scatter My Ashes is mostly just superficial fun. What do you expect from a store whose best-selling shoe is sparkly, teeteringly tall, and costs $6,000? (1:33) Clay, Shattuck. (Eddy)

ONGOING

The Angels’ Share The latest from British filmmaker Ken Loach (2006’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley) and frequent screenwriter collaborator Paul Leverty contains a fair amount of humor — though it’s still got plenty of their trademark grit and realism. Offered "one last opportunity" by both a legal system he’s frequently disregarded and his exasperated and heavily pregnant girlfriend, ne’er-do-well Glaswegian Robbie (Paul Brannigan) resolves to straighten out his life. But his troubled past proves a formidable roadblock to a brighter future — until he visits a whiskey distillery with the other misfits he’s been performing his court-ordered community service with, and the group hatches an elaborate heist that could bring hope for Robbie and his growing family … if his gang of "scruffs" can pull it off. Granted, there are some familiar elements here, but this 2012 Cannes jury prize winner (the fest’s de facto third-place award) is more enjoyable than predictable — thanks to some whiskey-tasting nerd-out scenes, likable performances by its cast of mostly newcomers, and lines like "Nobody ever bothers anybody wearing a kilt!" (not necessarily true, as it turns out). Thankfully, English subtitles help with the thick Scottish accents. (1:41) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

At Any Price Growing up in rural Iowa very much in the shadow of his older brother, Dean Whipple (Zac Efron) cultivated a chip on his shoulder while dominating the figure 8 races at the local dirt track. When papa Henry (Dennis Quaid) — a keeping-up-appearances type, with secrets a-plenty lurking behind his good ol’ boy grin — realizes Dean is his best hope for keeping the family farm afloat, he launches a hail-mary attempt to salvage their relationship. This latest drama from acclaimed indie director Ramin Bahrani (2008’s Goodbye Solo) is his most ambitious to date, enfolding small-town family drama and stock-car scenes into a pointed commentary on modern agribusiness (Henry deals in GMO corn, and must grapple with the sinister corporate practices that go along with it). But the film never gels, particularly after an extreme, third-act plot twist is deployed to, um, hammer home the title — which refers to prices both monetary and spiritual. A solid supporting cast (Kim Dickens, Heather Graham, Clancy Brown, Red West, newcomer Maika Monroe) helps give the film some much-needed added weight as it veers toward melodrama. (1:45) SF Center. (Eddy)

The Big Wedding The wedding film has impacted our concepts of matrimony, fashion, and marital happiness more than all the textbooks in the world have affected our national testing average; but it’s with that margin of mediocrity I report from the theater trenches of The Big Wedding. With this, the wedding movie again peters to a crawl. Susan Sarandon (an actress I love with a loyalty beyond sense) is Bebe, the stepmother/caterer swept under the rug by the selfishness of her live in lover Don (De Niro), his ex-wife/baby momma Elle (Diane Keaton) and their racist wackjob future in-laws. When Don and Elle faced the end of their marriage, they tried to rekindle with a Columbian orphan. Cue Ben Barnes in brownface. Alejandro is set to wed Amanda Seyfried and when his mother ascends from Columbia for the wedding, he decides Don and Elle have to act like their marriage never ended &ldots; which makes Bebe a mistress. Surprise! A decade of caring selflessly for your lover’s kids has won you a super shitty wedding you still have to cater! To give you a sense of the conflict management on display, Bebe — the film’s graceful savior —drops a drink on Don before fleeing the scene in her Alfa Romeo; she’s the one character not determined to act out her more selfish urges in the style of an MTV reality show. Despite some less imaginative conflicts and degrading "solutions," this blended family still speaks some truth about the endearing embarrassment of the happy family. (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Blancanieves If you saw the two crappy overblown Hollywood takes on Snow White last year, my condolences. This is probably its best cinematic incarnation ever not made by someone called Walt. Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves transplants the tale to 1920s Spain and told (à la 2011’s The Artist) in the dialogue-free B&W style of that era’s silent cinema. Here, Snow is the daughter of a famous bullfighter (a beautiful performance by Daniel Giménez Cacho) who’s paralyzed physically in the ring, then emotionally by the death of his flamenco star wife (Inma Cuesta) in childbirth. He can’t bring himself to see his daughter until a grandmother’s death brings little Carmencita (the marvelous Sofía Oria) to the isolated ranch he now shares with nurse-turned-second-wife Encarna — Maribel Verdú as a very Jazz Age evil stepmother. Once the girl matures (now played by the ingratiating, slightly androgynous Macarena García), Encarna senses a rival, and to save her life Carmen literally runs away with the circus — at which point the narrative slumps a bit. But only a bit. Where The Artist was essentially a cleverly sustained gimmick elevated by a wonderful central performance, Blancanieves transcends its ingenious retro trappings to offer something both charming and substantiative. Berger doesn’t treat the story template as a joke — he’s fully adapted it to a culture, place, and time, and treats its inherent pathos with great delicacy. (1:44) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Company You Keep Robert Redford directs and stars as a fugitive former member of the Weather Underground, who goes on the run when another member (Susan Sarandon) is arrested and a newspaper reporter (Shia LaBeouf) connects him to a murder 30 years earlier during a Michigan bank robbery. Both the incident and the individuals in The Company You Keep are fictive, but a montage of archival footage at the start of the film is used to place them in the company of real-life radicals and events from the latter days of the 1960s-’70s antiwar movement. (The film’s timeline is a little hard to figure, as the action seems to be present day.) Living under an assumed name, Redford’s Nick Sloan is now a recently widowed public interest lawyer with a nine-year-old daughter, still fighting the good fight from the suburbs of Albany, NY — though some of his movement cohorts would probably argue that point. And as Nick heads cross-country on a hunt for one of them who’s still deep underground, and LaBeouf’s pesky reporter tussles with FBI agents (Terrance Howard and Anna Kendrick) and his besieged editor (Stanley Tucci) — mostly there to pass comment on print journalism’s precipitous decline — there’s plenty of contentious talk, none of it particularly trenchant or involving. Redford packs his earnest, well-intentioned film with stars delineating a constellation of attitudes about revolution, justice, and violent radical action — Julie Christie as an unrepentant radical and Nick’s former lover, Nick Nolte and Richard Jenkins as former movement members, Brendan Gleeson as a Michigan police detective involved in the original investigation, Chris Cooper as Nick’s estranged and disapproving younger brother. But their scrutiny, and the film’s, feels blurry and rote, while the plot’s one major twist seems random and is clumsily exposed. (2:05) Albany, SF Center. (Rapoport)

The Croods (1:38) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Disconnect (1:55) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center.

Evil Dead "Sacrilege!" you surely thought when hearing that Sam Raimi’s immortal 1983 classic was being remade. But as far as remakes go, this one from Uruguayan writer-director Fede Alvarez (who’d previously only made some acclaimed genre shorts) is pretty decent. Four youths gather at a former family cabin destination because a fifth (Jane Levy) has staged her own intervention — after a near-fatal OD, she needs her friends to help her go cold turkey. But as a prologue has already informed us, there is a history of witchcraft and demonic possession in this place. The discovery of something very nasty (and smelly) in the cellar, along with a book of demonic incantations that Lou Taylor Pucci is stupid enough to read aloud from, leads to … well, you know. The all-hell that breaks loose here is more sadistically squirm-inducing than the humorously over-the-top gore in Raimi’s original duo (elements of the sublime ’87 Evil Dead II are also deployed here), and the characters are taken much more seriously — without, however, becoming more interesting. Despite a number of déjà vu kamikaze tracking shots through the Michigan forest (though most of the film was actually shot in New Zealand), Raimi’s giddy high energy and black comedy are replaced here by a more earnest if admittedly mostly effective approach, with plenty of decent shocks. No one could replace Bruce Campbell, and perhaps it was wise not to even try. So: pretty good, gory, expertly crafted, very R-rated horror fun, even with too many "It’s not over yet!" false endings. But no one will be playing this version over and over and over again as they (and I) still do the ’80s films. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

42 Broad and morally cautious, 42 is nonetheless an honorable addition to the small cannon of films about the late, great baseball player Jackie Robinson. When Dodgers owner Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) declares that he wants a black player in the white major leagues because "The only real color is green!", it’s a cynical explanation that most people buy, and hate him for. It also starts the ball curving for a PR shitstorm. But money is an equal-opportunity leveling device: when Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) tries to use the bathroom at a small-town gas station, he’s denied and tells his manager they should "buy their 99 gallons of gas another place." Naturally the gas attendant concedes, and as 42 progresses, even those who reject Robinson at first turn into men who find out how good they are when they’re tested. Ford, swashbuckling well past his sell-by date, is a fantastic old coot here; his "been there, lived that" prowess makes you proud he once fled the path of a rolling bolder. His power moves here are even greater, but it’s ultimately Robinson’s show, and 42 finds a lot of ways to deliver on facts and still print the legend. (2:08) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

From Up on Poppy Hill Hayao (dad, who co-wrote) and Goro (son, who directed) Miyazaki collaborate on this tale of two high-school kids — Umi, who does all the cooking at her grandmother’s boarding house, and Shun, a rabble-rouser who runs the school newspaper — in idyllic seaside Yokohama. Plans for the 1964 Olympics earmark a beloved historic clubhouse for demolition, and the budding couple unites behind the cause. The building offers a symbolic nod to Japanese history, while rehabbing it speaks to hopes for a brighter post-war future. But the past keeps interfering: conflict arises when Shun’s memories are triggered by a photo of Umi’s father, presumed lost at sea in the Korean War. There are no whimsical talking animals in this Studio Ghibli release, which investigates some darker-than-usual themes, though the animation is vivid and sparkling per usual. Hollywood types lending their voices to the English-language version include Jamie Lee Curtis, Christina Hendricks, Ron Howard, and Gilllian Anderson. (1:31) Shattuck. (Eddy)

GI Joe: Retaliation The plot exists to justify the action, but any fan of badass-ness will forgive the skimpy storyline for the outlandish badassery in GI Joe: Retaliation. Inspired by action figures and tying loosely to the first flick, Retaliation starts with a game of "secure the defector," followed by "raise the flag," but as soon as the stakes aren’t real, the Joes outright suck. They don’t have "neutral," which is maybe why a mission to rescue and revive the Joes as a force is the most ferocious fight that ever pit metal against plastic. The set pieces are stunning: a mostly silent sequence with Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Jinx (Elodie Yung) on a mountainside will leave the audience gaping in its high speed wake, and a prison break featuring covert explosives is nonstop amazing. You’ll notice an emphasis on chain link fences and puddles (terra nostra for action figures) and set pieces conceived as if by kids who don’t have a concept of basic irrefutable truths like gravity. It’s just that kind of imagination and ardor and limitlessness that makes this Joe incredible, memorable, and a reason to crack out your toys again. (1:50) Metreon. (Vizcarrondo)

In the House In François Ozon’s first feature since the whimsical 2010 Potiche, he returns somewhat to the playful suspense intrigue of 2003’s Swimming Pool, albeit with a very different tone and context. Fabrice Luchini plays a high school French literature teacher disillusioned by his students’ ever-shrinking articulacy. But he is intrigued by one boy’s surprisingly rich description of his stealth invasion into a classmate’s envied "perfect" family — with lusty interest directed at the "middle class curves" of the mother (Emmanuelle Seigner). As the boy Claude’s writings continue in their possibly fictive, possibly stalker-ish provocations, his teacher grows increasingly unsure whether he’s dealing with a precocious bourgeoisie satirist or a literate budding sociopath — and ambivalent about his (and spouse Kristin Scott Thomas’ stressed gallery-curator’s) growing addiction to these artfully lurid possible exposé s of people he knows. And it escalates from there. Ozon is an expert filmmaker in nimble if not absolute peak form here, no doubt considerably helped by Juan Mayorga’s source play. It’s a smart mainstream entertainment that, had it been Hollywood feature, would doubtless be proclaimed brilliant for its clever tricks and turns. (1:45) Albany, Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Iron Man 3 Neither a sinister terrorist dubbed "the Mandarin" (Ben Kingsley) nor a spray-tanned mad scientist (Guy Pearce) are as formidable an enemy to Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) as Tony Stark himself, the mega-rich playboy last seen in 2012’s Avengers donning his Iron Man suit and thwarting alien destruction. It’s been rough since his big New York minute; he’s been suffering panic attacks and burying himself in his workshop, shutting out his live-in love (Gwyneth Paltrow) in favor of tinkering on an ever-expanding array of manned and un-manned supersuits. But duty, and personal growth, beckon when the above-mentioned villains start behaving very badly. With some help (but not much) from Don Cheadle’s War Machine — now known as "Iron Patriot" thanks to a much-mocked PR campaign — Stark does his saving-the-world routine again. If the plot fails to hit many fresh beats (a few delicious twists aside), the 3D special effects are suitably dazzling, the direction (by series newcomer Shane Black) is appropriately snappy, and Downey, Jr. again makes Stark one of the most charismatic superheros to ever grace the big screen. For now, at least, the continuing Avengers spin-off extravaganza seems justified. (2:06) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Jurassic Park 3D "Life finds a way," Jeff Goldblum’s leather-clad mathematician remarks, crystallizing the theme of this 1993 Spielberg classic, which at its core is more about human relationships than genetically manufactured terrors. Of course, it’s got plenty of those, and Jurassic Park doesn’t really need its (admittedly spiffy) 3D upgrade to remain a thoroughly entertaining thriller. The dinosaur effects — particularly the creepy Velociraptors and fan-fave T. rex — still dazzle. Only some early-90s computer references and Laura Dern’s mom jeans mark the film as dated. But a big-screen viewing of what’s become a cable TV staple allows for fresh appreciation of its less-iconic (but no less enjoyable) moments and performances: a pre-megafame Samuel L. Jackson as a weary systems tech; Bob Peck as the park’s skeptical, prodigiously thigh-muscled game warden. Try and forget the tepid sequels — including, dear gawd, 2014’s in-the-works fourth installment. This is all the Jurassic you will ever need. (2:07) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Kon-Tiki In 1947 Norwegian explorer and anthropologist Thor Heyderdahl arranged an expedition on a homemade raft across the Pacific, recreating what he believed was a route by which South Americans traveled to Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. (Although this theory is now disputed.) The six-man crew (plus parrot) survived numerous perils to complete their 101-day, 4300-mile journey intact — winning enormous global attention, particularly through Heyderdahl’s subsequent book and documentary feature. Co-directors Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg’s dramatization is a big, impressive physical adventure most arresting for its handsome use of numerous far-flung locations. Where it’s less successful is in stirring much emotional involvement, with the character dynamics underwhelming despite a decent cast led by Pal Sverr Hagen as Thor (who, incredibly, was pretty much a non-swimmer). Nonetheless, this new Kon-Tiki offers all the pleasures of armchair travel, letting you vicariously experience a high-risk voyage few could ever hope (or want) to make in real life. (1:58) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Mud (2:15) California, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont.

No Long before the Arab Spring, a people’s revolution went down in Chile when a 1988 referendum toppled the country’s dictator, Augusto Pinochet, thanks in part to an ad exec who dared to sell the dream to his countrymen and women — using the relentlessly upbeat, cheesy language of a Pepsi Generation. In No‘s dramatization of this true story, ad man Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal) is approached by the opposition to Pinochet’s regime to help them on their campaign to encourage Chile’s people to vote "no" to eight more years under the brutal strongman. Rene’s well-aware of the horrors of the dictatorship; not only are the disappeared common knowledge, his activist ex (Antonia Zegers) has been beaten and jailed with seeming regularity. Going up against his boss (Alfredo Castro), who’s overseeing the Pinochet campaign, Rene takes the brilliant tact in the opposition’s TV programs of selling hope — sound familiar? — promising "Chile, happiness is coming!" amid corny mimes, dancers, and the like. Director-producer Pablo Larrain turns out to be just as genius, shooting with a grainy U-matic ’80s video camera to match his footage with 1988 archival imagery, including the original TV spots, in this invigorating spiritual kin of both 2012’s Argo and 1997’s Wag the Dog. (1:50) Shattuck. (Chun)

Oblivion Spoiler alert: the great alien invasion of 2017 does absolutely zilch to eliminate, or at least ameliorate, the problem of sci-fi movie plot holes. However, puny humans willing to shut down the logic-demanding portions of their brains just might enjoy Oblivion, which is set 60 years after that fateful date and imagines that Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by said invasion. Tom Cruise plays Jack, a repairman who zips down from his sterile housing pod (shared with comely companion Andrea Riseborough) to keep a fleet of drones — dispatched to guard the planet’s remaining resources from alien squatters — in working order. But Something is Not Quite Right; Jack’s been having nostalgia-drenched memories of a bustling, pre-war New York City, and the déjà vu gets worse when a beautiful astronaut (Olga Kurylenko) literally crash-lands into his life. After an inaugural gig helming 2010’s stinky Tron: Legacy, director Joseph Kosinski shows promise, if not perfection, bringing his original tale to the screen. (He does, however, borrow heavily from 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1996’s Independence Day, and 2008’s Wall-E, among others.) Still, Oblivion boasts sleek production design, a certain creative flair, and some surprisingly effective plot twists — though also, alas, an overlong running time. (2:05) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Oz: The Great and Powerful Providing a backstory for the man behind the curtain, director Sam Raimi gives us a prequel of sorts to 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. Herein we follow the adventures of a Depression-era Kansas circus magician named Oscar (James Franco) — Oz to his friends — as he cons, philanders, bickers with his behind-the-scenes assistant Frank (Zach Braff), and eventually sails away in a twister, bound for a Technicolor land of massively proportioned flora, talking fauna, and witches ranging from dazzlingly good to treacherously wicked. From one of them, Theodora (Mila Kunis), he learns that his arrival — in Oz, just to clarify — has set in motion the fulfillment of a prophecy: that a great wizard, also named Oz, will bring about the downfall of a malevolent witch (Rachel Weisz), saving the kingdom and its cheery, goodhearted inhabitants. Unfortunately for this deserving populace, Oz spent his last pre-twister moments with the Baum Bros. Circus (the name a tribute to L. Frank Baum, writer of the Oz children’s books) demonstrating a banged-up moral compass and an undependable streak and proclaiming that he would rather be a great man than a good man. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this theme is revisited ad nauseam as Oz and the oppressively beneficent witch Glinda (Michelle Williams) — whose magic appears to consist mainly of nice soft things like bubbles and fog — stand around debating whether he’s the right man for the task. When the fog clears, though, the view is undeniably pretty. While en route to and from the Emerald City, Oz and his companions — among them a non-evil flying monkey (voiced by Braff) and a rather adorable china doll (Joey King) — wander through a deliriously arresting, Fantasia-esque landscape whose intricate, inventive construction helps distract from the plodding, saccharine rhetoric and unappealing story line. (2:07) SF Center, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Pain & Gain In mid-1995 members of what became known as the "Sun Gym Gang" — played here by Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie — were arrested for a series of crimes including kidnapping, extortion, and murder. Simply wanting to live large, they’d abducted one well-off man (Tony Shalhoub) months earlier, tortured him into signing over all his assets, and left him for dead — yet incredibly the Miami police thought the victim’s story was a tall tale, leaving the perps free until they’d burned through their moolah and sought other victims. Michael Bay’s cartoonish take on a pretty horrific saga repeatedly reminds us that it’s a true story, though the script plays fast and loose with many real-life details. (And strangely it downplays the role steroid abuse presumably played in a lot of very crazy behavior.) In a way, his bombastic style is well-suited to a grotesquely comic thriller about bungling bodybuilder criminals redundantly described here as "dumb stupid fucks." There have been worse Bay movies, even if that’s like saying "This gas isn’t as toxic as the last one." But despite the flirtations with satire of fitness culture, motivational gurus and so forth, his sense of humor stays on a loutish plane, complete with fag-bashing, a dwarf gag, and representation of Miami as basically one big siliconed titty bar. Nor can he pull off a turn toward black comedy that needs the superior intelligence of someone like the Coen Brothers or Soderbergh. As usual everything is overamped, the action sequences overblown, the whole thing overlong, and good actors made to overact. You’ve got to give cranky old Ed Harris credit: playing a private detective, he alone here refuses to be bullied into hamming it up. (2:00) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Place Beyond the Pines Powerful indie drama Blue Valentine (2010) marked director Derek Cianfrance as one worthy of attention, so it’s with no small amount of fanfare that this follow-up arrives. The Place Beyond the Pines‘ high profile is further enhanced by the presence of Bradley Cooper (currently enjoying a career ascension from Sexiest Man Alive to Oscar-nominated Serious Actor), cast opposite Valentine star Ryan Gosling, though they share just one scene. An overlong, occasionally contrived tale of three generations of fathers, father figures, and sons, Pines‘ initial focus is Gosling’s stunt-motorcycle rider, a character that would feel more exciting if it wasn’t so reminiscent of Gosling’s turn in Drive (2011), albeit with a blonde dye job and tattoos that look like they were applied by the same guy who inked James Franco in Spring Breakers. Robbing banks seems a reasonable way to raise cash for his infant son, as well as a way for Pines to draw in another whole set of characters, in the form of a cop (Cooper) who’s also a new father, and who — as the story shifts ahead 15 years — builds a political career off the case. Of course, fate and the convenience of movie scripts dictate that the mens’ sons will meet, the past will haunt the present and fuck up the future, etc. etc. Ultimately, Pines is an ambitious film that suffers from both its sprawl and some predictable choices (did Ray Liotta really need to play yet another dirty cop?) Halfway through the movie I couldn’t help thinking what might’ve happened if Cianfrance had dared to swap the casting of the main roles; Gosling could’ve been a great ambitious cop-turned-powerful prick, and Cooper could’ve done interesting things with the Evel Knievel-goes-Point Break part. Just sayin’. (2:20) Embarcadero, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist Based on Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid’s award-winning 2007 novel, and directed by the acclaimed Mira Nair (2001’s Monsoon Wedding, 2006’s The Namesake), The Reluctant Fundamentalist boasts an international cast (Kate Hudson, Martin Donovan, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Om Puri) and nearly as many locations. British-Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed (2010’s Four Lions) stars as Changez Khan, a Princeton-educated professor who grants an interview with a reporter (Schreiber) after another prof at Lahore University — an American citizen — is taken hostage; their meeting grows more tense as the atmosphere around them becomes more charged. Most of the film unfolds as an extended flashback, as Changez recounts his years on Wall Street as a talented "soldier in [America’s] economic army," with a brunette Hudson playing Erica, a photographer who becomes his NYC love interest. After 9/11, he begins to lose his lust for star-spangled yuppie success, and soon returns to his homeland to pursue a more meaningful cause. Though it’s mostly an earnest, soul-searching character study, The Reluctant Fundamentalist suddenly decides it wants to be a full-throttle political thriller in its last act; ultimately, it offers only superficial insight into what might inspire someone’s conversion to fundamentalism (one guess: Erica’s embarrassingly bad art installation, which could make anyone hate America). Still, Ahmed is a compelling lead. (2:08) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Renoir The gorgeous, sun-dappled French Riviera setting is the high point of this otherwise low-key drama about the temperamental women (Christa Theret) who was the final muse to elderly painter Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet), and who encouraged the filmmaking urges in his son, future cinema great Jean (Vincent Rottiers). Cinematographer Mark Ping Bin Lee (who’s worked with Hou Hsiao-hsein and Wong Kar Wai) lenses Renoir’s leafy, ramshackle estate to maximize its resemblance to the paintings it helped inspire; though her character, Dédée, could kindly be described as "conniving," Theret could not have been better physically cast, with tumbling red curls and pale skin she’s none too shy about showing off. Though the specter of World War I looms in the background, the biggest conflicts in Gilles Bourdos’ film are contained within the household, as Jean frets about his future, Dédée faces the reality of her precarious position in the household (which is staffed by aging models-turned-maids), and Auguste battles ill health by continuing to paint, though he’s in a wheelchair and must have his brushes taped to his hands. Though not much really happens, Renoir is a pleasant, easy-on-the-eyes experience. (1:51) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Sapphires The civil rights injustices suffered by these dream girls may be unique to Aboriginal Australians, but they’ll strike a chord with viewers throughout the world — at right about the same spot stoked by the sweet soul music of Motown. Co-written by Tony Briggs, the son of a singer in a real-life Aboriginal girl group, this unrepentant feel-gooder aims to make the lessons of history go down with the good humor and up-from-the-underdog triumph of films like The Full Monty (1997) — the crucial difference in this fun if flawed comedy-romance is that it tells the story of women of color, finding their voices and discovering, yes, their groove. It’s all in the family for these would-be soul sisters, or rather country cousins, bred on Merle Haggard and folk tunes: there’s the charmless and tough Gail (Deborah Mailman), the soulful single mom Julie (Jessica Mauboy, an Australian Idol runner-up), the flirty Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell), and the pale-skinned Kay (Shari Sebbens), the latter passing as white after being forcibly "assimilated" by the government. Their dream is to get off the farm, even if that means entertaining the troops in Vietnam, and the person to help them realize that checkered goal is dissolute piano player Dave (Chris O’Dowd). And O’Dowd is the breakout star to watch here — he adds an loose, erratic energy to an otherwise heavily worked story arc. So when romance sparks for all Sapphires — and the racial tension simmering beneath the sequins rumbles to the surface — the easy pleasures generated by O’Dowd and the music (despite head-scratching inclusions like 1970’s "Run Through the Jungle" in this 1968-set yarn), along with the gently handled lessons in identity politics learned, obliterate any lingering questions left sucking Saigon dust as the narrative plunges forward. They keep you hanging on. (1:38) Opera Plaza, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Chun)

Scary Movie 5 (1:35) Metreon.

The Source Family Under the guidance of charismatic, luxuriously-bearded leader Father Yod (once named Jim Baker, later known as YaHoWha), the Source Family operated one of the country’s first health food restaurants. They lived in a Hollywood Hills mansion, wore flowing robes, assumed dreamy new names, meditated, and studied Father Yod’s custom blend of Eastern and Western philosophy and mysticism. As the home movies that comprise Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille’s documentary, The Source Family, suggest, there were golden moments aplenty, even as the mainstream began to view the group with suspicion (and an aging Father Yod’s decision to take multiple wives confused some members — particularly the woman he was already legally married to). Tapping into the group’s extensive film and psych-rock music archives, as well as interviews with surviving members, The Source Family offers a captivating look at what had to be the most earnest (and most photogenic) cult of the 1970s. (1:38) Roxie. (Eddy)

Trance Where did Danny Boyle drop his noir? Somewhere along the way from Shallow Grave (1994) to Slumdog Millionaire (2008)? Finding the thread he misplaced among the obfuscating reflections of London’s corporate-contempo architecture, Boyle strives to put his own character-centered spin on the genre in this collaboration with Grave and Trainspotting (1996) screenwriter John Hodge, though the final product feels distinctly off, despite its Hitchcockian aspirations toward a sort of modern-day Spellbound (1945). Untrustworthy narrator Simon (James McAvoy) is an auctioneer for a Sotheby’s-like house, tasked with protecting the multimillion-dollar artworks on the block, within reason. Then the splashily elaborate theft of Goya’s Witches’ Flight painting goes down on Simon’s watch, and for his trouble, the complicit staffer is concussed by heist leader Franck (Vincent Cassel). Where did those slippery witches fly to? Simon, mixed up with the thieves due to his gambling debts, cries amnesia — the truth appears to be locked in the opaque layers of his jostled brain, and it’s up to hypnotherapist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) to uncover the Goya’s resting place. Is she trying to help Simon extricate himself from his impossible situation, seduce Franck, or simply help herself? Boyle tries to transmit the mutable mind games on screen, via the lighting, glass, and watery reflections that are supposed to translate as sleek sophistication. But devices like speedy, back-and-forth edits and off-and-on fourth-wall-battering instances as when Simon locks eyes with the audience, read as dated and cheesy as a banking commercial. The seriously miscast actors also fail to sell Trance on various levels — believability, likeability, etc. — as the very unmesmerized viewer falls into a light coma and the movie twirls, flaming, into the ludicrous. (1:44) SF Center. (Chun)

Upstream Color A woman, a man, a pig, a worm, Walden — what? If you enter into Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color expecting things like a linear plot, exposition, and character development, you will exit baffled and distressed. Best to understand in advance that these elements are not part of Carruth’s master plan. In fact, based on my own experiences watching the film twice, I’m fairly certain that not really understanding what’s going on in Upstream Color is part of its loopy allure. Remember Carruth’s 2004 Primer? Did you try to puzzle out that film’s array of overlapping and jigsawed timelines, only to give up and concede that the mystery (and sheer bravado) of that film was part of its, uh, loopy allure? Yeah. Same idea, except writ a few dimensions larger, with more locations, zero tech-speak dialogue, and — yes! — a compelling female lead, played by Amy Seimetz, an indie producer and director in her own right. Enjoying (or even making it all the way through) Upstream Color requires patience and a willingness to forgive some of Carruth’s more pretentious noodlings; in the tradition of experimental filmmaking, it’s a work that’s more concerned with evoking emotions than hitting some kind of three-act structure. Most importantly, it manages to be both maddening and moving at the same time. (1:35) Roxie. (Eddy)

Music listings

Andrew Lam
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Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead or check the venue’s website to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Visit www.sfbg.com/venue-guide for venue information. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Andy Cabic and Eric D. Johnson Band, Neal Casal, Bart Davenport Chapel. 9pm, $17.

Michael Barrett Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Born Ruffians, Moon Kings Slim’s. 8pm, $17.

Great American Cities, Kallisto, DJ Creepy B Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

"Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos" Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 9pm. With Michael C. vs. Rags Tuttle.

Laura Stevenson Band, Field Mouse, Haunted Summer Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Low Magic, Yellow Dress, Jaberi and Deutsch Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Tom Odell, Cillie Barnes Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Joshua Radin, My Name is You Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $41.

Teddy Riley and Blackstreet featuring Dave Hollister Yoshi’s San Francisco. 10pm, $39.

Two-Tone Steiny and the Cadillacs Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn Independent. 8pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Hammond organ soul jazz blues party with Big Bones Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Edward Schocker Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell, SF; www.meridiangallery.org. 7:30pm, $8-10.

Sophisticated Ladies Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Daniel Seidel Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Curt Yagi and the People Standing Behind Me, Katie Garibaldi, Salet, Lauren Sturm Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, $8.

DANCE CLUBS

Debut DNA Lounge. 8pm, $5 suggested donation. SFEIC students showcase their work in a hair and make-up show, with DJ C-Lektra.

Timba Dance Party Bissip Baobab. 10pm, $5. Timba and salsa Cubana with DJ Walt Diggz.

THURSDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Allah-Las, Blank Tapes Chapel. 9pm, $17.

Chrysta Bell, Emily Jane White Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $20.

Brasil Couches, Old & Gray Amnesia. 9pm.

Cloud Cult, JBM Independent. 8pm, $17.

Paula Cole Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $32.

"An Evening with Chris Thile and Michael Daves" Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $19.

French Cassettes, Ash Reiter, yOya, Annie Girl and the Flight Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Glitter Wizard, Carlton Melton, Joy Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $8.

Gunshy Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

"Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos" Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 9pm. With Nathan Temby vs. Michael C.

Machine Gun Kelly Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

Rolando Morales Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $16.

Picture Atlantic, Little Daylight, Finish Ticket Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $10. Plus Popscene DJs.

Spanish Moss, Feeding People, Holy Wave, Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel Thee Parkside. 9pm, $5.

That1Guy, Captain Ahab’s Motorcycle Club Café Du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Zodiac Death Valley, Leopold and His Fiction, Sporting Life, Rusty Maples, DJ Neil Martinson Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Hammond organ soul jazz blues party with Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Tin Cup Serenade Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Haesemeyer Lost Church, 65 Capp, SF; www.thelostchurch.com. 8pm, $15.

Tipsy House Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8-15. Six-year anniversary celebration with hosts Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, plus the Afrolicious 12-piece band, DJ Smash, J Boogie, and Captain Planet.

DAMSF DNA Lounge. 10:30pm, $10-20. Hip-hop performance showcase.

DJ Kaos, Mozhgan, Jason Greer Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF; monarchsf.ticketfly.com. 10pm, $10.

8bitSF DNA Lounge. 9pm, $11. Chiptunes with DJ Cutman, A_Rival, E.N. Cowell, and more.

Pa’lante! Bissip Baobab. 10pm, $5. Electro-cumbia, dancehall, and soca with DJs Juan G., El Kool Kyle, and Mr. Lucky.

FRIDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO, Tjutjuna, 3 Leafs Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

B.A.P. (Best.Absolute.Perfect.) Warfield. 7:30pm, $40-100.

Body and Soul Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Chris Duarte Group Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Dead Winter Carpenters, Cody Canada and the Departed Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $16.

Justin Townes Earle Chapel. 9pm, $20-25.

Greyboy Allstars Independent. 9pm, $25.

"Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos" Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 9pm. With Greg Zema, Nathan Temby, and Michael C.

Pokey LaFarge, West Coast Ramblers Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $13-15.

Of Montreal, Wild Moccasins Slim’s. 9pm, $21.

Paul Collins Beat, Courtney and the Crushers, the Cry Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Lydia Pense and Cold Blood featuring Rick Stevens Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $19-26.

Secret Chiefs 3 Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $20.

Technicolors, Fictionist DNA Lounge. 8pm, $12.

Thrive!, Dewey and the Peoples, Sono Vero, Da Mainland Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Tomihara, Fox and the Law, Tokyo Raid Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Mike Burns Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Regina Carter, John Blake, Jr. SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30pm, $20-40.

Hammond organ soul jazz blues party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Big Lion, Rich McCulley Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Underskore Orchestra, Sour Mash Hug Band Amnesia. 9pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8-15. Six-year anniversary celebration with hosts Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, plus the Afrolicious 12-piece band and DJ Smash.

DJ What’s His Fuck Pop’s Bar, 2800 24th St, SF; (415) 401-7677. 9pm, free. Old-school punk and metal.

Indie Slash Amnesia. 10pm. With DJ Danny White.

Kitsune Club Night Mezzanine. 9pm, $17. With Fred Falke, Chrome Sparks, and Beni.

Makossa West Bissip Baobab. 10pm, $5. Classic salsa, funk, Afrobeat, reggae, and more with DJs Wonway Posibul and Joe Quixx.

That 90s Dance Party DNA Lounge. 10pm, $7-9. With DJs Devon, Netik, Sage, Starr, and Myster C.

TBMA, Syd Gris, DJ Icon, Ultraviolet Monarch, 101 Sixth St, SF; monarchsf.ticketfly.com. 10pm, $10.

SATURDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Big Blu Soul Revue Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

Blame Sally, Lia Rose Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $26-31.

Jay Brannan, Rin Tin Tiger, Plastic Arts Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Bright Grey Wing, Rebecca Pronsky, Eight Belles Amnesia. 6:30pm, $7.

Fonseca Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $38.

Greyboy Allstars Independent. 9pm, $25.

Hanalei, Divided Heaven, Rob Carter, Keeley Valentino Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

"Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos" Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 9pm. With Michael C., Greg Zema, and Nathan Temby.

K’Jon Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $24-28.

Kids on a Crime Spree, Number One Smash Hits, Manatee Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Man or Astro-Man?, Terry Malts, Ogres Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $18.

Meat Sluts, Thee Merry Widows, Dirty Shakers Bender’s, 800 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 10pm, $5.

Kate Nash Chapel. 9pm, $18-20.

Rose Windows, Extra Classic, Zig Zags Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Rustangs Riptide. 9:30pm, free.

Secret Chiefs 3 Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $20.

"Slim’s Goes British: Revue #3" Slim’s. 8:30pm, $15. With RaveUps, Blondies, Haunted by Heroes, and Whitecliff Rangers with special guest Girl Named T. 8:30pm, $15.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

2 Men Will Move You Amnesia. 9pm.

Wild Rumpus Salle Pianos, 1632 C Market, SF; www.wildrumpusmusic.org. 8pm, $15-25.

Wolf + Lamb, Soul Clap, Pillowtalk, Nick Monaco Mezzanine. 9pm, $10-20.

X-Static Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 1616 Bush, SF; www.audium.org. 8:30pm, $20. Theater of sound-sculptured space.

Regina Carter SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 11am (family matinee), $5-15, and 7:30pm, $25-60.

Cottontails Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Flux Pavilion, Cookie Monsta, Funtcase, Brown and Gammon, Roksonix Warfield. 9pm, $42.

Fogo Na Roupa, DJs Ras Rican, Sake One, and Epic, live percusion by Quique Padilla Bissip Baobab. 10pm, $5. Fundraiser for Mission Girls Violence Prevention Program.

Lovebirds Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Mision Flamenca Bissip Baobab. 7:30pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Mash-ups with A Plus D and others.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop. 10pm, $10. Queer dance party with DJs Nuxx and Zax.

Dark Days Eagle. 3-6pm. Lady Bear and her Dark Dolls host this beer bust (tickets benefit the AIDS Emergency Fund) with beats from DJ Le Perv and guests.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. With resident DJs Shawn Reynaldo and Oro11, and guest DJ Quality.

SUNDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Karina Denike and friends Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

Hydrophonic, My Victim, Bad Bones Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Jamaican Queens, Maus Haus, Black Jeans Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $7.

Merchants of Moonshine, DJ Quarterman Jack Champion Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, Max Gomez Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $23.

Dave Moreno and friends Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Rotten Sound, Early Graves, Hellbeard, Aurgurs, Parasitic Explosion DNA Lounge. 7:30pm, $16.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Regina Carter and Carolina Chocolate Drops SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 3 and 7pm, $25-50.

Hammond organ soul jazz blues party with Lavay Smith Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Brazil and Beyond Bissip Baobab. 6:30pm, free.

Hipwaders Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF; www.thecjm.org. Sun, 11am. $10-12 (kids under 18 free).

Junior Brown Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $25.

Darcy Noonan, Richard Mandel, Jack Gilder, and friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Thee Old Country Tupelo, 1337 Grant, SF; www.tupelosf.com. 4pm, free.

MONDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Damir Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Highlands, Orange Revival Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10.

Yngwie Malmsteen Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $32.

Collin Ludlow-Mattson and the Folks, Casual Dolphins, Air Surgeon, Catharsis for Cathedral Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

Milk Carton Kids, Barefoot Movement Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $17-19.

Sweat Lodge, Photo Atlas, Father President Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Amnesia. 9pm, free.

"The Pick: Open Bluegrass Jam" Amnesia. 6pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

TUESDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Buffalo Tooth, Joy, A Million Billion Dying Sons, Disappearing People, DJ Dahmer Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $9.

Go Time, pseudotunesmith, Reliics Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

IAMX, Moto Boy Slim’s. 8pm, $20.

John Garcia Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Kisses, Sister Crayon, Astronauts etc. Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-12.

Laurels, Moonbeams, Fleeting Joys Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $8.

Pow, Cold Beat, Cold Circuits, Daisy World, DJ Ack Ack Ack Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Stan Earhart Band Johnny Foley’s Irish House. 10pm, free.

Steve Adamyk Band, Needles // Pins, Primitive Hearts, Adam Widener Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Frisky Frolics Rite Spot Café, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 8:30pm, free.

"sfSoundSalonSeries: Xenoglossia/Leishmania (Christopher Burns and Bill Hsu)" Center for New Music, 55 Taylor, SF; www.centerfornewmusic.com. 7:49pm, $10.

Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.mystichotel.com. 6-9pm, free.
DANCE CLUBS
’90s Hip-Hop Sample Night Double Dutch, 3192 16th St, SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 9pm, free. With Mr. Murdock and DJ Haylow.

On the Cheap listings

Andrew Lam
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For information on how to submit events for listing consideration, see the guidelines in Selector.

THURSDAY 9

Bike to work day Various SF locations. www.sfbike.org. 5:30am-7pm, free. Trade in a cramped morning Muni commute for an open-air bike ride today in honor of bike to work day. The SF Bicycle Coalition knows biking the hills of SF is not always an easy task, which is why it has set up 26 "energizer stations" all around the city to serve free snacks, beverages, and reusable, goodie-filled tote bags to use on your to-and-froms. Check the Coalition’s site to find a station along your regular route.

Thirsty Thursday Toga Party Atmosphere, 447 Broadway, SF. www.a3atmosphere.com. 9:30pm, free. RSVP required. Revive your Animal House-esque days with a toga party. Travelers, locals, au pairs, and international students will be decked out in the finest bed sheets around. Show up before 10pm and score a free bingo card with a $3 shot offered every time you check off a square.

Britweek Design Series San Francisco Design Center, 2 Henry Adams, SF. www.babcsf.org. 4:30-10pm, $20-25 advance. The British-American Business Council hosts this design-driven evening. The event will kick off with a panel of British and American architects and interior designers, followed by a second international panel of innovators working in product design and technology, finishing up with an after party at Project One Gallery, just down the street from the design center.

FRIDAY 10

Spirit: A Century of Queer Asian Activism Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF. www.queerrebels.com. 8pm, $12-20. Queer Rebels’ organization for queer artists of color brings movers and shakers of the community together to celebrate 100 years of queer Asian activism. The two-day event begins tonight with performances by Eli-Coppola award winning poet Ryka Aoki, performance artist Genevieve Erin O’Brien, and more. The festivities will continue tomorrow night with a panel discussion and film screenings.

SATURDAY 11

Pet Week kick-off Little Marina Green, Marina and Baker, SF. www.marinatimes.com. 11am-3pm, free. Soak up some sun and get your puppy fix today at Pet Week’s kick-off event. Bring your favorite four-legged friend for free microchipping, watch police K-9s show off their detective skills, pick up some free goodies for Fido, and maybe even adopt a new friend. Pet adoption will be available from eight organizations including Pets Unlimited, Muttville, and Rocket Dog Rescue.

Bluegrass Pickin’ Picnic Dahlia Picnic Area, Golden Gate Park, SF. www.countryroundupsf.com. Noon-6pm, free. If you’re a fan of Golden Gate Park and bluegrass but the giant mobs of the Hardly Strictly festival bruise your gentle nerves, here is your second chance. Sponsored by the California Bluegrass Association, this afternoon is an open jam session for all who play or just like listening to bluegrass. Set up your picnic blanket early and score some free hamburgers and hot dogs while supplies last.

SUNDAY 12

Wanderlust Festival Marina Green. sf.wanderlustfestival.com. 12-5pm, free. Register online. If the daily grind of city life is taking its toll, head over to the Marina for a stress-relieving day of yoga and music. The day will begin with yoga sessions led by Pradeep Teotia and Susan Hauser, Lululemon 2012 ambassador. The evening will conclude with musical performances by DJ Drez and the fittingly named MC Yogi.

TUESDAY 14

Cakespy book signing Book Passage, 1 Ferry Building, SF. www.bookpassage.com. 6pm, free. Ever been stuffing your face with a red velvet cupcake or Girl Scout cookie and wondered where the recipe originated? Self proclaimed "dessert detective" Jessie Oleson Moore has these answers and more in her new book The Secret Lives of Baked Goods: Sweet Stories & Recipes from America’s Favorite Desserts. Head over to the Ferry Building to meet Moore and get a signed copy of this sweet literary treat.

"Ask a Scientist: Origins of the Universe" SoMa StrEat Food Park, 428 11th St., SF. www.askascientistsf.com. In this lecture hosted by UC Berkeley Professor Eliot Quataert science fanatics will learn how the universe evolved from its smooth beginnings to its current state. Quataert will focus on how gravity reigns supreme and builds up the planets, stars, and galaxies required for biological evolution. If digesting all this scientific chatter works up an appetite, fuel up at one of the ten gourmet food trucks at SoMa StrEat Food Park.

Secret San Francisco: Adventures in History Balboa Theatre, 3630 Balboa, SF. www.cinemasf.com/balboa. 6:30pm, $10. The history of the downtown neighborhoods of San Francisco are well photographed and documented, but head further west and things tend to get a bit foggy. That’s where the Western Neighborhood Projects comes in. The nonprofit has been documenting all things west of Stanyan Street since 1999. Head to the Balboa Theatre tonight for a dose of SF history — west and east — short films, archival TV footage, and other historic surprises.

Get festy: Burger Boogaloo, BottleRock, and nachos

Tony Robles
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Get festy: Burger Boogaloo, BottleRock, and nachos

Flop, flop, flop. Can you hear that? It could be a burger flipping. Or maybe that’s the sound of your tanned, bloated belly landing between crisp white sheets after long stretches of outdoor music-listening, dirt(y) dancing, craft beer-imbibing, and gourmet food stand-patronizing. It’s festival season, and there’ve been some tasty developments in the past couple of weeks.

Burger Boogaloo (July 6-7) excited Oaklanders and beyond by releasing its delictable lineup full of icons and punks, Outside Lands (Aug. 9-11) announced its even fancier food lineup, and hey, BottleRock is this weekend (May 9-12)

BottleRock Napa (May 9-12)
So BottleRock is a bit of a trek — it’s out in Napa Valley, but it’s a four-day-long fest in a real pretty location (that’s bound to get more unclouded sun than SF). It kicks off this Thu/9 with live music, food, comedy and yes, beer and wine. The top billing on the lineup is a bit ho-hum, with broadly appealing rock’n’roll, blues rock, and folk acts like Kings of Leon, the Black Keys, and Zac Brown Band, but there’s also the Flaming Lips, the Shins, and the thunderous Alabama Shakes. And for a certain breed of ‘90s kid: Primus and Cake.

There’s a safe, solid comedy showing too, with Jim Gaffigan, Demetri Martin, Tig Notaro, Rob Delaney, and Daily Show alums Wyatt Cenac, Kristen Schaal, and Aasif Mandvi (not appearing together).

Tickets: www.bottlerocknapavalley.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svZNjhsk2ys

Burger Boogaloo (July 6-7)
Here’s the one to watch. Burger Records just keeps outdoing itself. It has fests around the country (including a recent biggie on its home turf of Orange County, Burgerama II) and brings together an elite mix of sloppy, legendary, and up-and-coming surf, garage, fun punk, and slack doo-wop acts. Burger Boogaloo is even more special because it brings Burger together with our own local slop heroes Total Trash Booking, for a mega-fest created by two equally appealing masters. Plus, the Boogaloo is in a park, so things could get steamy.

Everyone is talking about the disparate headliners early LA punk band Red Kross and Modern Lover/singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman — and rightfully so, they are incredible — but can we also take a minute to thank satan for the Trashwomen addition to the lineup? Epic. For those somehow unaware, the Trashwomen are Bay Area noisy surf-punk royalty, born of the ‘90s, and featuring Tina Lucchesi (of every band ever), Danielle Pimm, and Elka Zolot (Kreayshawn’s hot mama).

Add to that Ty Segall’s early trio Traditional Fools, Audacity, Guantanamo Baywatch (listen to thumping “Barbacoa” now, please), and Pangea. And, with the addition of NY Night Train’s Jonathan Toubin, there will be a Mosswood Park soul clap dance off.

I can hardly wait to kick off these smelly sneakers.

Tickets: www.burgerboogaloo.com.

Outside Lands (Aug. 9-11)
The crème de le crème of foodie-meets-rocker outdoor fêtes, Outside Lands knows what its fan base wants. So with nearly as much fanfare as its band lineup (which this year includes Paul McCartney, Phoenix, D’Angelo, Foals, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and around 20 or so others), the fest also releases its noted food vendor roundup.

There are 75 food stuff sellers at Outside Lands’ “A Taste of the Bay Area” 2013 including “returning favorites” like massive pizza truck Del Popolo, carnival fare brick-and-mortar business Straw, 4505 Meats, American Grilled Cheese Kitchen, and Pacific Catch. Newbies this year include newish SF favorite Wise Sons Deli, Rich Table, 1300 on Fillmore, Blue Bottle Coffee Co., and Nopa offshoot, Nopalito. And worry not, my personal favorite from last year (besides Metallica), Azalina’s, will be back with the Malaysian nachos that stole my blackened heart.

The vendors are usually placed in two distinct sections, with somewhat close proximity to the main stages, plus there’s the Wine Lands circus tent, Beer Lands, and Chocolate Lands. So much better than overcooked hot dogs and stale keg beer, right?

Tickets: www.sfoutsidelands.com.

Party Radar: Honey Dijon, Kenny Dope, Plastic Plates, Daniel Maloso, Pearson Sound, more

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Party Radar: Honey Dijon, Kenny Dope, Plastic Plates, Daniel Maloso, Pearson Sound, more

It’s too sunny out to read! My eyes keep glazing over with lusty sparkles and unicorns in mankinis. Let’s meet in the park with a duffel of cold 40s, listen to some fun music with our tops off, and plan our party outfits for the following weekend blowouts (click on the titles for more details).

Oh, and PS: the only reason I didn’t include one of the best parties of the the spring, the Sunset Boat Party, is because it is, as usual, sold out. But check out the Sunset FB page for afterparty deets.

>>PEARSON SOUND

UK wiz kid David Kennedy updates that good ol’ UK bass sound with some neat twists of his own. 

Thu/2, 9:30pm-late, $10-$15. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF.

 

>>DEEP CRATES

Two great musical tastes will make a delicious, peanut-buttery dance floor sandwich: bathhouse disco prince Bus Station John and house/techno pumper Brian Bejarano giving us some rare classics. Diggin’ deep and finding gold y’all! 

Fri/3, 9pm, $5. UndergroundSF, 424 Haight, SF. 

 

>>SOME THING: THE BACHELORETTE PARTY

The best art-drag club in the city takes on party buses, “woo girls,” stiletto disasters, and puke-in-the-purse with this celebration of all things Bachelorette. Watch your fucking tiara or you will get cunt-punted into another sorority.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJNOOBOyn20

Fri/3, 10pm-late, $7. The Stud, 399 9th St., SF. www.studsf.com 

 

>>DANIEL MALOSO

Cute Spaniard, who in his darker moments can’t quite shake the influence of Liaisons Dangereuses “Los Ninos Del Parque” (and that’s just fine), will have you bopping around at the impeccable No Way Back party.

Fri/3, 10pm-4am, $15. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com

 

>>KENNY DOPE

The master — as in one half of the actually legendary Masters at Work — bangs out the heavy rhythm house and hip-hoppy jams with equally adept and beloved DJ Spinna.

Sat/4, 10pm-late, $20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

 

>>PLASTIC PLATES

He’s an electro-pop smoothie! Love the Aussie-via-LA producer’s irresistible takes on songs, givng them a moody bounce. 

Sat/4, 9:30pm, $15. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF. www.monarchsf.com

 

>>SWAGGER LIKE US

Supercute, super-diverse monthly queer hip-hop party — where, incidentally, you’ll hear some of the most cutting-edge music going on in the dance world right now. With special guest DJ Rapidfire!

Sun/3, 3-pm, $5-$8. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF.

 

>>HONEY DIJON

The first mistress of NYC house has come along way since we all used to cheer at the EndUp back in the day when she’d accidentally play the same record three times. (And yet she ALWAYS turned it out for the children.) Miss Honey will sinko your de mayo. 

>Sun/5, 10pm, $10. Holy Cow, 1535 Folsom, SF. 

The Performant: The real weekend warriors

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Holding down the weekend of the weekend with the Dark Room Theatre’s “Ghostbusters: Live” and Har Mar Superstar

Among the true creatures of the night, Saturday Night has always been passé, amateur night if you will, when even the most accommodating of dive bars or clubs are suddenly jammed tight with lightweight dilettantes, whose allegiance to the night life is as superficial as it is truncated. But the real weekend has always begun on Thursday, straddling the line between Wednesday’s hump and Saturday’s slump, a connoisseur’s indulgence.

Though San Francisco is happily full of those who understand that Thursday is when the party starts, any number of theatres can still attest that packing the house on that particular evening can be a tricky prospect, a trend I can attest to from the personal experience of having attended many a Thursday show where the actors outnumbered the oddience. Awkward. Which made entering the oversold, packed to the rafters performance of “Ghostbusters: Live”! at the Dark Room Theatre that much more refreshing. This is one Mission Street outpost that has thus far ably resisted the siren song of gentrification and co-option, and remains a place where silly good fun can be had for the price of cheap, with an additional calendar of ten p.m. comedy shows that caters specifically to the committed night owl crowd.

“Ghostbusters: Live” was a perfect example of the Dark Room aesthetic from start to finish, one which other no-budget production companies would do well to take note of. Eschewing a set, which would really just impede the action on the tiny, 12’ x 8’ stage, but expending just enough effort on costuming, lights, and sound to support the storyline and bolster the humor, “Ghostbusters: Live!” opened with the three researchers (played by Adam Curry, Tim Kay, and Thomas Apley) looking for signs of a haunting in the public library, the best lines about great sponge migrations, family psychosis, and menstruation left intact. With clever puppetry standing in for any number of ghostly apparitions, and a strong supporting cast including Adam Vogel as a pitch-perfect Louis Tully, and Alexia Staniotes as the acerbic Janine Melnitz, “Ghostbusters: Live!” managed to capture both the essence of the movie it was sending up and the heady geist of a Thursday night out on the town, framing the possibilities for the rest of the weekend to come.

If Thursday Night is the prelude to the weekend, then Sunday night is its final salute, and the true testing ground of the dedicated denizens of the dark. Which made it perhaps the perfect day of the week for the rarified talent that is Har Mar Superstar to perform. True, the tough sell that is Sunday night kept the crowd at the Bottom of the Hill from swelling to the epic proportions you might expect for a performer of his caliber, but wasn’t that just more elbow room for the rest of us?

Often compared to the lovably schlubby porn star Ron Jeremy, the Bay Area celebrity Sean Tillmann most closely resembles is Josh Kornbluth, although Tillman’s a whole lot more exhibitionistic. His alter-ego’s double-entendre filled lyrics, funky dance moves, catchy hooks, and unabashed libido combine into a stage persona of pure sweaty id, while his true weapon, a silkily soulful croon, tongue-bathes the oddience in its liquid smooth. While a lot of his songs skew towards the humorous, including the trashy-pop “Tall Boy” and his boy-band ode to “the male camel-toe” “Almond Joy,” when Har Mar gets serious he wields an epic howl such as when he turns on the retro-soul for “Lady, You Shot Me” and further unleashes his formidable upper register on “Sunshine.”

And while there was some initial trepidation on the part of the crowd, perhaps fearful of the unpredictable intentions of the lascivious songster, by the end everyone was getting into the spirit of the moment, rubbing Tillman’s proudly bared belly for luck, swapping saliva, getting down. Rounding out the set with a literally stripped-down (to the briefs) acapella version of “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” provided the appropriate closure for the weekend’s last hurrah, and set the mood for all the weekends to come, the sunshine and the rain.    

 

Aquarius rising

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Aquarius rising

FILM Under the guidance of charismatic, luxuriously-bearded leader Father Yod (once named Jim Baker, later known as YaHoWha), the Source Family operated one of the country’s first health food restaurants. They lived in a Hollywood Hills mansion, wore flowing robes, assumed dreamy new names, meditated, and studied Father Yod’s custom blend of Eastern and Western philosophy and mysticism.

As the home movies that comprise Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille’s documentary, The Source Family, suggest, there were golden moments aplenty, even as the mainstream began to view the group with suspicion (and an aging Father Yod’s decision to take multiple wives confused some members — particularly the woman he was already legally married to). Tapping into the group’s extensive film and music archives, as well as interviews with surviving members, The Source Family (opening here with a big gala Thu/2 and running through May 9 at the Roxie) offers a captivating look at what had to be the most earnest (and most photogenic) cult of the 1970s. I spoke with Demopoulos and Wille to learn more.

San Francisco Bay Guardian When did you first hear about the Source Family, and how did you hook up with “Family historian” Isis Aquarian?

Jodi Wille In 1999, a friend showed me a CD box set with all nine of the original Family records. I’d been obsessed with cults, communes, and radical groups from the 1960s and ’70s for 20 years — but I’d never heard of the Source Family. I was shocked that this existed, and that they had this kind of musical output. Also, there were pictures of them looking very beautiful and stylish. But I went online and there was nothing there [about them].

One day, my then-husband, [Feral House publisher] Adam Parfrey, came home with a DVD he’d found at Amoeba Records: a very limited-release student film on the Source Family. We watched it, and I was struck by how thoughtful and charming the Family members were in the interviews.

I went online again, and this time there was a website. I’m a book publisher, too — I put out books on counterculture, sustainability, and things like that [on Process Media and Dilettante Press] — so I emailed, asking if they’d ever considered doing a book. Isis Aquarian wrote back and said [she and her Source Family brother Electricity] had been working on a book for seven years. So I started going through her massive archives with her; we worked to expand the book, which had been written for Family members, for the public. As we were doing that, we were filming interviews with other Family members. When Isis let me know about the film component to her archive, I realized that this was an extraordinary story that had all of the elements we would need for a great documentary.

At that point, I brought in Maria, a close friend of mine who had become a very talented commercial director. Before the book, [The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13, and The Source Family], people were really private about their experiences, and I think some of them were uncomfortable about going public. But the book was received positively; it told the story from the believers’ point of view and I think that helped develop their trust. So we were very lucky to get incredible access.

SFBG You were friends with Isis, who’s credited as an associate producer, by the time you started working on the film — yet it offers a balanced portrait. How did you stay objective?

JW Isis has done an enormous amount of work helping us in many ways, but she was not involved creatively. That was really important to us, to have that freedom, and she agreed to that. But I became close to some Family members, so I think bringing Maria in was really essential to help with the balance.

Maria Demopoulos I think, objectivity aside, we just focused on letting the Family members speak for themselves, and trying to go for as much authenticity as possible, hearing all perspectives. We worked hard to represent as many Family members as possible and really tell the story from an insider’s point of view.

JW We tried to reflect the overall feelings that we were getting from Family members, because everyone had completely different experiences within the Family, and everybody had strong opinions about it.

And it’s not really about being objective — no filmmaker or documentary is ever truly objective. It’s just about being open and letting people come to their own conclusions.

SFBG Since you had access to all of that footage, what was the editing process like?

MD It was extremely difficult, but honestly, we hit the jackpot. It was just like an incredible gift and honor to go through the archive. We had a three-and-a-half-hour cut, and we just kept whittling it down. Often times, we just had to stay focused; even if we had some fantastic footage, if it didn’t absolutely serve the story, we had to pull it out. It was difficult, but that’s actually a great problem to have.

JW And I’d like to give credit to Isis Aquarian for preserving that archive. There were hundreds or maybe thousands of groups like this that existed. But most of them didn’t document themselves, or if they did, they didn’t hold on to the artifacts or preserve the documents. She’s a true documentarian, even now.

SFBG Did you encounter any resistance from former members, or anyone who thought the documentary shouldn’t be made?

MD From the Family members’ perspective, no. They were extremely cooperative. [On the other hand,] since the Source Family existed in Hollywood, they had many connection to celebrities. We approached a lot of celebrities who were around at that time, and we had a tough time getting access to them.

JW The Source Family members all knew about the book, and they knew that people in their 20s and 30s had become fans of the Family. So I think that made them a lot more open to talking to us. But as far as people like Warren Beatty and Donald Sutherland, who were actually friends with Father Yod, I don’t think they were aware of that phenomenon. They were still thinking about how the Source Family was perceived with a lot of controversy back in the ’70s. I think it’s possible that those people, besides being really busy, weren’t quite sure what we were doing with the material, or if they wanted to associate themselves with it.

SFBG Also, now that decades have passed, when people hear “Southern California cult” and “the Family,” they automatically think “Manson.”

JW For me, that was an important inspiration to make this film. Again, when you speak with the participants, or even with scholars, you find it’s a very different story. We have such a primitive understanding of what these radical, social, and spiritual experiments were really doing back in the 1960s and ’70s, and the kinds of effects that they were having on the participants’ lives.

Maria and I interviewed about 40 of them just for The Source Family, and I’ve gotten to know members of other groups over the years. I find that these groups, more often than not, were very important cultural incubators. A lot of progressive ideas came from them, including the slow food movement, the mind-body-spirit movement, the natural birthing movement. A lot of tech-industry people came from these experiments — San Francisco was a hotbed for them. And many of them were harmless. They didn’t create any major havoc. They were high-risk experiments, of course, but a lot of what people took away was deep and transformative.

SFBG Music plays a huge part in the film, and again, you had a lot of material to choose from. How did you decide which songs to match with the footage?

JW I knew the music really well, and then our editor, Jennifer Harrington, did an incredible job working with the music, and Maria pitched in, too. We did it by knowing the music and thinking about the mood, and just playing with stuff to see what fit.

MD We often chose songs that actually lyrically fit with what was happening in that particular scene. The music was incredibly well-suited to what was happening, because they’re basically singing their own story.

SFBG I missed The Source Family when it played the San Francisco International Film Festival last year, but I heard the Q&A got pretty colorful. How have screenings been going overall?

MD Response has been great. We’ve been selling out shows, and the Q&As have been very lively. A lot of people who participated in social experiments or lived in communes have been coming to the Q&As, but we’ve been getting a lot of younger kids as well. It’s been intergenerational.

JW That was the fun part in San Francisco, because there were two or three people in the audience who were in different communities who spoke up during the Q&A, and it became this really interesting group therapy session. And it’s not about us saying, “Oh, it was this way.” It’s us opening up new ideas so people can have new discussions about what was really going on back then.

SFBG What’s the opening event going to be like?

JW For the various premieres, we have Source Family members showing up to do Q&As in eight cities. We’ve got three in San Francisco: Isis, Electricity, and Galaxy — who was the fashion designer in the family. Also at the Roxie, we’re going to have food made from original Source Family recipes.

We’ll also have tribute bands in six cities. In San Francisco, after the screening, the Source Family tribute band is going to be playing at the Chapel [at 777 Valencia] — they’re called the Penetration Blues Band, with Michael Beach from Electric Jellyfish and Colossal Yes, Noel von Harmonson from Comets On Fire and Sic Alps, [and others]. It’s going to be a really fun night! *

THE SOURCE FAMILY

Opening event Thu/2, 7pm (complete experience with food, film, and concert, $40; film only, $10; concert only, $15)

Film runs May 3-9, 7:15 and 9:30pm (also Sat/4-Sun/5, 2:45pm), $6.50–$10

Roxie

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

Take the plunge

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Take the plunge

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE FACT/SF’s new Falling is a conceptually demanding, convincingly realized 70-minute sextet that annoys, puzzles, and ultimately persuades. Choreographer Charles Slender set his work on six beautifully-trained, well-rehearsed women. He also engaged excellent collaborators.

Falling asks questions that resonate beyond the physicality of what Slender has said he wanted to look at: the human need to stay upright and the reality of falling. That’s what the dancers do. They walk, stand, wobble, turn, and they fall — like rocks, sponges, and leaves. And then they get up. Again, and again, and again.

Repetition and unisons are the work’s most effective strategy. At first they are also annoying. A dancer bourrées across the stage like some Swan Queen, another joins her, then another. One starts an in-place stepping pattern, companions pick it up. A daisy-chain run calls up responses.

After a very short time this domino effect defocuses attention the way a déjà vu does. It also threatens to paralyze Falling’s thrust. But Slender keeps it going, and the set-up becomes uncomfortable because the process seems unstoppable. Then he shifts gears, with Shannon Leypoldt at the head of a diagonal shooting up her arm into the air as if delivering a manifesto.

That single gesture, besides elongating the body, becomes perhaps a leader’s command, an invitation, or a greeting among equals. It will be repeated over and over again, and everyone responds to it. To watch this process recalls cults and causes, rigid beliefs, and military indoctrination. In Falling, it’s insidious because not force but seduction sends those arms into the air. The initiation is made gently with a close body-to-body encounter as if in a tango. Tender hands help you take off that monkish, hooded robe to reveal the pretty dress, just like everyone else’s, underneath. Subjugation becomes possible because you really want to belong, no matter how hesitantly your arm responds.

There is a cool sense of inevitability about the way Leypoldt accrues these acolytes, until only Catherine Newman is left as the outsider. Desperately trying to hang on to her gown, and yet trying to step into the existing unisons, she attacks one of the dancers but crumples. That’s when hands reach out and welcome Newman to the brave new world accompanied by Dan Cantrell’s “angelic” voices. However, in that section, with its quasi-militaristic, though bare-foot stepping pattern, Falling stepped rather too close to literalism.

When Newman becomes the last acolyte and Leypoldt goes into a tailspin, Falling’s emotional temperature rises to something like a fever pitch. For the most part Slender keeps overt expressiveness in the cooler. The choreography stresses clarity and unity of purpose; there is little room for individual phrasing. Some of the floor patterns look as if they were designed on graph paper. Even when the dancers squirm flat on their backs and look like beasts about to expire, Darl Andrew Packard throws a harsh light on body parts as if they were on a dissecting table. Even in pretty phrases, elegantly rendered, the women look impersonal, primarily engaged in tasks — not in communicating. The dancing exists within strict parameters, yet not oppressively beyond the implications of the thematic material. The finale could have become melodramatic, but it didn’t; the dancers just walked away, leaving us with more questions than answers.

Falling benefits greatly from excellent production values. Packard suspended dozens of reflectors across the stage that blink on and off, suggesting a vast but dark space. Together with Slender he designed a simple set of dark woods in the beginning that became something like a world aflame at the end. Cantrell’s score, often fractured, is first-rate. Often you sense that the music, or its absence, serves as a comment to what’s happening in front of our eyes. Miyuki Bierlein designed two outstanding costumes, one a dark body-hiding robe, the other a subtly colorful summer frock that enhanced turns and suggested common ease. In addition to Leypoldt and Newman, the praiseworthy performers included Liane Burns, Michaela Burns, LizAnne Roman, and Amanda Whitehead.

Short takes: SFIFF week two

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Short takes: SFIFF week two

Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green, US, 2012) It has been somewhat hard to connect the dots between David Gordon Green the abstract-narrative indie poet (2000’s George Washington, 2003’s All the Real Girls) and DGG the mainstream Hollywood comedy director (2008’s Pineapple Express, yay; 2011’s Your Highness and The Sitter, nay nay nay). But here he brings those seemingly irreconcilable personas together, and they make very sweet music indeed. Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch play two men — one a fussy, married grown-up, another a short-attention-spanned man child — spending the summer in near-total isolation, painting yellow divider lines on recently fire-damaged Texas roads. Their very different personalities clash, and at first the tone seems more conventionally broad than that of the 2011 Icelandic minimalist-comedy (Either Way) this revamp is derived from. But Green has a great deal up his sleeve — gorgeous wide screen imagery, some inspired wordless montages, and a well-earned eventual warmth — that makes the very rare US remake that improves upon its European predecessor. Wed/1, 4pm, and Fri/3, 6:30pm, Kabuki. (Dennis Harvey)

Fill the Void (Rama Burshtein, Israel, 2012) Respectfully rendered and beautifully shot in warm hues, Fill the Void admirably fills the absence on many screens of stories from what might be considered a closed world: the Orthodox Hasidic community in Israel, where a complex web of family ties, duty, and obligation entangles pretty, accordion-playing Shira (Hada Yaron). An obedient daughter, she’s about to agree to an arranged marriage to a young suitor when her much-loved sister (Renana Raz) dies in childbirth. When Shira’s mother (Irit Sheleg) learns the widower Yochay (Yiftach Klein) might marry a woman abroad and take her only grandchild far away, she starts to make noises about fixing Shira up with her son-in-law. The journey the two must take, in possibly going from in-laws to newlyweds, is one that’s simultaneously infuriating, understandable, and touching, made all the more intimate given director Rama Burshtein’s preference for searching close-ups. Her affinity for the Orthodox world is obvious with each loving shot, ultimately infusing her debut feature with a beating heart of humanity. Wed/1, 6:30pm, and Thu/2, 4pm, Kabuki. (Kimberly Chun)

The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher, Germany, 2013) There’s a strange music to this light-on-its-toes, rhythmic, and ultimately mesmerizing chamber piece by first-time feature director Ramon Zürcher — one seemingly informed by dance, Gerhard Richter, contemporary opera, and Jean-Luc Godard in a latter-day gimlet-eyed state. The arc of a banal yet odd day is traced, within mostly the close confines of a Berlin apartment, as family members enter, interact, and then retreat in a kind of call and response: the mother runs a kitchen machine, a girl cries out as if to mimic its roar, a cousin who looks as if he’s straight out of a Dutch master painting soberly surveys the scene, while the eponymous feline weaves in and out of the action. In fact, that pet is the most domesticated of the lot populating this riveting domestic scene, all of which makes you want to see what Zürcher cooks up next. Wed/1, 9pm; Sun/5, 7pm; and May 8, 4pm, Kabuki. (Chun)

Salma (Kim Longinotto, England/India, 2012) Kept like a prisoner in her in-laws’ house for more than two decades, Salma is more than the most famed woman poet writing in the Tamil language. She’s also an archetypal South Indian woman of her time and place: married as a teen despite her desire to read and write poetry, her body controlled by her husband and family, and her freedom constricted to the point where she was once forced to write on scraps of paper in the toilet and to smuggle her verse out to have it published. What follows is the stuff of fairy tales, as Salma evolves into a politician and heroine who speaks for those otherwise muffled by their burkas and smothered by circumstance. Documentarian Kim Longinotto keeps a close eye on the oppressive culture that once harbored the writer — and inspired her to express herself — yet also takes the time to notice Tamil Nadu’s many small instances of beauty, in mutable pink and purple skies, a gold-flecked green sari, and showy weddings that mark both the beginning, and end, for so many young girls. Documentarian Longinotto whets one’s appetite for more of Salma’s words, while upholding her story’s relevance amid rising consciousness concerning the rights of all women in India. Thu/2, 6:15pm, Kabuki; Sat/4, 2pm, PFA; Sun/5, 3:45pm, New People. (Chun)

Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, US, 2013) Mumblecore maestro Andrew Bujalski (2002’s Funny Ha Ha; 2005’s Mutual Appreciation) makes his first period picture, kinda, with this stubbornly, gloriously retro saga set at an early-1980s computer-chess tournament (with a few ventures into the freaky couples-therapy seminar being held at the same hotel). The technology is dated, both on and off-screen, as hulking machines with names like “Tsar 3.0” and “Logic Fortress” battle for nerdly supremacy as a cameraman, wielding the vintage cameras that were actually used to film the feature, observes. Tiny dramas highlighting the deeply human elements lurking amid all that computer code emerge along the way, and though the Poindexters (and the grainy cinematography) are authentically old-school, the humor is wry and awkwardly dry — very 21st century. Keep an eye out for indie icon Wiley Wiggins, last seen hiding from Ben Affleck’s hazing techniques in 1993’s Dazed and Confused, as a stressed-out programmer. Thu/2, 9pm, and Sat/4, 4pm, Kabuki. (Cheryl Eddy)

The Cleaner (Adrián Saba, Peru, 2011) An austere take on substitute-parental bonding dressed in apocalyptic sci-fi clothing, Adrián Saba’s Peruvian feature finds the world ending not with a bang but with a sickly whimper. (If you’ve ever breathed the toxic air or looked at the shit-brown sea around Lima, you’ll find this pretty credible.) A middle-aged loner (Victor Prada) tasked with cleaning up the death sites of citizens felled by a fatal epidemic finds a surviving young boy (Adrian Du Bois) in one such apartment. Their forced, awkward pairing — because the death toll is so high city services can no longer taken in another orphan — is poignant and terse in what’s a minimalist companion to the underrated 2008 adaptation of José Saramago’s plague saga Blindness. Sat/4, 6:15pm, Kabuki; Tue/7, 8:40pm, PFA; May 9, 8:30pm, Kabuki. (Harvey)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, US, 1978) Yes, Vertigo (1958) is very nice. But here is my alternate choice for Best San Francisco Movie Ever: 2013 SFIFF tributee Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of the 1950s sci-fi classic. Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, and Leonard Nimoy are among the locals who get very paranoid — with no pot brownies involved — when everyone around them starts turning coldly conformist. Given the film’s fond evocation of the city’s loopy, friendly, countercultural vibe at the time, this shift in the psychological weather really is alarming — arguably much more dramatically so than it was the vanilla small-town setting of Don Siegel’s original or Abel Ferrara’s military-base 1994 version. Wonderfully creepy, eccentric, stylish and humorous, it was Kaufman’s first commercial success. He will appear at the Castro screening to discuss it, his career in general, and to accept his Founder’s Directing Award. Sun/5, 7:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Waxworks (Paul Leni, Germany, 1924) Paul Leni’s 1924 omnibus horror feature is considered one of the great classics of German Expressionist cinema. A young man (William Dieterle, who went on to a long Hollywood directing career) answers an ad seeking “an imaginative writer for publicity” work at a wax museum. There he’s asked to write “startling tales” about specific wax figures, envisioning himself and the owner’s comely assistant (Olga Belajeff) as hero and heroine in each narrative. The first and longest tale has the two of them as a couple who get unwanted attention from the tyrannical, lusty Caliph of Bagdad (Emil Jannings). It’s an attenuated comic episode sparked by spectacular abstracted “Middle Eastern” sets. Next, Conrad Veidt (of 1920 Expressionist flagship film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) plays Ivan the Terrible in a more macabre story of bloodthirst and madness. Finally, Werner Krauss is “Spring-Heeled Jack” (i.e. Jack the Ripper), terrorizing our protagonists in a brief riot of nightmarish superimposed images. SFIFF’s annual silent film extravaganza at the Castro will be accompanied by a stellar quartet of musicians playing an original score: Mike Patton, Scott Amendola, Matthias Bossi, and William Winant. Expect an eclectic and propulsive evening of sounds equally schooled by punk, prog rock, and jazz. Tue/7, 8:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, US, 2012) Proving (again) that not all sequels are autonomic responses to a marketplace that rewards the overfamiliar, director Richard Linklater and his co-writers Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke reconnect with the characters Céline and Jesse, whom we first encountered nearly 20 years ago on a train and trailed around Vienna for a night in Before Sunrise, then met again nine years later in Before Sunset. It’s been nine more years since we left them alone in a Paris apartment, Céline adorably dancing to Nina Simone and telling Jesse he’s going to miss his plane. And it looks like he did. The third film finds the two together, yes, and vacationing in Greece’s southern Peloponnese, where the expansive, meandering pace of their interactions — the only mode we’ve ever seen them in — is presented as an unaccustomed luxury amid a span of busy years filled with complications professional and personal. Over the course of a day and an evening, alone together and among friends, the two reveal both the quotidian intimacies of a shared life and the cracks and elisions in their love story. May 9, 7pm, Castro. (Lynn Rapoport) *

The San Francisco International Film Festival runs through May 9 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; New People Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, 1881 Post, SF. For tickets (most shows $10-15) and info, visit festival.sffs.org.

 

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