Photography

Wolf needs a Shield, and so do you

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By Sarah Phelan

With the Chronicle reporters off the hook, what’s going to happen to jailed freelancer Josh Wolf? News that a mediator has been brought in is a ray of hope. But people should not forget that Wolf’s credentials as a journalist have been repeatedly challenged, and even mocked, by the US Attorney’s Office. What’s particularly disturbing is that all this is going down against a backdrop of increased media consolidation. How many journalists have full time jobs? How many photographers? How many can even afford to make journalism their full -time job? Sure, journalism is a profession for which you can get credentialed up the kazoo, but the truth is that many great reporters and videographers are self-taught, and/or are freelancers, working their craft in between another job, and rarely and barely getting paid for their labor. And what about the person who sees something going down, and picks up a notebook or camera, and faithfully records it? Many a great career started that way.
Right now, Rep. John Conyers has a bill in the works that would define a journalist as someone who is engaged in gathering and reporting on news, written, photography, video, regardless of whether the person was paid for their work or not and regardless of what media they published in. Maybe you’re reading this and thinking of extra categories and definitions that need to be included in the bill. If so, great: now would be the perfect time to speak out. That way, we can get a federal shield law that will give news gatherers the strongest protections possible. The last few years has been a really dark Dark Age for the press. Let’s free Josh Wolf and get a free press, while we’re at it.

Doin’ the ‘Dance

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Sundance has become a spectator business event, like the weekly box office returns. This year turned out to be a surprise bull market when the same buyers who went in saying there was little of apparent commercial appeal on the program wound up spending tens of millions in an acquisitions frenzy. I didn’t get to see Son of Rambow, an ’80s nostalgia piece about action movie–obsessed kids that earned a cool $8 million distribution deal. But that movie at least sounds like real fun. Predictably, most of the features that scored dealwise were on the safe, earnest, kinda bland side, such as Adrienne Shelly’s posthumously completed Waitress, the Australian dramedy Clubland, and the John Cusack–as–Iraq War widower vehicle Grace Is Gone.

Other big-noise titles expired on arrival, including several exploring (or is that exploiting?) the de rigueur shocking subject of our moment, child abuse. Noses were held around Hounddog (the Dakota Fanning–rape film) and An American Crime (Catherine Keener as a monster foster mom), though child abduction drama Trade won some appreciation. Such controversial flicks were often more exciting in advance hype than onscreen, though conversely several bad-taste movies proved more than edible. Many thumbs went up for vagina dentata black comedy Teeth, and my own at least were hoisted for all-star, Commandments-inspired The Ten (in which Winona Ryder enjoys vigorous pleasuring with a ventriloquist’s dummy), from the good folks of comedy troupe the State. Not to mention (in a different realm entirely) Robinson Devor’s Zoo, an extraordinarily poetic and nonjudgmental documentary-dramatization mix about something you might expect those adjectives couldn’t apply to: the 2005 death of a Seattle man whose colon was perforated by an Arabian stallion’s member.

Zoo was a startling exception to a problem that’s become common among the kind of indie cinema Sundance programs — stuff that, since it’s often funded by HBO or PBS or whatever (or is simply produced with the expectation of a small- rather than big-screen career), tends to look, act, and smell like TV. There’s nothing wrong with that, since good fiction stories can be told and compelling documentaries crafted without the need for great visual panache. Still, the lack of aesthetic excitement, the sheer broadcasty-ness (abetted by so much HD photography) increasingly makes anything that feels like a real film seem refreshing. Examples most often surfaced among more experimental features (yes, they still get programmed at Sundance — you just don’t hear about them), such as Zoo and the ecstatically intimate soccer documentary Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait.

Sundance proved again this year that it’s the premier showcase for movies starring people who can single-handedly make viewing worthwhile. Parker Posey, Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, and Samantha Morton had two entries each. Steve Buscemi, god bless him, had three (including one he cowrote, directed, and starred in). Plus, there were opportunities to see actors like Ryan Reynolds (The Nines), Queen Latifah (Life Support), and Anna Faris (Smiley Face) get the generous roles you knew they were capable of filling. At times at Sundance the US film world almost seems like a repertory company of versatile, brilliant professionals — one that sometimes lets A-list Hollywood guest stars take part, in which context they tend to flounder (i.e., Lindsay Lohan in the achingly dull Jared Leto is Mark David Chapman drama Chapter 27; first-time director Anthony Hopkins’s embarrassing, surreal egofest, Slipstream). They may not get the big breaks, but the cool kids in class can always make the popular ones look insipid. (Dennis Harvey)

The video guy

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

PREVIEW The public furor set off last November by the imminent publication of onetime football star and Avis flunky O.J. Simpson’s now-quashed book, If I Did It, on the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Simpson, and Ron Goldman, demonstrates how pivotal the 1995 Simpson trial was to so many, just as Newsweek‘s recent publication of details from a key chapter shows how much it continues to compel — and how tender the wounds remain on this country’s notions of race, justice, media, and celebrity. To many TV viewers overseas, the trial might have merely summed up the insanity of stateside news priorities when the World Cup telecast was interrupted for the Simpson Bronco chase, but for Kota Ezawa, who had just transferred from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf to the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) at the time of the trial, it was ripe, rich stuff.

The televised Simpson verdict announcement — documented in the snippet Ezawa reworked for his brilliant 2002 short animation The Simpson Verdict, now showing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City — "was really a shock to everybody, but a very different kind of shock," Ezawa said. "It was a real kind of shock and a very strange shock because it wasn’t a bomb hitting the ground! It was just a court official saying two words, ‘Not guilty,’ and it was enough to send really huge seismic waves through the entire nation. That I find interesting — that it was so psychological, a psychological event."

Sitting at a work table scattered with paper collage scraps of fallen soldiers intended for his 2006 "The History of Photography Remix" project in a spare, white one-room studio at the corner of 16th and Mission streets, the soft-spoken, even-tempered Cologne, Germany, native in a brown hoodie seems like the last person who’d gravitate toward incendiary subject matter such as the Simpson trial. Or the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, which are paired in his 2005 animated short The Unbearable Lightness of Being. From the aforementioned pieces to 2003’s Who’s Afraid of Black, White and Grey, Ezawa’s work boils history-making spectacle down to ultraflat pop shapes and hues — adding another layer of commentary to the race cards dealt in The Simpson Verdict. Though Ezawa’s works mimic the primitive, jerky moves of South Park, they rarely make light of history’s dark corners — rather they are minimalist meditations on memorable images, sampling, quoting, recropping, and editing visual pop ephemera and masterworks culled from our collective memory’s moving-image files.

And Ezawa’s reenvisionings, or remixes, have found a growing audience, eliciting an enthusiastic review in the New York Times for his current exhibition at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Conn. SF Cameraworks recently feted the new Nazraeli Press volume compiling Ezawa’s "The History of Photography Remix" works, and this week the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art includes the artist in its biannual Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Art Award Exhibition.

"We were all enormously impressed by his practice — its clarity and range, the distinctness of his vision," SFMOMA painting and sculpture curator Janet Bishop wrote in an e-mail. "He was a top contender from the start of the award process." As a SECA award recipient, Ezawa will show parts of "The History of Photography Remix" as well as a two-screen animation, Stereo Stolen Honeymoon, which he described as a trailer for a longer adaptation of the purloined Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee wedding and honeymoon video, which the Guggenheim Museum is in talks to show.

"The Anderson-Lee tape is really most striking for how mundane it is," Bishop continued. "It has only become iconic because of our cultural response to it. Ezawa’s piece holds a mirror to our collective obsession with every tedious detail of celebrities’ lives."

A yearlong project featuring Ezawa’s idiosyncratic, hand-drawn computer animation and aided by assistant Ryan Thayer, voice actors, and assorted interns, the Anderson-Lee piece is also one of the artist’s most overtly comic pieces: the tabloid twosome’s cartoonish lifestyle slips seamlessly into Ezawa’s format as they exchange aggro vows, stroke tats, and chat up their pooch.

"I feel that I’m in the business of making moving paintings more than I’m in the business of making videos with a beginning and an end and a kind of dramatic curve," the 37-year-old self-described "video guy" confessed across his work table. "It’s a different kind of attention that people bring to a gallery or to a museum, and in that way, it almost has to work like a painting, meaning some people will watch it for 10 seconds, some people will watch it for a minute, but it really depends on how they will get grasped or not grasped by the image."

PRIMAL SCENE


The half-Japanese, half-German artist traces his own initial attempts at image-making to ancestors. "If you ask any artist, if they’re really honest, there will be something way, way, way back — even sometimes before you were born," he said with a small grin. The drawings of his great-grandfather Hans Gelderblom, an architect, made an impact, as did his Japanese forbears’ silk paintings and bronze vases.

As a child in rural southern Germany, Ezawa etched his own path with cartoon flip books and hand-cranked panorama boxes resembling TVs. "I think there’s one thing about the countryside that informed or really influenced me and why I am how I am now," he explained. "In the city I think even as a teenager there’s already these peer groups — sometimes it’s ethnic, the Latino kids or the Asian kids, some listen to punk music or some are really good at school or math. In the countryside it doesn’t really work like that — you’re just stuck with your age group, so one of your friends is a fantastic athlete and a piano genius, and your other friend is a borderline alcoholic heavy metal fan, and you all just converge and hang out. And so I think even today … I sometimes think I don’t have any taste, you know?"

That ability to switch from high to low, between mediums and messages, fed his work at the Düsseldorf art academy, where he tried his hand at photography and performance art before scoring an opportunity to study with Fluxus video art innovator Nam June Paik. "He wasn’t there a lot, but to me, he was a really big inspiration," recalled Ezawa, who made his first video in order to be in Paik’s class.

At first he put together "still videos that didn’t move at all": one of his first, I Want to Buy the Empire State Building, was made when the structure was actually for sale. Working pre-Photoshop, Ezawa used a graphic machine to print the title sentence along with his phone number, reproducing the words on a C-print before hanging it on the wall and videotaping it. Paik had the piece, along with other student works, shown at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City. "What’s similar to the videos I make today was I didn’t think of video as this entertainment format," Ezawa said. "I thought of video more as a light box. It was really just like this illuminated image coming out of the TV."

TAKING OFF ON HISTORY


Ezawa’s light-box reworking of Yves Klein’s Leap into the Void — part of "The History of Photography Remix" — looked down from an otherwise pristine wall above us. After finishing his BFA at the SFAI and his MFA at Stanford, Ezawa began teaching at California College of the Arts. While poring through the school’s slide library for a presentation on the history of photography for an introductory media arts course, he found himself thrilled: "I thought it was almost like DJing. ‘Oh yeah, this one will be really good. Maybe I’ll play this one after this one.’ " He took the Klein image home, scanned it into his computer, made a graphic sketch over the original, and kicked off his own "History," a compendium of transparencies, slides, collages, and intaglio etchings drawing on images as disparate as Ansel Adams landscapes and the surveillance shot of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army at the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. "That kind of became the idea for the work, to make this fake history slide show," he said.

Ezawa’s strategy stirs up the familiar cauldron of copyright issues in this age of digital reproduction. "You could call it visual hip-hop," he quipped. "But you can also call it somehow ripping off." He’s had only a few "sensitive reactions" from the creators of the original images. "I had long discussions, and it all got resolved," Ezawa said. "But with the book it was like, ‘OK, if you’re making this book and you’re ripping off tens and tens of photographs, you don’t want to have 30 angry photographers sending nasty e-mails." So in an effort to avoid a Simpson-like "legal nightmare," he contacted every shooter he sampled, and "the reaction was 95 percent very positive."

The SF artist has understandably mixed, and remixed, feelings about copyright, which he describes as being "really used to protect the interests of Walt Disney [Company] as opposed to actual artists. But then I feel like events like YouTube really help everybody and also the emergence of China as an economic player in the world, where they have Dior handbags that might say ‘Djor.’ I do think copyright might not exist much longer, though maybe long enough to ruin all of our lives."

He gave a compact chuckle. But then, the artist who once sang and played keyboards along with his wife, Karla Milosevich, in the Helen Lundy Trio seems to have his own quirky handle on the problem. "You know, like any hip-hop artist or DJ, I find my ways to manage this." *

SECA ART AWARD EXHIBITION

Jan. 27–April 22; call for additional programs; $7–$12.50 (free first Tues.; half price Thurs., 6–8:45 p.m.)

Mon.–Tues. and Fri.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs., 11 a.m.–8:45 p.m.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

>

MONDAY

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dec. 25

VISUAL ART/EVENT

Free Family Day

If you’re not feeling very merry today, there are few choices for entertaining yourself. You can head to the movies, catch up on beauty sleep, and chase it all with a turkey TV dinner. Or perhaps take in San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, hosting Free Family Day. Activities include gallery exhibits, children’s art projects, and storytelling. Snacks will be served while musician Jonathan Bayer leads a sing-along performance. On display is The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography. (Kellie Ell)

Noon-3:00 p.m.
Contemporary Jewish Museum
121 Steuart, SF
Free (photo ID required for adults)
(415) 344-8800
www.jmsf.org

VISUAL ART

“Ghosts, Weeds, Birds, and Travelers”

What at first glance appear to be paintings nestled in flea-market frames are actually large-scale photographs by local artist Clare Droney. The exhibit explores a series of once-bustling locales in desolate decay. This concept has the potential to become a travesty, but guided by Droney’s careful eye, the interpretation of this theme is discerning, sophisticated, and endlessly ethereal. (K. Tighe)

Through Jan. 6, 2007
Mon.-Thurs., 5 p.m.-2 a.m.; Sat.-Sun., 3 p.m.-2 a.m. \
Lexington
3464 19th St., SF
Free
(415) 863-2052

Eleventh-hour Christmas shopping

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› deborah@sfbg.com

Last year you waited until you heard Santa’s sleigh bells ringing overhead before you started your Christmas shopping. You ended up at the corner store purchasing smokes and PBR for your friends and loved ones. You felt about as festive as warm champagne in a can.
The fact that you’re a procrastinator doesn’t mean you can’t round up some rockin’ gifts in time to scoot them under the tree. We made the rounds and found some easily accessible shops for you to hit up. Follow our lead for 11th-hour shopping, and you’ll have gifts galore without the headaches. Most of these places are open extra hours this week and are definitely open on Christmas Eve. For you real snowflakes, a few will be open even on Christmas. Careful though: some places close when the flow of shopping traffic peters out.
BEAT MUSEUM
This recently opened, perfect postespresso stop is in the heart of North Beach. Buy a beret for your bongo-playing poet friend or a “Fuck Hate” Charles Bukowski poster for your dearest misanthrope. And where else are you going to find limited edition signed posters by the Grateful Dead and Fillmore poster artist Stanley Mouse?
540 Broadway, SF. Wed.–Sat., 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Christmas, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. (415) 399-9626, www.kerouac.com
BUENA VISTA GIFT SHOP
Make your cable car destination the Buena Vista, a bar and grill by the bay. Here you can sip the famous Irish coffees, then head into the gift shop, which sells Irish coffee–<\d>scented candles. Toss in a bottle of Buena Vista whiskey for a more intoxicating package.
2765 Hyde, SF. Wed.–Sat., 9 a.m.–8 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 474-5044, www.thebuenavista.com/giftshop
CLIFF’S VARIETY
The Castro’s hardware store isn’t just a place to buy nuts and bolts. At Cliff’s you can get everything from quality cookware and napkin rings to board games and mittens. But if someone in your life is really hankering for a power drill, you’ll find a good one here.
479 Castro, SF. Wed.–Sat., 9:30 a.m.–8 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 431-5365; www.cliffsvariety.com
ELEPHANT PHARMACY
Also known as “the gourmet pharmacy,” Elephant has fancy items you won’t find at Walgreens. For the powder room denizen, grab a spa kit filled with naturally scented candles, soap bars, and body butter in blood orange or Tahitian gardenia fragrances. Your ecoconscious associates will appreciate sustainably grown kitchen products such as the bamboo cutting boards and salad bowls. Creative teens will be wowed by the pinhole camera kit.
1607 Shattuck, Berk. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 8:30 a.m.–<\d>11 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 9 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m.; Christmas, 8:30 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m. (510) 549-9200, www.elephantpharmacy.com
FABRIC8
Probably the coolest shop in the Mission District, Fabric8 specializes in unusual gifts made and designed by local artists. Jenn Porreca has stick-on iPod skins and small, reasonably priced paintings for sale. C. Lee Sobieski designed a washable matching dog collar and owner wrist cuff with a cute skull-and-heart motif. And DJ Romanowski’s wall of knickknacks has something for everyone.
3318 22nd St., SF. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 11 a.m.–<\d>11 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–<\d>7 p.m.; Christmas, 11 a.m.–<\d>2 p.m. (415) 647-5888, www.fabric8.com
FRIEND
Embracing the moderne can be quite an expensive proposition at this posh Hayes Valley housewares shop, but you can most likely afford to buy your mate some good cheer in the form of the “The Good Book,” which is actually just a hollow cover for a flask.
401 Hayes, SF. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 11 a.m.–<\d>7 p.m.; Christmas Eve, noon–<\d>5 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 552-1717, www.friend-sf.com
HEARTFELT
You’ll find just about anything under the exposed beams of this Bernal Heights store: picture frames, stationery, organic cotton baby jumpers, candles, and something we would all like to wipe our asses with — toilet paper printed with George W. Bush’s face and quotable remarks.
436 Cortland, SF. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 10 a.m.–<\d>10 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>5 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 648-1380, www.heartfeltsf.com
JEFFREY’S TOYS
You’ll have an easier time getting gifts for kids at this well-stocked downtown toy store than fighting the crowds at the not-so-near big box. Stimulate the developing brains of youth by getting Lego sets and human anatomy puzzles here. The tarot jigsaw provides some alternative spiritual guidance to Christianity, and the porcelain unicorns are just plain cute.
685 Market, SF. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 9 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m. (or earlier, depending on business); Christmas, 10 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m. (415) 243-8697
KID ROBOT
You’ll please collectors big and small with limited edition toys from this hipster enclave in the Haight. Little anime items such as Munny zipper pulls, a paperweight-size pile of poo known as Superduex Shikito Brown, and figurines of the band Gorillaz will all be worth a fortune some day.
1512 Haight, SF. Wed.–<\d>Fri., 11 a.m.–<\d>7 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 11 a.m.–<\d>3 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 487-9000, www.kidrobot.com
NATHAN AND CO.
This petite and stylish shop on Piedmont Avenue has gifts for the ankle biter in your life, whether it be a friend’s dog or your sister’s teething toddler. You can also find gifts for grown-ups, such as the Hostess Twinkie Cookbook and sets of self-adhesive mustaches. The handmade bike-messenger bags made with vinylized pages of the New York and Los Angeles Times are a real find.
3820 Piedmont, Oakl. Wed.–<\d>Sat., 10:30 a.m.–<\d>8 or 9 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10:30 a.m.–<\d>8 or 9 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (510) 428-9638
PEKING BAZAAR
You can’t beat the hours at this emporium of gifts in Chinatown. Many of the store’s bagatelles come in beautiful silks: totes and wallets, lanterns and pillows, kimonos for him and her. It also specializes in iron tea sets and houses a large jewelry section.
826-832 Grant, SF. Open Wed.–<\d>Mon., 10 a.m.–<\d>10 p.m. (415) 982-9847, www.pekingbazaar.com
PLAIN JANE’S
Keep the people you’re closest to smelling good. This West Portal store has one of the best soap and bath product selections in town.
44 W. Portal, SF. Wed.–<\d>Thurs., 9 a.m.–<\d>8 or 9 p.m.; Fri.–<\d>Sat., 9 a.m.- 9 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 9 a.m.–<\d>9 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 759-7487 www.plainjanesgifts.com
POSTER SOURCE
After visiting the sea lions and taking a spin on the carousel, you can get a gift that doesn’t say “I Went to Pier 39 on Christmas Eve and All I Got You Was This Lousy Alcatraz T-shirt.” Poster Source has movie posters, scenic shots, fine art and photography prints, and sports cars pics to accommodate everyone’s decorative tastes.
Pier 39, SF. Wed.–<\d>Thurs., 10 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.; Fri.–<\d>Sat., 10 a.m.–<\d>9 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>6 p.m.; Christmas, call for hours. (415) 433-1995
THERAPY
The Mission District retailer has cozy sweaters, handsome leather-band watches, and purses in a variety of shapes, sizes, and prices. For that special headbanger in your life, pick up the Metallica book Nothing Else Matters: The Stories behind the Songs.
541 Valencia, SF. Wed.–<\d>Thurs., 11 a.m.–<\d>9 p.m.; Fri.–<\d>Sat., 10 a.m.–<\d>10:30 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>9:30 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 861-6213
WINE MERCHANT
One way to really take the edge off Christmas shopping is to have a drink first. Enjoy a pour at the Ferry Building’s Wine Merchant, then point yourself directly toward the “Great Wines for under $20” section. You’ll find everything from fussy California pinot noirs to fruity Belgian and German whites. Spending more than $150 entitles you to free delivery.
Ferry Bldg., stall 23, Embarcadero and Market, SF. Wed., 10 a.m.–<\d>8 p.m.; Thurs.–<\d>Fri., 10 a.m.–<\d>9 p.m.; Sat., 8 a.m.–<\d> 9 p.m.; Christmas Eve, 10 a.m.–<\d>7 p.m.; Christmas, closed. (415) 391-9460, www.fpwm.com<\!s>SFBG
Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman and Laura McCaul did research for this story.

Holiday Listings

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Holiday listings are compiled by Todd Lavoie. Listings for Wed/13-Tues/19 are below; check back each week for updated events. See Picks for information on how to submit items to the listings.
ATTRACTIONS
“Great Dickens Christmas Fair and Victorian Holiday Party” Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva; 897-4555, www.dickensfair.com. Sat-Sun, 11am-7pm. Through Dec. 23. $8-20. Step into a day in the life of Victorian London at this annual fair featuring costumed characters from literature and history, street vendors, games, and adult-only “after dark” festivities.
Ice Sculpting Union between Gough and Steiner; 1-800-310-6563. Sat/16, noon-4pm. Jaws will drop in wonder as nationally acclaimed ice sculptors work their magic for public display.
“Reindeer Romp” San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo Rd, Sloat at 47th Ave; 753-7080, www.sfzoo.org. Daily, 10am-5pm. Through Jan 1, 2007. Free with paid zoo admission ($4.50-11). Here’s a chance to show the little tykes what reindeer actually look like. Take a trip to Reindeer Romp Village and admire the beautiful creatures.
San Francisco SPCA Holiday Windows Express Macy’s, Stockton at O’Farrell; 522-3500, www.sfspca.org. During store hours. Through Dec 26. Free. The SF Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals presents an adorable display of cats and dogs; all featured pets are available for adoption.
BAY AREA
“Holidays at Dunsmuir” Dunsmuir Historic Estate, 2960 Peralta Oaks Court, Oakl; (925) 275-9490, www.dunsmuir.org. Sat-Sun, 11am-5pm. $7-11. Through Sun/17. The mansion presents self-guided tours of its historic grounds, holiday teas, horse-drawn carriage rides, and more.
Knight Ridder’s Downtown Ice Circle of Palms, S Market across from Plaza de Cesar Chavez, San Jose; (408) 279-1775, ext 45, www.sjdowntown.com. Through Sat/16, Jan 2-14: Mon-Thurs, 5-10pm; Fri, 5pm-midnight; Sat, noon-midnight; Sun, noon-10pm. Dec 17-24, 26-30: noon-midnight. Dec 25: 2pm-midnight. Dec 31-Jan 1: noon-10pm. $12-14. A glide around this outdoor rink is a perfect way to ring in the holidays; price includes skate rentals.
BENEFITS
BAY AREA
“Holiday Sweater Good Vibe Drive” Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo, Berk; www.falcorandfriends.com. Sun/17, 9pm, $15. Throw on your most Cosby-licious sweater and head down to Ashkenaz for an evening of socially conscious entertainment by the Everyone Orchestra and Magicgravy. Falcor and Friends, in conjunction with Conscious Alliance, encourage attendees to not only sport their cheesiest in knitwear finery but also to bring a new, unwrapped toy or gift to help those in need in the Bay Area.
CELEBRATIONS
“Ask a Scientist Holiday Trivia Contest Party” Bazaar Café, 5927 California; 831-5620. Tues/19, 7pm, free. Looking to flex your trivia muscles a bit? The Exploratorium’s Robin Marks hosts an evening of holiday-themed noggin-scratching and chest-puffing with a science quiz show. Bring your own team or form one with other people who show up; winners receive drinks, prizes, and Nobel Prizes. OK, I made the last part up …
“Bill Graham Menorah Day” Union Square; 753-0910. Sun/17, 2-5pm, free. Honor the Bay Area legend and celebrate the Festival of Lights with music by hip-hop artists Chutzpah and rocker Rebbe Soul. A ceremony follows the performances, culminating in the lighting of the third candle of the Bill Graham public menorah at 5pm.
“DJ Abel’s Black XXXMas” Factory, 525 Harrison; www.industrysf.com. Sat/16, 10pm-6am, $30. Industry and Gus Presents join forces to deliver one of the biggest holiday bashes in the city. Alegria superstar DJ Abel pumps bootylicious beats for revelers wishing to work off all of those Christmas candy calories.
“Good Vibrations Goodie Shoppe Ball” Club NV, 525 Howard; www.goodvibes.com. Thurs/14, 8pm-2am. $20-25. Good Vibrations will satisfy your more carnal Christmas wishes with an evening of sensual revelry hosted by Dr. Carol Queen and blues temptress Candye Kane, who will also perform. Jack Davis brings his inspired designs to the runway with his Lick your Lips line, and Miss Kitty Carolina raises temperatures with a festively feisty burlesque show. Candy-themed attire is encouraged.
“Old English Christmas Feast and Revels” Mark Hopkins International Hotel, One Nob Hill; 431-1137. Sun/17, 4pm, $80-130. Reservations required. A five-course dinner fit for royalty and a performance by the Golden Gate Boys Choir are certain to make for a memorable holiday celebration.
BAY AREA
“Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair” Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight, Berk. Sat/16-Sun/17, 11am-6pm. Also Dec 23-24. Free. The Telegraph business district transforms into a street party with an impressive array of live music, fine food, and unique handicrafts from area artisans.
MUSIC
“A Cathedral Christmas” Grace Cathedral, 1100 California; 1-866-468-3399. Fri, 7pm; Sat-Sun, 3pm. $15-50. Through Dec 22. The Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, with orchestra, sings a program of holiday favorites.
“A Chanticleer Christmas” St. Ignatius Church, 650 Parker; 392-4400. Sat/16, 8pm, $25-44. Grammy Award winners Chanticleer, a 12-man a cappella choir, sings a program of sacred and traditional holiday music. Along with holiday carols, the group performs medieval and Renaissance sacred works and African American spirituals.
“Alien For Christmas Party” Hotel Utah Saloon, 500 Fourth St; 546-6300. Sun/17, 9pm, $6. Be sure to dress up in your favorite alien attire for an evening of wacky fun. Groovy Judy and special guests Third Date and Mobius Donut will bring the funk-rock your holiday season so desperately needs.
“Ariela Morgenstern’s Classical Cabaret” Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento; 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. Fri/15, 8pm, $12-15. Need some Kurt Weill and Marlene Dietrich to get you in a jolly mood? Ariela Morgenstern, accompanied by two other vocalists, a pianist, and an accordion player, performs cabaret and musical theater favorites from the Weimar Republic right up to today’s showstoppers.
“Candlelight Christmas” Most Holy Redeemer Church, 100 Diamond; 863-6259. Fri/15-Sat/16, 8pm, $10-15. San Francisco State’s four choral ensembles from the School of Music and Dance present an eclectic program in a candlelit setting. Works performed range from Renaissance motets to gospel favorites.
“Festival of Carols” Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento; 1-888-RAG-AZZI. Sun/17, 4pm, $10-25. The Ragazzi Boys Chorus performs a medley of carols arranged by Allen and Julie Simon, with accompaniment by a chamber orchestra and guest organist Susan Jane Matthews.
“Frankye Kelly and Her Quartet” Wells Fargo History Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-4165. Mon/18, noon-1pm, free. Treat yourself to a relaxing lunch hour with a Christmas-themed performance by Bay Area jazz-blues vocalist Frankye Kelly.
“Golden Gate Men’s Chorus Winter Concert” St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, 3281 16th St; www.ggmc.org. Thurs/14, 8pm; Sun/17, 2 and 7:30pm. Also Dec 20, 8pm. $20. Musical director Joseph Jennings guides the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus through a repertoire of holiday favorites and audience sing-alongs.
“Handel’s Messiah” Grace Cathedral, 1100 California; 749-6350. Mon/18-Tues/19, 7:30pm, $20-55. The American Bach Soloists’ version of this classic work is sure to impress, especially when performed in such gorgeous surroundings.
“Hardcore Hanukkah Tour” Balazo Gallery, 2183 Mission; www.hanukkahtour.com. Fri/15, 8pm. $7. Mosh your way into the Festival of Lights with performances by Australian punks Yidcore, New Orleans klezmer-zydeco upstarts the Zydepunks, East Bay rockers Jewdriver, and many others. Clips from the Israeli punk documentary Jericho’s Echo: Punk Rock in The Holy Land will also be shown.
“House of Voodoo Deathmas Ball” Club Hide, 280 Seventh St; www.houseofvoodoo.com. Fri/15, 9pm, $5. If you’ve had your fill of jolly elves, creep into your darkest, deathliest goth-industrial clubwear and brood away to the sounds of DJs Hellbrithers, Geiger, and Caligari. Get your nibbles with Mizzuz Voodoo’s famously ill-willed cookies and be sure to bring something suitably gothic (and wrapped with black ribbon, perhaps) for the gift exchange.
“Martuni’s Holiday Extravaganza” Martuni’s, Four Valencia; www.kielbasia.com. Sun/17, 6pm, free. Camp it up this holiday season with an evening of martini-fuelled debauchery. Scheduled performers include Bijou, Cookie after Dark, Katya, and Kielbasia — “San Francisco’s Favorite Accordion-Playing Lunch Lady.”
“Renaissance Christmas” St. Dominic’s Catholic Church, 2390 Bush; 567-7824. Tues/19, 7:30pm, $10-20. The St. Dominic’s Solemn Mass Choir and Festival Orchestra, directed by Simon Berry, raise spirits with an inspiring program of music, including work by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Sing-along carols will round out the evening.
San Francisco City Chorus Wells Fargo History Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-4165. Tues/19, noon-1pm, free. A venerable musical institution in the city since 1979, the San Francisco City Chorus performs a program of holiday favorites.
“Season of Sound Performances” Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; www.exploratorium.edu. Sat/16-Sun/17, noon-3pm. Free with admission. The Exploratorium hosts two afternoons of eclectic holiday entertainment, with programs including the Golden Gate Boys Choir, opera singers Kathleen Moss and Will Hart, hand bell group Ringmasters of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Eastern European folksingers Born to Drone.
“Snowfall: An Evening of Holiday Carols” Mission Dolores Basilica, 3321 16th St; 840-0675. Sat/16, 8pm. $15-20. The San Francisco Concert Chorale, accompanied by harpist Dan Levitan, evoke snow-covered landscapes with relaxing English Christmas carols.
“This Shining Night” St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, 3281 16th St; 863-6371. Tues/19, 8pm, $15. Local men’s a cappella ensemble Musaic, led by artistic director Justin Montigne, bring tidings of comfort and joy with a program of Christmas carols and holiday songs.
“’Tis the Season Holiday Concert” St. Gregory of Nyssa, 500 De Haro; www.cantabile.org. Wed/13, 8pm, $20-25. Join the Cantibale Chorale, artistic director Sanford Dole, and pianist T. Paul Rosas in a unique holiday celebration. Poems by Robert Graves and e.e. cummings are transformed into Christmas songs, and the Chorale reinterprets Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite as a song cycle.
“What I Want for Christmas” Jazz at Pearl’s, 256 Columbus; 1-800-838-3006. Thurs/14, 8 and 10pm, $15. Jazz vocalist Russ Lorenson celebrates the release of his new holiday CD, What I Want for Christmas, with a romantic candlelit performance accompanied by the Kelly Park Jazz Quintet. Among the holiday chestnuts will be swinging Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer numbers.
“Wintersongs” Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez; (510) 444-0323. Fri/15, 8:15pm. $25. KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble explores Eastern European ethnic and spiritual traditions with a concert of carols, pre-Christian incantations, and Hebrew folk songs.
BAY AREA
“Amahl and the Night Visitors” St. Hilary Catholic Church, 761 Hilary Drive, Tiburon; (415) 485-9460. Sat/16, 4pm. Donations accepted. Paul Smith directs Contemporary Opera Marin in its adaptation of the Menotti classic.
“Bella Sorella Holiday Show” Little Fox Theater, 2219 Broadway, Redwood City; (650) FOX-4119. Sun/17, 7pm. $16. Renowned soprano ensemble Bella Sorella will enchant audiences with songs from its new album, Popera, as well as a series of holiday favorites.
“Celtic Christmas” Sanchez Concert Hall, 1220 Linda Mar Blvd, Pacifica; (650) 355-1882. Sun/17, 3pm. $12-20. Old World holiday cheer will be had by all as Golden Bough perform Celtic carols and winter favorites, as well as its own original compositions.
“Christmas Revels” Scottish Rite Theater, 1547 Lakeside Dr, Oakl; (510) 452-3800. Fri/15, 7:30pm; Sat/16-Sun/17, 1 and 5pm. $15-42. Get a taste of Christmas in Quebec as the musical dance troupe California Revels pay tribute to French Canadian traditions.
“Harmonies of the Season” St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito, Oakl; (510) 652-4722. Sat/16, 7pm. $15-20. The Pacific Boychoir Academy sings a program featuring Rutter’s Gloria with brass ensemble as well as an a cappella performance of Francis Poulenc’s Four Motets for Christmas.
“Hardcore Hanukkah Tour” 924 Gilman, Berk; www.hanukkahtour.com. Sat/16, 8pm, $7. Mosh your way into the Festival of Lights with performances by Australian punks Yidcore, New Orleans klezmer-zydeco upstarts the Zydepunks, East Bay rockers Jewdriver, and many others. Clips from the Israeli punk documentary Jericho’s Echo: Punk Rock in The Holy Land will also be shown.
Klezmatics 142 Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley; (415) 383-9600. Sat/16, 8pm. $35-45. What better way to celebrate Hanukkah than tapping your feet to the joyful sounds of klezmer? The legendary Klezmatics pay tribute to the Jewish songs of Woody Guthrie with a program of wildly imaginative adaptations of his lyrics.
“Seaside Singers and Friends” Sanchez Concert Hall, 1220 Linda Mar Blvd, Pacifica; (650) 355-1882. Sat/16, 7:30pm. $5-8. Ellis French directs the Seaside Singers in a performance of the Britten favorite Ceremony of Carols. The program also includes the Ocean Shore School Chorus and the Friday Mornings Ensemble.
“’Tis the Season Holiday Concert” St. John’s Presybterian Church, 2727 College, Berk; www.cantibale.org. Sun/17, 7:30pm. $20-25. Join the Cantibale Chorale, artistic director Sanford Dole, and pianist T. Paul Rosas in a unique holiday celebration. Poems by Robert Graves and e.e. cummings are transformed into Christmas songs, and the Chorale reinterprets Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite as a song cycle.
“Wintersongs” First Unitarian Church, 685 14th St, Oakl; (510) 444-0323. Sun/17, 7pm. $20-25. KITKA Women’s Vocal Ensemble explores Eastern European ethnic and spiritual traditions with a concert of carols, pre-Christian incantations, and Hebrew folk songs.
NUTCRACKERS AND CRACKED NUTS
BAY AREA
“Berkeley Ballet Theatre Presents: The Nutcracker” Julia Morgan Center For the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.juliamorgan.org. Fri/15, 7pm; Sat/16, 2 and 7pm; Sun/17, 2pm. The Berkeley Ballet Theatre performs the holiday classic, with choreography by Sally Streets and Robert Nichols.
THEATER, COMEDY, AND PERFORMANCE
“Beach Blanket Babylon’s Seasonal Extravaganza” Club Fugazi, 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St); 421-4222. Wed/13, 5 and 8pm; Thurs/14, 8pm; Fri/15-Sat/16, 7 and 10pm; Sun/17, 2 and 5pm. Through Dec 31. $25-77. Sure, the label gets used a lot, but Steve Silver’s musical comedy is really and truly an extravaganza, with topical humor, dancing Christmas trees, outrageous costumes, and the biggest Christmas hat you’ve ever seen in your life.
“Big All-Sunday Player Holiday Musical” Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Buchanan at Marina; 474-6776. Sun/17, 7pm. $8. The fast-on-their-feet folks at BATS Improv end their year with a completely improvised comedy musical.
“Christmas Ballet” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Theater Building, 700 Howard; 978-2787. Opens Fri/15. Fri/15-Sat/16, Tues/19, 8pm; Sat/16-Sun/17, 2pm; Sun/17, 7pm. $45-55. The Smuin Ballet offers a mix of ballet, tap, swing, and many other dance styles in a holiday performance set to music by everyone from Placido Domingo to Eartha Kitt.
“A Christmas Carol” American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. Wed/13, 2pm; Thurs/14, 2 and 7pm; Fri/15, 7pm; Sat/16, 2 and 7pm; Tues/19, 7pm. Also Dec 20-23, 7pm; Dec 20, 22-23, 2pm; Dec 24, noon. Through Dec 24. $13.50-81.50. The American Conservatory Theater presents Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh’s adaptation of the Dickens holiday story, featuring sets by Tony Award–winning designer John Arnone, original songs by Karl Lundeberg, costumes by Beaver Bauer, and choreography by Val Caniparolo.
“Classical Christmas Special” Florence Gould Theater, Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park; 392-4400. Sat/16-Sun/17, 2pm. $35-40. For holiday family fun with a classical music theme, this variety show is sure to be a hit. Enjoy performances by San Francisco Opera singers Kristin Clayton and Bojan Knezevic and 10-year-old cellist Clark Pang; watch a ballet set to the music of Robert Schumann; and listen to a telling of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” accompanied by the music of Scott Joplin.
“Holiday Cabaret” Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida; 252-9000. Fri/15-Sat/16, 7pm dance lessons, 8pm showtime. $25-30. Director Heather Morch leads a cast of more than 50 student and professional dancers in this showcase from the Metronome Dance Center. The program includes everything from tango to Lindy Hop and salsa; arrive early for dance lessons.
“I’m Dreaming of a Wet Christmas” Off-Market Theatre, 965 Mission; (510) 684-8813. Fri-Sat, 10pm. Through Sat/16. $15. Submergency! presents an evening of holiday-themed improv comedy with its multimedia squirtgun-toting laugh fest.
“It Could Have Been a Wonderful Life” Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason; 820-1400. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Dec 24. $20-25. Fred Raker’s laugh-filled retelling of the Christmas classic delivers a distinctly Jewish spin on the Frank Capra story.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush; 345-1287. Thurs/14, 8pm; Sat/16-Sun/17, 2pm. Through Dec 23. $10-30. Joe Landry’s adaptation of Frank Capra’s classic holiday film, directed by Kenneth Vandenberg, is performed in the style of live radio broadcasts from the ’40s.
“A Queer Carol” New Conservatory Theatre, Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. Wed/13-Sat/16, 8pm; Sun/17, 2pm. Through Dec 31. $22-40. The New Conservatory Theatre Center presents Joe Godfrey’s comedy A Queer Carol, a retelling of Charles Dickens’s classic tale, but with gay themes and characters.
“Santaland Diaries” Off-Market Theatre, 965 Mission; 1-866-811-4111, www.theatermania.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 31. $20-30. Steinbeck Presents and Combined Art Form Entertainment bring shrieks of glee with their adaptation of David Sedaris’s hilarious play, featuring the comic genius of actors John Michael Beck and David Sinaiko.
“Trimming the Holidays: The Second Annual Shorts Project” Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 503-0437, www.lveproductions.com. Runs Fri-Sun, 8pm; Mon/18, 8pm. Through Dec 23. $17-20. La Vache Enragee Productions presents a holiday-themed evening of short plays and silent films accompanied by music composed by Christine McClintock.
“A Very Brechty Christmas” Custom Stage at Off-Market, 965 Mission; 1-800-838-3006. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 23. $15-35. The Custom Made Theatre Company, under the direction of Lewis Campbell and Brian Katz, brings two short, socially conscious plays to the stage for a bit of holiday season perspective: Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule and Daniel Gerould’s Candaules, Commissioner.
BAY AREA
“Bad Santa: The Director’s Cut” Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; www.cafilm.org. Sat/16, 7:30pm. $9.50. Bay Area filmmaker Terry Zwigoff introduces the original director’s cut of his wonderfully snarky holiday feature and answers questions posed by San Francisco film programmer Anita Monga.
“A Christmas Carol” Sonoma County Repertory Theater, 104 North Main St, Sebastopol; (707) 823-0177. Thurs/14-Sat/16, 8pm; Sun/17, 2pm. Through Dec 23. $15-20; Thurs, pay what you can. Artistic director Scott Phillips leads the Sonoma Country Repertory in an inventive rendition of the Charles Dickens tale.
“Christmas Dreamland” Heritage Theatre, 1 West Campbell Ave, Campbell; 1-888-455-7469. Wed/13, 7pm; Thurs/14, 2 and 7pm; Fri/15, 8pm; Sat/16, 2 and 8pm; Sun/17, 1 and 6:30pm; Tues/19, 7pm. Through Dec 24. $48-73. Artistic director Tim Bair leads the American Musical Theatre of San Jose in the world premiere of its multimedia holiday showcase.
“Circus Finelli’s Holiday Extravaganza” Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.juliamorgan.org. Through Dec 24, 1 and 3pm; Dec 21, 9pm. $8-15. The Clown Conservatory of the SF Circus Center brings holiday cheer with a comedy stage show filled with acrobatics, juggling, dance, live music, and yes, clown high jinks.
“Keep the Yuletide Gay” Dragon Theater, 535 Alma, Palo Alto; (415) 439-2456, www.theatrereq.org. Thurs/14-Sat/16, 8pm; Sun/17, 2pm. Through Dec 30. $10-25. Theatre Q presents this world premiere of its irreverent comedy about a Christmas Eve dinner party that devolves into chaos when one of the guests hires a mystic to try to make their gay friend straight for the hostess.
“Navidad Flamenca” La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 849-2568, ext 20. Sat/16, 8pm. $20. Bring some fiery holiday passion into your holiday season with an evening of flamenco magic. Performers include special guest vocalist Vicente Griego and dancers Carola Zertuche, Cristina Hall, Fanny Ara, and Flamenco Kalore.
TREE LIGHTINGS AND FAMILY EVENTS
Bill Graham Menorah Union Square; 753-0910. First candlelighting: Fri/15, 3pm. Second candle: Sat/16, 7pm. Succeeding candles: Sun/17-Tues/19, 5pm. Also Dec 20-21, 5pm. Final candle lighting Dec 22, 3pm. Observe the Festival of Lights by visiting the impressively large public menorah in Union Square.
“Boudin at the Wharf’s Old-Fashioned North Pole” Boudin at the Wharf, 160 Jefferson; 928-1849. Sat, 10am-5pm; Sun, noon-4pm. Through Dec 23. Carolers, refreshments, and special visits from Santa mean family fun as Pier 43 is transformed into a wintry wonderland.
“Breakfast With Santa” Aquarium of the Bay, Pier 39, Embarcadero at Beach; 623-5300. Sat/16-Sun/17, 9-11am. $20-35. Bring the kids down to the aquarium to watch Santa arrive by boat. Afterward, they can enjoy breakfast, games, craft-making, and a chance to meet Santa.
“Children’s Tea” Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, One Nob Hill; 616-6916. Sat-Sun, noon-3pm. Through Dec 30. $39. The legendary Top of the Mark sky lounge hosts a holiday-themed afternoon tea for families. In addition to some fine views of the city, guests will be treated to a magic show.
BAY AREA
“Fairyland Tree Lighting Ceremony” Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue, Oakl; (510) 452-2259. Fri/15, 6:45pm. Free with admission. Enjoy holiday nibbles and cocoa as the lights go aglow in Fairy Winterland.
“Menorah Lighting Ceremony” Bay Street Plaza, Powell at Shellmound, Emeryville; www.baystreetemeryville.com. Sun/17, 4:30pm. Chabad of the East Bay hosts the lighting of a 10-foot-tall menorah, officiated by Rabbi Yehuda Ferris. Families will be treated to traditional sufganiyot (jelly-filled donuts),a Hanukkah sing-along, and performances by Buki the Clown.
“Miracles at the Chimes” Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 654-0123. Sat/16-Sun/17, 10am-5pm. Free. Admire the 15-and-a-half-foot noble fir tree, drink hot cocoa, and enjoy fine musical performances. Santa will visit occasionally; check ahead for dates.
“Night of Remembrance” Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 654-0123. Wed/13, 7pm. Free. Honor loved ones who have passed and celebrate their lives. Participants can create a memory ornament to hang on the Chapel’s Remembrance Tree. Music by the Bay Bell Ensemble, Catherine J. Brozena, and the Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus. One day only.
ARTS AND CRAFTS
“Feria Urbana” Canvas Café and Gallery, 1200 Ninth Ave; 505-0060. Thurs/14, 6-11pm; Sat/16-Sun/17, noon-5pm. Free. Here’s an opportunity to support the local arts community and take care of your shopping needs at the same time. Local artisans and designers show off their clothing, home accessories, and many other gift ideas; all three days feature different vendors. If you like groovy beats to accompany your shopping experience, attend Thursday’s event, which will be DJed by the swell folks at OM Records.
“Great Dickens Christmas Fair” Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva; 1-800-510-1558. Sat-Sun, 11am-7pm. Through Dec 23. $8-20. For a slower-paced shopping experience, this winter wonderland offers a range of theater and entertainment, costumed Victorian-era characters, sumptuous feasts, and gift ideas aplenty.
“Hands-on Mexican Holiday Cooking Class” Encantada Gallery of Fine Arts, 908 Valencia; 642-3939. Sat/16-Sun/17, 11am-2:30pm, $70. Advance registration required. Laurie Mackenzie, chef and scholar of Latin American cuisine, leads an instructional course on making tamales. While you’re there, check out the Encantada’s Bazaar Navideno for Mexican folk art and ceramics, as well as locally made fine art.
“Mexican Museum Holiday Family Day” Mission Library, 300 Bartlett; 202-9700, ext 721. Sat/16, noon-2pm, free. Multimedia artist Favianna Rodriguez of the Mexican Museum presents a slide show and hands-on workshop about nichos, a Latin American craft designed to protect special treasures and pictures of loved ones. The museum will supply materials for these decorative boxes; participants are encouraged to bring photos and mementos to personalize their nichos.
“Peace, Love, Joy, ART” ARTworkSF, main gallery, 49 Geary; 673-3080. Tues-Sat, noon-5:30pm. Through Dec 30. Browse locally made handiworks for holiday gift ideas.
“Physics of Toys: Museum Melody” Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; www.exploratorium.edu. Sat/16, 11am-3pm. Free with admission. Learn how to make noisemakers for delightful Christmas gifts and for ringing in the New Year just around the corner.
“Public Glass Artist Showcase” Crocker Galleria, 50 Post; 671-4916. Through Sun/17: daily, 10am-6pm. Dec 18-22: daily, 10am-7pm. Free. More than 15 local glass artists will exhibit their work, offering many one-of-a-kind gifts. Public Glass is the city’s only nonprofit center for glassworking, and this will be its sole downtown event of the year.
BAY AREA
“Berkeley Potters Guild Gallery Show and Holiday Sale” 731 Jones, Berk; (510) 524-7031. Sat-Sun and Dec 19-22, 10am-5pm. Through Dec 24. Free. Browse through the wares of the oldest and largest clay collaborative group on the West Coast.
“Bilingual Piñata-Making Party for All Ages” Oakland Public Library, Martin Luther King Jr. Branch, 6833 International Blvd, Oakl; (510) 238-3615. Sat/16, 2pm. Free. Learn how to make and decorate your own holiday piñata, with instruction given in both Spanish and English.
“Crucible’s Gifty Holiday Art Sale and Open House” Crucible, 1260 Seventh St, Oakl; (510) 444-0919. Sat/16-Sun/17, 10am-4pm. Free. The Crucible, a nonprofit sculpture studio and arts center, opens its doors to the public for a holiday sale meant for the whole family. In addition to providing one-of-a-kind gift options such as ceramics, glassware, and sculptures, the studio will offer glass blowing and blacksmithing demonstrations, hands-on activities for kids, and the memorable experience of seeing Santa arrive by flaming sleigh!
“EclectiXmas Art Show and Sale” Eclectix Store and Gallery, 7523 Fairmount, El Cerrito; (510) 364-7261. Tues, 10am-2pm; Wed, noon-6pm; Thurs, 11am-7pm; Fri, 10am-7pm; Sat, 10am-6pm; Sun, 10am-2pm. Through Dec 24. Free. Nothing says “I love you” like giving the gift of sculpture or painting or photography. Browse the gallery’s group show for imaginative gifts.
“Expressions Holiday Bazaar and Trunk Show” Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby, Berk; (510) 644-4930. Sun/17, noon-5pm. Free. For interesting handcrafted gifts, the Expressions Gallery’s show offers jewelry, scarves, mittens, among other things.
“Holiday Land Gift Sale” Blankspace, 6608 San Pablo, Oakl; (510) 547-6608. Sat/16, 1-7pm; Sun/17, noon-5pm. Free. Bay Area artists sell their cards, artwork, accessories, and unique gifts; proceeds from ornament sales support the Destiny Arts Center in Oakland. A performance by Kittinfish Mountain will get you in the shopping mood, and prizes will be given away as well.
“Pro Arts Holiday Sale” 550 Second St, Oakl; (510) 763-4361. Tues-Sat, noon-6pm; Sun, noon-5pm. Through Dec 21. Free. This nonprofit organization supporting Bay Area artists offers jewelry, glassware, ceramics, and other potential gifts. SFBG

Goldies Visual Art winner Tim Sullivan

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In his most recent San Francisco exhibition, at the cozy Little Tree Gallery in the Mission, Tim Sullivan managed to reanimate the late blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield. Mind you, he did it with a low-tech visual effect — a full-color glossy of the actress attached to a flat-screen monitor, a shifting blue sky visible through little almond-shaped slits in the eyes of the photograph. But the mixture of sublime pop (the elaborate media construct of Mansfield) with an almost metaphysical art reference is a key movement in Sullivan’s appealing photography, video, and sculpture. His work is an enticing combination of funky but effective tricks, sophisticated references, and an appreciation of comedic white-trash aesthetics.
Sullivan’s work often contains gracious nods to other artists. He’s made a hilariously perverse video-sculpture homage to Bruce Nauman’s mid-1960s Self-Portrait as a Fountain and devoted an entire exhibition at the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery to the influential Dutch-born conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who toyed with a sad-sack persona and disappeared mysteriously while attempting to cross the Atlantic alone in a 13-foot boat. Sullivan, a striking figure with pale blond hair and dark horn-rim glasses, often appears in his own work, using self-portraiture to tangentially channel his artistic forebears. While there may be something postmodern about this strategy, you don’t have to know about contemporary art history to be captivated by his visual magic. For instance, you need only know about the 1960s-style power of Herb Alpert to appreciate Sullivan’s remake of the classic Whipped Cream and Other Delights album cover. Sullivan plays the babe, slathered in foam.
He’s also made a life-size horizontal photograph of himself seemingly levitating just above the floor against a backdrop of fabulously chintzy flecked wallpaper. It’s in lush color — the artist wears a crimson T-shirt, a color he favors, perhaps for its theatricality. The image appears at a key spot in an opening gallery in the California Biennial, a timely survey of 31 West Coast artists organized by the Orange County Museum of Art (through Dec. 31), and it’s had the effect of giving Sullivan, a San Francisco Art Institute grad, wider recognition — he reports that he sold out an edition of the photograph, and he doesn’t even have gallery representation. He was singled out in the Los Angeles Times’ review of the show, which dubbed him a purveyor of high-spirited “do-it-yourself special effects art.”
The OC show also includes a hilarious video called Magic Carpet Ride, a piece made at a Fisherman’s Wharf souvenir stand. In it Sullivan and his former teacher, the filmmaker (and Goldie Lifetime Achievement winner) George Kuchar, cavort on a roller coaster gondola. The pair exude goofball charm as they whiz over the Golden Gate Bridge past friendly drag queens. Kuchar is an instructive reference, as Sullivan also seems to dream in Technicolor. They also collaborated on a theatricalized reenactment of Chris Burden’s Shoot, the politicized 1971 gallery performance in which the Southern California conceptualist artist was shot in the arm with a pistol. The Sullivan-Kuchar version is set against an amber-hued commercial photomural of a tropical sunset. As a child of the Midwest, Sullivan expresses a continuing appreciation for and bemusement with the California dream. In another recent piece, he’s made fluorescent matchbooks emblazoned with regionally significant incendiary song titles, “California Dreaming” and “Running with the Devil” among them. This guy’s on fire. (Glen Helfand)

FRIDAY

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Fri/3

Music

Tara Jane O’Neil
Cat Power and Neko Case may nab more of the press, but Portland’s Tara Jane O’Neil has quietly developed into a strikingly consistent songwriter-chanteuse, spinning out one compelling solo record after another. Previously known for her work with Rodan and the Sonora Pine, O’Neil makes music that is equal parts spindly folk and ambient soundscape these days. It manages to be simultaneously explorative and understated: a neat trick in these rather unsubtle times. (Max Goldberg)
With Sir Richard Bishop and Sandycoates
9 p.m.
Hotel Utah
500 Fourth St., SF
$10
(415) 546-6300
www.hotelutah.com
www.tarajaneoneil.com

Film

Excellent Cadavers
Drawing material from Alexander Stille’s book of the same title and Letizia Battaglia’s hard-boiled photography, director Marco Turco plunges into the Mafia’s long-standing stranglehold on Sicilian politics and capital in this heated documentary. Turco isn’t impressed by the Cosa Nostra’s mystique: he shows us a parasitic organization that has deeply embedded itself into the Italian economy through a combination of political influence and graft. As the murders and deceptions pile up, the filmmaker’s outrage hits its mark. (Goldberg)

7 and 8:50 p.m.
Roxie Film Center
3117 16th St., SF
$4-8
www.roxie.com

Boys? What boys?

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com
I meet bandleader, videographer, and Mission District indie icon Leslie Satterfield at Ritual café on a summer evening as she walks up Valencia Street looking weather-beaten and weary from her recent travels. Is she just back from a cross-country tour, I wonder? No, she was precisely where you’d expect the guitarist from Boyskout to have been: camping. She survived days of deer watching and near–bear sightings in the Sierras, and despite her desire for a hot shower and warm bed, Satterfield settles in with a cappuccino and some good stories.
Satterfield may be best known for her post-punk quartet Boyskout, a band that’s risen the ranks since its inception in 2001 to tour around the United States and Germany and headline major local venues including Mezzanine and Bimbo’s 365 Club. But the sandy-blond, late-20s songwriter has been also turning heads of late with her filmmaking.
Her video for Film School’s song “11:11” — a minimalist travelogue set in San Francisco streets and tunnels — is the latest work for her own Sharkbone Productions, which has also produced Boyskout videos shown internationally at major gay and lesbian film festivals. Her latest projects include a video for Rough Trade UK–signed act Scissors for Lefty and a self-produced experimental film that she describes as “being about love and creating what you believe.”
“Most of my films have been about how we create our own realities with our mind and how powerful the mind itself is — how your thoughts create everything that happens to you,” Satterfield says.
With her Mission artist garb — black boots and worn dark denim — I figure Satterfield had a youth spent in mosh pits and zine-collective punk hangouts. On the contrary, she grew up listening to the Beatles, Olivia Newton-John, and Simon and Garfunkel, while spending a lot of time drawing. She earned a BA in photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and resided in Amsterdam for a year before moving west. Now in addition to classics from Elton John and Heart, her iPod holds songs by Coco Rosie, the Libertines, and Tapes ’n Tapes. It’s an eclectic collection of music, similar to the local bands she holds dear and performs with regularly. The list includes up-and-coming acts like the Fucking Ocean, Tartufi, Full Moon Partisans, Death of a Party, and the Mall, as well as Shande — the group fronted by her sometime–guest guitarist Jennifer Chochinov.
Admittedly a shy, coy romantic who’s just completed an all-acoustic album, Mixing Memory with Desire (Dial), as J-Mod, Satterfield was initially a reluctant lead vocalist. You wouldn’t know it from Boyskout’s recent rock-out performances: Satterfield’s steely, saucerwide blue eyes zap the audience playfully while she mixes it up with her bandmates onstage. Along with bassist Piper Lewine, keys and violin player Christina Stanley, and drummer Ping (and occasionally adding guest guitarists like Chochinov or Daniel Dietrick to the lineup), Satterfield slayed audiences at South By Southwest this year in Austin and returned immediately to begin recording Boyskout’s now completed second album, Another Life (Three Ring). At the time we speak, eight of the planned 11 songs are done but won’t be out, well, until they’re done. “I’m a huge perfectionist,” Satterfield confesses. “The biggest in the world. I really like to take my time and do things to a tee.”
The songs I’ve heard from the project, including the Nocturne-era-Siouxsie-sounding “Spotlight” and the jittery dance-rock slab of “Lobby Boys,” are as refreshing as local underground music can get (word to Live 105). Meanwhile, Satterfield’s singing on the J-Mod disc (fantastically recorded at Hyde Street Studios) resembles Nico or Hope Sandoval in their darkest, most mysterious moments. Each album serves as an introduction to Satterfield’s thoughtful and dissonant guitar playing, a style that compliments her alabaster-smooth voice. Based on her range of projects and contacts, I get the impression that Satterfield has some big opportunities on the horizon.
Other recent adventures include a trip to Portland to teach at the Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls. “I taught last year in New York, and it was really fun. I worked with a group of 8-year-olds who formed their own band called Pink Slip.” Which reminds me, I never did get to ask Satterfield what her day job is. For now I’ll just assume it’s the professional term for “brilliant multidisciplinary artist.” SFBG
BOYSKOUT
With the Mall and the Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower
Oct. 5, 9:30 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$10
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
www.boyskout.com

Outrageous fortunes

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› kimberly@sfbg.com
This too may pass, but let it be said that “outrageous” is currently one of Mission District artist Keegan McHargue’s favorite descriptors — applied with equal enthusiasm to the thugs who smoke blunts down the street, his waxy-eyed portrait by Japanese artist Enlightment, Heavy Metal Parking Lot sequel Neil Diamond Parking Lot, and a new art book with a cover font composed of turds — and one that could easily apply to the refreshingly direct, boyish painter himself. Not many young artists are in the position to tell national television to take a cold shower in a couple hot minutes, but that’s just where McHargue is: he isn’t your archetypal stylist-damaged celebutante or attention-ravenous art star. The 2004 Goldies winner — last sighted at that award’s soiree shaking his sharp, narrow suit on the dance floor alongside beat legend Bruce Conner and hip-hop crew Sistaz of the Underground — warily considered this interview and then consented.
“Seriously, it’s crazy. Recently, all sorts of different people have been interested in me for different reasons. It’s pretty strange,” he marvels, leaning back in front of a recent large acrylic ready to be packed off to New York, where it will be exhibited in “Control Group,” McHargue’s solo show at Metro Pictures opening Sept. 21. CBS Sunday Morning was one such caller. “But I just said, ‘Fuck you.’ Kinda. I told ’em straight up, ‘I was, like, y’know, really flattered, but I don’t know if your demographic is exactly who I even want to know who I am.’
“If I’m doing that, I’m probably doing something wrong!”
It may sound like the arrogance of youth on line one — who wants to cater to the crowd who’s even up on Sunday morning? Yet it’s gotten to the point where Devendra Banhart (who described McHargue as his “favorite living artist”), Interview, and even Spin have lined up to lavish praise on the 24-year-old artist, with the last naming him one of the top 25 hottest people under 25, beating out Nicole Richie. “Outrageous!” exclaims McHargue. “Seriously, I swear to god. I don’t know what the general consensus is. It’s weird. It’s strange. I’m just a normal person who makes artwork and just happens to be an artist for a living.”
Perhaps this miniature media frenzy is linked to the fact that the self-taught McHargue is so young and makes such intriguing, increasingly exploratory work: paintings and drawings that swing between clean, Byzantine sophistication and fresh, obsessive energy, bright pop abstraction and darkly foreshadowed storytelling. His latest extravagantly hued, sprawling acrylics — a new series that differs from those in McHargue’s “Air above Mountains” show (named after a Cecil Taylor free-jazz disc) at Galerie Emmanuel Perriton in Paris earlier this year — revolve around true crime and headline news narratives populated by murderous mothers, power plants, dozing or dead kittens, and sinuous streams of toxic runoff. Picture the Yellow Submarine adrift beneath a mushroom-clouded sky.
As ripe and exciting as this week’s tabloids and likely less perishable, the canvases reflect McHargue’s latest ideas and techniques. “I’m just basically trying to constantly be expanding the scope of my practice or something,” he says, puttering around the tidy studios in the top-floor flat he shares with another artist — this despite the fact that his works have landed in such collections as the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. “I guess the long and short of it is now I’ve got tons of time on my hands and all I have to do is make art, so the bottom line is to just continue making better and better pieces.”
Psychedelic is almost too easy an adjective for his enigmatic imagery, the natural product of a childhood steeped in art, courtesy of his watercolorist mother. “That would make me instinctively want to change what I was doing,” says McHargue, who moved to San Francisco from his native Portland, Ore., five years ago. “I understand that people want to belong to cliques. But that’s not where my head’s at right now. I would just like to make some paintings that are insane to look at. Just hurt some people’s brains a little bit.”
Small pieces by Barry McGee, Will Yackulic, and others are clustered on the mantel above a Roland SP808, a drum machine, and an iPod emanating keening noise collaborations between McHargue and fellow artist Ry Fyan — the work of what McHargue describes as a Whitehouse tribute band. Some of the music will probably be released later this year by Tarentel’s Jef Cantu, along with a Japanese book surveying his work. “I’m just a hardcore music fanatic all across the board,” the artist explains. “Luckily, I live close to Aquarius, and I collect records too. That’s where I get inspiration for the work, from listening to music. It’s really, really important to me.”
And it’s an increasingly necessary hobby — preferable, he cracks wise, to “photography or yachting.” After working almost continuously for more than a year on consecutive gallery shows and finding himself on a rotating exhibition schedule stretching to 2012 (2007 will see shows at Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco and Hiromi Yoshi Gallery in Tokyo), McHargue is hoping to take it easy at last — following the “Control Group” opening and his partner Tauba Auerbach’s October show at Deitch Projects — and spend his autumn months in New York City. “It’s like all of a sudden I’m totally grown up and doing this all the time,” he says. “I need to cool out. Between now and the fall, I’m just going to kick it.” SFBG
www.supervisionstudy.org
www.metropicturesgallery.com

Yay Area five-oh

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› johnny@sfbg.com
“Before Vanishing: Syrian Short Cinema” A series devoted to films from Syria kicks off with a shorts program that includes work by Oussama Mohammed. (Sept. 7, PFA; see below)
The Mechanical Man The PFA’s vast and expansive series devoted to “The Mechanical Age” includes André Deed’s 1921 science fiction vision of a female crime leader and a robot run amok. The screening features live piano by Juliet Rosenberg. (Sept. 7, PFA)
“Cinemayaat, the Arab Film Festival” This year’s festival opens with the Lebanon-Sweden coproduction Zozo and also includes the US-Palestine documentary Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority, which looks at events before and after Israel’s 1948 occupation of Palestine.
Sept. 8–17. Various venues. (415) 863-1087, www.aff.org
“Global Lens” The traveling fest includes some highly lauded films, such as Stolen Life by Li Shaohong, one of the female directors within China’s Fifth Generation.
Sept. 8–Oct. 4. Various venues. (415) 221-8184, www.globalfilm.org
“MadCat Women’s International Film Festival” MadCat turns 10 this year, and its programming and venues are even more varied. Not to mention deep — literally. 3-D filmmaking by Zoe Beloff and Viewmaster magic courtesy of Greta Snider are just some of the treats in store.
Sept. 12–27. Various venues. (415) 436-9523, www.madcatfilmfestival.org
The Pirate The many forms and facets of piracy comprise another PFA fall series; this entry brings a swashbuckling Gene Kelly and Judy Garland as Manuela, directed by then-husband Vincente Minnelli. (Sept. 13, PFA)
“A Conversation with Ali Kazimi” and Shooting Indians Documentarian Kazimi discusses his work before a screening of his critical look at Edward S. Curtis’s photography. (Sept. 14, PFA)
“The Word and the Image: The Films of Peter Whitehead” The swinging ’60s hit the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as curator Joel Shepard presents the first-ever US retrospective dedicated to the director of Tonight Let’s All Make Love in London. Includes proto–music videos made for Nico, Jimi Hendrix, and others. Smashing! (Sept. 14–28, YBCA; see below)
Edmond Stuart Gordon of Re-Aminator infamy makes a jump from horror into drama — not so surprising, since he’s a friend of David Mamet. Willam H. Macy adds another sad sack to his résumé. (Sept. 15–21, Roxie; see below)
Anxious Animation Other Cinema hosts a celebration for the release of a DVD devoted to local animators Lewis Klahr, Janie Geiser, and others. Expect some work inspired by hellfire prognosticator Jack Chick!
Sept. 16. Other Cinema, 992 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-3890, www.othercinema.com
Kingdom of the Spiders Eight-legged freaks versus two-legged freak William Shatner. I will say no more.
Sept. 17. Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF. (415) 401-7987, www.darkroomsf.com
Landscape Suicide No other living director looks at the American landscape with the direct intent of James Benning; here, he examines two murder cases. (Sept. 19, PFA)
La Promesse and Je Pense à Vous Tracking the brutal coming-of-age of scooter-riding Jérémie Renier, 1997’s La Promesse made the name of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, but Je Pense is a rarely screened earlier work. (Sept. 22, PFA)
Muddy Waters Can’t Be Satisfied Billed as the first authoritative doc about the man who invented electric blues, this plays with Always for Pleasure, a look at New Orleans by the one and only Les Blank. (Sept. 22–26, Roxie)
Rosetta and Falsch The Dardenne brothers’ Rosetta made a splash at Cannes in 1999; Falsch is their surprisingly experimental and nonnaturalistic 1987 debut feature. (Sept. 23, PFA)
loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies A reunion tour movie. (Sept. 29–Oct. 5, Roxie)
American Blackout Ian Inaba’s doc about voter fraud made waves and gathered praise at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival; it gets screened at various houses, followed by a Tosca after-party, in this SF360 citywide event.
Sept. 30. Tosca Café, 242 Columbus, SF. (415) 561-5000, www.sffs.org
Them! “Film in the Fog” turns five, as the SF Film Society unleashes giant mutant ants in the Presidio.
Sept. 30. Main Post Theatre, 99 Moraga, SF. (415) 561-5500, www.sffs.org
“Zombie-Rama” Before Bob Clark made Black Christmas, Porky’s, and A Christmas Story, he made Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things. The ending is as scary as the title is funny.
Oct. 5. Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net
“Swinging Scandinavia: How Nordic Sex Cinema Conquered the World” Jack Stevenson presents a “Totally Uncensored” clip show about the scandalous impact of Scandinavian cinema on uptight US mores and also screens some rare cousins of I Am Curious (Yellow). (Oct. 5 and 7, YBCA)
“Mill Valley Film Festival” Why go to Toronto when many of the fall’s biggest Hollywood and international releases come to Mill Valley? The festival turns 29 this year.
Oct. 5–15, 2006. Various venues. (415) 383-5256, www.mvff.org
“Fighting the Walking Dead” Jesse Ficks brings They Live to the Castro Theatre. Thank you, Jesse. (Oct. 6, Castro; see below)
Phantom of the Paradise Forget the buildup for director Brian de Palma’s Black Dahlia and get ready for a Paul Williams weekend. This is screening while Williams is performing at the Plush Room.
Oct. 6. Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-1124, www.thelatenightpictureshow.com
Calvaire Belgium makes horror movies too. This one is billed as a cross between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance — a crossbreeding combo that’s popular these days. (Oct. 6–12, Roxie)
Black Girl Tragic and so sharp-eyed that its images can cut you, Ousmane Sembene’s 1966 film is the masterpiece the white caps of the French new wave never thought to make. It kicks off a series devoted to the director. (Oct. 7, PFA)
“Animal Charm’s Golden Digest and Brian Boyce” Boyce is the genius behind America’s Biggest Dick, starring Dick Cheney as Scarface. Animal Charm have made some of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.
Oct. 7. Other Cinema, 992 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-3890, www.othercinema.com
Madame X, an Absolute Ruler Feminist director Ulrike Ottinger envisions a Madame X much different from Lana Turner’s — hers is a pirate. (Oct. 11, PFA)
“The Horrifying 1980s … in 3-D” Molly Ringwald (in Spacehunter), a killer shark (in Jaws 3-D), and Jason (in Friday the 13th Part 3: 3-D) vie for dominance in this “Midnites for Maniacs” three-dimensional triple bill. (Oct. 13, Castro)
“Dual System 3-D Series” This program leans toward creature features, from Creature from the Black Lagoon to the ape astronaut of Robot Monster to Cat-Women on the Moon. (Oct. 14–19, Castro)
“Early Baillie and the Canyon CinemaNews Years” This program calls attention to great looks at this city by Baillie (whom Apichatpong Weerasethakul cites as a major influence) and also highlights the importance of Canyon Cinema. (Oct. 15, YBCA)
“War and Video Games” NY-based film critic Ed Halter presents a lecture based on From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games, his new book. (Oct. 17, PFA)
Santo Domingo Blues The Red Vic premieres a doc about bachata and the form’s “supreme king of bitterness,” Luis Vargas.
Oct. 18–19. Red Vic, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.redvicmoviehouse.com
“Monster-Rama” The Devil-ettes, live and in person, and Werewolf vs. the Vampire Women, on the screen, thanks to Will “the Thrill” Viharo.
Oct. 19. Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net
“Spinning Up, Slowing Down”: Industry Celebrates the Machine” Local film archivist Rick Prelinger presents six short films that epitomize the United States’ machine mania, including one in which mechanical puppets demonstrate free enterprise. (Oct. 19, PFA)
The Last Movie Hmmm, part two: OK, let’s see here, Dennis Hopper’s 1971 film gets a screening after he personally strikes a new print … (Oct. 20–21, YBCA)
What Is It? and “The Very First Crispin Glover Film Festival in the World” … and on the same weekend, Hopper’s River’s Edge costar Glover gets a freak hero’s welcome at the Castro. Sounds like they might cross paths. (Oct. 20–22, Castro)
I Like Killing Flies And I completely fucking love Matt Mahurin’s documentary about the Greenwich Village restaurant Shopsin’s, possibly the most characterful, funny, and poignant documentary I’ve seen in the last few years. (Oct. 20–26, Roxie)
“Miranda July Live” Want to be part of the process that will produce Miranda July’s next film? If so, you can collaborate with her in this multimedia presentation about love, obsession, and heartbreak.
Oct. 23–24. Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida, SF. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org)
The Case of the Grinning Cat This 2004 film by Chris Marker receives a Bay Area premiere, screening with Junkopia, his 1981 look at a public art project in Emeryville. (Oct. 27, PFA)
The Monster Squad The folks (including Peaches Christ) behind the Late Night Picture Show say that this 1987 flick is the most underrated monster movie ever.
Oct. 27–28. Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-1124, www.thelatenightpictureshow.com
Neighborhood Watch Résumés don’t get any better than Graeme Whifler’s — after all, he helped write the screenplay to Dr. Giggles. His rancid directorial debut brings the grindhouse gag factor to the Pacific Film Archive. (Oct. 29, PFA)
“Grindhouse Double Feature” See The Beyond with an audience of Lucio Fulci maniacs. (Oct. 30, Castro)
“Hara Kazuo” Joel Shepard programs a series devoted to Kazuo, including his 1969 film tracing the protest efforts of Okuzaki Kenzó, who slung marbles at Emperor Hirohito. (November, YBCA)
“International Latino Film Festival” This growing fest reaches a decade and counting — expect some celebrations.
Nov. 3–19. Various venues. (415) 454-4039, www.utf8ofilmfestival.org
Vegas in Space Midnight Mass makes a rare fall appearance as Peaches Christ brings back Philip Ford’s 1991 local drag science fiction gem.
Nov. 11. Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-1124, www.thelatenightpictureshow.com
“As the Great Earth Rolls On: A Frank O’Hara Birthday Tribute” The birthday of the man who wrote “The Day Lady Died” is celebrated. Includes The Last Clean Shirt, O’Hara’s great collaboration with Alfred Leslie.
Nov. 17. California College of the Arts, 1111 Eighth St., SF. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org
Sites and Silences A shout-out to A.C. Thompson for his work with Trevor Paglen on the well-titled Torture Taxi, which helped generate this multimedia presentation by Paglen. (Nov. 19, YBCA)
“Kihachiro Kawamoto” One of cinema’s ultimate puppet masters receives a retrospective. (December, YBCA)
“Silent Songs: Three Films by Nathaniel Dorsky” The SF-based poet of silent film (and essayist behind the excellent book Devotional Cinema) screens a trio of new works. (Dec. 10, YBCA)
CASTRO THEATRE
429 Castro, SF
(415) 621-6120
www.castrotheatre.com
PFA THEATER
2575 Bancroft, Berk.
(510) 642-5249
www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
ROXIE FILM CENTER
3317 16th St., SF
(415) 863-1087
www.roxie.com
YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS (YBCA)
Screening room, 701 Mission, SF
(415) 978-2787
www.ybca.org\ SFBG

THURSDAY

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Aug 3

Visual Art

“Altered Barbie”

Barbie has undergone many changes since her first appearance in 1959, when she was a teenage fashion model. But she’s never been to hell or lived in a trailer park. Nor has she been the Virgin Mary, a stripper, or a raver – until now. At the fourth annual “Altered Barbie Show,” more than 70 artists will mutate the American icon. Through the use of painting, photography, collage, sculpture, and video, artists will reinterpret and reassemble the idealized plastic doll. The gallery reception includes a screening of Susan Stern’s Barbie Nation. (Kellie Ell)

5:30 p.m.
Market Street Gallery
1554 Market, SF
Free
(415) 290-1441
www.marketstreetgallery.com

Performance

Lethe

Renowned San Francisco playwright Octavio Solis takes audiences down the river of forgetfulness this weekend with the world premiere of Lethe, an uncommon collaboration between Bay Area seniors, caregivers, and theater artists, presented by Cornerstone Theater Company and directed by Cornerstone and South Coast Rep’s Juliette Carrillo. Lethe draws its storyline and theme from more than a year’s immersion in discussion about caregiving, memory, and change. Mixing potent drama, sly humor, and original music by composer-musician Beth Custer, Lethe promises a memorable ride into uncharted waters. (Robert Avila)

7:30pm (also Fri/4, 7:30 p.m.; Sat/5, 2:00 p.m.)
Presentation Theater
2350 Turk Blvd
University of San Francisco, SF
Suggested donation $10
1-800-409-5322
www.cornerstonetheater.org

HELLO LARRY

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“My basic photography lesson is this: You frame the perfect composition, exactly like you want it, and then you step forward,” says Larry Clark. “What that does is screw things up a little bit, so they’ll become more real, more like the way you see.”
We’re at a restaurant South of Market, and the man behind the monographs Tulsa and Teenage Lust and the films Kids, Bully, and the new Wassup Rockers is talking when he should be eating. I’m glad, because he has a lot to say. On the car ride to Zuppa, he reminisced about a brief late-1960s spell in San Francisco after an Army stint in Vietnam — once here, Clark’s time included a few Janis Joplin encounters. Once we’ve sat down at the table, when I mention the ties between Wassup Rockers and the underrated 1968 Burt Lancaster vehicle The Swimmer, Clark agrees that Lancaster’s performance is “extremely brave” and then serves up a real whopper: A film publicist once told him that Lancaster had a love affair with Luchino Visconti during the filming of 1963’s The Leopard, and that Lancaster was left an emotional wreck when Visconti dumped him.
Well, when in Rome …
It’s an interesting, clichéd truism to apply to Clark’s work, which doesn’t fit the tired modern sense of gay by any stretch of the imagination but is certainly appreciative of male as well as female allure. In the silly and energetic Wassup Rockers, his distinctive eye rolls with a band of Guatemalan and Salvadoran skateboarders as they travel through Beverly Hills, a gated community that starts to seem more and more like a prison. Wassup is often like a 21st-century version of a Bowery Boys comedy, with Clark (in his words) “riffing off of white people” and “riffing off of pop culture.” Before one of the title characters shares a bubble bath with Janice Dickinson, he and a friend — whose jeans and bulge would make Peter Berlin envious — have a tender tête-à-tête with some Hilton types. “Paris and Nicky were too old for me [when the film started shooting],” Clark jokes.
Born in Oklahoma but sporting a huggable Brooklynese accent and looking surprisingly healthy and sweet (if worn) at 63, Clark is still very much a child at heart, the nonsnarky and better-dressed real-life answer to Strangers With Candy’s former smack user and permanent high schooler Jerri Blank. Wassup Rockers is his third collaboration with cinematographer Steve Gainer, who picked up tricks of the trade working under Roger Corman in the 1990s. The link is an apt one because Clark is still working with genre in the Corman teensploitation or celebration-of-youth-culture sense.
Does Clark think his one-step-forward approach to camerawork dates back to the early 1970s and the speed-shooting and baby-death days of Tulsa? “It was a little more formal then,” he says, adding that he was more influenced by Robert Frank imitators — and by “the best,” Walker Evans — than by Frank, whom he knew little about when he made the book. “Tulsa is really about rooms. We’re in very small rooms, and we’re very close.”
Going back to those rooms means going down with Janis again; as the fellow Clark enthusiast with me observantly notes, a Joplin poster appears on the wall of one of those dark spaces. “The first time I met her it was early in the morning and we were walking across that big park in Haight Ashbury,” Clark recalls. “She was with someone from Big Brother [and the Holding Company] and I was with someone who knew him. I remember she was smoking a cigarette and she was holding it like this” — he imitates a loose gesture — “and her fingers were all yellow, and she said, ‘I really like these Pall Malls because you smoke them right down to the end like a junkie.’”
Clark hasn’t gone right down to the end like a junkie, though Tulsa certainly pictures exactly that type of fate with a void-gazing ferocity that no television episode of Intervention will match. It’s crazy, really, how many ways mass media — fashion and advertising and “indie” film in particular — have both copped and watered down or misinterpreted Clark’s aesthetics (a bit similar to what’s happened with John Waters, though perhaps even more subtly pervasive). The producers of MTV’s Laguna Beach and The Hills, original offender Calvin Klein, and now American Apparel owe him a mint’s worth of royalties for their third-rate rip-offs. At least the latter recently threw a huge party for the cast members of Wassup Rockers and their families, complete with live performances by the band featured in the movie.
If Clark is still thriving in art and life today, some credit should be given to his girlfriend, Tiffany Limos, whose candid criticism of Clark’s past movies doubtless informed his approach to Wassup Rockers. Limos is too young to be responsible for the genius choice of soundtracking Clark’s recent mammoth Manhattan gallery show, “Punk Picasso,” with Nancy Wilson’s But Beautiful, but she did tell him to place a hilarious video installation of her beyond-hyper bichon frise near the show’s end, an element that is echoed in a funny dog-attack scene within Wassup Rockers.
“That video is like the real Larry Clark,” Clark says with a laugh. “Tiff was coming home, and when she would leave I would always tell her that I could not say her name while she was gone because the dog would go crazy. I thought, ‘I’m going to show Tiffany what happens when I say her name.’ But when I made the video, never in my wildest imagination did I think I would use it. It’s funny because I’m talking to this dog like it’s a human being. Sammy runs into the street and I scold him — ‘You’re going to get killed!’ — just like I was talking to a kid.”
Limos also got her friend the fashion designer Jeremy Scott cast in Wassup Rockers as a lascivious gay photographer who looks like Perry Farrell and has a mansion full of horrendous steroidy physique shots (actual work by Tom Bianchi). “Tiffany would bring these photos of Jeremy home,” says Clark. “We had this private joke about him that if you pointed a camera at him he would always do something incredible. Then we would see photos of him at parties in magazines, and true to form, he would always be making some flamboyant pose.”
As the interview winds down, the man who began with a photography tip says he now prefers making films. Then Clark makes a final distinction. “I was never really a photographer,” he says. “I was an artist and a storyteller [when I started out with Tulsa], and I was using photography because that’s what I had.” (Johnny Ray Huston)
WASSUP ROCKERS
Opens Fri/7
Lumiere Theatre
1572 California, SF
(415) 267-4893
Shattuck Cinemas
2230 Shattuck, Berk.
(510) 464-5980
See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com
for showtimes
www.wassuprockers.net

Arctic vessels

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› johnny@sfbg.com

The significance of a different numeral is noted near the finale, but the number in the title of Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint 9 makes it clear that the film is but one chapter within a gargantuan project that Barney has been working on for close to two decades, the first seven entries an array of vitrines and video installations predating and possibly even anticipating his Cremaster cycle. Barney has stated that this ninth chapter signals a shift away from the libidinal restraints and hypertrophy (a persistent muscular motif) of earlier installments, into a condition of atrophy. Got that?

A skeptic could view all of the above as a deflective shield used to ward off any criticism that is rooted in basic cinematic practice. How can Drawing Restraint 9‘s ponderously juxtaposed ceremonies and abundant array of symbols — from the many variations of the artist’s signature bisected ovular "field emblem" to the multiple manifestations of whales and other sea creatures — be analyzed if they are mere parts of a broader cosmology that the filmgoer isn’t taking into consideration? The worlds of Barney tend to be epically expansive in scope, making even Wagnerian opera seem smallish in terms of narrative configuration (though not in terms of emotional currency). Yet for all their majestic dives into goopy baths and slippery slides through lubricated passages, they remain clinically hermetic.

Perhaps the most expensive wedding video ever made, Drawing Restraint 9 isn’t short on spectacle. Origami-wrapped fossils, an "Ambergris March" street parade, women in white cooing as they dive for pearls, citrus-scented baths, and an enormous petroleum Jell-O mold are just a handful of the first half’s ingredients. Most of these somehow relate to the "Occidental Guests" (Barney and real-life mate Björk), who are bathed and shaved — and, in Björk’s case, given hair extensions that incorporate objects from the ocean and forest floors — before being adorned in furry variants of Shinto marriage garments. Ultimately, the couple meet, mute, at the end of one chilly hall in the Japanese whaling vessel Nisshin Maru before joining a tea master in a ceremony that gives way to an aquatic mating dance. Then out come the flensing knives.

Barney and Björk might be exploring a kinship between Japan’s and Iceland’s cultures. Is the result expensive indulgence? Yes. While the discourse around Barney’s museum exhibitions tends toward solemnity, his ventures into film have met with some irreverence that, however knee-jerk, might also be deserved. In a 2005 interview conducted by Glen Helfand for the local film publication Release Print, J. Hoberman clearly elucidated a film-focused critique of Barney, labeling his "big-budget avant-garde" movies "deeply uninteresting" in relation to the "crazy, quasi-narrative" (though usually more concise) works made in the ’60s and ’70s by underground filmmakers such as Jack Smith, Ken Jacobs, and Bruce Conner. Certainly, any spellbinding aspects of Barney’s visuals seem schematic in relation to Kenneth Anger’s or Maya Deren’s alchemy.

One could — perhaps unfairly — make a case that Drawing Restraint 9 is an act of class war against similar, barely funded efforts on film or video today, but more tellingly, it also comes up wanting in relation to similarly expensive efforts, whether they be "experimental" short works — the stunning aerial photography in Olivo Barbieri’s San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award New Visions winner site specific_LAS VEGAS 05 makes Barney’s seem clumsy and unimaginative — or the type of contemporary "art" film that lives primarily on the festival circuit. Both Tsai Ming-liang and Barney have created interlinked cinematic works that spotlight masculinity, but Tsai’s delve into the psyche more acutely than Barney’s phallic drag routines. Tsai’s work is also superior in cinematic terms: Both the editing and the mise-en-scène in his films deliver comic punch lines and emotional sucker punches. At the moment, at least, those are two things that Barney just can’t buy. SFBG

DRAWING RESTRAINT 9

Opens Fri/12

Bridge Theatre

3010 Geary, SF

(415) 267-4893

www.landmarktheatres.com

www.drawingrestraint.net

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