Police

Whose voice?

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Whose voice?

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FILM In 1981 Deborah Kaufman founded the nation’s first Jewish Film Festival in San Francisco. Thirteen years later, with similar festivals burgeoning in the wake of SFJFF’s success — there are now over a hundred around the globe — she left the festival to make documentaries of her own with life partner and veteran local TV producer Alan Snitow.

Their latest, Between Two Worlds, which opens at the Roxie this Friday while playing festival dates, could hardly be a more personal project for the duo. Both longtime activists in various Jewish, political, and media spheres, Snitow and Kaufman were struck — as were plenty of others — by the rancor that erupted over the SFJFF’s 2009 screening of Simone Bitton’s Rachel. That doc was about Rachel Corrie, a young American International Solidarity Movement member killed in 2003 by an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer while standing between it and a Palestinian home on the Gaza Strip.

As different sides argued whether Corrie’s death was accidental or deliberate, she became a lightning rod for ever-escalating tensions between positions within and without the U.S. Jewish populace on Israeli policy, settlements, Palestinian rights, and more — with not a few commentators amplifying the conservative notion that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, even (or especially) when it comes from Jews themselves.

People who hadn’t seen (and boasted they wouldn’t see) the strenuously even-handed Rachel called the documentary an “anti-Israeli hate fest” akin to “Holocaust denial,” its SFJFF inclusion “symptomatic of a demonic strategy” by “anti-Semites on the left.”

Stunned SFJFF executive director Peter Stein (who’s leaving the festival after its current edition) decried Jewish community “thought police” who pressured the institution and those connected to it with defunding and boycotting threats. The festival attempted damage control by inviting a public foe of the screening (Dr. Michael Harris of StandWithUs/Voice for Israel) to speak before it, which only amplified the hostile rhetoric.

Seeing the festival being used by extremists on both sides became a natural starting point for Between Two Worlds, which takes a many-sided, questioning, sometimes humorous look at culture wars in today’s American Jewish population. It touches on everything from divestment debates at UC Berkeley to the disputed site of a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem (atop a 600-year-old Muslim cemetery), from the tradition of progressive liberalism among U.S. Jews to rising ethnic-identity worries spawned by intermarriage and declining birth rates.

The fundamental question here, as Kaufman puts it, is “Who is entitled to speak for the tribe?” For the first time, the filmmakers have made themselves part of the subject matter, exploring their own very different personal and familial experiences to illustrate the diversity of the U.S. Jewish experience. Snitow’s mother had to hide her prior Communist Party membership to remain active in social-justice movements after the 1940s, while Kaufman’s father was a devoted Zionist from his Viennese childhood who had to adjust to offspring like “Tevye’s daughters gone wild,” including one who converted to Islam.

They’re clearly in sympathy with other documentary interviewees insisting that one core of Jewish identity has been, and should remain, a stance against absolutism and injustice towards any peoples. Between their SFJFF screenings the filmmakers chatted with the Guardian.

 

SFBG Is the Bay Area still a bastion of Jewish liberalism, relatively speaking?

Deborah Kaufman What we saw at the festival during the Rachel uproar was a collapse of the center. It was really a moment when the extremes were at battle and the center simply disappeared. That’s what was and is so disturbing. A kind of apathy where the moderates just throw up their hands and walk away from what’s become a very toxic debate.

Alan Snitow It’s not that the Bay Area is unique to boo a so-called “pro-Israel” speaker [like Harris]. It’s that the Bay Area has maintained an open debate about Israeli policies when other Jewish communities never countenanced such debate from the get-go. Rachel was not shown in other Jewish film festivals around the country because they are already creatures of conservative donors. The aim in this power grab by the right in San Francisco was and is to silence people and institutions like the festival that oppose a McCarthyite crackdown in a remaining bastion of free speech. And this is being mirrored in Israel itself where the Knesset recently passed a law punishing anyone who publicly supports the idea of a boycott of the West Bank settlements.

I think we also have to question this claim of “pro-Israel.” All criticism of Israel’s occupation is now being branded as “anti-Israel.” “Pro-Israel” has come to mean pro the policies of the current, most right-wing government in Israeli history — a government that is now advocating the truly Orwellian position that there is no occupation at all! That’s not what pro-Israel or Zionist ever meant except to some ideologues on the far right.

 

SFBG Had you already been thinking about somehow addressing political rifts in the Jewish community before the SFJFF fracas?  

DK We began the film over a year before the SFJFF fracas. We were focusing more on Jewish identity than politics — looking at intermarriage, hybrid identities, a new generation of American Jews — we wanted to re-tell the Biblical story of Ruth, and we were following a fantastic feminist-queer internet discussion called “Rabbis: Out Of My Uterus!” that we thought would be fun to film. But we kept getting swept into the Israel vortex and realized we had to address the question of dissent and who speaks for the Jewish community at this historical moment for the film to be relevant.

Between Two Worlds opens Fri/5 at the Roxie.

Time served

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Time served

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FILM In 1983, Deborah Peagler was sentenced to 25 years to life for first-degree murder in the death of her former boyfriend Oliver Wilson, whom two local L.A. gang members had strangled — supposedly at her behest, to access Wilson’s life insurance money.

Encouraged to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty, Peagler had a juryless trial and was quickly shunted off to prison. There she was repeatedly turned down for parole despite spending the years of her incarceration as a church leader, mentor, and tutor to other inmates; a highly skilled electronics-assembly supervisor; earning two degrees; and sustaining good long-distance relationships with her two daughters. Even most of the victim’s surviving relatives had come to believe she should have been released years earlier. For her part, Peagler always claimed she intended Wilson to be beaten, but had not asked for or condoned his murder.

What was missing (or suppressed) from the original trial were the myriad reasons she’d wanted to frighten him away from herself and her family. She was a pregnant 15-year-old high schooler when she first met Wilson, a charismatic sometimes model who charmed her by taking a fatherly interest in her firstborn. But when money got tight, he abruptly insisted she turn tricks. Initial refusal brought beatings that only increased over time despite her reluctant subsequent acquiescence, stopping just briefly when she bore his own child.

Soon Wilson was dealing drugs, then taking drugs; he kept Peagler a virtual prisoner, refusing to let her speak to friends or relatives. When an eviction forced their temporary separation, he stormed into her family’s home with two armed men, threatening to kill them all. For this he was jailed exactly one night, making new death threats in retaliation for the police being called at all. At this point in 1982 she contacted the Crips members (who viewed that home invasion by an outsider in their territory as a serious offense) to frighten Wilson away before he actually killed anyone.

At the time of her trial, testimony on “battering and its effects” were not allowed as circumstantial evidence in California courts, despite — as we now know — the overwhelming majority of U.S. women being victims of domestic violence, rape, or other abuses. (In 1979 President Carter gave a huge boost to the nascent overall cause by establishing the Federal Office of Domestic Violence. Two years later, Reagan shuttered it.) In 1992 that changed, allowing new cases to benefit — although cases already tried could not be re-opened with evidence previously excluded.

A decade later that, too, changed. Walnut Creek attorneys Nadia Costa and Joshua Safran agreed to take on Peagler’s case pro bono, stepping well outside their usual land-use litigation. They launched what turned into years of effort during which her cause becomes a public cause célèbre, and indications emerge of some very ugly misconduct by the District Attorney’s office.

This battle — all the above is just a starting point — is chronicled in Bay Area filmmaker Yoav Potash’s documentary Crime After Crime. It’s a story with plenty of lurid and tragic revelations, ranging from child sexual abuse to terminal illness to hidden evidence of perjury. After a certain point it becomes clear the D.A.’s office isn’t opposing Peagler’s release because she’s guilty as charged (though nearly everyone by then agrees she should have been tried for manslaughter with a maximum sentence of six years), but because it has dirty secrets of its own to protect and deny.

Crime After Crime won’t exactly stoke your faith in the justice system. But this thoroughly engrossing document does affirm that there is hope good people can and will fight the system — even if, alas, it sometimes takes nearly three to score one bittersweet win.

Crime After Crime opens Fri/5 in Bay Area theaters.

Film Listings

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

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

The 31st San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs through August 8 at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1119 Fourth St., San Rafael; Oshman Jewish Community Center, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto; and Roda Theatre at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison, Berk. For tickets (most shows $12) and a full schedule, visit www.sfjff.org.

OPENING

*Between Two Worlds See “Whose Voice?” (1:10) Roxie.

The Change-Up This brom-com just might go down as the one where Ryan Reynolds proves his acting chops by playing a creepy Peter Pan and an upstanding family man with Jason Bateman’s physical tics. And it’s almost good enough to wipe out those terrible memories of Reynolds’ dances with CGI in Green Lantern. Yet 2011 summer movies’ MVP Bateman still manages to steal all the best scenes as both the straight man and the kidult-in-a-grown-up’s-body: namely those R-pushing moments he’s changing diapers and taking a face full of baby poo, coming on like a pink-Polo’d jackass at a big-money meeting, and watching the woman of his dreams saunter into the can to cope with backfiring Thai grub. It’s the stuff of fantasy — as well as some clever writing and considerable buddy-buddy chemistry — when career-climbing, do-right lawyer Dave (Bateman) and perpetual playa Mitch (Reynolds) voice envy for each other’s lives while pissing into a magical fountain. The old switcheroo inexplicably occurs the next morning when each chum find himself in the other’s body. Fortunately the Freaky Friday (1976) kookiness that ensues rises a bit above the safe norm by plunging headlong into all the cringey discomfort that comes with watching babies toy with cleavers and electrical outlets. The Change-Up is completely ludicrous, fo’ sho’, and never really strays from the reassuring confines of its story arc, but the laughs accompanying its morning-afters will satisfy more than any new Hangover. (1:52) (Chun)

*Crime After Crime See “Time Served.” (1:33) Elmwood, Roxie, Smith Rafael.

The Devil’s Double Lee Tamahori directs Dominic Cooper in this 80s-set drama about Saddam Hussein’s sinister son Uday and his reluctant body double. (1:48)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

*Magic Trip How to bottle the lysergic thrills and chills of a monumental road trip that marked the close of the Beat Generation era and the dawn of the hippie years? Remarkably, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters did just that — and with the help of directors-writers Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney, their efforts have been retrieved from the swamps of yesterday. You don’t have to be a Summer of Love easy rider, Kesey reader, Deadhead, or acid gobbler to appreciate the freewheeling energy and epoch-making antics of Magic Trip, which arrives well-outfitted in much invaluable, real-deal-y footage and audio of Kesey, driver Neal Cassady, and the proto-Merry Pranksters, shot during their 1964 trip from La Honda to the World’s Fair in NYC, off, on, and hovering 10 miles above the paint-strewn school bus named Further. Already viewed through the lens of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the trip unfolds in all its truly weird, silly, LSD-laden, improvised, awkward, flailing, freeing glory, as the filmmakers gracefully sidestep the audio sync problems that drove Kesey to give up on assembling the film himself. Instead Ellwood and Gibney contextualize the hijinks with voice-over interviews from Pranksters prepped to look back on the journey’s consciousness-expanding trips, both good and bad, and imaginatively animate memorable asides, including a tape recording of Kesey’s first LSD experiments as a Stanford student. “What long, strange trip,” indeed — and this affectionate document viscerally, wonderfully conveys why it changed lives as well. (1:47) Embarcadero. (Chun)

*Pianomania You think your job is detail-oriented, your bosses fussy? Walk a mile in the shoes of Stefan Knupfer, a Steinway technician — i.e. “piano tuner” — who must attend every minute aspect of each instrument’s inner workings, surrounding physical spaces, and their temperature fluctuations, idiosyncratically demanding players, etc. when preparing for either a live performance or studio session. “When I see the kind of life pianists have, I am very happy I can get off the stage when the public comes,” Knupfer explains. Nonetheless, he’s so dedicated to his job he has regular nightmares about strings breaking. His good-humored expertise and ingenuity make for engaging company on a multi-city itinerary, during which we meet a roll call of world-class virtuosi. Following this affable, unflappable protagonist over a year’s course, with an important Bach recording project at its end, this beautifully assembled documentary (a rare one these days shot on 35mm) by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis should fascinate even those not especially attuned to classical music. (1:33) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes Fun fact: according to this origin story starring James Franco, the first supersmart apes were bred right here in San Francisco. (1:50)

Sarah’s Key Kristen Scott Thomas stars as a journalist in France who becomes deeply involved in a story she’s researching about the Jewish family forced by Nazis to vacate the home she now lives in. (1:42) Embarcadero.

ONGOING

Another Earth After serving a prison sentence for a youthful drunk-driving incident that killed two passengers in another car, Rhoda (Brit Marling) emerges no longer a blithe party girl but a haunted loner who prefers working as a high school janitor. Obsessed by her crime, she starts spying on the man it had left widowed and childless, a onetime composer (William Mapother) who like her has retreated into a solitary shell of depression. She finds a way to integrate herself (without revealing her identity) into his threadbare current existence, the two of them bonding over fascination with a newly discovered planet that appears the exact duplicate of Earth — complete with the possibility of our doubles living a parallel existence there. You can take Mike Cahill’s modestly scaled U.S. indie feature (cowritten with actor Marling) as a familiar drama about grief and repentance with a novel gloss of sci-fi, or as a sci-fi story with unusual attention to character emotions and almost no need of fantasy FX. Either way, it’s earnest, well-acted and interesting if not quite memorable; as has been noted elsewhere, the material could have fit just as effectively into a half-hour Twilight Zone episode. (1:32) Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*Attack the Block The Goonies go to a South London projects, with more gore, guts, and gumption? With good reason, writer, director, and Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg cohort Joe Cornish’s own project, Attack the Block, has been getting raves at fests for its effortless, energetic originality, discernible through its thick, glottal stop-chomping, Jafaican-draped local brogue. The question posed, ever so entertainingly: what happens when you pit the toughest kids on the block against a ferocious pack of outer-space critters — not quite out to serve man but rather sever him limb from limb? We start out seeing this gang of at-risk, risk-taking youth through the peepers of a vulnerable female mugging victim and neighbor, Sam (Jodie Whittaker)—they seem as scary as any alien invader and she wants to bring down the full force of the law on them. But the pack, led by Moses (John Boyega, who charismatically scowls like a young 50 Cent), has more pressing matters at hand: a mysterious creature has come crashing down from out of the sky, and naturally, being nasty terrors, they kill it, bringing down a intergalactic shit storm of trouble. Their favorite refuge: the top-floor weed room overseen by Ron (Pegg sidekick Nick Frost), where they attempt to suss out why they’ve become the prime prey for wolfish aliens out for blood. Throw in chills, bike chases, a resourceful use of elevators and dumpsters, and an epic, eerie dubstep theme by Basement Jaxx, and you have a very fun horror-thriller that declines to preach but manages to bring home a message reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead (1968). Consider this a whole-hearted, double-fisted antidote to the fearful vigilantism of films like 2009’s Harry Brown. (1:28) Metreon. (Chun)

*Beginners There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Mélanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. (1:44) Elmwood, Lumiere. (Peitzman)

Bride Flight Who doesn’t love a sweeping Dutch period piece? Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight is pure melodrama soup, enough to give even the most devout arthouse-goer the bloats. Emigrating from post-World War II Holland to New Zealand with two gal pals, the sweetly staid Ada (Karina Smulders) falls for smarm-ball Frank (Waldemar Torenstra, the Dutchman’s James Franco) and kind of joins the mile high club to the behest of her conscience. The women arrive with emotional baggage and carry-ons of the uterine kind. As the harem adjusts to the country mores of the Highlands, Frank tries a poke at all of them in a series of sex scenes more moldy than smoldery. This Flight, set to a plodding score and stuffy mise-en-scene, never quite leaves the runway. Not to mention the whole picture, pale as a corpse, resembles one of those old-timey photographs of your great grandma’s wedding. These kinds of pastoral romances ought to be put out to, well, pasture. (2:10) Opera Plaza. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Buck This documentary paints a portrait of horse trainer Buck Brannaman as a sort of modern-day sage, a sentimental cowboy who helps “horses with people problems.” Brannaman has transcended a background of hardship and abuse to become a happy family man who makes a difference for horses and their owners all over the country with his unconventional, humane colt-starting clinics. Though he doesn’t actually whisper to horses, he served as an advisor and inspiration for Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998). Director Cindy Meehl focuses generously on her saintly subject’s bits of wisdom in and out of a horse-training setting — e.g. “Everything you do with a horse is a dance” — as well as heartfelt commentary from friends and colleagues. In the harrowing final act of the film, Brannaman deals with a particularly unruly horse and his troubled owner, highlighting the dire and disturbing consequences of improper horse rearing. (1:28) Opera Plaza. (Sam Stander)

*Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff is to a large extent exactly what is sounds like: a well-made documentary on one of cinema’s most prolific and well-regarded cinematographers. Featuring interviews with the elderly Cardiff himself as well as with Martin Scorsese, Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and others, Cameraman examines Cardiff’s career, from his beginnings in 1918 as a child actor through his early innovations with color film, his mastery of lighting, and his brief transition into directing. As much as this is a film about Cardiff, though, it’s also about the collaborative process of filmmaking and the artistry of cinematography. With big-name directors and actors soaking up the headlines, it’s easy to forget the talent behind the camerawork. Cardiff, who passed away in 2009 at the age of 94, was a true artist, as at ease with a lens as with a paintbrush. (1:30) Balboa, Smith Rafael. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

Captain America: The First Avenger OK, Marvel. I could get behind 2008’s Iron Man (last year’s Iron Man 2, not so much), but after Thor and now Captain America, I’m starting to get cynical about this multi-year build-up to the full-on Avengers movie, due in May 2012. Can even a superhero-stuffed movie directed by Joss Whedon live up to all this hype? There’s plenty of time to ponder, and maybe worry a little, with Captain America’s backstory-explaining picture now in theaters. Chris Evans stars as the 90-pound weakling who morphs into a supersoldier, thanks to the World War II-era tinkerings of a scientist (Stanley Tucci) and an inventor (Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man’s dad). The original plan for the musclebound shield-bearer (fighting Nazis, natch) gets waylaid a bit when the newly famous Captain America becomes a PR prop for the U.S. government; it’s abandoned entirely when a worse-than-Hitler foe, in the guise of power-obsessed Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), threatens the world. Directed by Spielberg cohort Joe Johnston, Captain America is gee-whiz enjoyable enough, but it’s very nearly the same movie as Thor, which no amount of Tommy Lee Jones (as a sarcastic army colonel) wisecracks can conceal. And here’s an anti-spoiler: there’s no post-credits surprise in this one, so you can bolt as soon as they start to roll. (2:09) Cerrito, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Cars 2 You pretty much can’t say a bad thing about a Pixar film. Cars 2 is by no means Ratatouille (2007) or Wall-E (2008), but the sequel to the 2006 hit Cars offers plenty of sleek visuals and one-note gags under its hollow hood. If nothing else, Pixar seems to have overcome the dingy, dark glaze that plagues 3-D films. Directors John Lasseter and Joe Ranft return to beloved autos Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and the “extremely American” Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). This time around, secret agents Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) come along for the ride while working to expose sabotage in the alternative fuel industry. Compelling chase sequences, explosions and more than a few jabs at cultural stereotypes follow suit. This is the lightest, silliest Pixar film to date, but you probably don’t have any business seeing it unless you’ve got a kid in tow. (1:52) SF Center. (Lattanzio)

Cowboys and Aliens Here ’tis in a nutshell: the movie’s called Cowboys and Aliens — and that’s exactly, entirely what you’ll get. Director Jon Favreau may never best 2008’s Iron Man (actor Jon Favreau will prob never top 1996’s Swingers, but that’s a debate for another time), but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a good time trying. Cowboys is a genre mash-up in the most literal sense; as the title suggests, it pits Wild West gunslingers (Harrison Ford as a crabby cattleman, Daniel Craig as an amnesiac outlaw) against gold-seeking space invaders who also delight in kidnapping and torturing humans. As stupidly entertaining as it is, this is a textbook example of a pretty OK movie that could have been so much better … if only. If only the alien characters had a little bit more District 9-style personality. If only the story had a shred of suspense — look ye not here for “spooky” and “mysterious;” this shit is 100 percent full-on explosions. If only Craig’s comically fine-tooled physique didn’t outshine his wooden acting. And so forth. (1:58) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that mad or crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Friends With Benefits If you see only one romantic comedy this summer about a sex-sans-pair-bonding pact between a girl and a guy saddled with intimacy issues — well, chances are, if you tend to see movies with premises like this, you probably already saw No Strings Attached. In which case, poor unlucky Friends with Benefits may be filed away in your brain as that other movie about fuckbuddies, the one in which Ashton Kutcher is played by Justin Timberlake and Natalie Portman (in a slightly eerie cosmic echo of last year’s Black Swan) is played by Mila Kunis. But if you see two such movies this summer, and admit it, you probably might, you’ll likely agree that FWB kicks NSA‘s booty call, particularly in the areas of scriptwriting ingenuity, pacing, and the casting subcategory of basic chemistry between romantic leads, with points possibly taken off for shark-jumping use of flash mobs and the fact that the maddeningly sticky song “Closing Time” will now be with you from closing credits ’til doomsday. This is not a searing, psychologically nuanced portrayal of two young people’s struggles to grapple with modern-day sexual mores and their own crippling pathologies — rather, the pair’s emotional baggage mostly seems to be stuffed with packing peanuts, and scenes in which they catalog their sexual proclivities in a humorously businesslike, gently raunchy fashion reveal them to be hearteningly adept at the art of communication. But such moments keep us entertained as the film, salted with light jabs at the genre’s worn-down touchstones yet utterly complicit, depicts the inevitable stages of a non-relationship relationship. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Chances are you aren’t going to jump into the Harry Potter series with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. So while the movie is probably the best Harry Potter film yet, it’s more a fitting conclusion than a standalone film. For fans of the books, there are no real surprises — this is a close adaptation. And for those Harry Potter movie fans who haven’t read the books, shame on you, and kudos if you managed to not get spoiled. It’s hard for me to offer a serious critical analysis of Part 2, because it represents the end of a long and very emotional journey. (Everyone in that audience was crying. Everyone.) I will say that, as was the case in the book, there are a few overdone, schmaltzy moments that aren’t really necessary. But in the context of the series, they’re forgivable — this may not be the great cinematic event of our generation, but Harry Potter as a whole is sure to be one of our most enduring cultural icons. (2:10) Cerrito, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Horrible Bosses Lead by a clearly talented ensemble of comic actors, Horrible Bosses is yet another example of a big-budget summer comedy with a promising conceit (see: Bad Teacher) that fails to deliver anything but crude alms to the lowest common denominator. Seth Gordon directs Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day as three pals fed up with their evil employers (Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston, respectively) so they hatch a plan to have them killed. Because the answer to their problem obviously lies in a dive bar in the “bad part of town,” Jamie Foxx plays Motherfucker Jones, their murder consultant and the film’s most likable character-stereotype. In the tradition of The Hangover (2009) and its ilk of beer-guzzling, frat-boy cousins, Horrible Bosses is a disastrous pile-up of idiocy that’s more vapid than vulgar despite a few amusing performances. See it for no other reason than Michael Bluth and Charlie Kelly on coke. (1:33) Elmwood, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Lattanzio)

Life, Above All It’s tough enough to simply grow up, let alone care for a parent with AIDS and deal with the suspicions and fears of the no-nothing adults all around you. Rising above easy preaching and hand-wringing didacticism, Life, Above All takes as its blueprint the 2004 best-seller by Allan Stratton, Chandra’s Secrets, and makes compelling work of the story of 12-year-old Chandra (Khomotso Manyaka) and her unfortunate family, unable to get effective help amid the thicket of ignorance regarding AIDS in Africa. After her newborn sister dies, Chandra finds her loyalty torn between her bright-eyed best friend Esther (Keaobaka Makanyane), who’s rumored to hooking among the truck drivers in their dusty, sun-scorched rural South African hometown, and her mother (Lerato Mvelase), who listens far too closely to her bourgie friend Mrs. Tafa (an OTT Harriet Manamela), for her own good. Cape Town native director Oliver Schmitz sticks close to the action playing across his actors’ faces, and he’s rewarded, particularly by the graceful Manyaka, in this life-affirmer about little girls forced to shoulder heart-breaking responsibility far too soon. (1:46) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Life in a Day (1:30) Balboa.

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*The Names of Love Arthur (Jacques Gamblin) is a 40-ish scientist being interviewed about the threat of a bird flu epidemic when his radio broadcast is interrupted by 20-something Baya (Sara Forestier), who denounces him on-air as a “fascist” for frightening the public. But then, Baya tends to use that label rather indiscriminately, applying it to anyone who might conceivably have views to the right of the dial — and Arthur is in fact a solid liberal, which means she can bed him for love. As opposed to the many, many other men she beds as a self-described “political whore,” seeking out conservative types in order to seduce them and hopefully induce an idealogical shift by whispering sweet nothings (“Not all Arabs are thieves,” etc.) as they orgasm. Raised by parents whose emotions are so tightly wound his mother won’t acknowledge her parents were Jews killed at Auschwitz, Arthur has a hard time adjusting to a relationship with a lover who is faithful emotionally but sees promiscuity as her propagandic gift to the world. Meanwhile Baya’s largely Algerian family treats garrulous political argument as the very air they breathe. This odd-couple story written by Baya Kasmi and director Michel Leclerc deals with serious issues in both humorous and respectful fashion, making for one of the more novel, delightful and depthed French romantic comedies in a long time. Added plus: lots of antic gratuitous nudity. (1:42) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*NEDs There is bleak, and there is Scottish bleak. Weighed down by class and roundly ignored by apathetic institutions, the non-educated delinquent is the star of writer-director Peter Mullan’s wrenching but delightful NEDS (2010), a dark and curiously fanciful tale of youth in the housing estates of 1970s Glasgow. John McGill (Conor McCarron) is a bright and talented student with high hopes for a future at university until abuse by peers and teachers alike leads him down the well worn path of drinking, fighting, and gang life with the Young Car-Ds, his older brother Benny’s (Joe Szula) crew. The quiet John can’t escape the tide of history that society has set him upon and soon he’s joined the fray, abandoning his academic promise for a life of Doc Martens and concealed blades. As J. McGill so eloquently explains: “Youse want a NED? I’ll gie youse a fucking NED!” (2:03) Balboa. (Berkmoyer)

*Page One: Inside the New York Times When Andrew Rossi’s documentary premiered at Sundance this January, word of mouth on it was respectable but qualified, with nearly everyone opining that it was good … just not what they’d been led to expect. What they expected was (in line with the original subtitle A Year Inside the New York Times) a top-to-bottom overview of how the nation’s most respected — and in some circles resented — arbiter of news, “style,” and culture is created on a day-to-day as well as longer term basis. That’s something that would doubtless fascinate anyone still interested in print media, or even that realm of web media not catering to the ADD nation. But that big picture and the wealth of minute cogs within isn’t Page One‘s subject. Instead, Rossi focuses on the Gray Lady’s wrestling with admittedly fast-changing times in which newspapers and any other information source on paper seem to constitute an endangered species. This particular Times, however, is such a special case that that crisis might better have been explored by training a camera on a less fabled publication, perhaps one of the many that have succumbed to a once unthinkable, market-shrunk mortality in recent years. The film finds its colorful protagonist in David Carr, an ex-crack addict turned media columnist who retains his cranky, nonconformist edge even as he defends the Times itself from the same out-with-the-old cheerleaders who 15 years ago were inflating the dot-com boom till it burst. Facing one particularly smug champion of the blogosphere at a forum, Carr notes that without a few remaining outlets — like the Times — doing the hard work of serious research and reportage, the web would have nothing to purloin or offer but its own unending trivia and gossip. Page One does what it does entertainingly well, but if you’re looking for insight toward this not-dead-yet U.S. institution as a whole, you’d be better off simply picking up this week’s Sunday edition and reading every last word. (1:28) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

The Smurfs in 3D (1:43) 1000 Van Ness.

*Tabloid Taking a break from loftier subjects, Errol Morris’ latest documentary simply finds a whopper of a story and lets the principal participant tell her side of it — one we gradually realize may be very far from the real truth. In 1978 former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney flew to England, where the Mormon boy she’d grown infatuated with had been posted for missionary work by his church. What ensued became a U.K. tabloid sensation, as the glamorous, not at all publicity-shy Yankee attracted accusations of kidnapping, imprisonment, attempted rape and more. Her victim of love, one Kirk Anderson, is not heard from here — presumably he’s been trying to live down an embarrassing life chapter ever since. But we do hear from others who shed considerable light on the now middle-aged McKinney’s continued protestations that it was all just one big misunderstanding. Most importantly, we hear from the lady herself — and she is colorful, unflappable, unapologetic, and quite possibly stone-cold nuts. (1:28) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon I’ll never understand the wisdom behind epic-length children’s movies. What child — or adult, for that matter — wants to sit through 154 minutes of assaultive popcorn entertainment? It’s an especially confounding decision for this third installment in the Transformers franchise because there’s a fantastic 90-minute movie in there, undone at every turn by some of the worst jokes, most pointless characters, and most hateful cultural politics you’re likely to see this summer. But when I say a fantastic movie, I mean a fantastic movie. It took two very expensive earlier attempts before director Michael Bay figured out that big things require a big canvas. Every shot of Dark of the Moon‘s predecessors seemed designed to hide their effects by crowding the screen. Finally we get the full view — the scale is now rightly calibrated to operatic and ridiculous. The marquee set pieces are inspired and terrifying, eliciting a sense of vertigo that’s earned for once, not imposed by the editing. The human hijinks are less consistent but ingratiatingly batshit, and without resorting to preening self-awareness and elaborately contrived mea culpas. But unfortunately Bay is too unapologetic even to walk back the ethnic buffoonery that not only upsets hippies like me but also seems defiantly disharmonious with the movie he’s trying to make. Bay is like that guy at the party who thinks amping up the racism will prove he’s not a racist. It’s that kind of garbage (plus, I guess, some universal primal hatred of Shia LaBeouf that I don’t really get) that makes people dismiss these movies wholesale. This time it’s just not deserved. I wouldn’t want to meet the asshole who made this thing, but credit where credit is due. It’s a visual marvel with perfectly integrated, utterly tactile, brilliantly choreographed CG robotics — a point that’ll no doubt be conceded in passing as if it’s not the very reason the movie exists. As if it’s not a feat of mastery to make a megaton changeling truck look graceful. (2:34) 1000 Van Ness. (Jason Shamai)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) Empire, Lumiere. (Harvey)

*The Trip Eclectic British director Michael Winterbottom rebounds from sexually humiliating Jessica Alba in last year’s flop The Killer Inside Me to humiliating Steve Coogan in all number of ways (this time to positive effect) in this largely improvised comic romp through England’s Lake District. Well, romp might be the wrong descriptive — dubbed a “foodie Sideways” but more plaintive and less formulaic than that sun-dappled California affair, this TV-to-film adaptation displays a characteristic English glumness to surprisingly keen emotional effect. Playing himself, Coogan displays all the carefree joie de vivre of a colonoscopy patient with hemorrhoids as he sloshes through the gray northern landscape trying to get cell reception when not dining on haute cuisine or being wracked with self-doubt over his stalled movie career and love life. Throw in a happily married, happy-go-lucky frenemy (comic actor Rob Brydon) and Coogan (TV’s I’m Alan Partridge), can’t help but seem like a pathetic middle-aged prick in a puffy coat. Somehow, though, his confused narcissism is a perverse panacea. Come for the dueling Michael Caine impressions and snot martinis, stay for the scallops and Brydon’s “small man in a box” routine. (1:52) Bridge. (Devereaux)

Winnie the Pooh (1:09) Elmwood, 1000 Van Ness.

*World on a Wire The words “Rainer Werner Fasbinder” and “science fiction film” are enough to get certain film buffs salivating, but the Euro-trashy interior décor is almost reason enough to see this restored print of the New German Cinema master’s cyber thriller. Originally a two-part TV miniseries, World on a Wire is set in an alternate present (then 1973) in which everything seems to be made of concrete, mirror, Lucite, or orange plastic. When the inventor of a supercomputer responsible for generating an artificial world mysteriously disappears, his handsome predecessor must fight against his corporate bosses to find out what really happened, and in the process, stumbles upon a far more shattering secret about the nature of reality itself. Riffing off the understated cool of Godard’s Alphaville (1965) while beating 1999’s The Matrix to the punch by some 25 years, World on a Wire is a stylistically singular entry in Fassbinder’s prolific filmography. (3:32) Roxie. (Sussman)

 

Straightening out planking

Andrew Lam
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0
Straightening out planking

The newest international pastime involves lying face down on the ground with the ultimate goal of remaining as stiff as possible. I’d lump it in with parkour, mosh pits, and the car and phone booth stuffing competitions from the late 1950s and early ‘60s on account of its baffling physical appeal. For those of you unaware of this global craze and perhaps had no clue as to why Rosario Dawson was lying on a table on Jimmy Kimmel Live… they call it planking.

Although planking’s popularity has taken off this summer in the U.S, the trend goes back as far as 1994. It stayed under the radar as an underground hobby in Australia and Europe forever before its newfound seismic popularity.  

A written description of planking sounds neither amusing nor enticing. The goal of the practice is to find the most complex, unorthodox structure around and “plank” atop it, making sure to assume proper planking position — stiff as a board, arms at your sides. Planking is driven by a particular kind of oneupsmanship. Anything from fences to basketball hoops, forklifts to flagpoles, (yes flagpoles) plankers manage to find a way to remain as stiff as possible while their buddies quickly snap a photo of their latest feat. The higher the physical risk the better. 

But are bragging rights worth your life? 

On May 13, a man was arrested in Queensland, Australia for allegedly planking on top of an Australian police car. And sadly on May 15, a 20-year old Australian man made worldwide headlines after his failed attempt to plank on  a building’s balcony seven stories high resulted in the trend’s first casualty.

But for many, planking is nothing but clean harmless fun. Ryland Webb, an 18-year old from San Francisco, not only likes planking’s fun times — he also uses it as an opportunity to make a statement. 

Webb says he first started planking out of curiosity. “The first time I planked was with some friends on a long afternoon. We didn’t really know what to do so we gave [planking] a shot.”

While in Portland, Maine, Webb says that he used planking as a way of interaction. “We were in a different city and we viewed planking as an alternative way to interact with the natives. You really don’t know a place until you pretend you’re a board on its horizontal surfaces.”

“As times progressed we started to view the activity as our own innocent way of fucking shit up,” Webb says. “Planks began to be fashioned either to provoke reactions from bystanders, or symbolize some abstract form of youth rebellion.” He and his friends planked bike racks, benches, cars, newspaper stands, and fences.

And it’s not a trend if famous people aren’t doing it. Basketball players like Dwight Howard and former Golden State Warrior Gilbert Arenas, as well as mainstream artists like Katy Perry, Chris Brown, and Usher have all taken a plank now and then. 

But since planking’s breakout, there has been a growing amount of critics wary of the game’s origins and intentions. Some believe it to be an insulting representation of the horrific stacking of slaves atop wooden planks which took place during the Middle Passage. The idea of planking has sparked outrage from many; including Alvin Nathaniel Joiner IV, better known as rapper Xzibit, who tweeted “Planking is THE dumbest shit ever. #Planking was a way to transport slaves on ships during the slave trade, it’s not funny. Educate.”

It’s hard to say what the true intentions of planking really are. The game which has taken on many various monikers in the past, including “the lying down game”, “playing dead”, “extreme lying down,” and “facedowns.” 

But it does appear that the trend is sticking around, for the moment at least. Don’t be surprised if — on your next coffee run or hamster walk — you see someone lying face down atop of a bike rack or a public mail box. Planking may just be one of those things we’ll have to take lying down.

 

Ethics Commission to discuss Progress for All

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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81
Ethics Commission to discuss Progress for All

San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Cote’s scoop highlighting how Recology executives were working behind the scenes under pressure from Chinatown power broker Rose Pak to encourage Mayor Ed Lee to seek a full term is just the latest development for a committee that’s raised eyebrows already, and it may be just the beginning.

Five mayoral candidates — board President David Chiu, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, state Sen. Leland Yee, former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, and businesswoman Joanna Rees — have teamed up to encourage the San Francisco Ethics Commission to investigate whether Progress for All has run afoul of local election laws, rallying behind an effort spearheaded by Democratic County Central Committee Chair Aaron Peskin in a July 28 letter to commissioners.

At the heart of the issue is whether Lee or any of his representatives have been coordinating with agents of Progress for All. If they are, Progress for All would have to be considered Lee’s own, candidate-controlled committee, Peskin asserts in the letter.

“Given the close relationship between Ms. Pak, the Mayor, and Progress for All, it is very possible that the committee has ‘consulted’ or ‘coordinated’ with the Mayor, and therefore its expenditures should be deemed to be made ‘at his behest,'” Peskin’s letter to the Ethics Commission argues. A City Hall insider told the Guardian that Pak — a primary driver behind the Run, Ed, Run campaign — is regularly observed going to and from the mayor’s office.

“If Progress for All or any of these other committees has been acting on Mayor Lee’s behalf, those committees may have violated the $500 contribution limit and prohibitions against accepting corporate, union or city contractor money, restrictions that apply to all candidate committees,” the letter states.

Financial disclosure filings for committees fundraising for the Nov. 8 election are due Monday.

Aside from the question of whether there is coordination between Lee, who has not yet announced that he will run for mayor, and Progress for All, concerns have been raised about city contractors aiding in the efforts of the campaign. Under the city’s Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance, contractors doing business with the city are not allowed to make political contributions.

(Given the revelations that Recology executives’ signature gathering efforts were done in violation of company policy, it’s no wonder Recology executives become bashful when approached by reporters who ask tough questions.)

Meanwhile, Recology might not be the only city contractor that Pak has encouraged to support Run, Ed, Run. A column that former Mayor Willie Brown published recently in the San Francisco Chronicle suggests that this isn’t the first conversation of this kind.

“One thing you can say about Chinatown powerhouse Rose Pak, she is not shy,” Brown’s column begins. “Holding court at the party for the opening of the new airport terminal, Rose was seated at the table with interim Mayor Ed Lee and his wife, Anita, and a host of other local officials. ‘I want every one of you to call his office and tell him he should run for mayor,’ Rose told the table. ‘And do it right away so that there’s no misunderstanding.’ Then she turned to the architect David Gensler. ‘Didn’t you do this terminal?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you remodel this terminal before?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Then your firm should raise a million dollars for his election campaign.'”

While Brown may not be a visible player in the Run, Ed, Run campaign, he’s certainly been at the table with a key driver behind it and Lee himself — and he’s using his platform in the Chronicle to get the word out about Lee’s potential mayoral campaign.

“The specific revelations of unethical and possibly illegal activity are very troubling and need to be fully investigated by the Ethics Commission as soon as possible,” Chiu told the Guardian.

Political consultant Jim Stearns, whose firm is managing Sen. Yee’s mayoral campaign, joined the chorus in calling for an investigation. “If you think about the fact that these guys still, according to press reports, are eating together once a week, and there’s not supposed to be any coordination … You have this committee that is essentially operating in complete disregard of the campaign law,” he said. “It’s sort of like there’s a crime being committed, and where’s the police?”

The San Francisco Ethics Commission will hold a policy discussion about how to treat Progress for All at its Aug. 8 meeting, Ethics director John St. Croix told the Guardian.

“We’ve told the committee that we believe they’re a primarily form committee, which is an independent expenditure committee on behalf of a candidate for office or a ballot measure,” St. Croix explained. “They’re claiming that there’s no candidate, so they can’t be that committee, even though they’re acting pretty much exactly like one would.”

As things stand, Progress for All has filed as a general purpose committee, he added. “A general purpose committee is what you would think of as a [political action committee]. They usually represent an organization or elected group of individuals, they tend to exist for a long period of time, and they contribute to multiple campaigns, whereas a primarily formed committee is created to support or oppose a single candidate or a single ballot measure in a single election,” he explained. Another key distinction: “Independent expenditure committees don’t have contribution limits the way that candidate committees do. Candidate committees have a $500-per-contributor contribution limit.”

Peskin, meanwhile, hinted that there may be more to come. “There’s a lot of it,” he said, “and I think there are many people who have stories to tell.”

Police say they’ve recovered gun used by Harding

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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44

The San Francisco Police Department issued a statement this afternoon announcing that the gun that fired the fatal shot at Kenneth Wade Harding Jr. has been found.

“After a weeklong community effort, a neighborhood resident led officers from Bayview Police Station to the gun used by Kenneth Harding,” the SFPD statement says. “The gun, an AMT .380 caliber semi-automatic pistol, was matched through ballistic tests conducted by the San Francisco Police Department Crime Lab,” the official announcement goes on. “These tests confirmed that this was the same gun that fired the fatal .380 caliber bullet.” 

The police describe the weapon as a “small silver and black handgun,” and notes that it was “seen on the widely viewed cell phone video of the incident” and “picked up from the crime scene by an individual during the chaotic aftermath of the shooting.” 

One YouTube video showing the scene of the aftermath is titled, “Aftermath of Bayview gun battle in San Francisco,” and it has had 96,897 views so far.

At around 1 minute and 23 seconds into that video, an individual in a gray hooded sweatshirt reaches down and picks up an object off the sidewalk (which doesn’t look like a gun), but at another point in the clip, a gun-shaped object can be seen lying on the ground.

Lt. Troy Dangerfield, of the SFPD’s media relations unit, would not say whether the man in the hooded sweatshirt had anything to do with recovering the gun. Nor would he say whether an arrest had been made when the gun was turned over to police. “I can’t get into who turned over the gun, or whether that’s where we got the gun from,” he said, but asserted that ballistics testing had confirmed that it was the gun that fired the shot.

“We’re not speaking as to whether fingerprints are on it,” he added when asked if Harding’s fingerprints had been detected on the firearm. He said he did not know whether Harding’s cell phone had been recovered.

There are four separate investigations relating to the officer-involved shooting that occurred in connection with Harding’s death, Dangerfield said. They are being carried out by the District Attorney, the Office of Citizen Complaints, SFPD Homicide Unit and SFPD Internal Affairs.

Asked why SFPD officers did not move in quickly to snap up an unsecured weapon lying on the ground if a suspect had just fired and a crowd of alarmed bystanders was forming around them, Dangerfield said that the police had to prioritize officer safety — and in this case, he asserted, that meant keeping their weapons trained on a suspect who could still potentially pull out a gun and shoot at them. According to training protocol, “crime scene preservation” is a lower priority, he said. Asked if officers were trained to shoot to kill, he said, “we don’t shoot to kill, we shoot to stop the threat.”

Dangerfield went on to say that the video in which Harding is shown to still be moving while police stand with weapons trained on him would make a great police training video. “You do not remove yourself from the target until the target is no longer a threat to you,” he said, indicating that a suspect who is still moving is still perceived as a threat.

However, it was this aspect of the widely viewed video — that police continued to stand with weapons trained on Harding rather than calling for medical assistance after he’d been shot — that seemed to most inflame residents and protesters who’ve condemned the police response in the aftermath.

Dangerfield confirmed that data from SpotShotter revealed that a single bullet was fired, and then multiple rounds fired in succession 1.9 seconds later. The explanation that police have given for this, he confirmed, was that Harding fired a single shot and then police opened fire.

Assuming it’s true that Harding shot himself, as police have said, this suggests that the two police officers on the scene responded to a suspect shooting himself by firing eight rounds, just one of which entered through the leg. Asked why officers would respond to a self-inflicted shot in that way, Dangerfield said, “If you are a police officer and you’re running and chasing … and then shots are fired, what do you think?” He emphasized, “They’re trained to return fire.”

Anger erupts over police shootings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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11
Anger erupts over police shootings

rebeccab@sfbg.com

As the murky details of two recent police shootings emerge, a palpable anger surging through targeted communities points to a deeper issue than the particular circumstances surrounding each of these deaths. Simply put, many Bay Area communities are fed up with police violence.

For many activists who descended on transit stations to protest the fatal BART police shooting of Oscar Grant III, the 20-year-old unarmed Hayward man who was killed on New Year’s Day 2009, an upwelling of rage was rekindled after BART cops shot and killed a homeless man named Charles Blair Hill on July 3 in Civic Center Station.

Then, on July 16, San Francisco police officers in the Bayview shot 19-year-old Kenneth Wade Harding Jr. multiple times after he ran from the T-Third train platform because he’d been stopped for fare evasion, leaving him dead on the sidewalk.

The recent officer-involved shootings occurred under two different law enforcement bodies, and both incidents remain under police investigation with many questions still unanswered. BART police say Hill was brandishing a knife; the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) said its response was justified because Harding fired at officers first. The investigation in Harding’s case took a bizarre twist July 21 when SFPD issued a press release based on a medical examiner’s report stating that Harding had died not from rounds fired by police, but a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

But among communities distrustful of the police, the particulars of each case seemed to matter less than the perception that officers are too quick to escalate conflicts into deadly standoffs. Both incidents provoked intense anger because they resulted in marginalized transit passengers suffering sudden, violent deaths following interactions that were initiated by police. The shootings sparked angry protests, prompting standoffs at Civic Center BART Station, along the T-Third line in the Bayview, on Valencia Street, in Dolores Park, inside the Castro Muni Station, and at the cable car turnaround on Powell Street.

A group of activists staged protests in the Mission following the Bayview police shooting, snaking through the streets as they disrupted traffic and public transit service. “The march began at Dolores Park where nearly 200 of us departed,” an anonymous post on the anticapitalist Bay of Rage website recounted, describing the events of a July 19 protest that resulted in 43 arrests. “Upon reaching the Castro Muni Station, all hell broke loose…. What had now become a mob moved effortlessly past the bewildered cops … Trash was set alight and thrown down onto the tracks below … ticket machines, the fare checkpoints, and the agent booth were all smashed with hammers and flags — totally ruined. Smoke bombs and fireworks were thrown throughout the station.”

This display occurred just eight days after protesters shut down BART stations in downtown San Francisco during rush hour to condemn the fatal shooting of Hill, the homeless BART passenger.

The message from outraged Bayview residents at a chaotic and emotionally charged community forum staged July 20 at the Bayview Opera House was not that people were upset that this had happened to Harding, a Washington state resident, in particular. Instead, people expressed outrage that police had gunned down yet another African American youth, and that unless some complicated and long-standing issues were addressed, it could happen again, to anyone. The forum was organized in partnership with the SFPD and clergy members from the Bayview. Police had prepared a PowerPoint presentation, but never managed to get that far.

At the meeting, Police Chief Greg Suhr tried to provide an explanation for the July 16 shooting. “During this foot pursuit, at some point in time, the suspect … fired at the officers, and the officers returned fire. This is the account that we have so far,” he said. “I cannot tell you how badly that I feel … as captain of this station for two years,” Suhr continued, as an angry crowd shouted him down.

Police escorted Suhr out of the meeting before everyone who had signed up to speak had a chance to be heard. Once outside, the police chief told reporters that he planned to return.

After Suhr and other city officials departed from the meeting, District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen stayed at the Bayview Opera House and addressed the crowd that remained, she later told the Guardian, and engaged in discussion with Bayview homeowners, merchants, and other community stakeholders.

“We had a very thoughtful conversation,” she said. “People had questions about [Municipal Transportation Agency] policy over the SFPD riding the bus. We talked about the importance of attending Board of Supervisors meetings, Police Commission meetings, and giving public comment. And there will be future conversations, without obstruction.”

Many who attended the meeting voiced concerns that went well beyond the July 16 incident. Several said they believed youth were unduly harassed by law enforcement over Muni fares on a regular basis. Elvira Pollard spoke about how her son was shot 36 times by police and killed seven years ago. Another woman complained that police had used abusive language when she was arrested in the Bayview four years ago.

Mayor Ed Lee told the Guardian that a bigger police presence at the Oakdale/Palou stop on the T-Third line was part of the city’s strategy to prevent violence in that area. “I actually asked the chief to pay more attention to areas that had a history of gun violence and shootings and other kinds of violence … and it just so happens that this particular area, Third and Palou, is a place where there’s a lot of violence,” Lee said. “So we had more uniformed officers on that specifically at not only my request, but with the understanding of the police chief, too.”

Responding to acts of violence by sending in more police sounds simple enough, yet it seems a toxic environment has arisen out of a heightened police presence in a community where tensions between police and residents already run high, fueled by anxiety and bad past experiences. Add to this dynamic a trend of youth who lack other transportation alternatives riding public transit even if they don’t have enough money to pay the fare, and the situation feeds ongoing strife, particularly when fare evaders are asked for identification and searched by police.

Lee, in partnership with Cohen, called a meeting in City Hall July 19 with leaders of the Bayview community. The press was not allowed to attend, but participants said later that officials gave a presentation about the shooting and played an audio of gunfire from the SFPD’s SpotShotter program to offer evidence that Harding had fired first. Later that day, the SFPD reported that gunshot residue had been detected on Harding’s hand, supporting the police account of what happened. Yet the July 21 press release, suggesting that Harding had shot himself because a .380-caliber bullet that police said could not have come from SFPD firearms had entered the right side of Harding’s neck, made it even less clear what really happened.

By July 22, confusion was still swirling over why a gun hadn’t immediately been recovered from the scene of the shooting, and there still wasn’t any clarity on whether an online video of a passerby removing a silvery object from the sidewalk showed a person who retrieved Harding’s firearm after the shooting, as police have claimed. Police recovered a gun that was initially believed to be Harding’s, but later reported that the gun could not have been the same weapon that discharged a .380 caliber round into the victim’s head.

Chris Jackson, a Bayview resident who sits on the board of City College of San Francisco and ran for District 10 supervisor in 2010, said after the City Hall meeting that he felt it had amounted to little more than a lecture from the city’s top officials. Jackson said he perceived a need for a policy shift in terms of how to deal with fare evasion and violence prevention. “We need a better approach,” he said. “We cannot address this with more cops on the T line.”

After Harding’s death, it came to light that the 19-year-old Washington state man had served time for attempting to promote prostitution, and had been named as a person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old Seattle woman. Yet a widely circulated online video showing him writhing on the sidewalk in a pool of blood after being shot, while a handful of officers continued to stand around with weapons drawn, sparked outrage. Once the forum at the Bayview Opera House had broken up, LaDonna Callaway condemned the police response, saying, “They didn’t have to shoot him as many times as they did.”

Angelique Mayhem, a Bayview resident who stood nearby, told the Guardian that she didn’t think the meeting had solved anything. “A boy gets gunned down. We don’t know if there was a gun there, but we do know that for 40 damn years, people have been getting gunned down in this community,” Mayhem said. “People are angrier now than when they were when they walked in the door. We’re a community that’s truly in pain, that’s truly frustrated, and really needs some respect.”

A skate day for creative community

Andrew Lam
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0

At last, a weekend with weather resembling an actual summer vacation. With Saturday’s moderate temperature, a soothing breeze, and clear skies I was in a great mood to head to Tha Hood Games at the African American Art and Culture Complex (AAACC) on July 23 (click here to see our event preview). The vast majority of my experience with skateboarding has been watching the X Games religiously every year, so you could say that the bar was set high for day’s skating.

I didn’t have a problem finding the Western Addition venue; all I had to do was follow the heart-pounding, bass-pumping beats coming from the event’s speakers. Mistakingly anticipating a small crowd as I rounded the corner of Buchanan Street, it turned out the party had already started. A crowd stretched out in front of the AAACC for a lock down Fulton Street: skaters, parents, fans, everyone excited to check out the fun that was visible through the parking lot fence.

Not to be deterred by the onlooking SFPD police vehicle, the energy in the parking lot turned skate park was infectious. It appeared that every skateboarder in the city had turned out for the Games. 

Tha Hood Games was the kickoff event for an exhibit that will be on display in the AAACC’s Sargent Johnson Gallery through next year. Eye-grabbing smaller paintings and murals on helmets, car hoods, and other surfaces, all highlighting the past works of Tha Hood Games, which was created to give Bay Area youth a chance to showcase artistic talent in a positive skating environment. Saturday’s opening reception and fashion show were held following the parking lot open skate, which was held in tandem with music performances and a live mural painting.

But the skating was what caught my eye. The downhill orientation of the Complex’s parking lot acted as a natural drop-in for boarders who’d use it in their descent towards the various obstacles and quarter pipes that awaited them at the bottom. Boarders could grab a drink from vitamin water sponsors when thirsty, a bite from Gussie’s Chicken and Waffles booth when hungry, and if their board took a hit, visit the deck doctors stationed at, yes, another booth.

The crowd snapped to attention when the emcee and founder of Tha Hood Games, Keith “K-Dub” Williams announced that pro skater Nyjah Huston had arrived at the AAACC parking lot. Huston was the youngest-ever competitor in the X Games when he made his debut during the 2006 X Games at age eleven. Now, he was being ambushed by a group of skaters that ranged from youngsters to people twice his age. 

For a high-schooler like myself, to see a ‘5”7 17-year old admired on a ten-foot scale was really gratifying. For the skaters in attendance, Huston was the person to be: they were standing in front of a skateboarding prodigy. 

But the most the most rewarding part of the day was the sight of people of all ages coming together to enjoy a day of skateboarding. Literally, I took an informal poll. Whether it came out of the mouth of Williams or I overheard it from other attendees, the catch phrase of the day was clear: “this is just a beautiful sight.” 

The BART cover-up crumbles

Zelda Bronstein
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8
The BART cover-up crumbles

Zusha Elinson at the Bay Citizen continues to do great work on the BART Police shooting, and today he’s got a scoop: The audio of the incident gave him the names of the officers involved. OF course, BART can’t confirm or deny anything, as is typical — but the fact that we now know that the shooter was James A. Crowell, who had been on the force for just 18 months, gives some further insight into what happened. I’ve argued for years that the BART Police lack the training and the experience to know when to use lethal force, and this “newbie,” as other officers called him perhaps reacted too quickly to a threat that could have been defused.


At any rate, the whole thing demonstrates a fundamental point of politics: Cover ups don’t work. Information gets out eventually, and the people who are trying to suppress it just look bad.

Harding’s family speaks out

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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19
Harding’s family speaks out

On July 25, the family of Kenneth Wade Harding, Jr. — the 19-year-old who was killed in the Bayview by a gunshot wound after he ran from being detained for MUNI fare evasion by San Francisco police — attended a press conference in Oakland at the law offices of John Burris.

News of Harding’s criminal history quickly surfaced in the days following his death, with reports focusing on how the African American man from Seattle had served time in prison for attempting to promote prostitution, and had been named as a person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old Seattle woman.

Harding’s mother, Denika Chatman, presented an alternative profile of her son, describing him as an independent person who cared for his family and dreamed of a music career as a rapper. Chatman said Harding had planned on attending Seattle Central Community College and would have turned 20 on Aug. 5. As for his criminal background and allegations that he violated his parole, “it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to him,” she said.

Chatman and Pointer asserted that Harding was not in San Francisco because he was on the run. Instead, they said, he was there to visit with family and friends in the Bay Area and meet with his music manager. Chatman said Harding’s older brother is signed on with a record label in San Francisco, but declined to say which label.

Attorney Adante Pointer called Harding’s death “a tragedy and a shocking incident, which has brought us here seeking answers.” While he did not directly address the police account of the shooting thus far — that he was killed not by multiple rounds fired by San Francisco police officers, but a self-inflicted gunshot wound — Pointer did express skepticism.

“Those stories continuously shift,” Pointer said. “That’s nothing that you can build any kind of trust or credibility with.” He added, “This community is seeking some type of logical explanation as to what happened, as opposed to what amounts to be knee-jerk speculation.”

Pointer said his office had met with five eyewitnesses so far and hoped to find more. “There are eyewitnesses, there are persons in that community who’ve said this young man never fired a shot,” he said. “That’s inconsistent with what the police have said … let’s find out what the truth is.”

Pointer and Chatman were joined by members of Harding’s extended family, as well as African American community leaders in the Bay Area including Nation of Islam minister Rev. Christopher Muhammad and Rev. Renard Allen of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church. Also present was Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant, the 20-year-old Hayward man who was fatally shot Jan. 1, 2009 by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in a case which prompted riots. The Law Offices of John Burris represented Grant’s mother in a federal civil rights lawsuit against BART, striking a $1.3 million settlement with the transit agency in late June.  

Video by Rebecca Bowe

More questions in Bayview shooting

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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49

After receiving a San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) press release issued July 21 stating that the man who died July 16 following an officer-involved shooting in the Bayview had been killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, I phoned the city’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Amy Hart.
 
I asked Hart to walk me through how the conclusion that the gunshot wound was self-inflicted had been reached. But Hart responded that the Medical Examiner has not reached any conclusion so far about the cause of Harding’s death.

“That’s not a component of the press release that we issued,” Hart said. “Maybe it’s a question that would be best addressed to the San Francisco Police Department, probably their homicide division. For us, the cause and manner of death are pending. So, we are going to complete our investigation before we discuss the manner of death. The question that you’re asking is something that came from the police press release, so you have to ask them the nature of why they said that.”

I called the SFPD and left a message, and I’ll be sure to provide an update once they call back.

The SFPD release stated that the Medical Examiner had detected two gunshot wounds in the body of Kenneth Wade Harding, Jr., the 19-year-old from Washington state who died after being shot on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. One gunshot wound entered and exited Harding’s left leg, the statement said. A second gunshot wound entered the right side of Harding’s neck, and the bullet remained in his head. The round that was lodged in his head was of .380 caliber, police said, so it could not have come from a .40 caliber SFPD-issued firearm.

A .380 caliber round was discovered in the pocket of the jacket Harding was wearing, the press release added. “Based upon evidence known at this time including: officer and witness statements that Harding shot at the police officers, Shot Spotter data, video tape evidence that depicts a firearm at the scene that was subsequently taken and the location of gunshot residue on Harding’s right hand, it appears that Mr. Harding’s head wound was self inflicted,” the press release stated.

The Medical Examiner’s office hasn’t issued a death certificate yet, Hart said, and it generally takes several weeks to determine the cause of death.

I asked Hart if the Medical Examiner’s office had any way to determine which bullet had entered Harding’s body first.

“I wouldn’t say there’s a good way, except for eyewitness accounts,” she responded, adding that the Medical Examiner’s Office doesn’t have information to determine which bullet entered the body first.

While the Medical Examiner determined that the .380 caliber bullet entered through the right side of the neck, it is the ballistics section of SFPD’s crime lab that determines the caliber of the rounds, Hart explained.

When I asked Hart what process the Medical Examiner’s office would follow to determine the cause of death, she said, “It’s a completion of our investigation that will need to happen here at the Medical Examiner’s office. We’re going to make a final determination, and what goes into an investigation depends on a case, there’s no set thing that has to happen.” Eventually, she said, the various components of the investigation, such as witness accounts, the ballistics analysis, and the examination of the body will be merged.

Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Lee offered brief comments to the media today in response to the most recent findings released by the SFPD. The mayor attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Bayview Branch Library at Third and Revere streets, which is expected to open in December of 2012. Here’s a video of Lee’s response to the latest evidence released by SFPD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YSz1l4mOHQ

Video by Rebecca Bowe

Lee was joined by District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen as well as Sen. Mark Leno, Sen. Leland Yee, Sup. Scott Weiner, newly installed Municipal Transportation Agency Director Ed Reiskin, City Librarian Luis Herrera, and other prominent San Franciscans. City officials emphasized the positive at the press conference, stressing that the new library would be a center for learning that could serve the youth of the Bayview and offered hope for the future of a neighborhood in transition. “It’s not all doom and gloom here,” Cohen told reporters.

I asked Cohen if she had a comment about the police deparment’s latest findings, but she declined to say anything about it.

At this point, there are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding Harding’s death. So far, the gun that discharged the .380 caliber bullet into Harding’s head has not been recovered by police. Police believe an unidentified man in a hooded sweatshirt who can be seen in a YouTube video picking up a silvery object off the sidewalk removed Harding’s weapon from the scene, and they say they are searching for the man and the gun. But if the object shown in the video is a gun, and it was Harding’s gun, it’s still not clear how it wound up some 10 yards away from the body after he shot himself.

The BART Police video raises new questions

Zelda Bronstein
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12
The BART Police video raises new questions

BART, under public pressure, has finally released a video that shows part of the shooting of Charles Hill. Zusha Elinson of the Bay Citizen continues to do great work on this story (which the Chron didn’t even put on the front page). He’s got a good analysis, but after watching the video about 20 times, with as much stop action as my computer could give me, it seems pretty clear that:


1. The officers made no credible attempt to calm Hill down or de-escalate the situation. The shooting happens only 25 seconds after the cops arrived on the scene.


2. There’s no evidence on the video that Hill threw a bottle at the officers. It does appear that he threw what BART identifies as a four-inch knife, but it didn’t come anywhere close to the cop you can see in the video. And it appears, from my viewing (and Elinson’s) that the knife was thrown AFTER the shot was fired. Which could mean the guy was holding the knife and it flew out of his hands as he got hit — or it could mean that once he realized he was shot, he heaved it toward the officer.


3. Hill was not anywhere near close to the officer (and thus couldn’t have been credibly threatening to stab him) when the shot was fired.


As an aside: It’s clear that a knife can be a deadly weapon. A cop being attacked by a knife has the right to defend himself with lethal force. And a knife that it thrown with the right degree of skill and accuracy can be every bit as lethal as a bullet. But in this case, Hill was visibly intoxicated (which was why the cops were called in the first place). He may have been an expert knife-thrower (although it appears he wasn’t — the knife clattered away several feet from the officer). But I can tell you, because I’m into this sort of thing, that’s it’s very difficult to throw a knife well from even a few feet away. It takes years of practice to get good with a perfectly balanced knife, one that’s designed to be thrown. If the “four inch knife” Hall threw was a pocket knife or any kind of knife with a heavy handle, the difficulty would increase dramatically; those knives tend to travel in an unbalanced spin and wind up hitting the target handle-first (and thus fairly harmlessly). And I don’t know very many people who can throw any sort of knife with any degree of accuracy when they’re drunk.


Again: The cops had no way of knowning what this guy’s skill level was. He could have been a ninja assasin able to stick a dull pocket knife in someone’s heart from 50 feet away blind and dead drunk. I’m just saying: The level of threat here was a lot lower than, say, a man holding a guy, or a man holding a knife a foot away.


San Francisco cops are required to undergo training to deal with people who are mentally ill, unstable, drunk or on drugs. Part of that training involves trying to talk the person down, trying to avoid a situation where any sort of force is necessary. That clearly didn’t happen here.


One more note: When I was working on another BART shooting story years ago, I read a book on police use of force and it had an interesting comment. I quote from my prior story:


In Modern Police Firearms, a textbook on law-enforcement procedures, Professor Allen P. Bristow of California State University, Los Angeles, writes that deadly force should be used to stop a fleeing felon only when “he cannot be contained or captured” through other means. Further, Bristow notes, an officer considering deadly force should ask the following question:


“Is the crime this suspect is committing, or are the consequences of his possible escape, serious enough to justify my taking his life or endangering the lives of bystanders?”


 In this case, the guy wasn’t fleeing, but the question remains: Was his alleged crime serious enough to justify taking his life?


 


 


 

Outrage at the Bayview Opera House (VIDEO)

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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31

A community meeting July 20 at the Bayview Opera House dissolved into chaotic shouting when Police Chief Greg Suhr attempted to present the San Francisco Police Department’s version of what transpired July 16 when a 19-year-old African American man was shot nine times by police and killed just blocks from where the meeting was held.

“On Saturday afternoon, two officers at the Bayview station … contacted a fare evader whose name ended up being Kenneth Wade Harding, Jr. of Seattle, Washington,” Suhr began. “After asking him for his identification, he became a little bit anxious, and at one point in time he jumped off the platform and ran across the street, and ran through crowded Mendell Plaza. I cannot tell you how badly that I feel … as captain of this station for two years. I love the Bayview community.”

At that point, angry shouts rose up and Suhr started getting booed, but he continued. “During this foot pursuit, at some point in time, the suspect … fired at the officers, and the officers returned fire. This is the account that we have so far.”

Kilo Perry began shouting back at the chief, saying, “You are not a friend of ours. You are the enemy,” before bystanders tried to calm him down. The SFPD had planned on showing a power point presentation about the incident, but that didn’t happen. Instead, Suhr was drowned out, and the microphone was passed to various community representatives and members of the clergy, who’d helped organize the meeting, as they tried to regain control. Lifelong Bayview resident Charlie Walker asked people to sit down and relax.

Several hundred people had gathered at the Bayview Opera House to get answers about the shooting, and most remained seated as people continued to swarm around the police chief. After some time had passed, community leaders managed to set up a question-and-answer session with Suhr.

From this brief exchange and venting session, it became clear that people had come to the meeting with broader concerns than just what transpired Saturday. Elvira Pollard stood to recount how, seven years ago, her son had been shot by police 36 times, and that police had claimed that he’d shot first. She said it took more than nine months to get an autopsy report. “It’s the same scenario!” she charged. “Do you really think they aren’t going to lie about this one?” Suhr said that he couldn’t comment on that case specifically since he didn’t know the details, but offered to meet with her.

As people spoke, police violence against youth emerged as a theme. Harding was not a resident of the Bayview, and it came to light after his death that he had served time for attempting to promote prostitution and was a person of interest in connection with the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old woman. But to many who expressed outrage at the meeting, his death was linked to past instances in which youth had been gunned down by law enforcement. One woman showed up wearing a T-shirt, earrings, and a handbag displaying images of Oscar Grant, the 20-year-old unarmed Hayward man who was shot and killed by BART officer Johannes Mehserle on January 1, 2009.

A concern that was voiced again and again was that people felt the police routinely harrassed youth on the T-Third line. Grilled about why police were constantly stopping young people over MUNI transfers, Suhr responded that police had recovered weapons from T-line passengers while conducting fare inspections in the past.

The meeting broke apart when Suhr was escorted out, surrounded by uniformed officers, news cameras, and angry residents who continued to demand that he release the names of the officers who shot Harding. One simply yelled, “stop shooting black people in the back!” Once outside, with beads of sweat rolling down his face, Suhr told reporters, “I’ll be back.”

Here’s a video of the tense exchanges that took place at the July 20 meeting. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3cQwtKMsXM

Video by Rebecca Bowe

Mayor Lee meets with Bayview community leaders about officer-involved shooting

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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16

Mayor Ed Lee and officials from the San Francisco Police Department met with Bayview community leaders in City Hall July 19 to discuss the police investigation surrounding a July 16 officer-involved shooting that has prompted intense community anger and protests. While city officials indicated that the meeting was called to provide information and updates for the community, frustrated community members emerging from the City Hall conference room dismissed it as “more of a lecture,” saying city officials weren’t open to hearing broader community concerns that have intensified in the wake of this tragic event.

Reporters were not allowed in the room while the meeting was held because “it’s more of a community meeting,” according to mayoral communications staff member Francis Tsang. Attendees included Bayview community leaders Chris Jackson, Geoffrea Morris, Mike Brown, Charlie Walker, Ed Donaldson, and the Rev. Amos Brown. District 10 Sup. Malia Cohen also issued invitations to the meeting, which was scheduled at the same time as the full Board of Supervisors meeting, and sent a representative.


The shooting victim was Kenneth Harding Jr., 19, from Washington. Police say he fired one round at officers before police fired nine rounds, killing him. However, some witnesses initially reported that they did not see Harding fire a gun, and a firearm wasn’t immediately recovered from the scene. Police initially tried to detain Harding on the station platform of the Oakdale / Palou stop on the T-Third line on suspected fare evasion. After Harding was killed, it came to light that he had a criminal history and had been named as a person of interest in the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old pregnant woman from Washington. The incident, which occurred in broad daylight and was captured on film and witnessed by people who were out on the street, proved to be a traumatizing event for a low-income, predominantly African American community where tensions already run high between police and residents.

Lee indicated to the Guardian that the July 19 meeting had been called primarily to clear up misinformation. “There have been a lot of stories spreading about what did and didn’t occur, and we felt it was necessary to get the community updated as quickly as possible,” Lee said. “Any time there is a death in any community we’re very concerned … this one in particular has been represented in many different ways, and a lot of it has been very inflammatory in terms of what people have said occurred. We’ve heard points like there was no gun, when in fact now we’ve found a gun through police investigation. That there was no shot made at officers when … the officers have at least some evidence through the ShotSpotter program that there was an initial shot made by the suspect.”

Lee added that MUNI staff had reported people relaying “all kinds of stories” while riding the buses. “These are very hard, hard feelings,” he said. “So I felt it necessary that we confront this head on with community leaders. We met with some yesterday, we’re meeting with some today, [Police Chief Greg Suhr] is hosting a town-hall meeting in the Bayview tomorrow to yet again find every opportunity to fully explain what they have uncovered as the evidence, and to make sure people base their views on the facts.” A larger community meeting is scheduled for July 20 at 6 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House.

Meanwhile, Bayview community leaders Chris Jackson and Geoffrea Morris were not pleased when they emerged from the conference room. “The mayor left without hearing one public comment,” Morris said. “It was just a lecture. It wasn’t addressing the police, and how they deal with fare evasion, and harass people along the T train. It was not that. It was just, the mayor said his little thing, did not say goodbye, and ran out.”

Morris went on, “We don’t have grief counselors out there. We don’t have the police saying that they’ll stay off the T-Train platform until the investigation is done. We thought this meeting was going to be for them to go, ‘where do we go from here?’ And the thing that people are missing … whatever demon that boy had, that was a human life.” Concerns are still swirling about how long it took for an ambulance to arrive after the shooting, Morris said, and about how police arrived at the scene with high-powered weapons which they kept drawn even as Harding writhed in a pool of blood on the sidewalk.

Morris and Jackson said that during the meeting, officials showed a Channel 7 TV news broadcast clip and played an audio of gunshots being fired to demonstrate that the suspect had fired an initial shot before police opened fire. “We all have Internet, smart phones, and all the footage as well,” Morris said. “I was there on the site.”

Shortly after the meeting, the San Francisco Police Department issued a statement to announce that gunshot residue had been detected on Harding’s right hand during an investigation. “The presence of gunshot residue on Harding’s right hand supports statements from witnesses that Harding held the gun in his right hand as he fired at the police officers,” the press release stated. It went on to note that the presence of gunshot residue on an individual’s hand could indicate that the individual fired a gun, or was in close proximity to a gun when it was fired, or touched something that was coated with gunshot residue.

Morris and Jackson also voiced concerns that went beyond the details of this particular case. “The response really needs to be a policy shift,” Jackson said. “We need a better approach in terms of violence prevention. We cannot address this with more cops on the T line.”

Jackson, who ran for District 10 supervisor in 2010, also questioned why police officers had been tasked with fare evasion enforcement on the T-Third line in the first place. MUNI also employs fare inspectors, he pointed out, and the city has a specialized program, called the ambassadors program, which was created last year in the wake of violence along the T-Third line directed at members of the Asian community. “Where was the public conversation about putting cops on MUNI trains?” Jackson wanted to know. “Who came up with that idea?”

Asked about this, Lee told the Guardian that he had specifically requested a higher police presence in areas where higher levels of crime were anticipated – and the July 16 shooting occurred in just such an area.

“I actually asked the chief to pay more attention to areas that had a history of gun violence and shootings and other kinds of violence … and it just so happens that this particular area, Third and Palou, is a place where there’s a lot of violence,” Lee said. “So we had more uniformed officers on that specifically at not only my request, but with the understanding of the police chief, too. He’s trying to do his best to keep everybody safe. And that in the summer, with all of the evidence that we have about where the shootings are and where they’re occurring, we naturally focus on areas where we think there’s going to be more violence to have more presence. So circumstances occurred where an individual was stopped because of a fare evasion, and I believe police were there to begin to detain him, and ask him to provide some evidence of who he is and why he did what he did, and that turned out to be a chase. A chase is one thing, but a chase with an opening of a firearm is a completely different thing.”

Meanwhile, Bayview community residents who ride the T-Third line experienced delays in recent days because MUNI operations staff decided to stop running light rail trains into the Bayview, instead dropping people off partway through the route and then directing them to wait for shuttle buses.

On July 18, a little before dark, a T-Third driver stopped at the Marin Street stop and announced that all passengers would have to wait for a shuttle bus. When passengers demanded to know why, she responded, “They’re acting up on Third Street, and our bosses don’t want us in the middle of it.”

According to SFMTA spokesperson Kristen Holland, operations staff began receiving reports around 6:30 or 7 p.m. July 18 that “there were upwards of 50 people walking on the right-of-way for the trains. As a safety precaution, our operations folks deployed buses for that portion of the line. We were told that they started at the southern terminus, and were walking north.”

This Guardian reporter hopped onto a shuttle bus with a notebook in hand after hearing that people were “acting up,” but by the time the bus made its way into the heart of the Bayview, the streets were calm. A MUNI employee who asked not to be named said he’d heard that someone had kicked in a window on one of the T-Third cars, and that was why the trains weren’t going through.

Meanwhile, the unexpected transfer left passengers weary, since for many waiting for the shuttle marked a second or third transfer on public transportation to get home. “People’s kind of frustrated. You go a few blocks, and they say it’s the end of the line. You go a couple blocks and they tell you the same thing,” said Darwin Green.

Another passenger, a youth who was with a friend and seemed concerned about the unfamiliar route the shuttle bus was taking, said, “I think it’s bullshit that they’re issuing citations. And there’s no need to shoot somebody because they didn’t have change for the bus fare.”
 
Another passenger was also disgruntled about the delays. Asked what he thought about everything that had been going on in recent days, he said, “It seems like they spend an awful lot of money in wages chasing down $2 fares.”

Killed for riding while poor

Andrew Lam
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113

OPINION We sat together: elders, youth, workers, students, and folks. We were on our way to a low-paid job, an overpriced university, a pre-gentrified home and a public school. There was laughter and shouts, murmurs and silence. Then suddenly, there were nine heavily armed police officers and fare inspectors walking through the crowded 14 Mission Muni line. One stopped in front of me and my son.

“I don’t have a transfer, I lost it,” I tentatively answered a cop who asked to see my paperwork as I clutched my son’s stroller and tried to see how close I was to the back door of the bus.

“We will have to write you a citation and you will have to step off the bus — now.” He was yelling at me and was flanked by another officer. I knew I couldn’t make a run for it, but I almost tried.

I thought of this moment when I heard about the 19-year-old man shot by the SFPD while running away from a Muni bus because he didn’t have a transfer in the Bayview July 16.

Shot and killed for not having $2 bus fare.

At a press conference held July 18 at the scene of the shooting, Joanne Abernathy from People Organized to Win Employment Rights made the point: “No one should be shot for not having enough money to ride the bus.”

For the last few years, police presence on Muni has increased — as have attacks on poor people and people of color whose only crime is not having enough money to ride the increasingly expensive so-called public transportation known as Muni. From fare inspectors working for Muni to fully armed officers, they form a terrifying mob waiting menacingly at bus stops in the Mission, Ingleside, Bayview, and Tenderloin, and then enter buses to harass, eject, and cite anyone too poor to ride.

The police said the man pointed a gun. That’s what they consistently claim when rationalizing involved shootings. Several eyewitnesses said otherwise.

But before we get caught up in whether he had a gun or not, let’s stay with the real point: this young man was shot for not having a transfer. He was shot for not having $2. How did we get here?

Even if you are a supporter of the police, you have to see the Les Miserables-esque insanity in this shooting.

Police culture enables, allows, and encourages the use of deadly force — so much so that it seems at times as if killing can happen for any old thing. Throw in institutional racism and classism, and more and more people will not only be incarcerated but killed with impunity.

“Don’t get on the bus again if you don’t have the fare or you might be arrested,” the cop on Muni told me. He ended by giving me a citation and kicking me off the bus. He should have added “killed” to his threat of what would happen to us for riding while poor.

Tiny, also known as Lisa Gray-Garcia, is coeditor of POOR Magazine.

 

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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0

So now I’m really confused.

State Assemblymember Tom Ammiano met July 18 with representatives of BART and the BART Police (three BART lobbyists, a deputy chief, and a sergeant). He wanted to get some sense of what’s going on with the investigation into the Civic Center shooting. Ammiano had pushed last year for legislation forcing BART to create a civilian oversight agency for the cops; instead, BART created its own police auditor position.

Ammiano asked when BART would start releasing information, starting with the station video of the event, which ended with a homeless man dead on the platform. BART, Ammiano told me, said the whole thing had been turned over to the San Francisco Police Department.

But the SFPD Public Affairs Office tells me that it won’t release anything — that all information has to come from BART. Linton Johnson, BART’s public affairs person, tells me that it’s SFPD’s investigation and nothing will be forthcoming until SFPD turns its files over to the district attorney — but yes, even then, thanks to an interagency deal, all info will have to come from BART.

Round and round and round we spin. And nobody tells us anything.

There are some serious questions here. BART officials told Ammiano that Charles Hill, the dead man, was “armed with two knives and a bottle.” That’s the current narrative — that the guy was a mortal threat to the officers, who had the discretion to use lethal force.

Quintin Mecke, Ammiano’s press aide, asked the obvious question: Was Hill in fact wielding the weapons in a threatening way? Were the knives later found on his body? Did he throw the bottle or was it in his hand?

BART’s response: “They told me that was part of the investigation,” Mecke said.

As for the SFPD, Mecke said he’s been told that the investigation should be concluded in 45 days — which is crazy. I can’t imagine why it takes that long to review a police shooting that took place on a public train platform — and was recorded on video. “It is,” Mecke told me, “a stonewall all around.”

The good news is that BART now has an official police auditor. His name is Mark Smith. He has no staff at all, so he can’t investigate the case — but that’s okay, because the BART police are offering to help him.

For the record, I remain dubious.

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 20

Hotel Frank picket line

Since being foreclosed on by Wells Fargo and taken over by a union-busting management team, Hotel Frank has unilaterally subjected its workers to new working condition and benefits and fired two labor representatives who resisted the changes (see “Lembi’s legacy,” 9/21/10, and “Hotel Frank fires key union organizer,” SFBG Politics blog, 10/4/10). Join UNITE HERE Local 2 members and other supporters of Hotel Frank workers in picketing the hotel and calling for management to respect workers’ rights. Repeats each Wednesday, and on Fridays from 1–5:30 p.m.

3–5:30 p.m., free

Hotel Frank, Geary and Mason, SF

www.hotelfranksf.info

 

THURSDAY 21

Summer of Choice kickoff

Concerned about how budget cuts and new campaigns against abortion rights, the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights is launching the Summer of Choice with an event featuring Shawna Pattison of New Generations Health Center, Loren Dobkin of UCSF Nursing Students for Choice, and Belle Taylor-McGhee, president of California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom.

7–9 p.m., $3 donation

Quaker Meeting House

65 Ninth St, SF

bacorrinfo@yahoo.com

 

FRIDAY 22

Living Wage Awards dinner

The San Francisco Living Wage Coalition, which has sponsored several successful local campaigns protecting and expanding the rights of workers, is holding the first of what is intended to be an annual awards ceremony honoring labor’s local heroes. Conny Ford, the secretary-treasurer of Office and Professional Employees Local 3, will be named Labor Woman of the Year, while San Francisco Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson will receive Labor Man of the Year honors. The event is part of this year’s Laborfest, a month-long commemorate of San Francisco’s 1934 General Strike. And for details on a pair of labor mural tours on Saturday, July 23, visit www.laborfest.net/2011/2011schedule.htm

6:30 p.m., $35 or $300 for a table of nine

Third Baptist Church

1399 McAllister, SF

415-863-1225

sflivingwage@riseup.net

www.livingwage-sf.org

 

SUNDAY 24

Mirkarimi for Sheriff fundraiser

Join supporters of Ross Mirkarimi in a fundraiser for his campaign to succeed longtime Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who has endorsed Mirkarimi. In addition to serving on the Board of Supervisors, Mirkarimi is graduate of the San Francisco Police Academy and former investigator with the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. He’s running against a field of police officers and sheriff’s deputies.

2–4 p.m., $25+ suggested donation

Park 77

77 Cambon, SF

www.rossmirkarimi.com

Trash (summer) lit: Shut Your Eyes Tight

Zelda Bronstein
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Trash (summer) lit: Shut Your Eyes Tight

Shut Your Eyes Tight
By John Verdon
Crown, 509 pp, $24



Ever since Thomas Harris created Hannibal Lecter and James Patterson devised the twisted psychokillers who populate the Alex Cross novels, there’s been something of a drive in thriller lit to top even the worst, most grusome stuff imaginable. It’s the Pulp Fiction Syndrome in trash lit — and although Shut Your Eyes Tight is hardly the worst of the recent offerings, I was only about a third of the way through the book when I took out my notepad and wrote:


“This is some sick fucking shit.”


Yep: Ritual machete decapitations (including the bride at a society wedding). Headless body in a rich man’s freezer (below a hundred chickens and some broccoli). Doll equivalent of a horse’s head in a bed. Sexual sadists taking advantage of kids at a reform school for juvie sex offenders.


Oh, and our hero gets a roofie in his drink and gets blackmailed by a fake art patron with no real vowels in his name over (possible) unconsious underage sex. And the Sicilian mob is involved. And an obscure-Elizabethan-literary-reference murderer who cites the works of  Thomas (why should this not surpise me) Kyd.


Naturally, Dave Gurney, the reluctant former homicide detective caught in the middle of all of this, is having tortured relationship problems. It’s sort of a bloody Green Acres: His wife wants to live a nice peaceful life in the country, and he can’t stop himself from getting dragged into dangerous and horrifying crime investigations. In fact, for all the gore, the scenes with the wife are some of the most painful stuff in the book.


In this case, Gurney is called to help solve the wedding-day homicide, which the husband (a truly weird psychiatrist) wants to blame on the household help, in this case a young man who — according to the police — might have been having an affair with the late lamented, or might have been mad at her husband, or might just be a crazed killer who conveniently split town and can’t be found. But the facts don’t quite add up — and Gurney has to piss off not only all of the direct players but a crew of state cops who have bungled the preliminary investigation.


He follows the threads through a bizarre world of crooks, fashion models, child molesters, billionaires, and assorted upstate New York characters until he runs into the grisly world he retired to avoid. You can imagine how his wife feels.


Somehow, it all works as a perfectly adequate (if a bit too lenghty) beach book for the lovers of batshit psychos and the cops who chase them. It’s on my recommended list.

Chris Cunnie running for sheriff?

Zelda Bronstein
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65
Chris Cunnie running for sheriff?

It appears that the race for San Francisco sheriff is about to get more competitive: Chris Cunnie, the former Police Officers Association president, the former undersheriff and chief district attorney investigator is getting close to deciding to run, numerous sources tell me.


I haven’t been able to reach Cunnie directly, but he’s been calling around to local political types and talking about the race, and several people close to him say he’s about ready to make the jump.


Cunnie was widely expected to run when incument Mike Hennessey appointed him as undersheriff more than a year ago, but Cunnie left that job for personal reasons and appeared to have no interest in trying for the top position.


But he’s apparently changed his mind, and he would be the third candidate in the race and likely to get more traction than Paul Miyamoto, a captain in the Sheriff”s Department who has no prior political experience.


At this point, however, Hennessey has already endorsed Ross Mirkarimi, who is by any account the front-runner. He’s the only candidate with any electoral experience and he’ll have the progressives united behind his campaign. Cunnie’s time as the POA boss will hurt him on the left.


It’s not clear why Cunnie has decided to enter the race, but I think it’s safe to say that a lot of powerful people in this town are worried that Mirkarimi — a stalwart progressive who happens to have been very involved in law-enforcement issues — could wind up in a citywide office from which he might at some point seek to run for mayor. Cunnie would make it much safer for the more conservative types.


 

Couscous with Al Qaeda part 2

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Couscous with Al Qaeda part 2

TRUE TRAVEL TALES: This is part two of Marke B.’s culinary journey through the Arab Spring. You can read part one — spicy! — here.

Before we left Tunis, the lovely people and open vibe of which which we’d rapidly fallen in love with, we ate at a mind-blowing West African lunch off a small street near the African Development Agency building, El Khalifa. Heaping plates of sauce-covered, deeply flavored attiéké poulet brasse (a creamy, manioc-based specialty of Côte d’Ivoire) and choucouya de poulet au cancancan, smothered with onions over berberé-spiked rice, were served cafeteria-style to a bustling room of suits talking international affairs in a head-swimming number of languages.

All the development-speak in the air got us scheming about how to bring more tourists back to this great city, with its intense cosmopolitan air, historical riches, and perfectly enchanting old city section — although we’d already witnessed one option in play: activist tourism. 

In the medina (old city) of Tunis

Fortunately or unfortunately, our hotel (the majestic, insanely reasonable Grand Hôtel de France, go stay there) had played host to a coterie of trendy-anarchisty Western student-types, perpetual cigarette smoke wreathing their immaculately styled dreadlocks. They had come, like us, to see the after-effects of the revolution and make contact with some of the people behind it. But they also wanted a piece of the action, joining demonstrations and breathlessly relating tales of being chased by police — before heading out for a day at the beach. Part of a loose organization called the Knowledge Liberation Front, they had gathered from all parts of Europe, hoping to formulate new models of resistance to the austerity measures sweeping the Union. (The fact that there were so many Italians there, raging against Berlusconi, was kind of encouraging.) They were cute! If, of course, deadly serious. Whatever Tunisian group that had facilitated their “revolution experience” certainly had a great thing started in terms of possible revenue streams.  

But now we were on our way south via Tunisia’s main railroad line, hoping to reach the Grand Erg Oriental, a rippling sea of sand in the Sahara that looks like the pictures in your head when you hear “Sahara.” From there, our ultimate destination would be El Ghriba on the island of Djerba, the oldest synagogue in North Africa, and its huge annual Lag B’Omer festival, which draws tens of thousands of Jews from around the world in a celebrated pilgrimage.   

The third-century Roman-style amphitheater at El Djem 

On the way, we stopped in El Djem, a neat little town that just so happens to contain a humungous, remarkably intact Roman coliseum-like amphitheatre, a 35,000-seat wonder built in the 3rd century (with ancient graffiti carved into its stone!), which we had practically to ourselves. It also has a well-designed museum of ravishing mosaics, including some depicting the martyrdom-by-wild-beasts that the amphitheatre (actually more like a killing factory, really) showcased. Innumerable christians and animals – including now-extinct species of elephants, tigers, even giraffes — were sacrificed horribly for the crowd’s entertainment.

We had the most extraordinary lunch. At Cafe Le Bonheur, a traditional central Tunisian feast with several salads and a main course of tender rabbit stewed in saffron, served in casual French style by a hip young waiter for cheap. Score! Some balmy afternoon time in cafes over cafe filter (coffee served in a glass) confirmed that El Djem is one of those magical little places you could sink into for a while.

The only other tourists in El Djem belonged to a random British family. Hang in there, Tunisia!

Then it was on to Gabes at the end of the train line, an unremarkable oil town (with attendant pollution — but also plentiful alcohol and solid business-traveler restaurants), where we planned to rent a car and drive to the desert. As soon as we got to Gabes, though, we saw our plans would be interrupted. The barbed-wire around the city square was not an encouraging sign. We were now officially in the south, where the revolution had started and which, with its large and impoverished Berber population, had always been restive. 

Now that the Libyan revolution had begun, and tens of thousands of refugees were flooding into Tunisia (which, wonderfully, had welcomed them with open arms, providing housing and resources), the situation had grown more complicated. According to the press and the government, some of the Libyans were bringing weapons into the country with them — weapons stashes had been found in nearby caves. And, alas, on the route to the Grand Erg from Gabes, an Al Qaeda plot had been foiled, with more evidence of Al Qaeda presence being found in the region. (Both Tunisia and Morocco had remained almost Al Qaeda-free until recently, this was all sad news, although it still seemed divorced from the citizen’s everyday reality. Tunisians, especially, seemed casually or privately religious on the whole.)

We realized that it might not be the best thing to drive through the desert countryside, already a tricky operation, without a guide. So we switched plans and headed to tourist center Douz, where once busloads of tourists unloaded to ride camels and 4x4s into the scrubby surroundings, but which was now slowly but valiantly weathering the almost complete lack of tourist traffic since the revolution.

Livestock market at Douz

(First, it’s kind of gross that thousands of package tours cancelled now that there was no dictator, although people on package tours seem like the most vulnerable to feelings of uncertainty. Secondly, it was pretty inspiring to see people who were slowly slipping into poverty due to lack of income hold their heads up because they had won freedom — and remain positive that once things had settled down, people would come back. We heard that again and again.)   

So, swallowing my environmental eeks, we chartered a 4×4 to drive us over the dunes (after we had passed any cryptobiotic hotspots) to the hot springs oasis of Ksar Ghilane in the Grand Erg Oriental sand sea, which I probably don’t need to mention was aaaaah-mazing.

We rode camels named Caramel and Ghaniya (“pretty girl”) through a halcyon sunset into a full moon. And then it rained! In the freakin’ Sahara! Awesome.

We were, as usual, the only tourists there (and devoured delectable chicken tagine in an empty, cavernous mess hall right out of The Shining: camel-riding makes you ravenous!). As we were as well at our next stop, mountainous Matmata, the famous “trogolodyte” Sand People/ Mos Eisley Cantina town from Star Wars. I think that’s right — don’t kill me Star Wars nerds. There things, however, took another unexpectedly sinister turn.

Matmata is one of the biggest tourist draws in Southern Tunisia, thanks to the whole Skywalker connection. We rode in bumpily aboard a louage, the shared minivan taxis that are the main means of transport in these remote regions. But as we approached we saw smoke — and a tour bus, the only one of that week we later heard, rapidly retreating. As we entered the town center, the smoke grew overwhelming. A large group of men were burning tires in front of the government outpost. We were told that a govenment official was supposed to arrive from the capital that morning with news of a jobs program, but he never materialized. Out here the unemployment rate is around 70-80 percent, so this was a big deal (even though driving away the few tourists seemed like a bad idea.)

In the morning, after the tire fire

We managed to stay the night in one of the sunken, white-washed, fantasy-come-true underground trogolodyte dwellings, mingle with the locals, and stuff ourselves with kousksi bil djaj (chicken couscous), shakshouka (eggs poached with tomatoes, peppers, and tumeric) and makrouth — sweet, date-filled pastries native to the city of Kairoun.

The next morning, though, protesters had blocked the highway and were burning more tires. 

With no means of transportation, we started hiking the 12 kilometers to the next biggest city — luckily the day was overcast, this was still the Sahara after all! A nice man in a truck with government plates stopped to give us a ride, but as we rounded a large curve we hit another roadblock. A gang of young men from a nearby mountain town were standing ominously behind rocks piled on the road, makeshift weapons of former highway signs in their hands. As we slowly approached, they silently surrounded the truck.

“Uh oh,” I telegraphed to Hunky Beau, “I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t end well.” And then, “Well, at least a couple of them are hot.”

The guy giving us a ride backed slowly out and we retreated while he made a few calls. We went back to Matmata, our hearts sinking because the situation was getting heavier there as well. We waited a couple of stomach-wrenching hours on a bend outside of town, wondering what to do, at least enjoying the clifftop views. Lo and behold, our guardian angel in the truck returned with two hardcore, seasoned military men aboard (one of them a thick-faced number who looked like he saw a lot of torture under the old regime — and he wasn’t on the receiving end). We quickly squeezed in. As soon as we got back to the roadblock, the army dudes leapt out of the truck and charged the gang, bellowing and waving their arms.

“That’s the way to do it,” I thought, watching through laced fingers. “Barge the fuck right in.” There was a scuffle, one of the kids tried to grab an officer’s gun, weapons were hectically raised, but the kids eventually backed off after getting to vent a bit, and we charged through. Government escort? I’d never been so happy to have one. And all to help two complete strangers make it to their next vacation stop. Tunisia, I love ya.

But yeah, frustration out there is growing. When we eventually made it back to Douz, we had one of the best meals of my life. Finally, we found a great bowl of Ojja, the egg stew cooked with merguez sausages, served by the wonderful women who run Restaurant Chez Magic —  it really was a house of sausage stew magic!

Ojja at last. Crappy iPhone photo by Marke B.

Final destination: Djerba island, the legendary “Land of the Lotus Eaters.” Probably beautiful in its normal, sunny, sparkling blue Mediterranean state. Racked by magnificent storms when we were there. No Tunisian martinis at the beach for me.

No problem, though — there was plenty to enjoy, including one of Tunisia’s most bewitching specialties: brik. I know that there was a lot of other stuff involved, but if ol’ Odysseus and his Greek crew had trouble leaving this isle behind on their quest to return home, I’m pretty sure brik was involved.

Brik at Bric

Imagine, if you will, a thin-skinned pastry, stuffed with mashed potatoes, tuna, capers, parsley, olives, chopped onion, and harissa folded into a triangle and lightly deep-fried. But wait! Before the pastry is folded, and egg is gently broken into it, so that when your fork pierces the pastry skin, the yolk gently breaks and oozes out like a swoosh of golden flavor. I am sorry my vegan friends! Magnificent, and the place to get them is called Bric Belgacem in Houmt Souk, the capital, on January 14, 2011 Street (named after the date of the dictator Ben Ali stepped down). Gaaah, I want one.    

We had come to Djerba, like supposedly tens of thousands of other pilgrims, for the huge annual Lag B’Omer festival at the ancient synagogue of El Ghriba, in one of Northern Africa’s last remaining Jewish communities. Yep, on this small island, Jew and Muslim live side by side in peace — we’d unfortunately seen a dismaying share of anti-Semitism (not just anti-Israelism) on our journey in the form of graffiti, alas. We felt bouyant to be a part of this giant celebration.

And sure, in 2002 Al Qaeda had tried to blow up El Ghriba, which holds possibly the world’s oldest Torah (paraded through the streets during the festival). A truck bomb had killed 21. But that was long enough ago not to frighten people away, right?

El Ghriba synagogue

Not really. Spooked by the revolution and the turmoil just a few kilometers away in Libya (a flood of Libyan refugees was engulfing the island: there were more Libyan license plates than Tunisian ones), so many tourists had cancelled their pilgrimage that the celebration itself was cancelled. And boy, was it cancelled. When we showed up at the ornately-decorated, marvelously Moorish-style synagogue, there were just five old men praying, a father-daughter pair from Kansas (who had just crossed dangerous Southern Algeria for the heck of it) and the effervescent Zoey, a middle-aged Englishwoman who was receiving text messages from God. Let’s let her finish out this account:

“I woke up one day at my home in Norwich one day and I heard God telling me to drive to Israel.” She looked me in the eyes, completely calmly. “So I loaded up my camper and began to drive, trusting him to provide — and he has, oh how has. I made it to Libya and I asked God how was I going to get in. And you know what? He opened the borders for me, just opened them right up so I could drive through. As I was driving toward the border post, the rebels captured it, peacefully, and in the confusion I just drove. I met the rebels and slept in the mountains with them, until it was time to go. I drove on to Benghazi” — she was in a station wagon towing a trailer with a Jesus fish on the bumper — “where God taught me to accept my fear of being bombed, as bombs rained down all around me. I can tell you that was something.

“Checkpoint after checkpoint opened up before me. Sometimes they would search my car, but I had a Koran, and when they saw I had the Word of God with me they let me through. Once when danger approached, I received a text to avoid a certain area. Then finally, I was stopped and they ransacked my trailer. They tried to ransack me as well, but God put a stop to that! I was blindfolded and sent to a prison in Tripoli for a week. They ended up deporting me, and so I’m waiting here at the border until God tells me to try again. Really, you just need to trust sometimes. I can see that you’ll be hearing from him today, just by coming here.

“Sometimes,” she continued, “we have to do whatever crazy thing our heart tells us we should do, and call it belief.”

And with that, she went to drop a harboiled egg in an ancient well, which is the tradition at such occasions.

 

The energy of Arab Spring uprisings soon spread to Spain, although with a very different effect: you can read my report here.

 

 

 

 

Human rights for felons

Zelda Bronstein
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Human rights for felons

Matier and Ross have a way with making any story into something the national news media will use to say “only in San Francisco.” And here it is again; check out hte first paragraph of the July 13 item:


Ex-convicts may soon become a “protected class” in San Francisco – joining African Americans, Latinos, gays, transgender people, pregnant women and the disabled.


Right there in one sentence, everything Fox news loves to report: That crazy city that loves gays and trannies now wants to protect criminals.

And this is going to play out as an issue in the sheriff’s race, since Supervisor (and sheriff candidate) Ross Mirkarimi is the one carrying the legislation. You know, that crazy liberal — the guy who whant to give civil rights to ex-cons. I can see the ads now — if any of the other candidates decide to go negative on something that actually makes a lot of law-enforcement sense.

See, if people returning from prison can’t get a place to live or a job, they’re going to be homeless and back to a life of crime. Pretty basic math. And thanks to the governor’s realignment plan, a lot more prisoners are coming to San Francisco, and the next sheriff is going to have to make anti-recidivism programs a top priority. That’s really what this is.

And the fact that the district attorney and former police chief supports it was buried in the story.


Zero tolerance for BART cop killings

Zelda Bronstein
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Zero tolerance for BART cop killings

I understand how frustrated some commuters were when protesters shut down the Civic Center BART station. And you can make the argument that the protest might have alienated fewer people if it had been outside the station, or whatever. But the fact is, a man is dead because a BART cop shot him — and quite a few other people are dead because BART cops shot them, and in at least three of those cases, the shooting was unjustifiable. And the BART Board sat on its hands for almost 20 years and did nothing (until the Oscar Grant shooting was captured on video).


So I’m with the protesters on this one. It was important to make a statement, to disrupt business as usual, and to tell BART that, frankly, we’re all sick of this shit.


And now BART says it’s going to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy for protests. BART’s Linton Johnson says:


“That delay goes to the protesters. That mess, those fringe groups own it.”


I have a couple of questions: That “mess” of a police shooting — who owns that? Why are people angry (for good reason) about the BART Police suddenly “fringe groups?”


And when do we get a “zero tolerance” policy for dubious police shootings?

Film Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Beats, Rhymes & Life See “Buggin’ Out.” (1:38) Shattuck.

*”An Evening With Andy and Jonathan” Before the 80s standup craze dredged up so much bottom-feeding crap, the comedy world had room for a few chameleonic improv innovators like the subjects of this Roxie program hosted by Johnny Legend. Making its theatrical debut is his recent DVD assembly Jonathan Winters: Birth of a Comedy Genius, a compilation bringing together clips from various long-forgotten shows like The NBC Comedy Hour and The Steve Allen Plymouth Show. A man of a thousand voices, Winters (who’s still occasionally active — he voices Papa Smurf in the imminent Smurfs feature) anticipated the manic improvisational glee of Jim Carrey and others as he sped through myriad instantly-created characters, often leaving any fellow players silenced and agog. If these segments predating his peak fame in the late 60s aren’t necessarily stellar in terms of material — it was an era when TV allowed very little that was “edgy” — the performer himself is always a marvel to watch. The co-feature is cult fave My Breakfast with Blassie, the 55-minute semi-staged, all-improv vehicle for the late Andy Kaufman — very much “playing” himself — and his older pro wrestler friend Fred Blassie. Legend co-directed that 1983 oddity, made just a year before the “dadaist” comedian’s untimely death; also on the bill is a one-hour program of ultra-rarities featuring Kaufman, Blassie, Legend and more. Roxie. (Harvey)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Game over. (2:10)

If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front traces the roots and development of the controversial environmental activist organization through one of its members, Daniel McGowan, as he faces trial for the newly imagined charge of eco-terrorism. McGowan is thoughtful and open about his participation in numerous actions against perceived enemies of Earth, allowing director Marshall Curry to craft an intelligent documentary as much about McGowan and the E.L.F. as the almost insurmountable ethical murkiness of activism in America. Frustrated by the apparent ineffectuality of peaceful protest and faced with the continued despoiling of our planet, McGowan and his peers pose a difficult question: how far is too far? Or, what price do we pay by failing to go far enough? Curry is careful to allow both sides of the debate ample time on screen in a timely consideration of the viability of direct action and the human face behind a media frenzy. (1:30) Shattuck. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*Project Nim This is the story of an individual plucked from their native culture even before birth, separated from parents shortly after, handed over to a chaotic if loving urban foster family, yanked from them to a lavish, isolated country estate, then shipped off to a medical experimentation lab, “rescued” only to be placed in prison like solitary confinement, and … well, things finally get a little better, but isn’t this enough abuse for several lifetimes? Before you call Child Services or the ACLU, be informed that this is not the saga of a human being, but one Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee born in U.S. captivity, then set on a highly unusual life course as the subject of a study in animal language acquisition by Columbia University linguist Herbert S. Terrace. Nim did indeed prove remarkably adept at learning sign language to communicate with his teachers/minders — even if Terrace finally belittled that as no more than imitation performed to beg food and other favor. Nim was a prodigy, and for a while a media sensation. He was also a temperamental, physically powerful wild beast who could (and sometimes did) cause considerable harm to those around him. Regardless, both his adaptation to human habitats and animal instincts should have been deal with a great deal more care and consistency — there was no overall plan for his well-being beyond serving (or being abandoned by) whoever his keepers were at any given moment. This latest documentary by James Marsh (2008’s Man on Wire, 1999’s Wisconsin Death Trip) is an involving story whose latter-day interviewees — tumbling rather easily into hero and villain categories, with Prof. Terrance not in the first camp — annotate an enormous amount of archival footage shot throughout Nim’s life. (1:33) (Harvey)

*Snow Flower and the Secret Fan Working with Lisa See’s novel, director Wayne Wang returns to the crowd-pleasing territory of his wildly popular Joy Luck Club (1993) — fortunately it’s also material that feels intensely personal, even transposed in 21st century China (one of those modern Chinese women, Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi bought the rights to the book and provides a financial boost here). Modern-day Nina (Bingbing Li) is about to leave her native Shanghai for NYC and certain success in the banking world when she learns that her best friend, her laotong or sworn sister, Sophia (Gianna Jun), is in a coma. She must piece together the mystery of her friend’s life since they last parted, studying the book written about her 19th century forbearer Snow Flower (also Jun) and her own laotong Lily (Li). An uncredited turn by Hugh Jackman as a caddish boyfriend is beside the point here; Wang’s take on the bond of friendship that ties two women together, beyond the pain of foot-binding, marriage, class, and adversity is tremulously sentimental, in way that will have many would-be Joy Luck Club-ers happily identifying with these sisters from other mothers — and leave everyone else sobbing in the darkness. (1:40) Albany. (Chun)

*Tabloid Taking a break from loftier subjects, Errol Morris’ latest documentary simply finds a whopper of a story and lets the principal participant tell her side of it — one we gradually realize may be very far from the real truth. In 1978 former Miss Wyoming Joyce McKinney flew to England, where the Mormon boy she’d grown infatuated with had been posted for missionary work by his church. What ensued became a U.K. tabloid sensation, as the glamorous, not at all publicity-shy Yankee attracted accusations of kidnapping, imprisonment, attempted rape and more. Her victim of love, one Kirk Anderson, is not heard from here — presumably he’s been trying to live down an embarrassing life chapter ever since. But we do hear from others who shed considerable light on the now middle-aged McKinney’s continued protestations that it was all just one big misunderstanding. Most importantly, we hear from the lady herself — and she is colorful, unflappable, unapologetic, and quite possibly stone-cold nuts. (1:28) California. (Harvey)

*Terri What happens when the camera stops on the quiet, shy and heavy 15-year-old in the corner of the classroom? Terri might be his story — if he cut class regularly to avoid being teased about his man-breasts, wore PJs to school, and befriended an affable, straight-talking Shrek of a teacher. Painfully awkward Terri (Jacob Wysocki) is ignored or mocked by most, left to feed the mice he catches in traps to passing raptors, care for his ailing uncle, and avoid the school bullies as best he can. But assistant principal Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), who has a habit of nurturing the school’s misfits, recognizes Terri’s tender heart and takes him under his wing. It’s catching, apparently, as Terri first befriends the hair-pulling Chad (Bridger Zadina) and then Heather, the girl who allows herself be fingered in home ec (Olivia Crocicchia). What transpires among these school outcasts, shaped by director-writer Azazel Jacobs, subtly subverts your conventional teen identity story arc —Terri isn’t the only one here that’s good-hearted. (1:45) California. (Chun)

Trigun: Badlands Rumble Set in a futuristic western border town with as much variety in firepower as in its inhabitants (think Mos Eisley with way more guns), anime import Trigun: Badlands Rumble follows Vash the Stampede, an apparently bungling but actually expert gunslinger, as he attempts to both woo the beautiful and dangerous Amelia and prevent the infamous robber Gasback from pulling off the most daring heist in history. The orgy of destruction that results wears thin, as does the philosophical side to a movie that employs “rolling the dice” as a metaphor at least seven times. Vash’s staunch thou-shalt-not-kill posturing is somewhat intriguing if not wildly incongruous with the level of chaos celebrated by Badlands Rumble; there’s simply no way that everyone lives with the sheer tonnage of lead in the air. I’m guessing this could be a blast for those more familiar with the manga and animated series it’s based upon, but as for the casual viewer, it may leave you somewhat confused. (1:30) Viz Cinema. (Berkmoyer)

*”TV Noir” This-three night retrospective of broadcast episodes from the boob tube’s formative decade — in which it went from being the luxury of a few to the nation’s primary entertainment — spotlights moody crime, procedural, and morality dramas that fit into the medium’s early fast-cheap requirements. Network TV in the 1950s wasn’t yet mostly L.A.-based, and as a result providing a starting point for a lot of actors, writers and directors who’d soon make a splash on Broadway or in Hollywood, as well as established stars willing to slum a bit. Among those whose work you’ll catch in the series’ six separate programs are Leslie Nielsen, Sidney Lumet, Joanne Woodward, Boris Karloff, James Coburn, Robert Aldrich, Blake Edwards, Angie Dickinson, Lee Marvin, and even Harpo Marx. Highlights include Charles Bronson, atypically manic as an ex-con released to terrorize his wife (“Don’t you understand I love you, I’d never hurt you…” [Five seconds later] “You let a cop in here, Laura, and I’ll blow off his head, then yours!”) in an episode from forgotten 1955 series Treasury Men in Action. Jack Palance is swell as usual in “The Kiss Off,” a 1953 segment from long-running omnibus Suspense. And Brian Keith, a long way from the treacle train of Family Affair a decade later, plays Mike Hammer in a failed pilot of that name, the first attempted TV version of Mickey Spillane’s take-no-prisoners private eye. It was excellent but evidently too hardboiled for the tube at the time, although subsequent attempts both big- and small-screen would be more successful. While not all the largely very rare, commercially unavailable materials here qualify as “noir” by even a generous stretch of the imagination, they’re all testaments to the TV’s industry and invention back when many programs were broadcast “live.” Collector-curator Johnny Legend will be on hand to introduce all shows. Roxie. (Harvey)

Winnie the Pooh John Cleese narrates this new animated film about the honey-loving bear and his pals in the Hundred Acre Wood. (1:09)

ONGOING

Bad Teacher Jake Kasdan, the once-talented director of a few Freaks and Geeks episodes and 2002’s underrated Orange County, seems hell-bent on humiliating everyone in the cast of Bad Teacher. Cameron Diaz is Elizabeth, the title’s criminally bad pedagogue who prefers the Jack Daniels method to the Socratic. Her impetus for pounding Harper Lee into her middle school students’ bug-eyed little heads is to cash in on a bonus check to fund her breast-y ambitions and woo Justin Timberlake and his baby voice. The only likable onscreen presence is Jason Segal as a sad sack gym teacher in love with Elizabeth. But he could do so much better. There’s no shortage of racist jokes and potty humor in this R-rated comedy pandering to those 17 and below. When asked if she wants to go out with her coworkers, Elizabeth ripostes, “I’d rather get shot in the face!” That scenario is likely a better alternative than suffering this steaming pile of cash cow carcass. (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Lattanzio)

*Beginners There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Mélanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. (1:44) Balboa, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

A Better Life (1:38) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Bill Cunningham New York To say that Bill Cunningham, the 82-year old New York Times photographer, has made documenting how New Yorkers dress his life’s work would be an understatement. To be sure, Cunningham’s two decades-old Sunday Times columns — “On the Street,” which tracks street-fashion, and “Evening Hours,” which covers the charity gala circuit — are about the clothes. And, my, what clothes they are. But Cunningham is a sartorial anthropologist, and his pictures always tell the bigger story behind the changing hemlines, which socialite wore what designer, or the latest trend in footwear. Whether tracking the near-infinite variations of a particular hue, a sudden bumper-crop of cropped blazers, or the fanciful leaps of well-heeled pedestrians dodging February slush puddles, Cunningham’s talent lies in his ability to recognize fleeting moments of beauty, creativity, humor, and joy. That last quality courses through Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’ captivating and moving portrait of a man whose reticence and personal asceticism are proportional to his total devotion to documenting what Harold Koda, chief curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes in the film as “ordinary people going about their lives, dressed in fascinating ways.” (1:24) Castro. (Sussman)

*Bridesmaids For anyone burned out on bad romantic comedies, Bridesmaids can teach you how to love again. This film is an answer to those who have lamented the lack of strong female roles in comedy, of good vehicles for Saturday Night Live cast members, of an appropriate showcase for Melissa McCarthy. The hilarious but grounded Kristen Wiig stars as Annie, whose best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is getting hitched. Financially and romantically unstable, Annie tries to throw herself into her maid of honor duties — all while competing with the far more refined Helen (Rose Byrne). Bridesmaids is one of the best comedies in recent memory, treating its relatable female characters with sympathy. It’s also damn funny from start to finish, which is more than can be said for most of the comedies Hollywood continues to churn out. Here’s your choice: let Bridesmaids work its charm on you, or never allow yourself to complain about an Adam Sandler flick again. (2:04) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Buck This documentary paints a portrait of horse trainer Buck Brannaman as a sort of modern-day sage, a sentimental cowboy who helps “horses with people problems.” Brannaman has transcended a background of hardship and abuse to become a happy family man who makes a difference for horses and their owners all over the country with his unconventional, humane colt-starting clinics. Though he doesn’t actually whisper to horses, he served as an advisor and inspiration for Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998). Director Cindy Meehl focuses generously on her saintly subject’s bits of wisdom in and out of a horse-training setting — e.g. “Everything you do with a horse is a dance” — as well as heartfelt commentary from friends and colleagues. In the harrowing final act of the film, Brannaman deals with a particularly unruly horse and his troubled owner, highlighting the dire and disturbing consequences of improper horse rearing. (1:28) Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Sam Stander)

Cars 2 You pretty much can’t say a bad thing about a Pixar film. Cars 2 is by no means Ratatouille (2007) or Wall-E (2008), but the sequel to the 2006 hit Cars offers plenty of sleek visuals and one-note gags under its hollow hood. If nothing else, Pixar seems to have overcome the dingy, dark glaze that plagues 3-D films. Directors John Lasseter and Joe Ranft return to beloved autos Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and the “extremely American” Mater (Larry the Cable Guy). This time around, secret agents Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) come along for the ride while working to expose sabotage in the alternative fuel industry. Compelling chase sequences, explosions and more than a few jabs at cultural stereotypes follow suit. This is the lightest, silliest Pixar film to date, but you probably don’t have any business seeing it unless you’ve got a kid in tow. (1:52) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Lattanzio)

*Cave of Forgotten Dreams The latest documentary from Werner Herzog once again goes where no filmmaker — or many human beings, for that matter — has gone before: the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, a heavily-guarded cavern in Southern France containing the oldest prehistoric artwork on record. Access is highly restricted, but Herzog’s 3D study is surely the next best thing to an in-person visit. The eerie beauty of the works leads to a typically Herzog-ian quest to learn more about the primitive culture that produced the paintings; as usual, Herzog’s experts have their own quirks (like a circus performer-turned-scientist), and the director’s own wry narration is peppered with random pop culture references and existential ponderings. It’s all interwoven with footage of crude yet beautiful renderings of horses and rhinos, calcified cave-bear skulls, and other time-capsule peeks at life tens of thousands of years ago. The end result is awe-inspiring. (1:35) SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Green Lantern This latest DC Comics-to-film adaptation fails to recognize the line between awesome fantasy-action and cheeseball absurdity, often resembling the worst excesses of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. A surprisingly palatable Ryan Reynolds stars as Hal Jordan, the cocky test pilot who is chosen to wield a power ring as a member of an intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern Corps. He must face down Parallax, an alien embodiment of fear, who appears here as a chuckle-inducing floating head surrounded by tentacles. Peter Sarsgaard is effectively nauseating as Hector Hammond, who becomes Parallax’s crony after he is transformed by a transfusion of fear energy. The acting is all over the map, with Blake Lively’s blank-faced love interest caricature as the weakest link, and the effects are hit-or-miss, but scenes featuring alien Green Lanterns should please fans, and you could probably do worse if you’re looking for an entertaining popcorn flick. (1:45) 1000 Van Ness. (Stander)

The Hangover Part II What do you do with a problematic mess like Hangover Part II? I was a fan of The Hangover (2009), as well as director-cowriter Todd Phillips’ 1994 GG Allin doc, Hated, so I was rooting for II, this time set in the East’s Sin City of Bangkok, while simultaneously dreading the inevitable Asian/”ching-chang-chong” jokes. Would this would-be hit sequel be funnier if they packed in more of those? Doubtful. The problem is that most of II‘s so-called humor, Asian or no, falls completely flat — and any gross-out yuks regarding wicked, wicked Bangkok are fairly old hat at this point, long after Shocking Asia (1976) and innumerable episodes of No Reservations and other extreme travel offerings. This Hangover around, mild-ish dentist Stu (Ed Helms) is heading to the altar with Lauren (The Real World: San Diego‘s Jamie Chung), with buds Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug (Justin Bartha) in tow. Alan (Zach Galifianakis) has completely broken with reality — he’s the pity invite who somehow ropes in the gangster wild-card Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). Blackouts, natch, and not-very-funny high jinks ensue, with Jeong, surprisingly, pulling small sections of II out of the crapper. Phillips obviously specializes in men-behaving-badly, but II‘s most recent character tweaks, turning Phil into an arrogant, delusional creep and Alan into an arrogant, delusional kook, seem beside the point. Because almost none of the jokes work, and that includes the tired jabs at tranny strippers because we all know how supposedly straight white guys get hella grossed out by brown chicks with dicks. Lame. (1:42) SF Center. (Chun)

Happy Happy, a documentary by Roko Belic (1999’s Genghis Blues), traces the contented lifestyles of men and women around the globe. Manoj Singh is a Kolkata rickshaw driver sustained by his son’s smile. Anne Bechsgaard’s life is enriched by her co-housing community in Denmark. These soothingly sentimental profiles are intercut with commentary from leading neuroscientists and psychologists. They provide a cursory guide to the rare balancing act that is happiness in the 21st century. A brisk 75 minutes, the film is saturated with thought-provoking tidbits (the Bhutan government aims for gross national happiness instead of GDP) and an ambient backing track that’s heavy on the chimes. However, sometimes there’s the sense that these mechanics of happiness aren’t cinematically compelling enough, and that rifling through a couple Wikipedia pages might offer just as much insight. At its best, Happy sparks a reflection on how many of the unofficial criteria for joy one has fulfilled, and suggests ideas for simple happiness boosters. (1:15) Roxie. (Getman)

Horrible Bosses Lead by a clearly talented ensemble of comic actors, Horrible Bosses is yet another example of a big-budget summer comedy with a promising conceit (see Bad Teacher) that fails to deliver anything but crude alms to the lowest common denominator. Seth Gordon directs Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day as three pals fed up with their evil employers (Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston, respectively) so they hatch a plan to have them killed. Because the answer to their problem obviously lies in a dive bar in the “bad part of town,” Jamie Foxx plays Motherfucker Jones, their murder consultant and the film’s most likable character-stereotype. In the tradition of The Hangover (2009) and its ilk of beer-guzzling, frat-boy cousins, Horrible Bosses is a disastrous pile-up of idiocy that’s more vapid than vulgar despite a few amusing performances. See it for no other reason than Michael Bluth and Charlie Kelly on coke. (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Lattanzio)

Larry Crowne While Transformers: Dark of the Moon may be getting all the attention for being the most terrible summer movie, I’d like to propose Larry Crowne as the bigger offender. No, it doesn’t have the abrasive effects of a Michael Bay blockbuster, but it’s surely just as incompetent. And coming from an actor as talented as Tom Hanks — who co-wrote, directed, produced, and stars in the film —Larry Crowne is insulting. The plot, insofar as there is one, centers around the titular Larry (Hanks), a man who goes to community college, joins a scooter gang led by Wilmer Valderrama, and ends up falling for his cranky, alcoholic teacher Mercedes (Julia Roberts). The scenes are thrown together hapharzadly, with no real sense of character development or continuity. Larry Crowne doesn’t even feel like a romantic comedy until a drunk Mercedes begins kissing and dry humping her student. But hey, who can resist a shot of Larry’s middle-aged bottom as he tries to wriggle into jeans that are just too small? (1:39) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Monte Carlo (1:48) 1000 Van Ness.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins (1:35) SF Center.

*My Perestroika Robin Hessman’s very engaging documentary takes one very relatable look at how changes since glasnost have affected some average Russians. The subjects here are five thirtysomethings who, growing up in Moscow in the 70s and 80s, were the last generation to experience full-on Communist Party indoctrination. But just as they reached adulthood, the whole system dissolved, confusing long-held beliefs and variably impacting their futures. Andrei has ridden the capitalist choo-choo to considerable enrichment as the proprietor of luxury Western menswear shops. But single mother Olga, unlucky in love, just scrapes by, while married schoolteachers Lyuba and Boris are lucky to have inherited an apartment (cramped as it is) they could otherwise ill afford. Meanwhile Ruslan, once member of a famous punk band (which he abandoned on principal because it was getting “too commercial”), both disdains and resents the new order just as he did the old one. Home movies and old footage of pageantry celebrating Soviet socialist glory make a whole ‘nother era come to life in this intimate, unexpectedly charming portrait of its long-term aftermath. (1:27) Balboa. (Harvey)

*Page One: Inside the New York Times When Andrew Rossi’s documentary premiered at Sundance this January, word of mouth on it was respectable but qualified, with nearly everyone opining that it was good … just not what they’d been led to expect. What they expected was (in line with the original subtitle A Year Inside the New York Times) a top-to-bottom overview of how the nation’s most respected — and in some circles resented — arbiter of news, “style,” and culture is created on a day-to-day as well as longer term basis. That’s something that would doubtless fascinate anyone still interested in print media, or even that realm of web media not catering to the ADD nation. But that big picture and the wealth of minute cogs within isn’t Page One‘s subject. Instead, Rossi focuses on the Gray Lady’s wrestling with admittedly fast-changing times in which newspapers and any other information source on paper seem to constitute an endangered species. This particular Times, however, is such a special case that that crisis might better have been explored by training a camera on a less fabled publication, perhaps one of the many that have succumbed to a once unthinkable, market-shrunk mortality in recent years. The film finds its colorful protagonist in David Carr, an ex-crack addict turned media columnist who retains his cranky, nonconformist edge even as he defends the Times itself from the same out-with-the-old cheerleaders who 15 years ago were inflating the dot-com boom till it burst. Facing one particularly smug champion of the blogosphere at a forum, Carr notes that without a few remaining outlets — like the Times — doing the hard work of serious research and reportage, the web would have nothing to purloin or offer but its own unending trivia and gossip. Page One does what it does entertainingly well, but if you’re looking for insight toward this not-dead-yet U.S. institution as a whole, you’d be better off simply picking up this week’s Sunday edition and reading every last word. (1:28) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides The last time we saw rascally Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), he was fighting his most formidable enemy yet: the potentially franchise-ending Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007). The first Pirates movie (2003) was a surprise critical success, earning Depp his first-ever Oscar nomination; subsequent entries, though no less moneymaking, suffered from a detectable case of sequel-itis. Overseeing this reboot of sorts is director Rob Marshall (2002’s Chicago), who keeps the World’s End notion of sending Jack to find the Fountain of Youth, but adds in a raft of new faces, including Deadwood‘s Ian McShane (as Blackbeard) and lady pirate Penélope Cruz. The story is predictably over-the-top, with the expected supernatural elements mingling with sparring both sword-driven and verbal — as well as an underlying theme about faith that’s nowhere near as fun as the film’s lesser motifs (revenge, for one). It’s basically a big swirl of silly swashbuckling, nothing more or less. And speaking of Depp, the fact that the oft-ridiculous Sparrow is still an amusing character can only be chalked up to the actor’s own brand of untouchable cool. If it was anyone else, Sparrow’d be in Austin Powers territory by now. (2:05) SF Center. (Eddy)

*Super 8 The latest from J.J. Abrams is very conspicuously produced by Steven Spielberg; it evokes 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial as well as 1985’s The Goonies and 1982’s Poltergeist (so Spielbergian in nature you’d be forgiven for assuming he directed, rather than simply produced, the pair). But having Grandpa Stevie blessing your flick is surely a good thing, especially when you’re already as capable as Abrams. Super 8 is set in 1979, high time for its titular medium, used by a group of horror movie-loving kids to film their backyard zombie epic; later in the film, old-school celluloid reveals the mystery behind exactly what escaped following a spectacular train wreck on the edge of their small Ohio town. The PG-13 Super 8 aims to frighten, albeit gently; there’s a lot of nostalgia afoot, and things do veer into sappiness at the end (that, plus the band of kids at its center, evoke the trademarks of another Grandpa Stevie: Stephen King). But the kid actors (especially the much-vaunted Elle Fanning) are great, and there’s palpable imagination and atmosphere afoot, rare qualities in blockbusters today. Super 8 tries, and mostly succeeds, in progressing the fears and themes addressed by E.T. (divorce, loneliness, growing up) into century 21, making the unknowns darker and the consequences more dire. (1:52) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon I’ll never understand the wisdom behind epic-length children’s movies. What child — or adult, for that matter — wants to sit through 154 minutes of assaultive popcorn entertainment? It’s an especially confounding decision for this third installment in the Transformers franchise because there’s a fantastic 90-minute movie in there, undone at every turn by some of the worst jokes, most pointless characters, and most hateful cultural politics you’re likely to see this summer. But when I say a fantastic movie, I mean a fantastic movie. It took two very expensive earlier attempts before director Michael Bay figured out that big things require a big canvas. Every shot of Dark of the Moon‘s predecessors seemed designed to hide their effects by crowding the screen. Finally we get the full view — the scale is now rightly calibrated to operatic and ridiculous. The marquee set pieces are inspired and terrifying, eliciting a sense of vertigo that’s earned for once, not imposed by the editing. The human hijinks are less consistent but ingratiatingly batshit, and without resorting to preening self-awareness and elaborately contrived mea culpas. But unfortunately Bay is too unapologetic even to walk back the ethnic buffoonery that not only upsets hippies like me but also seems defiantly disharmonious with the movie he’s trying to make. Bay is like that guy at the party who thinks amping up the racism will prove he’s not a racist. It’s that kind of garbage (plus, I guess, some universal primal hatred of Shia LaBeouf that I don’t really get) that makes people dismiss these movies wholesale. This time it’s just not deserved. I wouldn’t want to meet the asshole who made this thing, but credit where credit is due. It’s a visual marvel with perfectly integrated, utterly tactile, brilliantly choreographed CG robotics — a point that’ll no doubt be conceded in passing as if it’s not the very reason the movie exists. As if it’s not a feat of mastery to make a megaton changeling truck look graceful. (2:34) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Jason Shamai)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) California, Empire, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*The Trip Eclectic British director Michael Winterbottom rebounds from sexually humiliating Jessica Alba in last year’s flop The Killer Inside Me to humiliating Steve Coogan in all number of ways (this time to positive effect) in this largely improvised comic romp through England’s Lake District. Well, romp might be the wrong descriptive — dubbed a “foodie Sideways” but more plaintive and less formulaic than that sun-dappled California affair, this TV-to-film adaptation displays a characteristic English glumness to surprisingly keen emotional effect. Playing himself, Coogan displays all the carefree joie de vivre of a colonoscopy patient with hemorrhoids as he sloshes through the gray northern landscape trying to get cell reception when not dining on haute cuisine or being wracked with self-doubt over his stalled movie career and love life. Throw in a happily married, happy-go-lucky frenemy (comic actor Rob Brydon) and Coogan (TV’s I’m Alan Partridge), can’t help but seem like a pathetic middle-aged prick in a puffy coat. Somehow, though, his confused narcissism is a perverse panacea. Come for the dueling Michael Caine impressions and snot martinis, stay for the scallops and Brydon’s “small man in a box” routine. (1:52) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Devereaux)

Zookeeper (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

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