Politics

Lee appointment of Nuru darkens the ethical cloud over Room 200

Sasha Cuttler
-
10

City Attorney Dennis Herrera deserves credit for being the one mayoral candidate willing to bring a full-throated denunciation of the sleazy and corrupt politics now flowing from Mayor Ed Lee, who yesterday appointed discredited political fixer Mohammed Nuru to head the Department of Public Works, compounding a series of ethically questionable actions by Lee and his supporters.

While it was inexplicably buried by editors at the bottom of Section C, the Chronicle’s City Insider today had a pair of good stories on Lee’s mounting political problems. The first was about how the U.S. Attorney’s Office has reportedly launched a probe of Progress for All and its “Run, Ed, Run” campaign, for which Lee ally Rose Pak illegally sought support from executives at Recology, the garbage company that had just been awarded a huge city contract, largely because then-City Administrator Lee had given the company far higher ratings than the other two supposedly impartial bid judges.

The second story was about Herrera slamming Lee’s choice of Nuru. On his campaign website, Herrera reminded voters about the scandals that have surrounded Nuru – like Lee, someone who has always taken his cues from former Mayor Willie Brown – who illegally diverted city funds and workers into campaigning for Brown in 1999 and Gavin Newsom in 2003. Brown now writes for the Chronicle and is even allowed to comment on the mayor’s race.

The scandal – first broken by the Chronicle in 2004, furthered by reporting in the Guardian, and then investigated by Herrera’s office – involved Nuru steering city funds to his nonprofit San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners and then requiring its employees to illegally do campaign work during work hours. Nuru then went to work for Lee at the DPW while continuing to illegally use SLUG’s funds and employees for political purposes.

Herrera said the appointment smacks of “cronyism, politics, and poor judgment.” Previously, Herrera had the best line about Lee as he jumped into race, telling a mayoral forum: “To my mind, Ed Lee’s biggest problem isn’t that he’s a dishonest man – it’s that he’s not his own man,” Herrera said. “The fact is, if Ed Lee is elected mayor, powerful people will continue to insist on things.”

Topping that list of the powerful people who have clearly been pulling Lee’s strings throughout his career are Pak and Brown, both of whom are consultants who regularly get paid by corporations that do big business with the city and need support from the Mayor’s Office. And their actions are often blatant and shameless, just like Nuru’s history, and even exposure of the misdeeds doesn’t correct the problem.

For example, as I reported last week, Brown’s administration helped Pak buy a Rincon Hill condo for half-price through a city affordable housing program in 2002, even though her disclosure forms showed she had $73,414 in her checking account, some of which probably included the $12,000 consulting fee she reported on her tax return from Emerald Fund – the politically connected developer of the project, employees of which are barred from buying such below-market rate units – and $10,000 from Chiang CM Construction, which helped fund Progress for All.

Most of this information was prominently reported in 2003 by the Examiner, but nothing was ever done. Pak got to keep her taxpayer-subsidized condo. Same thing with Nuru, who remained at DPW even after the City Attorney’s Office and Controller’s Office concluded his actions were corrupt. And Lee was appointed interim mayor even after being tied to several corrupt Brown scams, including overriding city workers to give contracts to fraudulent companies at Brown’s behest.

And now, Lee has placed Nuru in charge of a city department with a $129 million city budget and 1,200 employees, despite Nuru’s proven history of directing his subordinates to illegally campaign for his mayoral benefactors. You couldn’t even make this stuff up, and even Examiner columnist Melissa Griffin flatly calls the move “stupid.”

But I think it’s more than just stupid. And the appointment of Nuru is more than just a setback from DPW that good government activists had been fearing for a long-dysfunctional department that had gotten much better in recent years. It looks like flat-out corruption of the sort that ought to knock Lee out of the frontrunner position and hopefully land him in front of a grand jury at some point.

The post-labor world

Zelda Bronstein
-
8
The post-labor world

The engineers at Intel are thinking about the future, and they’ve hired sci-fi writers to help them imagine what the next few generations of chips will need to do. We’re talking about cars that drive themselves and space stations with AI — and, of course, about a future where robots do most of the work:


In one of the stories in “The Tomorrow Project,” a couple dash from Paris to the south coast of France to provide an injured relative with a blood transfusion. They travel in a car that navigates and drives itself. Medical information is wirelessly beamed to the vehicle’s dashboard and into mobile-phone-like ear studs. In another story, robotic automation has rendered jobs a thing of the past, and one human ponders what to do with his free time.


What to do with your free time. Imagine that.


Got me thinking about Player Piano, the first Vonnegut novel (and the first one I read, back in high school). In Vonnegut’s world, there are rich, educated people who control the machines — and then there’s everyone else, poor and frustrated and marginalized because there’s no meaningful work to do.


Seem familiar? Sound a little tiny bit like our jobless recovery?


Let me suggest something radical, something that a few futuristic writers have discussed but that’s no longer part of our national political consciousness. We may soon be heading for an economic system that involves massive structural unemployment. There may not be a need for as many human beings to do as much labor, particularly manual labor, as there has been in all of the history of civilization. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — but it will require us as a society to be willing, at a certain level, to divorce labor from income.


In other words, we’ll have to accept that the productive wealth of society will have to be distributed in part on the basis of need, not just on work. I know that sounds awful Marxist, but it’s also the only way a post-labor world can actually work. It’s that or massive starvation and global warfare.


This stuff wasn’t all that crazy a generation ago. In 1973, with Nixon in the White House, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote “The Politics of a Guaranteed National Income,” and he wasn’t remotely a commie. But with the “end of welfare as we know it” and the Reagan-Bush II tax cuts and the worship of wealth that passes for civil discourse in the United States today, it seems hard to imagine how anyone can talk seriously about giving people money — for the long term, for life — even if they aren’t employed in compensated labor as we know it today.


The dystopian novels like “Player Piano” assume that there’s some inherent value in labor — that people who can’t find meaningful work that requires skill and pride and offers the rewards of craftsmanship — will become morose and depressed. That’s only true if you assume that work and pay are connected in a 2011-style model. There’s plenty of good work to do in the world; shit, I could put 200 people to work today, researching and writing articles and reports that would add to the base of civic knowledge and do at least some good for the world. I just can’t afford to pay them. There’s so much else that the world needs — work that can only be done by humans and that will enrich us all, but that has no “value” in the modern economic paradigm. That is, it’s good work — and nobody will pay anyone to do it.


I’ll give you a good example: San Francisco alone could probably use 500 full-time people to take care of seniors. I don’t mean people with medical training; I mean people who can cook and clean — and, more important, sit around and talk to lonely single seniors, give them company, make their lives more full. There’s absolutely no economic model for that work right now — the seniors who need it can’t afford to pay for it, there’s nowhere near enough government money (thank you, tax cuts) and no conceivable private-sector role. Good, meaningful work that needs to be done. Lots of qualified people around with no jobs. No functional way to pair them.


Now, you ask me, we raise taxes profoundly on the wealthy and big business and create government jobs to do all the work that needs to be done. Redistribute enough wealth and create enough public-sector employment and we’ll be able to keep modern capitalism going for a while longer.


But we also need to start thinking about the post-labor world, about whether we want people to “ponder what to do with their free time” (which isn’t such an awful thing) and then think about good uses for that free time (acknowleging that there will always be some freeloaders who get money and don’t do jack shit for anyone) — or whether we want large number of people to starve in the streets because there’s no paying work.


When robots do the labor, who gets the paycheck? If it’s the small class of people who own all the robots, we’re looking at a pretty damn ugly future.

City workers union backs Yee — and Avalos

Zelda Bronstein
-
18
City workers union backs Yee — and Avalos

The press release I got from Leland Yee’s campaign made it sound as if Yee had won a major victory over progressive supervisor John Avalos:


SAN FRANCISCO – Senator Leland Yee has landed the first choice endorsement of the largest organization of city workers – Service Employees International Union (SEIU 1021) – in his campaign for San Francisco Mayor. The move by the 54,000 member union is a complete rejection of the city’s top official, interim Mayor Ed Lee.


The endorsement comes after Yee has landed virtually every major labor endorsement in the race, including the California Nurses Association, California School Employees Association, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, Laborers International Union, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, Communication Workers of America, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, among others.


Yee has also been endorsed by the major environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and San Francisco Tomorrow.


“I am proud to be the labor candidate in this race and honored to receive the endorsement from SEIU 1021 and our city’s workforce, who run our city and provide us essential services,” said Yee. “SEIU 1021 represents some of our lowest paid and hardest working employees, including healthcare workers, nurses, and janitors. Together, we have fought to ensure greater transparency and accountability at City Hall and within state government. I look forward to working with SEIU as we move San Francisco forward.”


Local 1021 is among the most progressive unions in the city — and when it comes to local politics, one of the most effective. Candidates backed by 1021 get the union’s volunteer work and wealth of political organizing skill, and it can make a huge difference.


Avalos, the leading progressive in the race, would seem a natural for the SEIU nod, and at first glance, it appeared that one of labor’s best friends at City Hall had been stiffed. You don’t learn until the end of the Yee release what really happened:


SEIU 1021 also endorsed John Avalos as a first or second choice and Bevan Dufty as a third choice.


Yep — Yee didn’t win the endorsement outright. Local 1021 was split between Yee supporters and Avalos supporters, and wound up doing a dual endorsement. Here’s what the official 1021 statement says:


The delegates were in support of both Supervisor John Avalos and State Senator Leland Yee, both progressives with strong labor credentials and records, both having been in SEIU at one time, and both friends. The delegates reasoned that with so many candidates in the race, neither could win without the others second votes, so they made a dual endorsement of them, asking members and supporters to vote their choice of first or second between them.


Dufty came in third in part because he did (and does) really well in these kinds of interviews. Watch the candidates on the trail — Dufty is funny, relaxed, personable … the kind of guy you want to go have a beer with. The others often come off as stiff and scripted. That doesn’t mean I’m necessarily voting for Dufty, who has been on the wrong side of too many issues. But in a crowded field, his personality stands out.


What does this mean? It means that SEIU members can and will work for both Yee and Avalos, which is good news for Avalos and probably better news for Yee. The senator has been working hard to get as many Avalos/Yee dual endorsements or 1-2 endorsements as he can, since any apparent connection between the two helps Yee with the progressive vote. And while I understand and appreciate the rights of candidates to promote themselves and hype every endorsement they get in the best terms possible, this one was a bit misleading. 

Adachi jumps in and the slugfest begins

Sasha Cuttler
-
94
Adachi jumps in and the slugfest begins

With the Examiner reporting that Public Defender Jeff Adachi this morning unexpectedly pulled papers to run for mayor, the wide-open race – now with 11 top-tier candidates who are either office-holders or strong fundraisers – just got a bit more interesting and will probably get a lot more nasty.

While Mayor Ed Lee has the advantage of incumbency and support from powerful players like former Mayor Willie Brown and Chinatown fixer Rose Pak, he also has the biggest target on his back and decades of patronage politics dirt to be dug up on him, a process that has already begun and will get far worse in the coming months.

Previously, Leland Yee and his history as a political weather vane had been the biggest target for op-shop research and popular derision, but Adachi might now displace him as the second-biggest target of political ire after his back-to-back campaigns of pushing pension reform proposals that didn’t have buy-in from labor.

The only certain thing about this year’s mayor’s race, which has so far been marked by downright boring levels of civility, is that it is likely to turn into slugfest, ranked-choice voting be damned. Sure, Lee’s camp will labor mightily to sell its unofficial “it’s all about civility” motto, but perhaps they should have thought about that before naming Gavin Newsom’s prickly and belittling former press secretary, Tony Winnicker, as its spokesperson.

So buckle up, everyone, with today’s deadline for filing to run passing by, it’s game on!

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

OPENING

Final Destination 5 Because Death never dies, or stops making sequels. (1:32)

Glee: The 3D Concert Movie The TV show goes cinematically 3D. (1:30)

The Help Three women (played by Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer) form an unlikely alliance in 1960s Mississippi. (2:17) Balboa, California, Presidio.

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

*Salvation Boulevard The ridiculous and ill-reputed worlds of ex-Deadheads and evangelical mega-churches collide in director George Ratliff’s Salvation Boulevard, based on Larry Beinhart’s novel of the same name. When proselytizing pastor Dan Day (Pierce Brosnan) accidentally murders an atheist professor (Ed Harris), churchgoer Carl (Greg Kinnear) tries to forget what he saw. He soon finds himself embroiled in plots involving a kidnapping in Mexico and the fundamentalist takeover of his town. Carl’s god-fearin’, brainwashed wife (Jennifer Connelly) isn’t the least bit understanding, and instead takes to painting demons to exorcise her grief. Though the film often struggles to find a consistent tone, its lampoon of spiritual hogwash (i.e. purity balls) and the sheer inanity of the situational comedy makes for pleasantly amusing satire. The real saint of the film — and no surprise here — is Marisa Tomei as a pothead security guard named Honey. (1:35) )Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy Ming Dynasty-set porn on the big screen. (2:09) Four Star.

30 Minutes or Less Jesse Eisenberg and Danny McBride star in this comedy caper about a pizza delivery guy forced to rob a bank. (1:29) Presidio, Shattuck.

*Vigilante Vigilante Eschewing any pretense of objectivity and adopting a civic-journalism approach, Bay Area director Max Good and producer Nathan Wollman exhaustively explore the issues at stake in the current graffiti and street art scene by focusing on some unexpected, once-hidden antagonists: the so-called buffers, graffiti abatement advocates, and self-styled vigilantes who obsessively paint over graffiti in cities like Los Angeles (Joe Connolly) and New Orleans (Fred Radtke). Good wraps his interviews with well-known street artists like Shepard Fairey, cultural critics such as Stefano Bloch, and graf advocates a la SF author Steve Rotman around his central pursuit: he’s trying to uncover the identity of the Silver Buff, the mysterious figure who has splashed silver over artwork and tags in Berkeley for more than a decade. After capturing the Buff on camera in the wee hours of the morn, the documentarian get his story — it’s Jim Sharp, a stubborn preservationist intent on “beautifying” the blight, tearing down street posters, picking up trash, and covering over what he sees as vandalism, even if he has to damage the property he claims to be cleaning up. In a witty twist on if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em, Good and Wollman ratchet their tale up a notch when they follow Sharp with colorful paint of their own, brilliantly driving home an appeal for freedom of expression and a reclamation of public space. (1:26) Roxie. (Chun)

The Whistleblower Rachel Weisz stars as a scandal-unearthing American working on a U.N. peacekeeping mission in post-war Bosnia. (1:58) 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) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (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)

Beats, Rhymes & Life Actor Michael Rapaport probably didn’t set out to make a hip-hop Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004), but that’s pretty much where his portrait of A Tribe Called Quest ends up. The first half of Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest is predictably worshipful, slathering on low angles and slow motion to cover mediocre live shows. More effectively, Rapaport traces the Queens group’s brief incubation period and subsequent breakthroughs in what would later be called alternative or, more obnoxiously, conscious hip-hop. A slew of notable followers and contemporaries toast Tribe’s first three albums, but by the time Rapaport catches up to the group’s 2008 reunion even their longtime friends De La Soul are wishing they’d call the whole thing off. The documentary slides into the Monster zone of hurt feelings and passive aggressive behavior in accounting for the group’s split after their inappropriately named 1998 album, The Love Movement. Phife Dawg and Q-Tip are the warring egos, though perennially slighted Phife is really no match for the imperially cool Tip. DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad is the Kirk Hammett of the outfit, looking on helplessly as the two bigger personalities make a mess of things. There’s still novelty in a story about aging in hip-hop, but Rapaport’s portrait is utterly conventional. He also doesn’t pursue more interesting questions of race and politics that naturally follow the band’s crossover appeal. (1:38) Shattuck. (Goldberg)

*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) Lumiere. (Peitzman)

*Between Two Worlds 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, 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. 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. 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. (1:10) Roxie. (Harvey)

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. (Lattanzio)

*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) Shattuck. (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) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Sam Stander)

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) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

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) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

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, Presidio, 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 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) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Crime After Crime 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. 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, including the fact that he’d frequently beaten her. Walnut Creek attorneys Nadia Costa and Joshua Safran agreed to take on Peagler’s case pro bono, and 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 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. The film 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. (1:33) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Devil’s Double Say hello to my little friend, again— and rest assured, it’s not a dream and you’re seeing double. New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori gets back to his potboiler roots with this campy, claustrophobic look back at the House of Saddam Hussein, based on a true story and designed to win over fans of Scarface (1983) with its portrait of mad excess and deca-dancey ’80s-ish soundtrack. The craziest poseur of all is Hussein’s son Uday (Dominic Cooper), a petty dictator-in-the-making — and, according to this film, a full-fledged murderous pedophile — who chomps cigars and wraps his jaws around schoolgirls while Cooper happily chews scenery. Uday needs a double to sidestep all those troublesome assassination attempts, so he enlists look-alike childhood friend Latif (also Cooper) to get the surgery, pop in the overbite, bray like a madman, make appearances in his stead, and function as a kind of pet human. Never mind Ludivine Sagnier, glassy-eyed and absurd in the role of Uday’s favorite sex kitten Sarrab — Double is completely Cooper’s, who seizes the moment, investing the morally upstanding Latif with a serious sincerity with just his eyes and body language and infusing evil odd job Uday with a dangerous, comic-book unpredictability. To his credit, Cooper imbues such cult-ready, blow-the-doors-off lines as “I love cunt! I love cunt more than god!” with, erm, believability, even as the denouement rings somewhat false. (1:48) California, 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)

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, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*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) Empire, 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) 1000 Van Ness. (Lattanzio)

Life in a Day (1:30) Balboa.

*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) Lumiere. (Chun)

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

*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)

*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, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont.

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

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, 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, Shattuck. (Devereaux)

 

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.

Obama, Lee, Avalos, and the arc of history

Sasha Cuttler
-
84
Obama, Lee, Avalos, and the arc of history

People need to hear compelling stories, particularly from those who aspire to lead them, a point that author and psychologist Drew Westen nailed in his incisive think-piece in Sunday’s New York Times, “What Happened to Obama?” His conclusions also apply in San Francisco, where progressives have lost control of the narrative to the tax-cutting centrists, who are telling stories that serve mainly to enfeeble the people and prop up powerful interests.

“The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to ‘expect’ stories with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought,” Westen writes.

Contrast that with the guiding narrative in San Francisco politics right now, put forth by Mayor Ed Lee, his supporters, and the crew of mostly bland centrists who aspire to replace him, all of whom cast conflict itself as the villain. Much like Obama, they all style themselves as the administrators-in-chief, conflict-averse protagonists content to compromise away what little wealth and power the average citizen still possesses. Not only does that narrative guarantee that Lee will be elected, but it’s a false and short-sighted narrative that does a profound disservice to this city.

The one candidate in the mayor’s race who understands that class matters, that conflict is a necessary part of politics, and that we’re all getting screwed over by the rich and powerful is John Avalos. But despite some flashes of progressive populism on the stump, he hasn’t really been consistently and boldly telling San Francisco the story of itself that it really needs to hear right now, which is the same story that Obama should be telling the American people.

“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out,” begins the story that Westen said Obama should have told during his inaugural address.

And that’s the story that Avalos should be telling right now, combating the myths that have been put out there by Lee, David Chiu, Bevan Dufty, Dennis Herrera, and the other centrists in the race, that if we just give Twitter, Zynga, Oracle, Sutter Health, Willie Brown’s clients, and every other corporation and developer who promises to create jobs everything they want, then we’ll all be okay.

But on some level, we all know that just isn’t true, and it hasn’t been true for a long time. Only a fool would trust them to take care of us at this point. The greed and self-interest of rich individuals and corporations – which has gone unchecked for far too long, at least partly because of the political corruption they’ve sponsored – is reaching epidemic proportions. It is the villain that needs to be fought, it is the hill that needs to be climbed.

“When faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far,” Westen wrote.

He was riffing off Obama’s penchant for quoting the MLK line, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” which he returned to again with his devastating conclusion: “But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.”

That is the moment we find ourselves in, both as a country and as a city. And it is a story that we’re still waiting for a future leader to tell us with enough power and passion that we all begin to believe it.

Ecological rewind

Andrew Lam
-
25
Ecological rewind

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Follow the trail from Yosemite National Park’s Rancheria Falls up along dusty switchbacks and down through a canopy of pines and madrones for roughly three miles, and you will reach Tiltill Valley.

Accessible only to hikers and horseback riders, the backwoods meadow hums with the chatter of birds, bees, and the distant rush of water spilling over rocks. Butterflies dart among wild orchids, lilies, yarrow, and other kinds of flowering plants that thrive there, and a lone sequoia stands along the perimeter. The valley floor is lush and boggy, with the forested hills of the High Sierra as its backdrop.

Tiltill Valley is a real-life example of what Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley might look like if the reservoir that holds San Francisco’s water supply were drained and the terrain allowed to return to its natural state, according to Mike Marshall, executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy.

His nonprofit group has a singular mission, as the title suggests. The upbeat, 50-year-old former political consultant wants to place a charter amendment on the November 2012 ballot to ask San Francisco voters if Hetch Hetchy Reservoir should be drained so that the valley, which has been underwater since 1923, can be ecologically restored and turned into an attraction for park visitors.

Yet that simply stated goal belies an extraordinarily difficult and expensive task, one that would fundamentally alter San Francisco’s water delivery system and diminish a city-owned source of inexpensive, green energy.

“The destruction of Hetch Hetchy Valley in the 1920s was the worst environmental disaster to ever besiege the national park system,” Marshall says. “And today, it is completely out of whack with the values of the vast majority of people who live here.”

But most city officials think this idea is just plain crazy. Whether or not it was a good idea to build the dam originally, they say it’s unwise and unrealistic to spend scarce resources to destroy one of city’s most valuable assets.

“While it is an interesting idea, I don’t think that there is yet a credible plan to move forward and actually restore Hetch Hetchy that will ensure that within our budget, we’ll be able to get the water that 2.5 million Bay Area customers need, as well as do everything else that the current Hetch Hetchy system does,” Board President David Chiu told the Guardian.

Based in San Francisco, Restore Hetch Hetchy worked in tandem with the Environmental Defense Fund and a consulting firm to craft a technical analysis describing how the city could continue receiving reliable freshwater deliveries without the reservoir, although it would require filtration because of its lower quality and be less abundant in drought years.

While restoring the valley would be an ecological win in a perfect world, cost estimates range in the billions of dollars at a time when budgets are shrinking and economic turbulence rocks the public and private sectors.

Draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and replacing it with other water and power projects would punch holes in an already cash-strapped city budget, first with the high capital costs and then with higher long-term annual costs. The hydro-electric system provides carbon-free electricity to city agencies at basement rates and helps fund local renewable-energy projects, so relinquishing some of that generation capacity would be a step backward when it comes to addressing climate change.

“The loss of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir would fly in the face of every effort San Francisco has made to replace fossil-fuel power generation with renewable energy sources,” City Attorney Dennis Herrera wrote in a 2004 editorial in the Guardian. Losing hydropower from the dam, he wrote, “would force greater dependence on fossil-fuel electricity and impair low-cost hydropower with higher-cost renewables, making San Francisco’s efforts to create a sustainable energy future virtually impractical. And it would devastate our efforts to enact a public power system in San Francisco. Hetch Hetchy was built by people who envisioned a public power system to serve all of San Francisco. We should finish that system before we start tearing it down.”

But when a round of invitations went out to Bay Area journalists to join a three-day backpacking trip in Yosemite and learn about Restore Hetch Hetchy’s vision, I signed up to attend. After all, here was a chance to go backpacking in beautiful terrain and assess one of the most controversial and impactful proposals facing San Francisco.

 

WATER

Our first stop within park boundaries was a chocolate-colored chalet with a spacious deck overlooking the waterfront. Owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), it’s notorious in San Francisco politics as a weekend getaway for local elected officials, city commissioners, and favored staffers. Stories of the chalet abound, as it’s rumored to have been the site of private soirees for powerful players and a rendezvous for lovers in extramarital affairs.

The eight-mile long, 300-foot deep Hetch Hetchy Reservoir holds 360,000 acre-feet of water, and the dam itself is an impressive structure, although Marshall scoffs at the popular wisdom casting it as “a marvel of engineering,” and dryly quips, “so was the Titanic.”

Native American remains were buried underwater when it was built, Marshall told us as we peered out over the towering dam wall, and 67 lives were lost during construction. As we rounded the perimeter of the man-made water body, sweating in the summer heat and saddled with gear, he asked us to imagine peering down into a dramatic sloping valley instead of what it looks like in its current state, which is a lake.

“Don’t call it a lake,” he insisted. Restore Hetch Hetchy regards the reservoir as an unnatural blemish that should never have been imposed upon a scenic and biodiverse environment in a national park. According to Mark Cedorborg, an ecological restoration expert with Hanford ARC and a Restore Hetch Hetchy board member who joined the trip, it wouldn’t take long for the natural ecosystem to bounce back if the water were removed, recreating a rare wildlife habitat that would mirror Yosemite Valley.

Sierra Club founding president John Muir would have sided with them, of course. The famous ecologist wrote passionately about the valley and vehemently fought the effort to submerge it. At the time, a chorus of opposition arose against flooding Hetch Hetchy — and that was before modern science documenting the impacts dams have wrought on the environment.

A black-and-white image of Michael O’Shaughnessy, the civil engineer behind the project, is posted on an info kiosk beside the dam, his eyebrows arched in a wizard-like, calculating gaze as he uses a pointer to mark the spot on a map of San Francisco’s watershed.

As things stand today, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is a crucial storage facility for drinking water. Freshwater flowing from the Tuolumne River through the glacial formation accounts for 85 percent of SFPUC deliveries to about 2.5 million customers in the city and on the peninsula.

Hetch Hetchy is unique in that it’s just one of a handful of water systems nationwide that uses chemical treatment and ultraviolet disinfection, but no filtration, to purify fresh water that is transported along a gravity-fed system down to the city.

SFPUC spokesperson Tyrone Jue said Hetch Hetchy water does not require filtration “because basically, it’s a giant granite basin there in the reservoir, so there’s no sedimentation.” He added that the water quality is exceptionally high. “It’s high up in the watershed. The higher up in the watershed, the better it is.”

Restore Hetch Hetchy has submitted a number of proposals to ensure that San Francisco could still receive adequate supplies without the reservoir, including constructing a new intertie at Don Pedro Reservoir, which lies downstream from Hetch Hetchy, to get drinking water supplies from there instead.

Under this scenario, the SFPUC would continue to get its water from the Tuolumne River — but it would have to build a new filtration system to treat it because the water quality would be worse and the city would lose its federal waiver.

That’s an expensive consideration, particularly at a time when city coffers are depleted, critical services for vulnerable populations have been gutted, and taxpayers are wary of authorizing costly new endeavors.

Marshall defends the cost by asserting that the current system is flawed; the lack of filtration makes San Francisco’s water more susceptible to contamination from nasty microorganisms like cryptosporidium and giardia, he says.

“San Francisco has a unique health demographic in that over 5 percent of the people that live in the city have compromised immune systems, if you just look at people who are HIV positive,” he said. “Ultimately, San Francisco is going to be forced to filter its water, so why are we kicking this can down the road?”

But filtering water at the residential level would be far cheaper than tearing down the dam. Jue pegs the cost of a new filtration system at somewhere between $3 billion and $10 billion, but Marshall rejects that estimate as “just crazy.”

So we called Xavier Irias, director of engineering at the East Bay Municipal Utility District. “Ten looks a little high, but the three sounds very credible,” Irias said, acknowledging that there were many complicating factors that could affect cost. Ultimately, he said, the cost range could be anywhere from half a billion to the single-digit billions of dollars.

“With the filtration costs, not only are you talking about building a facility to filter the water, you’re now talking about increased power consumption to basically power those filtration plants,” Jue noted. “You’d have to start pumping water, which would require additional energy. And then on top of that, there’s the long-term operation.”

What’s more is that the quantity of water that San Francisco now depends on wouldn’t be guaranteed every year. According to an analysis done in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, reconfiguring the system to tap Don Pedro would result in 19 percent less water delivered from the Tuolumne in critically dry years, and similar losses would result from alternative proposals like tapping Cherry Reservoir, another storage facility in the SFPUC system.

Restore Hetch Hetchy has suggested that the shortfall could be made up in part with new water-conservation measures, something that cities arguably ought to be practicing anyhow since climate change threatens to bring about drier conditions in California’s watershed. It could also place the city in the position of having to go to the open market to purchase water for customers — just as dwindling water supplies raise the temperature between cities and counties scrambling to secure reliable deliveries.

“The Hetch Hetchy water system is a fully owned public asset,” Jue notes. “At a time when state and federal governments are struggling with even being able to close our budget deficits, to even look at dismantling an environmentally sound, cost-efficient water system that delivers water to 2.5 million people is sort of outrageous.”

 

POWER

In addition to capturing the flow of pristine Tuolumne River water that eventually makes its way into the city’s plumbing network, O’Shaughnessy Dam is a key component of the SFPUC-owned hydro-electric system, which produced 1.7 billion kilowatt hours of power last year with no greenhouse gas emissions.

If efforts to advance the cause of a public power system resurfaced in San Francisco, having the full capacity of the Hetch Hetchy hydro-electric generation in place would be vital. Juice for city streetlights, Muni’s light rail cars, the chandeliers adorning the Board Chambers in City Hall, and countless other municipal uses are derived from this gravity-fed system, which provides roughly one-fifth of San Francisco’s overall energy needs.

City departments pay three or four cents per kilowatt-hour, less than what it costs to generate the power. If all the hydro-electric power were eliminated and substituted with PG&E power, the city would get pinned with $32 million in additional costs annually, and its carbon footprint would expand by more than 900 million pounds of greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the SFPUC. However, a technical report produced by the Environmental Defense Fund suggests the city would only suffer a 20 percent decline in the hydro-electric output, since operations at other SFPUC reservoirs would continue.

The hydro-electric system also generates revenue through the sale of excess power to Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts, but that would come to an end if the generation capacity fell by 20 percent. Restore Hetch Hetchy estimates this loss to be around $10 million annually.

“Whenever we sell the power to Modesto and Turlock, that revenue then goes to fund programs like GoSolarSF, and all of our energy-efficiency retrofits of municipal facilities,” Jue explains. If the city lost its ability to sell off this excess supply, “We would no longer be getting power revenue at all, which we’re using to help fund community choice aggregation.”

Fraught with problems as it is, the city’s effort to launch a community choice aggregation program offering residential customers an alternative to PG&E nevertheless holds promise as a powerful green shift for a major metropolitan hub. For all the ecological benefits to Yosemite, restoring Hetch Hetchy could wind up undercutting the fledgling green power initiative, and the upshot would be a boon for PG&E. Coupled with the fact that ceding control of the valley back to the National Park Service could strip the city of its mandate for public power, the utility giant would benefit tremendously from this plan.

All of this makes it somewhat surprising that District 5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, a longtime champion of the cause of public power, appointed Marshall to serve on the SFPUC Citizens Advisory Committee, a move that rankled SFPUC staff.

“I’ve known Mike many years and have found him to be whip smart when it comes to complicated policy issues,” Mirkarimi told the Guardian when asked about this. “He knows that I am an unwavering supporter for public power and that I’d hope his advocacy on the SFPUC continues to advance and innovate our locally-driven clean energy objectives.”

 

POLITICS

The concept of bringing back Hetch Hetchy Valley originated with the Sierra Club in 1999, and several mainstream environmental organizations have lent support for the cause although few have made it a high priority. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of financial backing and support from key political players to keep the vision alive.

Democratic County Central Committee Chair Aaron Peskin, a member of Restore Hetch Hetchy’s national advisory board, told me he’s been active with the group for at least a decade, making him a rare exception among the city’s political leaders.

“San Francisco is a remarkably sophisticated town that is technologically advanced and environmentally advanced, and this is an opportunity to right one of the most destructive environmental wrongs,” he said. “It’s time to start a local and national conversation.”

He acknowledged that there were a lot of technical issues to contend with, saying, “It should only be done in a way that makes sure San Francisco and communities that rely on the system are taken care of.”

Major funders backing Restore Hetch Hetchy include retired businesspeople from the financial sector, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, council members of the Yosemite Conservancy, and Lance Olson, a Restore Hetch Hetchy board member and partner in Olson Hagel & Fishburn, LLP, a prominent Sacramento legal firm that represents the California Democratic Party and elected officials.

Other influential and politically connected individuals have joined the effort as well. Marshall assured me that “no one from PG&E has given us a dime.” Yet the project still faces some powerful opponents. “I have opposed removing the O’Shaughnessy Dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley for decades and I remain opposed,” U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the Guardian. “Draining the reservoir would endanger San Francisco’s water supply, further jeopardize California’s water infrastructure and impose a huge financial burden on the state.”

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

THEATER

OPENING

Bedtime in Detroit Boxcar Theatre Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $15. Opens Thurs/11, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 4pm. Through Aug 21. Boxcar Theatre’s first-ever Directing Lab Performance is of Ellen K. Anderson’s drama, set in Detroit on Devil’s Night.

True West NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.truewestsf.com. $10-28. Previews Fri/12, 8pm. Opens Sat/13, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 17. Expression Productions presents Sam Shepard’s tale of two brothers.

BAY AREA

Candida Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theatre Way, Orinda; www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Previews Wed/10-Fri/12, 8pm. Opens Sat/13, 8pm. Runs Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sept 3, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through Sept 4. Cal Shakes artistic director helms this taken on George Bernard Shaw’s classic about a housewife torn between her husband and a new suitor.

Seven Guitars Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Previews Thurs/11-Sat/13, 8pm; Sun/14, 7pm. Opens Tues/16, 8pm. Runs Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Aug 25, 1pm; Aug 20 and Sept 3, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 4. Marin Theatre Company performs August Wilson’s 1940s-set entry into his series of plays about the African-American experience.

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 20. Un-Scripted Theater Company hosts a different playwright each night, performing the first scene of an unfinished play and then improvising its finish.

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

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

Billy Elliot Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market, SF; www.shnsf.com/shows/billyelliot. $35-200. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Aug 21. As a Broadway musical, Billy Elliot proves more enjoyable than the film. The movie’s T. Rex score may have been a major selling point, but it was a bit maudlin for a story that needed no help in that department. The musical naturally has a sentimental moment or three, but it’s much more often funny, muscular in its staging (with repeatedly inspired choreography from Peter Darling), and expansive in its eclectic score (Elton John) and well-wrought book and lyrics (Lee Hall). Moreover, Stephen Daldry (who also directed the 2000 film) plays up bracingly the too-timely class politics of the modest 1980s English mining town besieged by Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal regime in the latter’s ultimately successful bid to crush the once-powerful miners union. The cast is likewise very strong. The second act is not as strong as the first, but as crowd-pleasing entertainment the musical burrows deep and more often than not comes up with gold. (Avila)

The Book of Liz Custom Made Theatre, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Aug 28. Custom Made Theatre performs David and Amy Sedaris’ comedy about an unconventional nun.

Country Club Catastrophe Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs/11-Sat/13, 8pm. Back Alley Theater Company performs its first original production, a farcical comedy set at a country club.

Gilligan’s Island: Live On Stage! 2011 Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-20. Sat-Sun, 8pm. Through Aug 28. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts presents this updated, ribald take on TV’s classic castaways.

Left-Handed Darling Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-30. Fri/12-Sat/13, 8pm. This American gothic from Foul Play productions and playwright Nikita Schoen, directed by Michelle Talgarow, moves too listlessly and could use some trimming besides — besides the trimming invoked in the story, that is. Still, it offers spirited moments and morbid chuckles in its macabre tale about a little girl named Calliope (a nicely remote if somewhat wooden Amanda Ortmayer) who runs off to join the circus sideshow. Her shut-in parents once comprised a magic act there, but a gruesome tragedy inadvertently provoked by the infant Calliope has her father (Don Wood) pretending to be a lone convalescent to a charitable neighboring farmer (Sean Owens), as her mother (Kimberly Maclean) tries to keep hidden directly behind him (for reasons stemming from the aforementioned tragedy). In the face of parental opposition to her sideshow fever, Calliope’s willfulness gets the better of her — all the worse for mom and dad, and a girls’ academy recruiter (Mikka Bonel). Embraced by a set of sideshow freaks as one of their own, Calliope discovers stardom and “belonging” not what they were cracked up to be. Don Seaver’s moody sound design and a large freaky caricature-puppet (crafted by Peter Q. Parish) lend atmosphere, while solid turns from Owens (including as the sideshow’s half-man half-woman) and the bright, agile Bonel (including as an armless sideshow Venus) bring needed punch. Less consistent but fiery Mikl-Em has good moments too as sideshow barker Sugarchurch. But the production’s shuffling gait and slightly muddled storyline make small beer of its embroidered dialogue and wistful denouement. (Avila)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Steve Silver Theater, 1101 Eucalyptus (on the Lowell High School campus), SF; www.bathwater.org. $20. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm. Through Aug 20. Bathwater Productions performs an acrobatic version of the Shakespeare classic.

The Nature Line Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason, SF; www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. $17-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 27. With The Nature Line, Sleepwalkers Theatre concludes playwright J.C. Lee’s ambitious apocalypse trilogy, “This World and After.” Now well into the post-apocalyptic age, Aya (Charisse Loriaux) buries her miscarriages in the hardscrabble earth, tended by a blind one-breasted s/he named T (Amy Prosser) who plants a would-be garden and collects tattered love letters from a past when people could still physically — and emotionally — touch one another. All that’s been banished now, Aya’s friend Arty (Ariane Owens) tells us, along with the onetime plague of “sadness.” The few humans remaining huddle in the antiseptic arms of a corporate entity represented by a bossy nurse (Janna Kefalas) and her spacey assistant (Lissa Keigwin), who manage an artificial insemination clinic fueled by a stable of four comic-book–reared studs, or “dudes” in the argot of the future (a sensitive crooner smitten with Aya, played by Joshua Schell, and a boisterously adolescent fantastic three played by the roundly hilarious Roy Landaverde, Jeff Moran, and Jomar Tagatac). This all takes place at the edge of a vast, reportedly menacing frontier. Lured by an enchanting dream, and urged by T, Aya crosses over into this forbidding land, followed willy-nilly by everyone else, only to find another Eden of sorts, inhabited by the, at first, unrecognized figures of Aya’s lost and future familia (Soraya Gillis and Carla Pantoja) — a poignant moment comes in a bilingual reunion that magically erases barriers of language and time. Indeed, if Lee’s title suggests “line” as both lineage and division, the play recovers a timeless order by challenging the artificial lines between persons; people and “nature”; past, present, and future; or dream and reality. Director Mina Morita’s staging is fleet and at times poetic, while she gets generally solid performances from her cast (the more comical parts working best). Imaginative, just a little risqué, and reminiscent in its heightened vernacular, low humor, and romantic optimism of word-struck apocalypto-dramas like Liz Duffy Adams’ Dog Act, Nature is a well-constructed narrative with a theme and dialogue that can feel alternately eloquent and heavy-handed. That said, its final image remains an apt conclusion for the trilogy as a whole, amid another Eden where the first kiss, and first heartbreak, starts the beating all over again. (Avila)

Peaches en Regalia Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. $12-24. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 27. The new comedy by Bay Area playwright Steve Lyons borrows its title from a Frank Zappa instrumental and stamps it on the menu of a local diner (tangibly evoked in Wes Cayabyab and Quinn J. Whitaker’s spiffy set design), where new employee and recent college graduate Peaches (an endearingly offbeat Sarah Moser) revels in her impulse decision to leave a job at an investment bank to work at a place with such an auspicious side dish. We meet Peaches, as well as best friend Joanne (Nicole Hammersla), nebbish customer Norman (Philip Goleman), and confident guy’s guy Syd (Cooper Carlson), through a set of discrete monologues, each illustrated with mute help from the other characters. Philosophies of life and hidden desires are all on display but the plot is a prix fixe menu of romance, marriage, and parenthood as deliberate encounters lead to unexpected matches. Sharp performances crisply directed by Sara Staley add zest to otherwise average comic fare, but the writing has several inspired flights of zaniness too. Questionable whether the second act’s course is warranted, however, since it’s plot to pull into parenthood a reluctant Norman — for whom the pace of events collapses nine months and more into a dizzying time warp — is a bit too I Love Lucy to concentrate on without itching to change the channel. (Avila)

Tigers Be Still SF Playhouse, 522 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 10. SF Playhouse performs Kim Rosenstock’s quirky comedy.

What Mamma Said About Down There SF Downtown Comedy Theater, 287 Ellis, SF; www.sfdowntowncomedytheater.com. $15. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 20. Sia Amma returns with her solo comedy.

BAY AREA

Communicating Doors Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun/14, 2pm. Through Aug 20. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs Alan Ayckbourn’s “time-travel-battle-of-the-sexes comedy.”

The Complete History of America (abridged) Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Adam Lon, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor’s three-person romp through American history.

Fly By Night Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Wed/10, 7:30pm; Thurs/11-Sat/13, 8pm (also Sat/13, 2pm). TheatreWorks performs the world premiere of Kim Rosentock, Michael Mitnick, and Will Connolly’s musical, set in 1965 New York.

Macbeth Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sun/14. Marin Shakespeare Company takes on the Scottish play.

Madhouse Rhythm Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs, 7:30pm. Through Aug 25. Joshua Walters performs his hip-hop-infused autobiographical show about his experiences with bipolar disorder.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream This week: Downtown Library, 400 Front, Danville; www.womanswill.org. Free (donations requested). Sat/13, 2pm. Amador Valley Community Park, 4455 Black, Pleasanton. Sun/14, 4:30pm. Performances continue at Bay Area parks through Aug 21. Woman’s Will performs the Shakespeare favorite.

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 5pm (also Sept 8 and 22, 7:30pm). Through Sept 24. This is it: the final extension of Brian Copeland’s solo show about growing up in (nearly) all-white San Leandro.

Reduction in Force Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Aug 20 and 27, 5pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Aug 28. Central Works performs “an economic comedy about back-stabbing, ass-kissing, and survival of the sneakiest.”

The Road to Hades John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds). Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 11. Shotgun Players presents a new comedy written by and starring veteran comedian and clown Jeff Raz.

Strange Travel Suggestions Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Aug 27. Jeff Greenwald returns with a new version of his hit show of improvised monologues about travel.

“2011 New Works Festival” TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1355 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-29. Schedule varies. Through Aug 21. TheatreWorks presents its annual festival of new musicals and plays, performed in workshop or staged-reading form, plus a panel discussion.

2012: The Musical! This week: Live Oak Park, Shattuck and Berryman, Berk; www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat/13-Sun/14, 2pm. Continues through Sept 25 at various Bay Area venues. San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts their annual summer musical; this year’s show is about a political theater company torn between selling out and staying true to its anti-corporate roots.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Lily Cai Dance Company Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; (415) 978-ARTS, www.ybca.org. Sat, 8pm. $25-40. The company’s 2011 Home Season Concert includes the world premieres Shifting and What Is Missing, plus Candelas.

“Mortified” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Fri, 8pm, $17. The popular storytelling series (famous for its embarassing tales) moves into its biggest venue yet, with way more room for sympathetic cringing.

“Permutae/Reception” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri-Sat, 8pm. $10-20. Mary Franck/Finley Coyl and Tessa Wills contribute to these evenings of shared performance.

BAY AREA

“Hella Gay Comedy Show” La Estrellita Café, 446 E. 12th St, Oakl; (510) 465-7188. 9pm, $10. Charlie Ballard hosts this showcase of LGBT comedians.

“My Fair Lady” Woodminster Amphitheater, Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller, Oakl; (510) 531-9597, www.woodminster.com. $26-42. Woodminster Summer Musicals presents the classic makeover tale, selected by Woodminster audiences as their choice for this season’s musical.

 

Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

Dick Meister: Labor’s unhappy anniversary

-
5

 

By Dick Meister

It was 30 years ago this month that Ronald Reagan struck the blow that sent the American labor movement tumbling into a decline it’s still struggling to reverse.

Reagan, one of the most anti-labor presidents in history, set the decline in motion by firing 11,500 of the overworked and underpaid air traffic controllers whose work was essential to the operation of the world’s most complex aviation system.

Reagan fired them because they dared respond to his administration’s refusal to bargain fairly on a new contract by striking in violation of the law prohibiting strikes by federal employees. What’s more, he virtually destroyed their union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO).

Public and private employers everywhere treated Reagan’s 1981 action as a signal to take an uncompromising stand against the unions that they had accepted and bargained with, however reluctantly, as the legitimate representatives of their workers.

At that time, one-fourth of the U.S. workforce was represented by unions. Today, largely because of employer actions since then – often openly illegal actions – the percentage of workers with union bargaining rights is less than half that.

Ironically, PATCO had broken with other AFL-CIO affiliates to endorse Reagan’s successful run for president in 1980. The union did so because Reagan had promised to “take whatever steps are necessary” to improve working conditions and otherwise “bring about a spirit of cooperation between the president and the air traffic controllers.”

Yet PATCO negotiators were rebuffed a year later when they asked for a reduction in working hours, lowering of the retirement age and other steps to ease the controllers’ extraordinary stress, plus a substantial pay raise and updated equipment.

PATCO was faced with either abandoning its demands or striking to try to enforce them. And when the union struck, Reagan, certain of broad public support because of his great popularity, issued an ultimatum to the strikers: Return to work within 48 hours or be fired and replaced permanently by non-union workers.

Faced with millions of dollars in fines for violating Reagan’s order and the anti-strike injunctions that his administration and airlines had sought, and stripped of its right to represent the controllers, PATCO declared bankruptcy and went out of business.

Reagan’s ban on re-hiring strikers was later lifted by Bill Clinton, and three unions, including a revived PATCO, now represent controllers, among them hundreds of those who had been fired. But safety experts say the air traffic control system remains understaffed and the controllers still under far too much stress.

Part of the blame for that rests with Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, who was as anti-labor as Reagan. The Bush administration, in fact, imposed an onerous new contract on the controllers that cut their pay and pensions.

It’s not likely that other employers will soon abandon the crippling anti-labor practices that were inspired and furthered by Reagan. Hiring and permanently replacing strikers, previously a rare occurrence, has become a relatively common employer tactic. And strikes – an indispensable weapon for workers in collective bargaining – have become relatively rare post-Reagan.

It isn’t just strikers who face penalties for exercising their legal rights. Some employers also have taken to firing or otherwise penalizing workers who seek union recognition, despite the law that promises them the right to freely choose to unionize. Many employers have also hired “management consultants” who specialize in Reagan-style union busting.

It’s no coincidence that, as union ranks have shrunk under the relentless anti-labor pressures first applied to air traffic controllers three decades ago by Ronald Reagan, the ranks of the middle class also have shrunk –– as has the ordinary American’s share of the country’s wealth.

The situation for air traffic controllers has stayed much the same. They’re still demanding longer rest periods during working hours and between shifts and other improved working conditions that are clearly necessary for their well-being and that of those they serve. And they’re still being rebuffed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Republican leaders in Congress have made it even more difficult for the controllers and many others by insisting that a measure making it more difficult for workers to unionize be attached to the current bill that would continue the FAA’s funding for another year. A congressional stalemate over that was the principal reason for the recent partial shutdown of the FAA, which cost the government millions of dollars in lost airline taxes, threw several thousand airport construction workers and FAA employees out of work, and forced airline safety inspectors to work without pay throughout the two-week stalemate.

Although air traffic controllers and other FAA employees are back on the job, that could be only a temporary respite. The stalemate could very well resume when Congress returns from its current recess on September16th and again takes up FAA funding.

The attempt by congressional Republicans to weaken FAA employees’ basic union rights – and their willingness to shut down the air traffic system in order to further that goal ­– is yet another aspect of the legacy of Ronald Reagan, one of the most damaging and successful union-busters of all time.

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

Complete interview: “Between Two Worlds” directors Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow

Sue Vaughan
-
0
Complete interview: “Between Two Worlds” directors Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow

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 Fri/5 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.” KGO radio’s John Rothmann opined on air that the festival had “crossed the line” and “sympathized with those who participate in terror.”

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? Watching your movie I wondered how many other places there are where a Jewish film festival audience would boo and heckle a conservative pro-Israeli speaker like Dr. Michael Harris.

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. 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.” Theodore Bikel — a lifelong Zionist activist who went to jail with my mother at the Soviet consulate in Washington DC — was recently called an “anti-Zionist” because he supported an actors’ boycott of performing in the settlements. J Street — an explicitly and consistently pro-Israel voice that is critical of Israeli policies — is regularly attacked as not really pro-Israel for that very reason. “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.

DK: The Bay Area has had a history of passionate political commitment — to both the Zionist and anti-Zionist causes. But today the right wing is certainly louder and aside from what we saw at the theater that day, there has been a significant silencing of voices critical of Israel’s occupation policies.

SFBG: Conversely, have you perceived the local Jewish community as growing more conservative in recent years? In particular, more inclined to treat criticism of Israeli government policies as inherently anti-Semitic, even when voiced by fellow Jews?

DK: We were interested in the notion of excommunication — going back to Spinoza — and to the accusation “self-hating Jew” that some people used to attack Hannah Arendt when she wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem. Today, right-wing Jews are leveling charges of treason against Jewish academics, rabbis, and community members whose positions on israel aren’t as rabidly right wing as theirs. We didn’t have to look very far to find dramatic stories for our film on these themes. Censorship and the stifling of dissent are happening right in our home town.

AS: There’s conservative and there’s conservative. The Jewish community hasn’t become more conservative in terms of voting patterns or support for civil rights or the welfare state, but the establishment has become more and more dependent on an ever smaller number of big conservative donors who have bought out these institutions and compromised their independence and legitimacy as representing the whole Jewish community. This is a major reason for the crisis. More and more young Jews are finding the community’s institutions do not reflect their liberal beliefs and upbringing, particularly when it comes to Israel. The result is that many young people are not identifying with Israel because its actions are not consistent with their ideals as American Jews.

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 JFF 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.

SFBG: The festival had shown other movies relating to different aspects of the Palestinian conflict before, and Rachel does make an effort to represent all the different sides of its story. What do you think particularly ticked people off about that film?

DK: Over the years the festival had shown many films that were more controversial than Rachel. In fact, that same summer the festival showed a film called Defamation that we felt was far more critical of the Jewish establishment, but it went right under everybody’s radar. It was the Tea Party summer — almost anything could have been the spark that ignited a controversy. But the tragic death of Rachel Corrie had already made her an internationally famous symbol of opposition to Israel’s occupation, so the anger was focused on the program with her name.

AS: Rachel was just a pretext. In the months before the film festival, think tanks in Israel had declared the Bay Area a node of “delegitimization” of Israel (along with Toronto and London). The right was looking for a test case to make an example of Jewish institutions that step out of line. The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival was founded as a transgression right from the start — a place where unpopular and counter-cultural and diverse views could engage. It was a perfect target to attack.

One other item: when the festival allowed [Harris] on the podium to attack one of its own films and filmmakers it was a bad precedent, and the right smelled blood in the water. The festival’s good faith effort was viewed as a sign of weakness and the attacks only intensified. The people who wrote the attacking emails are people who think that any criticism of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism. They are not to be appeased by any symbolic action. They want control and silence.

SFBG: Deborah, since you left the festival it’s seen several well-regarded executive and programming directors depart, seemingly burnt out. Do you think the effort it takes to represent and placate the festival audience has gotten harder?

DK: I’m not sure things have changed so much. There has always been pressure on festival directors to do what major donors demand. I got a lot of that during my tenure but resisted the pressure. The difference is the political atmosphere which is more polarized and shrill, especially since the new, ultra-right government in Israel has come to power. It’s hard to withstand the bullying and accusations of treason and self-hate.

AS: I think it’s also important to add that Deborah and Janis [Plotkin] — who was director for many years — also had a lot of fun with the festival. This is a very hard job, but it’s a creative and fascinating one, and these attacks may come with the territory, but they don’t dominate it.

DK: In terms of the audience it’s always been a diverse group. I have fond memories of the midnight screening of the silent version of The Golem (1920) we did at the Roxie in our second year — where people in the audience were literally screaming at each other and at the projectionist during the whole screening about whether we should turn the volume up or down on the rock music sound track we had commissioned.

SFBG: You’ve shown Between Two Worlds to a variety of Jewish audiences so far, in Toronto, New York, and Jerusalem as well as SF. What have been some of the responses?

DK: The response has been great and sometimes surprising — we’ve had people from the left and right of the political spectrum both say the film has made them reconsider their own stridency. Non-Jews have said it mirrors what they felt they could not say out loud. Young people have told us it’s affirming of their perceptions and reveals a history they didn’t know existed. In Jerusalem one person felt the film was overly optimistic because it didn’t examine the support of right-wing Christian fundamentalists for the settlements!

AS: I think the personal stories we tell of our own families ring true to many people. Most Jews know deep down that if you look at the family histories of American Jews, you will find intense long term debates between those people at the Passover seder table who were Communists, Socialists, and Zionists. Often, the only way to sit down together was to maintain silence, but we wanted to bring those utopian hopes and ideals back into focus, and people across the political spectrum seem to take that as an opportunity to think about and question their own families and their own positions.

SFBG: How did the decision come about to put yourselves in the film? As filmmakers, was it awkward to become subjects?

DK: We’ve never been in our own films so it was something of a challenge for us. We don’t feel relaxed in front of the camera, but early in the production we realized we had to be in the film so that people would know where we were coming from, and also because our family histories shed a lot of light on debates inside the Jewish community today. We watched a lot of work by other documentary filmmakers who put themselves in their films like Marlon Riggs, Alan Berliner, and Ross McElwee, and decided we’d give it a try. We also felt this film was really about the intersection of the personal and the political, so the structure that moves back and forth between the two made sense to us.

AS: My daughter, Tania, is an actor, and I kept thinking that we needed to consult with her about being on camera. It’s not just something that you do. You have to work at it and learn how to do it. After we did it a couple of times, we realized that we weren’t dressing right, that the hair was wrong, that I was scratching my head, that we should have shot ourselves from above and not below. Rather than being an on camera ego-trip, it was a humbling experience.

Between Two Worlds opens Fri/5 at the Roxie.

Whose voice?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
Whose voice?

arts@sfbg.com

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.

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Gilligan’s Island: Live On Stage! 2011 Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $10-20. Opens Sat/6, 8pm. Runs Sat-Sun, 8pm. Through Aug 28. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts presents this updated, ribald take on TV’s classic castaways.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Steve Silver Theater, 1101 Eucalyptus (on the Lowell High School campus), SF; www.bathwater.org. $20. Opens Thurs/4, 7:30pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm. Through Aug 20. Bathwater Productions performs an acrobatic version of the Shakespeare classic.

Peaches en Regalia Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, SF; www.wilywestproductions.com. $12-24. Opens Thurs/4, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug *7. Wily West Productions performs company director Steve Lyons’ quirky comedy.

BAY AREA

“2011 New Works Festival” TheatreWorks at Lucie Stern Theatre, 1355 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-29. Schedule varies; runs Aug 7-21. TheatreWorks presents its annual festival of new musicals and plays, performed in workshop or staged-reading form, plus a panel discussion.

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug *0. Un-Scripted Theater Company hosts a different playwright each night, performing the first scene of an unfinished play and then improvising its finish.

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. Through Oct *0. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1*87, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

Billy Elliot Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market, SF; www.shnsf.com/shows/billyelliot. $35-200. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Aug 21. As a Broadway musical, Billy Elliot proves more enjoyable than the film. The movie’s T. Rex score may have been a major selling point, but it was a bit maudlin for a story that needed no help in that department. The musical naturally has a sentimental moment or three, but it’s much more often funny, muscular in its staging (with repeatedly inspired choreography from Peter Darling), and expansive in its eclectic score (Elton John) and well-wrought book and lyrics (Lee Hall). Moreover, Stephen Daldry (who also directed the *000 film) plays up bracingly the too-timely class politics of the modest 1980s English mining town besieged by Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal regime in the latter’s ultimately successful bid to crush the once-powerful miners union. The cast is likewise very strong. The second act is not as strong as the first, but as crowd-pleasing entertainment the musical burrows deep and more often than not comes up with gold. (Avila)

Country Club Catastrophe Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 13. Back Alley Theater Company performs its first original production, a farcical comedy set at a country club.

Left-Handed Darling Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-30. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 13. Foul Play Productions perfomrs the world premiere of Nikita Schoen’s Dust Bowl-era drama.

Tigers Be Still SF Playhouse, 522 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 10. SF Playhouse performs Kim Rosenstock’s quirky comedy.

What Mamma Said About Down There SF Downtown Comedy Theater, 287 Ellis, SF; www.sfdowntowncomedytheater.com. $15. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 20. Sia Amma returns with her solo comedy.

BAY AREA

Communicating Doors Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Aug 14, 2pm. Through Aug 20. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs Alan Ayckbourn’s “time-travel-battle-of-the-sexes comedy.”

The Complete History of America (abridged) Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Adam Lon, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor’s three-person romp through American history.

East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat/6, 8:30pm; Sun/7, 7pm. Don Reed’s hit solo comedy receives one last extension before Reed debuts his new show (a sequel to East 14th) in the fall.

Fly By Night Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Aug 13. TheatreWorks performs the world premiere of Kim Rosentock, Michael Mitnick, and Will Connolly’s musical, set in 1965 New York.

Macbeth Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Aug 14. Marin Shakespeare Company takes on the Scottish play.

Madhouse Rhythm Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Thurs, 7:30pm. Through Aug 25. Joshua Walters performs his hip-hop-infused autobiographical show about his experiences with bipolar disorder.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream This week: Rengstorff House, 3070 N. Shoreline, Mtn View; www.womanswill.org. Free (donations requested). Sun/7, 2pm. Performances continue at Bay Area parks through Aug 21. Woman’s Will performs the Shakespeare favorite.

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; 1-800-838-3006, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 5pm (also Sept 8 and 22, 7:30pm). Through Sept 24. This is it: the final extension of Brian Copeland’s solo show about growing up in (nearly) all-white San Leandro.

Reduction in Force Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Aug 20 and 27, 5pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Aug 28. Central Works performs “an economic comedy about back-stabbing, ass-kissing, and survival of the sneakiest.”

The Road to Hades John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds). Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 11. Shotgun Players presents a new comedy written by and starring veteran comedian and clown Jeff Raz.

Strange Travel Suggestions Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Aug 27. Jeff Greenwald returns with a new version of his hit show of improvised monologues about travel.

2012: The Musical! This week: Lakeside Park, Bellevue and Perkins, Oakl; www.sfmt.org. Free. Wed/3-Thurs/4, 7pm. Peacock Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF. Sat/6, 2pm. Glen Park, Bosworth and O’Shaughnessy, SF/ Sun/7, 2pm. Continues through Sept. 25 at various Bay Area venues. San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts their annual summer musical; this year’s show is about a political theater company torn between selling out and staying true to its anti-corporate roots.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

DanceWright Project and Labayan Dance/SF Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm, $18. The companies share the stage to present their joint 2011 summer/fall season.

“Fireside Storytelling: Spectacular Injuries” Jellyfish Gallery, 1286 Folsom, SF; www.jellyfishgallery.com. $10. Storytelling with Quintin Mecke, Chris Spurrell, Lori “Switch” Ayres, Damian Chacona, and more.

“Five Funny Females Festival” Purple Onion, 140 Columbus, SF; www.5funnyfemales.eventbrite.com. Fri-Sat, 8 and 10pm. $22. This fest’s format hightlights five different female comedians during each set, with host Susan Alexander.

Live stand-up comedy and belly dancing Four Star, 2200 Clement, SF; (415) 666-3488. Thurs, 8pm. $7. Variety show with Johnny Steele, Kurt Weitzmann, and other comedians, plus magician Charlie Martin, Rasa the belly dancer, and more.

“Previously Secret Information” Stage Werx Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.previouslysecretinformation.com. Sun, 7 and 9:30pm. $25-35. This month’s edition of the storytelling series features Greg Proops, Joe Klocek, and Dhaya Lakshminarayanan.

“The Unbearable Lightness of Raya (The *011 Remix)”/”Halloween! The Ballad of Michele Myers” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.counterpulse.org. Fri-Sun, 8pm. $15-20. Drag superstar Raya Light stars in her San Francisco Fringe Festival hit musical, with updates, in a performance paired with a drag (and musical) take on slasher films.

Film Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

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)

 

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, see www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

“AfroSolo Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.afrosolo.org. Free-$100. July 28-Oct 20. The AfroSolo Theatre Company presents its 18th annual festival celebrating African American artists, musicians, and performers.

Country Club Catastrophe Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Thurs/28, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 13. Back Alley Theater Company performs its first original production, a farcical comedy set at a country club.

BAY AREA

The Complete History of America (abridged) Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Opens Sat/30, 8pm. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Sept. 25. Marin Shakespeare Company performs Adam Lon, Reed Martin, and Austin Tichenor’s three-person romp through American history.

Madhouse Rhythm Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-35. Opens Thurs/28, 7:30pm. Runs Thurs, 7:30pm. Through Aug 25. Joshua Walters performs his hip-hop-infused autobiographical show about his experiences with bipolar disorder.

Reduction in Force Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Previews Thurs/28-Fri/29, 8pm. Opens Sat/30, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Aug 20 and 27, 5pm); Sun, 5pm. Through Aug 28. Central Works performs “an economic comedy about back-stabbing, ass-kissing, and survival of the sneakiest.”

The Road to Hades John Hinkel Park, Southampton Ave, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds). Opens Sat/30, 3pm. Runs Sat-Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 11. Shotgun Players presents a new comedy written by and starring veteran comedian and clown Jeff Raz.

Strange Travel Suggestions Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Opens Fri/29, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Aug 27. Jeff Greenwald returns with a new version of his hit show of improvised monologues about travel.

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 20. Un-Scripted Theater Company hosts a different playwright each night, performing the first scene of an unfinished play and then improvising its finish.

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 3. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

Assisted Living: The Musical Imperial Palace, 818 Washington, SF; 1-888-88-LAUGH, www.assistedlivingthemusical.com. $79.59-99.50 (includes dim sum). Sat/30-Sun/31, noon (also Sun/31, 5pm). Rick Compton and Betsy Bennett’s comedy takes on “the pleasures and perils of later life.”

“Bay Area Playwrights Festival” Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.playwrightsfoundation.org. $20. Through Sun/31. Staged readings of works by seven emerging playwrights.

Billy Elliot Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market, SF; www.shnsf.com/shows/billyelliot. $35-200. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Aug 21. As a Broadway musical, Billy Elliot proves more enjoyable than the film. The movie’s T. Rex score may have been a major selling point, but it was a bit maudlin for a story that needed no help in that department. The musical naturally has a sentimental moment or three, but it’s much more often funny, muscular in its staging (with repeatedly inspired choreography from Peter Darling), and expansive in its eclectic score (Elton John) and well-wrought book and lyrics (Lee Hall). Moreover, Stephen Daldry (who also directed the 2000 film) plays up bracingly the too-timely class politics of the modest 1980s English mining town besieged by Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal regime in the latter’s ultimately successful bid to crush the once-powerful miners union. The cast is likewise very strong. The second act is not as strong as the first, but as crowd-pleasing entertainment the musical burrows deep and more often than not comes up with gold. (Avila)

The Book of Liz Custom Made Theatre, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $10-29. Thurs/28-Sat/30, 8pm; Sun/31, 7pm. Custom Made Theatre performs David and Amy Sedaris’ comedy about an unconventional nun.

Indulgences in the Louisville Harem Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $20-40. Thurs/28-Sat/30, 8pm. Two spinster sisters find unlikely beaux in Off Broadway West Theatre’s production of John Orlock’s play.

Left-Handed Darling Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-30. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 13. Foul Play Productions perfomrs the world premiere of Nikita Schoen’s Dust Bowl-era drama.

Tales of the City American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $35-98. Wed/27-Sat/30, 8pm (also Sat/30, 2pm); Sun/31, 2 and 7pm. ACT performs a musical version of Armisted Maupin’s beloved San Francisco story.

Tigers Be Still SF Playhouse, 522 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 10. SF Playhouse performs Kim Rosenstock’s quirky comedy.

Twilight Zone Live: Season 8 Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; www.ticketturtle.com. $20 ($5 discount if you use the code word “maggie”). Fri/29, 8pm. The Dark Room Theater presents its eighth annual tribute to classic Twilight Zone episodes.

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Fri/29-Sat/30, 8pm; Sun/31, 7pm. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of the Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

What Mamma Said About Down There SF Downtown Comedy Theater, 287 Ellis, SF; www.sfdowntowncomedytheater.com. $15. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 20. Sia Amma returns with her solo comedy.

BAY AREA

Communicating Doors Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Aug 14, 2pm. Through Aug 20. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs Alan Ayckbourn’s “time-travel-battle-of-the-sexes comedy.”

East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 7. Don Reed’s hit solo comedy receives one last extension before Reed debuts his new show (a sequel to East 14th) in the fall.

Fly By Night Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Aug 13. TheatreWorks performs the world premiere of Kim Rosentock, Michael Mitnick, and Will Connolly’s musical, set in 1965 New York.

Macbeth Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Aug 14. Marin Shakespeare Company takes on the Scottish play.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream This week: San Felipe Park, 2058 D St, Hayward. www.womanswill.org. Free (donations requested). Sat/30, 2pm. Performances continue at Bay Area parks through Aug 21. Woman’s Will performs the Shakespeare favorite.

The Verona Project Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; (510) 548-9666, www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri/29-Sat/30, 8pm (also Sat/30, 2pm); Sun/31, 4pm. California Shakespeare Theater performs a world-premiere play (inspired by The Two Gentlemen of Verona) by Amanda Dehnert.

 

Film Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

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. Due to early Best of the Bay issue deadlines, theater information was incomplete at presstime.

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

The 31st San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs through August 8 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1119 Fourth St., San Rafael; Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF; 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

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) (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) (Chun)

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff See review at www.sfbg.com. (1:30) Balboa.

Cowboys and Aliens Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford star in Jon Favreau’s sci-fi Western. (runtime not available)

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) (Chun)

Gunless Action comedy about an American cowboy flummoxed by the ways of the Canadian frontier. (1:29)

A Little Help Jenna Fischer stars as a frazzled single mom in this indie comedy. (1:48)

*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) 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. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

The Smurfs in 3D You’re welcome, world! Love, America. (1:43)

The Tree A dead man talks to his bereaved family through a fig tree in French director Julie Bertuccelli’s The Tree. In spite of this heavy-handed premise, the film never does what you expect it to. Amid the stark, savage countryside of Australia, Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her four kids try to live life without their husband and father. But this proves an especially thorny endeavor since the tree in question seems to be a stubborn, invasive version of him. As in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), Gainsbourg embodies the role of grieving woman in another overflowingly open performance. Thankfully for us, this time she stays away from the scissors. The sweeping cinematography by Nigel Bluck is lovely to look at, and the young Morgana Davies is inspiring as Dawn’s 8-year-old daughter, Simone. Unlike that other magical realist Tree movie this summer, Bertuccelli’s film can at least be credited for being entirely unpretentious and kind of sweet. (1:40) (Ryan Lattanzio)

*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)

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) (Lattanzio)

Beats, Rhymes & Life Actor Michael Rapaport probably didn’t set out to make a hip-hop Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004), but that’s pretty much where his portrait of A Tribe Called Quest ends up. The first half of Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest is predictably worshipful, slathering on low angles and slow motion to cover mediocre live shows. More effectively, Rapaport traces the Queens group’s brief incubation period and subsequent breakthroughs in what would later be called alternative or, more obnoxiously, conscious hip-hop. A slew of notable followers and contemporaries toast Tribe’s first three albums, but by the time Rapaport catches up to the group’s 2008 reunion even their longtime friends De La Soul are wishing they’d call the whole thing off. The documentary slides into the Monster zone of hurt feelings and passive aggressive behavior in accounting for the group’s split after their inappropriately named 1998 album, The Love Movement. Phife Dawg and Q-Tip are the warring egos, though perennially slighted Phife is really no match for the imperially cool Tip. DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad is the Kirk Hammett of the outfit, looking on helplessly as the two bigger personalities make a mess of things. There’s still novelty in a story about aging in hip-hop, but Rapaport’s portrait is utterly conventional. He also doesn’t pursue more interesting questions of race and politics that naturally follow the band’s crossover appeal. (1:38) (Goldberg)

*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) (Peitzman)

A Better Life (1:38)

*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) (Sussman)

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) (Lattanzio)

*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) (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) Smith Rafael. (Sam Stander)

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) (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) (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) (Eddy)

Empire of Silver Love, not money, is at the core of Empire of Silver — that’s the M.O. of a Shanxi banking family’s libertine third son, or “Third Master” (Aaron Kwok) in this epic tug-of-war between Confucian duty and free will. The Third Master pines for his true love, his stepmother (Hao Lei), yet change is going off all around the star-crossed couple in China at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, and the youthful scion ends up pouring his passion into the family business, attempting to tread his own path, apart from his Machiavellian father (Tielin Zhang). Much like her protagonist, however, director (and Stanford alum) Christina Yao seems more besotted with romance than finance, bathing those scenes with the love light and sensual hues reminiscent of Zhang Yimou’s early movies. Though Yao handles the widescreen crowd scenes with aplomb, her chosen focus on money, rather than honey, leaches the action of its emotional charge. It doesn’t help that, on the heels of the Great Recession, it’s unlikely that anyone buys the idea of a financial industry with ironclad integrity — or gives a flying yuan about the lives of bankers. (1:52) (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) (Rapoport)

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) (Chun)

*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) (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) (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) (Peitzman)

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) (Chun)

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) (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) (Eddy)

*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)

*Rapt Colder than cool — and pokerfaced in its perusal of all the angles — this hostage thriller takes as its starting point the real-life 1978 kidnapping of Belgian aristo Baron Edouard-Jean Empain. Slick industrialist Stanislas Graff (Yvan Attal) is smoothly going through the motions of life — preparing for a sojourn to China alongside heads of state, swinging through his gambling den, indulging in an afternoon tryst with a mistress, then heading home to make fatherly noises for the family. Graff’s seamless, impressively precise kidnapping effectively cock-blocks the routine. Fifty million euros is the ransom, and the kidnappers quickly, brutally demonstrate that they mean bidness. Filmmaker Lucas Belvaux tests the tension at home, in the boardroom, among law enforcement, while the ugly details of Graff’s day-to-day life are laid bare by the French tabloids, much like dismembered body parts — and giving off a whiff of the hypocrisies surrounding ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. More often behind the camera than before it, Attal offers what might be his best performance as the entitled scion reduced to a cowering bag of bones and scar tissue. He’s well-matched by Anne Consigny as his shell-shocked spouse and Alex Descas as his lawyer, as Belvaux efficiently delivers his core query with almost zero melodrama: who’s the more brutal player in this high-stakes game — the so-called terrorists or the cutthroat captains of industry? (2:05) (Chun)

*Road to Nowhere “Legendary” is a term often applied to artists distinguished by either ubiquity or scarcity. Monte Hellman (1971’s Two-Lane Blacktop) definitely falls in the second camp — nearly 80, he’s just made his first feature in 22 years, causing a flurry of interest in the sparse 10 he made during the prior three decades he was, relatively speaking, active — movies hardly anyone saw when they came out since none were more than a blip on the commercial radar. Hellman’s career has largely been off the map — as a director and editor for hire, often fixing problems (like directors who die mid-production) without screen credit. Whether Road to Nowhere qualifies as summary statement or aberration has already divided viewers since its Venice premiere last fall. It’s a hall of mirrors in which a hotshot filmmaker (Tygh Runyan) making a movie about a woman’s apparent real-life murder casts an alluring non-actress (Shannyn Sossamon) whom an insurance investigator (Waylon Payne) and reporter (Dominique Swain) come to suspect might be playing herself — having faked her own death and adopted a new identity. The mix of noir, reality-illusion puzzle, industry in-jokes, film history name-dropping (as well as archival clips), uneven performances, sometimes stilted dialogue, brief startling violence, and handsome compositions (shot without permits on a hand-held digital camera) can be taken as two hours of delicious gamesmanship or exasperating self-indulgence. But no one can argue that by now Hellman hasn’t earned his right to be difficult. (2:02) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (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) (Chun)

*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) (Eddy)

*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) (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) (Chun)

*13 Assassins 13 Assassins is clearly destined to be prolific director Takashi Miike’s greatest success outside Japan yet. It’s another departure for the multi-genre-conquering Miike, doubtless one of the most conventional movies he’s made in theme and execution. That’s key to its appeal — rigorously traditional, taking its sweet time getting to samurai action that is pointedly not heightened by wire work or CGI, it arrives at the kind of slam-dunk prolonged battle climax that only a measured buildup can let you properly appreciate. In the 1840s, samurai are in decline but feudalism is still hale. It’s a time of peace, though not for the unfortunates who live under regional tyrant Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki), a li’l Nippon Caligula who taxes and oppresses his people to the point of starvation. Alas, the current Shogun is his sibling, and plans to make little bro his chief adviser — so a concerned Shogun official secretly hires veteran samurai Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) to assassinate the Lord. Fully an hour is spent on our hero doing “assembling the team” stuff, recruiting other unemployed, retired, or wannabe samurai. When the protagonists finally commence their mission, their target is already aware he’s being pursued, and he’s surrounded by some 200 soldiers by the time Miike arrives at the film’s sustained, spectacular climax: a small village which Shinzaemon and co. have turned into a giant boobytrap so that 13 men can divide and destroy an ogre-guarding army. A major reason why mainstream Hollywood fantasy and straight action movies have gotten so depressingly interchangeable is that digital FX and stunt work can (and does) visualize any stupid idea — heroes who get thrown 200 feet into walls by monsters then getting up to fight some more, etc. 13 Assassins is thrilling because its action, while sporting against-the-odds ingeniousness and sheer luck by our heroes as in any trad genre film, is still vividly, bloodily, credibly physical. (2:06) (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) (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) Smith Rafael (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) Smith Rafael. (Devereaux)

Winnie the Pooh (1:09)<\!s>2

 

Kim removes homeless shelter reform measure from ballot

Sasha Cuttler
-
8
Kim removes homeless shelter reform measure from ballot

Under pressure from the Mayor’s Office, Sup. Jane Kim today removed her sponsorship of the Fair Shelters Initiatives, effectively killing the measure that was set to appear on the November ballot, according to activists working on the issue. Sup. Eric Mar reportedly followed Kim’s lead and also removed his sponsorship, telling activists he was deferring to Kim’s decision.

“We hardly expected the supervisors would put a measure forward and then cave in before the campaign had even started,” said Bob Offer-Westort of the Coalition on Homelessness, which had asked Kim to be the lead sponsor of a measure that he said is the homeless community’s highest priority.

The measure would have removed shelter beds from the definition of housing under the city’s voter-approved Care Not Cash program, thus freeing up beds for the larger homeless population that is often denied space in shelters even as beds reserved for CNC recipients – who give up most of their welfare support in return for housing and services – often remain vacant.

The measure — which was sponsored by Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, David Campos, and John Avalos, in addition to Kim and Mar, giving it one more than the four votes it needed to make the ballot – had been harshly criticized by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and other downtown groups, as well as Mayor Ed Lee and other moderate politicians, who said it would somehow destroy CNC and attract more homeless people to the city.

In a recent email blast, Chamber head Steve Falk called the measure “alarming” and was “effectively dismantling the nationally-recognized program.” He tried to use the 100 nightly vacant shelter beds as a rationale against the measure (despite the fact that was the very problem the measure tried to correct), and wrote, “This measure is nothing more than pure politics to turn out progressive voters in a crowded mayoral race.”

Kim and her staffers haven’t returned Guardian calls for comments, and neither Mar nor Mirkarimi could be reached. But Offer-Westort said the arm-twisting by the Mayor’s Office shows just how little things have really changed at City Hall.

“It sets a really bad precedent when once again a mayor bullies members of the Board of Supervisors to get his way,” he said, noting that Kim still claimed to support the reform in her conversations with COH members. “It certainly wasn’t because she changed her mind about whether this was right or wrong. It had more to do with her concerns over the board’s relationship with Room 200.”

The BART cover-up crumbles

Zelda Bronstein
-
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.

The Performant: Super Freaks

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

Thunderbird Theatre and Foul Play serve it up weird
 
Like swallows returning to Capistrano, there are certain annual events you can count on to lift the spirits and brighten an otherwise soggy outlook. One such anticipated delight is Thunderbird Theatre’s yearly production of an ensemble-created original comedy. Mavens of the shameless spoof, the fabulous T-birds have sent-up pulp detective fiction, lucha libre wrestling, pirate intrigues, Citizen Kane, Conan the Barbarian, vampire romance, and creepy office politics in variously hysterical ways, and a summer pilgrimage to their shows is always effort well-rewarded.

This year’s Thunderbird Special was “SaltyTowers” (the run ended July 23) — a goofy mashup of Greek mythology and the best BBC comedy show ever to feature the line “don’t mention the war.” The opening sequence, involving a traditional chorus, established the basic plot, but it was the next scene, set in the lobby of the hapless, underwater hotel that established the funny. As a string of minor gods, mortals on-the-lam, and a beleaguered mob boss-styled Zeus check-in to Poseidon’s realm, they were waited on by a Portuguese man-o-war, a Dolphin, and Poseidon himself: a world-weary deity in an ill-fitting suit, married to Medusa — a woman for whom the phrase “my little nest of vipers” could actually be taken for an endearment.

The tangled fishing line of a plot might have lost direction now and again, but the buoyant silliness of the Thunderbird crew was unsinkable. Brandon Wiley played a scantily-clad Dionysus with hedonistic abandon; Neil Higgins’ swinging socialite Hermes was equal parts Oscar Wilde and Eddie Izzard; Analisa Svehaug channeled Connie Booth as “Dolly,” a matter-of-fact dolphin receptionist-cum-waterpark
performer; and Thunderbird regular Shay Casey’s Zeus, “a big God with big needs,” nevertheless seemed strangely unflapped by the temporary loss of his tender bits in a mishap involving an angry crustacean (Gilbert Esqueda). Weird science alert: did you know the sting of a Portuguese man-o-war can cause an orgasm? To find out how, you’ll have to see it for yourself.

Meanwhile, across the hallway of the EXIT Theatreplex, an entirely different brand of weird is getting a test-drive at Foul Play’s premiere of Nikita Schoen’s “The Left-handed Darling”. Inspired in part by the imitable Tod Browning film, “Freaks,” Schoen’s first foray into playwriting is tinged with longing, deformity, and a calmly rational madness that doesn’t so much spiral as glide smoothly forward into the dark.

The central character, Calliope (AmandaOrtmayer), is the young daughter of former sideshow performers, Phillip and Constance Darling (Don Wood and Kimberly Maclean). Raised in isolation by her well-meaning yet physically challenged parents (they are unhappily co-joined), Calliope amuses herself by creating hybrid creatures from the body parts of the animals her father “preserves” in jars.

Starved for companionship, she falls in with a group of carnival freaks, played with delicate empathy by Wood, Maclean, Mikka Bonel, and Sean Owens, with a suitably creepy Mikl-em as their barker/overseer, Sugarchurch. Surreal flourishes such as the mysterious puppet entity, Dr Chang, a hauntingly lifelike parasitic twin, Don Seaver’s dissonant soundscape, and a stellar courtroom scene staged by the sideshow performers, create an atmosphere of thoughtful unease that lingers long after the final bow.

THE LEFT-HANDED DARLINGThrough Aug. 13
EXIT Theatre
156 Eddy, SF
(415) 673-3847
www.sffringe.org

Dick Meister: Workers gaining in fight for union rights

Maria Poblet
-
0

This year marks the 76th anniversary of the National Labor Relations Act, the Depression-era law that was essential in building an American middle class – and which remains essential to the well-being of all working Americans. 

But you know what? Powerful corporate interests and their Republican buddies in Congress are nevertheless trying mightily to cripple what has so long been one of the most important U.S. laws of any kind.

Their main target currently is the National Labor Relations Board – the NLRB –which administers the National Labor Relations Act and takes seriously the act’s stated purpose of encouraging collective bargaining between workers and their employers.

The five-member labor board did very little to carry out its task of encouraging unionization during the notoriously anti-union Bush administration. But under President Obama, the NLRB has been doing its job – or has been trying to do its job — in the face of stiff Republican opposition.

The Republican opponents claim – what else? – that under Obama, the NLRB has become a tool of organized labor, Big Labor, as they like to call it.

It’s impossible to take those charges seriously. The labor board obviously has not been acting as an agent of unions, big or small. It’s merely been enforcing the law. But that, of course, means anti-labor forces no longer have the firm cooperation of the NLRB in their attempts to weaken unions as much as possible. They no longer have an ally in the White House. Bush is gone.

Imagine that. The National Labor Relations Board is actually doing what the law says it should do. And unions are actually getting a more or less even break vis-à-vis the corporate interests with whom they collectively bargain – or with whom they try to bargain.

What’s really got the anti-labor crowd sputtering lately is a ruling by the NLRB’s acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon,  against the Boeing Aircraft Company. Boeing was charged with breaking the labor law by moving a major assembly line from a unionized plant in Washington State to South Carolina, a notably anti-union state, in response to a machinist strike at the Washington plant. 

Moving the assembly line was done in violation of a provision in the National Labor Relations Act that bans companies from punishing striking unions by withholding or transferring jobs. Thus, said the NLRB’s Solomon, the assembly line should be moved back to Washington State.

Oh, boy, those union-hating Republicans in Congress didn’t like that at all. They threatened to defund the NLRB if it doesn’t withdraw its order to Boeing, trotting out their usual tired response to just about anything done in favor of unions these days. You’ve undoubtedly heard it – thousands of  times, maybe. Yes, that’s right. A ruling in favor of labor and labor law would be . . . Ah, yes, a job killer. Sure.

GOP House members have actually introduced something called – really – “The Protecting Jobs From Government Interference  Act.” that would void the NLRB order against Boeing  and prohibit future such orders. The proposed law undoubtedly has the approval of the union-hating U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has led the right-wing charge against the NLRB. It complains that the labor board is “out of control.”

Actually, the NLRB is out of control  – out of control of the right-wingers who had  their way throughout Bush’s two terms and are miffed that, unlike Bush, Obama doesn’t think their way is the only way to handle labor-management relations.

Much to the chagrin of the right-wingers, the labor board has come back strong under Obama. One of the board’s most important steps has been to develop rules to streamline the workplace elections that are held to determine if workers want to unionize. 

The board has cut short the pre-election periods that employers have used to harass workers into voting against unionization, approaching them individually and in mass meetings, frequently threatening to fire or otherwise penalize workers who vote for union representation. Obama’s NLRB also has cut back the time for management to appeal the outcome of a vote for unionization.

The changes, as one union attorney noted, are “common sense changes that drag labor law into the 21st century.” 

Common sense often doesn’t mean much to anti-labor Republicans. Sensible or not, they plunge onward on the anti-labor path that’s always been theirs. According to a count by Politico.com’s Joseph Williams, House Republicans have convened oversight hearings on the NLRB or summoned board members to Capitol Hill 14 times since the midterm elections to answer harassing questions and have threatened to severely cut the NLRB’s budget to “bring the board to heel.”

So, it’s still not easy for unions and workers who want to join unions, despite the progressive change in the NLRB’s attitude and operations. 

But the situation is looking much better since the change has come, since the law that promises American workers the right of unionization – and the important benefits that come from it – -is now being enforced by people who believe that their mission is not to hamper unions, but to encourage their growth for the benefit of all Americans.

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

Dick Meister: New hope for domestic workers

Maria Poblet
-
0

 

With a lot of luck, we may finally take decisive action to guarantee decent treatment for the world’s highly exploited housekeepers, maids, nannies and other domestic workers. There are an estimated 100 million of them, working in more than 180 countries.

Their pay is generally at the poverty level, and very few have fringe benefits such as pensions and employer-paid health care. Few have the protection of unions or labor laws, and they’re often at the mercy of unscrupulous labor contractors.  Almost half of them are not entitled to even one day off per week. About a third of the female workers are denied maternity leave.

The hope for improving the domestics’ slavery-like conditions has arisen from action taken in Geneva this month at the annual meeting of the United Nation’s International Labor Organization – the ILO.

Delegates representing unions, employers and governments voted 396 to 16  for what’s called a “Convention on Domestic Workers.” The non-binding convention spells out how domestics should be treated in UN member countries – most importantly in the pace-setting United States.

In the U.S., as in most other countries, an estimated 80 percent of the domestics are women of color, subject to racial discrimination and physical and sexual abuse.  In the United States, most of them are immigrants as well . They’re easy targets for exploitation, especially since, as elsewhere, domestics mainly work in private unregulated households, usually alone.

What’s more, U.S. domestics lack most of the protections of state and federal labor laws that are granted most U.S. workers outside of agriculture . Most other non-agricultural workers at least have the right to unionize. But domestics don’t even have that basic right.

The National Labor Relations Act specifically denies union rights to anyone “in the domestic service of any family or person.” That’s right. The Depression-era law that was designed to pull poverty-stricken workers out of poverty and build a middle class does indeed prohibit an entire group of exceptionally needy workers  from taking a major step to improve their extremely poor working conditions. The word for that is “un-American.” 

That outrageous legal prohibition has its roots in racism. Pressures from southern states, which objected to granting union rights to the mainly black domestics, was the main reason domestics were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.

 Some domestics have nevertheless formed union-like organizations to seek better treatment. But they need the force of law behind them.

The ILO convention calls for guaranteeing domestic workers in the United States and everywhere else some of the key rights that unionized workers invariably have, among them, regular working hours, vacations, maternity leaves and Social Security benefits.

Domestics would be promised what amount to contracts with employers that would make clear just what they would be expected to do, for how long, and for how much pay.  Their working conditions would have to include time off of at least 24 hours a week.

Migrant workers would have to be provided with a written job offer of employment or a contract before crossing  the border into another country to work.

It took several years for ILO representatives to adopt the domestic workers convention. It was finally adopted as a direct result of campaigning here and aboard by groups of activists from unions and other organizations. They will  be working for the next few years to get as many nations as possible to implement the ILO convention with their help.

The effort in this country is being led by the National Domestic Workers Alliance, with major support from the AFL-CIO, which has arranged to have some domestic workers represent themselves in ILO meetings and voting.

Among other things, proponents hope to make it clear that “domestic workers are real workers, NOT powerless individuals who are expected to remain in quiet servitude and endure long hours without overtime pay, along with hazardous working conditions without access to health and safety protections.”

Proponents also hope to end the “cultural relativity excuse that sleeping on a mattress in an unheated garage is better than he or she would get in their home country, or that the poor treatment of domestics is a tradition.”  The ILO convention says otherwise and workers in the United States and other countries where it is adopted  “will be armed with the knowledge that there is an international standard that protects them.”

Domestics already are granted labor rights in New York State, and California legislators are considering a proposal to bring them under that state’s labor laws. But winning basic rights for the badly exploited domestic workers elsewhere will be very difficult. But so was convincing ILO representatives to take on the task, the long needed task of granting domestic workers union rights and, with them, the decent wages, hours and working conditions that come with unionization.

Yes, winning the union rights for domestics worldwide will be very difficult. But we know it can be done.  And certainly we know that it should be done. 


Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century.  He can be reached through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

 

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
-
0

THEATER

OPENING

American Buffalo Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Opens Fri/22, 8 p.m. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 27. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet crime classic.

“Bay Area Playwrights Festival” Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.playwrightsfoundation.org. $20. July 22-31. Staged readings of works by seven emerging playwrights.

BAY AREA

Communicating Doors Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Opens Fri/22, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Aug 14, 2pm. Through Aug 20. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs Alan Ayckbourn’s “time-travel-battle-of-the-sexes comedy.”

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 869-5384, www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 20. Un-Scripted Theater Company hosts a different playwright each night, performing the first scene of an unfinished play and then improvising its finish.

Assisted Living: The Musical Imperial Palace, 818 Washington, SF; 1-888-88-LAUGH, www.assistedlivingthemusical.com. $79.59-99.50 (includes dim sum). Sat-Sun, noon (also Sun, 5pm). Through July 31. Rick Compton and Betsy Bennett’s comedy takes on “the pleasures and perils of later life.”

Billy Elliot Orpheum Theater, 1192 Market, SF; www.shnsf.com/shows/billyelliot. $35-200. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through Sept. 17. As a Broadway musical, Billy Elliot proves more enjoyable than the film. The movie’s T. Rex score may have been a major selling point, but it was a bit maudlin for a story that needed no help in that department. The musical naturally has a sentimental moment or three, but it’s much more often funny, muscular in its staging (with repeatedly inspired choreography from Peter Darling), and expansive in its eclectic score (Elton John) and well-wrought book and lyrics (Lee Hall). Moreover, Stephen Daldry (who also directed the 2000 film) plays up bracingly the too-timely class politics of the modest 1980s English mining town besieged by Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal regime in the latter’s ultimately successful bid to crush the once-powerful miners union. The cast is likewise very strong. The second act is not as strong as the first, but as crowd-pleasing entertainment the musical burrows deep and more often than not comes up with gold. (Avila)

The Book of Liz Custom Made Theatre, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $10-29. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 31. Custom Made Theatre performs David and Amy Sedaris’ comedy about an unconventional nun.

Indulgences in the Louisville Harem Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.offbroadwaywest.org. $20-40. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through July 30. Two spinster sisters find unlikely beaux in Off Broadway West Theatre’s production of John Orlock’s play.

Left-Handed Darling Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-30. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Aug 13. Foul Play Productions perfomrs the world premiere of Nikita Schoen’s Dust Bowl-era drama.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thurs/21, 8pm; Sat/23, 8:30pm; Sun/24, 7pm. Marga Gomez presents a workshop production of her new comedy, her ninth solo show.

Salty Towers Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.theexit.org. $15-25. Thurs/21-Sat/23, 8pm. Thunderbird Theatre Company performs a farce that combines Greek mythology with a tale of sea creatures running a two-star hotel.

Tales of the City American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $35-98. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Extended through July 31. ACT performs a musical version of Armisted Maupin’s beloved San Francisco story.

Tigers Be Still SF Playhouse, 522 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-50. Tues-Wed, 7pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through Sept 10. SF Playhouse performs Kim Rosenstock’s quirky comedy.

Twilight Zone Live: Season 8 Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; www.ticketturtle.com. $20 ($5 discount if you use the code word “maggie”). Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 29. The Dark Room Theater presents its eighth annual tribute to classic Twilight Zone episodes.

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through July 31. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of the Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

What Mamma Said About Down There SF Downtown Comedy Theater, 287 Ellis, SF; www.sfdowntowncomedytheater.com. $15. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 20. Sia Amma returns with her solo comedy.

BAY AREA

All My Children Cabaret at Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Fri/22, 8pm; Sat/23, 8:30pm. Not the soap opera — it’s Seattle Improv co-founder Matt Smith in his comedy about a middle-aged man with boundary issues.

East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 7. Don Reed’s hit solo comedy receives one last extension before Reed debuts his new show (a sequel to East 14th) in the fall.

Fly By Night Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Tues-Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Aug 13. TheatreWorks performs the world premiere of Kim Rosentock, Michael Mitnick, and Will Connolly’s musical, set in 1965 New York.

Macbeth Dominican University of California, Forest Meadows Amphitheater, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Opens Fri/15, 8pm. Performance times vary; check website for schedule. Through Aug 14. Marin Shakespeare Company takes on the Scottish play, opening under a full moon, no less.

Metamorphosis Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Wed/22-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 2 and 7pm. Aurora Theatre Company performs a terrifying yet comic adaptation of Kafka’s classic by David Farr and Gísli Örn Gardarsson.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream This week: Dimond Park, 3860 Hanly, Oakl. www.womanswill.org. Free (donations requested). Sat/23-Sun/24, 2pm. Performances continue at Bay Area parks through Aug 21. Woman’s Will performs the Shakespeare favorite.

2012: The Musical! This week: Mosswood Park, W. MacArthur and Broadway, Oakl; www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat/23, 2pm. Nicholl Park, Macdonald at 31st St, Richmond. Sun/23, 2pm. Continues through Sept. 25 at various Bay Area venues. San Francisco Mime Troupe mounts their annual summer musical; this year’s show is about a political theater company torn between selling out and staying true to its anti-corporate roots.

The Verona Project Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; (510) 548-9666, www.calshakes.org. $35-66. Tues-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also July 30, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through July 31. California Shakespeare Theater performs a world-premiere play (inspired by The Two Gentlemen of Verona) by Amanda Dehnert. 

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks. For complete listings, seewww.sfbg.com.

1...323334...82Page 33 of 82

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