San Francisco Archives — Page 84 of 517 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Supervisors approve condo legislation with veto-proof majority

Sasha Cuttler

June 11, 2013

Supervisors approve condo legislation with veto-proof majority

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted to approve compromise legislation that will allow more than 2,000 tenancy-in-common homeowners to convert to condominiums in exchange for a 10-year moratorium on the city’s current condo conversion lottery that now allows 200 conversions annually.

Approved by a veto-proof 8-3 majority after some last amendments were shot down by the six supervisors who most steadfastly supported the version that Board President David Chiu took the lead on crafting, this was a big victory for tenant groups who strongly opposed the original legislation, which did not include the moratorium and other restrictions.

“It’s great. We’re going to see a significant drop in condo conversions in the future. All of us tenants are very happy,” San Francisco Tenants Union head Ted Gullicksen told us after the hearing, which was packed with tenant supporters.

Sup. Mark Farrell, who sponsored the original legislation, decried how divisive the issue had become, criticized the approved version as deviating from his original intent of helping TIC owners in exchange for a fee that would help fund new affordable housing, and said, “This doesn’t need to be a zero sum game.”

But Chiu and the five supervisors who supported his version – Jane Kim, Norman Yee, David Campos John Avalos, and Eric Mar – noted the finite number of rent-controlled apartments in the city and the need to protect them from being converted into condos.

“How do we balance the needs of tenants who fear being evicted with TIC owners looking for relief?” Chiu said of the balance he aimed to strike, which he continued to tweak with new amendments today, including allowing TICs with all owner-occupied units to move forward if the legislation is challenged in court, an event that would otherwise freeze all condo conversions until the lawsuit is resolved.

Sup. London Breed wanted even greater flexibility in that so-called “poison pill” aspect of the legislation, which tenant groups had insisted on to prevent the bypass from going through even if the moratorium was challenged. Breed proposed allowing condo conversion applications to proceed for a year after a lawsuit was filed, but Chiu said that would let TIC owners convert to condos while challenging other aspects of the legislation, such as the lifetime leases for tenants in converted buildings.

Breed and Sup. Malia Cohen, who privately and rather grimly conferred with one another and sometimes Chiu before the item began a little after 4pm, were clearly the two swing votes on the question of whether the legislation would reach the crucial eight-vote threshold needed to override a possible mayoral veto. Mayor Ed Lee has refused to take a position on the issue, leaving both sides in the dark.

But after the motion to insert Breed’s amendments failed on a 5-6 vote, the board voted 8-3 to approve Chiu’s version of the legislation, with Sups. Farrell, Scott Wiener, and Katy Tang opposed. A subsequent vote on a version of the legislation backed by Farrell and Wiener – which contained a weaker poison pill and more flexible owner-occupancy provisions – then failed on a 4-7 vote, with Breed joining the three dissenting supervisors.

Underscoring this legislation was what some supervisors called a “housing affordability crisis” in San Francisco, an issue that Mayor Lee was asked about at the start of the meeting, which he deflected by claiming “our city has some of the toughest anti-displacement laws in the nation.”

We’ll analyze that discussion and offer more details on the condo conversion debate and the politics behind it tomorrow in the space, so check back then.

Bands on the run

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

June 11, 2013

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC In an airy third-floor loft in SOMA, not far from the Sightglass Coffee flagship and an antique mall with a pennant flag twisting out front, 20 filmmaking teams shuffle across a makeshift finish line some time before 8pm Sunday evening. Exhausted, they hold in their hands a digital file, the physical evidence of a brand new project — a joint effort between Bay Area bands, directors, producers, and editors. Something of this magnitude would traditionally take weeks or even months to complete, but in this focused case, it was all completed in a thrilling 48-hour period.

Flash back to the start of the weekend; it’s Friday night in the lower-level grotto of Sports Basement on the Mission-Potrero border, and everyone is huddled near complimentary Lagunitas beer. There’s a buzzy sense of anticipation. The bands and solo artists — truly diverse in sound and geography — are waiting to hear which filmmaking team they’ll be paired with for the remainder of the weekend.

For this is the second annual Music Video Race competition, and they’ll only have a short time to complete the project. Sure, given modern technology such as iPhones, basic music videos can now be made in a day (see Kitty Pryde, or other web-bred artists), but this is about the competition within the timeframe; the race pits artists against one another to see who can come up with the best concept and execution in the allotted two-day period.

Among the crowd, there’s young and quick-tongued Mission rapper A-1, bouncy power-pop act Giggle Party, groovy Ethiopian blues Sun Hop Fat, forest country-folk Whiskerman, dancey electro-pop duo Happy Fangs, vintage jazz crooner Quinn DeVeaux, and dreamy “post-indie” Magic Fight.

The names of filmmaking teams and bands are yelled out, and the room grows loud with introductions. “Have a blast, and thanks for playing!” (The next time they’ll be in the same room together will be the screening Sat/15 at Rickshaw Stop.)

Magic Fight gets paired with first-time music video director Cory K. Riley, an eager young filmmaker who says he cashed in just about every favor he had for this production (along with some online donations and money from his own pocket). He has a crew of three or four with him at Sports Basement tonight. “We’re definitely the messier one to follow,” Riley tells me with a wink. After they’re paired, the band and the Riley crew walk outside on this warm weekend evening, and pop the Magic Fight CD into Riley’s hatchback. It’s the first listen. Until moments before, they were all strangers on the local independent arts scene.

The match up of the bands and filmmakers seems almost up to dumb luck when the pairings are read aloud, a split-second decision and boom! Now there are new teams racing across the Bay with wild costumes and characters. But it’s actually months of hard work for co-organizers Tim Lillis and Jacquelyn “Jax” Marker. They pore over submissions, choose the pairings, find the sponsors, and host the happy hours leading up to the weekend.

They came up with the idea for the Music Video Race in 2011, while having drinks at Lucky 13 before a Mister Heavenly show — you know, that band in which Michael Cera intermittently played bass. “It came about talking about our friends that were in bands that needed music videos, and also our filmmaking friends that were either in corporate jobs, not getting as much creative release as they may like, or our filmmaking friends that had been sitting on something for two years that had never seen the light of day,” Marker says.

Plus, Marker and Lillis had together participated in the 48 Hour Film Festival, so they knew the thrill of the creative weekend. (“It was horrible,” Marker says with a laugh, of their joint project for that fest, which also challenges filmmakers to come up with a quality product in two days. “I directed it, and I’m a really good producer, not so much a director.”)

For the Music Video Race, the key objectives of the project were to create something fun, collaborative, and finite — with a clear ending time. “With this there’s an element of control,” Lillis says. “The song is the control, right?” He likens the organization to something like a very dialed-in Treasure Island, where the bands shift like clockwork. “I’m kind of production nerd, as well,” he says. While Lillis now works as a freelance illustrator and plays in an as-yet-unnamed band in San Francisco, in his former life in Boston, he did event production for Kaiju Big Battel, which pits costumed Godzilla-type characters against on another in a traveling steel cage.

Marker grew up in Sydney and came to San Francisco in ’06 for what was going to be a one-month project for Mythbusters. She begged her producers to let her stay in SF, which she did until late ’11. Now she’s back in Australia as a TV producer there, but was here for two months in 2012 for the first Music Video Race, and flew in for 10 days to be back in SF for the race this year. In the months leading up to each, there was a lot of organizing via Skype.

The 2012 videos were screened at a sold-out Rickshaw Stop show, where doppio’s video for “Beware of Cobra,” directed by filmmaking team the Outer Avenues, won overall. But beyond that, the videos gained artists more recognition. WATERS’ Vidola Productions-created video for “Mickey Mantle” premiered on the popular music blog Consequence of Sound, and the French Cassettes “Mouth Drum” video nearly went viral, earning director Dalan McNabola a few additional music video shoots from the exposure.

There are actual prizes too, including recording time with an engineer at Studio SQ for the bands, gear rental from popular grip and electric house DTC for the filmmakers, classes through TechShop, Vimeo memberships, Bay Area Video Coalition memberships, and more. A panel of judges including Noise Pop staff, and Bay Guardian film editor Cheryl Eddy (who, full disclosure, accepted judging responsibilities after I began work on this story), will choose the winners.

Still, the real goals of the race are collaboration and artistic expression. “I don’t think anybody is looking for this weekend to make them famous,” Lillis say. In what feels like direct contrast to the ethos of the Music Video Race, elsewhere in the city this weekend was the Chipotle Cultivate Festival, a free outdoor concert in Golden Gate Park with “Chipotle Eats” meals available for purchase.

“This is a passion project for us,” says Marker. “We both have full-time jobs while we put this on. What do we get out of this? It was definitely the most fun weekend I had of 2012. It was a year of work into 48 hours. And it’s about what other people get out of it, you know?”

Depending on how this year goes, Marker and Lillis are hoping to expand the Music Video Race to other cities, including Boston, Austin, and Sydney so far, just based on their own personal connections in these places. But before that, they’ll need to get through the weekend of this second annual competition.

“[You hope that] everybody just gets along, but you kind of want some craziness,” Marker says.

“There are a lot of personalities in the room. But everyone comes to it with a good attitude,” Lillis adds.

#MVRSF

At 10am the next morning after the race kickoff, inside the stuffy SUB-Mission venue space, the Cory K. Riley cast and crew seems to have tripled in size. Along with Riley, there’s producer Stuart Griese, director of photography Ryan Thomas, gaffer Matt Stouppe (Thomas and Stouppe own their own company, RTMS), first assistant director Alun Lee, art director Norah Hoover, makeup artist Laura Grassi, and a likely half a dozen more milling about, at any given moment.

There’s professional lighting and camera equipment from DTC laced throughout the cavernous three-room space, a snack table at the bar near the front with chorizo and egg burritos, tortilla chips and hummus, a big bottle of OJ, fresh fruit. And there are colorful Cosby sweaters and other clothing on the center stage of the venue, splayed out by the band as possible wardrobe choices.

Soon enough, Magic Fight will be windblown with twigs, spritzed in the face with water, dragged on the ground, and surrounded by beautiful young women in island-print dresses and coolly detached expressions.

But long before that, the four men of Magic Fight are hanging out front of the electric blue building, eating breakfast and waiting to shoot the first scene of the as-yet-unknown concept. They have a naturally light and upbeat energy between them, frequently joking with one another, ribbing, making puns, laughing; you’d never guess they were such a friendly bunch based on the somber tone of the song we’ll hear repeated all day as the cameras roll.

“Grand Children,” is an emotional indie pop rollercoaster off the band’s April 2013 album Wooden Swords and Stolen Echoes. The chorus methodically repeats the lyrics, “I want to die,” as octaves slowly rise and fall like rolling waves beneath them. There’s the sound of literal waves subtly crashing beneath the track as well, along with Alex Haager’s distressed vocals and gentle ukulele plucking, Alex Pinto’s bass, Jeff Gist’s steady drumming, and Hernando Buitrago’s twinkling keys.

The band members agree they’re all a part of the Music Video Race because of Buitrago. “I went to the [Music Vide Race] screening last year,” he explains. “I saw that Tim had a gathering at Hotel Utah a month ago, and I went — no one else wanted to go with me, but I went.” All laugh in unison. “I met Tim and he was down with having Magic Fight in it.”

“It was one of our classic email conversations that start between the hours of 2am and 8am, which seems to be how we communicate in this band,” Pinto says.

“I seem to remember a lot of screaming and finger-pointing,” Gist adds with one of his frequent sly smiles.

“Hernando has really good ideas, so we trust him,” Pinto concludes.

Haager and Buitrago say they first met at the Little Shamrock in the Inner Sunset over a game of backgammon, which Haager lost. That was the only game they played, but they ended up playing music together, or so the story goes. The others knew Buitrago through mutual friend Jessica Nguyen, a.k.a the Bicycle Bánh Mì owner.

They’re each talented in their own right, all in their late 20s, having played in various bands before coming together as this foursome for the first time in October of 2012 at Public Works. Previously, Haager conceived of Magic Fight as some sort of an electro-pop solo project — there’s an old Myspace page out there to prove it. He also played in Berlin and Brooklyn based quartet Hungry, Hungry Ghost.

And Pinto plays in his own jazz trio — which actually played its last SF show the night of the Music Video Race shoot — and also organizes the experimental jazz SF Offside Festival. He’ll be leaving Magic Fight too, at the end of summer, when he moves with his wife to India on a Fulbright Scholarship, where he’ll be creating new music content in jazz studies with South Indian classical music at the Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (his father grew up near the area). Though, he jokes, he may try to bring the band out to India for one show, his last performance with Magic Fight will be July 14 at Brick and Mortar Music Hall.

The band and I have kept up with others in the race through the hashtag #MVRSF on Instagram and Twitter. Everyone’s been posting photos and geotagging their locations, tweeting about their late nights and crazy shoots. But at this point, Magic Fight has yet to film a scene. “People were shooting all night long,” Buitrago says incredulously. “They were like, ‘Wrapping up! Four in the morning.'” Through the hashtag, we see scenes of ninjas in sports cars, bands playing in the park and at the beach, children with war-paint, balloons for days, and tiny voodoo dolls.

Later, Marker and Lillis tell me they were able to visit 11 different sets on Saturday: “We discovered A-1 literally underneath his apartment building covered in dust and cobwebs; Animal Friends were conducting some sort of healing ritual in a Mission apartment; we walked into a house in Oakland to find two guys from Battlehooch dangling another member out of a house window; we caught a werewolf arm wrestling a woman at dusk down past Third Street. Oh the funniest by far was rocking up to the parking lot at Secret Studios and finding what we first thought was an abandoned set but then heard the members of Giggle Party screaming from inside the parked box truck.”

“Magic Fight’s set up had the most manpower and fancy gear for sure.”

HURRICANE SEASON

An hour or so after Magic Fight finish hanging out in front of SUB-Mission with breakfast burritos, Haager is wearing one of his colorful knit sweaters inside the darkened middle room of the venue, and there’s a bright halo of lights aimed directly on his face. He starts on a depressed blue couch covered in braches, leaves, flora debris, gets up and walks toward the camera with a piercing yet forlorn expression, mouthing along to the words of “Grand Children.”

The impressively large crew walks backward, carrying heavy-duty film equipment, lights, and coiled chords. Two additional crew members hoist an industrial-strength fan near Haager and throw even more leaves near him and the pieces shoot across his chest, face, hair. A 20-second bit of “Grand Children” is playing in the background so he knows which words to mouth, but the fan is too loud now and he cracks a smile. Cut, back to one.

Once they get the shot, Haager is flat on his back on the cool ground and Gist and Pinto are pulling him. He’s again mouthing along, this time with a vintage mic in his hand, attached to a tiny amp on his chest. Riley sprays Haager with a bottle of water as he slides. Still, it’s not entirely clear what is going on here, what will bring this all together as a concept.

Many of the crew members are also unsure, but trust Riley’s vision. He seems to thrive in the chaos, pulled like taffy in different directions, and asked his opinion on every factor. Tall and thin, with dark arching eyebrows and a beanie pulled down over a shaved head, he’ll give copious high-fives, frequently ask how everyone is doing, and use the phrase “viciously entertaining” multiple times throughout the weekend.

It’s set designer-art director Nora Hoover who finally enlightens with what’s going on, and then it all clicks: the swirling chaos of water, leaves, branches, twigs, and pink flowers, the women in Hawaiian dresses and leis. Hoover and Riley were up early in the morning picking up most of these pieces at a prop warehouse in South San Francisco, in a situation Riley described to Hoover as “just like Supermarket Sweep.”

The music video would have a dystopic feel, sad yet hopeful: a thrashing hurricane in picturesque Hawaii.

It’s a set location Riley knows something about. He grew up on Kauai, and Hoover lived there for a few months one winter. The two — who met on the set of a Kacey Johansing music video — connected over this.

Riley tells me the concept grew while he, Hoover, and producer Griese drove around the Mission Friday night after they left Sports Basement, listening over and over to the Magic Fight song. As they drove, Riley threw out words and connections in a stream-of-consciousness manner — “rain! leaves!” — while Griese scribbled down the ideas.

“I had pinks, whites, greens,” Riley says of the set aesthetic. “It was [supposed to be like] the late ’60s, thinking of a postcard for those old airlines, like, ‘Come to Waikiki!’ I felt like there was a mod ’60s kind of feel to the sound, whoever recorded the [Magic Fight] album that way, and there’s a line in the song that said, ‘I’ve never been to Hawaii.'”

All of these elements come together in the late afternoon scene. Riley points to the back room, which is being dressed by Hoover and more set designers. He smiles then winks, “that’s going to be a little bit of a freak show.”

The backdrop is breathtaking. It’s lit up bright white, with a big, twinkly arch of pink flowers and branches, a large black circular bed on the ground also covered in leaves. The women in island dresses stand behind Haager and slowly hula. There are other ladies propped languorously behind him, lounging with outstretched legs in a wicker chair, or on a raised bed with a vintage suitcase behind the action. I later find out they were the girlfriends and close pals of the crew, called in that morning to help out. Leaves and other fragments fall from the balcony.

From behind the camera, it looks beautiful — but will it be enough to win the race? Riley, his crew, and the band will find out this weekend at the Rickshaw Stop, where all the videos will be shown for the first time, and Magic Fight just happens to be playing live. “Even if you lose the race, you end up with a video, which is winning,” says Haager.

MUSIC VIDEO RACE SCREENING

With Magic Fight and Animal Friend

Sat/15, 7:30pm, $12–$15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

www.rickshawstop.com

ADDITIONAL SCREENING

Sun/16, 7pm, $10

Opera Plaza Cinemas

601 Van Ness, SF

www.landmarktheatres.com

Bully for the ACLU! It went after the real lawbreakers

June 11, 2013

Scroll down to read the ACLU complaint in the New York Times story

For me, the crucial question was not whether Edward J. Snowden broke the law but whether the U.S. government had broken the law in secretly setting up and secretly expanding what the American Civil Liberties Union called its “dragnet”collection of logs of domestic phone calls.

The ACLU, filing on Tuesday one of its most important lawsuits ever, stated that “this practice is akin to snatching every American’s address book, with annotations detailing who we spoke to, when we talked, for how long, and from where. It gives the U.S. government a comprehensive record of our associations our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious, and intimate associations.”

The suit stated that this mass tracking violates the Patriot Act and the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The ACLU asked for the court to stop the Obama Administration from the practice and expunge the records.

“Every American” needs to read the ACLU suit embedded in the New York Times story. Let’s get our priorities straight and go after the real lawbreakers. Bully for the ACLU. b3

Click here to read the Times story and complaint.

Bruce B. Brugmann, who signs his blogs and emails B3, is the editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He writes and edits the Bruce Blog on the Bay Guardian website at sfbg.com. He is the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012.

Power plays

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

June 11, 2013

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER With its storied 35-year history of politically charged and transgressive theater, Theatre Rhinoceros might seem the perfect San Francisco outfit to take on the great English playwright Caryl Churchill’s 2006 political allegory Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? — wherein the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain is metaphorically transformed into a sadomasochistic affair between George Bush and Tony Blair. Or rather, their more expansive stand-ins Sam (Rudy Guerrero), described as “a country,” and Jack (Sam Cohen), described as “a man.” (Jack became “Guy” in the Public Theater’s US premiere, suggesting possibly an American everyman as opposed to a specifically British one).

The premise translates into an opportunity to excavate the seductions and corruptions of power, the homoerotic relationship resonating in complex ways with a larger patriarchal order where sex and death are right on the surface and inextricably linked. Unfortunately, despite the harmonizing at the outset of this 45-minute one-act — in a double rendition of American the Beautiful and God Save the Queen — the production directed by the Rhino’s John Fisher rarely seems in tune with the material.

The staging can be amusing even when obvious, as when Sam rams home his points with robust pelvic thrusts to his partner. But it is unnecessarily busy, with multiple entrances and exits and use of a changing photographic backdrop illustrating various settings, iconic images, and bellicose themes. Of course, all of this might have been OK if the tension, sexual and otherwise, were palpably communicated. But the tension is slack, despite the mildly explicit blocking.

Instead, the actors seem to have their hands full with the challenging dialogue — which, in addition to being tightly intermingled, is non-realistic and poetically compact, deploying the argot of geopolitics as if it were the stuff of intimate cooing and romantic tussling. Sam demands “total commitment” from his lover, for instance, but Jack is a family man divided in his loyalties, and moreover has moral qualms about some of Sam’s more outré behavior, despite the carnal lust it can also arouse. It’s a rare moment when Guerrero and Cohen convincingly connect this heightened dialogue with their rambunctious interactions.

The dialogue also makes use of a litany of high crimes committed by the US government, and its ally Britain, since the Second World War — a verbal onslaught that carries its own force by virtue of its magnitude and extent, rescuing from banality the individual crimes (from Vietnam to El Salvador to Guantanamo) made too familiar by repetition. But the power that derives from the juxtaposition of a romantic affair and this index of world-rocking brutality somehow gets lost when the production attempts to act out too much of the relationship. Ironically, the more it tries to show, the less we register the true political pornography on display.

A similar disconnect attends the second half of the evening: a staging of the 10-minute play Churchill wrote in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s devastating 2008 attack on Gaza, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, which the Rhino balances with New York playwright Deborah Margolin’s dramatic response to Churchill, Seven Palestinian Children: A Play for the Other.

As in the first play, Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children combines moral outrage with a keen formal logic, and is capable of subtleties that belie its compact and deceptively simple structure. In a series of short, regular phrases, a set of parental voices discuss what to tell a young female child about the world she has been born into. The short scenes begin in Nazi Germany and end in 2008, covering seven decades of Jewish Israeli experience. Its coruscating and certainly provocative evocations seamlessly progress from the Holocaust to the colonizing of Palestine and the repression, in turn, of its indigenous Arab population.

The staging is again probably busier than it needs to be, since the force of the rhythmic dialogue (given histrionic emphasis by Cohen and Kim Stephenson as a married couple) is somewhat dissipated when haltingly delivered across multiple scene changes and the insertion of visual and chronological cues on the screen at the back of the stage. But the short work has raised dialogue and debate internationally, and it’s long overdue for a production by a major Bay Area company. (The Rhino audience is invited to stay and discuss both plays afterward.)

Balance may be the objective in following this piece with Margolin’s Seven Palestinian Children, but there is something lopsided about it just the same. Part of the problem is that Margolin’s tit-for-tat response dulls the force of the impression left by the first play by co-opting its form and yet deploying it in a less muscular way. Indeed, Seven Palestinian Children (performed by Guerrero as a hotheaded Palestinian father and Stephenson as a more compassionate Palestinian mother) not only trades in the kinds of gendered stereotypes eschewed by Churchill’s piece but, in substituting a male child for the female one, raises an uncomfortable gender dynamic in the very representation of Israel vis-à-vis Palestine. That may be latent in the Churchill play to some extent, but in making it explicit the pairing of plays risks being more obfuscating than clarifying of the relevant issues.

DRUNK ENOUGH TO SAY I LOVE YOU?

Wed/12-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 3pm, $15-$30

Costume Shop

1117 Market, SF

www.therhino.org

Dede Wilsey re-elected prez of Fine Arts Museums board with little fanfare

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

June 11, 2013

Dede Wilsey re-elected prez of Fine Arts Museums board with little fanfare

At a quarterly meeting on June 6, Diane “Dede” Wilsey was summarily re-elected as president of the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF). The election marks her sixth consecutive term in a post she’s held since 1998, a tenure made possible when the board eliminated term limits in 2009.

She ran uncontested, and her unanimous endorsement by the board’s Nomination Committee was granted, in the words of Committee Chair Lisa Zanze, to be “mindful of the need for continuity” at FAMSF.

Earlier this year, Wilsey was the subject of harsh criticism by former and unnamed current employees at FAMSF, who anonymously submitted information to the Bay Guardian demonstrating that, among other things, Wilsey was directing staff members to assist with the maintenance of her personal art collection on museum time. Curator Emeritus Robert Flynn Johnson was even quoted in the New York Times as saying the museum was in a state of “Orwellian dysfunction” under Wilsey’s leadership.

Other allegations of mismanagement have included the ouster of several well-regarded, veteran members of the museum’s staff, such as European art curator Lynn Orr. Eyebrows were also raised over the exhibition of Wilsey’s son Trevor Traina’s photography collection at the deYoung last summer. Incidentally, Traina was re-elected to the FAMSF board last week after briefly retiring in April 2012, just before his show opened.

Despite the controversy, Wilsey’s position was never questioned at last week’s meeting. The need for “continuity” ostensibly stems from a gap in leadership at the museum following the death of Director John Buchanan in December 2011. The protracted recruitment effort for Buchanan’s replacement finally came to an end earlier this year, in the wake of the controversy, with the appointment of Colin Bailey, former deputy director and chief curator at The Frick Collection in New York. (On Thursday, Wilsey likened working with the selection committee to “herding cats.”)

It’s true that Wilsey has an extensive record of arts patronage in San Francisco. But with Wilsey retaining her post as president of the board, it’s unclear whether the “points of great concern amongst a broad range of professional staff” highlighted in an anonymous note sent to the Guardian this past February have been adequately addressed. The outcome of Wilsey’s re-election, perhaps, was the quiet dismissal of an ugly period in an institution otherwise concerned with beauty.

Selector: June 12-17, 2013

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

WEDNESDAY 12

The Trashies

What would you get if you paired those slimy Garbage Pail Kids with primal 1960s garage rock band the Monks? It’d probably turn in to something like the Trashies. A few weeks back, the Bay Guardian premiered a new video from the sloppy Seattle-and-East Bay act, featuring the band writhing in the mud at the Albany Bulb, screeching and freaking out psychedelically on guitars, and yelping “I’m a worm!/watch me squirm.” If it all sounds a bit familiar, this beach squelch shimmy, it’s because Uzi Rash frontperson Max Nordile also has a hand in Trashies, lending his particular style to the band’s intoxicating sounds. (Emily Savage)

With Buffalo Tooth, Scrapers

8:30pm, $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

FRIDAY 14

Queer Women of Color Film Festival

Five vibrant screening programs, 57 short films, and a particular focus — “Bridge To Truth: Queer SWANA/AMEMSA Communities” — on the feminist threads weaving through recent revolutions in Southwest Asian, North African/Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities: if this year’s festival doesn’t open your eyes to some amazing things happening in the world of queer women of color, well, here’s a loaf of Wonderbread, go nuts. “From the intoxicating first kiss to candlelit prayer rugs, from transmen of color dating to Navajo beauty pageants, to the ebb and flow between parents and children, this festival is awash with films that fill our spirits,” QWOCMAP, the great local arts institution that produces the fest, promises. Three days of flicks culminate in a party, 9pm on Sun/16 at Slate Bar, with DJs Wepa and AlmiuX and a host of friendly faces. (Marke B.)

Through June 16

Various prices and times Brava Theater

2789 24th St., SF

www.qwocmap.org

Date Palms

There’s this sense of impending doom ever-present in any given Date Palm piece. The instrumental band — which once described its sound to me as “psychedelic minimalism with Eastern tinged melodies driven by cyclical, distorted bass patterns” — has thriller cinematic appeal. Without the distraction of vocals, the mind is left to wander in these unsettling patterns, wobbling toward the deep unknown, creating eerie visions. In this way, it’s the soundtrack to the mini movies fluttering through your brain. This is never more apt than in single “Dusted Down,” off new album, Dusted Sessions, out this week on Thrill Jockey. And yet, one needn’t conjure a mind-flick for that particular track. There’s already a video, and it’s as trippy as deserved, with blurry visions of the band, analog video feedback, and a looping rainbow of madness. (Savage)

With Jackie O-Motherfucker, Soft Shells, Lady Free Mountain

9pm, $7

Night Light

311 Broadway, Oakl.

www.thenightlightoakland.com

The Bats

New Zealand rockers the Bats got their start 30 years ago, and have stayed together all this time, with all four original members still in the fold, an almost unheard of feat these days. The cult Kiwi favorites released their latest album, Free All The Monsters (Flying Nun Records) in 2011, imbued with an almost ethereal sound and feel, which could be partly due to the fact that it was recorded in a former lunatic asylum. The video for the single “Simpletons” shows haunting scenes of the aftermath of the major earthquake that struck the Bats hometown of Christchurch that year — but like their fellow countrymen, the band is as resilient as ever. (Sean McCourt)

With the Mantles, Legs

9pm, $15–$17-

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Monster Drawing Rally 2013

There will be no Grave Digger, no Bigfoot, no Mean Green Machine. There will be no Mud Tractor Pull (pull … pull …pull …) — or mud for that matter, either. But you never know what else will arise from the annual, hugely popular Monster Drawing Rally at Southern Exposure Gallery. A honkin’ 120 artists rev their creative engines in one hour shifts of 30 artists each to produce spectacular works, instantly available for sale at $60 each. Meanwhile, spectators can egg these MONSTER ARTISTS on while enjoying the inspirationally arty yet danceable sounds of DJs Juan Luna-Avin and Joshua Pieper and food from select street trucks. It all takes place at underground-feeling Mission design warehouse the NWBLCK, and proceeds go to Southern Exposure’s community art programs. Gentledrawers, start your engines. (Marke B.)

6pm-11pm, $15

1999 Bryant, SF

(415) 863-2141

www.soex.org

SATURDAY 15

Papa Bear and the Easy Love

Papa Bear and the Easy Love create a river of music and then go for a swim inside it. Some artists wear their music like accessories, a backdrop to their eccentric selves. Some become one with it, creating a pleasant unity on stage. Others stomp on top of the sound, trying to resuscitate the riffs and beats as they plunge from the speakers to the ground. With Papa Bear and the Easy Love, beautiful harmonies and soft finger-picking acoustics become the mantra on stage — and it is beautiful to watch. It makes the crowd wish to go for a dip as well. (Hillary Smith)

With Big Tree, Song Preservation Society, City Tribe

9pm, $17

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

SUNDAY 16

StyleWOW

Dear San Francisco Art Institute,

You’re forgiven for the questionable taste shown in the naming of your annual student fashion show because I anticipate that its runway lewks will be fantastic. We are known as a fabulous city to live in (if one — or one’s parents — can afford it), but not to launch a high fashion career. The walls of your institution have long been a holding container for bright style stars who light out after graduation for more apace fashion worlds. And so: while the SF style scene continues to grow, your event remains one of the year’s more exciting chances to see high fashion here in the city. I for one am excited. Sincerely, (Caitlin Donohue)

7pm, $20–$50

San Francisco Design Center

101 Henry Adams, SF

stylewow.brownpapertickets.com

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper

Everything about the story of Aly Spaltro’s transformation into Lady Lamb and the Beekeeper seems old and out of time. In the Maine town where she went to high school, she practiced in the basement of that bygone establishment, a video store, and produced her first recordings through another, an independent record store. Then there’s her alter ego, the name of a Victorian woman who came to her in a dream (for real), which maybe that explains the biggest leap of time: Spaltro performs far beyond her 22 years. With her preternatural understanding of human feeling and her unique ability to sing about it, the very old and young Lady Lamb should not be missed. (Laura Kerry)

With Torres, Paige and the Thousand

8pm, $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Tracy Morgan

Getting his first major mainstream exposure on the TV show Martin in the mid-1990s, Tracy Morgan quickly went on to join the cast of Saturday Night Live based on the strengths of his hilarious comedic talents. On SNL, he created classic characters such as animal expert “Brian Fellows” and the moonshine-swilling “Uncle Jemima” and performed a host of side-splitting celebrity impersonations. Now that 30 Rock — where he poked fun at his own celebrity in the guise of “Tracy Jordan” — has ended its cult hit run, Morgan is hitting the stage for a series of live gigs ahead of his new TV project, Death Pact, which is slated to air on FX.

(McCourt)

8pm, $35.50

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

(800) 745-3000

www.palaceoffinearts.org

The Front Bottoms

The Front Bottoms’ shows are usually teeming with fans who are just as excited as them — we’re talking double rainbow excited. The New Jersey indie-punk group’s sarcastic and humorous lyrics guarantee a sing-along show. “And you’re so confident, but I hear you cry in your sleeping bag,” scream the die-hards along with the Front Bottoms. Though the Ludo-esque vocals sound great and the songs are quite catchy, a good part of the energy comes from the party atmosphere provided on stage. Going to a Front Bottoms concert is like going to a house show, but with an above average band playing the gig. You still get to go bat-shit and get weird, just to good music instead. (Smith)

With Weatherbox, Night Riots

8pm, $12

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

“A Radio Silence Live Tribute to Buddy Holly”

With all legend surrounding his untimely death, one tends to forget the most important thing about Buddy Holly: the bespectacled kid (age 22) had a serious knack for songwriting. He was a prolific musician who wrote a bunch of timeless rockabilly-blues blended rock’n’roll juke classics in his relatively short career. (“That’ll Be The Day,” “Peggy Sue,” “True Love Ways,” “Crying, Waiting, Hoping,” “Everyday.”) As a small gesture to correct the collective direction of remembrance — and to prove the music didn’t really die that day on the “Winter Dance Party” tour — local lit mag Radio Silence presents a tribute night to the songs of Holly. There’ll be Greil Marcus, an icon of rock journalism, reading from his as-yet-unpublished new book, plus conversations with and performances by Eleanor Friedberger of Fiery Furnaces, Van Pierszalowski of Port O’Brien and WATERS, and singer-songwriter Thao Nguyen. As with any proper SF event, there’ll be DJs and food trucks as well. (Savage)

7pm, $20

Public Works 161 Erie, SF (415) 779-6757

www.publicsf.com

TUESDAY 18

Brooke D.

Brooke D. is a solo artist — but unless you’ve seen her live you wouldn’t have a clue. The San Francisco native’s loops of soft hums and harmonies alongside simple beats offer a full backdrop (not that it’s needed) to her gentle, poignant vocals. And yet, the subtle empty spaces in D.’s tracks lend a withholding quality that is altogether alluring. The result is a refreshingly captivating performance. Worth seeing for the a capella novelty alone, D.’s show is also impressive because of her freestyle harmonies in which she flawlessly reaches high notes unattainable to most. She delivers a unique and skilled three-person performance for the price of one. (Smith)

With Sea Lioness, Doncat, Tendrils

9pm, $8

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 626-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

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

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. "Her Tail Was Cut in Two," live performance and short films with Cyrus Yoshi Tabar and Janel Leppin, Fri, 8.

BRAVA THEATER CENTER 2789 24th St, SF; www.qwocmap.org. Free. Queer Women of Color Film Festival, Fri-Sun. The 2013 focus is "Bridge to Truth," with an emphasis on queer communities in Southwest Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-13. The Place Beyond the Pines (Cianfrance, 2012), Wed, 2, 5, 8. •Knife in the Water (Polanski, 1962), Thu, 7, and Belle de Jour (Buñuel, 1967), Thu, 8:50. "San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents the Hitchcock 9:" Blackmail (1929), Fri, 8; Champagne (1928), Sat, 1; Downhill (1927), Sat, 4; The Ring (1927), Sat, 7; The Manxman (1927), Sat, 9:30; The Farmer’s Wife (1928), Sun, noon; Easy Virtue (1927), Sun, 2:30; The Pleasure Garden (1926), Sun, 5; The Lodger (1926), Sun, 7:30. With accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Judith Rosenberg, Stephen Horne, and others; more info at www.silentfilm.org. •The Doors (Stone, 1991), Tue, 2, 7, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam, 1998), Tue, 4:35, 9:35.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. Elemental (Roshan and Vaughan-Lee, 2012), call for dates and times. Fill the Void (Burshtein, 2012), call for dates and times. Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012), call for dates and times. Midnight’s Children (Mehta, 2012), call for dates and times. Rebels With a Cause (Kelly, 2012), call for dates and times. Stories We Tell (Polley, 2012), call for dates and times. Becoming Traviata (Béziat, 2012), June 14-20, call for times.

"FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK" This week: Dolores Park, SF; www.filmnight.org. Free (donations appreciated). Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981), Sat, 8.

JACK LONDON SQUARE Market lawn, Harrison at Water, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. Free. The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012), Thu, sundown.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, milibrary.org/events. $10 (reservations required as seating is limited). "CinemaLit Film Series: On the Road:" Two for the Road (Donen, 1967), Fri, 6.

NEW PARKWAY 474 24th St, Oakl; www.thenewparkway.com. $6-10. "New Parkway Family Classics:" Honey I Shrunk the Kids (Johnston, 1989), Fri, 4; Sat, 12:30. "Thrillville Theater:" The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (Green, 1962), Sun, 6.

OHLONE COLLEGE Smith Center Outdoor Amphitheater, 43600 Mission, Fremont; www.smithcenter.com. $10 (parking, $2). Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Fri, 8:30.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. "Dancing with Light: The Cinematography of Agnès Godard:" "Behind the Scenes: Agnès Godard on Cinematography:" Home (Meier, 2008), Thu, 7; Sister (Meier, 2012), Fri, 7; Beau travail (Denis, 1999), Sat, 6:30; Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001), Sat, 9; The Dreamlife of Angels (Zonca, 1998), Sun, 7. With Godard in person. "Castles in the Sky: Masterful Anime from Studio Ghibli:" Castle in the Sky (Miyazaki, 1986), Sun, 4:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. DocFest: 12th SF Documentary Film Festival, through June 20. For complete schedule and ticket info, visit www.sfindie.com.

SAN MATEO PUBLIC LIBRARY Oak Room, 55 W. Third Ave, San Mateo; facebook.com/earthbeamfoods. Free. Genetic Roulette (Smith, 2012), Wed, 5:30. With a Q&A with David Hinckle, owenr of Earthbeam Natural Foods.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; Facebook: The Vortex Room. $10. "The Vortex Phenomena:" •The Dunwich Horror (Haller, 1970), Thu, 9, and Satan’s Triangle (Roley, 1975), Thu, 11.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. "Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise Trilogy:" Paradise: Love (2012), Thu and Sat, 7:30; Sun, 2.

Stage listings

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Can You Dig It? Back Down East 14th — the 60s and Beyond Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Sat/15, 8pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 25. Solo performer Don Reed returns with a prequel to his autobiographical coming-of-age hits, East 14th and The Kipling Hotel.

Darling, A New Musical Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Fourth St, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20. Opens Fri/14, 7:30pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 29. American Conservatory Theater’s Young Conservatory performs Ryan Scott Oliver and Brett Ryback’s jazz-age musical.

BAY AREA

This Is How It Goes Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Previews Fri/14-Sat/15 and June 19, 8pm; Sun/16, 2pm; Tue/18, 7pm. Opens June 20, 8pm. Runs Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through July 21. Aurora Theatre Company performs the Bay Area premiere of Neil LaBute’s edgy comedy about an interracial couple.

ONGOING

Arcadia ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-95. Wed/12-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 2pm); Sun/16, 2pm. In Tom Stoppard’s now 20-year-old master work Arcadia, sex and science, and poetry and pastoralism crowd the otherwise uncluttered stage (designed by Douglas W. Schmidt), as two sets of characters separated by 200 years demonstrate themselves to be far more connected then even their immediate descendents suspect. As two modern academics (Gretchen Egolf and Andy Murray) vie over the contents of a country estate library in order to verify their own pet theories about the past occupants — including, briefly, Lord Byron — a 19th-century intellectual prodigy (Rebekah Brockman) discovers the principles of chaos theory more than a hundred years ahead of her time, impressing her raffish tutor (Jack Cutmore-Scott) while the rest of the household busies itself with the mundane intrigues that better typify their aristocratic caste. Although at times the pacing of the nearly three-hour play feels sluggish, the slow unfurling of key plot points and character reveals suits the intricacies of the text, while still allowing for much of Stoppard’s wry humor to shine, if not crackle, through the layers. The delightfully antagonistic chemistry between Egolf and Murray, and the more delicately cerebral connection between Brockman and Cutmore-Scott alone make this a production worth seeing, to say nothing of the rigorous crash course in Latin, landscaping, physics, and Romanticism. (Gluckstern)

Birds of a Feather New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 29. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs the San Francisco premiere of Marc Acito’s tale inspired by two gay penguins at the Central Park Zoo.

Black Watch Drill Court, Armory Community Center, 333 14th St, SF; www.act-sf.org. $100. Wed/12-Sat/15, 8pm (also Wed/12 and Sat/15, 2pm); Sun/16, 2pm. American Conservatory Theater presents the National Theatre of Scotland’s internationally acclaimed performance about Scottish soldiers serving in Iraq.

The Divine Sister New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 29. Charles Busch’s latest comedy pays tribute to Hollywood films involving nuns.

Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? Costume Shop, 1117 Market, SF; www.therhino.org. $15-30. Wed/12-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 3pm. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Caryl Churchill’s play that asks, “Do countries really behave like gay men?” Included in the program are two one-act plays: Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza and Deborah S. Margolin’s Seven Palestinian Children.

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

410[GONE] Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 29. Crowded Fire Theater presents the world premiere of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s fanciful, Chinese folklore-inspired look at the underworld.

Frisco Fred’s Magic and More Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $35-50. Thu-Sat, 7pm. Through June 29. Performer Fred Anderson presents his latest family-friendly show, complete with magic, juggling, and “crazy stunts.”

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $27-43. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. John Cameron Mitchell’s cult musical comes to life with director Nick A. Olivero’s ever-rotating cast.

Into the Woods Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.rayoflighttheatre.com. $25-36. Thu-Sat, 8pm (check website for matinee schedule). Through June 29. Ray of Light Theatre performs Stephen Sondheim’s fairy-tale mash-up.

Krispy Kritters in the Scarlett Night Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Extended run: Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through June 23. For patrons of last year’s production of Annie Elias’ documentary theater piece Tenderloin, walking into Cutting Ball’s take on Andrew Saito’s Krispy Kritters in the Scarlett Night brings about a slight sensation of déjà vu. It’s not so much that the cast actually resembles that of Tenderloin (save the familiar face of Cutting Ball associate artist David Sinaiko), but there’s a similar atmosphere of decay and powerlessness that roils beneath a surface of surrealistic flash. Framed by Michael Locher’s versatile, split-level set, clad in Meg Neville’s savvy costumes, the trampled-upon characters hurl poetic invective around the stage, delight in fish heads and petrified gerbils, plot to torture, seduce, and murder, and form clumsy, temporary alliances in order to accomplish the above. David Sinaiko’s crass, legless patriarch Pap Pap and Marjorie Crump-Shears’ deceptively fragile-looking brothel proprietor Gran Ma Ma preside over the inexorable decline of their insular households while their immediate kin, the cheerfully morbid Drumhead (Wiley Naman Strasser) and the irresistible temptress, Scarlett (Felicia Benefield), desperately seek to break free of their overbearing elders and the stifling routines that chain them to their circumstances. Much like the fish heads beloved by the characters as food, the play isn’t easy to digest, and there are gaps left in the narrative that even heavy abstraction can’t explain away, but Saito’s topsy-turvy world is nonetheless one worth visiting, and inaugurates his three-year playwriting residency at Cutting Ball with a weird and wonderful flourish. (Gluckstern)

Oleanna Exit’s Studio Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.theexit.org. $18-25. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 2pm); Sun/16, 4pm. True to the mission implied in its name, Spare Stage offers dramatic purity en lieu of flashy stage concepts in this beautifully calibrated, consistently stimulating production of David Mamet’s 1992 two-hander, about a university professor (Aaron Murphy) and the female undergrad (Frannie Morrison) who accuses him of sexual misconduct. The action takes place exclusively inside the small office where John, on the verge of gaining tenure and simultaneously closing a deal on a new house, meets with his failing student Carol, a young woman who, ironically enough, seems lost by the concepts her professor deploys in his lectures on the social underpinnings of higher education (insights he recycles from his recently minted book, which is naturally the assigned reading). What begins as a condescending tutorial by the distracted prof soon turns into a vaguely prurient extracurricular exercise and, then, a table-turning power struggle as the initially introverted and stumbling Frannie returns with serious and highly articulate charges of impropriety throwing John’s tenure and world into jeopardy. Now it’s his turn to try to explain and justify himself. The power struggle throughout is grippingly played by the remarkably potent team of Murphy and Morrison, who, under the shrewd direction of Stephen Drewes, lock into a dynamic battle of wills where minute changes in posture can say as much about the cloaked, institutionalized nature of power as anything in Mamet’s precise and heightened dialogue. (Avila)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. It seems a no-brainer. Not just the HBO series itself — that’s definitely missing some gray matter — but putting it onstage as a drag show. Mais naturellement! Why was Sex and the City not conceived of as a drag show in the first place? Making the sordid not exactly palatable but somehow, I don’t know, friendlier (and the canned a little cannier), Velvet Rage Productions mounts two verbatim episodes from the widely adored cable show, with Trannyshack’s Heklina in a smashing portrayal of SJP’s Carrie; D’Arcy Drollinger stealing much of the show as ever-randy Samantha (already more or less a gay man trapped in a woman’s body); Lady Bear as an endearingly out-to-lunch Miranda; and ever assured, quick-witted Trixxie Carr as pent-up Charlotte. There’s also a solid and enjoyable supporting cast courtesy of Cookie Dough, Jordan Wheeler, and Leigh Crow (as Mr. Big). That’s some heavyweight talent trodding the straining boards of bar Rebel’s tiny stage. The show’s still two-dimensional, even in 3D, but noticeably bigger than your 50″ plasma flat panel. Update: new episodes began May 15. (Avila)

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through June 29. Self-awareness, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement — for these things we turn to the professionals: the self-empowerment coaches, the self-help authors and motivational speakers. What’s the good of having a “self” unless someone shows you how to use it? Writer-performer Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook wants to sell you on a better you, but his “Better Than You” weekend seminar (and tie-in book series, assorted CDs, and other paraphernalia) belies a certain divided loyalty in its own self-flattering title. The bitter fruit of the personal growth industry may sound overly ripe for the picking, but Bodden’s deftly executed “seminar” and its behind-the-scenes reveals, directed by Mark Kenward, explore the terrain with panache, cool wit, and shrewd characterization. As both writer and performer, Bodden keeps his Steve Seabrook just this side of overly sensational or maudlin, a believable figure, finally, whose all-too-ordinary life ends up something of a modest model of its own. (Avila)

Sylvia Fort Mason Theater, Fort Mason Center, Bldg C, Rm 300, Marina at Laguna, SF; sylvia.brownpapertickets.com. $20-45. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 30. Independent Cabaret Productions and Shakespeare at Stinton present AR Gurney’s midlife-crisis comedy.

Talk Radio Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed/12-Sat/15, 8pm. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs Eric Bogosian’s breakthrough 1987 drama.

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through June 29. Thrillpeddlers and director Russell Blackwood continue their Theatre of the Ridiculous series with this 1971 musical from San Francisco’s famed glitter-bearded acid queens, the Cockettes, revamped with a slew of new musical material by original member Scrumbly Koldewyn, and a freshly re-minted book co-written by Koldewyn and “Sweet Pam” Tent — both of whom join the large rotating cast of Thrillpeddler favorites alongside a third original Cockette, Rumi Missabu (playing diner waitress Brenda Breakfast like a deliciously unhinged scramble of Lucille Ball and Bette Davis). This is Thrillpeddlers’ third Cockettes revival, a winning streak that started with Pearls Over Shanghai. While not quite as frisky or imaginative as the production of Pearls, it easily charms with its fine songs, nifty routines, exquisite costumes, steady flashes of wit, less consistent flashes of flesh, and de rigueur irreverence. The plot may not be very easy to follow, but then, except perhaps for the bubbly accounting of the notorious New York flop of the same show 42 years ago by Tent (as poisoned-pen gossip columnist Vedda Viper), it hardly matters. (Avila)

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

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

BAY AREA

The Beauty Queen of Leenane Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $36-52. Wed/12, 7:30pm; Thu/13-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 2pm); Sun/16, 2 and 7pm. Martin McDonagh wrote a rash of plays in the mid-1990s (six in all) that have had worldwide traction ever since, though I suspect it’s due less to any thematic depth or aesthetic polish than to the cool charm of McDonagh’s gritty and hilariously broad riffs on rural Irish life — a scene the London-born playwright (now filmmaker) gleaned from a distance, during vacations to County Galway as a child, and which serves as a ready vessel for all the pettiness, naiveté, cruelty, extreme violence, and loneliness of contemporary life in general. Of course, there’s usually a little passing tenderness along the way. All of these traits are on display in The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the first of McDonagh’s plays to win production (in 1996) and accolades in the UK and on Broadway. Marin Theatre Company offers a well acted if muted production of this bleakly humorous little drama about the bottled-up home life of a 40-year-old spinster, Maureen (Beth Wilmurt), and her manipulative semi-invalid mother, Mag (Joy Carlin). The sadomasochism inherent in Maureen and Mag’s daily battle of wits and wills over the porridge and the pee in the sink comes to a cringing climax eventually, but most of the drama sustains itself on the passive aggressive dialogue along the way, with buoying interjections from dim and sniping neighbor Ray (an amusingly snarky Joseph Salazar) and his brother Pato (a winningly bemused yet gallant Rod Gnapp), the latter presenting himself as the unlikely knight who might rescue Maureen from her mirthless seclusion. Wilmurt’s shy and desperate, vaguely unhinged Maureen and Carlin’s unassumingly treacherous Mag, carried helplessly away by the logic of her dependency, are nicely wrought and affecting in director Mark Jackson’s careful staging. However, the violence is oddly muffled as played, as is the claustrophobia that should be almost unbearable in the unchanging setting of the women’s dingy kitchen. As is, on MTC’s large stage and designer Nina Ball’s open set (which does away with the walls and front door en lieu of a larger expanse of gray), the actors are rarely right up against each other and the tension and sense of visceral disgust is accordingly too dispersed. (Avila)

Bubbles for Grown-Ups Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Wed, 8pm. Through June 19. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl presents a show aimed at adults.

By & By Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 23. Shotgun Players presents a new sci-fi thriller by Lauren Gunderson.

Dear Elizabeth Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $24-77. Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun and July 3, 2pm); Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and Thu/6, 2pm; no show July 4). Through July 7. Berkeley Rep performs Sarah Ruhl’s play written in the form of letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.

George Gershwin Alone Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-77. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 23. Hershey Felder stars in his celebration of the music and life of composer George Gershwin.

The Medea Hypothesis Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 23. Medea is perhaps one of the most problematic tragic protagonists in theater history, as even the most flexibly sympathetic viewpoint is severely challenged when faced with a filicidal mother. But at Central Works, rather than just updating an old tale of bloody vengeance, The Medea Hypothesis further takes a page from the pop science book of the same name written by Peter Ward, in which he speculates on the latent suicidal and self-destructive tendencies of the planetary superorganism. As the brittle, middle-aged Em, Jan Zvaifler dominates the stage, holding herself and her glamorous career in fashion together as her husband leaves her for a woman with a “perfect neck” and her daughter Sweetie (Dakota Dry), who appears only as a video projection, becomes contested property in an angry custody battle. Relentlessly egged on by her Mephistophelian flunky Ian (Cory Censoprano), and enraged by the interference of her ex-husband’s prospective father-in-law (Joe Estlack), Em does lash out at the happy couple in the Euripides-approved manner (though with flunky-provided “Plutonium 210” instead of plain old poison) but when it comes to the expected act of ultimate violence playwright Marian Berges provides a surprising twist to the familiar Grecian formula, giving Em a shot at a redemption never allowed the Euripidean matriarch. It’s still undeniably a tragedy, but concurrently, also a triumph. Kind of like the continued presence of multicellular life on earth. (Gluckstern)

Wild With Happy TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 30. TheatreWorks presents the West Coast premiere of Colman Domingo’s new comedy, starring the playwright himself.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Bitter Queen” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm; Sun/16, 2pm. $15. The Garage’s AIRspace residency program and the National Queer Arts Festival present this physical theater installation and contemporary dance performance.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. Sat/16, June 22, 30, July 13, 21, and 27, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Dream Queens” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/12, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Diva LaFever, Sophilya Leggz, and more.

“Laughs at the Lookout” Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. Thu/13, 10pm. $5. Stand-up with host Valerie Branch and guests Charlie Ballard, Eloisa Bravo, Ronn Vigh, Shanti Charan, and Justin Lucas.

“Love and Light” Joe Goode Annex, Project Artaud, 401 Alabama #150, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thu/13-Fri/14, 7:30pm. $10-18. Leigh Fitzjames performs her solo play about a yoga teacher who has a one-night stand with a famous guru.

“ImShift” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm. $8-20. Victoria Mata’s performance investigates what identity means for a Latin American in the diaspora.

LEVYdance Heron Street, off 8th St between Folsom and Harrison, SF; www.levydance.org. Wed/13, 7pm (opening night celebration); Fri/14-Sun/16, 8:30pm. $20-200. “Spring Season at Home” features favorite works from the company’s first ten years, presented on custom-built outdoor stages and catwalks.

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

“Mortified SF” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Fri/14, 7:30pm. $21. Outrageous and awkward true tales, told by those who lived them.

“ODC Dance presents Global Dance Passport Showcase” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Fri/14-Sat/15, 8pm (also Sat/15, 5:30pm). $10. A sampler of dance styles from around the world.

“Randy Roberts: Live!” Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. Fri-Sat through June 29 and July 9, 16, and 23, 9pm. $30. The famed female impersonator takes on Cher, Better Midler, and other stars.

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

“San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival: Weekend Two” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Lam Research Theater, 700 Howard, SF; www.sfethnicdancefestival.org. Sat/15-Sun/16, 2pm (also Sat/15, 3pm). $18-58. With Colective Anqari, Chaksam-Pa, Parangal Dance Company, and more.

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

Amara Tabor-Smith Various locations (starts at 32 Page), SF; www.dancersgroup.org. Sat/15 and June 21-23, 3:30-8:30pm. Free. Dancers’ Group’s ONSITE Series presents the performer’s site-specific work, He Moved Swiftly But Gently Down the Not Too Crowded Street: Ed Mock and Other True Tales in a City That Once Was…

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

“Yerba Buena Gardens Festival” Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission between 3rd and 4th Sts, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. Through Oct 15. Free. This week: Na Lei Hulu I Ke Wekiu (Sat/15, 1-2:30pm).

BAY AREA

“Bloomsday in Berkeley” Garden Gate Creative Center, 2911 Claremont, Berk; www.wildeirish.org. Sat/15, 7pm; Sun/16, 2pm. $25. Staged readings from James Joyce’s Ulysses and other works.

“Ojai North!” Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph, Berk; www.calperformances.org. Wed/12-Sat/15, times vary. $20-110. The Ojai Music Festival makes a NorCal visit with performances that include the world premiere of Mark Morris Dance Group’s Stravinsky/The Rite of Spring.

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

“Te’s Harmony” El Cerrito Performing Arts Center, 540 Ashbury, El Cerrito; tesharmonyencore.eventbrite.com. Fri/14-Sat/15, 6-9pm. $8-45. Spoken word theater written and performed by Richmond youth.

Film listings

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

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

OPENING

Becoming Traviata Philippe Béziat’s backstage doc offers an absorbing look at a particularly innovative production of Verdi’s La Traviata, directed by Jean-François Sivadier and starring the luminous Natalie Dessay (currently appearing in SF Opera’s production of Tales of Hoffman). Béziat eschews narration or interviews; instead, his camera simply tracks artists at work, moving from rehearsal room to stage as Sivadier and Dessay (along with her co-stars) block scenes, make suggestions, practice gestures, and engage in the hit-and-miss experimentation that defines the creative process. The film is edited so that La Traviata progresses chronologically, with the earliest scenes unfolding on a spartan set (Dessay’s practice attire: yoga clothes), and the tragic climax taking place onstage, with an orchestra in the pit and sparkly make-up in full effect. Dessay will appear in person at San Francisco screenings Sat/15 at 7pm and Sun/16 at 2pm. (1:53) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Dirty Wars Subtitled "the world is a battlefield," this doc follows author and Nation magazine writer Jeremy Scahill as he probes the disturbing underbelly of America’s ongoing counterterrorism campaign. After he gets wind of a deadly nighttime raid on a home in rural Afghanistan, Scahill does his best to investigate what really happened, though what he hears from eyewitnesses doesn’t line up with the military explanation — and nobody from the official side of things cares to discuss it any further, thank you very much. With its talk of cover-ups and covert military units, and interviewees who appear in silhouette with their voices disguised, Dirty Wars plays like a thriller until Osama bin Laden’s death shifts certain (but not all) elements of the story Scahill’s chasing into the mainstream-news spotlight. The journalist makes valid points about how an utter lack of accountability or regard for consequences (that will reverberate for generations to come) means the "war on terror" will never end, but Dirty Wars suffers a bit from too much voice-over. Even the film’s gorgeous cinematography — director Rick Rowley won a prize for it at Sundance earlier this year — can’t alleviate the sensation that Dirty Wars is mostly an illustrated-lecture version of Scahill’s source-material book. Still, it’s a compelling lecture. (1:26) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

The Guillotines Why yes, that is Jimmy Wang Yu, director and star of 1976 cult classic Master of the Flying Guillotine, in a small but pivotal role commanding a team of assassins who specialize in dispatching heads with airborne versions of you-know-which weapon. Unfortunately, this latest from Andrew Lau (best-known stateside for 2002’s Infernal Affairs, remade into Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Oscar-winner The Departed) doesn’t have nearly as much fun as it should; dudes be chopping heads off in a flurry of CG’d-up steampunky whirlygigs, but The Guillotines‘ tone is possibly even more deadly, as in deadly serious. When a rebellious prophet-folk hero known as Wolf (Xiaoming Huang) runs afoul of the Emperor’s top-secret Guillotine brotherhood, led in the field by Leng (Ethan Juan), the squad travels in disguise to a rural, smallpox-afflicted village to track him down. Along for the journey is the Emperor’s top operative, ruthless Agent Du (Shawn Yue), a boyhood friend of Leng’s. Leng and Du share a dark secret: the Guillotines have been deemed expendable — yep, in the Stallone sense — and the Emperor has decided to kill them off and replace them with armies toting guns and cannons in the name of progress. Lau is no stranger to tales of men grappling with betrayals, misplaced loyalties, and hidden personal agendas — and as historical martial-arts fantasies go, The Guillotines has higher production values than most, with sweeping, luscious photography. Too bad all the action scenes are punctuated by episodes of moody brooding — replete with slo-mo gazing off into the distance, dramatically falling tears, solemn heart-to-hearts, swelling strings, and the occasional howl of anguish. (1:53) Presidio. (Eddy)

Man of Steel As beloved as he is, Superman is a tough superhero to crack — or otherwise bend into anything resembling a modern character. Director Zack Snyder and writer David S. Goyer, working with producer Christopher Nolan on the initial story, do their best to nuance this reboot, which focuses primarily on Supe’s alien origins and takes its zoom-happy space battles from Battlestar Galactica. The story begins with Kal-El’s birth on a Krypton that’s rapidly going into the shitter: the exploited planet is about to explode and wayward General Zod (Michael Shannon) is staging a coup, killing Kal-El’s father, Jor-El (Russell Crowe), the Kryptonians’ lead scientist, and being conveniently put on ice in order to battle yet another day. That day comes as Kal-El, now a 20-something earthling named Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) — resigned to his status as an outsider, a role dreamed up by his protective adoptive dad (Kevin Costner) — has turned into a bit of a (dharma) bum, looking like a buff Jack Kerouac, working Deadliest Catch-style rigs, and rescuing people along the way to finding himself. Spunky Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is the key to his, erm, coming-out party, necessitated by a certain special someone looking to reboot the Kryptonian race on earth. The greatest danger here lies in the fact that all the leached-of-color quasi-sepia tone action can turn into a bit of a Kryptonian-US Army demolition derby, making for a mess of rubble and tricky-to-parse fight sequences that, of course, will satisfy the fanboys and -girls, but will likely glaze the eyes of many others. Nevertheless, the effort Snyder and crew pack into this lengthy artifact — with its chronology-scrambling flashbacks and multiple platforms for Shannon, Diane Lane, Christopher Meloni, Laurence Fishburne, and the like — pays off on the level of sheer scale, adding up to what feels like the best Superman on film or TV to date — though that bar seems pretty easy to leap over in a single bound. (2:23) Balboa, Marina. (Chun)

Pandora’s Promise Filmmaker Robert Stone has traveled far from his first film, 1988’s Oscar-nominated anti-nuke Radio Bikini, to today, with the release of Pandora’s Promise, a detailed and guaranteed-to-be-controversial examination of nuclear power and the environmentalists who have transitioned from fervently anti- to pro-nuclear. Interviewing activists and authors like Stewart Brand, Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas, and Michael Shellenberger, among others, Stone eloquently visualizes all angles of their discussion with media, industrial, and newly shot footage, starting with a visit to the largest nuclear disaster of recent years, Fukushima, which he visits with the hazmat-suited environmental activist and journalist Lynas and continuing to Chernobyl and its current denizens. Couching the debate in cultural and political context going back to World War II, Stone builds a case for nuclear energy as a viable method to provide clean, safe power for planet in the throes of climate change that will nonetheless need double or triple the current amount of energy by 2050, as billions in the developing world emerge from poverty. In a practical sense, as The Death of Environmentalism author Shellenberger asserts, "The idea that we’re going to replace oil and coal with solar and wind and nothing else is a hallucinatory delusion." Stone and his subjects put together an enticing argument to turn to nuclear as a way forward from coal, made compelling by the idea that designs for safer alternative reactors that produce less waste are out there. (1:27) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

This Is the End See "Hell Boys." (1:46) Four Star, Presidio, Shattuck.

ONGOING

After Earth In around a century, we’ll board penitentiary-style ships and evacuate Earth for a sexier planet. Let’s call it a middle-aged migration — we all saw this coming. It’ll be dour, and we’ll feel temporary guilt for all the trees we leveled, bombs we dropped, and oil refineries we taped for 1960s industrial films. Like any body post-divorce, our planet will develop defenses against its ex — us humans — so when Will Smith and son Jaden crash land on the crater it’s toxic to them, full of glorious beasts and free as the Amazon (because it was partly filmed there). Critically wounded General Raige (Will) has to direct physically incredible Kitai (Jaden) through the future’s most dangerous Ironman triathalon. It’s more than a Hollywood king guiding his prince through a life-or-death career obstacle course, it’s a too-aggressive metaphor for adolescence — something real-world Jaden may forfeit to work with dad. Call that the tragedy beneath After Earth: it makes you wonder why the family didn’t make a movie more like 1994’s The Lion King — they had to know that was an option. Director M. Night Shyamalan again courts the Last Airbender (2010) crowd with crazy CG fights and affecting father-son dynamics, but for once, Shyamalan is basically a hired gun here. The story comes straight from Papa Smith, and one gets the feeling the movie exists primarily to elevate Jaden’s rising star. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

Before Midnight Proving (again) that not all sequels are autonomic responses to a marketplace that rewards the overfamiliar, director Richard Linklater and his cowriters Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke reconnect with the characters Céline and Jesse, whom we first encountered nearly 20 years ago on a train and trailed around Vienna for a night in Before Sunrise, then met again nine years later in Before Sunset. It’s been nine more years since we left them alone in a Paris apartment, Céline adorably dancing to Nina Simone and telling Jesse he’s going to miss his plane. And it looks like he did. The third film finds the two together, yes, and vacationing in Greece’s southern Peloponnese, where the expansive, meandering pace of their interactions — the only mode we’ve ever seen them in — is presented as an unaccustomed luxury amid a span of busy years filled with complications professional and personal. Over the course of a day and an evening, alone together and among friends, the two reveal both the quotidian intimacies of a shared life and the cracks and elisions in their love story. (1:48) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The East In Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling’s powerful second film collaboration (Batmanglij directs, and the pair co-wrote the screenplay, as in 2011’s Sound of My Voice), Marling plays Sarah, an intelligence agent working for a private firm whose client list consists mainly of havoc-wreaking multinationals. Sarah, presented as quietly ambitious and conservative, is tasked by the firm’s director (Patricia Clarkson) with infiltrating the East, an off-the-grid activist collective whose members, including Benji (Alexander Skarsgård), Izzy (Ellen Page), and Doc (Toby Kebbell), bring an eye-for-an-eye sensibility to their YouTube-publicized "jams." Targeting an oil company responsible for a BP-style catastrophe, they engineer their own spill in the gated-community habitat of the company’s CEO, posting a video that juxtaposes grisly images of oil-coated shorebirds and the unsettling sight of gallons of crude seeping through the air-conditioning vents of a tidy McMansion. A newspaper headline offers a facile framework for understanding their activities, posing the alternatives as "Pranksters or Eco-Terrorists?" But as Sarah examines the gut-wrenching consequences of so-called white-collar crime and immerses herself in the day-to-day practices of the group, drawn in particular to the charismatic Benji, the film raises more complex questions. Much of its rhetorical force flows from Izzy, whom Page invests with a raw, anguished outrage, drawing our sympathies toward the group and its mission of laying bare what should be unbearable. (1:56) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Elemental Even those suffering from environmental-doc fatigue (a very real condition, particularly in the eco-obsessed Bay Area) will find much to praise about Elemental, co-directed by Gayatri Roshan and NorCal native Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee (who also co-composed the film’s score). This elegantly shot and edited film approaches the issues via three "eco-warriors," who despite working on different causes on various corners of the planet encounter similar roadblocks, and display like-minded determination, along the way: Rajendra Singh, on a mission to heal India’s heavily polluted Ganges River; Jay Harman, whose ingenious inventions are based on "nature’s blueprints"; and Eriel Deranger, who fights for her indigenous Canadian community in the face of Big Oil. Deranger cuts a particularly inspiring figure: a young, tattooed mother who juggles protests, her moody tween (while prepping for a new baby), and the more bureaucratic aspects of being a professional activist — from defending her grassroots methods when questioned by her skeptical employer, to deflecting a drunk, patronizing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a big-ticket fundraiser — with a calm, steely sense of purpose. (1:33) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Epic (1:42) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio.

Fast and Furious 6 Forget the fast (that’s understood by now, anyway) — part six in this popcorny series is heavy on the "furious," with constant near-death stunts that zoom past irrational and slam into batshit crazy. Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) lures the gang out of sunny retirement to bust a fast driver with a knack for strategy and an eye on world domination. Sure, Ludacris jokes their London locale doesn’t mean they’re in a Bond movie, but give cold-blooded Luke Evans some time and he’ll work his way up to antagonizing 007. Shaw (Evans) is smaller than our hero Toretto (Vin Diesel), but he’s convincing, throwing his King’s English at a man whose murky dialect is always delivered with a devilish baritone. If Shaw’s code is all business, Toretto’s is all family: that’s what holds together this cast, cobbled from five Fast and Furious installments shot all over the world. Hottie Gal Gadot (playing Sung Kang’s love interest) reassures Han (Kang) mid-crisis: "This is what we are." It’s not for nothing the gang’s main weapon is a harpoon gun that, once shot, leaves an umbilicus from the shooter to whatever’s in the crosshairs. That’s Torreto for you. Meanwhile, the villain’s weapon is a car with a spatula-like front end, that flips cars like pancakes. The climactic battle on a cargo plane has to give a face time to every member of the eight-person team, so naturally they shot it on the world’s longest runway. Of course the parade features less car porn than previous editions but it’s got a wider reach now — it’s officially international intrigue, not just fun for gearheads. For my money, it’s some of the best action in theaters today. Stick around for the inevitable sequel-suggesting coda during the credits. (2:10) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Vizcarrondo)

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

Frances Ha Noah Baumbach isn’t exactly known for romance and bright-eyed optimism. Co-writing 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox with director Wes Anderson is maybe the closest to "whimsy" as he’s ever come; his own features (2010’s Greenberg, 2007’s Margot at the Wedding, 2005’s The Squid and the Whale, 1997’s Mr. Jealousy, and 1995’s Kicking and Screaming) tend to veer into grumpier, more intellectual realms. You might say his films are an acquired taste. But haters beware. Frances Ha — the black-and-white tale of a New York City hipster (Baumbach’s real-life squeeze, Greta Gerwig, who co-write the script with him) blundering her way into adulthood — is probably the least Baumbach-ian Baumbach movie ever. Owing stylistic debts to both vintage Woody Allen and the French New Wave, Frances Ha relies heavily on Gerwig’s adorable-disaster title character to propel its plot, which is little more than a timeline of Frances’ neverending micro-adventures: pursuing her nascent modern-dance career, bouncing from address to address, taking an impromptu trip to Paris, visiting her parents (portrayed by the Sacramento-raised Gerwig’s real-life parents), "breaking up" with her best friend. It’s so charming, poignant, and quotable ("Don’t treat me like a three-hour brunch friend!") that even those who claim to be allergic to Baumbach just might find themselves succumbing to it. (1:26) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Great Gatsby Every bit as flashy and in-your-face as you’d expect the combo of "Baz Luhrmann," "Jazz Age," and "3D" to be, this misguided interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale is, at least, overstuffed with visual delights. For that reason only, all the fashion-mag fawning over leading lady Carey Mulligan’s gowns and diamonds, and the opulent production design that surrounds them, seems warranted. And in scenes where spectacle is appropriate — Gatsby’s legendary parties; Tom Buchanan’s wild New York romp with his mistress — Luhrmann delivers in spades. The trade-off is that the subtler aspects of Fitzgerald’s novel are either pushed to the side or shouted from the rooftops. Leonardo DiCaprio, last seen cutting loose in last year’s Django Unchained, makes for a stiff, fumbling Gatsby, laying on the "Old Sports" as thickly as his pancake make-up. There’s nothing here so startlingly memorable as the actor and director’s 1996 prior collaboration, Romeo + Juliet — a more successful (if still lavish and self-consciously audacious) take on an oft-adapted, much-beloved literary work. (2:22) California, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Hangover Part III Even the friendliest little blackout bacchanal can get tiresome the third time around. The poster depicting Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis — stern in suits and ties — says it all: it’s grim men’s business, the care and maintenance of this Hangover franchise, this orgy of good times gone bad. Once a bad-taste love letter to male-bonding, Hangover Part III is ready for a chance, primed to sever some of those misbegotten ties. This time around, the unlikely troika — with the always dispensable normal-dude figurehead Doug (Justin Bartha) in tow — are captured by random sketchy figure Marshall (John Goodman, whose every utterance of the offensive "Chinaman" should bring back Big Lebowski warm-and-fuzzies). He holds Doug hostage in exchange for the amoral, cockfighting, coke-wallowing, whore-hiring, leather-wearing Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong), who stole his gold, and it turns out Alan (Galifianakis) might be his only chum. Jeong, who continues to bring the hammy glee, is still the best thing here, even as the conscience-free instigator; he’s the dark counterpart to tweaked man-child Alan, who meets cute with mean-ass pawn-star soulmate Cassie (Melissa McCarthy). Meanwhile, Cooper and Helms look on, puzzled, no doubt pondering the prestige projects on their plates and wondering what they’re still doing here. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Internship The dirty little secret of the new economy continues to be the gerbil cycle of free/cheap labor labeled "internships" that propels so many companies — be they corporate or indie, digital or print media. But gee, who’s going to see an intern comedy titled The Exploitation, besides me and my local union rep? Instead, spinning off a Vince Vaughn story idea and a co-writing credit, The Internship looks at that now-mandatory time-suck for so many college students through the filter of two older, not-quite-wiser salesmen Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson) hoping to make that working guy’s quantum leap from watch sales to Google’s Mountain View campus, which director Shawn Levy casts as a bright and shiny workers wonderland with its free spring rolls and lattes, bikes, and napping pods. Departing from reality: the debugging/coding/game-playing/app-making competition that forces Billy and Nick to bond with their team of castoffs (Dylan O’Brien, Tiya Sircar, Tobit Raphael), led by noob manager Lyle (Josh Brener), in order to win a full-time job. Part of the key, naturally, turns out to be a Swingers-like visit to a strip club, to release those deeply repressed nerd sexualities — nothing like a little retrograde sexism to bring a group together. Still, the moment is offset by the generally genial, upbeat attitude brought to The Internship by its lead actors: Nick and Billy may be flubs at physics and clueless when it comes to geek culture, but most working stiffs who have suffered the slings and arrows of layoffs and dream of stable employment can probably get behind the all-American ideals of self-reinvention and optimism about the future peddled in The Internship, which easily slips in alongside The Great Gatsby among this year’s Great Recession narratives. Blink too fast and you might miss the microcameo by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. (1:59) Four Star, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Vogue. (Chun)

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

Kings of Summer Ah, the easy-to-pluck, easy-to-love low-hanging fruit of summer — and a coming of age. Who can blame director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and writer Chris Galletta, both TV vets, for thinking that a juicy, molasses-thick application of hee-hee-larious TV comedy actors to a Stand by Me-like boyish bildungsroman could only make matters that much more fun? When it comes to this wannabe-feral Frankenteen love child of Terrence Malick and Parks and Recreation, you certainly don’t want to fault them for original thinking, though you can understand why they keep lurching back to familiar, reliably entertaining turf, especially when it comes in the form of Nick Offerman of the aforementioned P&R, who gets to twist his Victorian doll features into new frustrated shapes alongside real-life spouse Megan Mullally. Joe (Nick Robinson) is tired of his single dad (Offerman) stepping on his emerging game, so he runs off with neurotic wrestling pal Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and stereotypically "weirdo foreign" kid Biaggio (Moises Arias) to a patch of woods. There, from scrap, they build a cool-looking house that resembles a Carmel boho shack and attempt to live off the land, which means mostly buying chicken from a Boston Market across a freeway. Pipes are pummeled, swimming holes are swum, a pathetically wispy mustachio is cultivated — read: real burly stuff, until the rising tide of testosterone threatens to poison the woodland well. Vogt-Roberts certainly captures the humid sensuality and ripe potential of a Midwestern summer — though some of the details, like the supposedly wild rabbit that looks like it came straight from Petco, look a bit canned — and who can gripe when, say, Portlandia‘s Kumail Nanjiani materializes to deliver monster wontons? You just accept it, though the effect of bouncing back and forth between the somewhat serious world of young men and the surprisingly playful world of adults, both equally unreal, grows jarring. Kings of Summer isn’t quite the stuff of genius that marketing would have you believe, but it might give the "weirdo foreign" art house crowd and TV comedy addicts something they can both stand by. (1:33) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

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

Midnight’s Children Deepa Mehta (2005’s Water) directs and co-adapts with Salman Rushdie the author’s Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel, which mixes history (India’s 1947 independence, and the subsequent division of India and Pakistan) with magical elements — suggested from its fairy-tale-esque first lines: "I was born in the city of Bombay, once upon a time." This droll voice-over (read by Rushdie) comes courtesy of Saleem Sinai, born to a poor street musician and his wife (who dies in childbirth; dad is actually an advantage-taking Brit played by Charles "Tywin Lannister" Dance) but switched (for vaguely revolutionary reasons) with Shiva, born at the same moment to rich parents who unknowingly raise the wrong son. Rich or poor, it seems all children born at the instant of India’s independence have shared psychic powers; over the years, they gather for "meetings" whenever Saleem summons them. And that’s just the 45 minutes or so of story. Though gorgeously shot, Midnight’s Children suffers from page-to-screen-itis; the source material is complex in both plot and theme, and it’s doubtful any film — even one as long as this — could translate its nuances and more fanciful elements ("I can smell feelings!," Saleem insists) into a consistently compelling narrative. Last-act sentimentality doesn’t help, though it’s consistent with the fairy-tale vibe, I suppose. (2:20) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Much Ado About Nothing Joss Whedon (last year’s The Avengers) shifts focus for a minute to stage an adaptation of the Shakespeare comedy, drawing his players from 15 years’ worth of awesome fantasy/horror/sci-fi TV and film projects. When the Spanish prince Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) pays a post-battle visit to the home of Leonato (Clark Gregg) with his officers Claudio (Fran Kranz) and Benedick (Alexis Denisof), Claudio falls for Leonato’s daughter, Hero (Jillian Morgese), while Benedick falls to verbal blows with Hero’s cousin Beatrice (Amy Acker). Preserving the original language of the play while setting his production in the age of the iPhone and the random hookup, Whedon makes clever, inventive use of the juxtaposition, teasing out fresh sources of visual comedy as well as bringing forward the play’s oddities and darker elements. These shadows fall on Beatrice and Benedick, whose sparring — before they succumb to a playfully devious setup at the hands of their friends — has an ugly, resentful heat to it, as well as on Hero and Claudio, whose filmy romance is unsettlingly easy for their enemies, the malevolent Don John (Sean Maher) and his cohorts, to sabotage. Some of Acker and Denisof’s broader clowning doesn’t offer enough comic payoff for the hammy energy expenditure, but Nathan Fillion, heading up local law enforcement as the constable Dogberry, delivers a gleeful depiction of blundering idiocy, and the film as a whole has a warm, approachable humor while lightly exposing "all’s well that ends well"’s wacky, dysfunctional side. (1:49) Albany, SF Center. (Rapoport)

Mud (2:18) Balboa, Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

Now You See Me Cheese can be a tough factor to quantify, but you get close to the levels Now You See Me strives for when you picture the hopelessly goofy, tragically coiffed Doug Henning lisping, "It’s magic!" somewhere between Bob "Happy Little Tree" Ross and a rainbow sprinkled with Care Bears. Now You See Me, however, is much less likely to be dusted off and adored by a Bronies-style cult. Four seemingly savvy street and stage magicians (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco) are brought together by tarot card invite by a mysterious host. What follows is a series of corny performances by the crew, now dubbed the Four Horseman, that are linked to a series of Robin Hood-like, or not, thefts. Nipping at their heels are a loudly flustered FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo, working an overcooked Columbo impression), a waifish Interpol detective (Mélanie Laurent, as if slouching through a Sorbonne semester), and a professional debunker (Morgan Freeman, maintaining amusement). In the course of the investigation, the Horsemen’s way-too-elaborate and far-from-apocalyptic illusions are taken apart and at least one vigorously theatrical fight scene takes place — all of which sounds more riveting than what actually transpires under the action-by-the-book watch of director Louis Leterrier, who never succeeds in making the smug, besuited puppets, I mean Horsemen, who strut around like they’re in Ocean’s Eighteen 4D, anything remotely resembling cool. Or even characters we might give a magical rabbit’s ass about. For all its seemingly knowing pokes at the truth behind the curtain, Now You See Me lacks much of the smarts and wit of loving deconstructionists like Penn and Teller —glimmers of which can only be made out in the smirk of Harrelson and the knowing twinkle of Freeman — or even the tacky machismo of Criss Angel, as well as a will to get to a truth behind the mystery. Or is the mystery behind the truth? (1:56) California, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

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

1 Mile Above When his brother dies suddenly, sheltered Taiwanese student Shuhao takes possession of the older boy’s "riding diaries," determined to complete his sibling’s dream of biking to the highest point in Tibet. It’d be a perilous journey even for an experienced cyclist — but Shuhao’s got gutsy determination that (almost) makes up for his wobbly wheels. Fortunately, nearly everyone he meets en route to Lhasa is a kind-hearted soul, including a food-obsessed fellow traveler who doles out advice on how to avoid government checkpoints, prevent "crotch trouble" (from all that riding), and woo women, among other topics. (The cruel weather, steep inclines, and hostile wild dogs he faces, however, aren’t as welcoming.) Jiayi Du’s based-on-true-events drama doesn’t innovate much on similar adventure tales — spoiler alert: it’s the journey, not the destination, that counts — but it admirably avoids melodrama for the most part, and the gorgeous location photography is something to behold. (1:29) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Purge Writer-director James DeMonaco founds his dystopian-near-future tale on the possibly suspect premise that the United States could achieve one percent unemployment, heavily reduced crime rates, and a virtually carb-free society if only it were to sanction an annual night of national mayhem unconstrained by statutory law — up to and including those discouraging the act of homicide. Set in 2022, The Purge visits the household of home security salesman James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), wife Mary (Lena Headey), and their children, Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane), as the annual festivities are about to begin, and the film keeps us trapped in the house with them for the next 12 hours of bloodletting sans emergency services. While they show zero interest in adding to the carnage, James and Mary seem to be largely on board with what a news commentator describes as "a lawful outlet for American rage," not giving too much credence to detractors’ observations that the purge is a de facto culling of the underclass. Clearly, though, the whole family is about to learn a valuable lesson. It comes when Charlie, in an act of baseline humanity, draws the ire of a gang of purgers running around in bathrobes, prep school jackets, and creepy masks, led by a gleaming-eyed alpha-sociopath whom DeMonaco (whose other screenplay credits include 2005’s Assault on Precinct 13 remake) tasks with wielding the film’s blunt-object message alongside his semi-automatic weaponry. (1:25) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Rebels with a Cause The huge string of parklands that have made Marin County a jewel of preserved California coastline might easily have become wall-to-wall development — just like the Peninsula — if not for the stubborn conservationists whose efforts are profiled in Nancy Kelly’s documentary. From Congressman Clem Miller — who died in a plane crash just after his Point Reyes National Seashore bill became a reality — to housewife Amy Meyer, who began championing the Golden Gate National Recreation Area because she "needed a project" to keep busy once her kids entered school, they’re testaments to the ability of citizen activism to arrest the seemingly unstoppable forces of money, power and political influence. Theirs is a hidden history of the Bay Area, and of what didn’t come to pass — numerous marinas, subdivisions, and other developments that would have made San Francisco and its surrounds into another Los Angeles. (1:12) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

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

Shadow Dancer Watching the emotions flicker across the exquisitely smooth, pale plane of Andrea Riseborough’s face is one of the central pleasures of Shadow Dancer. Likely the surest step Madonna made in making 2011’s W.E. was choosing the actress as her Wallis Simpson — her features fall together with the sweet symmetry of a, well, Madonna, and even when words, or the script, fail her, the play of thoughts and feelings rippling across her brow can fill out a movie’s, or a character’s, failings admirably. The otherwise graceful, good-looking Shadow Dancer fumbles over a few in the course of resurrecting the Troubles tearing apart Belfast in the 1990s. After feeling responsible for the death of a younger brother who got caught in the crossfire, Collette (Riseborough) finds herself a single mom in league with the IRA. Caught after a scuttled bombing, the petite would-be terrorist is turned by Mac (Clive Owen) to become an informant for the MI5, though after getting quickly dragged into an attempted assassination, Collette appears to be way over her head and must be pulled out — something Mac’s boss (Gillian Anderson) won’t allow. Director James Marsh (2008’s Man on Wire) brings a keen attention to the machinations and tested loyalties among both the MI5 and IRA, an interest evident in his Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980 (2009), and even imbues otherwise blanked-out, non-picturesque sites like hotel suites and gray coastal walks with a stark beauty. Unfortunately the funereal pacing and gaps in plotting, however eased by the focus on Riseborough’s responses, send the mind into the shadows. (1:44) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Star Trek Into Darkness Do you remember 1982? There are more than a few echoes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in J. J. Abrams’ second film retooling the classic sci-fi property’s characters and adventures. Darkness retains the 2009 cast, including standouts Zachary Quinto as Spock and Simon Pegg as comic-relief Scotty, and brings in Benedict "Sherlock" Cumberbatch to play the villain (I think you can guess which one). The plot mostly pinballs between revenge and preventing/circumventing the destruction of the USS Enterprise, with added post-9/11, post-Dark Knight (2008) terrorism connotations that are de rigueur for all superhero or fantasy-type blockbusters these days. But Darkness isn’t totally, uh, dark: there’s quite a bit of fan service at work here (speak Klingon? You’re in luck). Abrams knows what audiences want, and he’s more than happy to give it to ’em, sometimes opening up massive plot holes in the process — but never veering from his own Prime Directive: providing an enjoyable ride. (2:07) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Stories We Tell Actor and director Sarah Polley (2011’s Take This Waltz) turns the camera on herself and her family for this poignant, moving, inventive, and expectation-upending blend of documentary and narrative. Her father, actor Michael Polley, provides the narration; our first hint that this film will take an unconventional form comes when we see Sarah directing Michael’s performance in a recording-studio booth, asking him to repeat certain phrases for emphasis. On one level, Stories We Tell is about Sarah’s own history, as she sets out to explore longstanding family rumors that Michael is not her biological father. The missing piece: her mother, actress Diane Polley (who died of cancer just days after Sarah’s 11th birthday), a vivacious character remembered by Sarah’s siblings and those who knew and loved her. Stories We Tell‘s deeper meaning emerges as the film becomes ever more meta, retooling the audience’s understanding of what they’re seeing via convincingly doc-like reenactments. To say more would lessen the power of Stories We Tell‘s multi-layered revelations. Just know that this is an impressively unique film — about family, memories, love, and (obviously) storytelling — and offers further proof of Polley’s tremendous talent. (1:48) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Violet and Daisy The 1990s revival has already infiltrated fashion and music; Violet and Daisy, the directorial debut of Oscar-winning Precious (2009) screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, suggests that cinema may be next. Unfortunately, not enough time has passed since the first wave of Pulp Fiction (1994) knockoffs to make the genre feel particularly interesting again. And yet here comes a pair of assassins dressed as nuns, cracking long-winded jokes before unloading on their targets with guns they’ve concealed in pizza boxes … as an AM radio hit ("Angel of the Morning") swells in the background, and Danny Trejo stops by for a cameo. At least this Tarantino-lite exploration of crime and daddy issues has an appealing cast; besides Trejo, Alexis Bledel (sporting Mia Wallace bangs) and Saoirse Ronan play the jailbait titular killers, and James Gandolfini pops in as a sad-sack who manages to evade their bullets because, like, he’s nice and stuff. Despite their efforts, the over-stylized Violet and Daisy comes off like a plate of leftovers reheated too long after the fact. (1:28) Metreon. (Eddy)

What Maisie Knew In Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s adaptation of the 1897 Henry James novel, the story of a little girl caught between warring, self-involved parents is transported forward to modern-day New York City, with Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan as the ill-suited pair responsible, in theory, for the care and upbringing of the title character, played by Onata Aprile. Moore’s Susanna is a rock singer making a slow, halting descent from some apex of stardom, as we gather from the snide comments of her partner in dysfunctionality, Beale (Coogan). As their relationship implodes and they move on to custody battle tactics, each takes on a new, inappropriate companion — Beale marrying in haste Maisie’s pretty young nanny, Margo (Joanna Vanderham), and Susanna just as precipitously latching on to a handsome bartender named Lincoln (True Blood‘s Alexander Skarsgård). The film mostly tracks the chaotic action — Susanna’s strung-out tantrums, both parents’ impulsive entrances and exits, Margo and Lincoln’s ambivalent acceptance of responsibility — from Maisie’s silent vantage, as details large and small convey, at least to us, the deficits of her caretakers, who shield her from none of the emotional shrapnel flying through the air and rarely bother to present an appropriate, comprehensible explanation. Yet Maisie understands plenty — though longtime writing-and-directing team McGehee and Siegel (2001’s The Deep End, 2005’s Bee Season, 2008’s Uncertainty) have taken pains in their script and their casting to present Maisie as a lovely, watchful child, not the precocious creep often favored in the picture shows. So we watch too, with a grinding anxiety, as she’s passed from hand to hand, forced to draw her own unvoiced conclusions. (1:38) Opera Plaza. (Rapoport)

Music listings

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

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

WEDNESDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Brent Amaker and the Rodeo Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Buffalo Tooth, Trashies, Scrapers Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $7.

Future Unlimited, DJ Aaron Axelsen DNA Lounge. 8:30pm, $10.

Ghost and Gale, Cartoon Bar Fight, Ghost Town Jenny, Shawn Alpay Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Pi Jacobs, Risa Binder, Rachael Cardiello Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Jel and Abilities, Odd Nosdam, Of Nazareth with Cyph4, Edison Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Kevin Russell Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Pharoahe Monch, Hugo (DJ set) Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, $18-$30.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Alice Smith Independent. 8pm, $20.

Tenors Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon, SF; www.palaceoffinearts.org. 7:30pm.

Todd vs Charlie Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Stefano Bollani Trio SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $22-$30. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

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

Terry Disley Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.burrittavern.com. 6-9pm, free.

Freddie Hughes Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Darren Johnston Revolution Café. 8:30pm, free.

Main Ingredient feat. Cuba Gooding Sr. Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $26.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Blood and Dust Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Pi Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Timba Dance Party Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 10pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita MORE! and Joshua J host this dance party.

Cash IV Gold Double Dutch, 3192 16th St, SF; www.thedoubledutch.com. 9pm, free.

Coo-Yah! Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, free. With Vinyl Ambassador, DJ Silverback, DJs Green B and Daneekah.

Hardcore Humpday Happy Hour RKRL, 52 Sixth St, SF; (415) 658-5506. 6pm, $3.

Martini Lounge John Colins, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 7pm. With DJ Mark Divita.

THURSDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Across Tundras, Name, Hellbender, Lament Cityscape Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Lance Canales and the Flood Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Charlie vs Todd Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

“For the Sake of a Song: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt” Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10. With Chuck Prophet, Sweet Chariot, Gypsy Moonlight Band, and more.

Kate Boy, Cayucos, popscene DJs Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $13-$15.

Lady Crooners, Tom Rhodes, Barren Vines Amnesia. 9pm.

Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, White Manna, Disappearing People Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $7.

Matthew Joseph Payne, Together We Are Robots, Auxicide DNA Lounge. 9pm, $11.

Radar Brothers, Ola Podrida Café Du Nord. 8:30pm, $12-$14.

RB3 Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Snowden, Bad Veins, Color Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, $12-$15.

Jonathan Wilson, Kelley Stoltz, Andy Cabic (DJ) Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $15-$17.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Egg Plant Casino Revolution Café. 8:30pm, free.

Ahmad Jamal Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8:30pm, $30-$80. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Harold Lopez-Nussa Duo SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:3, 9pm, 10:30pm, $10-$15. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Enrico Rava Tribe feat. Gianluca Petrella Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $24.

Chris Siebert Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Tin Cup Serenade Rite Spot. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Kenneth Brian Band Tupelo, 1337 Grant, SF; www.tupelosf.com. 9pm.

Mutineers, Misisipi Mike Wolf, Midnight Gamblers Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Pa’ante! Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 10pm, $5. With DJs Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $8. With DJ-hosts Pleasuremaker and Senor Oz.

All 80s Thursday Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). The best of ’80s mainstream and underground.

Blowout DNA Lounge. 8pm, $25. With Luka.

Darling Nikki Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 9pm, free. Queer dance party.

First Base Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; Facebook: Rebel. 10pm, $3. Old school breaks, disco house, and electro breaks with DJ Loryn, Becky Knox, and guests.

Lions, Tigers, and Queers Underground SF. 10pm-2am, $3. Indie, Electro, and House dance party with resident DJ Becky Knox and special guests.

Ritual Temple. 10pm-3am, $5. Two rooms of dubstep, glitch, and trap music.

Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, free. Salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, and more with DJs Don Bustamante, Apocolypto Sr. Saen, Santero, and Mr. E.

FRIDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Arnocorps, Polka Meisters, Memphis Murder Men, Lazerwolf Slim’s. 9pm, $13-$15.

Bats, Mantles, Legs Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $15-$17.

Cut Loose Band Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Harrington Saints, Crashed Out, City of Vain, Troublemaker, Let It Burn Thee Parkside. 9pm, $12.

La Plebe, Atom Age, Mano Cherga Band, Impalers Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Naked Soul, Jay Trainer Band, Fat Opie, Felsen Café Du Nord. 9pm, $10-$12.

Night Gown, Crez DeeDee, Impersonations Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Gina Sicilia Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Soft White Sixties, Sioux City Kid, Black Cobra Vipers Independent. 9pm, $15.

Sunrunner, 8th Grade, Pixel Memory Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $10.

They Might Be Giants, Moon Hooch Warfield. 9pm, $30.

Todd, Nathan Temby, Charlie Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Peter Tork Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $26.

Desiree Wattis Amnesia. 6pm, free.

Emily Wells, Sister Crayon Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Americano Social Club Revolution Café. 9pm, free.

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

Hammond Organ Soul Jazz, Blues Party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-$70. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Grant Levin Rite Spot. 9pm, free.

New Orleans Suspects, Slide Brothers Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $45; 10pm, $35.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Silver Threads Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Fag Fridays DNA Lounge. 10pm, $5. With David Harness, Rolo, Robert Jeffrey.

Gaudi, Sugarpill, Dov Mighty, 119 Utah, SF; nexusmaskrave-es2.eventbrite.com/. 10pm, $15. NEXUS Masquerade Fundraiser.

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

Turbo Drive DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $8. With Vicereine, Delorean Overdrive, and more.

Ninja Tune Showcase 2013 1015 Folsom, SF; www.1015.com. 10pm, $17. 50. With Actress, Falty DL, Slugabed, and more.

Heartbeat John Collins, 138 Minna,SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, soul, and dancehall.

Joe Lookout, 3600 16th St.,SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Eight rotating DJs, shirt-off drink specials.

Old School JAMZ El Rio. 9pm. Fruit Stand DJs spinning old school funk, hip-hop, and R&B.

Paris Dakar Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 10pm, $5. With DJs Epic, Fuze, Bocar, Claude, and resident DJs.

SATURDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bay Area Heat Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Café R&B Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Charlie, Todd, Nathan Temby Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 10pm, free.

Coppertones, Pineapple Princess Riptide. 9:30pm, free.

Dandy Warhols Fillmore. 9pm, $26.

Eleanor Friedberger, TEEN, Icewater Independent. 9pm, $15.

Anna Hillburg, Ryan Traster, Michael Musika Amnesia. 6-9:30pm, $6.

Kwanza Jones BeatBox, 314 11th St, SF; www.beatboxsf.com. 10pm, free.

Life Stinks, Dancer, Shark Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Luce Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $20-$22.

James McMurtry, Denver Slim’s. 9pm, $21.

“Music Video Race” Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $12-$15. With Magic Fight, Animal Friend.

Papa Bear and the Easy Love, Big Tree, Song Preservation Society, City Tribe Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $15.

Scissors For Lefty, Hundred Days, Trims, Happy Fangs Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Beth Custer Church of the Advent of Christ the King, 261 Fell, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 5pm, $10. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Gospel Brunch SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 11am, $30-$65. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Go Van Gough Revolution Café. 9pm, free.

Hammond Organ Soul Jazz, Blues Party Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $45; 10pm, $35.

New Orleans Suspects, Slide Brothers Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $20.

Pacific Mambo Orchestra SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-$35; 10pm, $20-$30. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Anju’s Pale Blue Eyes Plough and Stars. 9pm.

Shanty Town Tupelo, 1337 Grant, SF; www.tupelosf.com. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie Classics DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-$15. With Smash-Up Derby, A Plus D, Dada, and more.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. Indie music video dance party with DJ Blondie K and subOctave.

Haceteria Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; www.decosf.com. 9pm, free before 11pm, $3 after.

Kinky Disko Underground SF, 424 Haight; www.kinkydisko.com. 10pm, $7. Vintage boogie.

OK Hole Amnesia. 9pm, $5-$7.

Paris Dakar Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 10pm, $5. With DJs Epic, Fuze, Bocar, Claude, and resident DJs.

Radio Franco Bissap, 3372 19th St, SF; (415) 826 9287. 6 p.m. Rock, Chanson Francaise, Blues. Senegalese food and live music.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-$10.

Smiths Party Slate Bar, 2925 16th St, SF; www.slate-sf.com. 10pm, $5. Sounds of the Smiths, Morrissey, the Cure, and New Order.

Wild Nights Kok BarSF, 1225 Folsom, SF; www.kokbarsf.com. 9pm, $3. With DJ Frank Wild.

SUNDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“Benefor for Jerry Day the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater” Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 1pm, $10-$20. With Stu Allen and Mars Hotel, Phil Savell Trio, and more.

CSS, Ms Mr, io echo Independent. 8pm, $22.

Cumstain, Radiator King Hemlock Tavern. 6pm, $6.

Front Bottoms, Weatherbox Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, $12.

Michael McDonald, Boz Scaggs Stern Grove Festival, 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard, SF; sterngrove.org/thebigpicnic. 2pm (concert follows ticketed benefit party), free. Big Picnic Benefit.

Project Pitchfork, Ayria, Razor Skyline, Unit 77 DNA Lounge. 9pm, $20.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Strawberry Girls, Light Thieves, Epilogues Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Torres, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, Paige and the Thousand Rickshaw Stop.8pm, $10.

Mitch Woods Biscuits and Blues. 7 and 9pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Howell Divine Revolution Café. 8:30pm, free.

Stephen Kent Church of the Advent of Christ the King, 261 Fell, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 5pm, $10. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Pedrito Martinez SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $20-$45. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Micro Concert with Adam Shulman SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 4pm, 5pm, $5. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Harold Lopez-Nussa Duo SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:3, 9pm, 10:30pm, $10-$15. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

“Show for Equality” Yoshi’s SF. 7pm, $24. With Stephanie Teel Band, Maria Stanford, Rita Lackey, and more.

Lavay Smith Royal Cuckoo, 3203 Mission, SF; www.royalcuckoo.com. 7:30-10:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Barnyard Stompers Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Brazil and Beyond Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 6:30-9pm, free. With Rebecca Kleinmann and friends.

Brian Keeney Band Tupelo, 1337 Grant, SF; www.tupelosf.com. 9pm.

“Concert of Jewish Music” Jewish Community High School of the Bay, 1835 Ellis, SF; www.jewishfolkchorussf.org. 2:30pm, $15. With Jewish Folk Chorus.

Marla Fibish and Friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Beats for Brunch Thee Parkside. 11am, free.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2.

MONDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

CSS, Ms Mr, Jo Echo Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $22.

Damir Johnny Foley’s. 10pm, free.

Melechesh, Vreid, Reign of Lies, Lightning Swords of Death DNA Lounge. 7pm, $20.

Mount Kimbie, Holy Other, Vinyl Williams Independent. 9pm, $20.

Shivas, TodaysHits, Hemlock Tavern. 7pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Classical Revolution Revolution Café. 8:30pm, free.

David Sanborn and Bob James, Steve Gadd and James Genus SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $35-$85. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Giulia Valle SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30 and 9pm, $10-$15. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Barren Vines Tupelo, 1337 Grant, SF; www.tupelosf.com. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Crazy Mondays Beauty Bar, 2299 Mission, SF; www.thebeautybar.com. 10pm, free. Hip-hop and other stuff.

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-$5.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. DJs Timoteo Gigante, Gordo Cabeza, and Chris Phlek playing all Motown every Monday.

Soul Cafe John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. R&B, Hip-Hop, Neosoul, reggae, dancehall, and more with DJ Jerry Ross.

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Aliacensis, Stillsuit, DJs Noel Von Harmonson, Phengren Oswald Amnesia. 9:30pm, $5.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

John Grant, Craig Wedren Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF; www.thechapelsf.com. 9pm, $15.

Nolunta’s, 45isdistance Café Du Nord. 7:30pm, $12.

Ruby Pins, Mane, Generation Loss Knockout. 9:30pm, $7.

Sea Lioness, DonCat, Tendrils, Brooke D. Bottom of the Hill. 9:30pm, $8.

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

Station and the Monster, Bloodbirds, Dirty Pillows Hemlock Tavern. 8:30pm, $6.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Terry Disley Burritt Room, 417 Stockton, SF; www.burrittavern.com. 6-9pm, free.

East-West Collective feat. Didier Petit, Xu Feng Xia Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $18.

Panique Gypsy Jazz Revolution Café. 8:30pm, free.

Giulia Valle SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7:30 and 9pm, $10-$15. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Frederic Yonnet, Gregoire Maret SFJazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-$45. San Francisco Jazz Festival.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Drizoletto Rite Spot. 9pm, free.

Autumn Rhodes and Friends Plough and Stars. 9pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Brazilian Wax Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Underground Nomads Bissap Baobab, 3372 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 10pm, $5. With Cheb Sabbah, DJs Amar, Dulce Vita, Sep resident DJs.

Alerts

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

WEDNESDAY 12

Whose future? Community forum LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market, SF. sfbg.com, ccho@sfic-409.org. 6-8pm, free. In July, the Bay’s Regional governing body is scheduled to approve a state-mandated plan aimed at reducing carbon-emissions that proposes to put 280,000 more people, 92,000 new housing units, 100,000 new jobs (and 73,000 more cars) into SF over the next 30 years. By the proposed Plan’s own assessment: it will increase the risk of neighborhood disruption and displacement of existing residents and businesses, especially among the city’s working class communities. What can we do about it? Join Tim Redmond, San Francisco Bay Guardian; Mike Casey, Unite HERE Local 2; Cindy Wu, San Francisco Planning Commissioner; Maria Zamudio, Causa Justa: Just Cause; and others for this important panel discussion.

THURSDAY 13

Raising the Roof for Renters 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna, SF. tenantstogether.org/raisingtheroof2013. 6pm, $30 in advance/ $40 at the door. Tenants are hurting right now, so show your support by attending this fundraiser for Tenants Together — California’s statewide organization for renters’ rights. Celebrate five years of mobilizing tenants statewide for housing justice. Featuring a silent auction, fantastic food, and a cash bar.

SUNDAY 16

Teach-in: class struggle in Turkey Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakl. (510) 428-1578. 10:30am-12:30 p.m., free with donation requested. On May 31, without warning, Turkey erupted. For the first time in recent history, women, students, workers, artists, youth, Kurds, Artists, Turks, gays-lesbians, Alevites, doctors, small merchants, environmentalists, unions and progressive associations rose up together. Mehmet Bayram, a long time journalist and Bay Area activist from Turkey, will report on the developments that led to the events and the aftermath. A discussion of politics and class struggle in Turkey will follow.

THURSDAY 20

Rally and protest against Keystone XL Battery East, below Golden Gate Bridge Visitor Center, SF. tinyurl.com/mf6m2ef. Noon, free. Join Bill McKibben of 350.org for a noon rally against the Keystone XL pipeline, followed by a march across the Golden Gate Bridge. This time, environmentalists seeking to halt this major oil infrastructure project will be joined by National Nurses United, who are organizing a day of action in the city against austerity and the Keystone XL.

Developers should pay — on time

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

OPINION San Francisco used to be an eclectic city, filled with working class folks, people of color, lots of artists, and families. But that’s changed dramatically. The black population has dismally plummeted, to 6.3 percent, according to the most recent census. Families of color are streaming out, expensive condos and sky-high rentals are shooting up, and the unique mix that once was the city and made it such a diverse and culturally rich place to live and thrive is changing.

Three years ago, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom decided that private developers in San Francisco needed a local stimulus boost. The housing bubble had burst and taken the economy down with it, but Newsom wanted to ensure that private development in the city continued. So he proposed that private developers be allowed to defer paying the neighborhood impact fees on their projects, thus delaying funding for safety-net programs that help existing residents of working class neighborhoods fight displacement.

His proposal passed in 2010, and since then the Eastern Neighborhoods, SoMa, and the Octavia/Market Area have seen an upswing in private development projects coupled with rising eviction rates and housing costs, while affordable housing throughout the city becomes harder and harder to find. Because neighborhood impact fees were deferred services that would help vulnerable populations were underfunded by a total of almost $53.5 million — in 2011-2012 alone.

That lost money impacted affordable housing construction, affordable child care, development of parks and other types of open spaces, infrastructure and pedestrian-safety measures, neighborhood schools and libraries, and eviction prevention services.

Meanwhile, out-of-town private development companies are set to make millions of dollars building high-end rental units and luxury condominiums that the average San Franciscan can’t afford.

Given that private market-rate residential development in San Francisco is speeding up regardless of displacement dangers, it’s even more necessary today to strengthen and sharpen the tools our neighborhoods have for fighting displacement.

A longstanding question for San Francisco has been how to keep it from becoming a place where only the very wealthy can afford to live while the rest of us have to commute in to the city that we work in and love. Now as we field off another local housing boom fueled by speculation, we are faced again with needing to ensure that we prioritize San Franciscans over profit.

That’s why tenant groups, affordable housing advocates, and San Franciscans fighting for the right to stay in their city will be urging the Planning Commission to end the fee deferrals. The Planning Department staff has studied the issue and recommends that the Newsom program be allowed to expire; that would bring back the funds needed to invest in the vitality and vibrancy of our neighborhoods.

Come join us in helping get San Francisco’s priorities back on track at the Planning Commission meeting Thursday June 13th at 12pm in room 200 of City Hall. Private development is not worth more than the well being of working class communities, immigrants, families, LGBTQ, and tenant communities.

Maria Zamudio is a housing rights organizer for Causa Justa: Just Cause

Mr. Mayor: Stop supporting tax cheats

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

EDITORIAL Mayor Ed Lee’s love affair with all things tech shouldn’t extend to allowing a large company to cheat on local taxes.

It’s no secret that Airbnb, the successful startup that allows people to share their apartments as hotel rooms, has failed to collect or pay San Francisco’s Transitory Occupancy Tax, which every traditional hotel has to pay. Our stories have shown that the city is losing $1.8 million a year, and that number will only grow as the service becomes more popular.

The company claims that all it’s doing is facilitating private transactions. But the city’s treasurer, Jose Cisneros, has investigated the situation and ruled that Airbnb is liable for collecting and remitting the tax. It’s not that hard — the company could simply add the 14 percent onto the prices on its website, make sure the people renting out their homes receive that money, and turn it over to the city.

But that would open the “sharing economy” site to similar rules in all the other cities where it operates. It would force Airbnb to admit that it’s a business, like any other business, and that the Internet hasn’t made obsolete the notion of following the rules that apply to everyone else in the same line of work.

So the company, funded in part by investor Ron Conway — a close ally of the mayor — takes unfair advantage of the situation, refuses to pay taxes, and undermines the existing hotel industry, which not only pays taxes but employs thousands of San Franciscans.

Lee was asked about the situation on a recent edition of KQED’s Forum, and when host Michael Krasny pushed him, Lee said: “They’re not so much dodging it, they’re making arguments, like any business would, about what applies to them and what doesn’t.”

That’s flatly, factually untrue. Airbnb has already had a chance to make its arguments — to Cisneros — and he rejected them. The company could go to court to overrule the treasurer, but it hasn’t. It could go the Board of Supervisors and seek to have the Hotel Tax modified, but it hasn’t. The people who run Airbnb aren’t making any arguments at all, in any public forum; they’re just refusing to pay.

And the mayor is not only letting them get away with it but defending the practice.

This is disgraceful.

A judge in New York City has ruled that Airbnb violates local laws, and people who use it as hosts are now subject to steep fines. There, at least, the company is asking the state Legislature to modify the ban on short-term apartment leasing.

In San Francisco, most renters who sign up with Airbnb to make a little extra money by turning their apartments into hotel rooms are in violation of their leases and could be subject to eviction — something the company doesn’t warn about.

It’s time for the supervisors to pass legislation regulating this industry. In the meantime, Lee needs to stop defending a company that’s openly violating the city’s tax laws and direct the city attorney to crack down.

A ‘reasonable’ cheek swab

Andrew Lam

June 11, 2013

Rebecca@sfbg.com

On June 3, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it’s legal for law enforcement to collect DNA samples from people who are arrested — even when the individuals taken into custody are never convicted of a crime. The justices were narrowly split, and the decision immediately drew criticism from civil liberties advocates like American Civil Liberties Union, who characterized it as a blow to American’s Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

Does the historic ruling carry implications for law enforcement practices in California? Not exactly. As it turns out, current state law allows police to collect DNA samples through cheek swabbing on a far more routine basis than in Maryland, where only a handful of serious offenses can trigger this kind of search. And in the Golden State, fewer protections are in place for arrestees.

The Supreme Court issued its ruling with a narrow 5-4 vote. “The majority’s take was that cheek-swabbing is reasonable … even without any suspicion of wrongdoing by the arrestee, because the intrusion is minimal, the arrestee has less of an expectation of privacy than a typical citizen, and the state has a strong interest in using DNA to identify people,” explained Andrea Roth, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and founding member of a group that studied and litigated forensic DNA typing.

In contrast, Roth said, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia “was concerned that this is the first time that we’ve ever allowed searches of someone’s body, without any type of individualized suspicion, for the purpose of general crime-solving. He thought that was a line the Constitution draws in the sand, and that the law is on the wrong side of that line.”

Despite drawing a scathing critique from a conservative Supreme Court justice, Maryland’s system for the collection and use of DNA is actually much narrower in scope than the law that went into effect in California in 2004, when Proposition 69 passed.

Maryland’s law “only applies to a limited number of offenses, it doesn’t apply at all to people who are simply arrested but not charged, and they can only make use of the sample after there’s been a judicial finding of probable cause,” Michael Risher, a lawyer with the Northern California Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told us.

“California doesn’t have any of those safeguards,” Risher added. “It’s a different law.”

2.1 MILLION SAMPLES

When Prop. 69 was approved, California voters initially sanctioned DNA collection from people convicted of felony offenses. But on January 1, 2009, a different provision of that initiative kicked in, expanding it to allow police to collect DNA samples from “any adult person” arrested for “any felony offense,” regardless of whether that person is ever charged or convicted of a crime.

When used as a form of identification, DNA samples are processed to yield a 26-number sequence that aids law enforcement in verifying suspects’ identities.

Once they’re collected and used to produce unique identifiers, those cotton-swabbed samples aren’t destroyed; instead, they remain in the hands of a state agency. “The problem is that the state keeps your samples,” Roth said. “It’s not like they develop the 26-number profile and then throw the rest of the sample in the trash. So if you’re in a database, state officials still have your entire DNA strand.”

According to the California Department of Justice, since the start of the program, the DNA data bank had received and logged more than 2.1 million samples as of March 31. The data bank is shared with the National DNA Index System (NDIS), part of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which is linked to federal records.

In its decision, the nation’s highest court determined that “taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure.”

Yet civil liberties advocates point out that the information contained in a DNA sample can reveal much more about an individual than either a fingerprint or a unique identifier generated from a sample.

“There’s a basic difference between your DNA and your fingerprint,” Risher explains. “Your fingerprint doesn’t tell you anything about yourself. And your DNA is your genetic blueprint. The profile that they generate might not say a lot about you … but they are keeping these physical samples. Current law says they can’t be tested for sensitive things, but laws change, and people can violate them.”

And a properly preserved DNA sample can last hundreds of thousands of years — essentially forever.

ANTI-WAR PROTESTER ASKED FOR DNA

Lily Haskell has been fighting the state of California over DNA collection ever since her arrest in March of 2009, at an anti-war demonstration in downtown San Francisco. Held to commemorate the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, the protest was staged in Civic Center Plaza. “With no prior warning, police charged the crowd, penned us in, arrested us, and charged us with trying to incite a riot,” she told us.

But hours later, after she and a handful of others had been processed at the San Francisco County Jail, Haskell was summoned from her holding cell and presented with what struck her as an odd request. Although she says she had already been fingerprinted, and her identity already confirmed, an officer “told me I had to provide a DNA sample.”

Her first instinct was to decline. “I didn’t believe it was just to have to comply with that,” she said. “I told them I believed it was my right to refuse.” Haskell was told that if she continued to resist the sample collection, she’d be charged with a misdemeanor and would likely spend a few additional nights in jail. So she relented.

Although she was neither charged with a crime nor tried for a felony or any other offense after being released from jail 24 hours later, Haskell’s DNA sample remains in the state databank. Now she’s a lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

Haskell said she’s never tried to get her DNA expunged from the state database, because she sees her participation in the lawsuit as an important challenge to a law she views as unjust. “I don’t want my DNA to be held,” Haskell says, “and I don’t want anybody else’s DNA to be held, either.”

Individuals who have tried to go the route of having DNA samples removed have found it can be tedious. “In California, the process of getting your DNA out of a database if your case ends in dismissal or acquittal is an onerous one,” Roth explained. “You have to pay your own filing and attorney fees, you have to wait until the statute of limitations has run, the judge has complete discretion to deny your motion, and you can’t appeal the judge’s decision.”

Legal upshot still unclear

Meanwhile, ACLU attorneys in Northern California were closely watching the Supreme Court case, Maryland v. King, to see how it might affect their class-action challenge to Prop. 69, a case known as Haskell v. Harris. Although a divided panel of Ninth Circuit judges upheld the law in February of 2012, the court took the unusual step last July of voting to rehear the case en banc, with a nine-judge panel. However, the court issued an order after oral arguments saying it wouldn’t issue a ruling until King had been decided in the Supreme Court.

“Yes, they will have to do something with our case — but what they do is actually up to them,” Risher explained. “There’s no binding opinion in our case right now. Everything was up in the air waiting for King to be decided.”

Risher added that in future arguments, the ACLU plans to highlight the differences between Maryland’s DNA collection law and California’s far broader Prop. 69. “If King was a 5-4 decision with a law that was so narrowly focused, with those safeguards,” he said, “well okay — this one crosses the line.”

8 Washington and the Warriors

Zelda Bronstein

June 11, 2013

I won’t be a bit surprised if the Warriors start putting money behind Simon Snellgrove’s efforts to win ballot approval for his 8 Washington condo project. And it won’t be just because of general developer solidarity. And I don’t think the basketball team owners are counting on a lot of fans living just down the Embarcadero — odds are a lot of the people who buy Snellgrove’s ultra-luxury condos won’t live in San Francisco much of the time anyway.

No: What the Warriors realize is that the fate of their arena could be linked to the fate of the height-limit battle on Snellgrove’s lot.

The mayor has called the Warriors Arena his legacy project. The head of the Planning Commission says it’s a done deal. Despite the screwy financing and the serious problems with traffic and transit, this thing is moving forward through official San Francisco on greased skids.

But given the way things work in this city, it’s almost certain that the arena will wind up on the ballot. Either the Warriors will organize an initiative campaign to put it before the voters, or the opponents will. And in this case, both sides will have money — the neighbors who don’t want the project are a relatively well-off bunch.

It’s too late for anything to happen for the Warriors this fall, which means a likely battle in November, 2014. But the voters this fall may very well reject the condo towers, and if they do, it will likely hinge on the notion that San Francisco has historically reduced height limits near the Bay. Polls show most voters don’t want tall buildings on the waterfront. And a strong vote to reinforce that would have impacts for any future projects.

“If 8 Washington goes down,” former Mayor Art Agnos, who opposes both projects, told me, “then the people will have spoken out about big buildings on the waterfront, and the Warriors will be in trouble.”

Remember: The arena is only one piece of the Warriors’ project. There’s also a shopping mall, hotel and highrise housing planned for the area — and without the highrise on Seawall Lot 333, the arena doesn’t pencil out. So you can love the idea of a big ol’ flying saucer thingy on a concrete pad four times the size of Union Square sitting on the edge of the Bay and still not like the idea of (once again) spot-zoning a waterfront lot for high-end condos that will block people’s views.

If I were opposed to the arena, I’d be reaching out to the folks fighting Snellgrove and throwing some cash their way. Because this is the first in a series of battles over the use of waterfront land, and its importance goes far beyond 134 condo units.

Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir talks asylum options for NSA whistleblower

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

June 11, 2013

Birgitta Jónsdóttir is waiting for Edward Snowden to drop her a line.

The Icelandic Member of Parliament and Wikileaks supporter happens to be in San Francisco at the moment, working to raise awareness about the trial of Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning, and preparing for a speaking engagement this evening where she’ll appear alongside Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

Snowden, meanwhile, is presumed to be somewhere in Hong Kong – but as of the most recent media reports, his exact whereabouts were unknown (at least to reporters). Snowden is the 29-year-old former employee of intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, who came forward Sunday as the source responsible for leaking top-secret U.S. government documents to The Guardian (UK) and The Washington Post revealing a widespread digital surveillance program.

Jónsdóttir’s International Modern Media Institute issued a statement on June 9 vowing to “discuss the details of his asylum request” and to investigate the legal and security implications of the Iceland option.

“I have not gotten into contact with him,” Jónsdóttir said in a phone interview with the Bay Guardian this morning. “But … we have sent out the message that he can be in contact with us if he chooses, to let us know exactly what he wants.”

She added, “I’m quite concerned, because there are no direct flights to Iceland. … I’m just worried about the extradition process in other countries – if he needs to do a layover, or if we’re not quick enough to grant him asylum. And, frankly speaking, one of the parties in the government in Iceland is never going to agree to support it. So, it’s tricky.”

There may be better places for Snowden to seek asylum, Jónsdóttir added, but she and others are still investigating the possibilities. “I don’t know if Ecuador can take any more refugees from the political prisoners of the information age,” she said, referencing the country that granted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange political asylum, and has granted him residency in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a year.

“But I really think emphasis in this case should be on all this heavy sentencing on … whistleblowers and people that are doing research and trying to bring information into the public domain,” Jónsdóttir said. “I feel this is more like a witch hunt than the ordinary justice system,” she added, “if you look at the crimes they’re accused to have done, which in many people’s opinion, are not crimes at all.”

For now, it’s still too early to say where Snowden will ultimately wind up. “The ball is in his hands,” Jónsdóttir said. “In the meantime, we will check out all the legalities and possibilities. We would obviously have to do it through secure ways. We have reached out to [journalist] Glenn [Greenwald] and James Ball, who has also been writing about this for The Guardian. And we’ll see if we get a message from him or if we can communicate directly. As soon as we have any information, we will make a statement.”

Supervisors pose tough but important questions to Mayor Lee

Sasha Cuttler

June 11, 2013

Supervisors pose tough but important questions to Mayor Lee

There’s a full agenda at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting today, from the condo conversion lottery bypass legislation to approval of the term sheet from the massive development project at Pier 70, but some of the most interesting and potentially newsworthy items are at the very beginning of the agenda, when Mayor Ed Lee will answer questions posed by the supervisors.

Unfortunately, if past is prologue, Lee won’t give direct, substantive answers to the vitally important questions that he’s being asked, just as he dodged a question on the condo conversion debate in February and has kept everyone in the dark of which of the rival measures he supports and which he may veto. Mayoral leadership was desperately needed on that protracted debate, just as it’s needed today on some of the questions he’s being asked.

The first question, posed by Sup. Eric Mar, concerns Plan Bay Area and how it plans to pack 280,000 more people into San Francisco by 2040, which was the subject of a May 28 Bay Guardian cover story and panel dicussion that we’re sponsoring at the LGBT Center tomorrow night.

Mar lays out the massive displacement of existing residents and the traffic gridlock that the plan will create in San Francisco and how the approval process from much of this streamlined development may be given waivers from California Environmental Quality Act review.

Mar notes more than 40 regional groups have come together to try to improve the plan and mitigate its damage, and he plans to ask Lee:

“A consensus has formed around the following recommendations for making Plan Bay Area better:

– Provide $3 billion in additional operating revenue for local transit service and commit to a long-range ‘Regional Transit Operating Program’ to boost transit operating subsidies by another $9 billion over the coming years.

– Move 5 percent of the housing growth from low-income communities (mainly San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose) to transit-connected suburban job centers.

– Incorporate strong anti-displacement policies for community stabilization measures, such as land banking and preservation of affordable housing in at-risk neighborhoods.

– Director the Planning Department to analyze the impacts of potential CEQA streamling as soon as possible and create strong mitigation measures.

Do you support these measure, and are you committed to a plan with lower displacement level than the current proposal? If you do not support these ideas, why not?”

Excellent question, and definitely an appropriate one for our chief executive officer, who would have more clout to push for these changes than any of the supervisors.

The second question comes from Board President David Chiu, who makes news by noting that Mayor Lee has continued his predecessor’s underhanded practice of refusing to fill city positions to provide services that the supervisors have decided to fund in the budget, undermining the city’s balance of power and Lee’s rhetoric on collaboration.

“In recent months, Controller data indicates that positions allocated by the Board for librarians, recreation and park staff, building inspection, health and labor enforcement, urban agriculture and other Board priorities were either not filled or only recently hired. Will you commit to ensuring that when the FY 13-14 budget is approved, our Board of Supervisors’ priorities are treated equally to your Administration’s, with positions filled as soon as possible?”

Again, great question about an important current issue, the kind of thing that voters created this question time for, to ensure that there was communication and collaboration between these two branches of government.

The last two questions concern San Francisco’s housing crisis. Sup. David Campos cites the scatching report that he commissioned from the Budget and Legislative Analyst on the dysfunctional and mordibund Housing Authority, which Lee controls, asking “what is your long term vision to save public housing — a significant public asset to San Francisco?”

Sup. John Avalos cites data on the skyrocketing rents in San Francisco and asks, “Are you concerned that your administration’s policies to stimulate economic activity, especially supporting the tech industry, have created one-sided development and only job for high-income ‘appsters,’ and have exacerbated the already extremely limited housing market? Do you have any plans to address the increasing rents, and increasing rate of evictions and displacement of long-time San Francisco renters?”

These are tough questions, but they are central to what kind of city San Francisco is becoming. They were all submitted last week, so the mayor has had time to think about them and he should provide answers and show leadership on these difficult issues. That is his job.

Will he? Check back later and I’ll let you know. The meeting starts at 2pm.

Heads Up: 7 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles

June 11, 2013

Dear 2 Chainz: we’d like to formally apologize on behalf of our city, if you were indeed robbed at gunpoint (details are a bit murky at this point). Terrible things happen in every city, and San Francisco is no exception. But we must trundle forward, as a city of sonic fiends who love this place called home, always exploding with new bands, and welcoming traveling acts from around the world.

This week, we celebrate a particularly beloved member of own pack: Sonny and the Sunsets has a new record, and it’s a leap in yet another direction for the singer-songwriter and his crew. There’s also a Date Palms album release, a visit from New Zealand rockers the Bats (locals the Mantles open), the return of Cold Cave, some existential slop-punk from the Trashies, and a tribute to “rock‘n’roll specialist” Buddy Holly. Music lives on, despite despair.

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

Sonny and the Sunsets
It’s the record release party for Sonny and the Sunsets’ newest, Antenna to the Afterworld. The confessional record, which hints at Modern Lovers and Silver Jews (a shift from country break-up record Longtime Companion), opens with Sonny Smith talk-singing a call-and-response conversation, “Something happened/I fell in love/but it was weird/Real weird.” “Good weird?” the voice on the other side implores.
With Burnt Ones, Cool Ghouls.
Tue/11, 8pm, $7
Eagle Tavern
398 12th St., SF
www.sf-eagle.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoUjLj7Lp2w

The Trashies
What would you get if you paired those slimy Garbage Pail Kids with primal 1960s garage rock band the Monks? It’d probably turn in to something like the Trashies. A few weeks back, the Bay Guardian premiered a new video from the sloppy Seattle-and-East Bay act, featuring the band writhing in the mud at the Albany Bulb, screeching and freaking out psychedelically on guitars, and yelping “I’m a worm!/watch me squirm.” If it all sounds a bit familiar, this beach squelch shimmy, it’s because Uzi Rash frontperson Max Nordile also has a hand in Trashies, lending his particular style to the band’s intoxicating sounds.
With Buffalo Tooth, Scrapers
Wed/12, 8:30pm, $7
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
(415) 923-0923
www.hemlocktavern.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg4fgl9jnT0

The Bats
“New Zealand rockers the Bats got their start 30 years ago, and have stayed together all this time, with all four original members still in the fold, an almost unheard of feat these days. The cult Kiwi favorites released their latest album, Free All The Monsters (Flying Nun Records) in 2011, imbued with an almost ethereal sound and feel, which could be partly due to the fact that it was recorded in a former lunatic asylum. The video for the single “Simpletons” shows haunting scenes of the aftermath of the major earthquake that struck the Bats hometown of Christchurch that year — but like their fellow countrymen, the band is as resilient as ever.” — Sean McCourt
With the Mantles, Legs
Fri/14, 9pm, $15–<\d>$17-
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zi4Ec2Fr2E

Date Palms
There’s this sense of impending doom ever-present in any given Date Palm piece. The instrumental band — which once described its sound to me as “psychedelic minimalism with Eastern tinged melodies driven by cyclical, distorted bass patterns” — has thriller cinematic appeal. Without the distraction of vocals, the mind is left to wander in these unsettling patterns, wobbling toward the deep unknown, creating eerie visions. In this way, it’s the soundtrack to the mini movies fluttering through your brain. This is never more apt than in single “Dusted Down,” off new album, Dusted Sessions, out this week on Thrill Jockey. And yet, one needn’t conjure a mind-flick for that particular track. There’s already a video, and it’s as trippy as deserved, with blurry visions of the band, analog video feedback, and a looping rainbow of madness.
With Jackie O-Motherfucker, Soft Shells, Lady Free Mountain
Fri/14, 9pm, $7
Night Light
311 Broadway, Oakl.
www.thenightlightoakland.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImOJP_Pp7EY

Cold Cave
Your two favorite parties (120 Minutes and Lights Down Low) come together this weekend for one spooky-special mashup of noise, ideas, and freaks, with live performances by darkwave duo Cold Cave backed by underground post-punk legend Boyd Rice, R&B/dance music-mixer Brenmar, and Jokers of the Scene, who are known to “craft epic nine-minute Salem remixes or rave out with their own anthemic tracks.” With 120 Minutes residents S4Nta_MU3rTE and Chuncey_CC, Lights Down Low residents Sleazemore and Richie Panic.
Sat/15, 9pm, $15-$20
Public Works
161 Erie, SF
www.publicsf.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqcy96QzeRg

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
“Everything about the story of Aly Spaltro’s transformation into Lady Lamb and the Beekeeper seems old and out of time. In the Maine town where she went to high school, she practiced in the basement of that bygone establishment, a video store, and produced her first recordings through another, an independent record store. Then there’s her alter ego, the name of a Victorian woman who came to her in a dream (for real), which maybe that explains the biggest leap of time: Spaltro performs far beyond her 22 years. With her preternatural understanding of human feeling and her unique ability to sing about it, the very old and young Lady Lamb should not be missed.” — Laura Kerry
With Torres, Paige and the Thousand
Sun/16, 8pm, $10
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdqsUML8wv0

“A Radio Silence Live Tribute to Buddy Holly”
With all legend surrounding his untimely death, one tends to forget the most important thing about Buddy Holly: the bespectacled kid (age 22) had a serious knack for songwriting. He was a prolific musician who wrote a bunch of timeless rockabilly-blues blended rock’n’roll juke classics in his relatively short career. (“That’ll Be The Day,” “Peggy Sue,” “True Love Ways,” “Crying, Waiting, Hoping,” “Everyday.”) As a small gesture to correct the collective direction of remembrance — and to prove the music didn’t really die that day on the “Winter Dance Party” tour — local lit mag Radio Silence presents a tribute night to the songs of Holly. There’ll be Greil Marcus, an icon of rock journalism, reading from his as-yet-unpublished new book, plus conversations with and performances by Eleanor Friedberger of Fiery Furnaces, Van Pierszalowski of Port O’Brien and WATERS, and singer-songwriter Thao Nguyen. As with any proper SF event, there’ll be DJs and food trucks as well.
Sun/16, 7pm, $20
Public Works
161 Erie, SF
(415) 779-6757
www.publicsf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQiIMuOKIzY

NSA whistleblower supporters to speak on civil liberties

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

June 10, 2013

Famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and plans to march in the upcoming San Francisco Pride Parade to honor Bradley Manning. In an editorial published earlier today, Ellsberg lauded Edward Snowden – the 29-year-old who came forward to reveal himself as the National Security Agency whistleblower – as “a new hero” and “a patriot.”

Tomorrow, June 11, Ellsberg will speak as part of a panel talk titled “Our Vanishing Civil Liberties.” The event will also feature Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic Member of Parliament and Wikileaks supporter, who leads an organization that indicated in a statement yesterday that it would assist Snowden in seeking asylum in Iceland.

The panel talk, which will be held in Berkeley, was organized in tandem with the National Lawyers Guild of San Francisco and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Other speakers will include activist and author Norman Solomon, who has also called for support for Snowden, and Nadia Kayyali, Legal Fellow with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and Executive Vice President for the National Lawyers Guild.

“The timing with these revelations is pretty fantastic,” Kayyali notes. “The real goal of this discussion is really that, for it to be a discussion,” she added.

A national coalition of privacy organizations is in the process of coming together and preparing a statement in response to the surveillance programs revealed in The Guardian (UK) and the Washington Post over the last several days, Kayyali said.

Yesterday, a statement was released by the International Modern Media Institute, co-founded by Jonsdottir to strengthen Iceland’s protections for journalists and whistleblowers.

“Tonight the identity of Edward Snowden, the brave whistleblower who exposed these clandestine projects for monitoring the world’s population, was revealed in an interview, where it was implied that he has an interest in seeking asylum in Iceland,” IMMI wrote in a message apparently drafted in Reykjavík, Iceland and San Francisco. “Whereas IMMI is based in Iceland, and has worked on protections of privacy, furtherance of government transparency, and the protection of whistleblowers, we feel it is our duty to offer to assist and advise Mr. Snowden to the greatest of our ability.”

Jonsdottir was targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice several years ago, when federal agents sought her Twitter account records after she supported Wikileaks as a volunteer.

The myth of a pro-tenant city

Zelda Bronstein

June 10, 2013

There are always bad tenants. Always will be. Human interactions are imperfect, and renting out a room in your flat or a flat under your apartment to a stranger is always a bit of a gamble. I’ve lived with housemates, and it’s always been great, but not everyone has that experience — one old friend of mine lived with a guy who threatened to kill him by writing demonic messages in blood on the bathroom wall and then smashed his car to bits with a street sign.

Yet most of the time, tenants pay the rent and keep things clean and it all works out — and that doesn’t make the news. Real drama is Pacific Heights, Michael Keaton breeding cockroaches and driving a poor young couple to bankruptcy and despair. Real drama is a guy who smashes the door in with a borrowed sledgehammer, floods the basement and throws a live appliance into the sink.

And when stories like that, written by a conservative man who clearly thinks the city is too soft on tenants, make the New York Times, it’s easy for the rest of the country to start thinking that San Francisco is some kind of commie paradise where even the worst tenants have all the rights and the nicest, most generous landlords always get screwed.

Such is the case with the Scott James tale of woe that has become one of the most-shared stories in the Times over the past week. Unfortunately, there’s nothing about this case that says anything about the state of landlord-tenant law in San Francisco.

James has decided not to rent out his available unit because he had a bad tenant. But he takes a bizarre example of unacceptable behavior and turns it into an argument that the city’s generally unfavorable to landlords — even when it’s clear that, in his case, the tenant could have been (and fairly easily was) evicted.

He argues that “it is a widely held belief among renters here that laws are so tilted in favor of tenants (and against landlords) that renters can get away with any outrageous behavior.” I know lots of renters and tenant lawyers, and I don’t know anyone who would say that breaking into the building with a sledgehammer and shorting out all the circuit breakers is something you can “get away with.” The laws that protect tenants essentially say that someone who pays the rent on time, honors the terms of the lease, and doesn’t do anything crazy like this guy did, gets to stay in place. The city restricts arbitrary, retailiatory, and purely economic evictions; what Scott found when he filed an eviction notice is that tenants who damage the property are not protected; in his case, there was no long battle, no expensive eviction process. He filed for eviction and the tenant left.

Story over.

If the tenant damaged the place, his or her security deposit would not be returned — and in most cases, the insurance would cover the rest of the damage. (Michael Petrelis has a nice takeout here; he also remembers that hideous Michael Keaton movie.)

Scott is clearly wealthy enough to pay for his turn of the century Victorian (which he bought for $1.3 million in 2004, according to public records) without renting out the downstairs unit. He’s not about to lose his home; in fact, he says he’s just as happy to have visitors stay there. So he’s not one of those landlords who says he can’t possibly survive without raising the rent or using the Ellis Act.

Instead, he’s just a whiner. He’s holding a valuable rental unit off the market because he wants … what? The right to throw out any tenant any time without any due process? What exactly is the problem he’s facing? How, exactly, did the city’s allegedly pro-tenant laws harm him?

I dunno. I have been trying to reach him; I send him emails and a message on Facebook. No response.

Here’s the truth: Most tenants are decent people who have, and should have, every right to stay in their homes. But these days, the amount of money flowing into the housing market (much of it, by the way, from big out-of-town investment groups) and the inability of the city to enact effective tenant protections has skewed the balance way, way in favor of the landlords.

The state Legislature has removed the only tools that actually protect low-income tenants in the long term, like rent controls on vacant apartments and anti-eviction rules. So San Francisco, in reality, is anything BUT a tenant paradise.

As for landlords who leave units vacant? They ought to pay a penalty. A tax on vacant residential units might encourage them to take the (modest) risk for the (big) reward, and put their places back on the market. Pacific Heights was just a movie.

A map of SF’s wealth — and poverty

Zelda Bronstein

June 10, 2013

There’s a cool interactive map that gives you a visual picture of wealth and poverty in San Francisco. Check it out here. Just type in “San Francisco, CA” and click “income.”

What you see is a city full of green (wealth), with a few pockets of poverty. The data is at least two years old, so it’s almost certain that, say, the inner Mission no longer has a median income of $36,000 and the median in Noe Valley is above $108,000. The median in Vis Valley is (or was) $17,000. Nobody at that level could buy a house in VV now, not even close.

The fun thing is to imagine the income map overlaid with this map to see where housing costs — and thus median income — is rising fast. Check out, for example, the tiny Duboce Triangle area, with median income of $84, 000 (certainly no more than middle class by San Francisco standards). There were at least 17 buildings in that one census tract cleared of tenants by Ellis Act evictions; I wonder how much the median income has gone up.

It’s interesting to contrast SF to, say, Oakland and Berkeley, or to Los Angeles, where there are plenty of rich people (on the coast and in the hills) but also large swaths of more middle-income middle-class communities.

Just some thoughts for a Monday afternoon.

Democratic Party chair signs on with Realtors

Zelda Bronstein

June 10, 2013

Democratic Party chair signs on with Realtors

Gee, which is worse: Having the chair of the local Democratic Party working for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which blows up neighborhoods, or for the San Francisco Board of Realtors, which pushes anti-tenant legislation and whose members profit from gentrification and evictions?

Either way, Mary Jung, the Democratic County Central Committee chair, isn’t exactly a good representative for the city’s progressive Democracts. She just left her job as a lobbyist for PG&E and took a new position running government affairs for the landlords. From the Realtors press release:

Jung stated, “I am excited to have this opportunity to build upon and expand the REALTORS® Association role in the community. I look forward to working collaboratively with our local, state and national elected officials, and with our members, to ensure that the robust housing market continues to grow and our voice is heard effectively at City Hall.”

The “robust housing market.” In other words, displacement central. From the elected chair of the Democratic Party in San Francisco. I can’t think of the last time the chair of the local party was paid to represent corporate interests. Not a good sign.

Solomon: Historic challenge to support the moral actions of Edward Snowden

June 10, 2013

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

In Washington, where the state of war and the surveillance state are one and the same, top officials have begun to call for Edward Snowden’s head. His moral action of whistleblowing — a clarion call for democracy — now awaits our responses.

After nearly 12 years of the “war on terror,” the revelations of recent days are a tremendous challenge to the established order: nonstop warfare, intensifying secrecy and dominant power that equate safe governance with Orwellian surveillance.

In the highest places, there is more than a wisp of panic in rarefied air. It’s not just the National Security Agency that stands exposed; it’s the repressive arrogance perched on the pyramid of power.

Back here on the ground, so many people — appalled by Uncle Sam’s continual morph into Big Brother — have been pushing against the walls of anti-democratic secrecy. Those walls rarely budge, and at times they seem to be closing in, even literally for some (as in the case of heroic whistleblower Bradley Manning). But all the collective pushing has cumulative effects.

In recent days, as news exploded about NSA surveillance, a breakthrough came into sight. Current history may not be an immovable wall; it may be on a hinge. And if we push hard enough, together, there’s no telling what might be possible or achieved.

The gratitude that so many of us now feel toward Edward Snowden raises the question: How can we truly express our appreciation?

A first step is to thank him — publicly and emphatically. You can do that by clicking here to sign the “Thank NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden” petition, which my colleagues at RootsAction.org will send directly to him, including the individual comments.

But of course saying thank-you is just one small step onto a crucial path. As Snowden faces extradition and vengeful prosecution from the U.S. government, active support will be vital — in the weeks, months and years ahead.

Signing the thank-you petition, I ventured some optimism: “What you’ve done will inspire kindred spirits around the world to take moral action despite the risks.” Bravery for principle can be very contagious.

Edward Snowden has taken nonviolent action to help counter the U.S. government’s one-two punch of extreme secrecy and massive violence. The process has summoned the kind of doublespeak that usually accompanies what cannot stand the light of day.

So, when Snowden’s employer Booz Allen put out a statement Sunday night, it was riddled with official indignation, declaring: “News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm.”

What are the “code of conduct” and “core values” of this huge NSA contractor? The conduct of stealthy assistance to the U.S. national security state as it methodically violates civil liberties, and the values of doing just about anything to amass vast corporate profits.

The corporate-government warfare state is enraged that Edward Snowden has broken through with conduct and values that are 180 degrees in a different direction. “I’m not going to hide,” he told the Washington Post on Sunday. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”

When a Post reporter asked whether his revelations would change anything, Snowden replied: “I think they already have. Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”

And, when the Post asked about threats to “national security,” Snowden offered an assessment light-years ahead of mainline media’s conventional wisdom: “We managed to survive greater threats in our history . . . than a few disorganized terrorist groups and rogue states without resorting to these sorts of programs. It is not that I do not value intelligence, but that I oppose . . . omniscient, automatic, mass surveillance. . . . That seems to me a greater threat to the institutions of free society than missed intelligence reports, and unworthy of the costs.”

Profoundly, in the early summer of 2013, with his actions and words, Edward Snowden has given aid and comfort to grassroots efforts for democracy. What we do with his brave gift will be our choice.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

(Bruce B. Brugmann, or b3 as he signs his blogs and emails, writes and edits the Bruce blog on the San Francisco Bay Guardian website at sfbg.com. He is the editor at large of the Bay Guardian and editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012. He can be reached at bruce@sfbg.com.)

City College overseers bar most speakers from meeting

Zelda Bronstein

June 9, 2013

City College overseers bar most speakers from meeting

The Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges has the power to close City College of San Francisco, and students and faculty in line at the San Francisco Airport Marriott June 7 were there to hear about the fate of their school.

But at the only public meeting available to meet with City College’s accreditors in more than seven months, some 30 people were barred from entry.

The doors were were shut, police said, because there were only about 20 seats available.

Even the San Francisco Chronicle’s higher education reporter, Nanette Asimov, was left outside, haggling with officers to get into the meeting — and she called ahead to reserve a seat.

Lalo Gonzalez, a City College student who was recently elected to the Associated Students Senate, was dismayed at not being able to meet with the accreditation agency. “I would’ve assumed they would have reached out to students,” he said.

But they didn’t.

The commission made its decision June 6 on whether City College would keep its accreditation — without which the school would lose state funding and close. But that decision won’t be revealed until early July.
The accreditors put the school sanction for a number of reasons, mostly fiscal but also relating to measuring student achievement. The college has 85,000 students and nearly 2,600 faculty.

The meeting was held at the same Marriott used many times in the past for meetings, the commissioners said. But unlike normal meetings, on June 7 there were four police officers, two from Burlingame PD and two from City College, who patrolled more than 60 feet of metal barriers erected around the corner.

Part of that may have been reaction to the 30 demonstrators from the Save CCSF coalition (www.saveccsf.org) that protested outside the accreditor’s closed meeting Wednesday.

“I was shocked that we couldn’t get in,” student Sharon Shatterly said.

No bags, recording devices, or cameras were allowed in the meeting. As a private entity, the accreditation commission does not fall under California open access laws like the Brown Act.
Inside, 24 commissioners from the agency were seated, dealing with the day-to-day business of managing matters of California’s 112 community colleges, seemingly unconcerned about the dozens who waited outside wishing to speak. In fact, only two public speakers were allowed to address the accreditors.

One was Teeka James, a San Mateo community college teacher speaking on behalf of the California Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers. She read aloud a litany of complaints about the accreditors, alleging that the teams sent to evaluate community colleges didn’t have enough faculty members, that the policies of the accreditors weren’t values “widely accepted” by educators or other accrediting bodies, and that there was a lack of transparency in how they operate.

She especially bemoaned the agency’s conflict of interest — the commission president is Barbara Beno, and her husband served on the team that visited and evaluated City College a year ago, which resulted in the severe sanction the school is under today.

The president and the reviewing agents are supposed to be independent entities.

“To serve the students and people of California properly, ACCJC has to change or be delisted by the Department of Education,” James said. “The time is now.”

She was basically summarizing an official complaint about the accreditation agency sent to the Department of Education last month. It’s 280 pages long, and the allegations are serious.

After her presentation, the members of the commission started to grill her.

“What qualifications do you have? What is the source of your evidence?” said Steven Kinsella, who was named in the official complaint as someone whose ties to business constituted a conflict of interest to his role as a commissioner on the ACCJC. He is a “public member” of the agency.

The questions kept coming – and some were about James herself.

“I don’t think they took her very seriously,” said Fred Teti, president of the City College Academic Senate.

James also argued that the accreditors needed to be more transparent about their process, which was exemplified by the dozens of people who weren’t let into the meeting. Beno disagreed.

“We’re a private institution,” she said. “You can imagine a college president comes in and they discuss matters that could be embarrassing or challenging. That can’t occur in public.”

Outside, the students who had come to talk to the commission that may potentially close their school sat beside each other in the sun, watching the blue of the bay from the hotel’s patio.

And what would Gonzalez and his fellow students have said to the panel if they had gotten in?

“I would’ve asked about if they knew how this was affecting my people, people of color. I would’ve asked about EOPS,” he said, which is the second chance program at City College for those coming out of prison. “They’ve cut over 30 counselors, they’re dismantling the school in the name of accreditation.”

Gonzalez and all of San Francisco will have to wait until the beginning of July to find out what will happen to City College.

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