sex Archives — Page 70 of 111 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Ghostly hardware

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October 28, 2009

johnny@sfbg.com

MUSIC Be aware — from new albums by Cold Cave to reissues on Minimal Wave, neo-gothic strains are in the air. Take one listen to the debut album by Demdike Stare. ‘Tis the season of the witch, but the spells cast by the 11 tracks on Symbiosis (Modern Love) will last well past Halloween to contend on Top 10 lists. Mancunian pair Miles Whitaker and Sean Canty tap into the oft-latent creep factor of dub and the vast darkness of techno, incorporating metal and film scores into those genres’ expansive space to create a distinctively present haunted sound. Neo-goths tend to have better aesthetics than their forebears, and this is the case here, as Whitaker and Canty pay homage to a classic 1922 cult film on witchcraft ("Haxan Dub"; "Haxan") and name their group after 17th-century reputed witch Elizabeth Southerns. Symbiosis is not without humor, though, particularly on "Entwistle Hall" (where moaning gives way to a climactic shriek) and "Trapped Dervish," which sounds exactly like its title.

Canty of Demdike Stare’s day job is at Andy Votel’s Finders Keepers label, the renowned crate-digging — grave-robbing? — label that recently unearthed Dracula’s Music Cabinet by the Vampires of Dartmore. A kitschy pre-krautrock oddity, that album adds quantity if not quality to the growing shelves of library music celebrated by the likes of Jonny Trunk, whose Trunk label has brought back the soundtracks of films such as Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and the original Wicker Man (1973). Connections between incidental and soundtrack music of the past and electronic musicians of the present are further — and better — underlined by Terror and Prey, the first releases by Muscovitch Music, a new label established by Joel Martin, who, along with Matt Edwards of Radioslave, is half of the neo-exotica act Quiet Village. The standout of the pair of film soundtracks by Ivor Slaney, Terror favors cold wave minimal electronic flourishes over generic rock. Made in 1978, the movie itself stars Tricia Walsh, who recently had a renewed splash of fame as the bug-eyed "YouTube lady" ranting about her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s many infidelities.

Terror‘s director Norman J. Warren aimed to create a no-budget British answer to Dario Argento’s 1976 Italo horror vision Suspiria. The influence of Argento and his pet group Goblin hangs heavy over contemporary horror-tinged electronic music, from the solemn rock-oriented efforts of Pittsburgh duo Zombi to, most recently, the comedic Horror Disco (Bear Funk) by Bottin. Bottin taps into the fact that Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti was a top creator of Italo disco, and also crafts an Italian answer to the cult games of France’s Black Devil Disco Club.

Neo-goth and horror music is an international phenomenon, ranging from the Knife in Sweden and Bottin in Italy to the U.S., where Philadelphia’s Cold Cave resides. Cremations (Hospital Productions) compiles parched, nihilistic alienation odes from Wesley Eisold’s early EPs, such as "Sex Ads," but it’s Love Comes Close (Matador) — with ex-Xiu Xiu member Caralee McElwoy brought into the fold — that connects as Cold Cave’s crossover move, the type of recording that will bring the trend to the mainstream. Yet in invoking Sisters of Mercy, Cabaret Voltaire, and Pornography-era Cure, Love Comes Close is not alone this year: the criminally ignored Chatterton (Systematic) by American-expat-in-Germany Chelonis R. Jones did so back in the spring, while updating Goblin’s Suspiria death drums on "Rehabilitation."

Still, England may be the current ground zero for neo-goth and retro and contempo sounds of horror, thanks in part to Demdike Stare, and to Trunk, Finders Keepers, and other labels. The latest spectral proof is Broadcast and Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age (Warp). The Broadcast and Focus Group collaboration is a playful cousin of Symbiosis and a 21st-century musical answer to Bryan Forbes’ 1964 film Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Here, there, and everywhere, the ghosts aren’t just in the machine, they’re running it.

Foxy lady

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October 28, 2009

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A Hu-Li appears to be your run-of-the-mill lascivious 15-year-old prostitute in modern Russia. She does all the things professionals who cater to the discerning international pedophile do. What are those things? Well, she posts ads on the Internet that read:

"A FAIRY TALE CUM TRUE: Small breasts for big money. A little ginger kitten is waiting for a call from a well-to-do stranger. Classic sex and royal head, anal, petting, bondage, whipping (including the Russian knout), foot fetish, strap-on, sakura branch, lesbo, oral, anal stimulation, cunnilingus (including compulsory), role-swapping, two-way, gold and silver rain, fisting, piercing, catheter, copro, enema, gentle and heavy domination, Mistress and Slave girl services. Face control … Almost everything. Shag me and forget! If you can …

In other words, A Hu-Li flagellates the middle-aged intelligentsia who answer her siren’s call. She likes riding her bike, loves Nabokov, and is still a bit hung up about being a virgin. Pretty typical right?

How about this? A Hu Li is a 2,000-year-old, shape-shifting werefox from ancient China who uses her bushy tail to hypnotize men and absorb their life force. That grab ya? The title of Victor Pelevin’s latest is The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, the increasingly intriguing A-Hu Li is our narrator, and the book has little to do with anything I’ve just written. A Hu-Li is a member of a race of werefoxes who appear to be 15-year-old girls, when they are in fact neither. They cannot die; do not bathe; and never need to eat food, as long as they can feed on the sexual energy of the "naked apes" they have been doomed to interact with for seemingly all eternity. Their tails enable them to sap the energy of their prey while convincing them that they are fulfilling their greatest sexual fantasies. As such, they gravitate toward sex work, and have since time immemorial. Naturally, thousands of years doing the same thing as civilizations rise and fall can leave an immortal netherworld creature cynical and with a lot of time on her hands. Our narrator fills it by seeking enlightenment. Might as well.

Until she meets Alexander, that is, a Wagner-addicted werewolf who ranks high in the Russian Secret Service. What follows is one of the most hilarious and horrific courtships to come out of the former bloc. But guess what? The Sacred Book of the Werewolf isn’t about that, either.

Victor Pelevin may be a literary genius. He is definitely a tricky malcontent. He has written one of the most spiritually satisfying novels ever about wily werefoxes, interspecies sex, kleptocracy, and the joys of methamphetamines. In fewer than 400 pages, he manages touch on the finer points of sages from Nietzsche to Lao Tzu as A-Hu Li and Alexander seek the highest state of their kind … super werewolf. Sound silly? That’s because it is. It’s also pretentious, perverse, puerile, and exasperating. Yet none of that stops it from saving your sullied soul. Sticky fur and a dash of satori — what more could you ask for on Halloween … candy?

Fat lot of good

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October 28, 2009

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have a feeling this is not the best way to get a sympathetic response from you, but it’ a real problem for me and I like your advice, so I thought I might as well give it a try. Here goes.

My boyfriend and I have been together eight years. I can’t say I’m as cute now as I used to be, but I’m OK. "Brian," on the other hand, has gained weight every year due to a desk job and, I guess, just normal metabolism stuff. By now, he’s actually fat. And I just don’t feel attracted the way I used to. I still love him, but I’m really not feeling it in the sex department. Do I try to get him to lose weight, or just put up with a no-sex partnership (forever?), or try to find someone I do have the hots for? Help!

Love,

Size Matters

Dear Size:

Before we even consider getting into the hopelessness of pinning your future on weight loss — yours or anyone else’s — let’s talk about relationships at the seven- or eight-year mark. This is not, generally speaking, a high point. So common is the "seven-year itch" that sociobiologists have attempted to explain it, alleging that it takes seven years for a man-cub to achieve enough independence to survive without two parents regularly provisioning it. Thus, the hormonal glue that holds a couple together need last no longer than that. And it doesn’t. There are several obvious holes in this theory (it takes longer than seven years to conceive and rear a child to the age of seven; couples historically would have had more than one child, etc.) Plus, the most compelling recent research makes a strong argument against the nuclear family as the essential unit of protohuman and early human society. (See Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s Mothers And Others [Belknap, 2009], where she demonstrates, very persuasively, that it takes a village — and always has.)

But we don’t need sociobiology to convince us that relationships often beach themselves on the rocky shoals of not-quite-a-decade together. Six or seven or eight years out, the very last of the initial biochemical rush we call "falling in love" has finally dissipated. Real life is in ascendance. And real life is nowhere near as much fun. Six-seven-eight years is also enough time for individual priorities to deviate from the original, couple-led mandate, which was basically "be together as much as possible and have lots and lots of sex." Careers, families or origin, children yea or nay or present, all conspire to pull you apart unless you make all possible effort to cleave unto each other. Have you done enough cleaving?

You can blame the wad of adipose tissue that has attached itself to your beloved’s abdomen (and I’m not saying the wad does not bear some responsibility here), but I don’t think it’s the whole story. Are you sure you do?

Now: his fat. I don’t have to tell you that he has probably noticed it himself, correct? That your pointing it out is not going to come as some great revelation? So either he does not wish to "do anything" about it; has tried, and, like nearly everyone who attempts to diet off excess poundage, has succeeded only in making himself miserable and possibly fatter; or he will take on the project in his own good time. In any event, nagging him, shaming him, even attempting to inspire him ("We’ll go running together!") are all pretty much doomed to fail. Fail you, that is. He may lose the weight. He may not. But it is his fat, his body, his life, and, well, your problem. Sorry.

I was recently reading over at Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose (kateharding.net) and if you, that is the collective "you," not, you know, you, haven’t read her, you probably should. She and her co-bloggers have the sharpest and funniest take out there on the "obesity epidemic," misogyny, feminism, and fat. Kate also recently answered this question, and she isn’t even an advice columnist. She was just fed up with the way people who are advice columnists have historically bungled it.

Dear Not Attracted to Your Spouse Anymore (writes Kate):

Get over it or get a fucking divorce. And I truly mean you should consider both options seriously. If you believe it is actually possible for you to get over it — by which I mean, you find a way to reframe the way you look at your fat partner, find him attractive again, and go back to whatever you both agree is a normal sex life — then by all means, work on that (provided everything else in the marriage is good and worth saving, which it probably isn’t if you’re not even a little bit attracted to him anymore).

If, however, you’re so hung up on your partner’s weight that you can’t even conceive of being attracted to him anymore? Get a fucking divorce already. (Writes Kate, who is not an advice columnist.)

Hear hear, say I, who am.

Love,

Andrea

Newsom lacks authority to decide what’s legal, Campos says

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October 27, 2009

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Text and photos by Sarah Phelan

Campos moments after Board approves his legislation to give juvenile immigrants their day in court.

Sup. David Campos said today that Mayor Gavin Newsom lacks the authority to ignore the city’s newly amended sanctuary ordinance. And he rebuked the mayor for making it sound, in comments Newsom made to Fox News, as if being a suspect is the same thing as being a convicted criminal.

“I think it’s important for us to look at the facts before we generalize and make comments,” Campos said.

Campos’ comments came as a veto-proof majority of the Board approved the second reading of Campos proposal to give immigrant juveniles their day in court before handing them over to the feds.

Flanked by Ariana Gil-Nafarrate of Mujeres Unidas y Activas and Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus, Estella, an immigrant mother, recalls how ICE put a hold on her 15-year-old daughter after a fight in school.

Campos proposal changes a policy that Newsom ordered in June 2008, after city probation officials were apprehended in Texas, escorting Hondurans teens to their country of origin.

Campos agrees that the city should halt that practice, and that city officials should refer juvenile felons to ICE. But he disagrees with Newsom’s current practice, which has led to 150 kids being referred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) to ICE, without first having had the chance to establish their innocence.

Campos says he expects the city to change this policy, as stipulated under his amendment. He says Newsom has 10 days to veto his legislation, and the Board has 30 days to override it, after which the City must change its policy so juveniles are not reported to ICE until they are found guilty of a felony by a juvenile justice.

To illustrate his point about the limits of mayoral power, Campos referred to the California Supreme Court ruling that was triggered by Newsom’s 2004 announcement that he intended to start marrying same-sex couples.

“Even though we have a strong mayor system, the power of the mayor is not absolute,” Campos said. “That’s why we have the Board to enact laws that are reflective of the will of the people.”

If mayors were able to selectively ignore laws, Campos pointed out, “That would be depriving people affected by that law their due process.”

“A public official faithfully upholds the constitution by complying with the mandates of the legislature, leaving the courts the decision of whether the mandates are valid,” Campos said, referring to the state Supreme Court ruling.

“It’s a fallacy that elected officials can ignore a law enacted by the legislature,” Campos continued. “When this law is passed, when the mayor decides to veto it, when the Board decides to override it, we ask the Mayor to do his constitutional duty: let this law be implemented as the system requires it to be. We expect nothing less.”

“It’s been a long time coming,” Campos said, referring to the community’s battle to amend a unilateral policy decision that Newsom made 16 months ago. “This is a proud day for San Francisco, this is a victory for the community. This shows that San Francisco is committed to the notion that we are all human beings, that we are all treated equally.”

Asked about Newsom’s claims that the Campos amendment opens up the entire sanctuary ordinance to challenge, Campos said, “I think the biggest danger to the sanctuary policy was the mayor’s decision to release a confidential memo.”

Asked about Newsom’s claims that the Campos amendment opens up city workers to civil and criminal lawsuits, Campos said “I don’t think he can point to any instance where a city employee has been found liable for following sanctuary ordinance.”

Noting that the sanctuary ordinance just celebrated its 20th anniversary, Campos added, “We expect the mayor and every employee of the city to follow laws that have been duly enacted and If the Mayor does not enact it, then Board will look at its options, including a legal challenge.”

Campos words were followed by the tearful recollections of an immigrant single mother called Estella, who talked about how her 15-year old daughter had an ICE hold placed on her after she got into fight at school.

Following Estella’s public testimony, Abigail Trillin, a staff attorney with LEgal Services for Children, said she like someone from the Mayor’s Office to publicy debate the sanctuary issue with Campos.

“If the mayor’s position is that a minor, who has not been found guilty, needs to be reported to immigration, let’s talk about that,” Trillin said. ” But let’s not put fake federal laws in the way. There is no federal law that says juveniles that are arrested on a felony must be reported. That’s a smoke and mirror thing.”

Pointing to recent statements from law enforcement chiefs in Los Angeles and Sacramento who are supportive of sanctuary laws, Trilliin added, “Anyone who knows about juvenile justice and public safety knows that reporting people who haven’t been found guilty destroys community trust.”

Gavin Newsom, lawbreaker

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October 27, 2009

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EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom has set off something of a crisis in San Francisco government by insisting that he will defy the city law that seeks to protect immigrant youth from deportation. While Newsom claims that the sanctuary policy approved 8-2 by the supervisors last week violates federal law (something the same-sex marriage advocate hasn’t worried so much about in the past), this is really a matter of politics. Newsom, candidate for governor of California, doesn’t want to seem soft on crime — so Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, is siding with the federal immigration authorities.

He’s also putting out a misleading message about the law.

The sanctuary legislation, by Sup. David Campos, is an attempt to deal with a very real — and serious — problem. Under the city’s current policy, any time a young person is arrested and the juvenile probation department thinks he or she might lack documentation, the officers involved contact Immigration Control and Enforcement. That means kids who have lived in this country for years and have no ties to their birth nation can be deported — just on the basis of an arrest that could turn out to be groundless.

Campos’ law establishes a city policy that prohibits local law enforcement from reporting juvenile offenders to ICE until they’ve been convicted of a crime. That’s just basic due process.

Newsom insists (and the city attorney’s office agrees) that no city employee can be penalized for contacting ICE. But that’s not the point of this law. Right now, juvenile officers are required to call ICE when they have someone in custody who may be undocumented. There’s no federal law saying this has to happen. And it’s perfectly legal — and appropriate — to lift that mandate and to say, in effect, that no city employee should be penalized for declining to turn a kid over to the feds.

At this point, the city attorney hasn’t argued that the Campos bill is illegal or unenforceable, and no judge has overturned it. When, as expected, the supervisors override Newsom’s certain veto, the bill will become city law — presumptively valid until a court rules otherwise. And Newsom has a legal obligation as mayor to abide by and enforce that law.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera is in something of a bind here since he has to represent both the mayor and the supervisors. But he needs to make clear, in public, that while he warned of possible legal implications of the Campos legislation, right now there is nothing preventing the law from taking effect — and that the mayor, like any other city official, is required to follow it.

The supervisors need to keep pushing the issue, too. And they need to be prepared to go to court to seek a writ mandating that the city’s chief executive follow his sworn oath and faithfully execute the law.

None of this needs to happen. Newsom could have worked with Campos on the legislation. Instead, the mayor continues to defy the board and act like the sort of imperial executive who is utterly unqualified for any higher office. For the sake of innocent kids facing the horrors of deportation, San Francisco’s reputation as a sanctuary city and Newsom’s own political future, he needs to back off and agree to abide by the city’s own laws.

alt.sex.column: Fat lot of good

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October 27, 2009

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By Andrea Nemerson. Email your questions to andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com. Read more of Andrea’s columns here.

Dear Andrea:

I have a feeling this is not the best way to get a sympathetic response from you, but it’ a real problem for me and I like your advice, so I thought I might as well give it a try. Here goes.

My boyfriend and I have been together eight years. I can’t say I’m as cute now as I used to be, but I’m OK. "Brian," on the other hand, has gained weight every year due to a desk job and, I guess, just normal metabolism stuff. By now, he’s actually fat. And I just don’t feel attracted the way I used to. I still love him, but I’m really not feeling it in the sex department. Do I try to get him to lose weight, or just put up with a no-sex partnership (forever?), or try to find someone I do have the hots for? Help!

Love,

Size Matters

Dear Size:

Before we even consider getting into the hopelessness of pinning your future on weight loss — yours or anyone else’s — let’s talk about relationships at the seven- or eight-year mark. This is not, generally speaking, a high point.

Editorial: Gavin Newsom, lawbreaker

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October 27, 2009

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Gavin Newsom, candidate for governor of California, doesn’t want to seem soft on crime, so Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, is siding with the federal authorities on deporting immigrant youth

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom has set off something of a crisis in San Francisco government by insisting that he will defy the city law that seeks to protect immigrant youth from deportation. While Newsom claims that the sanctuary policy approved 8-2 by the supervisors last week violates federal law (something the same-sex marriage advocate hasn’t worried so much about in the past), this is really a matter of politics. Newsom, candidate for governor of California, doesn’t want to seem soft on crime — so Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, is siding with the federal immigration authorities.

He’s also putting out a misleading message about the law.

Power Exchange opening tonight

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October 23, 2009

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By Megan Gordon

After its long permit battle with the city, the Power Exchange sex club will open for business tonight at 9 p.m. Owner Mike Powers credits the work of Jeremy Paul at the Planning Department for expediting the paperwork snafus, and is confident there will be no further hang-ups or permit issues.

“We’re good now. We’re where we need to be. There will be no more having to go back and submit paperwork. We still have things to do with the Fire Department, but we’re cleared for 200 people, so unless we decide we want well over that number in there, we’re set,” Powers said.

Powers complied with all of the inspections, requested renovations, and refiling of paperwork, and will likely be rewarded with a very busy night tonight. With each passing weekend, loyal patrons have wondered when they’ll get to play once again. Now they’ll have a reason to look forward to the weekends once again.

Does Newsom protest too much?

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October 22, 2009

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By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom is strongly denying the “swirling rumors” that he might drop out of the race for governor and settle for second fiddle. He kind of has to do that if he wants to keep raising money — although all these reports, some of which come from his own shop, aren’t going to help him. And the more vocally he insists he will never drop out of the governor’s race, the more embarrassing it will be if he gets to the point where he has no choice. I don’t think he’ll stay in the race to the bitter end if the polls and the money show him getting clobbered; nothing worse for a political career than a 20-point loss in a primary.

I agree that the polls at this point are pretty meaningless — it’s mostly about name ID and the few issues Newsom is known for, like same-sex marriage (which plays badly with older voters, who are the ones most likely to be contacted by pollsters. Newsom’s voters all use cell phones.) What’s more significant is that our mayor is having trouble raising money — and sadly, in California, it take tens of millions to reach voters who might not know much about you (and need to change their opinions pretty radically).

So I can understand why some Newsom allies think he should just cut a deal with Jerry Brown and run for lieutenant gov. It makes a certain amount of political sense: Newsom is young, and the Lt. job is perfect for him — it’s all about holding press conferences and cutting ribbons. Four years of that, plenty of time to make statewide connections, build a donor base and create the image he wants, and he’ll be ready to go for the top job — which might very well be open. Brown is 71; by the time he’d be up for re-election he’d be 76, and looking at serving in one of the toughest jobs in American into his 80s. One term might be all he’s up for.

And besides, not to be ghoulish or anything, but whenever you take the Number Two spot behind a septuagenarian office holder, the possibility that you’ll wind up Number One is always on your mind. Brown is pretty damn healthy; all that meditation and stuff is good for you. But you never know.

The problem is that someone else will want the LT job, and if he waits too long, it looks like he’s taking the consolation prize and doesn’t really care about it, and all these quotes will come back to haunt him. Imagine how much it would suck to agree to be the understudy — and then get beat for that job.

Mayor to ignore San Francisco’s wishes

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October 21, 2009

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Text and images by Sarah Phelan

Sups. David Campos, Ross Mirkarimi and Bevan Dufty shortly after they joined Board President David Chiu and Sups. John Avalos, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell and Chris Daly in amending the city’s sanctuary policy. Dufty has said that Mayor Newsom threatened not to endorse Dufty’s bid for mayor, if he supported the amendment.

Yesterday’s celebration of the Board’s veto-proof amendment of the sanctuary ordinance felt similar to the joy that surrounded the city’s decision to start marrying same-sex couples. Only this time, instead of leading the civil rights charge, Mayor Gavin Newsom appears to be opposing it, citing fears that the city could be sued.

Following the supervisors’ vote, supporters of the Campos amendment poured out of the Board Chambers, chanting “Yes we can,” in Spanish and English, and into the second-floor rotunda, joined by Sup. David Campos.

Campos and immigration attorney Francisco Ugarte celebrate the Board’s historic Oct. 20 vote.

But even as Campos talked to the crowd about the importance of fighting for civil rights and against the slippery slope of a two-tiered system of justice, mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard appeared to be belittling the work of Campos and numerous civil and immigration rights experts, while vowing to ignore the Board’s amendment.

“The Campos bill isn’t worth the paper it’s written on—it’s unenforceable and he knows that,” Ballard told the Chron.
‘We are not going to put our law enforcement officers in legal jeopardy just because the Board of Supervisors wants to make a statement.”

Ana Perez the director of CARECEN SF, shares her thoughts on the Board’s vote with the media.

But can Newsom selectively ignore laws that have been passed by a veto-proof majority of the Board, and have been vetted as being legally tenable by the City Attorney?

“I don’t know,” Campos told the Guardian. ” I’m still trying to figure out whether the mayor can do that. We’re going into uncharted legal territory.”

A crowd of supporters, including civil rights experts, immigration attorneys and community leaders, gathered in the rotunda to celebrate, even as the Mayor’s Office announced it intends to ignore the Board’s sanctuary amendment.

Hot sex events this week: Oct 21-27

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October 21, 2009

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Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

Missing Persons are among the impressive number of bands, live acts, and special appearances at Saturday’s Exotic Erotic Ball.

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>> Underwear Party
Every Thursday this month, Powerhouse hosts this panty-themed event, featuring a wet underwear contest, drink specials, and a chance to exchange your old underwear for a free drink.

Thurs/22, 10pm
$5
Powerhouse
1347 Folsom, SF
(415) 52-8689
www.powerhouse-sf.com

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>> Exotic Erotic Expo and Ball
The two-day Expo celebrating flesh, fetish, and fantasy has lots of sexy exhibits, great food, interesting lectures, and previews of Saturday night’s Ball, which is part Mardi Gras, part burlesque, and part rock concert. Live acts include Impotent Sea Snakes, Coolio, Missing Persons, Minikiss, Unauthorized Rolling Stones, and many more.

Fri/23-Sat/24
$20-$185
Cow Palace, SF
www.exoticeroticexpo.com

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>> Hubba Hubba Revue: Oktoberfest!
SF’s favorite burlesque show brings a bit of Deutschland to DNA with this tassel-twirlin’, hip-shakin’ Bavarian party. Featuring Vienna La Rouge, SF Boylesque, Wiggy Darlington, The Baron Meatball von Tease, and more Bay Area favorites.

Fri/23, 9pm
$10
DNA Lounge
375 11th St, SF
www.dnalounge.com

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Lars loves lars

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October 20, 2009

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Will history judge Lars von Trier as the genius he’s sure he is? Or as a humorless, slightly less cartoonish Ken Russell, whipping images and actors into contrived frenzies for ersatz art’s sake? You’re probably already on one side of the fence or the other. Notorious Cannes shocker Antichrist will only further divide the yeas and nays.

Seriously: why does von Trier’s particular misanthropy and misogyny make him an auteur with something to say about the human condition (as opposed to a neurotic whose particular hangups — fear of sex, for starters — might better work out in therapy)?

His endlessly violated, saintly, often pea-brained victims — previously played by Björk, Nicole Kidman, and Emily Watson — embody phony innocence to hammer home indictments of horrible humanity dependent on cartooned melodrama. Dogme 95’s "rules" briefly enlivened international cinema before becoming a tiresome fad. Less liberating than puritanical, their restrictions painted all other cinema decadent.

Antichrist does offers perhaps the most formally beautiful filmmaking von Trier’s bothered with since 1984’s The Element of Crime. Grieving parents Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe retreat to a forest primeval enabling widescreen images of poetic succulence. Yet that beauty only underlines Antichrist‘s garishness. One film festival viewer purportedly barfed onto the next row — and you too might recoil, particularly if unaccustomed to gore levels routinely surpassed by mainstream horror.

Does Antichrist earn such viewer punishment by dint of moral, character, narrative, or artistic heft? Like slurp it does. What could be more reactionary than an opening in which our protagonists "cause" their angelic babe’s accidental death by obliviously enjoying one another? Shot in "lyrical" slow-mo black and white, it’s a shampoo commercial hard-selling Victorian sexual guilt.

Later, Dafoe’s "He" clings to hollow psychiatric reason as only an embittered perennial couch case might imagine. Gainsbourg’s "She" morphs from maternal mourner to castrating shrike as only one terrified of femininity could contrive. They’re tortured by psychological and/or supernatural events existing solely to bend game actors toward a tyrant artiste’s whims.

There’s no devil here — just von Trier’s punitive narcissism. His fuzzed point is finally just old-school, arted-up revulsion toward that gender that both engulfs and births the male member. Antichrist offers the punitive sound of Lars’ one hand, slapping.

ANTICHRIST opens Fri/23 in San Francisco.

The zone

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October 20, 2009

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I read an article (I think it was in Redbook) that listed six little known erogenous zones or "hot zones." One was big toes, which they said has a direct connection to the genitals. And one was tip of the nose, which they said it is an erotic area because people get stuffy noses sometimes when they have sex. I don’t know. Is there really such a thing as an erogenous zone? What would it take for something to be a real erogenous zone? And is it worth learning these to turn my husband on? We have a good sex life, but sometimes it does seem like we just touch the same places the same way all the time.

Love,

Looking

Dear Look:

Well, don’t do that. You don’t need a list of unlikely or downright unerotic body parts (I have allergies; don’t touch it if you don’t want to get sneezed on) to inspire you to branch out a little. In the event that you do need such a list, here are some nongenital, sexually responsive spots for your perusal: nipples, necks, ears, armpits, lower backs, inner thighs, backs of knees, feet. Some of these are "erogenous" simply because they are adjacent to more traditionally eroticized areas (by the time someone’s got to your inner thigh, it’s a pretty good bet he’s going to keep going) and/or because the skin there is thin and well-supplied with both blood vessels and nerve-endings. Some do seem to have their own independent set of erotic responses (fingers, toes). And while we’re at the toes, some body parts seem to have sex lives all their own, quite divorced from any nearby genitals. Feet have their own admirers and magazines and special party nights at the sex clubs and more than 4.7 million Google hits. They don’t need a good address near the genitals to throw a party.

I think I found your article. It’s by Judy Dutton, who is, not at all coincidentally, the author of the book Redbook’s 500 Sex Tips. I guess I had Redbook filed as a "ladies’" magazine, but on closer examination, it’s more Cosmo (Dutton was an editor there too) than McCall’s. I found more "Six filthy things men want you to know" and "16 essential sex techniques you’ve never heard of" and "the top 26 mistakes you’re making in bed" articles from Redbook than I could count, though it appears the Redbook editors would have no trouble totting them up. There was even a "Top 40: excerpts from our steamiest sex articles." And in addition to what I think was our article, there were six other Redbook offerings on erogenous or "hot zones."

The Hot Zone was one of the books I read a few years ago while on an infectious diseases kick, after I had exhausted my household’s considerable stock of bubonic plague titles. So I don’t think I’m really comfortable seeing the phrase applied to, say, labia. "Erogenous zones" itself is a phrase so redolent of the ’70s, I can’t help imagining anyone who talks about them as a mustachioed gent in a denim and corduroy patchwork bell-bottomed suit. And that is not in the "hot zone," not for me. So, not knowing what to call them, here are some of the, uh, places in the article.

Big toe We’ve already established that toes and feet are both sexually responsive (to varying degrees) and the object of enormous sexual interest, but we have not established that there is any merit whatsoever to "reflexology." So there is no merit to the claim made here that stimuutf8g them "activates reflexology pathways connected to your genitals." Nor do we know that pressing on the soles of the feet can "cause energy to ‘bubble up’ the legs to the genitals." I’m not saying it can’t, mind you. Just that there’s no particular reason for it to do so.

Nose Swelling of the mucus membranes in there is a fairly common side effect of both Viagra and regular old sexual arousal. It just doesn’t particularly follow that nasal play adds to sexual arousal. And I wouldn’t pursue it during flu season.

Navel "Your navel and your clitoris have a lot in common. In the womb, these two regions grow from the same tissue, linking them neurologically in adulthood." I have no idea what this person is talking about. Also, lots of people cannot bear to have their navels prodded. It’s just too … internal. "It feels like you’re touching my soul," an old boyfriend once said. "And I don’t want you to."

We don’t really have to go on, do we? I have nothing against Redbook, but these list-type articles are a perennial favorite of lazy magazine editors, and writers gamely do their best to produce them, month after month after month. I once had a job writing lists just a tiny bit like this one for an only-just-passably-reputable men’s magazine, and you know how I managed it?

I made them up.

Love,

Andrea

(If you’re interested: www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/advice/surprise-sexy-spots-ll)

See Andrea’s other column at carnalnation.com.

alt.sex.column: The zone

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October 20, 2009

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By Andrea Nemerson: andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com. Read more of Andrea’s columns here.

Dear Andrea:

I read an article (I think it was in Redbook) that listed six little known erogenous zones or "hot zones." One was big toes, which they said has a direct connection to the genitals. And one was tip of the nose, which they said it is an erotic area because people get stuffy noses sometimes when they have sex. I don’t know. Is there really such a thing as an erogenous zone? What would it take for something to be a real erogenous zone? And is it worth learning these to turn my husband on? We have a good sex life, but sometimes it does seem like we just touch the same places the same way all the time.

Love,

Looking

Dear Look:

Well, don’t do that. You don’t need a list of unlikely or downright unerotic body parts (I have allergies; don’t touch it if you don’t want to get sneezed on) to inspire you to branch out a little. In the event that you do need such a list, here are some nongenital, sexually responsive spots for your perusal: nipples, necks, ears, armpits, lower backs, inner thighs, backs of knees, feet. Some of these are "erogenous" simply because they are adjacent to more traditionally eroticized areas (by the time someone’s got to your inner thigh, it’s a pretty good bet he’s going to keep going) and/or because the skin there is thin and well-supplied with both blood vessels and nerve-endings. Some do seem to have their own independent set of erotic responses (fingers, toes). And while we’re at the toes, some body parts seem to have sex lives all their own, quite divorced from any nearby genitals. Feet have their own admirers and magazines and special party nights at the sex clubs and more than 4.7 million Google hits. They don’t need a good address near the genitals to throw a party.

I think I found your article. It’s by Judy Dutton, who is, not at all coincidentally, the author of the book Redbook’s 500 Sex Tips. I guess I had Redbook filed as a "ladies’" magazine, but on closer examination, it’s more Cosmo (Dutton was an editor there too) than McCall’s. I found more "Six filthy things men want you to know" and "16 essential sex techniques you’ve never heard of" and "the top 26 mistakes you’re making in bed" articles from Redbook than I could count, though it appears the Redbook editors would have no trouble totting them up. There was even a "Top 40: excerpts from our steamiest sex articles." And in addition to what I think was our article, there were six other Redbook offerings on erogenous or "hot zones."

Power Exchange plugs along

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October 15, 2009

1

By Megan Gordon

The situation at Power Exchange, the San Francisco venerable sex club that has been battling with city officials and their neighbors, hasn’t changed much since we last wrote about it. “We’re bogged down in the mire of bureaucratic red tape. No one’s doing anything but a professional job, but it’s taking forever,” owner Michael Powers said.

If anything, the past few weeks have brought about changes and developments that seem to be slowing things down even further. “Planning just needs to send a letter to the Fire Department saying we’re not prohibited from being in there. The Fire Department is ready to put it in our hands,” Powers said. But Lawrence Badiner, planning inspector who was dealing with the situation, recently handed over responsibilities to fellow inspector Dario Jones. At press time, Jones was not available for comment.

In addition to a shuffling of responsibility within the Planning Department, on Oct. 13, Powers filed for a new building permit that would change the assembly definition from a nightclub to a social hall. When asked why he did this or what it will mean for the business, Powers replied, “The permit is based on Badiner’s interpretation—it’s the closest thing they have to match what our business really is. It’s just a matter of interpretation of language: a nightclub implies there’s activity like amplified music or organized entertainment. We don’t fit under all of those code sections. The idea with a social club is we’re no different than, say, an Elks Lodge.”

Hot sex events this week: Oct 14-20

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October 14, 2009

0

Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

Artist Laurel Lee hosts a fine art class geared towards women, lesbians, and female-identified people on Saturday.

————-

>> CSC Film Night: Happy Endings?
CSC presents an intriguing exploration of the Asian massage parlor industry in Providence, Rhode Island.

Wed/14, 7:30pm
$5-$15
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.sexandculture.org

————-

>> Barbary Coast Burlesque
Wear a costume, wine a prize, and enjoy drink specials while Virginia Suicide hosts this monthly show, featuring Mae Western, Cupcake, Kitty Von Quimm, Balla Fire, and more.

Wed/14, 8pm
$5
Annie’s Social Club
917 Folsom, SF
www.anniessocialclub.com

————-

>> Sensual Chemistry
Beyond Education and The Pleasure Course present this installment of BEing Talks, meant to help you realize your deepest desires.

Thurs/15, 6:45pm
$15
Call for location
(415) 308-9580
www.pleasurecourse.com

————-

Perv 101

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October 13, 2009

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I guess this is pretty common, but it’s not something I have any experience with, so please bear with me.

I have a lot of fantasies about being tied up, humiliated, etc. and often think about them while my girlfriend and I are having sex. I’m sure you know where this is going, but I’d really like it if she did the tying up and humiliating — but I have no idea how I would bring it up or how to talk to her about it. It’s not like I even know that much about it myself. Should I just forget about it and stick with fantasies? Is it just a stupid idea?

Love,

Unsure

Dear Sure:

I’ll tell you one thing: what with all the "I’m sure you already know" and "I don’t know much about it myself" and "Do you think I’m stupid even to think about this? How stupid? Really stupid?", you are showing a certain natural talent for abjection that I’m sure will serve you well in your new career as a bottom.

This is a perennial topic, and in a way it has gotten easier to answer over time — when I started the column, I had to recommend books (can you imagine?) and about three Web sites I happened to know about (and you’d never find without me because Google didn’t exist). In another way, though, it’s, well, not harder, but more disheartening. A girlfriend who’d never heard anything about bondage and discipline except the phrases "whips and chains" and a few grim episodes of Law and Order in 1997 could conceivably just need a little education and just might jump right in as soon as she knew what you were talking about. A girlfriend who says "I don’t know what you’re talking about, and also, ew!" in 2009 is probably not going to be running down to the Dungeon Hole Gifte Shoppe for a black latex body-bag and a "Gates of Hell" penis cage in your size anytime soon.

It’s possible, of course, that at the very moments you’ve been imagining her stuffing her underpants in your mouth and riding you around the room like Her Little Pony, she’s been thinking "Hmm … underpants, pony, yee-haw." But I don’t think so, and neither do you. She’s probably never given any of this a moment’s thought. But you’ll never know if you don’t try. With a little finesse, s’il vous plait. You don’t want to just suddenly drop to the floor in front of her and go on about how you’re not fit to be trod upon by her rankest gym-shoe and so on — at least, not to start. She’ll think you’ve developed one of those conditions on House that aren’t a brain tumor but make a normal person suddenly say weird stuff. Worse, she’ll think you’ve done something unspeakably shitty, like sleep with her sister.

Neither do you want to run down to Ye Hole yourself and come back with a bunch of expensive, highly specified gear that will only mystify her (and probably you, since you are a mere neophyte yourself).

No, what you want to do is get a little playful while things are already heated up (things do heat up between you two, right?) and give her a chance to see that there’s more out there than the nice, gentle, mutual, equitable sexzzzzzzzz … I’m sorry, I must have drifted off for a moment there … sex you’ve been having. See if you can get her up on top of you, then tell her that you love feeling like maybe she wouldn’t let you back up again. Fun! And see if she thinks that’s ridiculous or at least faintly intriguing.

If the latter, ask her to hold your wrists down. At least you’ll have something to talk about later: "Gee, it sure was fun feeling powerless for a minute there, heh." How about her? Has she ever thought about that kind of thing? Maybe she’d think it’d be fun to boss you around a little, sometime? Don’t get your heart set on the humiliation angle, though — it’s a much harder sell. Anyone can do a little physical control, but far fewer are comfortable with saying a lot of mean stuff to someone they’re used to calling "snugglepuss."

Since we’re now years past having to recommend books to people with outré (or formerly outré) interests, I ought to send you and the girlfriend off to the Web for some Perv 101-level education, but I think, at least to start out, I won’t. Books are safe, they are familiar, and they don’t flash animated gifs of hog-tied ladies getting cattle-prodded. Books never have loud, unexpected sound-files attached to them. Try something like Jay Wiseman’s S/M 101: A Realistic Introduction, or the topping and bottoming guides by Easton and Liszt, which are illustrated with harmless line drawings, like The Joy Of Sex but with less armpit hair. Anyone who is scared of books like these is not going to want to whip you anyway.

Love,

Andrea

See Andrea’s other column at carnalnation.com.

Film listings

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October 13, 2009

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, Matt Sussman, and Laura Swanbeck. The film intern is Fernando F. Croce. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

SF DOCFEST

The eighth annual San Francisco Documentary Film Festival runs Oct 16-29 at the Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF. Tickets ($11) are available by visiting www.sfindie.com. For commentary, see "Is the Truth Out There?" All times p.m.

FRI/16

The Entrepreneur 7. Shooting Robert King 7. Drums Inside Your Chest 9:15. Houston We Have a Problem 9:15.

SAT/17

Drums Inside Your Chest 2:30. Waiting for Hockney 2:30. Between the Folds 4:45. Finding Face 4:45. HomeGrown 7. The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia 7. Dust and Illusions 9:15. The Earth Is Young 9:15.

SUN/18

"Bay Area Shorts" (shorts program) 2:30. We Said, No Crying 2:30. Another Planet 4:45. I Need That Record: The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store 4:45. Cat Ladies 7. Off and Running 7. Vampiro 9:15. What’s the Matter with Kansas? 9:15.

MON/19

Between the Folds 7. We Said, No Crying 7. October Country 9:15. Waiting for Hockney 9:15.

TUES/20

The Earth Is Young 7. I Need That Record: The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store 7. Another Planet 9:15. The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia 9:15.

MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL

The 32nd Mill Valley Film Festival runs through Sun/18 at the Century Cinema, 41 Tamal Vista, Corte Madera; CinéArts@Sequoia, 25 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; 142 Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; and Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael. Tickets (most shows $12.50) available by calling 1-877-874-MVFF or visiting www.mvff.org. All times p.m. unless otherwise noted.

WED/14

Rafael The Horse Boy 4:30. "5@5: America Is Not the World" (shorts program) 5. "Spotlight on Jason Reitman:" Up in the Air 6:30. White Wedding 7. Linoleum 7:15. Tapped 9. The Eclipse 9:15. Up in the Air 9:40.

Sequoia The Swimsuit Issue 4:15. "5@5: Oscillate Wildly" (shorts program) 5. Trimpin: The Sound of Invention 6:30. Surrogate 7. Elevator 8:45. Hellsinki 9.

Throck "Insight: The Cassel Touch" (interview and discussion) 8.

THURS/15

Rafael The Girl on the Train 4. Reach for Me 4:30. "5@5: The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get" (shorts program) 5. Icons Among Us: jazz in the present tense 6:30. Meredith Monk: Inner Voice 6:45. "Tribute to Woody Harrelson:" The Messenger 7. Hipsters 9. Barking Water 9:15.

Sequoia "5@5: Sister I’m a Poet" (shorts program) 5. Jim Thorpe: The World’s Greatest Athlete 5:15. Apron Strings 6:45. The Missing Person 7:30. This Is the Husband I Want! 9. Winnebago Man 9:30.

Throck Storm 7.

FRI/16

Rafael Sweet Rush 4. "5@5: The Edges Are No Longer Parallel" (shorts program) 5. Stalin Thought of You 6. "Tribute to Anna Karina:" Victoria 6:30. Zombie Girl: The Movie 7. Jermal 8:15. Trimpin: The Sound of Invention 9. Red Cliff 9:30.

Sequoia Shylock 4. Shameless 5. Tenderloin 6:45. A Thousand Suns and Mustang: Journey of Transformation 7. One Crazy Ride 8:45. Happy Tears 9:15.

Throck Troupers: 50 Years of the San Francisco Mime Troupe 7:30.

SAT/17

Rafael [Blank.] 11am. A Thousand Suns and Mustang: Journey of Transformation noon. Ricky Rapper 1. The Girl on the Train 1:45. Hellsinki 2. Oh My God 3. The Strength of Water 4:15. Awakening from Sorrow 4:45. The Missing Person 5:30. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg 6:45. The Swimsuit Issue 6:45. Surrogate 7:45. Tenderloin 9. Hipsters 9:15.

Sequoia The Letter for the King 10:30am. Eat the Sun noon. White Wedding 1:30. Miracle in a Box: A Piano Reborn 2:30. Dark and Stormy Night 3:45. Mine 5. A Year Ago in Winter 6:15. Reach for Me 7:15. "Hi De Ho Show" (shorts and music) 9:15. Winnebago Man 9:45.

Throck "New Movie Labs: Distribution of Specialty Film" (seminar) 12:30. Project Happiness 3. "5@5: The Edges Are No Longer Parallel" (shorts program) 5. "Cinemasports" (shorts program of films made in one day) 7:30.

SUN/18

Rafael Stella and the Star of the Orient noon. This Is the Husband I Want! noon. Mine 12:30. Apron Strings 2:30. Soundtrack for a Revolution 2:45. One Crazy Ride 3. Project Happiness 5. The Young Victoria 5:15. Race to Nowhere 5:45. Skin 7:30. Bomber 7:45.

Sequoia The Ten Lives of Titanic the Cat 12:30. Meredith Monk: Inner Voice 1. Oh My God 2:30. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg 3:15. Looking for Eric 5:15. The Strength of Water 5:45.

Throck "New Movies Lab: Active Cinema" 12:30. "A Sweeter Music: Live Concert with Sarah Cahill and John Sanborn" 3:30.

OPENING

Birdwatchers War-painted natives don bows and arrows and watch from the Amazon riverbank as a boat of tourists passes by. Away from white eyes, they slip back into their modern clothes and are paid by the tour guide for a job well done. Had it sustained the evocative wryness of its opening scene throughout its running time, Marco Bechi’s film would have been more than a frequently striking culture-clash tract. As it is, there’s much to admire in this Brazil-set account of a disbanded Guarani-Kaiowà tribe struggling to hang on to their expiring heritage, from its clear-eyed view of the lingering human toll of colonialism to its uncondescending portrait of indigenous mysticism. Unfortunately, Bechi’s penchant for underlined contrasts and clumsy staging often threaten to sabotage his evocative mix of ethnography, satire, and social critique. While far from being as complacent as the titular sightseers, in the end the film is similarly content to merely skim over an ongoing cultural genocide. (1:40) Sundance Kabuki. (Croce)

*An Education See "Culture Class." (1:35) Albany, Embarcadero.

The Horse Boy Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff are a Texas couple struggling to raise their five-year-old autistic son Rowan. When they discover that the boy’s tantrums are soothed by contact with horses, they set out on a journey to Mongolia, where horseback riding is the preferred mode of traveling across the steppe and sacred shamans hold the promise of healing. Michael Orion Scott’s documentary is many things — lecture on autism, home video collage, family therapy session, and exotic travelogue. Above all, unfortunately, it’s a star vehicle for Isaacson, whose affecting concern for his son is constantly eclipsed by his screen-hogging concern for his own paternal image (more than once he declares that he’s a better father thanks to Rowan’s condition). The contradiction brings to mind doomed activist Timothy Treadwell in Grizzly Man (2005), and indeed the film could have used some of Werner Herzog’s inquisitive touch, if only to question the artistic merits of showing your son going "poopie." Twice. (1:33) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Croce)

Law Abiding Citizen "Spike Lee’s Inside Man (2006) as re-imagined by the Saw franchise folks" apparently sounded like a sweet pitch to someone, because here we are, stuck with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler playing bloody and increasingly ludicrous cat-and-mouse games. Foxx stars as a slick Philadelphia prosecutor whose deal-cutting careerist ways go easy on the scummy criminals responsible for murdering the wife and daughter of a local inventor (Butler). Cut to a decade later, and the doleful widower has become a vengeful mastermind with a yen for Hannibal Lecter-like skills, gruesome contraptions, and lines like "Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten." Butler metes out punishment to his family’s killers as well as to the bureocratic minions who let them off the hook. But the talk of moral consequences is less a critique of a faulty judicial system than mere white noise, vainly used by director F. Gary Gray and writer Kurt Wimmer in hopes of classing up a grinding exploitation drama. (1:48) Presidio. (Croce)

*More Than a Game In the late 1990s, armed with a camera and a certain amount of tenacity, Kristopher Belman set out to capture the glory that was regularly manifesting itself on a certain Akron, Ohio basketball court. The main reason: a future superstar named LeBron James. But James’ remarkable teenage career (at least until the age of 18, when the St. Vincent-St. Mary High School grad became the number one NBA draft pick) wasn’t completely a solo act; his core group of friends, the team’s starting line-up, was so tight they were called "the Fab Five." Despite Belman’s determination to equally divide the spotlight, James was clearly a star then as he is now, slam-dunking on hapless opponents even as he grappled with his burgeoning celebrity status. I’ll never tire of the tale of how James raised eyebrows when he started driving a brand-new Hummer — only to quash whispers of misconduct when it was revealed that his mother, Gloria, was able to secure a loan for the gift based solely on the understanding (shared by all) that her son’s skills would make him a zillionaire before his next birthday. (1:45) (Eddy)

New York, I Love You A variety of filmmakers (including Fatih Akin, Shekhar Kapur, Mira Nair, and Brett Ratner) directed segments of this stateside answer to 2006’s Paris, je t’aime. (1:43) Bridge, Shattuck.

The Providence Effect Located in Chicago’s gang-infested West side, the illustrious Providence St. Mel School rises above its surroundings like a flower in a swamp. Or at least it does in Rollin Binzer’s documentary, where analysis of the institution’s great achievements at times edges into a virtual pamphlet for enrollment. Focusing mainly on affable school president Paul J. Adams III, a veteran of the civil rights movement whose "impossible dream" made Providence possible, the film chronicles the daily activities of teachers and students vying for success in the face of poverty and crime. Given the school’s notoriously unwholesome environment, it’s a bit disappointing that the film chooses to exclusively follow the trajectory of model pupils, trading grittier tales of struggle in favor of a smoother ride of feel-god buzzwords and uplifting anecdotes. The documentary isn’t free of scholarly platitudes straight out of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), but, in times when teachers get as much respect as Rodney Dangerfield, its celebration of the importance of education is valuable. (1:32) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Croce)

The Stepfather Dylan Walsh: as scary as Terry O’Quinn? Discuss. (1:41)

Where the Wild Things Are Spike Jonze directs a live-action version of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s tale. (1:48) Four Star, Grand Lake, Marina.

ONGOING

*Bright Star Is beauty truth; truth, beauty? John Keats, the poet famed for such works as "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and Jane Campion, the filmmaker intent on encapsuutf8g the last romance of the archetypal Romantic, would have undoubtedly bonded over a love of sensual details — and the way a certain vellum-like light can transport its viewer into elevated reverie. In truth, Campion doesn’t quite achieve the level of Keats’ verse with this somber glimpse at the tubercular writer and his final love, neighbor Fanny Brawne. But she does bottle some of their pale beauty. Less-educated than the already respected young scribe, Brawne nonetheless may have been his equal in imagination as a seamstress, judging from the petal-bonneted, ruffled-collar ensembles Campion outfits her in. As portrayed by the soulful-eyed Abbie Cornish, the otherwise-enigmatic, plucky Brawne is the singularly bright blossom ready to be wrapped in a poet’s adoration, worthy of rhapsody by Ben Whishaw’s shaggily, shabbily puppy-dog Keats, who snatches the preternaturally serene focus of a fine mind cut short by illness, with the gravitational pull of a serious indie-rock hottie. The two are drawn to each other like the butterflies flittering in Brawne’s bedroom/farm, one of the most memorable scenes in the dark yet sweetly glimmering Bright Star. Bathing her scenes in lengthy silence, shot through with far-from-flowery dialogue, Campion is at odds with this love story, so unlike her joyful 1990 ode to author Janet Frame, An Angel at My Table (Kerry Fox appears here, too, as Fanny’s mother): the filmmaker refuses to overplay it, sidestepping Austenian sprightliness. Instead she embraces the dark differences, the negative inevitability, of this death-steeped coupling, welcoming the odd glance at the era’s intellectual life, the interplay of light and shadow. (1:59) Empire, Piedmont, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Capitalism: A Love Story Gun control. The Bush administration. Healthcare. Over the past decade, Michael Moore has tackled some of the most contentious issues with his trademark blend of humor and liberal rage. In Capitalism: A Love Story, he sets his sights on an even grander subject. Where to begin when you’re talking about an economic system that has defined this nation? Predictably, Moore’s focus is on all those times capitalism has failed. By this point, his tactics are familiar, but he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. As with Sicko (2007), Moore proves he can restrain himself — he gets plenty of screen time, but he spends more time than ever behind the camera. This isn’t about Moore; it’s about the United States. When he steps out of the limelight, he’s ultimately more effective, crafting a film that’s bipartisan in nature, not just in name. No, he’s not likely to please all, but for every Glenn Beck, there’s a sane moderate wondering where all the money has gone. (2:07) California, Empire, Grand Lake, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (1:21) Oaks, 1000 Van Ness.

Coco Before Chanel Like her designs, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was elegant, très chic, and utterly original. Director Anne Fontaine’s French biopic traces Coco (Audrey Tautou) from her childhood as a struggling orphan to one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. You’ll be disappointed if you expect a fashionista’s up close and personal look at the House of Chanel, as Fontaine keeps her story firmly rooted in Coco’s past, including her destructive relationship with French playboy Etienne Balsar (Benoît Poelvoorde) and her ill-fated love affair with dashing Englishman Arthur "Boy" Capel (Alessandro Nivola). The film functions best in scenes that display Coco’s imagination and aesthetic magnetism, like when she dances with Capel in her now famous "little black dress" amidst a sea of stiff, white meringues. Tautou imparts a quiet courage and quick wit as the trailblazing designer, and Nivola is unmistakably charming and compassionate as Boy. Nevertheless, Fontaine rushes the ending and never truly seizes the opportunity to explore how Coco’s personal life seeped into her timeless designs that were, in the end, an extension of herself. (1:50) Albany, SF Center. (Swanbeck)

Couples Retreat You could call Couples Retreat a romantic comedy, but that would imply that it was romantic and funny instead of an insipid, overlong waste of time. This story of a group of married friends trying to bond with their spouses in an exotic island locale is a failure on every level. Romantic? The titular couples — four total — represent eight of the most obnoxious characters in recent memory. Sure, you’re rooting for them to work out their issues, but that’s only because awful people deserve one another. (And in a scene with an almost-shark attack, you’re rooting for the shark.) Funny? The jokes are, at best, juvenile (boners are silly!) and, at worse, offensive (sexism and homophobia once more reign supreme). There is an impressive array of talent here: Vince Vaugh, Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell, Jean Reno, etc. Alas, there’s no excusing the script, which puts these otherwise solid actors into exceedingly unlikable roles. Even the gorgeous island scenery — Couples Retreat was filmed on location in Bora-Bora — can’t make up for this waterlogged mess. (1:47) Grand Lake, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

*District 9 As allegories go, District 9 is not all that subtle. This is a sci-fi action flick that’s really all about racial intolerance — and to drive the point home, they went and set it in South Africa. Here’s the set-up: 20 years ago, an alien ship arrived and got stuck, hovering above the Earth. Faster than you can say "apartheid," the alien refugees were confined to a camp — the titular District 9 — where they have remained in slum-level conditions. As science fiction, it’s creative; as a metaphor, it’s effective. What’s most surprising about District 9 is the way everything comes together. This is a big, bloody summer blockbuster with feelings: for every viscera-filled splatter, there’s a moment of poignant social commentary, and nothing ever feels forced or overdone. Writer-director Neill Blomkamp has found the perfect balance and created a film that doesn’t have to compromise. District 9 is a profoundly distressing look at the human condition. It’s also one hell of a good time. (1:52) Four Star. (Peitzman)

Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat A third entry in the low-budget gay franchise that goes mano-a-mano for crassness with mainstream teen sex comedies, this latest ages past even collegiate youth. That’s doubtless due to the expired jeune-fille status of series fave Rebekah Kochan, whose character Tiffani is a bitchy, potty-mouthed, horndoggie drag queen improbably inhabiting the person of an actual heterosexual born-female. Who operates a nail shop in West Hollywood, yet. That she bears no resemblance to credible real-world womanhood doesn’t entirely erase the line-snapping panache of Kochan herself, a gifted comedienne. If only she had better material to work with. After a truly horrific opening reel — duly tasteless but so, so unfunny — director Glenn Gaylord (is that really his name?) and scenarist Phillip J. Bartell’s sequel mercifully goes from rancid to semisweet. There’s little surprise in the Tiffani-assisted pursuit of slightly nelly dreamboat Zack (Chris Salvatore) by pseudo-nerdy, equally bodyfat-deprived new kid in town Casey (Daniel Skelton). But there is a pretty amusing climax involving a three-way (theoretically four) recalling the original’s hilarious phone-sex-coaching highlight. (1:23) Roxie. (Harvey)

Fame Note to filmmakers: throwing a bunch of talented young people together does not a good film make. And that’s putting it mildly. Fame is an overstuffed mess, a waste of teenage performers, veteran actors, and, of course, the audience’s time. Conceptually, it’s sound: it makes sense to update the 1980 classic for a new, post-High School Musical generation. But High School Musical this ain’t. Say what you will about the Disney franchise — but those films have (at the very least) some semblance of cohesion and catchy tunes. Fame is music video erratic, with characters who pop up, do a little dance, then disappear for a while. The idea that we should remember them is absurd — that we should care about their plights even stranger. It doesn’t help that said plights are leftovers from every other teen song-and-dance movie ever: unsupportive parents, tough-love teachers, doomed romance. "Fame" may mean living forever, but I give this movie two weeks. (1:45) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

(500) Days of Summer There’s a warning at the tender, bruised heart of (500) Days of Summer, kind of like an alarm on a clock-radio set to MOPEROCK-FM, going off somewhere in another room. Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a student of architecture turned architect of sappy greeting card messages, opts to press snooze and remain in the dream world of "I’m the guy who can make this lovely girl believe in love." The agnostic in question is a luminous, whimsical creature named Summer (Zooey eschanel), who’s sharp enough to flirtatiously refer to Tom as "Young Werther" but soft enough to seem capable of reshaping into a true believer. Her semi-mysterious actions throughout (500) Days raise the following question, though: is a mutual affinity for Morrissey and Magritte sufficient predetermining evidence of what is and is not meant to be? Over the course of an impressionistic film that flips back and forth and back again through the title’s 500 days, mimicking the darting, perilous maneuvers of ungovernable memory, first-time feature director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber answer this and related questions in a circuitous fashion, while gently querying our tendency to edit and manufacture perceptions. (1:36) Shattuck. (Rapoport)

*In the Loop A typically fumbling remark by U.K. Minister of International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) ignites a media firestorm, since it seems to suggest war is imminent even though Brit and U.S. governments are downplaying the likelihood of the Iraq invasion they’re simultaneously preparing for. Suddenly cast as an important arbiter of global affairs — a role he’s perhaps less suited for than playing the Easter Bunny — Simon becomes one chess piece in a cutthroat game whose participants on both sides of the Atlantic include his own subordinates, the prime minister’s rageaholic communications chief, major Pentagon and State Department honchos, crazy constituents, and more. Writer-director Armando Iannucci’s frenetic comedy of behind-the-scenes backstabbing and its direct influence on the highest-level diplomatic and military policies is scabrously funny in the best tradition of English television, which is (naturally) just where its creators hail from. (1:49) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Inglourious Basterds With Inglourious Basterds Quentin Tarantino pulls off something that seemed not only impossible, but undesirable, and surely unnecessary: making yet another of his in-jokey movies about other movies, albeit one that also happens to be kinda about the Holocaust — or at least Jews getting their own back on the Nazis during World War II — and (the kicker) is not inherently repulsive. As Rube Goldbergian achievements go, this is up there. Nonetheless, Basterds is more fun, with less guilt, than it has any right to be. The "basterds" are Tennessee moonshiner Pvt. Brad Pitt’s unit of Jewish soldiers committed to infuriating Der Fuhrer by literally scalping all the uniformed Nazis they can bag. Meanwhile a survivor (Mélanie Laurent) of one of insidious SS "Jew Hunter" Christoph Waltz’s raids, now passing as racially "pure" and operating a Paris cinema (imagine the cineaste name-dropping possibilities!) finds her venue hosting a Third Reich hoedown that provides an opportunity to nuke Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Goering in one swoop. Tactically, Tarantino’s movies have always been about the ventriloquizing of that yadadada-yadadada whose self-consciousness is bearable because the cleverness is actual; brief eruptions of lasciviously enjoyed violence aside, Basterds too almost entirely consists of lengthy dialogues or near-monologues in which characters pitch and receive tasty palaver amid lethal danger. Still, even if he’s practically writing theatre now, Tarantino does understand the language of cinema. There isn’t a pin-sharp edit, actor’s raised eyebrow, artful design excess, or musical incongruity here that isn’t just the business. (2:30) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Informant! The best satire makes you uncomfortable, but nothing will make you squirm in your seat like a true story that feels like satire. Director Steven Soderbergh introduces the exploits of real-life agribusiness whistleblower Mark Whitacre with whimsical fonts and campy music — just enough to get the audience’s guard down. As the pitch-perfect Matt Damon — laden with 30 extra pounds and a fright-wig toupee — gee-whizzes his way through an increasingly complicated role, Soderbergh doles out subtle doses of torturous reality, peeling back the curtain to reveal a different, unexpected curtain behind it. Informant!’s tale of board-room malfeasance is filled with mis-directing cameos, jokes, and devices, and its ingenious, layered narrative will provoke both anti-capitalist outrage and a more chimerical feeling of satisfied frustration. Above all, it’s disquietingly great. (1:48) Empire, Four Star, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Richardson)

The Invention of Lying Great concept. Great cast. All The Invention of Lying needed was a great script editor and it might have reached classic comedy territory. As it stands, it’s dragged down to mediocrity by a weak third act. This is the story of a world where no one can lie — and we’re not just talking about big lies either. The Invention of Lying presents a vision of no sarcasm, no white lies, no — gasp —creative fiction. All that changes when Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) realizes he can bend the truth. And because no one else can, everything Mark makes up becomes fact to the rubes around him. If you guessed that hilarity ensues, you’re right on the money! Watching Mark use his powers for evil (robbing the bank! seducing women!) makes for a very funny first hour. Then things take a turn for the heavy when Mark becomes a prophet by letting slip his vision of the afterlife. Faster than you can say "Jesus beard," he’s rocking a God complex and the audience is longing for the simpler laughs, like Jennifer Garner admitting to some pre-date masturbation. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

Julie and Julia As Julie Powell, disillusioned secretary by day and culinary novice by night, Amy Adams stars as a woman who decides to cook and blog her way through 524 of Julia Child’s recipes in 365 days. Nora Ephron oscillates between Julie’s drab existence in modern-day New York and the exciting life of culinary icon and expatriate, Julia Child (Meryl Streep), in 1950s Paris. As Julia gains confidence in the kitchen by besting all the men at the Cordon Bleu, Julie follows suit, despite strains on both her marriage and job. While Streep’s Julia borders on caricature at first, her performance eventually becomes more nuanced as the character’s insecurities about cooking, infertility, and getting published slowly emerge. Although a feast for the eyes and a rare portrait of a female over 40, Ephron’s cinematic concoction leaves you longing for less Julie with her predictable empowerment storyline and more of Julia and Streep’s exuberance and infectious joie de vivre. (2:03) Oaks, Sundance Kabuki. (Swanbeck)

*9 American animation rarely gets as dark and dystopian as the PG-13-rated 9, the first feature by Shane Acker, who dreamed up the original short. The end of the world has arrived, the cities are wastelands of rubble, and the machines — robots that once functioned as the War of the Worlds-like weapons of an evil dictator — have triumphed. Humans have been eradicated — or maybe not. Some other, more vulnerable, sock-puppet-like machines, concocted with a combination of alchemy and engineering, have been created to counter their scary toaster brethren, like 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood), who stumbles off his worktable like a miniature Pinocchio, a so-called stitch-punk. He’s big-eyed, bumbling, and vulnerable in his soft knitted skin and deprived of his guiding Geppetto. But he quickly encounters 2 (Martin Landau), who helps him jump start his nerves and fine-tune his voice box before a nasty, spidery ‘bot snatches his new friend up, as well a mysterious object 9 found at his creator’s lab. Too much knowledge in this ugly new world is something to be feared, as he learns from the other surviving models. The crotchety would-be leader 1 (Christopher Plummer), the one-eyed timid 5 (John C. Reilly), and the brave 7 (Jennifer Connelly) have very mixed feelings about stirring up more trouble. Who can blame them? People — and machines and even little dolls with the spark of life in their innocent, round eyes — die. Still, 9 manages to sidestep easy consolation and simple answers — delivering the always instructive lesson that argument and dialogue is just as vital and human as blowing stuff up real good — while offering heroic, relatively complicated thrills. And yes, our heros do get to run for their little AI-enhanced lives from a massive fireball. (1:19) SF Center. (Chun)

*Paranormal Activity In this ostensible found-footage exercise, Katie (Katie Featherson) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a young San Diego couple whose first home together has a problem: someone, or something, is making things go bump in the night. In fact, Katie has sporadically suffered these disturbances since childhood, when an amorphous, not-at-reassuring entity would appear at the foot of her bed. Skeptical technophile Micah’s solution is to record everything on his primo new video camera, including a setup to shoot their bedroom while they sleep — surveillance footage sequences that grow steadily more terrifying as incidents grow more and more invasive. Like 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, Oren Peli’s no-budget first feature may underwhelm mainstream genre fans who only like their horror slick and slasher-gory. But everybody else should appreciate how convincingly the film’s very ordinary, at times annoying protagonists (you’ll eventually want to throttle Micah, whose efforts are clearly making things worse) fall prey to a hostile presence that manifests itself in increments no less alarming for being (at first) very small. When this hits DVD, you’ll get to see the original, more low-key ending (the film has also been tightened up since its festival debut two years ago). But don’t wait — Paranormal‘s subtler effects will be lost on the small screen. Not to mention that it’s a great collective screaming-audience experience. (1:39) Metreon. (Harvey)

*Paris Cédric Klapisch’s latest offers a series of interconnected stories with Paris as the backdrop, designed — if you’ll pardon the cliché — as a love letter to the city. On the surface, the plot of Paris sounds an awful lot like Paris, je t’aime (2006). But while the latter was composed entirely of vignettes, Paris has an actual, overarching plot. Perhaps that’s why it’s so much more effective. Juliette Binoche stars as Élise, whose brother Pierre (Romain Duris) is in dire need of a heart transplant. A dancer by trade, Pierre is also a world-class people watcher, and it’s his fascination with those around him that serves as Paris‘ wraparound device. He sees snippets of these people’s lives, but we get the full picture — or at least, something close to it. The strength of Paris is in the depth of its characters: every one we meet is more complex than you’d guess at first glance. The more they play off one another, the more we understand. Of course, the siblings remain at the film’s heart: sympathetic but not pitiable, moving but not maudlin. Both Binoche and Duris turn in strong performances, aided by a supporting cast of French actors who impress in even the smallest of roles. (2:04) Shattuck. (Peitzman)

*The September Issue The Lioness D’Wintour, the Devil Who Wears Prada, or the High Priestess of Condé Nasty — it doesn’t matter what you choose to call Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. If you’re in the fashion industry, you will call her — or at least be amused by the power she wields as the overseer of style’s luxury bible, then 700-plus pages strong for its legendary September fall fashion issue back in the heady days of ’07, pre-Great Recession. But you don’t have to be a publishing insider to be fascinated by director R.J. Cutler’s frisky, sharp-eyed look at the making of fashion’s fave editorial doorstop. Wintour’s laser-gazed facade is humanized, as Cutler opens with footage of a sparkling-eyed editor breaking down fashion’s fluffy reputation. He then follows her as she assumes the warrior pose in, say, the studio of Yves St. Laurent, where she has designer Stefano Pilati fluttering over his morose color choices, and in the offices of the magazine, where she slices, dices, and kills photo shoots like a sartorial samurai. Many of the other characters at Vogue (like OTT columnist André Leon Talley) are given mere cameos, but Wintour finds a worthy adversary-compatriot in creative director Grace Coddington, another Englishwoman and ex-model — the red-tressed, pale-as-a-wraith Pre-Raphaelite dreamer to Wintour’s well-armored knight. The two keep each other honest and craftily ingenious, and both the magazine and this doc benefit. (1:28) Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*A Serious Man You don’t have to be Jewish to like A Serious Man — or to identify with beleaguered physics professor Larry Gopnik (the grandly aggrieved Michael Stuhlbarg), the well-meaning nebbishly center unable to hold onto a world quickly falling apart and looking for spiritual answers. It’s a coming of age for father and son, spurred by the small loss of a radio and a 20-dollar bill. Larry’s about-to-be-bar-mitzvahed son is listening to Jefferson Airplane instead of his Hebrew school teachers and beginning to chafe against authority. His daughter has commandeered the family bathroom for epic hair-washing sessions. His wife is leaving him for a silkily presumptuous family friend and has exiled Larry to the Jolly Roger Motel. His failure-to-launch brother is a closeted mathematical genius and has set up housekeeping on his couch. Larry’s chances of tenure could be spoiled by either an anonymous poison-pen writer or a disgruntled student intent on bribing him into a passing grade. One gun-toting neighbor vaguely menaces the borders of his property; the other sultry nude sunbather tempts with "new freedoms" and high times. What’s a mild-mannered prof to do, except envy Schrodinger’s Cat and approach three rungs of rabbis in his quest for answers to life’s most befuddling proofs? Reaching for a heightened, touched-by-advertising style that recalls Mad Men in look and Barton Fink (1991) in narrative — and stooping for the subtle jokes as well as the ones branded "wide load" — the Coen Brothers seem to be turning over, examining, and flirting with personally meaningful, serious narrative, though their Looney Tunes sense of humor can’t help but throw a surrealistic wrench into the works. (1:45) California, Piedmont. (Chun)

*Still Walking Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 After Life stepped into a bureaucratic beyond. His 2001 Distance probed the aftermath of a religious cult’s mass suicide. Likewise loosely inspired by fact, Nobody Knows (2004) charted the survival of an abandoning mother’s practically feral children in a Tokyo apartment. 2006’s Hana was a splashy samurai story — albeit one atypically resistant to conventional action. Despite their shared character nuance, these prior features don’t quite prepare one for the very ordinary milieu and domestic dramatics of Still Walking. Kore-eda’s latest recalls no less than Ozu in its seemingly casual yet meticulous dissection of a broken family still awkwardly bound — if just for one last visit — by the onerous traditions and institution of "family" itself. There’s no conceptually hooky lure here. Yet Walking is arguably both Kore-eda’s finest hour so far, and as emotionally rich a movie experience as 2009 has yet afforded. One day every summer the entire Yokohama clan assembles to commemorate an eldest son’s accidental death 15 years earlier. This duty calls, even if art restorer Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) chafes at retired M.D. dad’s (Yoshio Harada) obvious disappointment over his career choice, at the insensitivity of his chatterbox mum (Kiri Kirin), and at being eternally compared to a retroactively sainted sibling. Not subject to such evaluative harshness, simply because she’s a girl, is many-foibled sole Yokohama daughter Chinami (Nobody Knows‘ oblivious, helium-voiced mum You). Small crises, subtle tensions, the routines of food preparation, and other minutae ghost-drive a narrative whose warm, familiar, pained, touching, and sometimes hilarious progress seldom leaves the small-town parental home interior — yet never feels claustrophobic in the least. (1:54) Roxie. (Harvey)

Surrogates In a world where cops don’t even leave the house to eat doughnuts, Bruce Willis plays a police detective wrestling with life’s big questions while wearing a very disconcerting blond wig. For example, does it count as living if you’re holed up in your room in the dark 24/7 wearing a VR helmet while a younger, svelter, pore-free, kind of creepy-looking version of yourself handles — with the help of a motherboard — the daily tasks of walking, talking, working, and playing? James Cromwell reprises his I, Robot (2004) I-may-have-created-a-monster role (in this case, a society in which human "operators" live vicariously through so-called surrogates from the safe, hygienic confines of their homes). Willis, with and sans wig, and with the help of his partner (Radha Mitchell), attempts to track down the unfriendly individual who’s running around town frying the circuits of surrogates and operators alike. (While he’s at it, perhaps he could also answer this question: how is it that all these people lying in the dark twitching their eyeballs haven’t turned into bed-sore-ridden piles of atrophied-muscle mush?) Director Jonathan Mostow (2003’s Terminator 3) takes viewers through the twists and turns at cynically high velocity, hoping we won’t notice the unsatisfying story line or when things stop making very much sense. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Toy Story and Toy Story 2 Castro, Grand Lake, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

*We Live in Public Documentarian Ondi Timoner (2004’s DiG!) turns her camera on a longtime acquaintance, internet pioneer Josh Harris, as talented and maddening a subject as DiG! trainwreck Anton Newcombe. From the internet’s infancy, Harris exhibited a creative and forward-thinking outlook that seized upon the medium’s ability to allow people to interact virtually (via chat rooms) and also to broadcast themselves (via one of the internet’s first "television" stations). Though he had an off-putting personality — which sometimes manifested itself in his clown character, "Luvvy" (drawn from the TV-obsessed Harris’ love for Gilligan’s Island) — he racked up $80 million. Some of those new-media bucks went into his art project, "Quiet," an underground bunker stuffed full of eccentrics who allowed themselves to be filmed 24/7. Later, he and his girlfriend moved into a Big Brother-style apartment that was outfitted with dozens of cameras; unsurprisingly, the relationship crumbled under such constant surveillance. His path since then has been just as bizarre, though decidedly more low-tech (and far less well-funded). Though I’m not entirely sold on Timoner’s thesis that Harris’ experiments predicted the current social-networking obsession, her latest film is fascinating, and crafted with footage that only someone who was watching events unfurl first-hand could have captured. (1:30) Roxie. (Eddy)

The Wedding Song Continuing the examination of Muslim-Jewish tensions and female sexuality that she started in La Petit Jerusalem (2005), writer-director Karin Albou’s sophomore feature places the already volatile elements in the literally explosive terrain of World War II. Set in Tunis in 1942, it charts the relationship between Nour (Olympe Borval), a young Arab woman engaged to her handsome cousin, and Myriam (Lizzie Brocheré), the outspoken Jew she’s known since childhood. Bombs rain down from the sky and toxic Nazi propaganda fills the air, but to Albou the most trenchant conflict lies between the two heroines, who bond over their place in an oppressive society while secretly pining for each other’s lives and loves. Jettisoning much of the didacticism that weighted down her previous film, Albou surveys the mores, rituals, and connections informing the thorny politics of female identity with an assured eye worthy of veteran feminist filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta (1986’s Rosa Luxemburg). (1:40) Sundance Kabuki. (Croce)

Whip It What’s a girl to do? Stuck in small town hell, Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), the gawky teen heroine of Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It, faces a pressing dilemma — conform to the standards of stifling beauty pageantry to appease her mother or rebel and enter the rough-and tumble world of roller derby. Shockingly enough, Bliss chooses to escape to Austin and join the Hurl Scouts, a rowdy band of misfits led by the maternal Maggie Mayhem (Kristin Wiig) and the accident-prone Smashley Simpson (Barrymore). Making a bid for grrrl empowerment, Bliss dawns a pair of skates, assumes the moniker Babe Ruthless, and is suddenly throwing her weight around not only in the rink, but also in school where she’s bullied. Painfully predictable, the action comes to a head when, lo and behold, the dates for the Bluebonnet Pageant and the roller derby championship coincide. At times funny and charming with understated performances by Page and Alia Shawcat as Bliss’ best friend, Whip It can’t overcome its paper-thin characters, plot contrivances, and requisite scenery chewing by Jimmy Fallon as a cheesy announcer and Juliette Lewis as a cutthroat competitor. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Swanbeck)

*Zombieland First things first: it’s clever, but it ain’t no Shaun of the Dead (2004). That said, Zombieland is an outstanding zombie comedy, largely thanks to Woody Harrelson’s performance as Tallahassee, a tough guy whose passion for offing the undead is rivaled only by his raging Twinkie jones. Set in a world where zombies have already taken over (the beginning stages of the outbreak are glimpsed only in flashback), Zombieland presents the creatures as yet another annoyance for Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg, who’s nearly finished morphing into Michael Cera), a onetime antisocial shut-in who has survived only by sticking to a strict set of rules (the "double tap," or always shooting each zombie twice, etc.) This odd couple meets a sister team (Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin), who eventually lay off their grifting ways so that Columbus can have a love interest (in Stone) and Tallahassee, still smarting from losing a loved one to zombies, can soften up a scoch by schooling the erstwhile Little Miss Sunshine in target practice. Sure, it’s a little heavy on the nerd-boy voiceover, but Zombieland has just enough goofiness and gushing guts to counteract all them brrraiiinss. (1:23) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

REP PICKS

*"Robert Beavers: My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure" See "Camera Lucida." Pacific Film Archive.

alt.sex.column: Perv 101

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October 13, 2009

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By Andrea Nemerson: andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com. Read more of Andrea’s columns here

Dear Andrea:

I guess this is pretty common, but it’s not something I have any experience with, so please bear with me.

I have a lot of fantasies about being tied up, humiliated, etc. and often think about them while my girlfriend and I are having sex. I’m sure you know where this is going, but I’d really like it if she did the tying up and humiliating — but I have no idea how I would bring it up or how to talk to her about it. It’s not like I even know that much about it myself. Should I just forget about it and stick with fantasies? Is it just a stupid idea?

Love,

Unsure

Dear Sure:

I’ll tell you one thing: what with all the "I’m sure you already know" and "I don’t know much about it myself" and "Do you think I’m stupid even to think about this? How stupid? Really stupid?", you are showing a certain natural talent for abjection that I’m sure will serve you well in your new career as a bottom.

This is a perennial topic, and in a way it has gotten easier to answer over time — when I started the column, I had to recommend books (can you imagine?) and about three Web sites I happened to know about (and you’d never find without me because Google didn’t exist). In another way, though, it’s, well, not harder, but more disheartening. A girlfriend who’d never heard anything about bondage and discipline except the phrases "whips and chains" and a few grim episodes of Law and Order in 1997 could conceivably just need a little education and just might jump right in as soon as she knew what you were talking about. A girlfriend who says "I don’t know what you’re talking about, and also, ew!" in 2009 is probably not going to be running down to the Dungeon Hole Gifte Shoppe for a black latex body-bag and a "Gates of Hell" penis cage in your size anytime soon.

Sexcipe: Mommy makes steak

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October 13, 2009

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By Mistress Eve Minax, a professional dominatrix, sex educator, and food lover based in SF

If you’ve been following the last sexcipes, you now know how to prepare an eight hour pork spare rib meal with side of rubber gimp, and you also know how to make a hot sexy quicky with a burger and your lover.

Today’s sexcipe will focus on a meal that may not take any longer than the quicky but is so widely appreciated that it begs to be accompanied by a classic scenario from everybody’s favorite person and potential sex symbol, their Mommy. Now, I’m not talking about your actual mother. I’m talking about that feminine archetype who has held your hand when you were sick, spanked you when you peed the bed, and gave up the best cuts of meat to make sure you grow up big and strong. In other words, the maternal figure who cares for you, disciplines you, and also creates some of your initial sexual propensities in life. As a Mommy figure I find bringing my “children” into a primal state of no longer having to worry about who they are and what their place is in society gives me a great opportunity to contain them in that primal space while allowing their sexual fantasies to emerge.

Ingredients:

Truffle Steak

1 pound grass fed velvet steak (you may substitute skirt or bavette, but I prefer velvet)
2 cloves garlic
pinch of truffle salt
crushed black pepper
smidge of olive oil (truffle if you have it)
8-10 shitake mushrooms

SF vs. the Catholic Church, round 3

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October 9, 2009

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By Ryan Thomas Riddle

A decision is expected next month in the high-stakes battle
between the Archdiocese of San Francisco and Assessor-Record Phil Ting, which will determine whether the church will pay out millions in transfer taxes.

On Thursday, Oct. 8, Ting once again went before the Transfer Tax Review Board to counter the Archdiocese’s
assertions that its extensive 2008 property transfers aren’t taxable. The board then called for final legal documentation in the case, including closing briefs, to be delivered by both sides on Nov. 9. The board will render its final ruling two weeks later, according to Ting.

“It is in the capable hands of the tax review board,” he told the Guardian.

Ting said he expects that the verdict will be in his office’s favor, which could force the Catholic Church to pay somewhere between $3 million and $15 million in transfer taxes to the city. Church officials, who have yet to respond to our calls, contend that the properties the archdiocese moved from one interdenominational entity to another are considered a “gift” under canon law, and thus do not qualify for transfer taxation since the properties still belong to the greater Catholic Church.

The Assessor’s Office reviewed a January 2009 California Supreme Court ruling that reaffirmed the national Episcopal Church’s ownership of local church buildings and properties, a case the archdiocese has cited. “Basically, it’s an interdenominational conflict that has no barring on this case,” Ting said.

As for accusations from the more militant church supporters that this is the city’s retaliation for the passing of Proposition 8
, Ting said that his office made overtures on the transfer taxes long before the same-sex marriage issue went to the election ballot. Craig Dziedzic, manager of the recording division within the Assessor’s Office who testified in Thursday’s hearing, sent emails out to the legal counsel for the diocese regarding the transfer taxes back in April 2008, months before Prop 8 was passed.

I smell coffee and sex

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October 9, 2009

0

By Juliette Tang

I do most of my writing in cafes, because any attempt to write at home generally results in watching online videos and taking naps. Given some of the things I write about, the process of writing in public often induces a distracting level of self-consciousness that borders on fear. There’s always the mild worry that what I’m working on is ‘inappropriate’ for public consumption, a worry that’s as tiresome as it is shaming. As I furtively write on my laptop, I invent implausible scenarios that almost always result in my being exposed and then humiliated in some convoluted way. What if I’m writing at a cafe and someones child, lurking near my table, sees the engorged human genitalia trumpeting like something 3-D and malevolent from the light of my Google image search? Would I be escorted out by management for being some kind of sex offender? In front of all of Ritual? Why must they sell those tiny cupcakes that attract kids in the first place???

It is not always possible to detect a child’s presence. They are small, like bacteria.

My answer came in the form of Wicked Grounds, which opened two weeks ago in SOMA (289 8th St, at Folsom) — as luck would have it, literally in my backyard. Situated barely a block away from kink havens Madame S, Stormy Leather, and the Citadel, this new, 18+ kinky coffee shop fits into the neighborhood foliage and is, bewilderingly, the only ‘adult’ cafe in our city.

The quaint and welcoming Wicked Grounds serves pastries, Ritual Coffee, and Red Blossom Tea in a quiet space that is, like many cafes in our city, long, skinny, and adorned with the work of local artists. However, unlike every other cafe in our city, all the artwork in the cafe features naked people. Finally, a place where I can work in peace!

On Catherine Breillat’s “Anatomy of Hell”

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October 9, 2009

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By Juliette Tang

I watched Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell (2004) for the first time tonight, initially out of boredom because it was on my “Watch Instantly” Netflix queue, and because I remembered, off-handedly, a remark the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek made about Breillat at an Authors@Google lecture that I happened to catch on YouTube last year, in which he discussed Violence, his latest book at the time.

The section of the lecture in which Zizek discussed Breillat was, more specifically, on the topic of censorship (at around 34 minutes into the video) and the ways in which censorship relates to what Zizek termed our “rules of discretion”. According to Zizek, what we term our “inner life” — i.e. our sense of personal narrative or interior gospel — is really just a “zero level ideology”, or the misinterpretation of our interiority (a mere discursive formation) as a kind of real, external reality (for those who are interested, Zizek delves into this in much more detail in his latest book First as Tragedy, Then As Farce). Amazingly, to illustrate his point, he chose the metaphor of pornography.

In order to operate in the ways that it intends, porn is absolutely obliged to participate in self-censorship of this “inner life,” or a censoring of any real or implied emotional discourse or narrative. Porn censors itself emotionally, or narratively so that it can be free to act explicitly, physically, in ways that narrative would hinder. A trade-off, in the crudest sense, of the emotional world for the sensual world.

As Zizek puts it, with hardcore porn, “You cannot have it both ways. You can see it all but the price you pay is to sabotage emotional involvement. In the sense of having an engaging story and so on so on… In gonzo sex you see a camera man, and the camera man tells to the actors, ‘move like that,’ and a woman who is being screwed slides to the camera and asks ‘am I ok like this’ and they make fun… I think this is the high point of censorship. They are afraid of even a minimum of narrative.”

The Democrats wild night

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October 8, 2009

24

By Tim Redmond

Well, I’m really sorry I missed the Democratic Party gala Wednesday night. Apparently it was quite a show. Brian Leubitz has a great report at Calitics on the unexpected appearance of Gov. Schwarzenegger and the overwhelmingly negative response by the attendees, including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who stood up and shouted “You Lie!”

“It was political theater of the type we love,” Ammiano told me.

Seriously, though: Former Mayor Willie Brown apparently told the guv that the event was happening, and since Schwarzenegger was in the same hotel for a President’s Cup event, he decided (perhaps at Brown’s invitation, it’s not entirely clear) just to drop by. And everyone was supposed to act all nice and pretend that they’re aren’t real, serious issues in Sacramento and that the governor isn’t really, really screwing up the state and hurting a lot of people.

“This wasn’t the Legislative Chambers, where you have to put up with this shit,” Ammiano said.. “It’s like this guy just showed up and took a big dump in my living room.”

Labor folks weren’t happy, either, and a bunch of them walked out. Then Ammiano (and we should all give thanks that he’s in the Legislature, reminding everyone what San Francisco stands for) accepted an award and made a speech:

And then he proceeded to bludgeon the Governor’s record. He questioned why he was holding bills hostage to get a bad water deal. He questioned why a Governor who has vetoed the Harvey Milk Day bill would stand up in front of a room that was at least 25% LGBT. He politely asked Mayor Brown to send a message to the governor to sign the bills already.

And finally, Senator Mark Leno closed the proceedings for the evening. Leno took a different tack than Ammiano’s passion. He simply stated the facts. He said that the events of this evening were all funny and stuff, but the fact is that this Governor had cut state workers salaries by 15% with the furloughs. This Governor wanted to cut IHSS salaries to minimum wage. This Governor illegally used the line item veto to slash funding for domestic violence shelters. And that he, and the Senate Democrats, were going to fight him tooth and nail.

And to a loud applause, Leno stepped off the stage and the crowd began to thin. And everybody was saying, “um, wow.”

The other thing Ammiano said in his speech was that Democrats have gotten a little lax on standing up for their friends — and he mentioned both ACORN and Kim-Shree Maufas, and both times was met with huge applause.

And, of course, the Chron’s Carla Marinucci focused her reporton Willie Brown’s comments about how inappropriate this all was and how everyone needed to make nice to poor Arnold. But there are serious issue here that aren’t just fun and games, and when the stakes are as high as they are here, I’m glad to see them Democrats (or at least some of them) deciding not to play so nice with a governor who is smiling while he drives the state into bankruptcy and despair.

PS: Ammiano told me that when Marinucci called him, she seems astounded that he had said “kiss my gay ass” while walking out of the governor’s speech. “I told her, I don’t remember, but I probably did say that,” Ammiano said. “After all, it’s safe sex.”