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Maria Poblet
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The 54th annual San Francisco International Film Festival runs through May 5. Venues are the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; New People, 1746 Post, SF; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third, SF; and Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, SF. For tickets (most shows $13) and complete schedule visit www.sffs.org.

OPENING

*…But Film is My Mistress and Images from the Playground Swedish critic Stig Bjorkman will visit the Rafael with two recent documentaries he’s made about

his country’s–and one of the last century’s–greatest filmmakers, Ingmar Bergman. The feature-length Mistress adds commentary from admiring colleagues Olivier Assayas, John Sayles, Arnaud Desplechin, Bertolucci, Scorcese, Lars von Trier and Woody Allen to a scrutiny of Bergman’s working methods, as glimpsed in eight features from 1966’s Persona to 2003’s Saraband. It’s fascinating to watch Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman endlessly questioning their scenes on 1978’s Autumn Sonata, charming to watch the director walk arm-in-arm down a street with his invaluable cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Bjorkman’s half-hour Images from the Playground is comprised of home movies and behind-the-scenes footage mostly shot by Bergman himself from the early 1950s onward, accompanied by audio reflections from him and major collaborators. In contrast to the filmmaker’s rep for doom and gloom, these clips show everybody having a pretty good time on the job, goofing for the camera, while his unbridled enthusiasm for his actresses suggests something was swinging in Sweden well before the Sixties. Dennis (1:35) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night Brandon Routh stars as the titular supernatural investigator in this adaptation of the Italian comic-book series. (1:47)

Fast Five Vin Diesel and Paul Walker: still furious after all these years. (1:41)

Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil Hayden Panettiere, Glenn Close, and Joan Cusack lend their voices to this 3D animated sequel. (run time not available) Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen Donnie Yen stars in Andrew Lau’s period martial arts actioner. (1:46) Four Star.

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

*The Princess of Montpensier Marie (Mélanie Thierry), the titular figure in French director Bertrand Tavernier’s latest, is a young 16th century noblewoman married off to a Prince (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) of great wealth and property. But they’ve barely met when he’s called off to war — leaving her alone on his enormous estate, vulnerable to myriad suitors who seem to be forever throwing themselves at her nubile, neglected body. Lambert Wilson (2010’s Of Gods and Men) is touching as the older soldier appointed her protector; he comes to love her, yet is the one man upstanding enough to resist compromising her. If you’ve been jonesing for the kind of lush arthouse period epic that feels like a big fat classic novel, this engrossing saga from a 70-year-old Gallic cinema veteran in top form will scratch that itch for nearly two and a half satisfyingly tragic-romantic hours. (2:19) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Prom Every teen movie has a prom scene; this ensemble movie’s just cutting to the chase is all. (1:44)

The Robber A bank robber uses his marathoning skills to escape crime scenes in this Austrian thriller based on a true story. (1:37)

Stake Land See “Land of the Undead.” (1:38) Roxie.

Too Perfect Five 14-year-old boys come of age in this Bay Area-made film. (1:15) Orinda.

ONGOING

The Adjustment Bureau As far as sci-fi romantic thrillers go, The Adjustment Bureau is pretty standard. But since that’s not an altogether common genre mash-up, I guess the film deserves some points for creativity. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau takes place in a world where all of our fates are predetermined. Political hotshot David Norris (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness — but not if he lets a romantic dalliance with dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) take precedence. And in order to make sure he stays on track, the titular Adjustment Bureau (including Anthony Mackie and Mad Men‘s John Slattery) are there to push him in the right direction. While the film’s concept is intriguing, the execution is sloppy. The Adjustment Bureau suffers from flaws in internal logic, allowing the story to skip over crucial plot points with heavy exposition and a deus ex machina you’ve got to see to believe. Couldn’t the screenwriter have planned ahead? (1:39) (Peitzman)

African Cats (1:40)

Arthur (1:45)

Atlas Shrugged (1:57)

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

Ceremony It’s easy to dismiss Ceremony as derivative. The plot isn’t exactly original. But recycled material aside, it’s an entertaining indie diversion and a promising feature-length debut from writer-director Max Winkler. The underrated Michael Angarano stars as Sam Davis, a pretentious shit who owes a lot to Holden Caulfield by way of Rushmore‘s Max Fischer. Sam tricks his best friend Marshall (Reece Thompson) into accompanying him on a weekend getaway, with the real objective of winning back his lost love Zoe (Uma Thurman). But Zoe is all set to marry blowhard Whit Coutell (Lee Pace) and is not too keen on blowing off her wedding. None of the characters are all that likable — a quirky indie comedy must — and there are few surprises. But Winkler’s script is cute, and his cast is charming enough to carry the material along. The scenes between Angarano and Thompson are the film’s best. Here’s hoping they stand out enough to earn these young actors the recognition they deserve. (1:40) (Peitzman)

Certified Copy Abbas Kiarostami’s beguiling new feature signals “relationship movie” with every cobblestone step, but it’s manifestly a film of ideas — one in which disillusionment is as much a formal concern as a dramatic one. Typical of Kiarostami’s dialogic narratives, Certified Copy is both the name of the film and an entity within the film: a book written against the ideal of originality in art by James Miller (William Shimell), an English pedant fond of dissembling. After a lecture in Tuscany, he meets an apparent admirer (Juliette Binoche) in her antique shop. We watch them talk for several minutes in an unbroken two-shot. They gauge each other’s values using her sister as a test case — a woman who, according to the Binoche character, is the living embodiment of James’ book. Do their relative opinions of this off-screen cipher constitute characterization? Or are they themselves ciphers of the film’s recursive structure? Kiarostami makes us wonder. They begin to act as if they were married midway through the film, though the switch is not so out of the blue: Kiarostami’s narrative has already turned a few figure-eights. Several critics have already deemed Certified Copy derivative of many other elliptical romances; the strongest case for an “original” comes of Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy (1954). The real difference is that while Rossellini’s masterpiece realizes first-person feelings in a third-person approach, Kiarostami stays in the shadow of doubt to the end. (1:46) Smith Rafael. (Goldberg)

*Circo The old notion of “running away with the circus” seldom seemed appealing — conjuring images of following an elephant around with a shovel — and it grows even less so after watching Aaron Schock’s warm, touching documentary. The kids here might one day run away from the circus. They’re born into Grand Circo Mexico, one of four circuses run by the Ponce family, which has been in this business for generations; if they’re old enough to walk, they’re old enough to perform, and help with the endless setup and breakdown chores. (Presumably child labor laws are an innovation still waiting to happen here.) Touring Mexico’s small towns in trucks with a variety of exotic animals, it’s a life of labor, with on-the-job training in place of school — arguably not much of a life for child, as current company leader Tino’s wife Ivonne (who really did run away with the circus, or rather him, at age 15) increasingly insists. Other family members have split for a normal life, and Tino is caught between loyalty to his parents’ ever-struggling business and not wanting to lose the family he’s raised himself. This beautifully shot document, scored by Calexico and edited by Mark Becker (of 2005’s marvelous Romantico), is a disarming look at a lifestyle that feels almost 19th century, and is barely hobbling into the 21st one. (1:15) (Harvey)

The Conspirator It may not be your standard legal drama, but The Conspirator is a lot more enjoyable when you think of it as an extended episode of Law & Order. The film chronicles the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the lone woman charged in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. It’s a fascinating story, especially for those who don’t know much of the history past John Wilkes Booth. But while the subject matter is compelling, the execution is hit-or-miss. Wright is sympathetic as Surratt, but the usually great James McAvoy is somewhat forgettable in the pivotal role of Frederick Aiken, Surratt’s conflicted lawyer. It’s hard to say what it is that’s missing from The Conspirator: the cast — which also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Tom Wilkinson — is great, and this is a story that’s long overdue to be told. Still, something is lacking. Could it be the presence of everyone’s favorite detective, the late Lennie Briscoe? (2:02) (Peitzman)

*Hanna The title character of Hanna falls perfectly into the lately very popular Hit-Girl mold. Add a dash of The Boys from Brazil-style genetic engineering — Hanna has the unfair advantage, you see, when it comes to squashing other kids on the soccer field or maiming thugs with her bare hands — and you have an ethereal killing/survival machine, played with impassive confidence by Atonement (2007) shit-starter Saoirse Ronan. She’s been fine-tuned by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), a spy who went out into the cold and off the grid, disappearing into the wilds of Scandinavia where he home-schooled his charge with an encyclopedia and brutal self-defense and hunting tests. Atonement director Joe Wright plays with a snowy palette associated with innocence, purity, and death — this could be any time or place, though far from the touch of modern childhood stresses: that other Hannah (Montana), consumerism, suburban blight, and academic competition. The 16-year-old Hanna, however, isn’t immune from that desire to succeed. Her game mission: go from a feral, lonely existence into the modern world, run for her life, and avenge the death of her mother by killing Erik’s CIA handler, Marissa (Cate Blanchett). The nagging doubt: was she born free, or Bourne to be a killer? Much like the illustrated Brothers Grimm storybook that she studies, Hanna is caught in an evil death trap of fairytale allegories. One wonders if the super-soldier apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since evil stepmonster Marissa oversaw the program that produced Hanna — the older woman and the young girl have the same cold-blooded talent for destruction and the same steely determination. Yet there’s hope for the young ‘un. After learning that even her beloved father hid some basic truths from her, this natural-born killer seems less likely to go along with the predetermined ending, happy or no, further along in her storybook life. (1:51) (Chun)

Henry’s Crime Keanu Reeves is one of those actors who’s spectacularly franchise-wealthy — due to those Matrix movies wherein his usual baffled solemnity was ideal — yet whom the public otherwise feels scant evident loyalty toward, and producers don’t know what to do with. Now that he’s aging out of his looks, can he transform into a character actor? Maybe. Reeves played charming suitors in Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009), both very much supporting roles. He seems increasingly interested in indie films, which he surely doesn’t need to pay the rent, and he’s certainly the best reason to see Henry’s Crime, a pleasant, middling, retro crime caper costarring frequently better actors at dimmer wattage than usual. The film is an old hat out of the Damon Runyon trunk, in which lovable crooks mix it up with hoity theatrical types and nobody gets hurt except (barely) the really bad guys. James Caan — who starred in similar enterprises during their post-The Sting heyday — plays the veteran convict-conman who schools Reeves’ hapless Buffalo, N.Y., toll-taker Henry after our hero is slammer-thrown for an armed robbery he didn’t know he was embroiled in until it was over. Upon release, Henry discovers the targeted bank and nearby theater had a Prohibition-era secret tunnel between them. Having already done the time, he figures he might as well do the crime by finishing the aborted bank job for real. He enlists local stage diva Julie (Vera Farmiga) as well as Caan’s parole-coaxed Max. Resulting wacky hijinks render Max a theater “volunteer” and Henry as Julie’s Cherry Orchard costar, all so they can access the walled-up passageway to the bank vault. Much of this is ridiculous, of course, and not intentionally so. The climax is classic movies-getting-how-theater-works-wrong. But its contrivance functions to some extent because the lead actor convinces us it should. (1:48) (Harvey)

Hop (1:30)

*In a Better World Winner of this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this latest from Danish director Susanne Bier (2004’s Brothers, 2006’s After the Wedding) and her usual co-scenarist Anders Thomas Jensen (2005’s Adam’s Apples, 2003’s The Green Butchers) is a typically engrossing, complex drama that deals with the kind of rage for “personal justice” that can lead to school and workplace shootings, among other things (like terrorism). Shy, nervous ten-year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard) needs a confidence boost, but things are worrying both at home and elsewhere. His parents are estranged, and his doting father (Mikael Persbrandt) is mostly away as a field hospital in Kenya tending victims of local militias. At school, he’s an easy mark for bullies, a fact which gets the attention of charismatic, self-assured new kid Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen), who appoints himself Elias’ new (and only) friend — then when his slightly awed pal is picked on again, intervenes with such alarming intensity that the police are called. Christian appears a little too prone to violence and harsh judgment in teaching “lessons” to those he considers in the wrong; his own domestic situation is another source of anger, as he simplistically blames his earnest, distracted executive father (Ulrich Thomsen) for his mother’s recent cancer death. Is Christian a budding little psychopath, or just a kid haplessly channeling his profound loss? Regardless, when an adult bully (Kim Bodnia as a loutish mechanic) humiliates Elias’ father in front of the two boys, Christian pulls his reluctant friend into a pursuit of vengeance that surely isn’t going to end well. With their nuanced yet head-on treatment of hot button social and ethical issues, Bier and Jensen’s work can sometimes border on overly-schematic melodrama, meting out its own secular-humanist justice a bit too handily, like 21st-century cinematic Dickenses. But like Dickens, they also have a true mastery of the creating striking characters and intricately propulsive plotlines that illustrate the points at hand in riveting, hugely satisfying fashion. This isn’t their best. But it’s still pretty excellent, and one of those universally accessible movies you can safely recommend even to people who think they don’t like foreign or art house films. (1:53) (Harvey)

*Jane Eyre Do we really need another adaptation of Jane Eyre? As long as they’re all as good as Cary Fukunaga’s stirring take on the gothic romance, keep ’em coming. Mia Wasikowska stars in the titular role, with the dreamy Michael Fassbender stepping into the high pants of Edward Rochester. The cast is rounded out by familiar faces like Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins — all of whom breathe new life into the material. It helps that Fukunaga’s sensibilities are perfectly suited to the story: he stays true to the novel while maintaining an aesthetic certain to appeal to a modern audience. Even if you know Jane Eyre’s story — Mr. Rochester’s dark secret, the fate of their romance, etc. — there are still surprises to be had. Everyone tells the classics differently, and this adaptation is a thoroughly unique experience. And here’s hoping it pushes the engaging Wasikowska further in her ascent to stardom. (2:00) (Peitzman)

Kill the Irishman If you enjoy 1970s-set Mafia movies featuring characters with luxurious facial hair zooming around in Cadillacs, flossing leather blazers, and outwitting cops and each other — you could do a lot worse than Kill the Irishman, which busts no genre boundaries but delivers enjoyable retro-gangsta cool nonetheless. Adapted from the acclaimed true crime book by a former Cleveland police lieutenant, the film details the rise and fall of Danny Greene, a colorful and notorious Irish-American mobster who both served and ran afoul of the big bosses in his Ohio hometown. During one particularly conflict-ridden period, the city weathered nearly 40 bombings — buildings, mailboxes, and mostly cars, to the point where the number of automobiles going sky-high is almost comical (you’d think these guys would’ve considered taking the bus). The director of the 2004 Punisher, Jonathan Hensleigh, teams up with the star of 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, Ray Stevenson, who turns in a magnetic performance as Greene; it’s easy to see how his combination of book- and street smarts (with a healthy dash of ruthlessness) buoyed him nearly to the top of the underworld. The rest of the cast is equally impressive, with Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, and Linda Cardellini turning in supporting roles, plus a host of dudes who look freshly defrosted from post-Sopranos storage. (1:46) (Eddy)

The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Castro. (Harvey)

*Limitless An open letter to the makers of Limitless: please fire your marketing team because they are making your movie look terrible. The story of a deadbeat writer (Bradley Cooper) who acquires an unregulated drug that allows him to take advantage of 100 percent of his previously under-utilized brain, Limitless is silly, improbable and features a number of distracting comic-book-esque stylistic tics. But consumed with the comic book in mind, Limitless is also unpredictable, thrilling, and darkly funny. The aforementioned style, which includes many instances of the infinite regression effect that you get when you point two mirrors at each other, and a heavy blur to distort depth-of-field, only solidifies the film’s cartoonish intentions. Cooper learns foreign languages in hours, impresses women with his keen attention to detail, and sets his sights on Wall Street, a move that gets him noticed by businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro in a glorified cameo) as well as some rather nasty drug dealers and hired guns looking to cash in on the drug. Limitless is regrettably titled and masquerades in TV spots as a Wall Street series spin-off, but in truth it sports the speedy pacing and tongue-in-cheek humor required of a good popcorn flick. (1:37) (Galvin)

*The Lincoln Lawyer Outfitted with gym’d-tanned-and-laundered manly blonde bombshells like Matthew McConaughey, Josh Lucas, and Ryan Phillippe, this adaptation of Michael Connelly’s LA crime novel almost cries out for an appearance by the Limitless Bradley Cooper — only then will our cabal of flaxen-haired bros-from-other-‘hos be complete. That said, Lincoln Lawyer‘s blast of morally challenged golden boys nearly detracts from the pleasingly gritty mise-en-scène and the snappy, almost-screwball dialogue that makes this movie a genre pleasure akin to a solid Elmore Leonard read. McConaughey’s criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller is accustomed to working all the angles — hence the title, a reference to a client who’s working off his debt by chauffeuring Haller around in his de-facto office: a Lincoln Town Car. Haller’s playa gets truly played when he becomes entangled with Louis Roulet (Phillippe), a pretty-boy old-money realtor accused of brutally attacking a call girl. Loved ones such as Haller’s ex Maggie (Marisa Tomei) and his investigator Frank (William H. Macy) are in jeopardy — and in danger of turning in some delightfully textured cameos — in this enjoyable walk on the sleazy side of the law, the contemporary courtroom counterpart to quick-witted potboilers like Sweet Smell of Success (1957). (1:59) (Chun)

Miral (1:42)

*Of Gods and Men It’s the mid-1990s, and we’re in Tibhirine, a small Algerian village based around a Trappist monastery. There, eight French-born monks pray and work alongside their Muslim neighbors, tending to the sick and tilling the land. An emboldened Islamist rebel movement threatens this delicate peace, and the monks must decide whether to risk the danger of becoming pawns in the Algerian Civil War. On paper, Of Gods and Men sounds like the sort of high-minded exploitation picture the Academy swoons over: based on a true story, with high marks for timeliness and authenticity. What a pleasant surprise then that Xavier Beauvois’s Cannes Grand Prix winner turns out to be such a tightly focused moral drama. Significantly, the film is more concerned with the power vacuum left by colonialism than a “clash of civilizations.” When Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson) turns away an Islamist commander by appealing to their overlapping scriptures, it’s at the cost of the Algerian army’s suspicion. Etienne Comar’s perceptive script does not rush to assign meaning to the monks’ decision to stay in Tibhirine, but rather works to imagine the foundation and struggle for their eventual consensus. Beauvois occasionally lapses into telegraphing the monks’ grave dilemma — there are far too many shots of Christian looking up to the heavens — but at other points he’s brilliant in staging the living complexity of Tibrihine’s collective structure of responsibility. The actors do a fine job too: it’s primarily thanks to them that by the end of the film each of the monks seems a sharply defined conscience. (2:00) (Goldberg)

*Poetry Sixtysomething Mija (legendary South Korean actor Yun Jung-hee) impulsively crashes a poetry class, a welcome shake-up in a life shaped by unfulfilling routines. In order to write compelling verse, her instructor says, it is important to open up and really see the world. But Mija’s world holds little beauty beyond her cheerful outfits and beloved flowers; most pressingly, her teenage grandson, a mouth-breathing lump who lives with her, is completely remorseless about his participation in a hideous crime. In addition, she’s just been disgnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and the elderly stroke victim she housekeeps for has started making inappropriate advances. Somehow writer-director Lee Chang-dong (2007’s Secret Sunshine) manages not to deliver a totally depressing film with all this loaded material; it’s worth noting Poetry won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Yun is unforgettable as a woman trying to find herself after a lifetime of obeying the wishes of everyone around her. Though Poetry is completely different in tone than 2009’s Mother, it shares certain elements — including the impression that South Korean filmmakers have recognized the considerable rewards of showcasing aging (yet still formidable) female performers. (2:19) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Don’t even think about shortening the title: Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Story Ever Sold is ingenious, bitingly funny, and made possible by corporate sponsorship. POM paid good money to earn a spot about the title, so damned if I’m going to leave them out. Instead of keeping product placement subliminal — or at least trying — Spurlock shows exactly what goes into the popular marketing practice. His film isn’t so much critical as it is honest: he doesn’t fight product placement, but rather embraces it to his own advantage. It’s win-win. Spurlock gets to make his movie without losing any cash, and the audience gets a hilarious insider look into a mostly hidden facet of advertising. As he says, it’s about transparency, and no one can claim Spurlock is trying to go behind our backs. And what of the advertising that pops up throughout the film? I can only speak to my own experience, but yes, I’m drinking POM as I write this. (1:26) (Peitzman)

Potiche When we first meet Catherine Deneuve’s Suzanne — the titular trophy wife (or potiche) of Francois Ozon’s new airspun comedy — she is on her morning jog, barely breaking a sweat as she huffs and puffs in her maroon Adidas tracksuit, her hair still in curlers. It’s 1977 and Suzanne’s life as a bourgeois homemaker in a small provincial French town has played out as smoothly as one of her many poly-blend skirt suits: a devoted mother to two grown children and loving wife who turns a blind eye to the philandering of husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), Suzanne is on the fast track to comfortable irrelevance. All that changes when the workers at Robert’s umbrella factory strike and take him hostage. Suzanne, with the help of union leader and old flame Babin (Gerard Depardieu, as big as a house), negotiates a peace, and soon turns around the company’s fortunes with her new-found confidence and business savvy. But when Robert wrests back control with the help of a duped Babin, Suzanne does an Elle Woods and takes them both on in a surprise run for political office. True to the film’s light théâtre de boulevard source material, Ozon keeps things brisk and cheeky (Suzanne sings with as much ease as she spouts off Women’s Lib boilerplate) to the point where his cast’s hammy performances start blending into the cheery production design. Satire needs an edge that Potiche, for all its charm, never provides. (1:43) Smith Rafael. (Sussman)

Red, White and Blue (1:42) Roxie.

Rio (1:32)

Scre4m Back in 1996, Wes Craven’s Scream revitalized the slasher genre with a script (by Kevin Williamson) that poked fun at horror clichés while still delivering genuine scares. The sequels offered diminishing returns on this once-clever formula; Scream 4 arrives 11 years past Scream 3, presumably hoping to work that old self-referential yet gory magic on a new crop of filmgoers. But Craven and Williamson’s hall-of-mirrors creation (more self-satisfied than self-referential, scrambling to anticipate a cynical audience member’s every second-guess) is barely more than than a continuation of something that was already tired in 2000, albeit with iPhone and web cam gags pasted in for currency’s sake. Eternal Ghostface target Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to her hometown to promote what’s apparently a woo-woo self-help book (Mad Men‘s Alison Brie, as Sidney’s bitchy-perky publicist, steals every scene she’s in); still haunting Woodsboro are Dewey (David Arquette), now the sheriff, and Gale (Courteney Cox), a crime author with writer’s block. When the Munch-faced one starts offing high school kids, local movie nerds (Rory Culkin, Hayden Panettiere) and nubile types (Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere) react by screening all seven Stab films, inspired by the “real-life” Woodsboro murders, and spouting off about the rules, or lack thereof in the 21st century, of horror sequels. If that sounds mega-meta exhausting, it is. And, truth be told, not very scary. (1:51) (Eddy)

Soul Surfer (1:46)

*Source Code A post-9/11 Groundhog Day (1993) with explosions, Inception (2010) with a heart, or Avatar (2009) taken down a notch or dozen in Chicago —whatever you choose to call it, Source Code manages to stand up on its own wobbly Philip K. Dick-inspired legs, damn the science, and take off on the wings of wish fulfillment. ‘Cause who hasn’t yearned for a do-over — and then a do-over of that do-over, etc. We could all be as lucky — or as cursed — as soldier Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who gets to tumble down that time-space rabbit hole again and again, his consciousness hitching a ride in another man’s body, while in search of the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. On the upside, he gets to meet the girl of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) — and see her getting blown to smithereens again and again, all in the service of his country, his commander-cum-link to the outside world (Vera Farmiga), and the scientist masterminding this secret military project (Jeffrey Wright). On the downside, well, he gets to do it over and over again, like a good little test bunny in pinball purgatory. Fortunately, director Duncan Jones (2009’s Moon) makes compelling work out of the potentially ludicrous material, while his cast lends the tale a glossed yet likable humanity, the kind that was all too absent in Inception. (1:33) (Chun)

Trust Outta-hand sexting and predatory online pedophilia gets Schwimmerized with Trust, which creeps into the theaters with all the sudden stealth of a—surprise!—predatory online pedophile. Nevertheless, like any relevant drama torn from the headlines, Trust starts off with promise, as director David Schwimmer attempts to replicate the budding chat-room romance of Annie (Liana Liberato) and her supposed male tween counterpart with playful onscreen text. The constant, increasingly intimate chatting takes a sexy turn while the crush confesses that he’s actually in college, then older still, and finally instigates a meet-up. Few can accuse Annie’s ad-man father Will (Clive Owen) and quirky mom Lynn (Catherine Keener) of being uncaring—but the consequences of Annie’s relationship quickly upend the family in ways that have the frustrated, guilt-ridden Owen rampaging with the barely capped rage that he does so well (a skill that threatens to typecast him). Liberato, who flips from fresh-faced hope to utter desperation, and Keener, who can make drinking a glass of water compelling, do much better, though Trust never truly grabs even the most wired social networker. Must be all that annoying texting. (1:55) (Chun)

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family (2:00)

Water for Elephants A young man named Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) turns his back on catastrophe and runs off to join the circus. It sounds like a fantasy, but this was never Jacob’s dream, and the circus world of Water for Elephants isn’t all death-defying feats and pretty women on horses. Or rather, the pretty woman also rides an elephant named Rosie and the casualties tend to occur outside the big top, after the rubes have gone home. Stumbling onto a train and into this world by chance, Jacob manages to charm the sadistic sociopath who runs the show, August (Christophe Waltz), and is charmed in turn by August’s wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), a star performer and the object of August’s abusive, obsessive affections. Director Francis Lawrence’s film, an adaptation of Sarah Gruen’s 2006 novel, depicts a harsh Depression-era landscape in which troupes founder in small towns across America, waiting to be scavenged for parts — performers and animals — by other circuses passing through. Waltz’s August is a frightening man who defines a layoff as throwing workers off a moving train, and the anxiety of anticipating his moods and moves supplies most of the movie’s dramatic tension; Jacob and Marlena’s pallid love story feeds off it rather than adding its own. The film also suffers from a frame tale that feels awkward and forced, though Hal Holbrook makes heroic efforts as the elderly Jacob, surfacing on the grounds of – what else? – a modern-day circus to recount his tale of tragedy and romance. (2:00) (Rapoport)

White Irish Drinkers What is 20-year TV veteran John Gray (of series The Ghost Whisperer) doing writing-directing yet another indie Mean Streets (1973) knockoff? That’s fresh-outta-film-school business. Why is anyone doing one of those so long after the expiration date for that second (or by now third) generation shit? This trip down some very familiar roads — 1997’s Good Will Hunting and 1977’s Saturday Night Fever being others — stars SF native Nick Thurston as a 1975 Brooklyn youth with a violent alcoholic father (Stephen Lang), long-suffering mother (Karen Allen), and an older brother drifting into criminality (Geoffrey Wigdor). As outside influences this talented closet artist has the requisite upscaling girl (Leslie Murphy) urging him to dream big, and a wistfully downtrodden employer (Peter Riegert) providing the plot gimmick as a failing movie-palace owner who hopes to turn around his fortunes with a one-night-stand by the Rolling Stones. Everything about White Irish Drinkers feels recycled from other movies. Though the performers work hard and the progress is entertaining enough, there’s way too much déjà vu here for one film to bear and still stand on its own punch-drunk legs. (1:49) (Harvey)

*Win Win Is Tom McCarthy the most versatile guy in Hollywood? He’s a successful character actor (in big-budget movies like 2009’s 2012; smaller-scale pictures like 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck; and the final season of The Wire). He’s an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (2009’s Up). And he’s the writer-director of two highly acclaimed indie dramas, The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007). Clearly, McCarthy must not sleep much. His latest, Win Win, is a comedy set in his hometown of New Providence, N.J. Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer who’s feeling the economic pinch. Betraying his own basic good-guy-ness, he takes advantage of a senile client, Leo (Burt Young), when he spots the opportunity to pull in some badly-needed extra cash. Matters complicate with the appearance of Leo’s grandson, Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer), a runaway from Ohio. Though Mike’s wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan), is suspicious of the taciturn teen, she allows Kyle to crash with the Flaherty family. As luck would have it, Kyle is a superstar wrestler — and Mike happens to coach the local high school team. Things are going well until Kyle’s greedy mother (Melanie Lynskey) turns up and starts sniffing around her father’s finances. Lessons are learned, sure, and there are no big plot twists beyond typical indie-comedy turf. But the script delivers more genuine laughs than you’d expect from a movie that’s essentially about the recession. (1:46) (Eddy)

Your Highness One of the dangers of reviewing a film like Your Highness is that stoner comedies have a very specific intended audience. A particular altered state is recommended to maximize one’s enjoyment. I tend not to show up for professional gigs with Mary Jane as my plus-one, so I had to view the latest from Pineapple Express (2008) director David Gordon Green through un-bloodshot eyes. While Express was more explicitly ganja-themed, Your Highness is instead a comedy that approximates the experience of getting as high as possible, then going directly to Medieval Times. Never gut-bustingly funny, Your Highness still reaps chuckles from its hard-R dialogue and plenty of CG-assisted sight gags involving genetalia. James Franco and Danny McBride star as princes, one heroic and one ne’er-do-well, who quest to save a maiden kidnapped by an evil wizard (Justin Theroux). Natalie Portman turns up as a thong-wearing warrior, just ’cause it’s that kind of movie. Forget the box office; only time and the tastes of late-night movie watchers will dictate whether Your Highness is a success or a bust. Case in point: nobody thought much of Half Baked (1998) when it was released, but in certain circles, it’s become a bona fide classic. Say it with me now: “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, and fuck you. I’m out!” (1:42) (Eddy)

 

The Urban Eating League’s food activists with flair

Andrew Lam
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Last Sunday I wore a slip, faked pregnancy, drenched myself in beer, and ate five brunches in four hours. Sure, behavior that doesn’t raise an eyebrow on those of us who have seen the dark side of a bottomless mimosa, but this time my bedlam brunch behavior was part of a carefully devised social eating event focused on community building and celebrating local food. Improbable, no? May I present to you: The Urban Eating League.

The league was born one night when Morgan Fitzgibbons and Rose Johnson, two of the neighborhood’s most inventive and resourceful characters, were sitting around a Panhandle table, tossing ideas back and forth. Johnson runs a one-woman bicycle delivery service named Apothocurious, through which she peddles hummus, salad, salsa, pesto, and the like around the city to hungry, green-minded customers. Fitzgibbons helped to found The Wigg Party, a neighborhood group dedicated to advocating for sustainability through local currency, strengthening strong businesses, and partying among neighbors. The two shared their mutual desire to eat more locally-sourced meals communally. Fitzgibbons knew they were on to something.

“At first our idea was just to have a progressive dinner where we could involve big groups of people, but then I started thinking that I wanted to have some element of fun competition to it,” he says, remarking that after the two hit on the idea for a league, he embarked upon outlining the basic structure and rules that would soon become the signature tenets of The Urban Eating League.

A UEL eater prove style and substance can go hand in hand. Photo by Hannah Tepper

Speaking of basic structure, here’s what they came up with: teams of three go from host house to host house, eating food that each group of cooks prepares for the event. The cooks are given a set amount from eaters’ $15 to $20 entry fees, and must make sure that their ingredients are 90 percent local.

The hosts at each house are competing against each other in three categories: “flavor slam,” creativity, and hospitality, titles determined by votes cast by each team of eaters. At day’s end, all participants regroup – often for a dessert potluck, or games in the park – and the winning hosts get prizes and informal awards.

The competition is further animated by the fact that every team of eaters and hosts must have a team name and theme, e.g. Team Snow Pants or No Pants (a popular moniker from a recent UEL). A general sense of wackiness works to make the event read more like a big, food-related costume party than stone-cold competition.

The first event took place in February, a dinner competition that involved three host sites and 18 eaters. Since then Johnson, Fitzgibbons, and a crew of dedicated friends have expanded the event and come up with new ideas to refine it. Last Sunday’s brunch event was the league’s third. It was composed of five hosts cooking for 30 eaters who were split into ten teams.

I showed up with my team, Shotgun Wedding, dressed in a slapshod manner as two brides and a priest, hauling a 30-rack of beer with which we planned to honor the spirit of the shotgun. We congregated with the other eating teams at a Fulton street Victorian affectionately dubbed the Sunshine Castle by Fitzgibbons and the others that call the place home. After some brief warm-ups and ice-breakers, our team took off, armed with a map showing us our meal plans.

At our first house we dined on edible flower-filled spring rolls in a sidewalk picnic. Next up, a home where hosts would speak only in French and Spanish and fed us delicious French toast in a meditative ceremony. Then, the hippie-neon-inspired meal: biscuits and “wavy gravy” made from vegetables grown in their garden. Our hippie hosts presented us with (unplugged) electric Kool-Aid and the 1970 UC Berkeley yearbook to peruse.

The fourth stop was a breezy, well-furnished Scott street apartment where we dined on mini-quiche and Meyer lemon-infused water, refreshments that gave us strength for our final brunch: another French toast plate, this time with a tomato salad and sweet potatoes. Our hosts, dressed from head to toe in orange, told us a Russian Easter parable (in Russian) as we ate.

It was exhausting – but well worth the shotgunning. I found that the Urban Eating League to be a creative way to bring sustainable eating and socializing under one auspice. And despite the silliness, these folks are passionate about sharing local foods. 

“I’ve participated in the event as an eater and chef,” said Rachel Caine, an ex-organic farmer and one of the hippies. “I love doing both actually. Being an eater is full of surprises – it’s really great to see people’s homes and meet new neighbors. But it’s been eye-opening to be able to feed 30 people with such a low budget.”

While the league has been limited to the Panhandle thus far, Johnson and Fitzgibbons say they are working towards expanding the event to other neighborhoods, and a wider group of participants. They are currently working with potential facilitators to stage Urban Eating League events in the Mission and Sunset.

The next Urban Eating League will take place on May 14. Sign ups take place on May 8 at the Divisadero farmer’s market, starting at 10 a.m. Visit www.wiggparty.org for more information

Live Shots: Bomba Estéreo at the Independent, 4/19/11

Andrew Lam
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Do you ever go to a concert and realize that the lead singer is your new style icon? From the peacock feather in her hair to the flamingo tee-shirt and chipped red nails, Liliana from Bomba Estéreo has got definite style chops. But the sold out audience at the Independent last night, April 19, wasn’t there just to see what hip threads Liliana might throw on. They were there to hear the band’s utterly unique music, a mix of electronica and traditional Colombian beats.

I grew up with a Puerto Rican dad, which meant that on Saturdays we’d be blasting classic salsa from the KPOO radio station. Those classic Latin rhythms just become a part of any Latino kid’s body, so I love that Bomba Estéreo has kept so much of their roots present in their music while at the same time venturing into the future by mixing in technology.

At one point in the show, someone yelled out “Psychedelic trip!” as a plethora of colors and images danced on the stage and the beat became almost trance-like and hypnotic. There was definitely some major heat and energy coming off the stage — luckily it didn’t become a full out fuego.

Our Weekly Picks: April 20-26

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 20

DANCE

“MOVE(MEN)T4”

The “MOVE(MEN)T” concerts plug into a men-only choreography tradition from the 1980s (although women do perform in them. Joe Landini revived the idea four years ago because the guys so clearly enjoyed the camaraderie that comes from working together. The artists for the second week’s program include Tim Rubel, who creates text-heavy pieces notable for their humor, and Honey McMoney and Kowal in what Landini calls “very queer” work. Jesse Bie has been dancing with and choreographing for Steamroller for more than 10 years while Michael Velez, a stunningly beautiful dancer, is a still-young choreographer. Todd McQuade is creating an installation in the basement; he will later perform it with Sasha Waltz and Guests in Berlin. (Rita Feliciano)

Wed/20-Thurs/21 8 p.m., $10-20

Garage

957 Howard, SF

(415) 518-1517

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

MUSIC

Dengue Fever

In trying to deal with the challenge Dengue Fever poses — singer Chhom Nimol belting out 1960s-style Cambodian pop played by L.A.-based musicians — critics have appealed to a unifying element: funk. Whether you’re Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, or Dengue Fever, anachronism doesn’t matter, if you make the beat move. On its newest album, Cannibal Courtship, Dengue Fever twists the cultural novelty out of their lyrics, turning songs unexpectedly strange. (In the first track, Nimol shakes up the bored, hand-clapping back-up singers, transitioning from “you wouldn’t understand” to “be my sacrificial lamb.”) Funk is universal, and makes for a hell of a party. Just like LSD. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Maus Haus and DJ Felina

8 p.m., $22.50

Fillmore 

1850 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.livenation.com


THURSDAY 21

EVENT

“Salmon in the Trees”

What are fish doing up in the leafy branches of trees? The punch line (spoiler alert!) requires thinking web-of-life style. Salmon swim upstream from the ocean to spawn and then die, having successfully laid the next generation. In the process, some are hunted by hungry bears — among 50 other salmon-eating animals, including us — who consequently spread carcasses and salmon-fortified poop far and wide on the forest floor. Nutrients are absorbed, reaching the tops of even the oldest-growth trees. Learn about this phenomenon and more with award-winning conservation photographer and author Amy Gulick, who talks about her adventures documenting this wild interconnectivity in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, one of the rarest ecosystems on the planet. (Kat Renz)

5:30 p.m., $20

Commonwealth Club

595 Market, SF

(415) 597-6700

www.commonwealthclub.org


PERFORMANCE

The Lily’s Revenge

What happens when a flower goes on a quest to become a man in order to wed his beloved bride? Or rather, what doesn’t happen, during this five-hour theater extravaganza in which playwright and burlesque performer Taylor Mac — along with dozens of local Bay Area artists — tackles love, marriage, and Prop. 8 using vaudeville, haiku, drag queens, ukuleles, feminist theories, dream ballets, and public dressing rooms, culminating in an interactive town hall. You heard right. Five hours. The first of three intermissions serves as a communal dinner, and wine and snacks are available for the long journey. Get ready for a spectacular adventure. (Julie Potter)

Through May 22

Tues-Sat 7 p.m.; Sun 2:30 p.m., $20-150

Magic Theatre

Fort Mason Center, SF

(415) 441-8822

www.magictheatre.org


FRIDAY 22

FILM

“John Waters’ Birthday Weekend”

John Samuel Waters was born April 22, 1946, which means he’s 65 today — but let’s hope one of America’s most daringly creative, bitingly hilarious, boundary-pushing filmmakers (not to mention authors, visual artists, and stand-up performers) has no intention of retiring anytime soon. The Castro pays tribute to “the Pope of Trash” with a quartet of essential early films (1972’s Pink Flamingos, 1974’s Female Trouble, 1981’s Polyester, and 1977’s Desperate Living), plus the (slightly) more mainstream 1994 Serial Mom and the movie that spawned the musical that spawned the movie musical, 1988’s Hairspray. True fiends will want to rush home post-weekend to watch all the movies not contained here, plus the DVD edition of 1981’s Mommie Dearest that contains Waters’ brilliant commentary, “Filth is my life!” (Cheryl Eddy)

Fri/22-Sun/24 $7.50-$10 

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com


MUSIC

Amon Amarth

Though they’ve been a band since 1992, the five burly Vikings in Sweden’s Amon Amarth didn’t really hit their stride for a decade. While headlining a U.S. tour in 2002, the quintet introduced stateside death metal maniacs to its untrammeled beards, overflowing, belt-mounted drinking horns, and soaring, harmonized riffs. With Oden on Our Side (2006) cemented the band’s status as standard bearers for the now-burgeoning Viking metal subgenre, partially on the strength of two hair-whipping music videos. New release Surtur Rising marks a historic chapter in the band’s career — one without headliners. This year’s “An Evening with Amon Amarth” tour features the band playing the new platter in its entirety, before launching into another set’s worth of old favorites. (Ben Richardson)

9 p.m., $22.50

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com


DANCE

Bay Area National Dance Week

Free. Dance. Everywhere. Kicking off with the participatory “One Dance” in Union Square Plaza at noon today, Bay Area National Dance Week, presented by Dancers’ Group, encourages everyone to bust a move with classes, workshops, performances, and events across the region. Head to ODC Dance Commons for free classes from bhangra and ballet to the Rhythm and Motion dance workout. Impress your friends with new fire dancing skills learned at Temple of Poi. Or get close to your favorite performers during an open rehearsal. Whatever your style, be sure to enjoy some of the more than 400 events taking place as part of this dance celebration. (Potter)

Through May 1, free

Various Bay Area locations

(415) 920-9181

www.bayareandw.org

 

MUSIC

Questlove

From busking on the streets of Philadelphia in the late 1980s to a nightly gig on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (with more than 12 albums in between), the Roots have never slowed down. It’s no blind guess that Ahmir Thompson, a.k.a. Questlove (a.k.a. ?uestlove), is a driving force behind its success (particularly if you’ve ever seen the look on his face when someone dropped the beat). A talented drummer with few peers, Questlove is the major reason the band is credited with not using recorded samples; he keeps them in his head and plays them with his hands. His deep knowledge of music, hip-hop, and beyond will be on display in an extensive four-hour DJ set. (Prendiville)

9 p.m., $20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com


SATURDAY 23

EVENT

“Cycles of History: Ecological Tour”

Feel the shape of San Francisco imprinted on your ass during a four-hour bike tour pedaling through the ecological past and present of the city’s northern neighborhoods. Sponsored by Shaping San Francisco, a living archive of lost local history, the two-wheeled trip explores the nature currently occupied by the towers of downtown, the landfilled waterfront, and the Presidio’s culturally-constructed forest, among other buried treasures. The tour is one of several offered throughout the year on everything from dissent to cemeteries, organized and led by the excessively knowledgeable and accessible Chris Carlsson, one of San Francisco’s premier activists and visionaries. An afternoon that’s good for the brain and the butt. (Renz)

Noon, $15-$50 sliding scale

Meet at CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 608-9035

www.shapingsf.org


TUESDAY 26

MUSIC

tUnE-YarDs

It should be clear by now, given that name, its punctuation, the previous album (BiRd-BrAiNs) and the new one (w h o k i l l), plus the cover art, that Merrill Garbus has a thing for collage. Without hearing the music, you see it’s going to be a strange assembly. Sure as hell isn’t going to fit set styles in any easy way. But. Oh, she put that there? Kind of works. And those clippings on top of that image? It’s actually a little inspired (the glitter in particular.) Is she one of these crazy bedroom producers? Would explain the uncanny intimacy. The live show should explain how she puts it all together. (Prendiville)

With Buke and Gass, Man/Miracle

8 p.m., $15

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

 

FILM

Valley Girl

OK, so Nicolas Cage’s career of late has taken a strange turn. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) showed that under the right conditions, he can still contain his spiraling zaniness, but films like Season of the Witch, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010), Knowing (2009), and Next (2007) — not to mention 2006’s remake of The Wicker Man — show that often he’d simply prefer not to. With Drive Angry 3-D and, Lord help us, an upcoming Ghost Rider (2007) sequel hinting that won’t be changing soon, take the time to revisit 1983’s Valley Girl, featuring a teenage Cage as a Hollywood demi-punk wooing adorable, mall-fixated Valley gal Deborah Foreman. The “I Melt With You” sequence is the gold standard for teen-dream falling-in-love montages; the dialogue, as always, remains totally tripendicular. (Eddy)

Tues/26-Weds/27 7:15 p.m., 9:25 p.m. (also April 27, 2 p.m.), $6-$10

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com


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What to watch

Andrew Lam
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What to watch

THURS/21

Beginners (Mike Mills, U.S., 2010) There is nothing conventional about Beginners, a film that starts off with the funeral arrangements for one of its central characters. That man is Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) at the ripe age of 75. Through flashbacks, we see the relationship play out — Oliver’s inability to commit tempered by his father’s tremendous late-stage passion for life. Hal himself is a rare character: an elderly gay man, secure in his sexuality and, by his own admission, horny. He even has a much younger boyfriend, played by the handsome Goran Visnjic. While the father-son bond is the heart of Beginners, we also see the charming development of a relationship between Oliver and French actor Anna (Melanie Laurent). It all comes together beautifully in a film that is bittersweet but ultimately satisfying. Beginners deserves praise not only for telling a story too often left untold, but for doing so with grace and a refreshing sense of whimsy. Thurs/21, 7 p.m., Castro. (Louis Peitzman)

 

FRI/22

The Good Life (Eva Mulvad, Denmark, 2010) Portraits of the formerly wealthy are often guilty of peddling secondhand nostalgia for some ancien regime while simultaneously stoking schadenfreude toward the now-deposed (just ask Vanity Fair). Eva Mulvad’s melancholy character study of 50-something Annemette Beckmann and her aged mother, Mette, avoids both traps even as her subjects — formerly wealthy Danish expats living on the dole in a cramped apartment in a coastal Portuguese town — offer few inroads for sympathy. Narcissistic and petulant, Annemette blames the loss of her family’s wealth on the 1974 nationalization of Portugal’s then-Communist government, and claims that her cosseted upbringing has made it hard to find a job (“Work doesn’t become me,” she gratingly protests at one point). Mette, who is more likeable, is a resigned realist whose sole comfort, aside from the pet dog, seems to be her knowledge that she is not long for this world. Comparisons to Grey Gardens (1975) are inevitable here, but the Beckmanns simply aren’t as interesting or possessed by as idiosyncratic a joie de vivre as the Beales, making The Good Life a tough slog. Fri/22, 3:45 p.m.; April 28, 6:45 p.m.; and May 1, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Matt Sussman)

Hahaha (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2010) Do you remember a time you behaved badly (not horribly, but bad enough that you felt ashamed) but you didn’t really think about it until long after the fact, say, when getting drinks with an old friend? If you can’t, than the latest from South Korean director Hong Sang-soo will probably jog your memory. As with many of Hong’s films, Hahaha’s premise is similar to the above scenario: two 30-something buds get together and reminisce about their recent trips to the same seaside town. Shown in episodic flashbacks, we start to realize that the incidents and players in their separate accounts overlap into one story filled with terrible poetry, domineering mothers, stalker-ish behavior, and poorly made choices. Hong’s films are primers in how not to treat your fellow human beings (straight dudes are usually the culprits), so take notes. Fri/22, 9:15 p.m.; Mon/25, 9 p.m.; and Tues/26, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Sussman)

I’m Glad My Mother is Alive (Claude Miller and Nathan Miller, France, 2009) Codirected with his son Nathan, this latest by veteran French director Claude Miller is an about-face from his acclaimed 2007 period epic A Secret. Viscerally up-to-the-moment in content and handheld-camera style, it’s a small story that builds toward an enormous punch. Thomas (played by Maxime Renard as a child, then Vincent Rottiers) is a lifelong malcontent whose troubles are rooted in his abandonment at age five by an irresponsible mother (Sophie Cattani). Neither the attentions of well-meaning adoptive parents or the influence of his better-adjusted younger brother can quell Thomas’ mix of furious resentment and curiosity toward his mere, whom he finally develops a relationship with as a young adult. As usual, Miller doesn’t “explain” his characters or let them explain themselves, yet everything feels emotionally true — right up to a narrative destination both that feels both shocking and inevitable. Fri/22, 6:45 p.m., and Mon/25, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Dennis Harvey)

Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, U.S., 2010) After three broke down road movies (1994’s River of Grass, 2006’s Old Joy, 2008’s Wendy and Lucy), Kelly Reichardt’s new frontier story tilts decisively toward socially-minded existentialism. It’s 1845 on the choked plains of Oregon, miles from the fertile valley where a wagon train of three families is headed. They’ve hired the rogue guide Meek to show them the way, but he’s got them lost and low on water. When the group captures a Cayeuse Indian, Solomon proposes they keep him on as a compass; Meek thinks it better to hang him and be done with it. The periodic shots of the men deliberating are filmed from a distance — the earshot range of the three women (Michelle Williams, Zoe Kazan, and Shirley Henderson) who set up camp each night. It’s through subtle moves like these that Meek’s Cutoff gives a vivid taste of being subject to fate and, worse still, the likes of Meek. Reichardt winnows away the close-ups, small talk, and music that provided the simple gifts of her earlier work, and the overall effect is suitably austere. Fri/22, 9 p.m., and Mon/25, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Max Goldberg)

Stake Land (Jim Mickle, U.S., 2010) Not gonna lie — the reason I wanted to review this one was because of the film still in the SFIFF catalog. Rotten-faced vampire with a stake through its neck? Yes, please! But while Jim Mickle’s apocalyptic road movie does offer plenty of gore, it’s more introspective than one might expect, following an orphaned teenage boy, Martin (Connor Paolo, Serena’s little bro on Gossip Girl), and his gruff mentor, Mister (Snake Plissken-ish Nick Damici), on their travels through a ravaged America. As books, films, and comics have taught us, whenever a big chunk of the human race is wiped out (thanks to zombies, vampires, an unknown cataclysm, etc.), the remaining population will either be good (heroic, like Mister and Martin, or helpless, like the stragglers they rescue, including a nun played by Kelly McGillis), or evil — cannibals, rapists, religious nuts, militant survivalists, etc. Stake Land doesn’t throw many curveballs into its end-times narrative, but it’s beautifully shot and doesn’t hold back on the brutality. Larry Fessenden (director of 2006’s The Last Winter) produced and has a brief cameo as a helpful bartender. Fri/22, 11:30 p.m., and Mon/25, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Cheryl Eddy)

 

SAT/23

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica, Romania, 2010) Andrei Ujica’s three-hour documentary uses decades of propagandic footage to let the late Romanian dictator — who was overthrown by popular revolt and executed in 1989 — hang himself with his own grandiose image-making. While the populace suffered (off-screen, you might want to bone up on the facts before seeing this ironical, commentary-free portrait), the “great leader” and his wife Elena were constantly seen holding state dances, playing volleyball, hunting bear, and vacationing hither and yon. (We even see them on the Universal Studios tour.) There’s no surprise in seeing them greeted with enormous pageantry in China; but it’s a little shocking to see this tyrant welcome Nixon (in the first-ever U.S. presidential visit to a Communist nation), lauded by Jimmy Cartner, and hobnobbing with Queen Elizabeth. This grotesque parade of self-glorifying public moments has a happy ending, however. Sat/23, 12:45 p.m., Kabuki; Sun/24, 5:15 p.m., New People; May 1, 1:30 p.m., PFA. (Harvey)

Life, Above All (Oliver Schmitz, South Africa/Germany, 2010) It’s tough enough to simply grow up, let alone care for a parent with AIDS and deal with the suspicions and fears of the no-nothing adults all around you. Rising above easy preaching and hand-wringing didacticism, Life, Above All takes as its blueprint the 2004 best-seller by Allan Stratton, Chandra’s Secrets, and makes compelling work of the story of 12-year-old Chandra (Khomotso Manyaka) and her unfortunate family, unable to get effective help amid the thicket of ignorance regarding AIDS in Africa. After her newborn sister dies, Chandra finds her loyalty torn between her bright-eyed best friend Esther (Keaobaka Makanyane), who’s rumored to hooking among the truck drivers in their dusty, sun-scorched rural South African hometown, and her mother (Lerato Mvelase), who listens far too closely to her bourgie friend Mrs. Tafa (an OTT Harriet Manamela), for her own good. Cape Town native director Oliver Schmitz sticks close to the action playing across his actors’ faces, and he’s rewarded, particularly by the graceful Manyaka, in this life-affirmer about little girls forced to shoulder heart-breaking responsibility far too soon. Sat/23, 4 p.m., and April 28, 6 p.m., Kabuki. (Kimberly Chun)

The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, Poland/Sweden, 2010) One of the clichés often told about art is that it is supposed to speak to us. Polish director Lech Majewski’s gorgeous experiment in bringing Flemish Renaissance painter Peter Bruegel’s sprawling 1564 canvas The Procession to Calvary to life attempts to do just that. Majeswki both re-stages Bruegel’s painting — which draws parallels between its depiction of Christ en route to his crucifixion and the persecution of Flemish citizens by the Spanish inquisition’s militia — in stunning tableaux vivant that combine bluescreen technology and stage backdrops, and gives back stories to a dozen or so of its 500 figures. Periodically, Bruegel himself (Rutger Hauer) addresses the camera mid-sketch to dolefully explain the allegorical nature of his work, but these pedantic asides speak less forcefully than Majeswki’s beautifully lighted vignettes of the small joys and many hardships that comprised everyday life in the 16th century. Beguiling yet wholly absorbing, this portrait of a portrait is like nothing else at the festival. Sat/23, 12:30 p.m., SFMOMA, and April 27, 9 p.m., Kabuki. (Sussman)

Mind the Gap Experimental film fans: come for the big names, but don’t miss out on the newcomers. Locals Jay Rosenblatt (melancholy found-footage bio The D Train), Kerry Laitala (psychedelic 3-D brain-dazzler Chromatastic), and Skye Thorstenson (mannequin-horror music video freak out Tourist Trap, featuring the acting and singing stylings of the Guardian’s Johnny Ray Huston) offer strong entries in an overall excellent program. International bigwigs Peter Tscherkassky (the 25-minute Coming Attractions, a layered study of airplanes, Hollywood, and Hollywood airplanes — not for the crash-phobic) and Jonathan Caouette (“Lynchian” has been used to describe the Chloë Sevigny-starring All Flowers In Time, though it contains a scary-faces contest that’d spook even Frank Booth) are also notable. New names for me were Zachary Drucker, whose Lost Lake introduces a transsexual, pervert-huntin’ vigilante for the ages, and my top pick: Kelly Sears’ Once it started it could not end otherwise, a deliciously sinister hidden-history lesson imagined via 1970s high-school yearbooks. Sat/23, 4:45 p.m., and May 1, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Troll Hunter (André Ovredal, Norway, 2010) Yes, The Troll Hunter riffs off The Blair Witch Project (1999) with both whimsy and, um, rabidity. Yes, you may gawk at its humongoid, anatomically correct, three-headed trolls, never to be mistaken for grotesquely cute rubber dolls, Orcs, or garden gnomes again. Yes, you may not believe, but you will find this lampoon of reality TV-style journalism, and an affectionate jab at Norway’s favorite mythical creature, very entertaining. Told that a series of strange attacks could be chalked up to marauding bears, three college students (Glenn Erland Tosterud, Tomas Alf Larsen, and Johanna Morck) strap on their gumshoes and choose instead to pursue a mysterious poacher Hans (Otto Jespersen) who repeatedly rebuffs their interview attempts. Little did the young folk realize that their late-night excursions following the hunter into the woods would lead at least one of them to rue his or her christening day. Ornamenting his yarn with beauty shots of majestic mountains, fjords, and waterfalls, Norwegian director-writer André Ovredal takes the viewer beyond horror-fantasy — handheld camera at the ready — and into a semi-goofy wilderness of dark comedy, populated by rock-eating, fart-blowing trolls and overshadowed by a Scandinavian government cover-up sorta-worthy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009). Sat/23, 11:30 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/25, 6:15 p.m., New People. (Chun)

World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany, 1973) The words “Rainer Werner Fassbinder” and “science fiction film” are enough to get certain film buffs salivating, but the Euro-trashy interior décor is almost reason enough to see this restored print of the New German Cinema master’s cyber thriller. Originally a two-part TV miniseries, World on a Wire is set in an alternate present (then 1973) in which everything seems to be made of concrete, mirror, Lucite, or orange plastic. When the inventor of a supercomputer responsible for generating an artificial world mysteriously disappears, his handsome predecessor must fight against his corporate bosses to find out what really happened, and in the process, stumbles upon a far more shattering secret about the nature of reality itself. Riffing off the understated cool of Godard’s Alphaville (1965) while beating 1999’s The Matrix to the punch by some 25 years, World on a Wire is a stylistically singular entry in Fassbinder’s prolific filmography. Sat/23, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki, and April 30, 2 p.m., PFA. (Sussman) SUN/24

A Cat in Paris (Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli, France/Belgium/Netherlands/Switzerland, 2010) Save your pocket poodles, please: Paris, as cities go, is most decidedly feline. From 1917’s silent serial Les Vampires to its uber-cool 1990s update Irma Vep, cat burglars and the Parisian skyline have gone together like café and au lait. Add actual cats and jazz to the mix for good measure (even Disney saw fit to set its jazzy 1970 Aristocats in the City of Light). At just over an hour long, the animated A Cat in Paris is an enjoyable little amuse-bouche that employs all the standards of the cats-in-Paris meme: Billie Holiday warbling on the soundtrack, a dashingly heroic antihero who scales the rooftops as if he studied parkour under Spider-Man, and the titular untamable black cat who serves as his partner in crime. Complete with a climatic Hitchcockian set piece on the rooftops of Notre Dame Cathedral, A Cat in Paris has a refreshingly angular and graphic, almost cubist, feel. Directors Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli’s work certainly doesn’t rank among that of countryman Sylvain Chomet (2010’s The Illusionist), but this family film is worth checking out if kitties up to no good in Purr-ree simply make you want to le squee. Sun/24, 12:30 p.m., Kabuki, and May 1, 12:30 p.m., New People. (Michelle Devereaux)

 

MON/25

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, U.S., 2010) The latest documentary from Werner Herzog once again goes where no filmmaker — or many human beings, for that matter — has gone before: the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, a heavily-guarded cavern in Southern France containing the oldest prehistoric artwork on record. Access is highly restricted, but Herzog’s 3D study is surely the next best thing to an in-person visit. The eerie beauty of the works leads to a typically Herzog-ian quest to learn more about the primitive culture that produced the paintings; as usual, Herzog’s experts have their own quirks (like a circus performer-turned-scientist), and the director’s own wry narration is peppered with random pop culture references and existential ponderings. It’s all interwoven with footage of crude yet beautiful renderings of horses and rhinos, calcified cave-bear skulls, and other time-capsule peeks at life tens of thousands of years ago. The end result is awe-inspiring. Mon/25, 7 p.m., and Tues/26, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)

 

TUES/26

Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán, France/Chile/Germany, 2010) Chile’s Atacama Desert, the setting for Patricio Guzmán’s lyrically haunting and meditative documentary, is supposedly the driest place on earth. As a result, it’s also the most ideal place to study the stars. Here, in this most Mars-like of earthly landscapes, astronomers look to the heavens in an attempt to decode the origins of the universe. Guzmán superimposes images from the world’s most powerful telescopes — effluent, gaseous nebulas, clusters of constellations rendered in 3-D brilliance — over the night sky of Atacama for an even more otherworldly effect, but it’s the film’s terrestrial preoccupations that resonate most. For decades, a small, ever dwindling group of women have scoured the cracked clay of Atacama searching for loved ones who disappeared early in Augusto Pinochet’s regime. They take their tiny, toy-like spades and sift through the dirt, finding a partial jawbone here, an entire mummified corpse there. Guzmán’s attempt through voice-over to make these “architects of memory,” both astronomers and excavators alike, a metaphor for Chile’s reluctance to deal with its past atrocities is only marginally successful. Here, it’s the images that do all the talking — if “memory has a gravitational force,” their emotional weight is as inescapable as a black hole. Tues/26, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki, and April 28, 6:15 p.m., PFA. (Devereaux)

The Sleeping Beauty (Catherine Breillat, France, 2010) Fairytales are endemically Freudian; perhaps it has something to with their use of subconscious fantasy to mourn — and breathlessly anticipate — the looming loss of childhood. French provocateuse Catherine Breillat’s feminist re-imagining of The Sleeping Beauty carries her hyper-sexualized signature, but now she also has free reign to throw in bizarre and beastly metaphors for feminine and masculine desire in the form of boil-covered, dungeon-dwelling ogres, albino teenage princes, and icy-beautiful snow queens. The story follows Anastasia, a poor little aristocrat, who longs to be a boy (she calls herself “Sir Vladimir”). When her hand is pricked with a yew spindle (more of a phallic impalement, really), Anastasia falls into a 100-year adventurous slumber, eventually awakening as a sexually ripe 16-year-old. It all plays like an anchorless, Brothers Grimm version of Sally Potter’s 1992 Orlando. And while it’s definitely not for the kiddies, it’s hard to believe that many adults would find its overt symbolism and plodding narrative any more than a sporadically entertaining exercise in preciousness. Your own dreams will undoubtedly be more interesting — perhaps you can catch a few zzz’s in a theater screening this movie. Tues/26, 6:15 p.m., and April 27, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Devereaux)

THE 54TH ANNUAL SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs April 21–May 5. Venues are the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; New People, 1746 Post, SF; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third, SF; and Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, SF. For tickets (most shows $13) and complete schedule visit www.sffs.org>.

Wicked, man

Andrew Lam
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7
Wicked, man

marke@sfbg.com

RAVE CULTURE Here’s a classic San Francisco rave story for you. First the official legend: “In the spring of 1991, a small, brave crew of acid house seekers set sail from southeast England in search of adventure. San Francisco was the destination. They made their mark under the Golden Gate Bridge at Baker Beach with the first in a six-year run of wild and lawless Full Moon parties.” And now the party reality: the crew set up during heavy fog after touching down from Britain — and at least two of Wicked’s four members, Garth and Jenö, had absolutely no freaking clue that they were beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

“We Brits were virgins to that beach,” Garth told me. “We were all enjoying a psychedelic dance when the sun started to come up, and the fog peeled back to reveal the bridge above our heads, lit up like a spaceship! We were hooked from that moment on. The decks were set up on a blanket on the sand. No table. Walkman speakers made makeshift monitors. One well-prepared gay friend improvised a cardboard dancefloor for himself and went about his vogueing like he was back at the Endup or Paradise Garage.”

The Wicked Brit saucer, launched from the illustrious Tonka Sound System renegade rave base, touched down on our shores at a moment when the Bay Area psychedelic sound and spirit was flagging. The West Coast underground party scene was being commercialized into the kind of slick, infantile, overproduced spectacles that unfortunately came to define rave in many ’90s people’s minds. And the music was veering from true basement soul to Big Bird carnival woo-woo — not that there was anything too awful about that, at the time it was fresh. But a pagan squadron of prog-rocky, deep acid house and baggy beats lovers setting up on a beach was a blast of fresh air.

Update on the Wicked crew: Almost all have benefited from our wonderful current dance music moment that values historical broad-mindedness over genre lockstep. (Really, the era-roving Wicked DJs have never sounded better than right now). Garth now lives in Los Angeles and has been releasing a steady stream of re-edits and remixes on his two labels, and through his King & Hound project with beloved local disco archivist James Glass. Former punk protestor and anarchist bookstore haunter Jenö plays live acid house every first Saturday at 222 Hyde, broadcasts the weekly “Noise from the Void” radio show (Tuesdays at 9 p.m. at www.90hz.org), and is codirecting a documentary on the social implications of San Francisco’s early rave scene, due out this summer. Thomas is in New York City as one-half of the awesome Rub N Tug production team and owns Whatever We Want Records. And Markie? The dude is and always will be Markie, party legend.

On the eve of the full moon Wicked: 20 Years of Disco Glory reunion party (the name is a cheeky play on one of Garth’s already cheeky dance floor hits), I talked to Garth, Jenö, and Thomas over e-mail.

SFBG It seems like a boatload of Brits emigrated here in the ’90s and had a huge impact on the party scene — in fact, they’re still coming. Is there something special about San Francisco that draws you guys? 

Garth I think a lot of Brits followed us here after they heard what was going on in the Bay Area, the freedom. The U.K. party scene was outlawed by Thatcher’s conservative government when it passed the criminal justice bill, which made it illegal for groups of more than 10 people to congregate while listening to repetitive beats. So there was a kind of party exodus: trance heads went to India (specifically Goa), other Brits went to Thailand, Australia, and Spain in search of a more fun life. San Francisco is particularly appealing to Brits because the climate suits us. It’s never too hot or too cold, and there’s a good dose of fog. It’s very liberal, the architecture is Victorian, it’s by the ocean with hills and those trams — plus great food and a strong, self-sustaining music scene.

Thomas It’s poetic, cosmopolitan, and charming without being European: we like that.

SFBG You definitely did bring a pagan spirit with you — not just with the full moon and witchy Wicked angles, but also in the sense of reinfusing the local music scene with a particularly enchanting Northern California-British psychedelic rock sensibility. Is that spirit still alive? After seeing how the West Coast techno scene has progressed in the past 20 years, do you have any thoughts or gripes? 

Garth Life’s too short for gripes. And I don’t consider it a “West Coast techno scene,” really. It’s all just music. We’ve always played the best in disco, acid house, psych rock, and all points in between. It’s the tempo that keeps things moving, and move it always will.

Jenö I wouldn’t consider Wicked as even being a part of the techno scene. Our music was a lot broader than that, dominated more by psychedelic house and soulful disco grooves. But we definitely influenced the West Coast music scene, and that influence can still felt today in the style and sounds of the current crop of local DJ crews, from the Sunset parties to the hipster clubs currently delving into obscure house and disco-driven sounds.

Thomas I’ll tell you this: I live in New York, and there’s too much disco.

SFBG Any good stories from the early days of Burning Man? 

Garth We were the first and only sound system there in 1995, and of the 5,000 or so people out on the playa, we had a few thousand of them all grooving out under the open skies: no marquees, no lightshow, just a kick ass 15K Turbosound system, right out of the box. During the height of my five-hour set on Saturday night, one naked freak (they never seem to be clothed) ran up and flipped the tables on top of me. There was thunder and lightning and a mad electrical hum until we got the gear up and running again. The crowd went apeshit — it’s still the highlight of my DJ career!

Jenö I didn’t make it the Wicked BM camps back then. But I did attend the last-ever Stonehenge Free Festival in the U.K. during summer solstice in 1984, which was the epiphany that drove me to want to create my own anarchic and free-spirited musical gatherings. Very similar to BM in style and substance — art and music-driven with countercultural ideals, but without the dust and ridiculously expensive admission of Black Rock City.

Thomas I didn’t go because I didn’t think I’d get served a proper cocktail. A foolish mistake on many levels.

SFBG Top five quintessential Wicked records?

Wicked DJ Garth & Eti, “20 Minutes of Disco Glory” — all the boys did excellent remixes of this seminal West Coast classic.

!!!, “Hello Is This Thing On? (Rub N Tug Remix)” — this incredible remix really sums up the Wicked sound, and they recorded it on a full moon!

Colm III, “High as a Mountain” — the title of this 1988 release says it all. Jenö brought it with him from England and played it at the first SF Full Moon party.

Marshall Jefferson, “Open Your Eyes” — deep vibes from the master of early Chicago house. More than just good music, it’s a spiritual journey.

The Man Collective, “No Hassle From the Man” — anthem. It’s rock and rave and soul and psych and passion. That’s maybe what we’re all about. 

WICKED: 20 YEARS OF DISCO GLORY

Sat/23, 10 p.m.–7 a.m., $20 advance

Mighty

119 Utah, SF

www.mighty119.com

Facebook: Wicked Disco Glory

 

Film Listings

Maria Poblet
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0

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

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The 54th annual San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 21–May 5. Venues are the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; New People, 1746 Post, SF; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third, SF; and Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, SF. For tickets (most shows $13) and complete schedule visit www.sffs.org.

THURS/21

Castro Beginners 7.

FRI/22

Kabuki The Place In Between 2. “Irresistable Impulses” (shorts program) 3:15. The Good Life 3:45. Miss Representation 6. Hahaha 6:15. I’m Glad My Mother is Alive 6:45. Attenberg 7. Walking Too Fast 8:45. Meek’s Cutoff 9. Microphone 9:15. The City Below 9:30. Stake Land 11:30.

New People Hot Coffee 6:30. Nainsukh 9:15.

PFA Silent Souls 7. Jean Gentil 8:40.

SAT/23

Kabuki “Youth Media Mash-Up” noon. Mysteries of Lisbon 12:15. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu 12:45. The Colors of the Mountain 1. Year Without a Summer 3. Life, Above All 4. “Mind the Gap” (shorts program) 4:45. Better This World 6. The Future 6:15. Le Quattro Volte 6:45. The Light Thief 7:15. World on a Wire 8:45. Living On Love Alone 9:30. “Get With the Program” (shorts program) 9:45. The Troll Hunter 11:30.

New People Pink Saris 1. The Last Buffalo Hunt 3:20. The Pipe 6. Hospitalité 9.

SFMOMA The Mill and the Cross 12:30. !Women Art Revolution 3.

PFA Foreign Parts 2:15. The Green Wave 4. Autumn 6:15. The High Life 8:40.

SUN/24

Kabuki “Irresistable Impulses” (shorts program) noon. A Cat in Paris 12:30. Jean Gentil 1. Nainsukh 2:30. The Green Wave 2:45. Walking Too Fast 3. “Cupid With Fangs” (shorts program) 3:15. Silent Souls 4:45. Crime After Crime 6. At Ellen’s Age 6:15. The Colors of the Mountain 6:30. “The Deep End” (shorts program) 7. Asleep in the Sun 8:45. “State of Cinema: Christine Vachon” 9. The Stool Pigeon 9:15. “From A to Zellner” (shorts program) 9:45.

New People A Useful Life noon. Microphone 2. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu 5:15. The Future 9:15.

PFA Something Ventured 2. Children of the Princess of Cleves 4:15. Chantrapas 6:15. The Arbor 8:45.

MON/25

Kabuki Children of the Princess of Cleves 2. The City Below 4. Meek’s Cutoff 4:30. Hot Coffee 6:30. Autumn 6:45. Cave of Forgotten Dreams 7. She Monkeys 7:15. Salon: The Social Justice Documentary 8:30. Hahaha 9. The Light Thief 9:15. I’m Glad My Mother is Alive 9:30. Stake Land 9:45.

New People The Troll Hunter 6:15. Year Without a Summer 9:15.

PFA A Useful Life 7. !Women Art Revolution 8:40.

TUES/26

Kabuki Hot Coffee 2. Hahaha 3:30. Ulysses 4. Chantrapas 6. Jean Gentil 6. The Sleeping Beauty 6:15. Nostalgia for the Light 6:30. She Monkeys 8:45. New Skin For the Old Ceremony 9. The Whistleblower 9:15. Cave of Forgotten Dreams 9:30.

New People The Last Buffalo Hunt 6:30. “Cupid With Fangs” (shorts program) 9.

PFA Better This World 6:30. Position Among the Stars 8:50.

OPENING

African Cats This Earth Day release, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, follows cheetah and lions on the African savanna. (1:40) Shattuck.

Ceremony It’s easy to dismiss Ceremony as derivative. The plot isn’t exactly original. But recycled material aside, it’s an entertaining indie diversion and a promising feature-length debut from writer-director Max Winkler. The underrated Michael Angarano stars as Sam Davis, a pretentious shit who owes a lot to Holden Caulfield by way of Rushmore‘s Max Fischer. Sam tricks his best friend Marshall (Reece Thompson) into accompanying him on a weekend getaway, with the real objective of winning back his lost love Zoe (Uma Thurman). But Zoe is all set to marry blowhard Whit Coutell (Lee Pace) and is not too keen on blowing off her wedding. None of the characters are all that likable — a quirky indie comedy must — and there are few surprises. But Winkler’s script is cute, and his cast is charming enough to carry the material along. The scenes between Angarano and Thompson are the film’s best. Here’s hoping they stand out enough to earn these young actors the recognition they deserve. (1:40) Lumiere. (Peitzman)

Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Don’t even think about shortening the title: Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Story Ever Sold is ingenious, bitingly funny, and made possible by corporate sponsorship. POM paid good money to earn a spot about the title, so damned if I’m going to leave them out. Instead of keeping product placement subliminal — or at least trying — Spurlock shows exactly what goes into the popular marketing practice. His film isn’t so much critical as it is honest: he doesn’t fight product placement, but rather embraces it to his own advantage. It’s win-win. Spurlock gets to make his movie without losing any cash, and the audience gets a hilarious insider look into a mostly hidden facet of advertising. As he says, it’s about transparency, and no one can claim Spurlock is trying to go behind our backs. And what of the advertising that pops up throughout the film? I can only speak to my own experience, but yes, I’m drinking POM as I write this. (1:26) SF Center. (Peitzman)

Red, White and Blue Noah Taylor stars in this mystery punctuated by shocking twists. (1:42) Roxie.

Trust A teenager is victimized by an internet predator in this drama. Clive Owen and Catherine Keener play her horrified parents. (1:55) Opera Plaza.

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family She’s baaack. (2:00) Shattuck.

Water for Elephants A young man (Robert Pattinson) joins a circus (populated by the likes of Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz) in this drama based on the best-selling novel. (2:00) Balboa, Marina.

White Irish Drinkers What is 20-year TV veteran John Gray (of series The Ghost Whisperer) doing writing-directing yet another indie Mean Streets (1973) knockoff? That’s fresh-outta-film-school business. Why is anyone doing one of those so long after the expiration date for that second (or by now third) generation shit? This trip down some very familiar roads — 1997’s Good Will Hunting and 1977’s Saturday Night Fever being others — stars SF native Nick Thurston as a 1975 Brooklyn youth with a violent alcoholic father (Stephen Lang), long-suffering mother (Karen Allen), and an older brother drifting into criminality (Geoffrey Wigdor). As outside influences this talented closet artist has the requisite upscaling girl (Leslie Murphy) urging him to dream big, and a wistfully downtrodden employer (Peter Riegert) providing the plot gimmick as a failing movie-palace owner who hopes to turn around his fortunes with a one-night-stand by the Rolling Stones. Everything about White Irish Drinkers feels recycled from other movies. Though the performers work hard and the progress is entertaining enough, there’s way too much déjà vu here for one film to bear and still stand on its own punch-drunk legs. (1:49) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

ONGOING

The Adjustment Bureau As far as sci-fi romantic thrillers go, The Adjustment Bureau is pretty standard. But since that’s not an altogether common genre mash-up, I guess the film deserves some points for creativity. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau takes place in a world where all of our fates are predetermined. Political hotshot David Norris (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness — but not if he lets a romantic dalliance with dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) take precedence. And in order to make sure he stays on track, the titular Adjustment Bureau (including Anthony Mackie and Mad Men‘s John Slattery) are there to push him in the right direction. While the film’s concept is intriguing, the execution is sloppy. The Adjustment Bureau suffers from flaws in internal logic, allowing the story to skip over crucial plot points with heavy exposition and a deus ex machina you’ve got to see to believe. Couldn’t the screenwriter have planned ahead? (1:39) Balboa, Shattuck. (Peitzman)

Arthur (1:45) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Atlas Shrugged (1:57) Shattuck, SF Center.

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

Certified Copy Abbas Kiarostami’s beguiling new feature signals “relationship movie” with every cobblestone step, but it’s manifestly a film of ideas — one in which disillusionment is as much a formal concern as a dramatic one. Typical of Kiarostami’s dialogic narratives, Certified Copy is both the name of the film and an entity within the film: a book written against the ideal of originality in art by James Miller (William Shimell), an English pedant fond of dissembling. After a lecture in Tuscany, he meets an apparent admirer (Juliette Binoche) in her antique shop. We watch them talk for several minutes in an unbroken two-shot. They gauge each other’s values using her sister as a test case — a woman who, according to the Binoche character, is the living embodiment of James’ book. Do their relative opinions of this off-screen cipher constitute characterization? Or are they themselves ciphers of the film’s recursive structure? Kiarostami makes us wonder. They begin to act as if they were married midway through the film, though the switch is not so out of the blue: Kiarostami’s narrative has already turned a few figure-eights. Several critics have already deemed Certified Copy derivative of many other elliptical romances; the strongest case for an “original” comes of Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy (1954). The real difference is that while Rossellini’s masterpiece realizes first-person feelings in a third-person approach, Kiarostami stays in the shadow of doubt to the end. (1:46) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Goldberg)

*Circo The old notion of “running away with the circus” seldom seemed appealing — conjuring images of following an elephant around with a shovel — and it grows even less so after watching Aaron Schock’s warm, touching documentary. The kids here might one day run away from the circus. They’re born into Grand Circo Mexico, one of four circuses run by the Ponce family, which has been in this business for generations; if they’re old enough to walk, they’re old enough to perform, and help with the endless setup and breakdown chores. (Presumably child labor laws are an innovation still waiting to happen here.) Touring Mexico’s small towns in trucks with a variety of exotic animals, it’s a life of labor, with on-the-job training in place of school — arguably not much of a life for child, as current company leader Tino’s wife Ivonne (who really did run away with the circus, or rather him, at age 15) increasingly insists. Other family members have split for a normal life, and Tino is caught between loyalty to his parents’ ever-struggling business and not wanting to lose the family he’s raised himself. This beautifully shot document, scored by Calexico and edited by Mark Becker (of 2005’s marvelous Romantico), is a disarming look at a lifestyle that feels almost 19th century, and is barely hobbling into the 21st one. (1:15) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Conspirator It may not be your standard legal drama, but The Conspirator is a lot more enjoyable when you think of it as an extended episode of Law & Order. The film chronicles the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the lone woman charged in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. It’s a fascinating story, especially for those who don’t know much of the history past John Wilkes Booth. But while the subject matter is compelling, the execution is hit-or-miss. Wright is sympathetic as Surratt, but the usually great James McAvoy is somewhat forgettable in the pivotal role of Frederick Aiken, Surratt’s conflicted lawyer. It’s hard to say what it is that’s missing from The Conspirator: the cast — which also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Tom Wilkinson — is great, and this is a story that’s long overdue to be told. Still, something is lacking. Could it be the presence of everyone’s favorite detective, the late Lennie Briscoe? (2:02) Embarcadero, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio. (Peitzman)

*Hanna The title character of Hanna falls perfectly into the lately very popular Hit-Girl mold. Add a dash of The Boys from Brazil-style genetic engineering — Hanna has the unfair advantage, you see, when it comes to squashing other kids on the soccer field or maiming thugs with her bare hands — and you have an ethereal killing/survival machine, played with impassive confidence by Atonement (2007) shit-starter Saoirse Ronan. She’s been fine-tuned by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), a spy who went out into the cold and off the grid, disappearing into the wilds of Scandinavia where he home-schooled his charge with an encyclopedia and brutal self-defense and hunting tests. Atonement director Joe Wright plays with a snowy palette associated with innocence, purity, and death — this could be any time or place, though far from the touch of modern childhood stresses: that other Hannah (Montana), consumerism, suburban blight, and academic competition. The 16-year-old Hanna, however, isn’t immune from that desire to succeed. Her game mission: go from a feral, lonely existence into the modern world, run for her life, and avenge the death of her mother by killing Erik’s CIA handler, Marissa (Cate Blanchett). The nagging doubt: was she born free, or Bourne to be a killer? Much like the illustrated Brothers Grimm storybook that she studies, Hanna is caught in an evil death trap of fairytale allegories. One wonders if the super-soldier apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since evil stepmonster Marissa oversaw the program that produced Hanna — the older woman and the young girl have the same cold-blooded talent for destruction and the same steely determination. Yet there’s hope for the young ‘un. After learning that even her beloved father hid some basic truths from her, this natural-born killer seems less likely to go along with the predetermined ending, happy or no, further along in her storybook life. (1:51) Empire, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Henry’s Crime Keanu Reeves is one of those actors who’s spectacularly franchise-wealthy — due to those Matrix movies wherein his usual baffled solemnity was ideal — yet whom the public otherwise feels scant evident loyalty toward, and producers don’t know what to do with. Now that he’s aging out of his looks, can he transform into a character actor? Maybe. Reeves played charming suitors in Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009), both very much supporting roles. He seems increasingly interested in indie films, which he surely doesn’t need to pay the rent, and he’s certainly the best reason to see Henry’s Crime, a pleasant, middling, retro crime caper costarring frequently better actors at dimmer wattage than usual. The film is an old hat out of the Damon Runyon trunk, in which lovable crooks mix it up with hoity theatrical types and nobody gets hurt except (barely) the really bad guys. James Caan — who starred in similar enterprises during their post-The Sting heyday — plays the veteran convict-conman who schools Reeves’ hapless Buffalo, N.Y., toll-taker Henry after our hero is slammer-thrown for an armed robbery he didn’t know he was embroiled in until it was over. Upon release, Henry discovers the targeted bank and nearby theater had a Prohibition-era secret tunnel between them. Having already done the time, he figures he might as well do the crime by finishing the aborted bank job for real. He enlists local stage diva Julie (Vera Farmiga) as well as Caan’s parole-coaxed Max. Resulting wacky hijinks render Max a theater “volunteer” and Henry as Julie’s Cherry Orchard costar, all so they can access the walled-up passageway to the bank vault. Much of this is ridiculous, of course, and not intentionally so. The climax is classic movies-getting-how-theater-works-wrong. But its contrivance functions to some extent because the lead actor convinces us it should. (1:48) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Hop (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

*In a Better World Winner of this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this latest from Danish director Susanne Bier (2004’s Brothers, 2006’s After the Wedding) and her usual co-scenarist Anders Thomas Jensen (2005’s Adam’s Apples, 2003’s The Green Butchers) is a typically engrossing, complex drama that deals with the kind of rage for “personal justice” that can lead to school and workplace shootings, among other things (like terrorism). Shy, nervous ten-year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard) needs a confidence boost, but things are worrying both at home and elsewhere. His parents are estranged, and his doting father (Mikael Persbrandt) is mostly away as a field hospital in Kenya tending victims of local militias. At school, he’s an easy mark for bullies, a fact which gets the attention of charismatic, self-assured new kid Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen), who appoints himself Elias’ new (and only) friend — then when his slightly awed pal is picked on again, intervenes with such alarming intensity that the police are called. Christian appears a little too prone to violence and harsh judgment in teaching “lessons” to those he considers in the wrong; his own domestic situation is another source of anger, as he simplistically blames his earnest, distracted executive father (Ulrich Thomsen) for his mother’s recent cancer death. Is Christian a budding little psychopath, or just a kid haplessly channeling his profound loss? Regardless, when an adult bully (Kim Bodnia as a loutish mechanic) humiliates Elias’ father in front of the two boys, Christian pulls his reluctant friend into a pursuit of vengeance that surely isn’t going to end well. With their nuanced yet head-on treatment of hot button social and ethical issues, Bier and Jensen’s work can sometimes border on overly-schematic melodrama, meting out its own secular-humanist justice a bit too handily, like 21st-century cinematic Dickenses. But like Dickens, they also have a true mastery of the creating striking characters and intricately propulsive plotlines that illustrate the points at hand in riveting, hugely satisfying fashion. This isn’t their best. But it’s still pretty excellent, and one of those universally accessible movies you can safely recommend even to people who think they don’t like foreign or art house films. (1:53) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Insidious (1:42) 1000 Van Ness.

*Jane Eyre Do we really need another adaptation of Jane Eyre? As long as they’re all as good as Cary Fukunaga’s stirring take on the gothic romance, keep ’em coming. Mia Wasikowska stars in the titular role, with the dreamy Michael Fassbender stepping into the high pants of Edward Rochester. The cast is rounded out by familiar faces like Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins — all of whom breathe new life into the material. It helps that Fukunaga’s sensibilities are perfectly suited to the story: he stays true to the novel while maintaining an aesthetic certain to appeal to a modern audience. Even if you know Jane Eyre’s story — Mr. Rochester’s dark secret, the fate of their romance, etc. — there are still surprises to be had. Everyone tells the classics differently, and this adaptation is a thoroughly unique experience. And here’s hoping it pushes the engaging Wasikowska further in her ascent to stardom. (2:00) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Presidio. (Peitzman)

Kill the Irishman If you enjoy 1970s-set Mafia movies featuring characters with luxurious facial hair zooming around in Cadillacs, flossing leather blazers, and outwitting cops and each other — you could do a lot worse than Kill the Irishman, which busts no genre boundaries but delivers enjoyable retro-gangsta cool nonetheless. Adapted from the acclaimed true crime book by a former Cleveland police lieutenant, the film details the rise and fall of Danny Greene, a colorful and notorious Irish-American mobster who both served and ran afoul of the big bosses in his Ohio hometown. During one particularly conflict-ridden period, the city weathered nearly 40 bombings — buildings, mailboxes, and mostly cars, to the point where the number of automobiles going sky-high is almost comical (you’d think these guys would’ve considered taking the bus). The director of the 2004 Punisher, Jonathan Hensleigh, teams up with the star of 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, Ray Stevenson, who turns in a magnetic performance as Greene; it’s easy to see how his combination of book- and street smarts (with a healthy dash of ruthlessness) buoyed him nearly to the top of the underworld. The rest of the cast is equally impressive, with Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, and Linda Cardellini turning in supporting roles, plus a host of dudes who look freshly defrosted from post-Sopranos storage. (1:46) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Limitless An open letter to the makers of Limitless: please fire your marketing team because they are making your movie look terrible. The story of a deadbeat writer (Bradley Cooper) who acquires an unregulated drug that allows him to take advantage of 100 percent of his previously under-utilized brain, Limitless is silly, improbable and features a number of distracting comic-book-esque stylistic tics. But consumed with the comic book in mind, Limitless is also unpredictable, thrilling, and darkly funny. The aforementioned style, which includes many instances of the infinite regression effect that you get when you point two mirrors at each other, and a heavy blur to distort depth-of-field, only solidifies the film’s cartoonish intentions. Cooper learns foreign languages in hours, impresses women with his keen attention to detail, and sets his sights on Wall Street, a move that gets him noticed by businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro in a glorified cameo) as well as some rather nasty drug dealers and hired guns looking to cash in on the drug. Limitless is regrettably titled and masquerades in TV spots as a Wall Street series spin-off, but in truth it sports the speedy pacing and tongue-in-cheek humor required of a good popcorn flick. (1:37) California, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Galvin)

*The Lincoln Lawyer Outfitted with gym’d-tanned-and-laundered manly blonde bombshells like Matthew McConaughey, Josh Lucas, and Ryan Phillippe, this adaptation of Michael Connelly’s LA crime novel almost cries out for an appearance by the Limitless Bradley Cooper — only then will our cabal of flaxen-haired bros-from-other-‘hos be complete. That said, Lincoln Lawyer‘s blast of morally challenged golden boys nearly detracts from the pleasingly gritty mise-en-scène and the snappy, almost-screwball dialogue that makes this movie a genre pleasure akin to a solid Elmore Leonard read. McConaughey’s criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller is accustomed to working all the angles — hence the title, a reference to a client who’s working off his debt by chauffeuring Haller around in his de-facto office: a Lincoln Town Car. Haller’s playa gets truly played when he becomes entangled with Louis Roulet (Phillippe), a pretty-boy old-money realtor accused of brutally attacking a call girl. Loved ones such as Haller’s ex Maggie (Marisa Tomei) and his investigator Frank (William H. Macy) are in jeopardy — and in danger of turning in some delightfully textured cameos — in this enjoyable walk on the sleazy side of the law, the contemporary courtroom counterpart to quick-witted potboilers like Sweet Smell of Success (1957). (1:59) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Miral (1:42) California.

*Of Gods and Men It’s the mid-1990s, and we’re in Tibhirine, a small Algerian village based around a Trappist monastery. There, eight French-born monks pray and work alongside their Muslim neighbors, tending to the sick and tilling the land. An emboldened Islamist rebel movement threatens this delicate peace, and the monks must decide whether to risk the danger of becoming pawns in the Algerian Civil War. On paper, Of Gods and Men sounds like the sort of high-minded exploitation picture the Academy swoons over: based on a true story, with high marks for timeliness and authenticity. What a pleasant surprise then that Xavier Beauvois’s Cannes Grand Prix winner turns out to be such a tightly focused moral drama. Significantly, the film is more concerned with the power vacuum left by colonialism than a “clash of civilizations.” When Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson) turns away an Islamist commander by appealing to their overlapping scriptures, it’s at the cost of the Algerian army’s suspicion. Etienne Comar’s perceptive script does not rush to assign meaning to the monks’ decision to stay in Tibhirine, but rather works to imagine the foundation and struggle for their eventual consensus. Beauvois occasionally lapses into telegraphing the monks’ grave dilemma — there are far too many shots of Christian looking up to the heavens — but at other points he’s brilliant in staging the living complexity of Tibrihine’s collective structure of responsibility. The actors do a fine job too: it’s primarily thanks to them that by the end of the film each of the monks seems a sharply defined conscience. (2:00) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Goldberg)

*Poetry Sixtysomething Mija (legendary South Korean actor Yun Jung-hee) impulsively crashes a poetry class, a welcome shake-up in a life shaped by unfulfilling routines. In order to write compelling verse, her instructor says, it is important to open up and really see the world. But Mija’s world holds little beauty beyond her cheerful outfits and beloved flowers; most pressingly, her teenage grandson, a mouth-breathing lump who lives with her, is completely remorseless about his participation in a hideous crime. In addition, she’s just been disgnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and the elderly stroke victim she housekeeps for has started making inappropriate advances. Somehow writer-director Lee Chang-dong (2007’s Secret Sunshine) manages not to deliver a totally depressing film with all this loaded material; it’s worth noting Poetry won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Yun is unforgettable as a woman trying to find herself after a lifetime of obeying the wishes of everyone around her. Though Poetry is completely different in tone than 2009’s Mother, it shares certain elements — including the impression that South Korean filmmakers have recognized the considerable rewards of showcasing aging (yet still formidable) female performers. (2:19) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Potiche When we first meet Catherine Deneuve’s Suzanne — the titular trophy wife (or potiche) of Francois Ozon’s new airspun comedy — she is on her morning jog, barely breaking a sweat as she huffs and puffs in her maroon Adidas tracksuit, her hair still in curlers. It’s 1977 and Suzanne’s life as a bourgeois homemaker in a small provincial French town has played out as smoothly as one of her many poly-blend skirt suits: a devoted mother to two grown children and loving wife who turns a blind eye to the philandering of husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), Suzanne is on the fast track to comfortable irrelevance. All that changes when the workers at Robert’s umbrella factory strike and take him hostage. Suzanne, with the help of union leader and old flame Babin (Gerard Depardieu, as big as a house), negotiates a peace, and soon turns around the company’s fortunes with her new-found confidence and business savvy. But when Robert wrests back control with the help of a duped Babin, Suzanne does an Elle Woods and takes them both on in a surprise run for political office. True to the film’s light théâtre de boulevard source material, Ozon keeps things brisk and cheeky (Suzanne sings with as much ease as she spouts off Women’s Lib boilerplate) to the point where his cast’s hammy performances start blending into the cheery production design. Satire needs an edge that Potiche, for all its charm, never provides. (1:43) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Sussman)

Rio (1:32) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center.

Scre4m Back in 1996, Wes Craven’s Scream revitalized the slasher genre with a script (by Kevin Williamson) that poked fun at horror clichés while still delivering genuine scares. The sequels offered diminishing returns on this once-clever formula; Scream 4 arrives 11 years past Scream 3, presumably hoping to work that old self-referential yet gory magic on a new crop of filmgoers. But Craven and Williamson’s hall-of-mirrors creation (more self-satisfied than self-referential, scrambling to anticipate a cynical audience member’s every second-guess) is barely more than than a continuation of something that was already tired in 2000, albeit with iPhone and web cam gags pasted in for currency’s sake. Eternal Ghostface target Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to her hometown to promote what’s apparently a woo-woo self-help book (Mad Men‘s Alison Brie, as Sidney’s bitchy-perky publicist, steals every scene she’s in); still haunting Woodsboro are Dewey (David Arquette), now the sheriff, and Gale (Courteney Cox), a crime author with writer’s block. When the Munch-faced one starts offing high school kids, local movie nerds (Rory Culkin, Hayden Panettiere) and nubile types (Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere) react by screening all seven Stab films, inspired by the “real-life” Woodsboro murders, and spouting off about the rules, or lack thereof in the 21st century, of horror sequels. If that sounds mega-meta exhausting, it is. And, truth be told, not very scary. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Some Days Are Better Than Others First-time director Matt McCormick doesn’t break any new stylistic or thematic ground with his ensemble drama, but Some Days Are Better Than Others does boast an interesting bit of stunt casting. Indie rock fans will recognize the Shins’ James Mercer as mopey Eli, who drifts between temp jobs trying to earn enough money to go back to school because he hates working so much; fellow musician Carrie Brownstein appears as Katrina, a recently-dumped, reality TV-obsessed dog-shelter worker; her character is the kind of emo thrift-shopper that Portlandia would had no trouble poking fun at. Other points on this sad-sack square are a lonely woman ((Renee Roman Nose) who finds an erstwhile cremation urn, and an elderly man (David Wodehouse) obsessed with the kaleidoscope-like patterns he captures while filming soap bubbles. Moments of wry humor (Katrina checks messages at “mumblemail.net”) and some Ghost World-ish jabs at mainstream go-getters (including a moving-company douchebag who hires Eli to help clean out a recently-deceased woman’s house) keep Some Days from being a total downer, but be warned: this is one melancholy movie. Shins fans will enjoy the scene where Eli, alone in his room, rehearses for a yearned-for karaoke date with a Bonnie Tyler classic. (1:33) Roxie. (Eddy)

Soul Surfer (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*Source Code A post-9/11 Groundhog Day (1993) with explosions, Inception (2010) with a heart, or Avatar (2009) taken down a notch or dozen in Chicago —whatever you choose to call it, Source Code manages to stand up on its own wobbly Philip K. Dick-inspired legs, damn the science, and take off on the wings of wish fulfillment. ‘Cause who hasn’t yearned for a do-over — and then a do-over of that do-over, etc. We could all be as lucky — or as cursed — as soldier Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who gets to tumble down that time-space rabbit hole again and again, his consciousness hitching a ride in another man’s body, while in search of the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. On the upside, he gets to meet the girl of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) — and see her getting blown to smithereens again and again, all in the service of his country, his commander-cum-link to the outside world (Vera Farmiga), and the scientist masterminding this secret military project (Jeffrey Wright). On the downside, well, he gets to do it over and over again, like a good little test bunny in pinball purgatory. Fortunately, director Duncan Jones (2009’s Moon) makes compelling work out of the potentially ludicrous material, while his cast lends the tale a glossed yet likable humanity, the kind that was all too absent in Inception. (1:33) Balboa, Marina, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Win Win Is Tom McCarthy the most versatile guy in Hollywood? He’s a successful character actor (in big-budget movies like 2009’s 2012; smaller-scale pictures like 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck; and the final season of The Wire). He’s an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (2009’s Up). And he’s the writer-director of two highly acclaimed indie dramas, The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007). Clearly, McCarthy must not sleep much. His latest, Win Win, is a comedy set in his hometown of New Providence, N.J. Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer who’s feeling the economic pinch. Betraying his own basic good-guy-ness, he takes advantage of a senile client, Leo (Burt Young), when he spots the opportunity to pull in some badly-needed extra cash. Matters complicate with the appearance of Leo’s grandson, Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer), a runaway from Ohio. Though Mike’s wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan), is suspicious of the taciturn teen, she allows Kyle to crash with the Flaherty family. As luck would have it, Kyle is a superstar wrestler — and Mike happens to coach the local high school team. Things are going well until Kyle’s greedy mother (Melanie Lynskey) turns up and starts sniffing around her father’s finances. Lessons are learned, sure, and there are no big plot twists beyond typical indie-comedy turf. But the script delivers more genuine laughs than you’d expect from a movie that’s essentially about the recession. (1:46) Bridge, California, Piedmont. (Eddy)

Your Highness One of the dangers of reviewing a film like Your Highness is that stoner comedies have a very specific intended audience. A particular altered state is recommended to maximize one’s enjoyment. I tend not to show up for professional gigs with Mary Jane as my plus-one, so I had to view the latest from Pineapple Express (2008) director David Gordon Green through un-bloodshot eyes. While Express was more explicitly ganja-themed, Your Highness is instead a comedy that approximates the experience of getting as high as possible, then going directly to Medieval Times. Never gut-bustingly funny, Your Highness still reaps chuckles from its hard-R dialogue and plenty of CG-assisted sight gags involving genetalia. James Franco and Danny McBride star as princes, one heroic and one ne’er-do-well, who quest to save a maiden kidnapped by an evil wizard (Justin Theroux). Natalie Portman turns up as a thong-wearing warrior, just ’cause it’s that kind of movie. Forget the box office; only time and the tastes of late-night movie watchers will dictate whether Your Highness is a success or a bust. Case in point: nobody thought much of Half Baked (1998) when it was released, but in certain circles, it’s become a bona fide classic. Say it with me now: “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, and fuck you. I’m out!” (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy) 

 

Snap Sounds: Jessica 6

John Elberling
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Snap Sounds: Jessica 6

JESSICA 6
“White Horse” and “Fun Girl”
(Peacefrog)

Siren of the dance floor Nomi Ruiz is looking and sounding even better outside of Hercules and Love Affair; in fact, depending on the petty commercial whims and deeper prejudices of the world, she could be the most alluring pop diva since Aaliyah. Washing in on peerless cymbal-sprays, “White Horse” comes on like the 21st-century answer to Shannon’s “Let the Music Play” while also notching top spot in the current Madonna revival. Its video sashays through the kind of N.Y. nighttime sleaze that just about disappeared with the Gaiety, and does so with style. The older “Fun Girl” has traces of the Hercules sound as well as Janet Jackson’s and Aaliyah’s feline flirtations with guitar rock, and a warped horror-tinged sound that make sense when one considers Jessica 6’s original name was Deep Red. Check out the flawless combo of windblown hair/keyboard at 1:14. Can’t wait for the album. Videos after the jump.

Jessica 6, “White Horse”:

Jessica 6, “Fun Girl”:

Flannelalia

Andrew Lam
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Flannelalia

marke@sfbg.com

PLAID OBSESSION We live in a post-Etsy world, people, and the latest homemade, zero-kilometer focus is on small-batch clothing production. As usual, the Bay Area is taking a lead here, weaving its green intentions and entrepreneurial zeal into its free-spirited fashion sense and a strong garment manufacturing legacy — and producing stylish duds with enough professional veneer to take to the runway or just out for a beer.

The three sharp dudes from Pladra (www.pladra.com) — Scott Ellison, Ian Ernzer, and Jeff Ladra — add another Bay tradition to the mix: classically avid sportiness. “As passionate outdoorsmen, we have never found a flannel that we could wear both in the field and to the bar after getting blood on it,” they say, and so they set about combining their love of surfing, fly-fishing, camping, hunting, skateboarding, and nature photography with flawless design skills and vintage beauty. (It doesn’t hurt that a good plaid flannel is the one item that still unites many of our current style tribes.)

I admit I’m a flannel freak, and Pladra’s three current lines, including an awesome one for women, had me wiping drool off my keyboard. But I wanted a glimpse into the new local-production trend, too, and the Pladra boys happily provided, answering my questions over e-mail.

SFBG Pladra is all about plaid flannel — how’d you come to focus on that? Will you be expanding? 

PLADRA I think it’s safe to say we’ve all had a few go-to flannels throughout our lives. You know, the one you camp in, then come home and go straight to a bar or concert in, then wear to work the next day — each stain is a story and a memory. In terms of our growth, we’d love to let everything grow at its own pace, although we definitely have some ideas. For now, we’re keeping production small and tight. We wanted to start with plaid flannel shirts because they’re timeless and represent an iconic outdoor style we feel really connects to life in the Bay Area. It’s funny that people peg flannels as a trend, but even the gold miners wore flannel. Jeff grew up here, and his grandparents spent their whole lives building and racing motorcycles. He still has photos of them wearing flannels.

SFBG Right now you’re foregoing retail outlets and selling direct from your website. I’m assuming that’s to keep costs down, yes? Has this been a problem in regard to getting your product in front of people?

PLADRA That’s true, we’re selling direct through our website to maintain the lowest price possible. Our goal is not to turn a profit, but to make the best garment possible at the most reasonable price — and our price range is $89–$109. Truth be told, this is what it costs to have a quality, American-made, custom shirt. We’ve found that people who initially scoff at our prices backpedal when they find out what goes into making something in the USA. Americans are so accustomed to paying for cheap garments that are imported mostly from Asia. We’re not condemning that, the truth is that a lot of production out of Asia has great quality. But at a certain point, we need to step back and consider the ramifications that one of the USA’s largest imports is apparel. Many U.S. cities used be the home to some of the best and biggest fabric mills in the world. Now what? All the mills are overseas. Very few companies can afford to use fabric milled in the USA. Even denim companies have to use reclaimed fabric.

The direct selling approach certainly makes it difficult to reach a wide range of people off the bat. But we do want to offer reasonable pricing to our customers. We want to focus on the brand integrity and we don’t want to dilute our product and blast it everywhere right away. We are taking a slow and careful approach in our growth.

SFBG What were the specific challenges of designing and producing everything in San Francisco? 

PLADRA It was really important to us to keep things local and support local businesses. But limiting our geographic range also meant limiting our accessibility to materials that would maintain our desired quality while not forcing our prices to skyrocket. That meant we had to challenge ourselves to search harder for vendors that could deliver great materials and finishing — and we ended up partnering with some incredible ones who went above and beyond to support our vision.

SFBG Pladra isn’t just all about hunting and designing. What are some of your favorite shops and bars in SF? 

PLADRA Shopping-wise, we really like Union Made in the Castro. Our friends at Park Life in the Inner Richmond and the General Store in the Outer Sunset offer amazing home-produced goods. And the Aqua and Mollusk surf shops have always been amazing at supporting their communities. As for going out, we could happily spend the rest of our lives drinking our way through the menus at Toronado and Alembic. And we just scored one of our favorite clubs, 111 Minna, to host our official launch party. See you there? *

PLADRA LAUNCH PARTY Tues/26, 5 p.m.–9 p.m., free. 111 Minna, SF. www.111minnagallery.com

 

Out of the shadows

Andrew Lam
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0
Out of the shadows

arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC The Cults out of the bag.

The initial mystery surrounding the Brooklyn band of two has been solved, as rumors turned into a year of lengthy articles, photographs, and live performances, all soothing the flea-ridden hype. The official promise of a debut full-length this summer is sure to stimulate some additional excitement, but once again the information age has won and indie snoops are left with a furry clump of truth.

“There’s no real story behind us. We’re just real people,” explains Brian Oblivion, the male half of Cults. While it may seem like some rock stars are hiding wizard or robot identities, believe it or not, all musicians are indeed “just real people.” Oblivion attempts to elaborate on this idea, but he and girlfriend Madeline Follin, the female half of the band, are riding in a tour van through some sketchy airwaves. His voice keeps transforming into robotic and scratchy sounds, which makes his theory slightly suspicious.

But no — the Cults are neither lizard-people nor alien-forms. They’re not angry cult leaders or brainwashed followers for that matter. The Internet has explained it all and the facts are clearly posted: Oblivion and Follin are both 22, from San Diego, and going to film school in New York City.

Follin grew up swaddled in punk music, and Oblivion always had a thing for surf-rock, but when the two of them began their courtship, a musical agreement had to commence. Soul, ’50s pop, and ’60s girl-groups like Lesley Gore and the Shangri-Las became a pleasant middle ground. When the lovers began to play music together, their inspiration was a direct pipeline to these performers; musicians who could make lemons into limoncello and drape a lacy haze over any foggy day.

“There’s something so tough about ’50s pop music,” says Oblivion. He respects the genre’s mold-breaking ideas, from its social connotations and ability to blur race barriers to its physical elements, like new echo effects and guitar tones. “There’s lots of spirit in that music that gets written off as retro when new acts try to perform it. But there’s a sentiment in it that we like. It’s moving. There’s something special there.”

Music by Cults makes daisies grow and serious cares seem like spoonfuls of acid-laced sugar. Everything is sublime beneath Follin’s gorgeous bell-like vocals, even when she sings about naughty behaviors, crying, and shit relationships. And they’re not the only young band that has begun harnessing the Motown stallion. Best Coast is the most direct example, but groups like Warpaint and Dom have also turned rock back a few pages, spawning a fresh generation of ears ready to challenge the music industry’s current corporate-pop bill.

“Madeline has a theory about [the ’50s and ’60s pop revival],” Oblivion says. “We’re just old enough now to appreciate it. Our parents grew up listening to it because it was our grandparents’ style. But we’re the ones going back and rediscovering. Our parents are still into their ’80s Rolling Stones records. Our generation is excited because we’re digging in Dumpsters and finding these old records — and we’re finding this music without having it shoved in our faces.”

Like treasure chests buried beneath a sea of Rihannas, American Idols, and decades of rock, the serenades of brass instruments, cheery bass lines, hollow voices, and forlorn lyrics are bubbling up to the surface. It’s discovery and reacquainted love. Aging 40 years or more, these albums may be dusty and scratched, their performers long absent from daily gossip rags, yet there’s still some element of mystery that has regrown from the ashes of the era. That mystery makes for good hype, but as Cults have learned, you’ve got to come out of the shadows to make solid impressions.

“It’s fun to play live and interact with audiences. Live [music] is so important — it’s the only way to make money, and right now shows are doing awesome,” Oblivion says with his crackly, phone-impaired voice, noting his admiration for indie bands that are selling out large venues. He’s calling it a revolution.

“People want to have an experience, something to hold onto. They’re tired of the MP3s that move around through the air, because it’s just not the same as being at a show and feeling the music come out of the speakers. It’s immaterial. You walk away with a feeling.”

That feeling is the revolution.

CULTS

With Magic Kids, White Arrows

Thurs./14, 8 p.m.; $13

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

 

Hear me howling!

Andrew Lam
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1
Hear me howling!

MUSIC Last November, with little fanfare, homegrown roots music empire Arhoolie Records turned 50, an almost unbelievable milestone for a niche music label dedicated to the lasting preservation of regional music in an increasingly disposable MP3 world.

It wasn’t until this February that Arhoolie even scheduled a celebration, the proceeds of which went to fund the Arhoolie Foundation, the 16-year-old nonprofit dedicated to making a digital archive of founder Chris Strachwitz’s vast miscellany of Mexican and Mexican American recordings — the Frontera Collection — widely considered to be the largest of its kind on both sides of the border. Conceived as a research resource and historical documentation of the recordings, the digitized files are stored and accessible at the Chicano Studies Research Center library at UCLA (www.chicano.ucla.edu). The physical collection of approximately 46,000 units, housed in a climate-controlled basement in El Cerrito, stands as a fragile yet monumental testament to the mostly under-recognized talents of literally thousands of music-makers.

Strachwitz himself, a seemingly boundless wellspring of enthusiasm at 79, slowed only by a recalcitrant hip (recently replaced), attributes the label’s longevity in part to his own stubborn “fanaticism” for music, a trait shared by his small yet dedicated staff. From Strachwitz’s well-documented obsession with tracking down Lightnin’ Hopkins to record him in 1959, to his increasingly far-flung forays into the backwoods and swamps of the musically-diverse South, his emphasis has been on excavating the genuine, the raw, and the regionally significant. The diversity of music that Arhoolie publishes and records ranges in style from dirty blues to folk ballads, Cajun zydeco to conjunto. The tie that binds them isn’t genre, but emotional content.

“They are all very down to earth, totally alive and vibrant, from people who have mostly had a rough life,” Strachwitz explains. Perhaps best known for their bang-for-your-buck compilations assembled by region or genre: 15 Early Tejano Classics, Angola Prisoner’s Blues, Masters of the Folk Violin, Arhoolie has also released a number of seminal single-artist albums. Bogalusa Boogie by recent Grammy Hall of Fame inductee Clifton Chenier, Flaco Jiménez’s 1986 Grammy-winning ranchera album Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio, and the Pine Leaf Boys’ 2007 Grammy-nominated Cajun dance album Blues de Musicien exemplify Arhoolie’s commitment to unadorned authenticity.

Though it’s been a few years since Arhoolie recorded any new material, there’s a stockpile of one-of-a-kind field recordings patiently awaiting release. A recent addition to the Arhoolie canon is 2010’s Hear Me Howling, a four-CD collection housed in the handsome confines of a hardcover scrapbook. This 72-track compilation of raw material, gleaned from a series of Bay Area recording sessions from 1954-71, captures the essence of the music as well as the musicians in the moment: a humorous reference about Strachwitz’s “new recording machine,” improvised by skiffle group The Skid Band; a soft-spoken call for requests by bluesman Mance Lipscomb; a brief but earnest sermon delivered by the Rev. Louis Overstreet before he launches into an anthem on his electric guitar.

On several of Hear Me Howling‘s tracks, you can hear Strachwitz’s distinctive laugh carrying above the responsive noises of the audience. The intimacy of these mostly home recordings brings the circumstances they were recorded in to life in a way that no studio polish can mimic. Each is an aural document of a precise place and time.

Aural documents are what head Frontera Collection archivist (and trombonist for radical ska-punk ensemble La Plebe) Antonio Cuellar specializes in. His Sisyphean task is to scan and digitize a copy of every album — he’s been working for nine years, focusing primarily on the 78s and 45s that make up the bulk of the collection. After listening to a recording, Cuellar compiles a list of keywords to append to the digital file. Recurring themes and keywords such as “patriotism” (four hits), “praise of beauty” (3,590 hits), “executions” (32), and “trabajo de emigrante” (277) are entered into the digital database, along with a high-quality scan of the physical vinyl, and notes on the artists (Hermanas Segovia, Narciso Martínez, Orquesta La Campaña) and style of music (conjunto, ranchera, bolero, vals bajito, and Latino rock and soul).

“Often the only information left about a recording is on the label,” explains Cuellar, who extracts what he can from each. But besides collecting discards from jukebox joints, radio stations, and major label back-stock, Strachwitz acquired several now-defunct labels lock, stock, and-barrel, including Falcón and Ideal. This has allowed him to expand on the information he archives, noting, for example, what a particular recording artist was paid ($10 and a six-pack) or who was in the backing band. It’s painstaking, “sometimes tedious” work, but Cuellar, who may be the only person besides Strachwitz to have listened to so much of the collection, has a clear sense of its historical importance.

“Probably 99.9 percent of these artists are unknown,” Cuellar points out. “If I do a search for them online, it directs me back to Arhoolie, to the information that we have here … [Whereas] I can go and search for information about the most obscure blues guy, and he’s going to have something written about him.”

“It was Guillermo Hernandez [the late former director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center] who made me aware that this music was really the literature of the campesinos,” Strachwitz muses. “When he discovered I had all these damn old records, he became totally intrigued. Because nobody at that time seemed to know they had such a long history.” “It definitely influences me,” notes Cuellar, who was born in Mexico. “It’s helped open my eyes to my own history.”

Heady

Andrew Lam
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0
Heady

culture@sfbg.com

CAREERS AND ED “Just to let you know, this class is different than other yoga classes,” warns the receptionist at the San Francisco Integral Yoga Institute. It’s Monday night and I’ve just shown up at the institute to try my first restorative yoga class. “You roll around on pillows …” he continues.

I get it — restorative yoga is not your typical barrage of sun salutations and yogic pretzel bends — so I nod reassuringly and head up the flights of stairs to the top floor of the institute’s Victorian-style mansion-cum-yoga-palace, emerging in the dark, candle-lit room where the class will be held. There are high wood ceilings and plenty of space on the carpeted floor, where a pile of pillows wait for each student.

Our instructor will be Divya Nanda, a guest teacher who has been affiliated with the institute for more than 40 years. Wearing silky orange garments from head to toe, she radiates a calming, peaceful presence.

Here we go. Let’s just get it out there. I’m not a yoga person. If I happen to take a break from Internet-beer time long enough to exercise, I prefer to do it alone with my iPod rather than in a room full of strangers.

But I’m a stressed-out soul, generally speaking, and restorative yoga’s smooth, centering movements sound appealing. This form of yoga is geared toward relaxation and uses slow-moving techniques to give students a sense of peacefulness, spiritual fulfillment, and mind-body connection — all things yours truly is 100 percent lacking. Most yoga studios in the city offer some form of restorative class, which can be perfect for those suffering from injuries or just in need of a little slow-paced nurturing.

“Restorative yoga is based in the philosophy of the whole yoga practice, which is to be peaceful,” Nanda says. “Peace is within you, so we go within.”

Within we go, starting with “oms,” “hari oms,” and simple warm-ups — downward dog pose interspersed with concentrated breathing exercises and stretches. All the while, Nanda circulates throughout the room, adjusting our positions and making sure that we’re completely relaxed and comfortable.

During one warm-up that involved sitting with our knees tucked under us, Nanda looked over at me and said, “Hannah, you might want to do this one in the cross-legged position, I don’t want you to hurt your ankles.” I was shocked. How did she know my ankles were aching — x-ray yogi vision?

After the deep breathing, we move on to poses that entailed lying in super-comfortable, unconventional asanas. They make me feel like a sleepy baby. Designed to place minimal pressure on joints, they include splaying out our legs and arms, every part of our bodies supported by soft pillows.

Along the way, Nanda shares soothing thoughts: “The future is a mystery. The past is history. What we have is now, the golden present.” “Beyond the thinking mind there is a great peacefulness,” and so on. We end the class with guided meditation and this Sanskrit chant: “From the unreal to the real, from the darkness to the light, from our fears to the knowledge of our immortal natures.”

Leaving Nanda’s world was bittersweet: I’m sad to go, realizing I’ve never given myself a sanctioned stretch of time to nurture my reflective side. But emerging from the institute, walking back out into the gentle buzz of Dolores Street, I feel so centered that I can almost hear my body whispering to me. Was that an “om shanti,” relaxed core of mine? I can’t be sure — but I know it won’t be my last time in restorative yoga. Below, a brief list of ways to learn to nurture yourself in the Bay.

Restorative yoga

Mondays 7:30 p.m. –9 p.m., $9 for first class, $12 for subsequent classes, Integral Yoga Institute, 770 Dolores, SF. www.integralyogasf.org

 

INTERPRETING DREAMS WITH HORARY ASTROLOGY

You may not have heard of the San Francisco Astrological Society, but as far as Bay Area star sign enthusiasts are concerned, it’s a big deal. This year it will be hosting astrology-focused lectures on topics like “The Cycle of Saturn,” “2012 and Beyond.” If you’re interested in what your dreams can tell you about the future, you’ll have to check out this upcoming talk. It promises to teach about the basic techniques needed to unlock your dreams for clues on what’s to come using ancient Greek dream interpretation methods and horary astrology, a sect of astrology based on creating a horoscope for the exact moment in which a question is asked.

May 26, 7:30 p.m., $7 for members, $12 for nonmembers. Building C, Fort Mason Center, SF., www.sfastrologicalsociety.com

 

SENSUAL TOUCH AND DEEPER CONNECTION (IN AND OUT OF THE BEDROOM)

If you’re not big on touching people, then this class is probably not for you — although it might have the power to change your mind on the subject. This one-time workshop with somatic therapist and intimacy coach Shara Ogin teaches you how to take physical contact to the next level. From intimacy to sex to sensual massage, Ogin plans to show students how to make each experience more intimate and cosmically close.

April 19, 6–8 p.m., $40/pair advance, $45 at door. Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk, SF. www.goodvibes.com

 

EVOLVING WESTERN HERBAL TRADITIONS

Medical herbalist, new age crusader, and self-proclaimed member of the herbal renaissance, David Hoffman teaches this class focusing on the history of herbalism in the United States and the world. The workshop ranges from discussions about herbs in science and medicine to ways herbs are used in the our country and the changing role of botanical medicine in a modern global context. Rolling papers not included.

Aug. 23, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., $100. Charlotte Maxwell Complimentary Clinic, 2601 Mission, SF. www.ohlonecenter.org

 

Music Listings

Maria Poblet
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0

Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 13

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Broken Social Scene, Gord Downie Warfield. 8pm, $27.

Francis and the Lights, Oh Land, Sunday Ghost Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Girls in Trouble, Jascha vs. Jascha Viracocha, 998 Valencia, SF; www.viracochasf.com. 8pm, $5-10.

Hammerlock, Scheisse Minnelli, Seven Crowns, Lecherous Gaze Thee Parkside. 8pm, $6.

Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, Those Darlins Independent. 8pm, $18.

Lightning Bolt, Tits, High Castle Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $12.

Majesty, Sweet Chariot, Tarantula Tango Knockout. 9pm, $6.

Curtis Peoples, Keaton Simons, Whitney Nichols Hotel Utah. 8pm, $10.

Porch, Bone Dweller Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Rural Alberta Advantage, Lord Huron, Birdmonster Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Chelsea TK and the Tzigane Society, Parlour Suite, Starfish in the Clouds, Uni and Her Ukelele, DJ Neil Martinson Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Yacht, Bobby Birdman Bimbo’s 365 Club. 8pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Jazz All-Stars Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

New Rite Spot All-Stars Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Rudy Simone 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St., SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. Soul, funk, swing, and rare grooves with residents Dr. Musco and DJB.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

Mod vs. Rocker Make-Out Room. 10pm, free. DJs all night spinning 60s pop; come at 7:30 p.m. (cover $7) for a live concert with Bond Girl and 10 ft. 5.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

Obey the Kitty Vessel. 10pm, $10. With a Ladytron DJ set.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Strutter El Rio. 9pm, $3. DeeJay Andre spins electro, booty bass, hip-hop, and more for lesbians and friends.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

“When I Was a Youth: Big Up Magazine Issue Release” Mezzanine. 9pm, $10. With Breakage, Goth Trad, and a screening of the documentary Bassweight.

THURSDAY 14

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Cults, Magic Kids, White Arrows Independent. 8pm, $13.

Cute Lepers, Re-Volts, Complaints, Lydia and the Projects Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

Delorean, Water Borders Slim’s. 9pm, $21.

“Eddie Dane Memorial” DNA Lounge. 9pm, $5 suggested donation. With Hi-Rhythm Hustlers and burlesque performances.

Ellie Goulding, Knocks Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $13.

Joy Formidable, Lonely Forest Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $12.

Lake, AgesandAges, Michael Beach Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

Little Mercury, Exit Wonderland, Curly El Rio. 8pm, $5.

Vonda Shephard Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $25.

Tomihara, My Second Surprise, Haberdasher Red Devil Lounge. 8pm, $6.

Two Door Cinema Club, Globes, Work Drugs Fillmore. 8pm, $20.

Matt Wertz, Ben Rector Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Zach Hash Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and “Tender” Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

Ken Sealy Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

SF Jazz Hotplate Series Amnesia. 9pm.

Scott Sier Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Meredith Axelrod 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Bay Island Ramblers Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

Amy Obienski Mama Art Café, 4754 Mission, SF; www.mamasf.com. 8pm, free.

Yeye Suárez Red Poppy Art House. 7pm, $12-15.

“Twang! Honky Tonk” Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

CakeMIX SF Wish, 1539 Folsom, SF; www.wishsf.com. 10pm, free. DJ Carey Kopp spinning funk, soul, and hip hop.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Culture Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 10pm, free. Roots reggae, dub, rocksteady, and classic dancehall with DJ Tomas, Yusuke, Vinnie Esparza, and Basshaka and ILWF.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Electric Feel Lookout, 2600 16th St, SF; www.fringesf.com. 9pm, $2. Indie music video dance party with subOctave and Blondie K.

80s Night Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests. This week’s theme is Duran Duran; come dressed as a member of the band and get in free before 11pm.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Jivin’ Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Kissing Booth Make-Out Room. 9pm, free. DJs Jory, Commodore 69, and more spinning indie dance, disco, 80’s, and electro.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Motion Sickness Vertigo, 1160 Polk, SF; (415) 674-1278. 10pm, free. Genre-bending dance party with DJs Sneaky P, Public Frenemy, and D_Ro Cyclist.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party has a new venue, featuring video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

FRIDAY 15

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Blank Tapes, Little Wings, Kacey Johansing, Rad Cloud Great American Music Hall. 8:30pm, $13.

Burmese, CCR Headcleaner, Crib Death Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

“Cheerleader Graduation Party” Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10. With Cock-Ts, Devil-Ettes, Boner Jams, and Six Million Dollar Band.

Entrance Band, Rachel Fannan, Nick Waterhouse, Allah Las, DJ Selections by KC Bull Slim’s. 9pm, $13.

Gr’ups, Swann Danger, Street Eaters, Hounds and Harlots Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Katdelic, DJ K-Os Boom Boom Room. 9:30pm, $15.

Naked Fiction Amnesia. 7pm.

Night Call, Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Bad Dream El Rio. 9pm, $5.

Nodzzz, Art Museums, Gun Outfit Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Residents Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $30.

Raphael Saadiq, Quadron Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $39.50-49.50.

Scissor Sisters, Oh Land Warfield. 9pm, $37.

Upsets 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Emily Anne Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

“B3 Bash” Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-60. With Dr. Lonnie Smith and Barbara Dennerlein Trio.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Chelle! and friends Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-15.

Melees, Ken Sealy Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Maceo Parker Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $20-30.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Deke Dickerson, B-Stars, Golddigger Elbo Room. 9pm, $13.

Amjad Ali Khan Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.ciis.edu/publicprograms. 8pm, $25-100.

Amy Obienski Velo Rouge Café, 798 Arguello, SF; www.velorougecafe.com. 7pm, free.

Pine Box Boys, Hubba Hubba Revue, Possum and Lester Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $14.

Shakulintang Rancho Parnassus, 505 Minna, SF; www.ranchoparnassus.com. 8pm, $10-15.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Chase and Status, 2cents, Lukeino, Kuze DNA Lounge. 10pm, $20.

DJ Momentum Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 10:30pm, $10.

DJ What’s His Fuck Riptide. 9pm, free. Old-school punk and other gems.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Mary Anne Hobbs 1015 Folsom. 10pm, $15. With Joy Orbison, Kode9, Lorn, Gonja Sufi, and more.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 440-0222. 6pm. Synth sounds of the cold war era.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa “Samoa Boy” spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 16

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

All Time Low, Yellowcard, Hey Monday, Summer Set Warfield. 7pm, $27.

Arrival, Luvplanet, Relay Company Showroom, 1000 Van Ness, SF; (415) 346-5597. 8:30pm, $12-15.

Crazy Alligators Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Forrest Day, Bayonics, Ghost and the City Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14.

Druglords of the Avenues, Fracas, Street Justice Bender’s, 806 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 9:30pm, $5.

Duran Duran Fillmore. 9pm, $57.50.

Full on Flyhead, Lavish Green, Ben Benkert Band, Scholar and the Melting Pot Slim’s. 9pm, $14.

Heavy Liquid, Tempermentals Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Maserati, Kenseth Thibideau, Glaciers Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $10.

OONA, Super Adventure Club, Dogcatcher Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $10.

Orgone, Quinn Deveaux and the Blue Beat Review Independent. 9pm, $16.

Residents Bimbo’s 365 Club. 9pm, $30.

Stymie and the Pimp Jones Love Orchestra Café Du Nord. 9pm, $15-25.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Billy White Quintet West Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-20.

JP and the Rhythm Chasers, Petunia and the Vipers Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.oldtimey.net. 8pm, $15.

Maceo Parker Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $30.

Proverb Trio with Dafnis Prieto, Kokyai, and Jason Lindner Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $30.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Culann’s Hounds, Lucia Comnes St. Cyprian’s Church, 2097 Turk, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 8pm, $20.

Octomutt, Lily Taylor Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Cock Fight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. Gay locker room antics galore with electro-spinning DJ Earworm, MyKill, and Dcnstrct.

Bootie SF: Bootiechella DNA Lounge. 9pm, $8-15. Coachella artists get mashed up by Adrian and Mysterious D, and more.

DJ Nik Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 10:30pm, $10.

Fringe Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. Indie music video dance party with DJ Blondie K and subOctave bringing the best of Coachella to SF.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip-hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Prince vs. Michael Madrone Art Bar. 8pm, $5. With DJs Dave Paul and Jeff Harris battling it out on the turntables with album cuts, remixes, rare tracks, and classics.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Sixties soul with DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

“Bands for the Rising Sun: Benefit for Japan Tsumani Quake Relief” Maggie McGarry’s, 1353 Grant, SF; bandsfortherisingsun@gmail.com. 2-9pm, donations accepted. With Dyno Cats, Deepest Purple, Project Gojira, and more.

“Battle of the Bands” DNA Lounge. 5:30pm, $12. With Glorious Birds, Style Like Revelators, and more.

Black Wizard Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Foxtails Brigade, Rachel Fannan Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $15.

Hauschka, Magik*Magik Orchestra Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $18.

Goh Nakamura, Come Gather Round Us, Yea-Ming Café Du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Vostok-Zapad Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $25.

Wire Slim’s. 9pm, $21.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

“Bruno’s/Wayne Niethold Tribute” Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; www.publicsf.com. 4-10pm, $15-50. With DJ Chase Gowdy, Todd Sickafoose Group, Graham Connah’s Sour Note Seven, Scott Amendola Quartet, and more.

Jennifer Bryce and Josh Workman Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St., SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Jazz jam 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Ellis Marsalis Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-65.

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Andy y Callao El Rio. 4-8pm, $8.

Family Folk Explosion Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Silver Threads, Kitchen Fire Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

Venezuelan Music Project Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7pm, $16.

DANCE CLUBS

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death.

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

Chocolate Sundays Beauty Bar. 9pm. With DJs 4AM and Automatic Transmission, plus a drunken spelling bee.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and guest DJ Ripley.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. “Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers.” Got that?

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

MONDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

!!! Independent. 9pm, $20.

New Pornographers, Menomena Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $32.

One Way Station, Califia, Songs for Snakes Elbo Room. 9pm.

Spiral Bombs, Narooma, Hazel’s Wart El Rio. 7pm, $5.

Tame Impala, Yuck Fillmore. 8pm, $20.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Marcia Ball Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $20.

“Beyond the Music Label Series” Boom Boom Room. 6-9pm, free. With Blind Willies.

Grooming the Crow, Scott Gagner El Rio. 7pm, free.

Janet Jackson Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 8pm, $49.50-149.50.

Pains of Being Pure at Heart Amoeba, 1855 Haight, SF; www.amoeba.com. 6pm, free.

Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Twin Shadow, Catwalk Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $17.

Rubber O Cement, Dental Work, Shortwave Surfers, Terror Apart Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bomba Estéreo, Bayonics Independent. 8pm, $18.

Lumanation, Dubtown Dread John Colins, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm, $5.

Sue Quigley Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; (415) 641-6033. 8pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Boomtown Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 9pm, free. DJ Mundi spins roots, ragga, dancehall, and more.

Brazilian Wax Elbo Room. 9pm, $7. Forro and samba with Razteria, DJ Carioca, and DJ P-Shot.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

 

Film Listings

Maria Poblet
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0

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

OPENING

An Affirmative Act A lesbian couple fights for their right to stay married in this narrative courtroom drama. (1:33) Four Star.

*Circo The old notion of “running away with the circus” seldom seemed appealing — conjuring images of following an elephant around with a shovel — and it grows even less so after watching Aaron Schock’s warm, touching documentary. The kids here might one day run away from the circus. They’re born into Grand Circo Mexico, one of four circuses run by the Ponce family, which has been in this business for generations; if they’re old enough to walk, they’re old enough to perform, and help with the endless setup and breakdown chores. (Presumably child labor laws are an innovation still waiting to happen here.) Touring Mexico’s small towns in trucks with a variety of exotic animals, it’s a life of labor, with on-the-job training in place of school — arguably not much of a life for child, as current company leader Tino’s wife Ivonne (who really did run away with the circus, or rather him, at age 15) increasingly insists. Other family members have split for a normal life, and Tino is caught between loyalty to his parents’ ever-struggling business and not wanting to lose the family he’s raised himself. This beautifully shot document, scored by Calexico and edited by Mark Becker (of 2005’s marvelous Romantico), is a disarming look at a lifestyle that feels almost 19th century, and is barely hobbling into the 21st one. (1:15) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Conspirator It may not be your standard legal drama, but The Conspirator is a lot more enjoyable when you think of it as an extended episode of Law & Order. The film chronicles the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the lone woman charged in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. It’s a fascinating story, especially for those who don’t know much of the history past John Wilkes Booth. But while the subject matter is compelling, the execution is hit-or-miss. Wright is sympathetic as Surratt, but the usually great James McAvoy is somewhat forgettable in the pivotal role of Frederick Aiken, Surratt’s conflicted lawyer. It’s hard to say what it is that’s missing from The Conspirator: the cast — which also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Tom Wilkinson — is great, and this is a story that’s long overdue to be told. Still, something is lacking. Could it be the presence of everyone’s favorite detective, the late Lennie Briscoe? (2:02) Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Peitzman)

Henry’s Crime See “Breaking Point.” (1:48) California, Embarcadero.

Meet Monica Velour Kim Cattrall stars as an aging porn star in this comedy. (1:37)

Rio Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway lend their voices to this animated bird adventure. (1:32) Presidio.

Scre4m It’s kinda fun to just look at the cast list and wonder which demi-star will suffer the most hideous death at the hands of ol’ Ghostface: Emma Roberts? Adam Brody? Shanae Grimes? (run time not available)

Some Days Are Better Than Others First-time director Matt McCormick doesn’t break any new stylistic or thematic ground with his ensemble drama, but Some Days Are Better Than Others does boast an interesting bit of stunt casting. Indie rock fans will recognize the Shins’ James Mercer as mopey Eli, who drifts between temp jobs trying to earn enough money to go back to school because he hates working so much; fellow musician Carrie Brownstein appears as Katrina, a recently-dumped, reality TV-obsessed dog-shelter worker; her character is the kind of emo thrift-shopper that Portlandia would had no trouble poking fun at. Other points on this sad-sack square are a lonely woman ((Renee Roman Nose) who finds an erstwhile cremation urn, and an elderly man (David Wodehouse) obsessed with the kaleidoscope-like patterns he captures while filming soap bubbles. Moments of wry humor (Katrina checks messages at “mumblemail.net”) and some Ghost World-ish jabs at mainstream go-getters (including a moving-company douchebag who hires Eli to help clean out a recently-deceased woman’s house) keep Some Days from being a total downer, but be warned: this is one melancholy movie. Shins fans will enjoy the scene where Eli, alone in his room, rehearses for a yearned-for karaoke date with a Bonnie Tyler classic. (1:33) Roxie. (Eddy)

ONGOING

The Adjustment Bureau As far as sci-fi romantic thrillers go, The Adjustment Bureau is pretty standard. But since that’s not an altogether common genre mash-up, I guess the film deserves some points for creativity. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau takes place in a world where all of our fates are predetermined. Political hotshot David Norris (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness — but not if he lets a romantic dalliance with dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) take precedence. And in order to make sure he stays on track, the titular Adjustment Bureau (including Anthony Mackie and Mad Men‘s John Slattery) are there to push him in the right direction. While the film’s concept is intriguing, the execution is sloppy. The Adjustment Bureau suffers from flaws in internal logic, allowing the story to skip over crucial plot points with heavy exposition and a deus ex machina you’ve got to see to believe. Couldn’t the screenwriter have planned ahead? (1:39) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Arthur (1:45) Empire, Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

*Battle: Los Angeles Michael Bay is likely writhing with envy over Battle: Los Angeles; his Transformers flicks take a more, erm, nuanced view of alien-on-human violence. But they’re not all such bad guys after all; these days, as District 9 (2009) demonstrated, alien invasions are more hazardous to the brothers and sisters from another planet than those trigger-happy humanoids ready to defend terra firma. So Battle arrives like an anomaly — a war-is-good action movie aimed at faceless space invaders who resemble the Alien (1979) mother more than the wide-eyed lost souls of District 9. Still reeling from his last tour of duty, Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is ready to retire, until he’s pulled back in by a world invasion, staged by thirsty aliens. In approximating D-Day off the beach of Santa Monica, director Jonathan Liebesman manages to combine the visceral force of Saving Private Ryan (1998) with the what-the-fuck hand-held verite rush of Cloverfield (2008) while crafting tiny portraits of all his Marines, including Michelle Rodriguez, Ne-Yo, and True Blood‘s Jim Parrack. A few moments of requisite flag-waving are your only distractions from the almost nonstop white-knuckle tension fueling Battle: Los Angeles. (1:57) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

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

*Cedar Rapids What if The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) got so Parks and Rec‘d at The Office party that he ended up with a killer Hangover (2009)? Just maybe the morning-after baby would be Cedar Rapids. Director Miguel Arteta (2009’s Youth in Revolt) wrings sweet-natured chuckles from his banal, intensely beige wall-to-wall convention center biosphere, spurring such ponderings as, should John C. Reilly snatch comedy’s real-guy MVP tiara away from Seth Rogen? Consider Tim Lippe (Ed Helms of The Hangover), the polar opposite of George Clooney’s ultracompetent, complacent ax-wielder in Up in the Air (2009). He’s the naive manchild-cum-corporate wannabe who never quite graduated from Timmyville into adulthood. But it’s up to Lippe to hold onto his firm’s coveted two-star rating at an annual convention in Cedar Rapids. Life conspires against him, however, and despite his heartfelt belief in insurance as a heroic profession, Lippe immediately gets sucked into the oh-so-distracting drama, stirred up by the dangerously subversive “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly), whom our naif is warned against as a no-good poacher. Temptations lie around every PowerPoint and potato skin; as Deanzie warns Lippe’s Candide, “I’ve got tiger scratches all over my back. If you want to survive in this business, you gotta daaance with the tiger.” How do you do that? Cue lewd, boozy undulations — a potbelly lightly bouncing in the air-conditioned breeze. “You’ve got to show him a little teat.” Fortunately Arteta shows us plenty of that, equipped with a script by Wisconsin native Phil Johnston, written for Helms — and the latter does not disappoint. (1:26) Shattuck. (Chun)

Certified Copy Abbas Kiarostami’s beguiling new feature signals “relationship movie” with every cobblestone step, but it’s manifestly a film of ideas — one in which disillusionment is as much a formal concern as a dramatic one. Typical of Kiarostami’s dialogic narratives, Certified Copy is both the name of the film and an entity within the film: a book written against the ideal of originality in art by James Miller (William Shimell), an English pedant fond of dissembling. After a lecture in Tuscany, he meets an apparent admirer (Juliette Binoche) in her antique shop. We watch them talk for several minutes in an unbroken two-shot. They gauge each other’s values using her sister as a test case — a woman who, according to the Binoche character, is the living embodiment of James’ book. Do their relative opinions of this off-screen cipher constitute characterization? Or are they themselves ciphers of the film’s recursive structure? Kiarostami makes us wonder. They begin to act as if they were married midway through the film, though the switch is not so out of the blue: Kiarostami’s narrative has already turned a few figure-eights. Several critics have already deemed Certified Copy derivative of many other elliptical romances; the strongest case for an “original” comes of Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy (1954). The real difference is that while Rossellini’s masterpiece realizes first-person feelings in a third-person approach, Kiarostami stays in the shadow of doubt to the end. (1:46) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Goldberg)

*Hanna The title character of Hanna falls perfectly into the lately very popular Hit-Girl mold. Add a dash of The Boys from Brazil-style genetic engineering — Hanna has the unfair advantage, you see, when it comes to squashing other kids on the soccer field or maiming thugs with her bare hands — and you have an ethereal killing/survival machine, played with impassive confidence by Atonement (2007) shit-starter Saoirse Ronan. She’s been fine-tuned by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), a spy who went out into the cold and off the grid, disappearing into the wilds of Scandinavia where he home-schooled his charge with an encyclopedia and brutal self-defense and hunting tests. Atonement director Joe Wright plays with a snowy palette associated with innocence, purity, and death — this could be any time or place, though far from the touch of modern childhood stresses: that other Hannah (Montana), consumerism, suburban blight, and academic competition. The 16-year-old Hanna, however, isn’t immune from that desire to succeed. Her game mission: go from a feral, lonely existence into the modern world, run for her life, and avenge the death of her mother by killing Erik’s CIA handler, Marissa (Cate Blanchett). The nagging doubt: was she born free, or Bourne to be a killer? Much like the illustrated Brothers Grimm storybook that she studies, Hanna is caught in an evil death trap of fairytale allegories. One wonders if the super-soldier apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since evil stepmonster Marissa oversaw the program that produced Hanna — the older woman and the young girl have the same cold-blooded talent for destruction and the same steely determination. Yet there’s hope for the young ‘un. After learning that even her beloved father hid some basic truths from her, this natural-born killer seems less likely to go along with the predetermined ending, happy or no, further along in her storybook life. (1:51) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Hop (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck.

I Am File in the dusty back drawer of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) wannabes. The cringe-inducing, pretentious title is a giveaway — though the good intentions are in full effect — in this documentary by and about director Tom Shadyac’s search for answers to life’s big questions. After a catastrophic bike accident, the filmmaker finds his lavish lifestyle as a successful Hollywood director of such opuses as Bruce Almighty (2003) somewhat wanting. Thinkers and spiritual leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn, UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, and scientist David Suzuki provide some thought-provoking answers, although Shadyac’s thinking behind seeking out this specific collection of academics, writers, and activists remains somewhat unclear. I Am‘s shambling structure and perpetual return to its true subject — Shadyac, who resembles a wide-eyed Weird Al Yankovic — doesn’t help matters, leaving a viewer with mixed feelings, less about whether one man can work out his quest for meaning on film, than whether Shadyac complements his subjects and their ideas by framing them in such a random, if well-meaning, manner. And sorry, this film doesn’t make up for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). (1:16) Shattuck. (Chun)

*In a Better World Winner of this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this latest from Danish director Susanne Bier (2004’s Brothers, 2006’s After the Wedding) and her usual co-scenarist Anders Thomas Jensen (2005’s Adam’s Apples, 2003’s The Green Butchers) is a typically engrossing, complex drama that deals with the kind of rage for “personal justice” that can lead to school and workplace shootings, among other things (like terrorism). Shy, nervous ten-year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard) needs a confidence boost, but things are worrying both at home and elsewhere. His parents are estranged, and his doting father (Mikael Persbrandt) is mostly away as a field hospital in Kenya tending victims of local militias. At school, he’s an easy mark for bullies, a fact which gets the attention of charismatic, self-assured new kid Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen), who appoints himself Elias’ new (and only) friend — then when his slightly awed pal is picked on again, intervenes with such alarming intensity that the police are called. Christian appears a little too prone to violence and harsh judgment in teaching “lessons” to those he considers in the wrong; his own domestic situation is another source of anger, as he simplistically blames his earnest, distracted executive father (Ulrich Thomsen) for his mother’s recent cancer death. Is Christian a budding little psychopath, or just a kid haplessly channeling his profound loss? Regardless, when an adult bully (Kim Bodnia as a loutish mechanic) humiliates Elias’ father in front of the two boys, Christian pulls his reluctant friend into a pursuit of vengeance that surely isn’t going to end well. With their nuanced yet head-on treatment of hot button social and ethical issues, Bier and Jensen’s work can sometimes border on overly-schematic melodrama, meting out its own secular-humanist justice a bit too handily, like 21st-century cinematic Dickenses. But like Dickens, they also have a true mastery of the creating striking characters and intricately propulsive plotlines that illustrate the points at hand in riveting, hugely satisfying fashion. This isn’t their best. But it’s still pretty excellent, and one of those universally accessible movies you can safely recommend even to people who think they don’t like foreign or art house films. (1:53) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Insidious (1:42) 1000 Van Ness.

*Jane Eyre Do we really need another adaptation of Jane Eyre? As long as they’re all as good as Cary Fukunaga’s stirring take on the gothic romance, keep ’em coming. Mia Wasikowska stars in the titular role, with the dreamy Michael Fassbender stepping into the high pants of Edward Rochester. The cast is rounded out by familiar faces like Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins — all of whom breathe new life into the material. It helps that Fukunaga’s sensibilities are perfectly suited to the story: he stays true to the novel while maintaining an aesthetic certain to appeal to a modern audience. Even if you know Jane Eyre’s story — Mr. Rochester’s dark secret, the fate of their romance, etc. — there are still surprises to be had. Everyone tells the classics differently, and this adaptation is a thoroughly unique experience. And here’s hoping it pushes the engaging Wasikowska further in her ascent to stardom. (2:00) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Kill the Irishman If you enjoy 1970s-set Mafia movies featuring characters with luxurious facial hair zooming around in Cadillacs, flossing leather blazers, and outwitting cops and each other — you could do a lot worse than Kill the Irishman, which busts no genre boundaries but delivers enjoyable retro-gangsta cool nonetheless. Adapted from the acclaimed true crime book by a former Cleveland police lieutenant, the film details the rise and fall of Danny Greene, a colorful and notorious Irish-American mobster who both served and ran afoul of the big bosses in his Ohio hometown. During one particularly conflict-ridden period, the city weathered nearly 40 bombings — buildings, mailboxes, and mostly cars, to the point where the number of automobiles going sky-high is almost comical (you’d think these guys would’ve considered taking the bus). The director of the 2004 Punisher, Jonathan Hensleigh, teams up with the star of 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, Ray Stevenson, who turns in a magnetic performance as Greene; it’s easy to see how his combination of book- and street smarts (with a healthy dash of ruthlessness) buoyed him nearly to the top of the underworld. The rest of the cast is equally impressive, with Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, and Linda Cardellini turning in supporting roles, plus a host of dudes who look freshly defrosted from post-Sopranos storage. (1:46) Lumiere. (Eddy)

The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Empire, Red Vic, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Limitless An open letter to the makers of Limitless: please fire your marketing team because they are making your movie look terrible. The story of a deadbeat writer (Bradley Cooper) who acquires an unregulated drug that allows him to take advantage of 100 percent of his previously under-utilized brain, Limitless is silly, improbable and features a number of distracting comic-book-esque stylistic tics. But consumed with the comic book in mind, Limitless is also unpredictable, thrilling, and darkly funny. The aforementioned style, which includes many instances of the infinite regression effect that you get when you point two mirrors at each other, and a heavy blur to distort depth-of-field, only solidifies the film’s cartoonish intentions. Cooper learns foreign languages in hours, impresses women with his keen attention to detail, and sets his sights on Wall Street, a move that gets him noticed by businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro in a glorified cameo) as well as some rather nasty drug dealers and hired guns looking to cash in on the drug. Limitless is regrettably titled and masquerades in TV spots as a Wall Street series spin-off, but in truth it sports the speedy pacing and tongue-in-cheek humor required of a good popcorn flick. (1:37) California, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

*The Lincoln Lawyer Outfitted with gym’d-tanned-and-laundered manly blonde bombshells like Matthew McConaughey, Josh Lucas, and Ryan Phillippe, this adaptation of Michael Connelly’s LA crime novel almost cries out for an appearance by the Limitless Bradley Cooper — only then will our cabal of flaxen-haired bros-from-other-‘hos be complete. That said, Lincoln Lawyer‘s blast of morally challenged golden boys nearly detracts from the pleasingly gritty mise-en-scène and the snappy, almost-screwball dialogue that makes this movie a genre pleasure akin to a solid Elmore Leonard read. McConaughey’s criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller is accustomed to working all the angles — hence the title, a reference to a client who’s working off his debt by chauffeuring Haller around in his de-facto office: a Lincoln Town Car. Haller’s playa gets truly played when he becomes entangled with Louis Roulet (Phillippe), a pretty-boy old-money realtor accused of brutally attacking a call girl. Loved ones such as Haller’s ex Maggie (Marisa Tomei) and his investigator Frank (William H. Macy) are in jeopardy — and in danger of turning in some delightfully textured cameos — in this enjoyable walk on the sleazy side of the law, the contemporary courtroom counterpart to quick-witted potboilers like Sweet Smell of Success (1957). (1:59) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Max Manus One of Norway’s most expensive films to date, Max Manus follows the rise to infamy of the title character, a charismatic World War II resistance fighter whose specialty was blowing up German ships docked in occupied Oslo harbor. Again, I emphasize: this is a World War II movie about Norway made by Norwegians — though the Brits play a role, there’s nary a mention of the United States. That fact is the single most refreshing part of a movie that’s nonetheless clearly been inspired by stateside war epics, with traumatic flashbacks, male bonding, sadistic Nazis, rousing if familiar-sounding dialogue (“Being a commando takes more than courage!”), etc. Star Aksel Hennie anchors a film that’s painted in pretty broad strokes with a nuanced performance befitting the real-life Manus’ legacy as an everyman who became a hero. (1:58) Balboa. (Eddy)

Miral (1:42) Opera Plaza.

*Of Gods and Men It’s the mid-1990s, and we’re in Tibhirine, a small Algerian village based around a Trappist monastery. There, eight French-born monks pray and work alongside their Muslim neighbors, tending to the sick and tilling the land. An emboldened Islamist rebel movement threatens this delicate peace, and the monks must decide whether to risk the danger of becoming pawns in the Algerian Civil War. On paper, Of Gods and Men sounds like the sort of high-minded exploitation picture the Academy swoons over: based on a true story, with high marks for timeliness and authenticity. What a pleasant surprise then that Xavier Beauvois’s Cannes Grand Prix winner turns out to be such a tightly focused moral drama. Significantly, the film is more concerned with the power vacuum left by colonialism than a “clash of civilizations.” When Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson) turns away an Islamist commander by appealing to their overlapping scriptures, it’s at the cost of the Algerian army’s suspicion. Etienne Comar’s perceptive script does not rush to assign meaning to the monks’ decision to stay in Tibhirine, but rather works to imagine the foundation and struggle for their eventual consensus. Beauvois occasionally lapses into telegraphing the monks’ grave dilemma — there are far too many shots of Christian looking up to the heavens — but at other points he’s brilliant in staging the living complexity of Tibrihine’s collective structure of responsibility. The actors do a fine job too: it’s primarily thanks to them that by the end of the film each of the monks seems a sharply defined conscience. (2:00) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Goldberg)

Paul Across the aisle from the alien-shoot-em-up Battle: Los Angeles is its amiable, nerdy opposite: Paul, with its sweet geeks Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), off on a post-Comic-Con pilgrimage to all the US sites of alien visitation. Naturally the buddies get a close encounter of their very own, with a very down-to-earth every-dude of a schwa named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), given to scratching his balls, spreading galactic wisdom, utilizing Christ-like healing powers, and cracking wise when the situation calls for it (as when fear of anal probes escalates). Despite a Pegg-and-Frost-penned script riddled with allusions to Hollywood’s biggest extraterrestrial flicks and much 12-year-old-level humor concerning testicles and farts, the humor onslaught usually attached to the two lead actors — considered Lewis and Martin for pop-smart Anglophiles — seems to have lost some of its steam, and teeth, with the absence of former director and co-writer Edgar Wright (who took last year’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to the next level instead). Call it a “soft R” for language and an alien sans pants. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Poetry Sixtysomething Mija (legendary South Korean actor Yun Jung-hee) impulsively crashes a poetry class, a welcome shake-up in a life shaped by unfulfilling routines. In order to write compelling verse, her instructor says, it is important to open up and really see the world. But Mija’s world holds little beauty beyond her cheerful outfits and beloved flowers; most pressingly, her teenage grandson, a mouth-breathing lump who lives with her, is completely remorseless about his participation in a hideous crime. In addition, she’s just been disgnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and the elderly stroke victim she housekeeps for has started making inappropriate advances. Somehow writer-director Lee Chang-dong (2007’s Secret Sunshine) manages not to deliver a totally depressing film with all this loaded material; it’s worth noting Poetry won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Yun is unforgettable as a woman trying to find herself after a lifetime of obeying the wishes of everyone around her. Though Poetry is completely different in tone than 2009’s Mother, it shares certain elements — including the impression that South Korean filmmakers have recognized the considerable rewards of showcasing aging (yet still formidable) female performers. (2:19) Balboa, Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Potiche When we first meet Catherine Deneuve’s Suzanne — the titular trophy wife (or potiche) of Francois Ozon’s new airspun comedy — she is on her morning jog, barely breaking a sweat as she huffs and puffs in her maroon Adidas tracksuit, her hair still in curlers. It’s 1977 and Suzanne’s life as a bourgeois homemaker in a small provincial French town has played out as smoothly as one of her many poly-blend skirt suits: a devoted mother to two grown children and loving wife who turns a blind eye to the philandering of husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), Suzanne is on the fast track to comfortable irrelevance. All that changes when the workers at Robert’s umbrella factory strike and take him hostage. Suzanne, with the help of union leader and old flame Babin (Gerard Depardieu, as big as a house), negotiates a peace, and soon turns around the company’s fortunes with her new-found confidence and business savvy. But when Robert wrests back control with the help of a duped Babin, Suzanne does an Elle Woods and takes them both on in a surprise run for political office. True to the film’s light théâtre de boulevard source material, Ozon keeps things brisk and cheeky (Suzanne sings with as much ease as she spouts off Women’s Lib boilerplate) to the point where his cast’s hammy performances start blending into the cheery production design. Satire needs an edge that Potiche, for all its charm, never provides. (1:43) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Sussman)

*Rubber This starts out just on the right side of self-conscious prank, introducing a droll fourth-wall-breaking framework to a serenely surreal central conceit: An old car tire abandoned in the desert miraculously animates itself to commit widespread mayhem. Credit writer-director-editor-cinematographer-composer Quentin Dupieux for an original concept and terrific execution, as our initially wobby antihero wends its way toward civilization, discovering en route it can explode (or just crush) other entities with its “mind.” Which this rumbling black ring of discontent very much enjoys doing, to the misfortune of various hapless humans and a few small animals. Rubber is an extended Dadaist joke that has adventurous fun with filmic and genre language. Beautifully executed as it is, the concept tires (ahem) after a while, reality-illusion games and comedic flair flagging by degrees. Still, it’s so polished and resourceful a treatment of an utterly peculiar idea that no self-respecting cult film fan will want to say they didn’t see this during its initial theatrical run. (1:25) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Soul Surfer (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*Source Code A post-9/11 Groundhog Day (1993) with explosions, Inception (2010) with a heart, or Avatar (2009) taken down a notch or dozen in Chicago —whatever you choose to call it, Source Code manages to stand up on its own wobbly Philip K. Dick-inspired legs, damn the science, and take off on the wings of wish fulfillment. ‘Cause who hasn’t yearned for a do-over — and then a do-over of that do-over, etc. We could all be as lucky — or as cursed — as soldier Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who gets to tumble down that time-space rabbit hole again and again, his consciousness hitching a ride in another man’s body, while in search of the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. On the upside, he gets to meet the girl of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) — and see her getting blown to smithereens again and again, all in the service of his country, his commander-cum-link to the outside world (Vera Farmiga), and the scientist masterminding this secret military project (Jeffrey Wright). On the downside, well, he gets to do it over and over again, like a good little test bunny in pinball purgatory. Fortunately, director Duncan Jones (2009’s Moon) makes compelling work out of the potentially ludicrous material, while his cast lends the tale a glossed yet likable humanity, the kind that was all too absent in Inception. (1:33) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Sucker Punch If steampunk and Call of Duty had a baby, would it be called Baby Doll? That seems to be the question posed by director-cowriter Zack Snyder with his latest edge-skating, CGI-laden opus. Neither as saccharine and built-for-kids as last year’s Legend of the Guardians, nor as doomed and gore-besotted as 2006’s 300, Sucker Punch instead reads as a grimy Grimm’s fairy tale built for girls succored on otaku, Wii, and suburban pole dancing lessons. Already caught in a thicket of storybook tropes, complete with a wicked stepfather and vulnerable younger sister, Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is tossed into an asylum for wayward girls, signed up for a lobotomy that’s certain to put her in la-la land for good. Fortunately she has a great imagination — and a flair for disassociating herself from the horrors around her —and the scene suddenly shifts to a bordello-strip club populated by such bad-girls-with-hearts-of-gold as Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and sister Rocket (Jena Malone). There Baby Doll discovers yet another layer in the gameplay: like a prospective hoofer in Dancing with the Stars, she must dance her way to the next level or next prize — while deep in her imagination, she sees herself battling giant samurai, robot-zombie Nazis, dragons, and such, assisted by the David Carradine-like, cliché-spouting wise man (Scott Glenn) and accompanied by an inspiring score that includes Björk’s “Army of Me” and covers of the Pixies and Stooges. Things take a turn for the girl gang-y when she recruits Sweet Pea, Rocket, and other random stripper-‘hos (Vanessa Hudgens and Real World starlet Jamie Chung) in her scheme to escape. Why bother, one wonders, since Baby Doll seems to be a genuine escape artist of the mind? The ever-fatalistic Snyder obviously has affection for his charges: when the shadows inevitably close in, he delicately refrains from the arterial spray as the little girls bite the dust in what might be the closest thing to a feature-length anime classic that Baz Luhrmann would give his velvet frock coat to make. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Super Naive, vaguely Christian, and highly suggestible everyman Frank (Rainn Wilson) snaps when his wife (Liv Tyler) is seduced away by sleazy drug dealer Jacques (Kevin Bacon). With a little tutoring from the cute girl at the comic store, Libby (Ellen Page), he throws together a pathetically makeshift superhero costume and equally makeshift persona as the Crimson Bolt. Time to dress up and beat down local dealers, child molesters, and people who cut in line with cracks like, “Shut up, crime!” Frank’s taking stumbling, fumbling baby steps toward rescuing his lady love, but it becomes more than simply his mission when Libby discovers his secret and tries to horn in on his act as his kid sidekick Boltie. Alas, what begins as a charming, intriguing indie about dingy reality meeting up with violent vigilantism goes full-tilt Commando (1985), with all the attendant gore and shocks. In the process director James Gunn (2006’s Slither) completely squanders his chance to peer more deeply into the dark heart of the superhero phenom, topping off this vaguely Old Testament reading of good and evil with an absolutely incoherent ending. (1:36) Lumiere. (Chun)

*Win Win Is Tom McCarthy the most versatile guy in Hollywood? He’s a successful character actor (in big-budget movies like 2009’s 2012; smaller-scale pictures like 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck; and the final season of The Wire). He’s an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (2009’s Up). And he’s the writer-director of two highly acclaimed indie dramas, The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007). Clearly, McCarthy must not sleep much. His latest, Win Win, is a comedy set in his hometown of New Providence, N.J. Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer who’s feeling the economic pinch. Betraying his own basic good-guy-ness, he takes advantage of a senile client, Leo (Burt Young), when he spots the opportunity to pull in some badly-needed extra cash. Matters complicate with the appearance of Leo’s grandson, Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer), a runaway from Ohio. Though Mike’s wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan), is suspicious of the taciturn teen, she allows Kyle to crash with the Flaherty family. As luck would have it, Kyle is a superstar wrestler — and Mike happens to coach the local high school team. Things are going well until Kyle’s greedy mother (Melanie Lynskey) turns up and starts sniffing around her father’s finances. Lessons are learned, sure, and there are no big plot twists beyond typical indie-comedy turf. But the script delivers more genuine laughs than you’d expect from a movie that’s essentially about the recession. (1:46) Bridge, California, Piedmont, SF Center. (Eddy)

Winter in Wartime (1:43) Smith Rafael.

Your Highness One of the dangers of reviewing a film like Your Highness is that stoner comedies have a very specific intended audience. A particular altered state is recommended to maximize one’s enjoyment. I tend not to show up for professional gigs with Mary Jane as my plus-one, so I had to view the latest from Pineapple Express (2008) director David Gordon Green through un-bloodshot eyes. While Express was more explicitly ganja-themed, Your Highness is instead a comedy that approximates the experience of getting as high as possible, then going directly to Medieval Times. Never gut-bustingly funny, Your Highness still reaps chuckles from its hard-R dialogue and plenty of CG-assisted sight gags involving genetalia. James Franco and Danny McBride star as princes, one heroic and one ne’er-do-well, who quest to save a maiden kidnapped by an evil wizard (Justin Theroux). Natalie Portman turns up as a thong-wearing warrior, just ’cause it’s that kind of movie. Forget the box office; only time and the tastes of late-night movie watchers will dictate whether Your Highness is a success or a bust. Case in point: nobody thought much of Half Baked (1998) when it was released, but in certain circles, it’s become a bona fide classic. Say it with me now: “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, and fuck you. I’m out!” (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy) 

 

The Performant: Here be pirates

Andrew Lam
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Joining the saltwater chorus at the monthly Chantey Sing at Fisherman’s Wharf

Landlubbers arise. San Franciscans of the not long-distant past were a sea-faring folk, and you don’t have to scratch the surface very far to dig up old salt. Sailboats, houseboats, fishing boats, and ferries all still have their place in the bay, churning in the wake of container ships and visiting cruise lines, and the waterfront pubs are still prime locations to be regaled by gusty tall (ship) tales by grizzled old-school longshoremen and maritime amateurs alike.

One of the most unexpected legacies of our boating heritage is the monthly Chantey Sing aboard The Balclutha, a historic square rig docked at the end of the Hyde Street Pier. Six months shy of its 30-year anniversary, the Chantey Sing is one of those wonderfully hidden-in-plain-view pockets of locals-only camaraderie that you could spend years of urban assimilation hoping to stumble upon.

That singing in public is one of the top-rated social anxieties in America is a statistic that has blissfully passed the Balclutha by, and on the first Saturday of every month its shelter deck fills up with as mixed a group in terms of age, background, musical ability, and general sea-worthiness as any 120 year-old square-rigger could possibly hope to attract. Anchored at the end of Hyde Street pier and maintained by the National Park Service, the Balclutha sails no more, but when night falls and the tourist dives on Fisherman’s Wharf become flatlander-infested, the comfortable embrace of the historic ship welcomes Chantey novices and old hands alike.

Like any style of call-and-response work song, the typical sea chantey takes its rhythm from the work involved, in this case a slowly rolling pace punctuated by rollicking bursts of chorus, meant to be sung while heaving to or hoisting sails. Themes revolve predominantly around certain bodies of land or water, ladies left behind, dangerous capes, and rough seas, with songs of a salacious nature given a deserved airing after the 11 p.m. mark. Anyone is free to lead a song, and although some chanteys are certainly more immediately recognizable than others – the Pogues-immortalized “South Australia” for instance — the wealth of material ensures a comfortable four-hour singalong with no repeats. 

There’s a certain campfire chumminess about the event, right down to the marshmallows in the hot chocolate (bring your own mug!) but instead of wandering off to get lost  in the woods, the restless patron of the Chantey Sing can wander off to explore the ship itself: the captain’s close quarters, the vast cargo hold, the galley, the poop deck. And though the proceedings are considerably less rum-soaked and catastrophic than the typical night-out-at-sea in 1886 might have been, the experience does provide a bracing injection of salt-sea mystique to even the most landlocked veins. 

 

Chantey Sing

First Saturdays of the month 8 p.m., free

The Balclutha, Hyde Street Pier

2905 Hyde, SF

(415) 561-7171

www.nps.gov/safr/historyculture/chantey-sing.htm

 

Sinisterism and lost hills: The Slow Poisoner joins forces with Fantomas in San Francisco

John Elberling
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Sinisterism and lost hills: The Slow Poisoner joins forces with Fantomas in San Francisco

In conjunction with the continuing “Fantomas by the Bay” series presented by City Lights, the Cultural Services of the Consulate General of France, and the Mechanics’ Institute Library, here’s an interview with the Slow Poisoner, who may be casting a musical shadow over the Fri./8 event, “An Elegant Threat.” The man also known as Andrew Goldfarb holds forth on his Fantomas bonds, surrealist activity in San Francisco, and the Slow Poisoner’s current and next moves.

SFBG What is your interest in Fantomas, and do you have any favorite Fantomas-related works?
Andrew Goldfarb I first discovered French villain Fantomas during an absinthe binge abroad, and was immediately drawn to his unrepentant sinisterism and stylish fashion sense, especially the black mask and top hat combination. I would say that aside from the original 1911 literary serial, my favorite Fantomas work is the 1915 film series, because there’s nothing that captures the decadence of criminal Paris like a hand-cranked silent movie tinted with blood.

SFBG You’re a native San Franciscan. Do you feel there is surrealist activity present here at the moment, and if so, what are its facets?
AG As long as San Francisco is coated with a thick coat of fog in the morning, the City will remain mysterious, and surrealistic activity will be present. I’d say my favorite examples of modern surrealism in S.F., aside from the schizophrenic rants posted on telephone poles in the Tenderloin, are the costumed noise bands that flourish in the Mission District, such as the Spider Compass Good Crime Band, which features two oversized vultures, one of whom plays lounge music on an organ while the other generates electronic dissonance with analog synthesizers. Very entertaining, and feathered.

SFBG What is the Slow Poisoner up to these days?
AG I just completed a roots-rock-opera about ghosts and liquor, which is titled Lost Hills. It tells of my days as a traveling curio salesman, my brief engagement to a phantom hitchhiker, and my eventual hanging (after some misfortunes involving a tainted Mint Julep). I’ve been illustrating it with felt art, kindergarten-style. I’ve also just brewed up a new batch of my Slow Poisoner Miracle Tonic, which is made with pure Egyptian oil and is proven effective in the treatment of Consumption, Women’s Troubles, Gout, Neuralgia, Wandering Limbs, Stoutness, Onanism, Disinterested Bladder, Elephantiasis, Cholera, Barnacles and Boils, The Fits, Excessive Abscesses, Necrosis, Lavender Fever and General Wasting.

FANTOMAS BY THE BAY: AN ELEGANT THREAT
Fri/8, 8 p.m.
Location undisclosed and secret (invitations available at the front desk of City Lights); free
(415) 362-8193
www.citylights.com

Male lingerie: The proof is in the panties

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Male lingerie: The proof is in the panties

Lingerie has long been a lady thing. Lots of lace, ribbons and girly details ideally made to display womanly humps and lumps. Dudes can easily purchase a pair of Vicky’s panties to pretty up their anatomy but not all bodies can or want to rock their cock in female style. Options do exist.

These options, of course, vary from the stereotypical intimates that women are presented with — guy lingerie, at least the kind available ready-made in San Francisco, strips away the uber femme touches and gets down to business in a more functional way.

“We sell underwear that enhances. It lifts, supports, and projects forward,” says Bill Tull, owner of Injeanious, a Castro shop with 20-plus years of catering to men’s need for awesome underthings. 

Tull tells it like it is: “Men want to look bigger.”

There are lots of chicks out there shopping for sturdy underwires and promising push-ups, and their male counterparts are looking to make their junk more visually appealing, too. Injeanious has got answers for any department that needs a little boost: padded fronts, padded backs, control tops, girdles, back-less, front-less, briefs, trunks, thongs, ball danglers, built-in jock-straps with added ass-lifting and even pairs that promise ample dick-lifting.

injean04

Injeanious employee Thomas Williams is currently obsessed with a pair of Andrew Christian briefs that feature a ‘hang free pouch.’ These hott briefs are a one-up on the traditional silk stunners—they’re made from bamboo! Earth friendly and delightfully soft.

“Underwear has come such a long way. It’s not just Hanes and Fruit of the Loom anymore.”

injean02

injean01

Color options run the gamut from stark white to naughty brights, but there isn’t a pinch of lace to be found at Injeanious. Black mesh presents a more badass choice and a few sheer, transparent fabrics (even one with polka dots) account for the more decorative options — nothing too sparkly or sweet for the family jewels. Toll says there are no plans to include such items on his shelves.

“The customers are not interested. It’s just a bit beyond the pale.”

injean03

What they do want is obvious from one glace in the store windows: plump, engorged pouches. This is why they purposely overstuff the mannequins with big ol’ wads of potential penis. Guys are visual and they want to see it — theirs or that of another, hanging out in a glorified satchel. Who needs bows and lace when you’ve got a bulge like that? It’s simply unnecessary frill. 

Found in translation

Andrew Lam
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Found in translation

arts@sfbg.com

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

— Goethe

THEATER In Mark Jackson’s breakout theatrical hit, 2003’s The Death of Meyerhold, title character and playwright Vsevolod Meyerhold asserts that “the classics are always new. That is why they are called the classics.” That philosophy of theatre is one that Jackson’s other plays frequently embrace. From reimagined Shakespeare to adaptations of underproduced Russian dramas, Jackson’s work is invariably characterized by his respect for and understanding of the universal nature of human emotion, regardless of location or century, as well as an intensely verbal style of playwriting and often aggressively physical staging.

It’s a logical progression that a writer with such a facility for his own language might eventually turn to the translation of theatrical works in other languages — especially after spending a year abroad, steeped in the theater scene of another country (in Jackson’s case, Germany). To date, Jackson has translated two full-length works, Faust, Part 1 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Mary Stuart, by Friedrich Schiller, presented in 2009 and 2010 by the Shotgun Players at the Ashby Stage. Translating from a director’s perspective, Jackson’s primary focus is on the spirit of the original play, and the intentions of the playwright, not necessarily a word-for-word direct interpretation.

“Why do that,” he wonders when asked about his approach, “except out of academic interest?” In addition to preserving the overall intention of the pieces he translates, Jackson also focuses on what he calls the “music” of the German language.

“Fortunately, because English is a Germanic language, it’s easier to retain the melody of it,” he explains. “To streamline the text but keep the poetry.” From Jackson’s perspective and personal experience, it’s the music of a language that ultimately reveals the character of its people, and therefore the characters of the pieces he translates.

For Rob Melrose of the Cutting Ball Theater, an experimental Bay Area company with a dedicated bent for the classics and the avant-garde, translation is an opportunity to stretch his comprehension of the English language and language in general. A dabbler in five languages in addition to English, Melrose has translated a total of seven plays from French and German and appreciates the insight into different cultures learning languages has given him: how the spare simplicity of French reveals the elegance of the French; how the logical, tightly constructed phrases of German are engineered as flawlessly as one of their vaunted automobiles. But even more, he appreciates the ways that these other languages push him as a writer and an artist.

“Working in another language makes you think differently,” Melrose explains. “Learning how other languages work helps me appreciate our language better and helps me identify what is unique about it. It also helps me stretch English a bit by trying to make it do what French can do or what German can do.”

It’s fair to say that Bennett Fisher, a cofounder of San Francisco Theatre Pub and an English teacher, has an in-depth understanding of English, which may be why for fun he chooses to translate plays from ancient Greek and French. The convivial atmosphere created by San Francisco Theatre Pub doesn’t mask its emphasis on thinking theatre, including Fisher’s translations of Cyclops and Ubu Roi. For his Greek translations, Fisher relies on the translation website Perseus project (www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper), first translating chunks of text verbatim, then struggling to fill in the blanks.

“What I end up with is a kind of “me Tarzan, you Jane” sentence,” he says. “Then it’s a kind of puzzle to figure out what it means and how to phrase it to make it sound conversational. Once I get a handle on that, I can do all the stuff I do with French in terms of getting at feeling, tone, intent, and all that. There’s a lot of trial and error. It’s kind of like being a director — you try interpreting the dialogue in different ways and eventually you find a choice that feels right.”

It’s not just the classics that inspire local theatre-makers to try their hand at translation. One of the most exciting productions of 2006 was foolsFURY’s take on Fabrice Melquiot’s The Devil on All Sides, translated by artistic director Ben Yalom. A harrowing blend of magical realism and atrocity, Melquiot’s play set in the former Yugoslavia was pronounced the theatrical discovery of the year in his native France in 2003. The production went on from San Francisco to New York City, and helped inspire foolsFURY’s ongoing Contemporary French Plays Project, with two more Melquiot translations in the works and more possibilities waiting in the wings.

Daniel Zilber, cofounder of the Thrillpeddlers, translates original Grand Guignol plays from early 20th-century Paris, retaining all the melodrama and humor of the originals. Both the foolsFURY’s emphasis on physical artifice and the extreme naturalism of the Thrillpeddlers stem from French theatrical traditions, an influence that even extends to the writing and staging of their English-language productions. Much the way the art of translation pushes theatre-makers like Jackson and Melrose to think differently about the language of playwriting, so does the language of French theatricality encourage foolsFURY to create seething tableaux of writhing bodies, as in 2008’s Monster in the Dark, and the Thrillpeddlers to push the playfully edgy Grand Guignol aesthetic in their English original shows.

It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that some of Bay Area theatre’s most compelling risk-takers are also drawn to the possibilities translation offers them — from the challenges of the process to the rewards of producing a fresh interpretation of a classic work for the modern stage. But the greatest impact of the translation process may well be the way it continues to influence these theatre-makers during the creation of their original works. Perhaps Melrose puts it best: “It’s only by knowing these other languages well and by translating classic works that I have the idea to push English in my own writing.”

 

Two for the road

Andrew Lam
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Two for the road

MUSIC Erik “Ripley” Johnson is on the road. As the mastermind behind psych rock quartet Wooden Shijps and krautrockers Moon Duo, he spent eight months on tour last year. When he started Moon Duo with Sanae Yamada, Johnson knew that there’d be a degree of convenience in traveling as a twosome: it’s cheaper and much easier to be flexible and mobile. He was ready to tour as a full-time job.

Since Moon Duo began in 2009, Johnson and Yamada have put out two singles, the EP Killing Time (Sacred Bones) and the album Escape (Woodsist). Moon Duo’s just-released second full-length, Mazes (Sacred Bones), relays the story of a wandering life.

“We decided to name the album Mazes after we moved from San Francisco,” Johnson says over the phone, while the pair is on the road from New York to Massachusetts for their next gig. “That song is about choosing a path in life, but how you don’t necessarily know where it’s going to take you.”

Moon Duo creates trance-inducing music that builds minimalist, rhythmic repetition from drum samples and keyboards that support Johnson’s guitar freak-outs. It’s an experience of texture and tone that is sustained and then rerouted.

Most of Mazes was recorded lo-fi in Johnson’s and Yamada’s Mission District apartment last spring, when the couple was in transition. While they worked on the album, Johnson and Yamada packed up. “We needed to get out of the city because we were never there and we were paying all this rent,” Johnson says. By summer, the pair had moved to the wild highlands of Blue River, Colo.

“We thought we’d finished recording the album in San Francisco, but we weren’t happy with some elements,” he adds. So Moon Duo headed to Germany. Although Johnson acknowledges the synchronicity of recording in Berlin, he says it wasn’t motivated by his interest in krautrock, which he came to through Julian Cope’s influential book Krautrocksampler. “Every record he talks about, he’s so enthusiastic,” he says of Cope’s writing. “I can’t say I agree with all his choices, but it’s a guide book, and I went through it and bought stuff that sounded cool.”

The process of making Mazes reached Germany because Johnson and Yamada’s friends in Berlin had a studio and offered to help mix the album. “It just seemed like we should try it out in a different perspective, and go into a proper studio,” Johnson explains. There, the pair rerecorded some parts, tweaked things, and played with a collection of vintage drum machines.

The results are tight. Mazes‘ opening track “Seer” is a variant of a song off Escape, but lighter on the fuzz and denser with the rock ‘n’ roll. It gives you a good hint of where the band is heading on the rest of the many-layered album. Forerunners in the current kraut revival, Moon Duo is inspired by two-piece predecessors Silver Apples and Suicide while also exploring other sounds, including psychedelic wanderings, Velvet Underground-style hypnosis, and Modern Lovers post-punk.

“When You Cut” starts with lush synth and deep-throated vocals, and upbeat claps keep the song going steady, providing the framework for an untamed guitar solo. The band goes pop with the two-step “Run Around,” then gets dark again on the reverb-drenched “In the Sun” and on the closer, “Goners.” Ultimately, Mazes is a personal journey through music history, but one that also reflects the travels of life.

MOON DUO

With Lilac, Royal Baths

Mon./11, 9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Hare-raising

Andrew Lam
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Hare-raising

MUSIC This I know, having heard the name discussed in hushed yet excited tones among ecstatic ex-hardcore kids, having taken in all of two Lightning Bolt shows by Brians Chippendale and Gibson since Ride the Skies (Load, 2001). Having felt the gale-force winds of their live fury while swapping sweat with pinballing strangers. Having tasted the salad and found it delightful. Having waited with anticipation for their next show in the Bay Area—this time the night before they play Coachella.

Lightning Bolt’s most recent album, Earthly Delights (Load, 2009), is just as majestically noisy — and chock-full of wonder — as their seeming-career-best Hypermagic Mountain (Load, 2005). The time is right to share some truths about the dynamic duo.

 

DRUMMER-VOCALIST BRIAN CHIPPENDALE LIKES HIS FRIENDS FURRY.

“Mustard ran off, Weird appeared out of nowhere. Omni died,” says Chippendale of his Fort Thunder felines, driving the van and deep into the weeds of Peter Glantz and Nick Noe’s 2002s documentary, Lightning Bolt: The Power of Salad [and writ small like an afterthought] & Milkshakes. “Calico is too stupid to leave. Warlord ran off …” The talented cartoonist then goes on to recount the sad end of a pet rabbit, which broke its neck playing around metal. Seeing it bare its teeth, arch its back, and let lose a hair-(or hare-)raising “death scream,” Chippendale was forced to put it out of its misery with a sledgehammer. “Aw, I can’t believe I did that,” he says. “I love animals! Better than people, animals.”

Unless Lightning Bolt is playing, freakishly, on a stage, you must make the effort to get up close — or find a rafter or pole to dangle from.

I first saw ’em around ’03 when they played the Verdi Club, the old-folks rec hall near that sketchy patch of Bryant Street where working gals like to service their johns curbside. I wasn’t one of the lucky dozen or so standing right next to the twosome on the floor, so I wasn’t able to see much, even when I climbed up on a rickety metal folding chair to get a glimpse of sock-monkey-ish-masked Chippendale, looking like a mad drummer from the island of lost toys.

I fared better at Lobot Gallery in 2007, when I used all my best pit skills to wiggle up to the front for the first couple songs, risking a broken nose to get my fill of Lightning Bolt’s unforgettable way with Sabbath-style volume and Phillip Glass-style repetition, primal rambunctiousness and raw poetry. Certainly they’re the fiercest bass-and-drum duo ever to step into the formidable footwear of Ruins and godheadSilo, but has there ever been another hardcore or noise combo that has fully tapped the melodic and textural possibilities buried within a full-force blast beat?

 

BASSIST BRIAN GIBSON WORKS FOR VIDEO GAME COMPANY HARMONIX AS THE LEAD ARTIST ON GAMES SUCH AS ROCK BAND.

“I wish more of my projects were pure recreation,” the Rhode Island School of Design-schooled painter told Motherboard.tv. “I just get caught up in this sort of addiction to doing art and music stuff, but it would nice to be just fishing or exercising or drag racing.

So much of what I do is about me being deeply obsessed with projects and being alienated from communities and wanting to do something different.”

Don’t worry about missing the companion cassette that once went with Lightning Bolt’s “yellow album” debut — the CD includes the enthralling 30-minute noise epic “Zone.”

You also get the funny intro to “Caught Deep in the Zone,” in which a Euro-accented fellow warns, “Next time you go and buy a record and you think you’re all alternative and groovy — and everyone is into the alternative charts — remember it’s just like the other side, just a bit stranger.” Cue an onslaught of feedback-wracked, crunching skree: the death scream of Godzilla as lizard flesh is wrenched from bone.

 

ONE OF THE BEST LIGHTNING BOLT VIDEOS: PAPER RAD’S “13 MONSTERS.”

This ode to terrifyingly cute cartoon imagery, à la headless, bass-playing hot-pink tigers, opens with Gumby comforting a distraught Goo, who sobs, “There were 13 of them …” 

LIGHTNING BOLT

With T.I.T.S. and High Castle

Wed./13, 8 p.m., $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

Acid-washed terror

Andrew Lam
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Acid-washed terror

RETRO GORE With the upcoming release of Scream 4 — the overlong-awaited latest in a series riffing on 1980s slasher clichés — it feels like a good moment to review the source material, which is to say the deadly spawn of Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). Issued at the heyday of the direct-to-video market, those films’ myriad cheap-and-cheaper knockoffs explored the full range of variably amateur charm.

Two years ago Ti West made a very nice homage in The House of the Devil, a babysitter-in-peril thriller that was slick and canny enough to get an actual theatrical release. No such thing is risked by Drew Rosas’ Blood Junkie, a new DVD release from Troma — the company so indiscriminate it can’t help but release a good movie once in a while. (Still, it should dial down its contempt: Lloyd Kaufman’s recycled all-purpose introduction suggests any movie might be better than the one you’re about to watch.) This dead-on parody of no-budget VHS horror circa 1987 (according to its website, Blood Junkie was “shot in Wisconsin for $7,000”) is a sleeper and a keeper for anyone who covets the worst of Reagan decade style.

Mulleted Craig (Nick Sommer) and fellow pencil-‘stached buddy Teddy (Mike Johnston) are on the prowl for chicks, a quest answered when they meet high school best friends Rachel (tube-topped Emily Treolo) and Laura (feather-haired, four-eyed Sarah Luther), who has just come into a big $35 booze budget left as grocery money by traveling parents for her insect-tormenting brainiac little bro Andy (Brady Cohen). The attraction is irresistible; Teddy alone sports a lime-green tiger-striped T, denim vest, and acid-washed jeans. Babe magnet!

Anyway, this quartet plus imp go camping near an abandoned chemical plant. Bad things happen, thanks to a killer of extremely vague identity and motivation. Which is just as it should be.

With its dweezly synth score, post-synched dialogue, lowbrow FX, fake aerobics workouts, and pseudo-age-streaked “film” stock, Blood Junkie is pure retro-flavva’d silliness. One nice touch is the male protagonists’ bromantic frisson — played as a joke, albeit so persistently that Craig’s offhand mid-wrestle “I seriously want you, man” feels like a naked confession. 

 

Hanna and her sisters

Andrew Lam
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0
Hanna and her sisters

arts@sfbg.com

FILM With great girl power comes great responsibility — words that only a few of the Powerpuff Girls of 2011 have lived by. Behold the new generation, too young to settle down, prepped to suit up in skintight Lycra or schoolgirl gear, and eager to mete out punishment to the baddies. Girls mature faster than boys, sure, but that diary-keeping wimpy kid reigning the other half of the cineplex would have plenty to jot down in his diary if he met up with one of these slay-belles.

These babes in boyland, with all its the traditionally masculinized violence and bloodshed, aren’t exactly the next Supergirls. They’re nowhere near as bloodless or wholesome as the original DC product (or the 1984 Helen Slater film), and they’re less likely to fall prey to the dangers of womanly representation for a mainstream fanboy audience that, say, 2004’s Catwoman succumbed to. But the little girls understand — what it’s like to grapple with a strength that just might spiral out of control. The tension between their innocuous, angelic looks and semi-socialized, she-tiger ferocity parallels the balance between their highly trainable programmability and their own desires. They’re damaged kid sisters of Lisbeth Salander more than they are the mutant second-banana femme students of the X-Men, and they’re itching for freedom like Ellen Page’s reality-hampered Boltie in Super, or the fantasy girl-gang hos in Sucker Punch. Or they’ve been souped up as angels of vengeance at the service of embittered father figures, much like Kick-Ass scene-stealer Chloe Moretz’s pint-sized Hit-Girl with her Saturday-morning-cartoon purple wig and stone-cold killer instincts. STAY ON TARGET

The title character of Hanna falls perfectly into the Hit-Girl mold. Add a dash of The Boys from Brazil-style genetic engineering — Hanna has the unfair advantage, you see, when it comes to squashing other kids on the soccer field or maiming thugs with her bare hands — and you have an ethereal killing/survival machine, played with impassive confidence by Atonement (2007) shit-starter Saoirse Ronan. She’s been fine-tuned by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), a spy who went out into the cold and off the grid, disappearing into the wilds of Scandinavia where he home-schooled his charge with an encyclopedia and brutal self-defense and hunting tests.

The repellent association with real-life child soldiers who are forcibly conscripted to fight wars for corrupt elders is somewhat dispelled by the back-to-the-land-of-the-Vikings backdrop, with the film opening on Hanna hunting, clad in furs and skins, hidden in the white-on-white snowy woods beside other predators and prey. Atonement director Joe Wright plays with a palette associated with innocence, purity, and death — this could be any time or place, though far from the touch of modern childhood stresses: that other Hannah (Montana), consumerism, suburban blight, and academic competition. The 16-year-old Hanna, however, isn’t immune from that desire to succeed. Her game mission: go from a feral, lonely existence into the modern world, run for her life (the Chemical Brothers’ score gives her the ideal Run Lola Run-ish background music), and avenge the death of her mother by killing Erik’s CIA handler, Marissa (Cate Blanchett). The nagging doubt: was she born free, or Bourne to be a killer?

Much like the illustrated Brothers Grimm storybook that she studies, Hanna is caught in an evil death trap of fairytale allegories. One wonders if the super-soldier apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since evil stepmonster Marissa oversaw the program that produced Hanna — the older woman and the young girl have the same cold-blooded talent for destruction and the same steely determination. Yet there’s hope for the young ‘un. After learning that even her beloved father hid some basic truths from her — and that family life can be less desperately cutthroat, especially when she encounters the celebrity-gossip-spouting tourist teen Sophie (Jessica Barden) and her family — this natural-born killer seems less likely to go along with the predetermined ending, happy or no, further along in her storybook life.

 

CABARET DURING WARTIME

It’s a mental game for Baby Doll in Sucker Punch, Zack Snyder’s exercise in supergirl action fantasy and gothic Lolita dread. Emily Browning’s puffy-lipped, anime-eyed darling is far from infallible, except in the crazed, mixed-metaphor war games in her mind. Her talent for disassociation kicks off with her primal crime: she mistakenly kills her younger sister while trying to protect them both from a menacing stepfather. Escape and heroism can be had via one’s fertile yet traumatized imagination: Baby Doll is imprisoned in an asylum for girls where she’s next in line for a lobotomy, thanks to her stepdad’s machinations. And like a multilayered fantasy game, reminiscent of Dorothy’s dreamy recasting of friends and family in The Wizard of Oz (1939), she’s transported to a brothel-dancehall, along with other girlish inmates.

Here Baby Doll has just a few days to hatch a plan that will allow the girls to escape before her virginity is sold off. Her very special defense: she mesmerizes all who see her dance, and then goes far, far away, into a dream world where she’s dressed like a sexy J-pop schoolgirl and battles giant samurai or robot-zombie Nazis. Thoughts of Burlesque (2010) are mercifully vanquished.

Though Baby Doll’s initial battle scene at a Japanese temple evokes Quentin Tarantino’s take on girl-power revenge fantasy, Kill Bill (2003-2004) — while catering to the fanboys who ogle (and fear) deadly hotties in vixenish costume — Sucker Punch distinguishes itself not with its blatant po-mo plundering of movie, game, and music history, but with its adherence to the idea that sisterhood is powerful, as Baby Doll forms a girl gang of super-fighters with her fellow inmates-dancers. Therein lies the real super-heroism: the organizing, hearts-and-minds might of an underdog who can imagine overcoming huge odds. Even if the hero and the final girl, Baby Doll, is only a legend in her mind.

HANNA opens Fri/8 in Bay Area theaters.

 

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