Visual Arts Archives — Page 33 of 44 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Revival signs

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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June 5, 2012

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC A few musicians with slick hair and black-frame glasses are seen setting up their equipment in Chicago’s Hi-Style Studio: amps, a mustard Telecaster, glittering gold drums, a huge stand-up bass, and vintage condenser microphones. What year is this?

The drum hits crack and the bass strings ripple with heavy plucks. The finger-snapping beat is unavoidable, almost cloying in its blitheness. Potent vocals reminiscent of Little Richard suddenly overpower it all. It’s Broken Arrow, Oklahoma’s JD McPherson — singing so hard a craggy vein in his otherwise smooth forehead bulges — in the video for the single that has brought him this far: “North Side Gal.”

It’s due to be inescapable this summer. “The Chicago Cubs have actually been playing that song at the stadium during games,” McPherson says during a phone call from his car, where the singer-songwriter-occasional vegetarian is waiting on an order of red pepper tofu. “It’s really exciting. There’s really no other team I’d rather have that song associated with. It’s the ultimate old ballpark, underdog team.”

Like contemporaries Nick Waterhouse (who, coincidentally, is also playing San Francisco this week, and un-coincidentally is also profiled in this issue) and Nick Curran and the Lowlifes, McPherson is tackling the invigorating rock’n’roll power and bluesy vocals of early R&B and 1950s rock, exploring retro record-making processes,while nonchalantly dressing the part.

It’s another revival, likely to sell well across the mainstream in the Heartland, but also appeal to the underground listeners throughout rockabilly pockets. Though this is beyond classic rockabilly’s precise replications of the past, past kitsch and overwhelming aesthetics. These band leaders with undeniable guitar skills and a very modern drive have something that can only be described, apologetically, as star power. Out of the smoky clubs and into the mind’s eye.

And while rockin’ McPherson may have the sound, the side-parted hair, and the analog recording process back-story like the others in this current resurgence, his own background is fairly different; if the more soulful California boy Waterhouse is Rat Pack wool suits, McPherson is dusty rolled denim.

McPherson was raised on a cattle farm in Buffalo Valley, Southeast Oklahoma — dutifully feeding the cows before school — but later fell into a nearby punk scene, and met his wife (and mother to his two young daughters) at a new wave-goth club night in Tulsa; wearing a Smiths shirt herself, she approached him to say,”You look like a Smiths fan.” She’s now his biggest supporter, sitting patiently while he runs by new guitar parts or song lyrics. She’s also the original “North Side Gal.”

But before all that, before his interest in punk and new-wave, before the wife and kids, and long before the release of his modern reinterpretation of early rock’n’roll record, Signs and Signifiers, he was just a 13-year-old kid in the Midwest learning to play the guitar.

His much older brothers showed him their ’70s-era Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers, and Jimi Hendrix records. He grew obsessed with Led Zeppelin then Van Halen, and later, Nirvana, which led to searches for punk origins records by the Stooges and the Ramones. As a late teen, he discovered early rock’n’roll, the backbeat to all those spinning vinyl dreams.

“I found the Decca recordings of Buddy Holly, and that sort of seemed to marry the exuberance of the Ramones, with the country Arcadian aesthetic that I was growing up around. It made sense…and it got me.”

His teenage punk band began interjecting Buddy Holly’s “Rocking Around with Ollie Vee” into their sets; the sound had a pervasive pull, and he fell backwards, deeper into the roots of rock’n’roll — Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, blues artists his Alabama-born dad loved such as Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, and early jazz musicians.

He looked to Little Richard in particular, to whom he has garnered favorable comparisons (see the beginning of this story). Because of his style, and, perhaps, his skin color, he’s also seen comparisons to Elvis. “I love Elvis, I mean, I lo-ove Elvis,” he stretches out the “of” sound in the word “love” with an endearingly twangy accent. “I don’t know if there’s a huge musical similarity between us and Elvis, maybe instrumentation-wise, but we’re way more Specialty Records than Sun Records.”

“Little Richard is my favorite recording artist,” he continues, “[I’m] way more interested in Elvis’ black counterparts and predecessors. I do love rockabilly, but we don’t interject a lot of hillbilly sounds into our rhythm and blues the way Elvis did.”

In the ’90s Midwest, pop-country was taking over the airwaves, Billy Ray Cyrus and the like — it’s what all McPherson’s high school classmates were popping in the tape decks. It wasn’t for him. Perhaps this is why he shies away from any hillbilly sounds, those that can lead to psychobilly when mixed with the punk roots. Not that he disparages rockabilly.

“There’s a subculture of all these bands that have no intention of doing anything other than just really faithfully reproducing these sounds, there’s a lot more rockabilly and Western swing bands doing that thing, [yet] these are folks that are putting out quality music.”

But in those scenes and beyond he saw a shortage of the more straight-forward rock’n’roll he loved. That’s why he and musical partner Jimmy Sutton (the gray fox thumping those stand-up bass strings in the “North Side Gal” video) decided to make the DIY, all-analog Signs and Signfiers album in the first place. “So our record basically was almost like an art project, like ‘let’s just make this record and do what we always wanted to do.'”

The drummer on the album was Alex Hall, who doubled as the engineer. Now he’s still “in the family,” often playing keyboards with the band; drummer Jason Smay is on the current tour. During the recording process, McPherson and Sutton would run through a song then Hall would head into the control booth to mix. He’d set the levels, start the tape, run in, then get behind the drums. “That was kind of the magic of it, it was essentially mixed as we recorded it. Real fast, instant gratification. It’s the best way to record.”

Like contemporary Waterhouse noted, McPherson of course has his own connections with modern technology and has used digital recording processes in the past, but he prefers the analog way, to extract that authentic sound. “I’ve seen the amazing things you can do in a digital environment, but there’s some special thing to getting a band live in the studio and recording an actual performance. And then you know, the equipment sounds amazing too.”

While the record was originally released in 2010 on Sutton’s tiny Hi-Style label, the “North Side Gal” single and album have really started picking up this year. With the homemade video as the ultimate calling card, Rounder Records signed the band and rereleased the album this spring. The video has gained half a million views as of press time, and the band’s television debut is tonight on Conan. Despite all that, they’re still relatively unknown in the US, but McPherson and his band have a huge following in the UK — they regularly play sold-out shows and festivals, and have daily rotation on BBC Radio.

During the recording process, and up until the end of the 2011 school year, McPherson was still employed in a local Broken Arrow middle school as a computer and arts teacher (he went to college for fine arts). When he was laid off last summer he says he told the band, “well, I’m getting a paycheck through the summer, so let’s tour and try to make some money while I look for another job.” They’ve been touring consistently ever since.

Perhaps this batch of ’50s-inspired rockers and analog R&B crooners will move beyond the past, and into the future musical pantheon, gaining elusive mainstream success. Or maybe they’ll remain lovable underdogs. Only time will tell. For your McPherson fix now, you could always take in a Cubs game. Check back at the end of summer ’12.

JD MCPHERSON

With Toshio Hirano

Thu/7, 8pm, $21

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

Dream not deferred

Andrew Lam

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June 5, 2012

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yael@sfbg.com

On Monday, June 4, students at the Meadows-Livingstone School rehearsed for their annual end-of-the-year performance. It was bleak and rainy out, but the small, essentially one-room schoolhouse that houses the private elementary school was bursting with energy.

Twenty kids, first through sixth graders, were practicing: they sang Wade in the Water and a welcoming song in Swahili. During The Greatest Love of All, a seven-year old crooned her solo: “People need someone to look up to, I never found anyone who fulfilled my needs.” But then the kids broke out into the Neville Brothers’ Sister Rosa, (“Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark! You started our freedom movement!”) and then a rap about Malcolm X.

At this school, located at Potrero and 25th streets, those needs are fulfilled.

This end-of-the-year performance will showcase what the children have learned all year in an elementary school education built around lessons on African and African American history and culture. As Gail Meadows, the school’s founder and principal, puts it: “We have an Afro-centric school. We have a classical African Civilization class, and have books, videos, games, focused on African Americans. The kids learn African songs, they learn African American field songs.”

Meadows says is offers more than the cursory black history that is usually taught: “At most schools, you’ll learn about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, and that’s it.”

All of the children at Meadows-Livingstone are of African descent. “We’re not nationalists,” Meadows says. “The kids understand the world is of many colors, and you can’t live in this world by yourself.”

But spending some crucial elementary school time specifically for African Americans, Meadows believes, does wonders for her students’ abilities to navigate that world.

As Meadows tells it, she’s motivated partly because she didn’t get the same experience as a child. “I lived in a small campus town and went to an all-white school. My mother used to say that she had to undo everything that was done.”

Her education included books shaped by her parents to include black children (“They would search tirelessly for children’s books representing people of color, or they would just change the stories”) and distrust of television (“My father would say, why watch something that doesn’t validate you as a child?”). At her school, she recalls being in “a play that included a line, ‘Don’t drink coffee. It will make you black, and that’s bad.'”

For children in San Francisco today, Meadows says this feeling of belonging is as important as ever. “There’s an exodus of people of color out of San Francisco,” she says. “That means children of color are in classrooms with people who are not educated about African American culture. And they’re educated by a media that gives them a skewed view of who they are.”

This lack of education can often lead to racist bullying. a large reason why many students transfer to Meadows’ school.

“There are students that transfer into my school after having bad experiences, and they don’t know how to confront the person who said something offensive to them,” says Meadows. “In my school they learn to confront. An angry confrontation isn’t productive. It should be direct, they should be able to explain, here’s the real story about that stereotype.”

This education helps when kids leave the Meadows-Livingstone school for middle schools across the city.

“People ask them questions like, are you in a gang? Do you have a house? All these stereotypes they’ve read about, all of a sudden they’re right there,” Meadows says. “If you know who you are, you can live through that. Its easier.”

At a recent visit to the school, some students described their own experiences.

“Sometimes, when I was at my old school, they talked about blacks badly,” said one student. “They said they were stupid and dumb. And I still didn’t believe it, but now I learned about my heritage and I learned that we’re stronger and we have more spirit.”

Or, as he said, “Black power makes me feel strong.”

A 12-year-old who would be leaving the school soon told me a story of how the school influenced. “One of the kids in my neighborhood, he said, ‘We’re all niggers,'” he explained. “I said, ‘No we’re not. We’re regular black kids.'”

As another child put it, “Black power means that you have strength and nobody can push you around, like, like you’re just a little duck and everyone else is a coyote.”

From a long line of teachers, Meadows’ life work has been dedicated to educating and empowering young people. She taught her first class at age 10, before studying education at Kansas State University. She was teaching at Montessori schools when she decided to start her own.

Meadows-Livingstone school came out of a wave of alternative education informed by 1960s liberation movements. The Black Panther party, a part of the history that the children Meadows-Livingstone learn, had a 10-point platform laying out the ways that racism intersects with inequality in education, along with housing, treatment by the justice system, and other facets of society.

Point five says, “We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.”

Meadows-Livingstone continues this part of the Panther legacy, and not just ideologically.

“At one point in our school we had maybe 15 kids whose relatives had been Panthers,” says Meadows.

“We have a grandfather who brings fruit every week,” she says, continuing the spirit of the Free Breakfast Program. “And he was a Panther.”

The children also learn about prominent Panthers. “They play a Panther tag game, and they would cry if they couldn’t be Angela Davis or Huey P. Newton,” she said.

On Fridays, the children read poetry. “They really like to recite poems written by African Americans, it gives them hope. They’re stuck on Langston Hughes, they like Gwendolyn Brooks too.”

The school costs $700 a month, but many of the students are subsidized by The Basic Fund, a private foundation.

Meadows also uses partnerships with city institutions to enhance the curriculum. The children spend time every week swimming at Garfield public pool on Treat Street, and playing tennis, and partnering with Acrosports for tumbling lessons. The swimming lessons hold a particularly strong symbolism, as generations of African Americans in Jim Crow states were denied opportunities to swim.

Tributes to Black historical figures decorate the school’s walls. Children’s art on “Black Inventors” and “Louis Armstrong, the king of jazz” are displayed, along with a large version of the iconic photograph of John Carlos and Tommie Smith doing the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics.

When asked about Malcolm X, 20 hands shot up to talk about a figure important to their studies.

As one child explained it: “Malcolm X, he said if somebody’s hits you or hurts your family, he’s not going to turn the other cheek. He’s going to fight back. He’s like, you hurt my family, I’ll hurt yours. Martin Luther King, he said if a white person hits you, don’t fight back, make peace.”

“That’s nonviolence” another chimed in.

When listing their personal heroes, many kids included King and Malcolm. “Muhammad Ali, Yele, and you, Gail!” one exclaimed, the middle hero referring to the school’s drumming and African Civilization teacher, Akinyele Sadiq.

In the summer, most of the students go off to Camp Winnarainbow, the hippie-circus camp that Meadows calls “almost like an extension of our school.” Many of the children have parents who attended the school, and when I ask if they’re excited to graduate, all the kids frown and one says, “I don’t want to leave!” Others are more calm at the question. The school provides a safe haven for bullied kids and a source of ethnic pride. One 12-year-old tells me that when he goes to middle school next year, he’ll make new friends but, “I won’t follow them if they do something bad.” He sighs when I ask if he will be sad to leave. “Yeah,” he says, “But we all have to move on.”

Film Listings

Andrew Lam

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June 5, 2012

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

OPENING

Bel Ami Judging from recent attempts to shake off the gloomy atmosphere and undead company of the Twilight franchise, Robert Pattinson enjoys a good period piece, but hasn’t quite worked out how to help make one. Last year’s Depression-era Water for Elephants was a tepid romance, and Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s belle epoque–set Bel Ami is an ungainly, oddly paced adaptation of the Guy de Maupassant novel of the same name. A down-and-out former soldier of peasant stock, Georges Duroy (Pattinson) — or "Bel Ami," as his female admirers call him — gains a brief entrée into the upper echelons of France’s fourth estate and parlays it into a more permanent set of social footholds, campaigning for the affections of a triumvirate of Parisian power wives (Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman, and Kristin Scott Thomas) as he makes his ascent. His route is confusing, though; the film pitches forward at an alarming pace, its scenes clumsily stacked together with little character development or context to smooth the way, and Pattinson’s performance doesn’t clarify much. Duroy shifts perplexingly between rapacious and soulful modes, eyeing the ladies with a vaguely carnivorous expression as he enters drawing rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms, but leaving us with little sense of his true appetites or other motivations. (1:42) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)

Double Trouble When crooks nab a priceless painting from a Taipei museum, two security guards — wannabe hero Jay (Jaycee "Son of Jackie" Chan) and Chinese-tourist-on-vacation Ocean (Xia Yu) — reluctantly team up to recover the piece. A road trip of sorts ensues, laden with petty bickering, wacky melees, bonding moments, mistaken identity, gangsters both comical and sinister, and other buddy-comedy trappings. As expected, there are a few high-flying fight scenes; in the film’s production notes, director David Hsun-Wei Chang reveals he was inspired by the Rush Hour movies. Alas, Chan is neither as charismatic nor as breathtakingly nimble as his father (and, obvi, Xia is no Chris Tucker). It should be noted, however, that one of the slithery art thieves is played by underwear model Jessica C., famed in Hong Kong for her "police siren boobs." So there’s that. (1:29) Metreon. (Eddy)

Elena The opening, almost still image of breaking dawn amid bare trees — the twigs in the foreground almost imperceptibly developing definition and the sky gradually growing ever lighter and pinker in the corners of the frame — beautifully exemplifies the crux of this well-wrought, refined noir, which spins slowly on the streams of dog-eat-dog survival that rush beneath even the most moneyed echelons of Moscow. Sixtyish former nurse Elena (Nadezhda Markina) is still little more than a live-in caretaker for Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov), her affluent husband of almost 10 years. She sleeps in a separate bed in their modernist-chic condo and dutifully funnels money to her beloved layabout son and his family. Vladimir has less of a relationship with his rebellious bad-seed daughter (Yelena Lyadova), who may be too smart and hedonistic for her own good. When a certain unlikely reunion threatens Elena’s survival — and what she perceives as the survival of her own spawn — a kind of deadly dawn breaks over the seemingly obedient hausfrau, and she’s driven to desperate ends. Bathing his scenes in chilled blue light and velvety dark shadows, filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (2003’s The Return) keeps a detached but close eye on the proceedings while displaying an uncanny talent for plucking the telling detail out of the wash of daily routine and coaxing magnetic performances from his performers. (1:49) Lumiere. (Chun)

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted The animated zoo animals (voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith) join a circus. Hence the clown wigs. (1:33)

Peace, Love and Misunderstanding How is that even as a bona fide senior, Jane Fonda continues to embody this country’s ambivalence toward women? I suspect it’s a testament to her actorly prowess and sheer charisma that she’s played such a part in defining several eras’ archetypes — from sex kitten to counterculture-heavy Hanoi Jane to dressed-for-success feminist icon to aerobics queen to trophy wife. Here, among the talents in Bruce Beresford’s intergenerational chick-flick-gone-indie as a loud, proud, and larger-than-life hippie earth mama, she threatens to eclipse her paler, less colorful offspring, women like Catherine Keener and Elizabeth Olsen, who ordinarily shine brighter than those that surround them. It’s ostensibly the tale of high-powered lawyer Diane (Keener): her husband (Kyle MacLachlan) has asked for a divorce, so in a not-quite-explicable tailspin, she packs her kids, Zoe (Olsen) and Jake (Nat Wolff), into the car and heads to Woodstock to see her artist mom Grace (Fonda) for the first time in two decades. Grace is beyond overjoyed — dying to introduce the grandchildren to her protests, outdoor concerts, and own personal growhouse — while urbanite Diane and her kids find attractive, natch, diversions in the country, in the form of Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Cole (Chace Crawford), and Tara (Marissa O’Donnell). Yet there’s a lot of troubled water for the mother and daughter to cross, in order to truly come together. Despite some strong characterization and dialogue, Peace doesn’t quite fly — or make much sense at its close — due to the some patchy storytelling: the schematic rom-com arch fails to provide adequate scaffolding to support the required leaps of faith. But that’s not to deny the charm of the highly identifiable, generous-spirited Grace, a familiar Bay Area archetype if there ever was one, who Fonda charges with the joy and sadness of fallible parent who was making up the rules as she went along. (1:36) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Prometheus Ridley Scott returns to Alien (1979) turf with this sci-fi thriller starring Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Noomi Rapace, and Guy Pearce. (2:03)

ONGOING

Battleship During idle moments before the action revs up, the aliens start menacing, and the deadly razor balls-cum-air mines start rampaging, wrap your noggin around these random brainwaves: can Taylor Kitsch be any better named? Is it possible for Alexander Skarsgård’s glassy eyes to get any deader? Where are all the Hawaiians, Asians, and people of color in this white-bread vision of Hawaii? All matters to puzzle over in this toy franchise hopeful directed by ex-Chicago Hope regular Peter Berg. The 2007 Transformers is the best this gung-ho hybrid of up-with-the-military "Army of One" commercial and alien invasion flick — with plenty of blow-’em-up-real-good explosions and a dab of J-monster movies, but the writing never quite rises to the occasion. Here, an international group of navy folk and their ships are convening in Hawaii for playful war games, though the exercises turn somewhat more serious when alien vessels splash down in the middle of the fun —and some mild, no-investment family drama: Alex (Kitsch) is the screw-up younger brother of stony-faced naval man Stone (Skarsgård) and courting the daughter (Brooklyn Decker) of the fleet commander (Liam Neesom), who seems to hate his guts. The ultimate battle with space invaders, however, promises to turn that all around, as Alex is forced to sailor up and lead crew mates like Rihanna and work with former opponents like Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano). Here, at least, in the shadow of Pearl Harbor, U.S. and Japanese naval dudes can heal the wounds of World War II and bond in battle against the last unimpeachable interstellar villains who couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you say "I sunk your battleship." But Berg’s muddled direction doesn’t help when it comes to piecing out the chronology and balancing assorted perspectives in this latest effort to equate militarism with the games big and little kids play. (2:11) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Bernie Jack Black plays the titular new assistant funeral director liked by everybody in small-town Carthage, Tex. He works especially hard to ingratiate himself with shrewish local widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), but there are benefits — estranged from her own family, she not only accepts him as a friend (then companion, then servant, then as virtual "property"), but makes him her sole heir. Richard Linklater’s latest is based on a true-crime story, although in execution it’s as much a cheerful social satire as I Love You Philip Morris and The Informant! (both 2009), two other recent fact-based movies about likable felons. Black gets to sing (his character being a musical theater queen, among other things), while Linklater gets to affectionately mock a very different stratum of Lone Star State culture from the one he started out with in 1991’s Slacker. There’s a rich gallery of supporting characters, most played by little-known local actors or actual townspeople, with Matthew McConaughey’s vainglorious county prosecutor one delectable exception. Bernie is its director’s best in some time, not to mention a whole lot of fun. (1:39) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

The Cabin in the Woods If the name "Joss Whedon" doesn’t provide all the reason you need to bum-rush The Cabin in the Woods (Whedon produced and co-wrote, with director and frequent collaborator Drew Goddard), well, there’s not much more that can be revealed without ruining the entire movie. In a very, very small nutshell, it’s about a group of college kids (including Chris "Thor" Hemsworth) whose weekend jaunt to a rural cabin goes horribly awry, as such weekend jaunts tend to do in horror movies (the Texas Chainsaw and Evil Dead movies are heavily referenced). But this is no ordinary nightmare — its peculiarities are cleverly, carefully revealed, and the movie’s inside-out takedown of scary movies produces some very unexpected (and delightfully blood-gushing) twists and turns. Plus: the always-awesome Richard Jenkins, and in-jokes galore for genre fans. (1:35) Metreon. (Eddy)

A Cat in Paris This year’s Best Animated Film nominees: big-budget entries Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, and eventual winner Rango, plus Chico and Rita, which opened just before Oscar night, and French mega-dark-horse A Cat in Paris. Sure, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s film failed to cash in on 2011’s Paris craze, but it’s still a charming if featherweight noir caper, being released stateside in an English version that features the voices of Marcia Gay Harden and Anjelica Huston. A streetwise kitty named Dino spends his days hanging with Zoey, a little girl who’s gone mute since the death of her father — a cop killed in the line of duty. Zoey’s mother (Harden), also a cop, is hellbent on catching the murderer, a notorious crook named Costa who runs his criminal empire with Reservoir Dogs-style imprecision. At night, Dino sneaks out and accompanies an affable burglar on his prowlings. When Zoey falls into Costa’s clutches, her mom, the thief, and (natch) the feisty feline join forces to rescue her, in a series of rooftop chase scenes that climax atop Notre Dame. At just over an hour, A Cat in Paris is sweetly old-fashioned and suitable for audiences of all ages, though staunch dog lovers may raise an objection or two. (1:07) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Chernobyl Diaries Despite the peripheral input of Oren Peli, who scored big with 2009’s Paranormal Activity, this sorry excuse for a horror movie offers up a sample platter of shit we’ve already seen before: the vacation-from-hell genre, the city-slickers-versus-yokels genre, the don’t-poke-around-in-the-abandoned-nuclear-facility genre. Er, all right. I will admit the setting — spooky ghost town Pripyat, which abuts the Chernobyl reactors — is inspired, which actually makes first-time director Bradley Parker’s film even more of a disappointment. Douchey college kids — characters so one-dimensional their names might as well be "I Will Die First," "I Will Make the Obviously Stupid-Ass Decision to Run Into the Woods in the Direction of Those Strange Noises We’ve Been Hearing," and "I Will Be the Guy Who Starts Screaming Right When We’re Trying to Hide" — get in a rickety van with a sketchy guide for an "extreme tour" of you-know-where. Turns out, in addition to providing backdrops for Facebook-wall photo ops, the ‘Nobe is home to quite the cornucopia of beasties. Suggested alternate titles: Chernobyl Hostel. Wrong Turn (Off Chernobyl’s Only Road). Don’t Go In the Basement (of Chernobyl). Piranha-nobyl. Cujo-nobyl. Night of the Things in Chernobyl That Aren’t Dead. The Chernobyls Have Eyes. (1:26) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Color Wheel Carlen Altman, a nervous comedian who moonlights as a Jewish rosary maker, was doing stand-up in Brooklyn when filmmaker Alex Ross Perry approached her about collaborating on a project. The idea for a brother-sister movie came to be: The Color Wheel, a droll and perverse take on vexed lives in transition, tinged with 16mm. Perry directed, produced, and edited the film while co-writing with Altman. When the film begins, a dopey JR (Altman) shows up at the apartment of her misanthropic brother Colin (Perry). JR convinces him to help move her stuff out of her professor ex-boyfriend’s place. Inevitably, their Northeastern road trip follows other tangents, taking the pair on a hilarious and sad journey that raises more questions than answers about their fraught relationship. They meet a lot of jerks, but no one more so than themselves; their characters, filterless with no desire to grow up or shut up, are far behind everyone they encounter. With all its zeitgeisty humor and lovably awful people, The Color Wheel takes some dark turns — it begins as a charming, dour comedy, but ends up viscerally queasy and pitiful, with its two leads as mixed-up as ever. (1:23) Roxie. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Crooked Arrows (1:45) Metreon.

Dark Shadows Conceptually, there’s nothing wrong with attempting to turn a now semi-obscure supernaturally themed soap opera with a five-year run in the late 1960s and early ’70s into a feature film. Particularly if the film brings together the sweetly creepy triumvirate of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Helena Bonham Carter and emerges during an ongoing moment for vampires, werewolves, and other things that go hump in the night. Depp plays long-enduring vampire Barnabas Collins, the undead scion of a once-powerful 18th-century New England family that by the 1970s — the groovy decade in which the bulk of the story is set — has suffered a shabby deterioration. Barnabas forms a pact with present-day Collins matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) to raise the household — currently comprising her disaffected daughter, Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz), her derelict brother, Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), his mournful young son, David (Gulliver McGrath), David’s live-in lush of a psychiatrist, Dr. Hoffman (Carter), and the family’s overtaxed manservant, Willie (Jackie Earle Haley) — to its former stature, while taking down a lunatic, love-struck, and rather vindictive witch named Angelique (Eva Green). The latter, a victim of unrequited love, is the cause of all Barnabas’s woes and, by extension, the entire clan’s, but Angelique can only be blamed for so much. Beyond her hocus-pocus jurisdiction is the film’s manic pileup of plot twists, tonal shifts, and campy scenery-chewing by Depp, a startling onslaught that no lava lamp joke, no pallid reaction shot, no room-demolishing act of paranormal carnality set to Barry White, and no cameo by Alice Cooper can temper. (2:00) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Dictator As expected, The Dictator is, yet again, Sacha Baron Cohen doing his bumbling-foreigner shtick. Said character (here, a ruthless, spoiled North African dictator) travels to America and learns a heaping teaspoon of valuable lessons, which are then flung upon the audience — an audience which, by film’s end, has spent 80 minutes squealing at a no-holds-barred mix of disgusting gags, tasteless jokes, and schadenfreude. If you can’t forgive Cohen for carbon-copying his Borat (2006) formula, at least you can muster admiration for his ability to be an equal-opportunity offender (dinged: Arabs, Jews, African Americans, white Americans, women of all ethnicities, and green activists) — and for that last-act zinger of a speech. If The Dictator doesn’t quite reach Borat‘s hilarious heights, it’s still proudly repulsive, smart in spite of itself, and guaranteed to get a rise out of anyone who watches it. (1:23) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

First Position Bess Kargman’s documentary follows a handful of exceptional young ballet dancers, ranging in age from 10 to 17, over the course of a year as they prepare for the Youth America Grand Prix, the world’s largest ballet scholarship competition. Those who make it from the semifinals (in which some 5,000 dancers aged 9 to 19 perform in 15 cities around the world) to the finals (which bring some 300 contestants to New York City) compete for scholarships to prestigious ballet schools, dance-company contracts, and general notice by both the judges and the company directors in the audience. The film’s subjects come from varied backgrounds — 16-year-old Joan Sebastian lives and studies in NYC, far from his family in Colombia; 14-year-old Michaela was born in civil war-torn Sierra Leone and adopted from an orphanage by an American couple in Philadelphia; 11-year-old Aran, an American, lives in Italy with his mother while his father serves in Kuwait. The common threads in their stories are the daily sacrifices made by them as well as their families, whose energies and other resources are largely poured into these children’s single-minded pursuit. We get a vague sense of the difficult world they are driving themselves, in nearly every waking hour, to enter. But the film largely keeps its focus on the challenges of preparing for the competition, offering us many magnificent shots of the dancers pushing their bodies to mesmerizing physical extremes both on- and offstage. (1:34) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)

For Greater Glory (2:15) SF Center.

Headhunters Despite being the most sought-after corporate headhunter in Oslo, Roger (Aksel Hennie) still doesn’t make enough money to placate his gorgeous wife; his raging Napoleon complex certainly doesn’t help matters. Crime is, as always, the only solution, so Roger’s been supplementing his income by stealthily relieving his rich, status-conscious clients of their most expensive artworks (with help from his slightly unhinged partner, who works for a home-security company). When Roger meets the dashing Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones) — a Danish exec with a sinister, mysterious military past, now looking to take over a top job in Norway — he’s more interested in a near-priceless painting rumored to be stashed in Greve’s apartment. The heist is on, but faster than you can say "MacGuffin," all hell breaks loose (in startlingly gory fashion), and the very charming Roger is using his considerable wits to stay alive. Based on a best-selling "Scandi-noir" novel, Headhunters is just as clever as it is suspenseful. See this version before Hollywood swoops in for the inevitable (rumored) remake. (1:40) Lumiere. (Eddy)

Hide Away Josh Lucas plays a grieving man who buys a substantial sailboat sight unseen (note to self: never do that) and spends months restoring it from decrepitude to a thing of beauty. All while never leaving its Lake Michigan dock — and for a while seeming hellbent on self-destruction via winter cold, alcohol, and cough syrup. Among those witnessing his solitary exile are Ayelet Zurer as a woman keeping an eye peeled from her shorefront diner; and James Cromwell as an old salt (he’s actually billed as "The Ancient Mariner") prone to wearing a kilt, playing bagpipes, and spouting wise groaners like "Sometimes when you get to where you’re s’posed to be, it’s too soon." Peter Vanderwall’s screenplay aims for artful minimalism, but still one might wish there were even less of it — too much of the writing is psychologically undercooked, pretentious, silly, or incongruously over-garrulous. There are too many thankless moments of under-contextualized actor exertion, and narrative elements that do not reward when they need to. But if Smoke Signals (1998) director Chris Eyres’ film is shaky as drama, it still provides aesthetic rewards as an exercise in melancholy poetics, especially via Eliot Davis’ photography of the northern Michigan environ through several seasons, and the persistent keening emotion of Tony Morales and Edward Rogers’ original soundtrack. (1:23) SF Film Society Cinema. (Harvey)

High School (1:40) Metreon.

The Hunger Games Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a teenager living in a totalitarian state whose 12 impoverished districts, as retribution for an earlier uprising, must pay tribute to the so-called Capitol every year, sacrificing one boy and one girl each to the Hunger Games. A battle royal set in a perilous arena and broadcast live to the Capitol as gripping diversion and to the districts as sadistic propaganda, the Hunger Games are, depending on your viewpoint, a "pageant of honor, courage, and sacrifice" or a brutal, pointless bloodbath involving children as young as 12. When her little sister’s name comes up in the annual lottery, Katniss volunteers to take her place and is joined by a boy named Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), with whom she shares an old, unspoken bond. Tasked with translating to the screen the first installment of Suzanne Collins’s rabidly admired trilogy, writer-director Gary Ross (2003’s Seabiscuit, 1998’s Pleasantville) telescopes the book’s drawn-out, dread-filled tale into a manageable two-plus-hour entertainment, making great (and horrifying) use of the original work’s action, but losing a good deal of the narrative detail and emotional force. Elizabeth Banks is comic and unrecognizable as Effie Trinket, the two tributes’ chaperone; Lenny Kravitz gives a blank, flattened reading as their stylist, Cinna; and Donald Sutherland is sufficiently creepy and bloodless as the country’s leader, President Snow. More exceptionally cast are Woody Harrelson as Katniss and Peeta’s surly, alcoholic mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, and Stanley Tucci as games emcee Caesar Flickerman, flashing a bank of gleaming teeth at each contestant as he probes their dire circumstances with the oily superficiality of a talk show host. (2:22) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Hysteria Tanya Wexler’s period romantic comedy gleefully depicts the genesis of the world’s most popular sex toy out of the inchoate murk of Victorian quackishness. In this dulcet version of events, real-life vibrator inventor Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) is a handsome young London doctor with such progressive convictions as a belief in the existence of germs. He is, however, a man of his times and thus swallows unblinking the umbrella diagnosis of women with symptoms like anxiety, frustration, and restlessness as victims of a plague-like uterine disorder known as hysteria. Landing a job in the high-end practice of Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), whose clientele consists entirely of dissatisfied housewives seeking treatments of "medicinal massage" and subsequent "parosysm," Granville becomes acquainted with Dalrymple’s two daughters, the decorous Emily (Felicity Jones) and the first-wave feminist Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). A subsequent bout of RSI offers empirical evidence for the adage about necessity being the mother of invention, with the ever-underused Rupert Everett playing Edmund St. John-Smythe, Granville’s aristocratic friend and partner in electrical engineering. (1:35) Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

I Wish It’s tempting to hold Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish up to that other kids adventure story in the theaters, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, but that’s a disservice to Anderson: his arch look back at an age of innocence comes off as loftily contrived in contrast to this gently empathetic, ground-level view of children’s dreams and desires, one that falls well short of preciousness, thanks to Kore-eda’s acute eye for a changing Japan. Brothers Koichi and Ryunosuke (real-life sibs Koki and Ohshiro Maeda) are living apart like their two parents: the former bunks with his mother (Nene Otsuka) and grandparents in Kagoshima, where he plots to get his parents together again and frets over the ash-spewing still-active volcano; the latter is busy enabling his laid-back guitar-playing father (Jo Odagiri of 2003’s Bright Future) on the other side of the island, where he grows fava beans, eats takeout, and hangs out with pals like budding actress Megumi (Kara Uchida). These offspring of Peter Pan-like parents, who have had a tough time growing up and fulfilling their own dreams, have been forced to grow up fast — but Koichi is pinning his hopes on something faster: the new bullet train line that will link his town with his brother’s. He gets it in his mind that if a wish is made when the first trains pass each other, a miracle, like his bickering parents’ reunion, will occur. The kids conspire to grab to that magical moment, by hook or crook, and a little help from an elderly couple that might have stepped out of an older, more gracious Japan, as rhapsodized by Yasujiro Ozu. And as with his devastating portrait of abandoned kids eking out a living on their own, Nobody Knows (2004), Kore-eda effortlessly coaxes great performances out of his child actors. Like Nobody Knows‘s Akira, Koichi and Ryunosuke are determined to persevere, post-familial meltdown, through all personal Armageddons, be they triggered by volcano, tsunami, or heartbreak. (2:08) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Intouchables Cries of "racism" seem a bit out of hand when it comes to this likable albeit far-from-challenging French comedy loosely based on a real-life relationship between a wealthy white quadriplegic and his caretaker of color. The term "cliché" is more accurate. And where were these critics when 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy and 2011’s The Help — movies that seem designed to make nostalgic honkies feel good about those fraught relationships skewed to their advantage—were coming down the pike? (It also might be more interesting to look at how these films about race always hinge on economies in which whites must pay blacks to interact with/educate/enlighten them.) In any case, Omar Sy, portraying Senegalese immigrant Driss, threatens to upset all those pundits’ apple carts with his sheer life force, even when he’s shaking solo on the dance floor to sounds as effortlessly unprovocative, and old-school, as Earth, Wind, and Fire. In fact, everything about The Intouchables is as old school as 1982’s 48 Hrs., spinning off the still laugh-grabbing humor that comes with juxtaposing a hipper, more streetwise black guy with a hapless, moneyed chalky. The wheelchair-bound Philippe (Francois Cluzet) is more vulnerable than most, and he has a hard time getting along with any of his nurses, until he meets Driss, who only wants his signature for his social services papers. It’s not long before the cultured, classical music-loving Philippe’s defenses are broken down by Driss’ flip, somewhat honest take on the follies and pretensions of high culture — a bigger deal in France than in the new world, no doubt. Director-writer Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano aren’t trying to innovate —they seem more set on crafting an effervescent blockbuster that out-blockbusters Hollywood — and the biggest compliment might be that the stateside remake is already rumored to be in the works. (1:52) Embarcadero. (Chun)

Jiro Dreams of Sushi Celebrity-chef culture has surely reached some kind of zeitgeist, what with the omnipresence of Top Chef and other cooking-themed shows, and the headlines-making power of people like Paula Deen (diabetes) and Mario Batali (sued for ripping off his wait staff). Unconcerned with the trappings of fame — you’ll never see him driving a Guy Fieri-style garish sports car — is Jiro Ono, 85-year-old proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny, world-renowned sushi restaurant tucked into Tokyo’s Ginza station. Jiro, a highly-disciplined perfectionist who believes in simple, yet flavorful food, has devoted his entire life to the pursuit of "deliciousness" — to the point of sushi invading his dreams, as the title of David Gelb’s reverential documentary suggests. But Jiro Dreams of Sushi goes deeper than food-prep porn (though, indeed, there’s plenty of that); it also examines the existential conflicts faced by Jiro’s two middle-aged sons. Both were strongly encouraged to enter the family business — and in the intervening years, have had to accept the soul-crushing fact that no matter how good their sushi is, it’ll never be seen as exceeding the creations of their legendary father. (1:21) Bridge. (Eddy)

Marvel’s The Avengers The conflict — a mystical blue cube containing earth-shattering (literally) powers is stolen, with evil intent — isn’t the reason to see this long-hyped culmination of numerous prequels spotlighting its heroic characters. Nay, the joy here is the whole "getting’ the band back together!" vibe; director and co-writer Joss Whedon knows you’re just dying to see Captain America (Chris Evans) bicker with Iron Man (a scene-stealing Robert Downey Jr.); Thor (Chris Hemsworth) clash with bad-boy brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston); and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) get angry as often as possible. (Also part of the crew, but kinda mostly just there to look good in their tight outfits: Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.) Then, of course, there’s Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) running the whole Marvel-ous show, with one good eye and almost as many wry quips as Downey’s Tony Stark. Basically, The Avengers gives you everything you want (characters delivering trademark lines and traits), everything you expect (shit blowing up, humanity being saved, etc.), and even makes room for a few surprises. It doesn’t transcend the comic-book genre (like 2008’s The Dark Knight did), but honestly, it ain’t trying to. The Avengers wants only to entertain, and entertain it does. (2:23) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Men in Black III Why not? It’s been ten years since Men in Black II (the one where Lara Flynn Boyle and Johnny Knoxville — remember them? — played the villains), Will Smith has barely aged, and he hasn’t made a full-on comedy since, what, 2005’s Hitch? Here, he does a variation on his always-agreeable exasperated-guy routine, clashing with his grim, gimlet-eyed partner Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones, and in a younger incarnation, a spot-on Josh Brolin) in a plot that involves a vicious alien named Boris (Flight of the Conchords’ Jermaine Clement), time travel, Andy Warhol, the moon (as both space-exploration destination and modern-day space-jail location), and lines that only Smith’s delivery can make funny ("This looks like it comes from planet damn.") It’s cheerful (save a bit of melodrama at the end), crisply paced, and is neither a must-see masterpiece nor something you should mindfully sleep through if it pops up among your in-flight selections. Oh, and it’s in 3D. Well, why not? (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Monsieur Lazhar When their beloved but troubled teacher hangs herself in the classroom — not a thoughtful choice of location, but then we never really discover her motives — traumatized Montreal sixth-graders get Bachir Lazhar (Fellag), a middle-aged Algerian émigré whose contrastingly rather strict, old-fashioned methods prove surprisingly useful at helping them past their trauma. He quickly becomes the crush object of studious Alice (Sophie Nelisse), whose single mother is a pilot too often away, while troublemaker Simon (Emilien Neron) acts out his own domestic and other issues at school. Lazhar has his own secrets as well — for one thing, we see that he’s still petitioning for permanent asylum in Canada, contradicting what he told the principal upon being hired — and while his emotions are more tightly wrapped, circumstances will eventually force all truths out. This very likable drama about adults and children from Quebec writer-director Philippe Falardeau doesn’t quite have the heft and resonance to rate among the truly great narrative films about education (like Laurent Cantet’s recent French The Class). But it comes close enough, gracefully touching on numerous other issues while effectively keeping focus on how a good teacher can shape young lives in ways as incalculable as they are important. (1:34) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Michelle Devereaux)

Piranha 3DD (1:23) 1000 Van Ness.

Polisse Comparisons to The Wire are not to be tossed around lightly, but when the Hollywood Reporter likened Polisse to an entire season of the masterpiece cop show packed into a single film, it was onto something. Director, co-writer, and star Maïwenn (the object of desire in 2003’s High Tension) hung out with real officers serving in Paris’ Child Protection Unit, drawing inspiration from their dealings with pedophiles, young rape victims, negligent mothers, pint-sized pickpockets, and the like (another TV show worth mentioning in comparison: Law & Order: SVU). But Polisse (the title is deliberately misspelled, as if by a child) is no simple procedural; it plunges the viewer directly into the day-to-day lives of its boisterous characters, who are juggling not just stressful careers but also plenty of after-hours troubles, particularly relationship issues. Between heart wrenching moments on the job (and off), the unit indulges in massive cut-loose episodes of what amounts to group therapy: charades, dance parties, and room-clearing arguments, most of which involve huge quantities of booze. Watching Polisse is a messy, emotional, rewarding experience; no wonder it picked up the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. (2:07) Lumiere. (Eddy)

Snow White and the Huntsman It’s unclear why the zeitgeist has blessed us this year with two warring iterations of the Snow White fairy tale, one broadly comedic (April’s Mirror Mirror), one starkly emo. But it was only natural that Kristen Stewart would land in the latter rendering, breaking open the hearts of swamp beasts and swordsmen alike with the chaste glory of her mien. As Snow White flees the henchmen and hired killers dispatched by her seriously evil stepmother, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), and traverses a blasted, virulent forest populated with hallucinogenic vapors and other life-threatening obstacles, Stewart need not act so much as radiate a dazzling benignity, weeping the tears of a martyr rather than a frightened young girl. (Unfortunately, when required to deliver a rallying declaration of war, she sounds as if she’s speaking in tongues after a heavy hit on the crack pipe.) It’s slightly uncomfortable to be asked, alongside a grieving, drunken huntsman (The Avengers’ Chris Hemsworth), a handful of dwarfs (including Ian McShane and Toby Jones), and the kingdom’s other suffering citizenry, to fall worshipfully in line behind such a creature. But first-time director Rupert Sanders’s film keeps pace with its lovely heroine visually, constructing a gorgeous world in which armies of black glass shatter on battlefields, white stags dissolve into hosts of butterflies, and a fairy sanctuary within the blighted kingdom is an eye-popping fantasia verging on the hysterical. Theron’s Ravenna, equipped in modernist fashion with a backstory for her sociopathic tendencies, is credible and captivating as an unhinged slayer of men, thief of youth, destroyer of kingdoms, and consumer of the hearts of tiny birds. (2:07) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

What to Expect When You’re Expecting You needn’t direct what you know, but the first major misstep in this ensemble comedy was tapping a man, Kirk Jones (2005’s Nanny McPhee), to helm. Apparently Nicole Holofcener, Nancy Meyers, and Nora Ephron were too busy — busy making films not based on self-help bestsellers. Instead, What to Expect shows how marginal women can be to certain Hollywood blockbuster decision makers. On the surface, it’s all about the gals and their experiences, as an array of women from somewhat different, if pretty uniformly bourgie, walks of life — fitness star Cameron Diaz, baby store owner Elizabeth Banks, food truck chef Anna Kendrick, and trophy wife Brooklyn Decker — all find themselves knocked up. The odd woman out, surprisingly, is the boho photog played by Jennifer Lopez, who aspires to nest with a baby adopted from Ethiopia. But despite the frantic efforts of Banks, who shoulders the comedy burden here with hormones gone wild and gassy, and the climax, which should choke up all present and wannabe moms, the women are consistently upstaged by the bros, primarily the "Dudes Group" of dads headed up by Chris Rock and Thomas Lennon. Unlike the far-too-prominent, shruggable storyline involving an expectant father and son (Dennis Quaid and Ben Falcone), that crew gets the funniest, and perhaps most perceptive lines, in a baldly patriarchal play to the fellows forced into the cineplexes. Can’t the ladies catch a break, even as their waters are breaking? (1:50) Metreon. (Chun)

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam

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June 5, 2012

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

THEATER

OPENING

Aftermath Stagewerx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Previews Thu/7, 8pm. Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. Theatre, Period presents Jessica Blank and Erik Jenson’s docu-drama, based on interviews with Iraqi civilians forced to flee after the US military’s arrival in 2003.

Lips Together, Teeth Apart New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Terrence McNally’s play about two straight couples spending July 4 amid Fire Island’s gay community.

Reunion SF Playhouse, Stage Two, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Previews Wed/6-Thu/7, 7pm; Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through June 30. SF Playhouse presents a world premiere drama by local playwright Kenn Rabin.

“Risk Is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. Free ($20 donation for reserved seating; $50 donation for five-play reserved seating pass). Opens Fri/8, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through July 14. Cutting Ball’s annual fest of experimental plays features two new works and five new translations in staged readings.

Vital Signs Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Previews Fri/8 and June 15, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm. Opens June 16, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; June 22, 8pm. Through July 21. The Marsh San Francisco presents Alison Whittaker’s behind-the-scenes look at nursing in America.

BAY AREA

Wheelhouse TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Previews Wed/6-Fri/8, 8pm. Opens Sat/9, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through July 1. TheatreWorks’ 60th world premiere is a musical created by and starring pop-rock trio GrooveLily.

ONGOING

A Behanding in Spokane SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through June 30. If Garth Ennis had been asked to write a comic book about a one-handed sociopath with a dark obsession, he might well have written something similar to Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane. And admittedly, approached from that angle, a lot of the script’s dramatic flaws are more easily forgiven. There’s not a whole lot of subtle context or languid metaphor to be found in McDonagh’s criminal caper about the little-known “hand-dealing” trade, but as in Ennis’ best known work, Preacher, the pretty girl (Melissa Quine) is the smartest one in the room; the sociopath (Rod Gnapp) is interested in enacting as vicious a revenge on all humanity while spewing as many blatantly offensive invectives as possible; the boyfriend (Daveed Diggs) has some arrested development issues to work out; and the receptionist (Alex Hurt) takes the caricature of man-child to a whole new level. In fact, while all four actors deliver rock-solid performances of their mostly unsympathetic characters, it’s Hurt’s that impresses most. His spooky intensity and goofily tone-deaf determination plays like a combination of Adam Sandler and Arno Frisch, and if there’s a real sociopath in the room, the evidence suggests it’s probably him. Ultimately though the piece relies too heavily on hollow one-liners to remain interesting — a 20-minute farce stretched to 90 minutes — and quite unlike an Ennis comic, it does not leave one wanting more. (Gluckstern)

The Full Monty Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.roltheatre.com. $25-36. Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 30. In desperate times, how far would you go to turn a buck? The central premise of the 1997 movie and its namesake musical comedy The Full Monty, the answer to this question is right in the title, which limits the suspense, but amps up the expectations. Set not in Sheffield, England as in the movie, but the similarly economically challenged climate of Buffalo, New York circa the late nineties, the comical romp follows a group of unemployed steel workers who decide, rather optimistically, that spending one night as exotic dancers will solve their immediate financial woes. Banish all notions of a Hot Chocolate sing-along; the soundtrack of the stage musical has little in common with its cinematic predecessor, but there are a couple of toe-tappers, particularly the songs writ for the ladies: a belter’s anthem for their spry but elderly accompanist Jeanette (Cami Thompson), a snarky commentary on male beauty, “The Goods,” for the ensemble. On opening night, Ray of Light’s production ran about 15 minutes long after a late start, and the tempo seemed sluggish in parts, but once it hits its stride, The Full Monty should provide a welcome antidote to the ongoing, we’re-still-in-a-recession blues, red leather g-strings and all. (Gluckstern) Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu/7, 8pm; Sat/9, 8:30pm; Sun/10, 7pm. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

100 Saints You Should Know Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.therhino.org. $10-30. Wed-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 17. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Kate Fodor’s comedy-drama about family love, homosexuality, and adolescence.

Othello Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-18. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Ninjaz of Drama performs Shakespeare’s classic in a contemporary setting.

Slipping New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Daniel Talbott’s drama about a gay teen who finds new hope after a traumatic breakup.

Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Extended run: June 14 and 21, 7:30pm; June 15-16 and 22-23, 8pm (also June 16 and 23, 2pm); June 18 and 24, 5pm. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar “doood” dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through June 24. Berkeley Rep presents a world premiere from writer-performer Dael Orlandersmith (a Pulitzer finalist for 2002’s Yellowman).

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu/7-Sat/9, 8pm. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. That’s because slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next whose penchant for making lackluster life choices has sentenced them to an indefinite prison term of couch-surfing and Teen Mom marathons in their childhood home. Naturally, they desire change, but it’s not until their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man that things do. In an egregious breach of the TMI line, it appears that Mom’s orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz subsequently fall into. Thus removed from the entropy of their former reality they begin testing the parameters of their new one, quickly coming to the realization that sometimes the alternatives to what you already have are even worse. Getting home again is a convoluted, not fully mapped-out process, but in the interim, their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern)

God of Carnage Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also June 16, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 17. Marin Theatre Company performs Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning comedy about two sets of parents who meet after their children get into a schoolyard fight.

The Great Divide Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 24. Shotgun Players performs Adamn Chanzit’s drama about the hot topic of fracking, inspired by Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.

The Tempest Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; (510) 809-3290, www.calshakes.org. $35-71. Tue-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also June 23, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through June 25. California Shakespeare Theater opens its season with this dance-filled interpretation of the Bard’s classic tale.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Fri, 6pm; Sun/10, June 16, 24, and 30, 11am. Through June 30. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

American Foundation for Equal Rights benefit Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon/11, 8pm. $25-50. BATS Improv and Tom Bruett of marriageequalityplays.com present short plays by local playwrights, plus an improvised short play, on the theme of marriage equality.

“Beef Cake Comedy Show” Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; www.decosf.com. Sun/10, 8pm. $10. Comedy music group Saw Dem Eyes headlines this night of “straight guys telling jokes with their shirts off.”

“The BY Series” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 17. $25. Robert Moses’ Kin Dance Company presents work by guest choreographers Molissa Fenley, Ramon Ramos Alayo, and Sidra Bell, plus the world premiere of Moses’ Scrubbing the Dog.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tue, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“Elementary, My Dear Watson, It Was Crack” Purple Onion, 140 Columbus, SF; (415) 956-1653. Thu/7, 9pm. $20. Comedian Will Franken performs his latest one-man sketch comedy show.

“A Funny Night for Comedy” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.natashamuse.com. Sun/10, 7pm. $10. Natasha Muse and Ryan Cronin host a comedy talk show, followed by “A Funny Night for Improv” at 9pm.

“Feel the Power of the Dork Side” Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm. $15. Engineering professor by day, stand-up comedian by night: Dr. Pete Ludovice performs his solo show.

“Get In Front” Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.getinfront.org. Wed/6, 7pm. $35-250. A benefit for Cancer Prevention Institute of California, this event features performances by principal dancers from San Francisco Ballet, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, ODC/Dance, and more.

“House of Matter” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/8-Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 7pm. $15-25. Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project presents its latest installment of urban dance theater.

“Idina Menzel: Barefoot at the Symphony” Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; (415) 864-6000. Thu/7, 8pm. $69.50-125. The Tony winner performs a show of Broadway and modern pop songs.

“Kunst-Stoff Arts/Fest 2012” Kunst-Stoff Arts, One Grove, SF; kunststoffartsfest2012.eventbrite.com. Thu/7-Sat/9 (Program One) and June 14-16 (Program Three), 8:30pm; Tue/12, 8pm (Program Two). $15. Program one: Dance Elixir and Kunst-Stoff Dance Company; program two: Silvia Girardi performing multimedia theater work All I Wanted to Say; program three: Bruno Augusto and Meisha Bosma.

“Performance Night at the Strand” Strand Theater, 1127 Market, SF; maryarmentroutdancetheater.com. Fri/8, 8:15pm. Free (donations accepted). Mary Armentrout Dance Theater, Oakland’s Milkbar, and Paz de la Calzada present an evening of site-specific performances and installations inspired by de la Calzada’s mural on the shuttered Strand Theater.

“R16 North American B-Boy Championships” Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.r16usa.com. Sat/9, 2-6pm. $10-25. Come check out dancers popping, locking, and otherwise vying to represent North America at the Supreme World Championship finals in South Korea.

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.worldartswest.org. Sat/9, 2pm. $15. Artist dialogue with “American Tribal Style Belly Dance” creator Carolena Nericcio, followed by a performance by FatChanceBellyDance. Also Sun/10, 2pm, Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin, SF; www.worldartswest.org. Sun/10, 2pm. Free with museum admission ($7-12). Shamanic dance performace by Korean dance master Il Hyun Kim.

“Sex and the City: Live!” Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Tue, 7 and 9pm. Through June 26. $25. Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger, Lady Bear, Trixxie Carr play the fab four in this drag-tastic homage to the HBO series.

“Talkies” Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. Fri/8, 8pm. $6. Stand-up comedy and short comedic films hosted by Anna Seregina and George Chen.

“Voca People” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com. Tue-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6:30 and 9:30pm; Sun, 3 and 6pm. Through June 17. $49-75. A capella from outer space.

“X” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/6-Thu/7, 8pm. $10-20. Australian performer Sunny Drake presents his new show in conjunction with the National Queer Arts Festival.

BAY AREA

“Jazz Hams” Odell Johnson Performing Arts Center, Laney College, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sat/9, 8pm; Sun/10, 1pm. $10. The plus-sized performers of Big Moves present a new, full-scale production featuring an array of dance styles.

Music Listings

Andrew Lam

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June 5, 2012

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

WEDNESDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Brendan Benson, Young Hines, Howling Brothers Independent. 8pm, $18.

Brian Bergeron Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Bob vs. Greg Zema Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9:30pm.

Church of Misery, Hail! Hornet, Gates of Slumber Elbo Room. 8pm, $18.

CocoRosie, Tez and the Rajasthan Roots, Sissy Nobby Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $25.

Keith Crossan Invitational Pro Jam Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15. With Terry Hanck.

Rocco Deluca Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $8-$10.

Early Novembers, Wonder Years, Swellers, Young Statues Slim’s. 7:30pm, $20.

Guitar Wizards of the Future, Beatcasso Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $5.

Mansions on the Moon, Deer Tracks, Nouela Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

One Way Station Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5.

Teen Daze, One AM Radio, Giraffage, Slow Magic Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10-$12.

Nick Waterhouse Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.verdiclub.net. 8pm, $12. With DJs Carnita, Primo, Matt B, Lucky.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cat’s Corner with Nathan Dias Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Cosmo AlleyCats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7-10pm.

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

Thomas Mapfumo & Blacks Unlimited Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $22.

Candace Roberts 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 6:30pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Coo-Yah! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. DJs Daneekah and Green B spin reggae and dancehall with weekly guests.

Mary Go Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 10pm, $5. Drag with Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro, and Ginger Snap.

Megatallica Fiddler’s Green, 1333 Columbus, SF; www.megatallica.com. 7pm, free. Heavy metal hangout.

Obey the Kitty: Yolanda Be Cool Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $10.

THURSDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Advance Base, Nicholas Krgovich, David Joanna Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $10-$12.

Mickey Avalon, Millionaires, Dirt Slim’s. 7:30pm, $20.

Rick Derringer Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $26.

General 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Grendel’s Claw, Curse Words, Grandma’s Boyfriend, Sweet Bones Knockout. 9:30pm, $6.

Human Condition, Betsy and Beau, Quiet Man Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Laurie Morvan Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

JD McPherson Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Idina Menzel Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; (415) 864-6000. 8pm, $69.50-$125.

Misisipi Mike and the Midnight Gamblers, Heeldraggers Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10.

Party Owl, T.I.T.S, Burrows Hemlock. 9pm, $6.

Stan Erhart Band Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Wailers, Gondwana Mezzanine. 9pm, $30.

Greg Zema vs. Bob Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9:30pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 7:30pm, $10.

Ned Boynton Trio Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 7-10pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Twang! Honky Tonk Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm. Live country music, dancing, and giveaways.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. With DJ-host Pleasuremaker spins Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Base: Sasha Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $20.

Get Low Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. Jerry Nice and Ant-1 spin Hip-Hop, 80’s and Soul with weekly guests.

Midi Matilda, Young Digerati, popscene DJs Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $10-$12.

OneMama & M.O.M. Dance Party and Fundraiser 111 Minna, SF; www.onemama.org. 5:30-11pm.

Supersonic Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 9pm. Global beats paired with food from around the world by Tasty. Resident DJs Jaybee, B-Haul, amd Diagnosis.

Thursdays at the Cat Club Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with DJ’s Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests.

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

FRIDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bob, Joel Nelson, Greg Zema Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm.

Body & Soul Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Concussion, Jack Killed Jill, Ill Content, Bankrupt District Sub-Mission. 8:30pm, $5.

Christopher Cross Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $40; 10pm, $35.

Face to Face, Downtown Struts Slim’s. 7:30pm, $20.

Falsetto Teeth, Zu Zed, Bob Ladue Brainwash Cafe, 1122 Folsom, SF; www.brainwash.com. 8pm, free.

Forward, No Statik, Merdoso, Effluxus Knockout. 8pm.

Hollyhocks Makeout Room. 7:30pm.

Maus Haus, Exray’s, Mwahaha, Devonwho Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

New Orleans Suspects, Zigaboo Modeliste and the New Aahkesstra Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $15-$20.

Cathy Richardson Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Bob Schneider, Laura Warshauer Independent. 9pm, $20.

Starskate, Hazel’s Wart, Girls In, Wes Leslie and His Deadly Medley Thee Parkside. 9pm, $6.

Tender, DickWolf, Inferno of Joy, Yes Go’s Hemlock. 9:30pm, $6.

This Will Destroy You, A Place To Bury Strangers, Dusted Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $14.

Tornado Rider, Battlehooch, Kill Moi, Sporting Life Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $13.

Whiskerman, Guy Fox, Tumbleweed Wanderers, Steve Taylor Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $10-$12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

Terry Disely Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 5:30-8:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Jay Schraub Coffee Adventures, 1331 Columbus, SF; (415) 441-0301. 11am-1pm, free.

Taste Fridays 650 Indiana, SF; www.tastefridays.com. 8pm, $18. Salsa and bachata dance lessons, live music.

Usual Suspects Acoustic Showcase 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 8pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Forro Brazuca Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. Hottest dancehall music from Brazil.

Future Perfect Public Works. With Jel, GuMMy Bear, Friendzone, Jaycasio, and more.

Glitter DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-$20. Techno, tech-house, and electronic dance.

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

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

MartyParty 103 Harriet. 1am, $15.

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

Paris to Dakar 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.

SATURDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bow Wow Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $32.

Christopher Cross Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $40; 10pm, $35.

Corrosion of Conformity, Torche, Black Cobra, Gaza Slim’s. 8pm, $21.

Cut Loose Band Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Donavon Frankenreiter, Goodnight Texas Independent. 9pm, $21.

Funk Revival Orchestra: A Tribute to Roy Ayers Cafe Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Green Lady Killers, Flexx Bronco Bender’s, 800 S. Van Ness, SF; www.bendersbar.com. 9pm, $5.

Hightower, Pins of Light, Ironwitch, War Child Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

“Indie-Pino” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Sculpture Garden, Third and Mission, SF; ybca.org/indie-pino. 1-6pm, free. With Savages, Pedro Gil, Golda and the Guns, Jack Lords Orchestra, Good Night Robot.

Maps & Atlases, Big Sleep, Hands Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $15.

New Orleans Suspects, Zigaboo Modeliste and the New Aahkesstra Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $15-$20.

Julia Nunes Swedish American Hall. 8pm, $15.

Rod Piazza & the Mighty Flyers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Pierced Arrows, Don’t, Abatis Thee Parkside. 9pm, $12.

Randy, Greg Zema, Bob Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm.

Shannon & the Clams, Burnt Ones, Cool Ghouls, In Watermelon Sugar El Rio. 3-8pm, $8.

Spidermeow, Rabbles, Mt. Whateverest Hemlock. 9:30pm, $7.

Tiny Television Riptide, 3639 Taraval, SF; www.riptidesf.com. 9:30pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bay Area Swing All-Stars 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

San Francisco Free Folk Festival Presidio Middle School, 450 30th Ave, SF; noon-10pm, free.

“Twang Bang” Great American Music Hall. 8:30pm, $13-$15. With Dirty Hand Family Band, Famous, Shants, Rogers, Hot Pink.

Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod Atlas Cafe, 3049 20th St, SF; www.atlascafe.net. 4-6pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Club Gossip Cat Club. 9pm, free before 9:30pm, $5-$8 after. With VJs Shon, Low Life, Damon, and more.

Cockblock Rickshaw Stop.10pm, $5-$10.

Non Stop Bhangra: LA to the Bay Public Works. 9pm, $15.

Paris to Dakar 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.

Pink and Purple Patio Party Cafe Cocomo, 650 Indiana, SF; www.cafecocomo.org. 1-7pm, $10. Queer outdoor dance party with DJs and free barbecue.

Soul Slam 7: Michael Jackson vs. Prince Mezzanine. 9pm, $25.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-$10. With Shawn Reynaldo & Oro11, DJ Dodger Stadium.

2 Men Will Move You Amnesia. 9pm.

SUNDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers, Blank Tapes Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $10.

Elegant Trash, Warbler, Johnny Lowrie Band Hemlock. 9pm, $6.

Green River Ordinance, Jesse Thomas Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

John Lawton Trio Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Ray Wylie Hubbard, Elliot Randall Cafe Du Nord. 8:30pm, $17-$20.

Patrick Watson, Cat Marino Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $16-$19.

Unknown Hinson Independent. 8pm, $20.

Emily Jane White Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $5-$8.

Still Flyin, Tambo Rays, Trails and Ways Rickshaw Stop. 7pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Josh Klipp Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; www.blissbar.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Fabiana Passoni & Her All-Star Band Yoshi’s SF. 7Pm, $16.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Balkan Beat Box Israel In the Gardens Festival, 750 Howard, SF; Facebook: Israel in the Gardens 2012. 3pm, free

Lagos Roots Afro Beat Ensemble Boom Boom Room. 8pm, $5.

San Francisco Free Folk Festival Presidio Middle School, 450 30th Ave, SF; noon-10pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! After After Hours Monroe, 473 Broadway, SF; www.monroesf.com. 6am-2pm, $10. With Emanate, James Henderson, Joseph Lee, and Zenith.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, J. Boogie, Mochi Pet.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2. Raise money for LGBT sports teams while enjoying DJs and drink specials.

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

MONDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Catch Hell, Feral Cat, Death By Steamship Rock Loft, 471 Broadway, SF; (415) 846-5124. 9pm, $5.

Damir Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Priester’s Cue Yoshi’s SF. 8pm, $18.

Sidekicks, Spraynard, Delay, Wild Moth Bottom of the Hill. 8:45pm, $8.

Sticklers, Pony Time, Creepers Hemlock. 6pm, $5.

Y Axes, Tarantula Tango, Scatter Gather, Loud Talker Elbo Room. 9Pm, $6.

Wax Idols, White Lung Knockout. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bossa Nova Tunnel Top, 601 Bush, SF; (415) 722-6620. 8-11:30pm, free. Live acoustic Bossa Nova.

Timmy Igoe Band Rrazz Room. 7:30pm, $25.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Toshio Hirano Amnesia. 9pm.

Pick: Open Bluegrass Jam Amnesia. 6pm.

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

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

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop from 1960s-early ’90s with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alvon Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $22.

Bombshell Betty and Her Burlesqueteers, Fromagique Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

King Loses Crown, High Society, Parade Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Here We Go Magic, Harriet Independent. 8pm, $15.

Leopold & His Fiction, Rusty Maples Hemlock. 9pm, $7.

Merrill Bazaar Cafe, 5927 California, SF; www.bazaarcafe.net. 7pm, free.

Rhapsody of Fire, Voyager Slim’s. 8pm, $27.

Stan Erhart Band Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Thrice, Animals As Leaders, O’Brother Regency Ballroom. 7:30pm, $25.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Gaucho Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 7-10pm, free.

“Jazz Voices of Poetry” Yoshi’s SF. 8pm. With Clairdee, Nicolas Beare, Shanna Carlson.

Ben Vereen Rrazz Room. 8pm, $45-$50.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Dustbowl Revival, Devine’s Jug Band St. Cyprian’s, 2097 Turk, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 7:30pm, $18.

DANCE CLUBS

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

Post-Dubstep Tuesdays Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521.10pm, free. DJs Dnae Beats, Epcot, Footwerks spin UK Funky, Bass Music.

Study Hall John Colins Lounge, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm. Hip-hop, dancehall, and Bay slaps with DJ Left Lane.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam

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June 5, 2012

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, and Lynn Rapoport. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

OPENING

Bel Ami Judging from recent attempts to shake off the gloomy atmosphere and undead company of the Twilight franchise, Robert Pattinson enjoys a good period piece, but hasn’t quite worked out how to help make one. Last year’s Depression-era Water for Elephants was a tepid romance, and Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s belle epoque–set Bel Ami is an ungainly, oddly paced adaptation of the Guy de Maupassant novel of the same name. A down-and-out former soldier of peasant stock, Georges Duroy (Pattinson) — or “Bel Ami,” as his female admirers call him — gains a brief entrée into the upper echelons of France’s fourth estate and parlays it into a more permanent set of social footholds, campaigning for the affections of a triumvirate of Parisian power wives (Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman, and Kristin Scott Thomas) as he makes his ascent. His route is confusing, though; the film pitches forward at an alarming pace, its scenes clumsily stacked together with little character development or context to smooth the way, and Pattinson’s performance doesn’t clarify much. Duroy shifts perplexingly between rapacious and soulful modes, eyeing the ladies with a vaguely carnivorous expression as he enters drawing rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms, but leaving us with little sense of his true appetites or other motivations. (1:42) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)

Double Trouble When crooks nab a priceless painting from a Taipei museum, two security guards — wannabe hero Jay (Jaycee “Son of Jackie” Chan) and Chinese-tourist-on-vacation Ocean (Xia Yu) — reluctantly team up to recover the piece. A road trip of sorts ensues, laden with petty bickering, wacky melees, bonding moments, mistaken identity, gangsters both comical and sinister, and other buddy-comedy trappings. As expected, there are a few high-flying fight scenes; in the film’s production notes, director David Hsun-Wei Chang reveals he was inspired by the Rush Hour movies. Alas, Chan is neither as charismatic nor as breathtakingly nimble as his father (and, obvi, Xia is no Chris Tucker). It should be noted, however, that one of the slithery art thieves is played by underwear model Jessica C., famed in Hong Kong for her “police siren boobs.” So there’s that. (1:29) Metreon. (Eddy)

Elena The opening, almost still image of breaking dawn amid bare trees — the twigs in the foreground almost imperceptibly developing definition and the sky gradually growing ever lighter and pinker in the corners of the frame — beautifully exemplifies the crux of this well-wrought, refined noir, which spins slowly on the streams of dog-eat-dog survival that rush beneath even the most moneyed echelons of Moscow. Sixtyish former nurse Elena (Nadezhda Markina) is still little more than a live-in caretaker for Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov), her affluent husband of almost 10 years. She sleeps in a separate bed in their modernist-chic condo and dutifully funnels money to her beloved layabout son and his family. Vladimir has less of a relationship with his rebellious bad-seed daughter (Yelena Lyadova), who may be too smart and hedonistic for her own good. When a certain unlikely reunion threatens Elena’s survival — and what she perceives as the survival of her own spawn — a kind of deadly dawn breaks over the seemingly obedient hausfrau, and she’s driven to desperate ends. Bathing his scenes in chilled blue light and velvety dark shadows, filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (2003’s The Return) keeps a detached but close eye on the proceedings while displaying an uncanny talent for plucking the telling detail out of the wash of daily routine and coaxing magnetic performances from his performers. (1:49) Lumiere. (Chun)

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted The animated zoo animals (voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith) join a circus. Hence the clown wigs. (1:33)

Peace, Love and Misunderstanding How is that even as a bona fide senior, Jane Fonda continues to embody this country’s ambivalence toward women? I suspect it’s a testament to her actorly prowess and sheer charisma that she’s played such a part in defining several eras’ archetypes — from sex kitten to counterculture-heavy Hanoi Jane to dressed-for-success feminist icon to aerobics queen to trophy wife. Here, among the talents in Bruce Beresford’s intergenerational chick-flick-gone-indie as a loud, proud, and larger-than-life hippie earth mama, she threatens to eclipse her paler, less colorful offspring, women like Catherine Keener and Elizabeth Olsen, who ordinarily shine brighter than those that surround them. It’s ostensibly the tale of high-powered lawyer Diane (Keener): her husband (Kyle MacLachlan) has asked for a divorce, so in a not-quite-explicable tailspin, she packs her kids, Zoe (Olsen) and Jake (Nat Wolff), into the car and heads to Woodstock to see her artist mom Grace (Fonda) for the first time in two decades. Grace is beyond overjoyed — dying to introduce the grandchildren to her protests, outdoor concerts, and own personal growhouse — while urbanite Diane and her kids find attractive, natch, diversions in the country, in the form of Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Cole (Chace Crawford), and Tara (Marissa O’Donnell). Yet there’s a lot of troubled water for the mother and daughter to cross, in order to truly come together. Despite some strong characterization and dialogue, Peace doesn’t quite fly — or make much sense at its close — due to the some patchy storytelling: the schematic rom-com arch fails to provide adequate scaffolding to support the required leaps of faith. But that’s not to deny the charm of the highly identifiable, generous-spirited Grace, a familiar Bay Area archetype if there ever was one, who Fonda charges with the joy and sadness of fallible parent who was making up the rules as she went along. (1:36) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Prometheus Ridley Scott returns to Alien (1979) turf with this sci-fi thriller starring Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, Noomi Rapace, and Guy Pearce. (2:03)

ONGOING

Bernie Jack Black plays the titular new assistant funeral director liked by everybody in small-town Carthage, Tex. He works especially hard to ingratiate himself with shrewish local widow Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine), but there are benefits — estranged from her own family, she not only accepts him as a friend (then companion, then servant, then as virtual “property”), but makes him her sole heir. Richard Linklater’s latest is based on a true-crime story, although in execution it’s as much a cheerful social satire as I Love You Philip Morris and The Informant! (both 2009), two other recent fact-based movies about likable felons. Black gets to sing (his character being a musical theater queen, among other things), while Linklater gets to affectionately mock a very different stratum of Lone Star State culture from the one he started out with in 1991’s Slacker. There’s a rich gallery of supporting characters, most played by little-known local actors or actual townspeople, with Matthew McConaughey’s vainglorious county prosecutor one delectable exception. Bernie is its director’s best in some time, not to mention a whole lot of fun. (1:39) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

A Cat in Paris This year’s Best Animated Film nominees: big-budget entries Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, and eventual winner Rango, plus Chico and Rita, which opened just before Oscar night, and French mega-dark-horse A Cat in Paris. Sure, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s film failed to cash in on 2011’s Paris craze, but it’s still a charming if featherweight noir caper, being released stateside in an English version that features the voices of Marcia Gay Harden and Anjelica Huston. A streetwise kitty named Dino spends his days hanging with Zoey, a little girl who’s gone mute since the death of her father — a cop killed in the line of duty. Zoey’s mother (Harden), also a cop, is hellbent on catching the murderer, a notorious crook named Costa who runs his criminal empire with Reservoir Dogs-style imprecision. At night, Dino sneaks out and accompanies an affable burglar on his prowlings. When Zoey falls into Costa’s clutches, her mom, the thief, and (natch) the feisty feline join forces to rescue her, in a series of rooftop chase scenes that climax atop Notre Dame. At just over an hour, A Cat in Paris is sweetly old-fashioned and suitable for audiences of all ages, though staunch dog lovers may raise an objection or two. (1:07) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Color Wheel Carlen Altman, a nervous comedian who moonlights as a Jewish rosary maker, was doing stand-up in Brooklyn when filmmaker Alex Ross Perry approached her about collaborating on a project. The idea for a brother-sister movie came to be: The Color Wheel, a droll and perverse take on vexed lives in transition, tinged with 16mm. Perry directed, produced, and edited the film while co-writing with Altman. When the film begins, a dopey JR (Altman) shows up at the apartment of her misanthropic brother Colin (Perry). JR convinces him to help move her stuff out of her professor ex-boyfriend’s place. Inevitably, their Northeastern road trip follows other tangents, taking the pair on a hilarious and sad journey that raises more questions than answers about their fraught relationship. They meet a lot of jerks, but no one more so than themselves; their characters, filterless with no desire to grow up or shut up, are far behind everyone they encounter. With all its zeitgeisty humor and lovably awful people, The Color Wheel takes some dark turns — it begins as a charming, dour comedy, but ends up viscerally queasy and pitiful, with its two leads as mixed-up as ever. (1:23) Roxie. (Ryan Lattanzio)

I Wish It’s tempting to hold Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish up to that other kids adventure story in the theaters, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, but that’s a disservice to Anderson: his arch look back at an age of innocence comes off as loftily contrived in contrast to this gently empathetic, ground-level view of children’s dreams and desires, one that falls well short of preciousness, thanks to Kore-eda’s acute eye for a changing Japan. Brothers Koichi and Ryunosuke (real-life sibs Koki and Ohshiro Maeda) are living apart like their two parents: the former bunks with his mother (Nene Otsuka) and grandparents in Kagoshima, where he plots to get his parents together again and frets over the ash-spewing still-active volcano; the latter is busy enabling his laid-back guitar-playing father (Jo Odagiri of 2003’s Bright Future) on the other side of the island, where he grows fava beans, eats takeout, and hangs out with pals like budding actress Megumi (Kara Uchida). These offspring of Peter Pan-like parents, who have had a tough time growing up and fulfilling their own dreams, have been forced to grow up fast — but Koichi is pinning his hopes on something faster: the new bullet train line that will link his town with his brother’s. He gets it in his mind that if a wish is made when the first trains pass each other, a miracle, like his bickering parents’ reunion, will occur. The kids conspire to grab to that magical moment, by hook or crook, and a little help from an elderly couple that might have stepped out of an older, more gracious Japan, as rhapsodized by Yasujiro Ozu. And as with his devastating portrait of abandoned kids eking out a living on their own, Nobody Knows (2004), Kore-eda effortlessly coaxes great performances out of his child actors. Like Nobody Knows‘s Akira, Koichi and Ryunosuke are determined to persevere, post-familial meltdown, through all personal Armageddons, be they triggered by volcano, tsunami, or heartbreak. (2:08) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Michelle Devereaux)

Snow White and the Huntsman It’s unclear why the zeitgeist has blessed us this year with two warring iterations of the Snow White fairy tale, one broadly comedic (April’s Mirror Mirror), one starkly emo. But it was only natural that Kristen Stewart would land in the latter rendering, breaking open the hearts of swamp beasts and swordsmen alike with the chaste glory of her mien. As Snow White flees the henchmen and hired killers dispatched by her seriously evil stepmother, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), and traverses a blasted, virulent forest populated with hallucinogenic vapors and other life-threatening obstacles, Stewart need not act so much as radiate a dazzling benignity, weeping the tears of a martyr rather than a frightened young girl. (Unfortunately, when required to deliver a rallying declaration of war, she sounds as if she’s speaking in tongues after a heavy hit on the crack pipe.) It’s slightly uncomfortable to be asked, alongside a grieving, drunken huntsman (The Avengers’ Chris Hemsworth), a handful of dwarfs (including Ian McShane and Toby Jones), and the kingdom’s other suffering citizenry, to fall worshipfully in line behind such a creature. But first-time director Rupert Sanders’s film keeps pace with its lovely heroine visually, constructing a gorgeous world in which armies of black glass shatter on battlefields, white stags dissolve into hosts of butterflies, and a fairy sanctuary within the blighted kingdom is an eye-popping fantasia verging on the hysterical. Theron’s Ravenna, equipped in modernist fashion with a backstory for her sociopathic tendencies, is credible and captivating as an unhinged slayer of men, thief of youth, destroyer of kingdoms, and consumer of the hearts of tiny birds. (2:07) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport) *

On the Cheap Listings

Andrew Lam

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June 5, 2012

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Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 6

Tribute to a radical poet Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF. www.thegreenarcade.com. 7pm, free. Committed political radical and award-winning writer-poet Marilyn Buck was imprisoned over 30 years for her revolutionary activities, and freed less than a month before her death from cancer at age 62. Join local author Sin Soracco (who has penned Low Bite and Edge City) in celebrating the release of Buck’s posthumous release Inside/Out: Selected Poems.

“Sex Money Power” exhibition Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF. www.p1sf.com. Also Thu/7, 7pm-noon, free. This contemporary art show is about the things we all crave — sex, money, and power. Glossy and glamorized paintings by Nick Flatt depict images of these vices using a modern, graphic style.

THURSDAY 7

“Sustainable Catch”: Cooking and wine pairing at NightLife California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF. calacademy.org/events. 6pm-10pm. $12. Celebrate World Oceans Day with food and wine from Sausalito’s sustainable seafood joints, Fish and Ki. Watch as chefs wield their fish expertise and razor-sharp knives as they teach on how to pair dishes with wine. Schmooze with members of local ocean conservation organizations, who will also be in attendance and available to answer all your wet ‘n’ wild questions.

SATURDAY 9

World Naked Bike Ride Justin Herman Plaza, SF. Facebook: World Naked Bike Ride San Francisco. 11am-4pm, free. It’s that time again — time to get undressed to the nines and pedal alongside tens of thousands of nude crusaders the world over, who will be joining similar rides in other cities in protest of global dependency on oil cartels. Naked protests, our favorite.

Maddie’s Matchmaker Adoptathon Various San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa County shelters. www.maddiesadoptathon.org. Also Sun/10. Today, visit 13 Bay Area pet shelters and rescue groups who are offering free canine and feline adoptions — it’s the perfect day to find your new best friend. Whatever shelter you choose will benefit as well — local nonprofit Maddie’s Fund will give each organization $500 to $2,000 for every furry friend that gets taken home.

Beer cooking with Top Chef‘s Ryan Scott Pyramid Alehouse, 1410 Locust, Walnut Creek. www.pyramidbrew.com. 4pm-6pm, free. Arrive early to snag a seat for this live broadcast of Cooking with Ryan Scott on KGO 18 AM. Using his favorite suds, Top Chef‘s Scott will cook and grill, discuss pairings, and explore the beer cocktail. Pyramid will be serving up samples of the ales and infused treats featured.

Urban Agriculture coming of age farm tours Various Bay Area farms. www.iuhoakland.com. 11am-6pm, last tour starts at 5pm, $5 per tour. The urban agriculture movement is expanding and the Institute of Urban Homesteading is inviting you to tour private backyards, frontyards, yards of every size really, to see what established urban farmers in the Bay Area are up to. Take a gander at what productive urban agriculture can look like on a small, medium, large, or extra-large urban lot by signing up for one of these home garden tours.

Writers With Drinks literary night Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. 7:30pm-9:30pm, $5–$10 sliding scale. Enjoy a spoken word variety show featuring poetry, stand-up comedy, and readings from literature of many genres at an event that raises money for important local causes. Come see why Guardian readers have given it the Best of the Bay award for “Best Literary Night” six years in a row.

SUNDAY 10

Nice Collective sample sale 1999 Bryant, SF. www.nicecollective.com, www.blasthaus.com. Noon-5pm, free. Calling all fashionistas, listen to live DJ sets while you muse over temporary art installations and the modern fashion collections of this local brand. Today’s shopping event includes reduced-price garments from past and present seasons, plus limited edition and prototype items.

Record your story with StoryCorps Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF. www.storycorps.org. 11am-4pm, free. This year marks the 45th anniversary of the Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage in the US — a day that we now honor as Loving Day. To honor this monumental ruling, StoryCorps hosts a special community recording day for multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and mixed heritage individuals, couples, and families. Come share the story of your family — it might be chosen to become one of StoryCorps animated narrations.

MONDAY 11

Bryan Gruley whodunit author reading Book Passage Bookstore, 51 Tamal Vista, Corte Madera. www.bryangruley.com. 7pm, free, $25 for hardcover book. While elderly residents enjoy bingo night in the small town of Starvation Lake, mysterious break-ins plague their homes. Someone is rifling through their financial and personal files, but taking nothing. When the break-ins escalate to murder, worry turns to panic. Follow the protagonist — a journalist forced to investigate the case — as author Bryan Gruley describes his new mystery novel.

Save Adobe Books?

Andrew Lam

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June 4, 2012

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Adobe Books owner Andrew McKinley didn’t have to think long when I asked him the corniest question of our interview, occasioned by the announcement that his store was in serious danger of having to close. Question: if you had to choose one book to describe your situation, what would it be? “It reminds me of The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurty,” McKinley gamely responded. “It’s about a movie theater in a small Texas town that’s dying out.”

But! ask Mission District bibliophiles. Can Adobe Books be saved? The answer, according to McKinley, lies in whether you have a buddy with $60,000 to save the future of SF books — or better yet, $3 million.

McKinley has owned the store for the past 24 years, originally with a business partner. “I always dreamed of having a store filled with artists, poets, and writers,” he told me. “Meeting people who want to be artists has been the best part.” For decades, that’s what he did — he even opened a gallery space in the back that hosted near-monthly art openings. But times, they are a’changin’ — and rising real estate costs in the area have made it impossible for the bookstore to continue to exist in its prime location astride Valencia and 16th Streets. Granted, this isn’t the first time the alarm has been sounded, but McKinley forsees having to close his doors for good at some point over the next few months.

Unless… and on this point he’s almost reluctant to give us hope. Unless some “angel” descends from heaven (or the hills south of Dolores Park perhaps) to pluck Adobe from its doom. With $60,000, McKinley reckons he could keep the shop open for three more years — that amount is approximately a year’s rent on the space. With $3 million, said “golden angel” could buy the building and ensure that the inner Mission continues to have a place to buy dog-eared paperbacks and browse well-curated banks of sweet, sweet literature.

But. “I don’t want to be a charity,” says McKinley. “I feel that closure might be the best solution if no one can step into save it.” The bookshopkeep allows that he hasn’t exactly bent over backwards to adjust our times of Amazon.com and 140-character attention spans. He could have added a cafe to augment the business, he posits. Maybe started selling new and remaindered volumes.

But. There it is, he didn’t, and now we’re faced with losing yet another Mission bookstore to the march of time. (Granted, it’s not all bad news for bookworms — Modern Times Bookstore Collective was able to relocate to a gorgeous new location on 24th Street and the Dog-Eared Books family recently had a new baby not too far away in the form of Phoenix Books.)

Unless. McKinley says the notion of re-starting Adobe as a member-based collective has been thrown around by some of the shop’s super fans. But that could be just the well-wishing of the community members he’s held so dear over the years.

Just remember. “The knowledge in books is not as important to get by in this modern world,” says McKinley. “People don’t put together large collections of books as much. It is funny, more books have been created in the last few decades and more people can read than ever before.” We read you, sir.

P.S., massive sale going on right now at Adobe Books.

Adobe Books

3166 16th St., SF

(415) 864-3936

adobebooksbackroomgallery.blogspot.com

Heads Up: 8 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles

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June 4, 2012

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It really just so happens that a few of this week’s obligatory shows are at club nights (Jel, Friendzone, and Antwon at Future Perfect, Yalls at Push the Feeling) featured in last month’s post-everything cover story, my article profiling local experimental party curators.

What’s more, there are other shows in this stretch that recall the vibes of those featured: great lineups with weird, beats-plus-chords, hi-fi meets lo-fi, robot with a heart of gold overarching themes (Maus Haus and more at Rickshaw, Owen Ashworth’s Advance Base at Café Du Nord).

And then there are your classic rock’n’rollers; we’ve got some of those for you too – it’s just a banner batch all around this time, folks.

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

Tim Cohen
Scruffy singer-songwriter Tim Cohen, of popular local psych-garage band the Fresh & Onlys, is about to release his second full-length under the solo Magic Trick moniker, the lush and folky Ruler of the Night (Hardly Art, June 12) – an album that somehow weaves in synth, surf guitar, back-up vocals from the Aislers Set’s Noelle Cahill and Alicia Van Heuvel, and surreal beats. Plus, this show is totally free. Rather hard to resist.
With Survival Guide, 8th Graders
Tue/5, 9pm, free
Brick and Mortar Music Hall
1710 Mission, SF
(415) 371-1631
www.brickandmortarmusic.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg5zFruYc_E

Nick Waterhouse
“The retro-minded songwriter-arranger-producer crafts perfect little tributes to the punchy 1950s R&B sounds he’s been drawn to since he was a kid, all steeped with an endearing reverence for old-school record culture and recording techniques.” – Landon Moblad
Wed/6, $12 sold out
Verdi Club
2424 Mariposa, SF
(415) 861-9199
www.verdiclub.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJruQmdlU10

Advance Base
Formerly the Bay Area-born solo keyboard entity known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Owen Ashworth ended his longterm project in 2010 to focus all his musical efforts on Advance Base – a less delicate evolutionary step for the lyric-driven, minimalist singer-songwriter/growing family man. Advance Base released debut album, A Shut-In’s Prayer, last month. Ashworth describes the new offerings as “Dreamy waltzes, American folk traditionals, & minimalist electro pop torch songs.”
With Nicholas Krgovich, David and Joanna
Thu/7, 8pm, $12
Cafe Du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyNCaitW96I

Yalls
Yalls – Berkeley’s Dan Casey – sounds like the tape ending, unraveling to the ground, like the world falling apart and then picking itself up, dusting itself off, and rising to the dancefloor. Basically: weird-flowing synth, trippy samples, and twitchy beats with spooky echoing vocals. Here’s hoping he plays the dreamy tracks off February’s Fantasy seven-inch.
Push the Feeling
Fri/8, 9pm, Free with Facebook RSVP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-S1JnP8d1E

Maus Haus, Mwahaha, Exray’s, Devonwho
It’s rare to find a set of bands so thoroughly watchable as this lineup at the Rickshaw Stop. Let’s break it down. There’s Maus Haus (always a futuristic digi-treat), psych-rockers Mwahaha, along with producer Devonwho, who recently remixed “Ancient Thing,” a song by the last piece in this awesome post-modern puzzle: Exray’s. The single is a cut from the upcoming Exray’s dystopian electro-pop record Trust a Robot, out June 26 on Howells Transmitter.
Fri/8, $10
155 Fell, SF
www.rickshawstop.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gFhCqmE7EY

Jel
Anticon-co-founder, rapper, and producer Jel is known for creating drum beats with little or no sequencing – as in, playing the drums live via sampler pads, and killing it. His hands disappear over those illuminated little squares, and fresh beats emerge, seemingly effortlessly (though we all know the precision and sweat likely involved).
Future Perfect with GuMMy Bear, Antwon, Friendzone, Jaycasio
Fri/8, 10pm, $5
Public Works
161 Erie, SF
www.publicsf.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twHhcB4D-po

Corrosion of Conformity
“With bassist Mike Dean taking over vocal duties from guitarist Pepper Keenan (busy playing in Down), COC have returned to their hardcore roots. Expect high tempos and chaos in the pit.” – Ben Richardson
With Torche, Black Cobra, Gaza
Sat/9, 8pm, $21
Slim’s
333 11th St., SF
(415)-255-0333
www.slimspresents.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2I2mK_3_ns

Balkan Beat Box at Israel in the Gardens
An Israeli dude walking along the boardwalk of a somewhat scuzzy coastal beach town — maybe like the dark vision of Santa Cruz in Lost Boys — with a boombox on his shoulder, blasting classic hip-hop and bouncy dancehall beats, passes a world music trio performing Mediterranean and Balkan roots music on percussion and hot brass with a whirling dervish spinning out front. They all collide, and out comes Balkan Beat Box.
Sun/10, 11am festival, 3pm performance; free
Yerba Buena Gardens
750 Howard, SF
www.jewishfed.org
Facebook: Israel in the Gardens 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWbqcV8HqbI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qqwtrd8PzA

Oaxacan surrealism hits the SF Mexican consulate

Andrew Lam

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June 4, 2012

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Oaxacan surrealism hits the SF Mexican consulate

Approximately 500 people pass through SoMa’s Mexican consulate building each day, processing visas and civil registration, generally making it possible for themselves to live in the United States legally. The consulate’s cultural affairs attache Marimar Suárez Peñalva sees these moments of bureaucracy as an opportunity. She wants expats to connect to their nationality not only through signatures and stamps, but by reacquainting themselves with its brushstrokes and creative underpinnings.

Hence, this art lesson. “The Zapotec origin is really relevant in surrealism,” Peñalva tells me on the Friday afternoon that I visit her carefully-curated gallery, located on the second floor of the Folsom Street consulate.We’re surrounded by canvases of floating watermelon, a reclining woman with a fish tail, vividly colored fish, and a bright red woman’s skirt. Peñalva explains that the current exhibit is based around two seminal artists from the Mexican state of Oaxaca: Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo.

Francisco Toledo’s aquatint etching “Self Portrait”

The two pioneered the art of mixography, a style of painting that uses molded paper and mixed media to create a textural appearance. Peñalva points to the artists’ ceremonial use of animals as one sign of their pre-Colombian heritage. The Zapotec identity, she says, is one of the unifiers of the exhibit, which contains the works of not only Tamayo and Toledo but also artists who were inspired by their work like Justina Fuentes Zárate, she of the reclining mermaid and arresting red dress. Perhaps the works don’t look similar, but they represent the diversity and breadth of the work to come out of the surrealist Zapotec tradition in Oaxaca.

Last year Peñalva filled this space with the work of contemporary Latina artists. Though “Numina Feminina” was critically acclaimed — a gallery patron who perused while we chatted interrupted us to tell Peñalva how compelling he’d found the show — she says that the Oaxacan surrealism exhibit has done a better job of enthralling the Mexicans who come to process paperwork one floor down. Since the show’s opening on Thursday, she says there’s been a constant stream of visitors coming upstairs to check out the gallery.

“Birth of Spring” by Jorge Lopez Garan

Maybe this work is more immediately identifiable as Mexican than that of the modern female show. But whatever the reason, she’s glad that it resonates. That’s the reason why the gallery is up here, after all.

“We want to make art available and show people what’s happening in Mexico. Art people, they always come to shows like this, but our daily public is harder to get upstairs.” The surrealist works were donated by Bay Area collecters Gina Bray and Russell Herrman.

Do you feel the magic? The consulate is screening El Informe Toledo July 26, a documentary made by Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal’s production companay based on the life of the mixography master.

“The Magic Surrealists of Oaxaca”

Through Aug. 9, free

Gallery open Mon.-Fri. 10am-6pm; Sat.-Sun., 10am-3pm

El Informe Toledo screening

July 26 6pm-8pm, free

Consulate General of Mexico

532 Folsom, SF

www.mexicoinsf.com

2012 East Bay Open Studios

Maria Poblet

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June 1, 2012

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East Bay Open Studios, presented by Oakland’s Pro Arts, is the largest and most exciting arts event in the region!

This year, over 400 artists from 16 cities in the East Bay open their studiosto the public, offering an opportunity for art fans of all ages to visit artists’ studios, to glimpse their creative process, and purchase works directly from local artists. Since 1979, this event remains the largest art event in the region and draws an annual audience over 50,000!

Pro Arts invites critics, writers, and gallerists to curate their own tour picks to offer studio-goers new starting points for their East Bay Open Studios experience. The curated tour itineraries will be available at Pro Arts and online.

Saturdays and Sundays, June 2 & 3 and June 9 & 10 from11am-6pm. Call (510) 763-4361 or visit this website for more info.

Chevron meets amid angry shareholders, liability, and environmental disasters

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May 31, 2012

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Chevron meets amid angry shareholders, liability, and environmental disasters

About 40 gathered outside Chevron’s San Francisco offices yesterday to mark its annual shareholder meeting. The demonstration was organized by OccupySF’s environmental justice working group, and used art and street theater to criticize Chevron’s involvement in hydraulic fracturing, a natural gas extraction process that may threaten parts of California’s water supply.

The afternoon protest came after a larger group showed up to Chevron’s world headquarters in San Ramon for the shareholder meeting that morning. According to Ginger Cassady of Rainforest Action Network (RAN), who helped organize the protest, it was a “big, colorful demonstration” with “over 100” in attendance.

Groups like the True Cost of Chevron and RAN’s Change Chevron campaign have been pressuring the company for years on a variety of issues. This year, workers and residents in areas where Chevron operates from Ecuador, Brazil, Angola and Nigeria travelled to San Ramon to voice their concerns. These ranged from oil-contaminated land in the Ecuadorian Amazon to an explosion on an oil rig off the shore of Nigeria in January. In that explosion, two workers were killed and more than 100 local people left the city for fear of contamination and other health risks caused by a fire that burned for months before going out on its own, despite Chevron’s efforts to contain the flames.

About 30 activists from around the world entered the meeting with proxy votes, according to Cassady. None interrupted the meeting, instead waiting their turn to speak. There were no arrests.

Some people with proxy votes, however, were not allowed access to the meeting. João Antonio de Moraes, national coordinator of Brazil’s United Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), was not allowed access, along with two representatives from United Steel Workers. Another worker, at the meeting to present in support of a resolution for worker safety, was initially blocked from entering but allowed access after a dispute, but had his presentation notes confiscated.

At the meeting, Chevron CEO John Watson announced “tremendous performance momentum” for the company, with “earnings of $26.9 billion” in the past year, according to a press release.

“Watson reinforced Chevron’s long-standing culture of safety and environmental stewardship, and resulting industry-leading performance,” the press release states. “He also highlighted Chevron’s commitment to partnerships that address health, education and economic development issues in the communities where the company operates, and Chevron’s global social investments of approximately $1 billion over the past six years.”

But Chevron is also suffering financially due to liability following oil spills, explosions, and contamination, a concern protest organizers say Watson failed to address. Representatives from Chevron did not return calls for comment.

The company recently settled with plaintiffs in Ecuador after an appeals court there ordered that they pay $18 billion in fines for spilling and deliberately dumping a total of 345 million gallons of crude oil in the Amazon rainforest of northeastern Ecuador.

Stockholders in attendance voted on eleven proposals, including seven submitted by shareholders, at the meeting. All of the votes went with the recommendation of the Board of Directors- including a proposal to reform the Board of Directors itself. That proposal asked that the Board of Directors find an independent Chair to head it up, as the current Chair is Chevron’s CEO, John Watson. The Board of Directors has the authority to incentivize and, if necessary, fire CEOs.

“We believe this presents a conflict of interest that can result in excessive management influence on the board of weaken the board’s management oversight,” read the proposal.

The proposal, along with several others, mentioned the Ecuador lawsuit, saying “we believe that independent board leadership is key at Chevron, given the questions raised about the oversight by the board of the CEO’s management and disclosure to shareholders of the financial and operational risks to the company from the $18 billion dollar judgment in the Ecuadorian courts in 2011.”

“With all these major legal liabilities that Chevron is facing a lot of people are concerned,” said Cassady. “Chevron is profitable at the expense of worker safety, the environment, human rights and our economy.”

Other stockholder proposals dealt with safety, transparency, and the environmental impacts of Chevron’s international operations. A proposal asking Chevron to disclose money spent on lobbying received approximately 23 percent of votes, a proposal asking for a report on what the company has done to reduce the risk of accidents like the Niger Delta explosion received only eight percent of the vote, and a proposal that Chevron nominate a new board member with environmental expertise failed as well with 23 percent of votes cast.

Shareholders also voted on a proposal that Chevron release a report on the financial, environmental, and community impacts of hydraulic fracturing, the focus of the afternoon protest in San Francisco. The proposal received about 27 percent of the vote.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of extracting natural gas by injecting dense underground rock formations with a pressurized mixture of water, sand and chemicals. It has been hailed as an environmentally friendly alternative to oil drilling, as natural gas burns cleaner than oil.

But protest movements have coalesced around fracking practices in the Appalachian mountains region and above the Marcellus Shale, as residents report toxic chemicals in their water supplies, endangering drinking water as well as water used for raising livestock and growing food.

The 2010 documentary Gasland included now notorious footage of residents near a Pennsylvania fracking operations whose tap water bursts into flames.

Fracking operations in California are less well known. The protest outside of Chevron’s San Francisco offices yesterday drew attention to this issue- and the extensive list of chemicals present in fracking solution.

“It’s happening in California, but it’s not really talked about” said Ellen Osuna. Osuna now lives in San Francisco, but moved from New York, where she says she worried about her water supply since it comes from aquifers near the Marcellus Shale.

The protest featured an 180-foot banner, painted by artist Ruthie Sakheim. The banner listed more than 70 chemicals found in fracking fluid, in alphabetical order.

“It’s not even halfway through the A’s” said Sakheim.

She also handed out bottles of water oil-colored water labeled “Frackelicious Frackwater Unsustainable Energy Drink.” The label listed some of the more toxic chemicals involved in the process under “ingredients” along with “no preservatives, no artificial flavors, 100 percent poison.”

According to a report released by the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce, fracking fluid contains 750 chemicals, which “ranged from generally harmless and common substances, such as salt and citric acid, to extremely toxic substances, such as benzene and lead” as well as many carcinogens, according to the report.

These chemicals, along with gas itself, can enter water supplies when the casing on wells cracks or when wastewater containers spill.

The Safe Drinking Water Act of 2005 specifically exempts hydraulic fracturing, a lack of regulation known as the Halliburton Loophole.

Fracking currently takes place in nine California counties, including Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Monterey. But the extent of hydraulic fracturing in California isn’t well known, and yesterday, the California Senate rejected SB1054, which would have required energy companies to notify landowners before using hydraulic fracturing on or near their land.

In between chants of “ban fracking now!” Sakheim told me that she spent several months painting the banner, and plans to continue the project of listing the chemicals involved in fracking in artistic form.

“I have three kids,” said Sakheim. “I really worry about what will happen to them with these corporations having so much control to influence government.”

Heads Up: 6 must-see concerts this week

Tony Robles

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May 30, 2012

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How is it already today, today? I mean, how is this week already so present? Long weekends really mess with that standard five in, two out routine, flipping the days on their side, and giving you enough time to buy new shoes and clean out the sock drawer (literally) without feeling like you’re missing out on all that day-drinking at the park. It’s already time to slip on those fresh kicks and catch Kurt Vile, Wet Illustrated, Xiu Xiu, and Mogwai live in venues around this city and its outlying counties.

Last weekend, we as a community fêted the Golden Gate Bridge and all its 75-years-of-burnt-orange glory with super loud fireworks, hidden only partially by rolling fog. We danced in the streets of the Mission for Carnaval. We celebrated tiny sonic explosions with SF Pop Fest. We barbecued tofu and waved flags with the best of ‘em.

And next weekend, friends, is only so close. And there are a whole lot of worthy shows in that short time period in between, up to, and including. Here are your must-see Bay Area concerts this week/end:

Kurt Vile and the Violators
In asking a friend to recount his recent experience at a Kurt Vile and the Violators show last week up north on this current tour (taking the mumbly, guitar-slinging troubadour and his killer rock’n’roll backing band to SF tonight), I was treated to this concise description: “loud epic jammy amazingness.” Yeah, what he said.
With Black Bananas
Wed/30, 8pm, $22.50
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
www.thefillmore.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcg9tA0H0zY

Wet Illustrated
Bay Area garage rock band Wet Illustrated — which features members of Ty Segall’s band, and Lilac — clears a path to so many throwaway descriptors: weirdo, homegrown, pop, punk ethos. Okay, a few more: swirly, moody, silly, psychedelic, Nuggets box set-esque, hip-shaking good times. I’m out of adjectives and buzz phrases. It’s everything.
With the Mallard, Swiftumz, Chris Thayer
Thu/31, 8pm
Verdi Club
2424 Mariposa, SF
(415) 861-9199
www.verdiclub.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcQt6DawrRI

Xiu Xiu
The video for Xiu Xiu’s “Honeysuckle” off recently released LP Always is a rather representative bid into the decade-old Jamie Stewart project. It’s airy and dreamy, art-pop and creepy as hell. Watch the blood pour out of current bandmate Angela Seo’s forbidden fruit and try to eat an apple any time later in the day, I dare you.
With Yamantaka Sonic Tita, Father Murphy
Thu/31, 9pm, $14
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYKGR8Er4vM

Little Barrie
For some seriously evil, reverb-drenched surf guitar riffs, try this early Aughts-born UK garage trio, lead by Primal Scream guitarist Barrie Cadogan . And if you’ve yet to catch the Little Barrie wave, check it out recorded pre-show; the band released jangly new full-length King of the Waves — with horrorcore-lite single “Surf Hell” — this spring on Tummy Touch Records.
With Mamas Cookin’
Thu/31, 9pm, $5
Vitus
201 Broadway, Oakl.
(510) 452-1620
www.vitusoakland.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHmsblNnnGM

Mogwai
Classic ’90s post-rock act Mogwai makes ample use of distortion and effects, layering endless swelling guitar instrumentals in a hypnotic, uneasy curtain of fog – maybe rock’n’roll is actually cyclical, because the Scottish quintet still sounds up to that modern-retro slow, pulsating speed. Once upon a time it made for great studying-with-headphones ambiance, tonight it makes for the perfect stoney date.
Fri/1, 9pm, $25
Regency Ballroom
1300 Van Ness, SF
(415) 673-5716
www.theregencyballroom.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHO6pbjQ9ec&feature=fvst

Slough Feg
Named “Best Lord of Metal” in last year’s Best of the Bay awards, Slough Feg’s Mike Scalzi is still at it, still raising classic metal hell, much to the delight of Bay Area metal fans and beyond. All hail the Lord Weird.
With Cormorant, Young Hunter
Sat/2, 9:30pm, $8
Thee Parkside
1600 17th St., SF
(415) 252-1330
www.theeparkside.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmaOJcASD4&feature=fvst

This Week’s Picks

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 30, 2012

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WEDNESDAY 5/30

A Behanding in Spokane

Martin McDonagh, Oscar-winning author of the movie In Bruges and the equally dark hit play Pillowman, brings us another demented fable, already receiving rave reviews from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. All we need to know is that protagonist Carmichael has lost his hand, and although it has been more than 30 years, he is still pissed as hell. Violence and sexually twisted elements are guaranteed in any McDonagh production, and this stage performance includes special effects as gruesome as you could find on the big screen. Do not be too scared off by the talk of gore though — his work is psychologically thrilling as well, and this black comedy brings some fantastic actors to the stage. (Shauna C. Keddy)

Ongoing, through June 30 Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm)

8pm, $30-40

533 Sutter, SF

(415) 677-9596

www.sfplayhouse.org

WEDNESDAY 5/30

Kids on a Crime Spree

These Kids embrace the idea that a simple pop song can be so much more — their music contains darker lyrics hidden under sunny melodies. Their records are captured on analog tape and harken back to the days when Phil Spector was recording bands in New York’s famous Brill Building, and not just a crazy-haired freak. Based on a driving drum line and drenched in reverb guitar, this Crime Spree creates all the messy fun you could ask for, but it’s safe to say you can walk away from this controlled chaos without any trouble with the law. This is not just the sound of kids having some rowdy fun, the Oakland rockers have some truly memorable tunes. (Keddy)

9pm, $5

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elriosf.com

THURSDAY 5/31

“The Water is Clear and Still”

Liss Fain has always chosen her visual and musical collaborators with great care. A choreographer of uncommon intelligence and taste, every new work is the result of careful deliberations and satisfying for that reason alone. Last year she stepped away from the proscenium stage into an installation format inside YBCA’s Forum. In her new “The Water is Clear and Still,” based on Jamaica Kincaid’s tiny but hugely resonating short stories, she is taking the concept further by using the more complex space of Z Space’s lobby and theater. Again the audience will be invited to wander. Joining Fain’s seven dancers will be actor Delia MacDougall for Kincaid’s text. Longtime collaborator Matthew Antaky has signed on one more time for the lighting and set design. Dan Wool composed the score. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/2, 8pm; Sun/3, 2pm; $15–$25

Z Space

450 Florida St., S.F.

(800) 838-3006

www.lissfaindance.org

THURSDAY 5/31

“City Scenes: Installments One and Two”

Owned by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, the circa 1910 Vogue Theatre is, appropriately, a single-screen theater smack-dab in the middle of a neighborhood — no shopping malls need apply. With SFNTF partners CinemaSF at the programming helm, the Vogue shows first-run films, but also hosts unique cultural events you won’t find elsewhere. Case in point: CinemaSF’s new venture with promoters folkYEAH, “City Scenes,” which pairs local musicians with SF-centric films for two nights of rockin’ and movie-watchin’. Tonight, Vetiver curates the 1978 Goldie Hawn-Chevy Chase comedy Foul Play; tomorrow, Chuck Prophet presents Francis Ford Coppola’s tense drama The Conversation (1974). (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Fri/1

8pm (music); 9pm (film), $20

Vogue Theatre

3290 Sacramento, SF

cinemasf.com/vogue

THURSDAY 5/31

Hospitality

One of the highlights at the most recent Noise Pop festival, Brooklyn’s Hospitality is also responsible for one of the best releases this year, its self-titled debut on Merge Records. Amber Papini sings with an appealing lilt and unlocatable accent, and her storytelling style has the punch of Attractions-era Elvis Costello with the tenderness of Belle and Sebastian. Featuring production from guitarist-solo artist-Papini’s husband Nathan Michel and Shane Stoneback (Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells), the resulting album is ten tracks of unimpeachable pop, immediately relatable to anyone that’s endured a third decade of ennui, reevaluating friendships and that useless degree. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Waterstrider, Popscene DJs

9:30pm, $13

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

THURSDAY 5/31

2012 San Francisco Nightlife Awards

This is your chance, San Francisco, to throw your tired arms up then bend over and take a vote. More accurately: to celebrate all your creative nightlife creatures, venues, and parties with awards and accolades. The California Music and Culture Association is throwing this second annual meeting of the nightlife minds, where DJs from some of SF’s favorite parties will spin, and all the voting will take place during the actual event. Yes, attendees get in on that hot voting action (Best Live Venue, Best Festival, Best Designer, etc). The winners will then be announced on the spot in a grand ceremony hopefully befitting for such luster. (Emily Savage)

With DJs from Debaser, Future Perfect, Hard French, Lights Down Low

Hosted by Anna Conda and Marke B.

8pm-midnight; Members $5, Non-Members $10

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

Facebook: 2012 San Francisco Nightlife Awards

FRIDAY 6/1

Annie Bacon and Her OSHEN

Some nights you need to rock out to hardcore, other nights you want sweet and tender vocals over a folk-y melody, the kinds of songs in which the lyrics mean something, and the music carries you right along. Annie Bacon, also known for her “Folk Opera” work, offers that soothing sound you may yearn for at her album release show with Her OSHEN band (for new album Light to See Dark). Think Americana, with an emotionally driven undertone. (Keddy)

With Adios Amigo, Al Lover, the Hates, My Second Surprise

9pm, $10

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

FRIDAY 6/1

“Reap What You Zoa”

If you’ve visited Oakland Art Murmur — the city’s super-cool monthly art walk, which last month turned into an Occupy-style dance party that took over Telegraph Avenue for hours — then you’ve probably seen the flaming Fluxcycle and its beautiful, stylish crew from Flux Foundation. Wanna go home with them? Mmm, of course you do. You’ll get the chance after this month’s Art Murmur when the crew brings the party back to its home base at American Steel for a rockin’ afterparty to benefit Zoa, its creation for this year’s Burning Man. The event features live music, a gallery show, Chester the Fire Breathing Art Car, the Front Porch, Oaktown Hall, a full bar staffed by the legendary Flash Hopkins, and other artsy surprises, all in a fantastic industrial warehouse. (Steven T. Jones)

With American Nomad

7pm-1am, $10–$20 donation

American Steel

1960 Mandela Parkway, Oakl. (enter on 20th)

www.americansteelstudios.com

www.fluxfoundation.org

FRIDAY 6/1

Omar Souleyman

The prominent ambassador of Syrian folk-dance-party-Dabke music to the US, Omar Souleyman is perhaps known best for his live performances. Releases on the Sublime Frequencies record label — drawing from reportedly over 500 cassettes created over the course of a decade plus, the majority of which were recorded at weddings and parties — has brought increased exposure for the musician and his band, and some ire from more “traditional” world music fans. Souleyman’s style of overdriven, synthesizer-embracing, unrelenting beats and fire-spitting vocals inevitably leads to those who immediately can’t stand it, and those who can’t resist it. Incidentally, this category includes Bjork, for whom Souleyman recently remixed a series of songs including “Crystalline.” (Prendiville)

With DJ Dragonfly, 3 Leafs

8pm, $20 Mezzanine 444 Jessie, SF (415) 625-8880 www.mezzaninesf.com

FRIDAY 6/1

Balam Acab

Tri Angle Records wunderkind Alec Koone, better known as Balam Acab, creates hauntingly beautiful music. The 2011 LP Wander / Wonder solidified Koone as a singular player in the vogue witch house scene. Although the term “witch house” is a four-letter word among some contemporaries, Balam Acab’s music fits all the criteria: inherently electronic, atmospheric, warped, hazy and dragged out. The 20-something Pennsylvanian embarked on a sound that has helped characterize the Tri Angle aesthetic; label mates include Clams Casino, How to Dress Well, Holy Other and oOoOO. Koone made his San Francisco debut with a live performance at Public Works in December. This time around, Elbo Room should prove to be a more intimate experience for fans of his moody music, sure to be set to fog and lasers. (Julia B. Chan)

With S4NtA_MU3rTE, Nako, PLANET DEATH, oOoOO

10pm, $8 Advance

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

SATURDAY 6/2

Barn Owl

Barn Owl is often marginalized as a “drone” outfit, but its much too versatile for that description. Evoking the thick-as-molasses stoner sludge of Sunn O))), the astral jazz explorations of Alice Coltrane, and the shimmery moodiness of Can via Future Days, the SF duo has always incorporated the tonal shifts and genre-hopping necessary to keep its hypnosis in check. Having just finished a European tour, in support of its critically acclaimed 2011 album Lost in the Glare, this homecoming appearance ought to be a wild, unpredictable ride through Barn Owl’s veritable maze of sonic influences. (Taylor Kaplan)

With Suishou No Fune, Tone Volt

9:30pm, $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

SATURDAY 6/2

Ernest Ranglin

Legendary Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin helped form what would become the ska scene back in the 1950s with his distinctive “scratching” style of playing, and has performed with everybody from Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff to the Skatalites. Fans are invited to help the musical icon celebrate his 80th birthday tonight here in the city with a special concert featuring Ranglin backed by local favorites Vinyl performing hits from his massive back catalog along with selections from his newest album, Avila, which hit stores this week. (Sean McCourt)

With DJ Dukey

9pm, $20–$24

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell St., SF

(415) 885-0750 www.slimspresents.com The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, 71 Stevenson Street, Second Floor, SF, CA 94105 or email (paste press release into email body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Trans-formation

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 30, 2012

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arts@sfbg.com

MUSIC After touring on 2009’s Words of the Knife with his band Os Beaches, Mark Matos’ world fell crashing from the cosmos. Internal struggles compelled him to fire his producer and his guitarist; Os Beaches’ practice space that doubled as a crash pad burned down (relegating the fresh-off-the-road group back to van sleeping); and Matos began to develop a destructive relationship with drugs.

When I meet up with him over an extremely tall glass of weizen beer at German restaurant Suppenküche, Matos — an eloquent, bearded 30-something who comes off as much like a shaman as the front person of a psychedelic rock collective — explains how he somewhat-recently hit rock bottom; and how psychedelics enabled him to climb out of a debilitating death hole and build a mountain on top of it.

“I was up all night on cocaine. I hate cocaine. I felt it all slipping away. And I was like, ‘I’m going to take the heroic dose’ — five grams of mushrooms,” Matos recalls. “It’s what the shamans of South America say is the proper dose. It’s not fun.”

Matos says after he emerged from his heroic experience, he felt completely reborn. “I didn’t want to do coke. I didn’t care about being famous, and I really, really felt high. I was so high that people thought I was losing it.”

He says his consumption of the heroic dose, coupled with a series of vision quests, spawned the creation of his enlightened self — Trans Van Santos — and drew him toward the concept of communal musicianship.

The Trans Van Santos identity came to Matos during a vision quest in the desert. He remembers big hands lifting him onto a pyramid, and voices beckoning him to embrace his spirit name, Trans Van Santos.

“Santos is my grandmother’s maiden name, and in our [Portuguese] tradition we often take the matriarch’s name. When I think ‘Santos,’ it reminds me to honor the feminine.”

Coyote and the Crosser, Mark Matos & Os Beaches’ recent release, tells the story of Matos’ transformation into Trans Van Santos and his quest for “the ball of light” — a metaphor for illumination and enlightenment. The band will debut the Coyote and the Crosser live show this week at the Rickshaw Stop.

“This show will be a rock’n’roll extravaganza: loud, psychedelic, and very electric,” Matos says. “The album is a malleable rock opera, so it’s a rock opera in a sense that there’s a narrative structure — a group of [six songs] — but there are other [songs] too. There’s a mythological universe coming across, so certain songs of mine fit into that world.”

With the help of Joel Dean (who’s built sets for Phil Lesh and extravagant art pieces for Burning Man), Matos has constructed visually compelling stage props for his performance, including “the Spirit Molecule Sound Chambers with spinning disco balls hovering inside,” eight-foot tall glowing cacti, and a 13-foot tall dream catcher.

“I think having intention in the visual aspect of [Coyote and the Crosser] will bring people to the point where we can have a shared experience,” Matos anticipates.

Matos’ cosmic alter-ego Trans Van Santos will perform at Starry Plough the following night, which should be a calmer, quieter ceremony. Trans, along with his Trans Band, will explore “Americalia”: a synthesis of American folk and Brazilian Tropicalia.

For his Trans Van Santos other self and Trans Band, Matos says he “kept the direction to a minimum, focusing on the spiritual approach to the material. I want to hear the choices these folks make, to feel the spirit of discovery between us.”

Matos’ mystical transformation has compelled him to share his “acid gospel” with the community. “What I am trying to do with my little corner of rock’n’roll is to treat it as a new psychedelic ceremony,” Matos explains. “That and throw a birthday party for the whole galaxy!”

MARK MATOS & OS BEACHES’ COYOTE AND THE CROSSER

With Zodiac Death Valley, Little Owl, Ash Reiter

Fri/1, 8pm, $10

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

TRANS VAN SANTOS

With the Bottlecap Boys, The Know Nothings

Sat/2, 9:30 p.m., $7-10 sliding scale

Starry Plough

3101 Shattuck, Berkeley

(510) 841-2082

www.starryploughpub.com

Tricky sings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 30, 2012

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MUSIC Compared with the smooth operator currently installed in the Oval Office, how nervous Richard Nixon looks now as a representative of America abroad, all stiff grins, rumpled shiftiness, outbursts of awkward rhetoric. Reviewing vintage footage of him recently, I half expected a rappin’ granny to suddenly appear, and goofy Uncle Dick to start “breaking it down.” And yet, 40 years after California’s second-most problematic political progeny (pace, zombie Reagan) went to Beijing to “open China” — ending 25 years of separation and going on to win re-election in a landslide, despite the growing Watergate scandal — might it be time to look past the jerky, jowly image of Tricky Dick and reassess the character of the man and the moment, to keep us on our toes?

“Nixon was an incredibly complicated man, whose intellect constantly got in his way,” Canadian opera director Michael Cavanagh told me over the phone during a wide-ranging interview. “And it’s especially relevant to examine him now in that light, with a certain distance of history. We tend to stop at the jowls, the scandal, and the Republicanism. But it’s often been remarked during this election cycle that there’s no way in hell Nixon would ever be considered for the Republican ballot now. He was too small ‘r’ republican, too centrist. So there’s this complexity to him that confronts lefties with their own stereotypes, assuming most patrons of the arts lean left. That’s something I really like.”

Cavanagh’s complexifying occasion will be his production of John Adams’ 1987 Nixon in China, part of the San Francisco Opera’s nifty-looking summer season. The opera, with a luminescent libretto by poet Alice Goodman and an engrossing, fever-dream score by Adams, whose melodies, time signatures, and musical reference points churn and shift like memory itself, takes us from the moment Nixon’s Spirit of ’76 touches down on the tarmac (Kissinger in tow), through his historic meetings with Chou En-Lai and Mao Tse-Tung, along with First Lady Pat on an eventful factory tour, and finally into the major characters’ bedrooms, memories, and fantasies. It’s a sensually intoxicating work, full of barnstorming arias sung by a multi-ethnic cast (you will have “I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung” stuck in your head for days) that examines media spectacle, modern myth-making, and cultural difference on a truly, well, operatic scale.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Nixon was Californian, Adams is a longtime Bay Area resident. It’s the 40th anniversary of the China visit, and also an insanely contentious election year. The Bay Area as a huge Chinese population — many families escaped Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Do you feel any particular pressure bringing this production here, now?

Michael Cavanagh I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility, but I also feel a lot of freedom. Of course, the events the opera depicts and its roots in the Bay Area will resonate, and that’s hugely exciting. But this isn’t a documentary, it’s a rumination, more of a poem. As Nixon says in the beginning of the opera, “News has a kind of mystery” — and I feel that’s what Adams and Goodman were really expanding upon with this.

I do think that this production, especially, will bring up memories for a lot of people. I myself had an inkling of this whole thing happening when I was really young — it’s something that a lot of the world shares, a memory of this iconic moment, even if that memory is only a glimpse of pavement or a handshake, kind of like my own. The opera works with that abstraction, those fuzzy frames of memory that overlay images of the past, while still sharpening some of the more historically relevant moments. I hope people can relate to it on all of those levels.

SFBG Twenty-five years separate us from the opera’s premiere in Houston in 1987 — and yet China remains, to use a slightly loaded term, as inscrutable as ever to many Americans, yet as enmeshed in their daily lives as ever. What relevance do you think the opera may hold today?

MC I think it has an eerie relevance. Even back when Nixon in China premiered, China was still remote and threatening to many, and this was before the reform machine revved into life, before China’s emerging economic dominance. In one scene, in Mao’s library, Mao goes off quite poetically about the revolution, and how things were changing, and he plays fast and loose with the concepts of capitalism and communism, almost as if he foresees the necessary reforms ahead, that came to pass.

Beyond that, the opera is very prescient about the evolution of the media — this was one of the first major world events to be broadcast on a global scale, to be covered as the kind of spectacle we base much of our opinions and thoughts on today. We think of Nixon as shifty-eyed, but he was really just trying to figure out where the cameras were most of the time, trying to acclimate to this new kind of fishbowl environment in which political figures were treated like movie characters. The opera records the beginnings of all that, and ends with them reviewing their memories of everything that’s occurred as if it was all this footage, which it is quite actually on stage.

Basically, though, the deepest relevance a work can have is by connecting to the audience through its characters. Take Pat Nixon. We hurt for Pat Nixon. She’s been betrayed. Nixon promised her a simple home life, the comforts of family and a man at home, and here she is traveling all the way to China! She’s bewildered, but as First Lady there’s really no place for that, so she forges her own, I think very American kind of resolve that cracks a couple times, but still gets her through.

It’s a very poignant psychological and emotional study, projected on the world stage, and amplified as only opera can. That’s what opera does better than any other art form: it amplifies life.

SFBG You’re a Canadian — have you caught any flack for interpreting these events that are so associated with the US?

MC You know, despite appeals to the contrary, our two countries really share the same history. This version of the opera was premiered in Vancouver during the Olympic Festival — it’s what Canada chose to represent itself will to the entire world. And when it comes down to it, really, everything you do effects us Canadians just as much. We sleep with the elephant. *

NIXON IN CHINA

June 8-July 3, times and prices vary

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF.

(415) 861-4008

www.sfopera.com

On utopian frequencies

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 30, 2012

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arts@sfbg.com

CULTURE It’s the tangible buzz I notice first, a tingling awareness of something important about to occur, followed swiftly by the realization that there are free quesadillas courtesy of the Great Tortilla Conspiracy, silk-screened with chocolate sauce and rabble-rousing sentiment: “Eat the Rich.”

It’s opening night for the ambitious Streetopia festival, and the scene outside the Luggage Store Gallery is vibrant and chocolate-scented. On the sidewalk, Brontez Purnell scrawls ritual sigils in bright pink chalk, while a watchful Amara Tabor-Smith, in Butoh face paint and bare feet, leans against a tree, waiting to enter the circle and begin her ceremonial dance. Festival co-curator (with Kal Spelletich and Erick Lyle) Chris Johanson is overheard gushing unselfconsciously about the “vibe,” and among the gathered throng of artists and tourists, Sixth Street residents and urban activists, bookworms and cinephiles, tastemakers and thinkers, old punks and new parents, it’s as apt a descriptor of the electric excitement as any.

Inside the Luggage Store itself, a fanciful reimagining of the space awaits, just past the heavily-graffitied stairwell and the bright shock of Day-Glo paint and black light of the entryway. A multi-level, wooden loft structure dominates the gallery itself, crammed with little nooks in which one might find a contemplative interactive art project involving paper boats, a tribute to Valerie Solanas, a solitary disco ball, a pirate radio set-up, a “live open letter office,” and countless murals, photographs and sculptures — frankly too much to absorb in one sweep through.

Down Market Street, beneath the Renoir Hotel, the cacophonous screech and throb from Shaun O’Dell’s noise installation “THE SOMETHING” attracts the curious, with amplifier knobs to twiddle, an out-of-tune ukulele to bang, synthesizers to desynchronize, and numerous cameras to record the emphatically spontaneous proceedings on. A rare opportunity for the public to visit the San Francisco Drug Users Union to view an art installation by Barry McGee, plus the promise of free food at the Tenderloin National Forest/Luggage Store Annex at 509 Ellis, entices the intrepid to wander further afield, into the TL night.

Impressively all-encompassing by any measure, Streetopia’s first weekend (it opened May 18) included nods to almost every possible artistic discipline with participants from all corners of the country. It gave space to panel talks, such as AIDS chronicler and former ACT UP activist Sarah Schulman’s “A Gentrification of the Mind” (an event co-curator Erick Lyle was eager to point out represented “the multi-generational teaching and sharing aspect of Streetopia”). It reinvigorated the idea of food as communion with Sy Wagon’s Free Café, the previously-mentioned Great Tortilla Conspiracy, and the War Gastronomy Food Cart; precipitated an off-site “spirit gardening” event at the Hayes Valley Farm with performance artist-musician Ryder Cooley; and hosted the kickoff to “endurance” performer Marshall Weber’s 72-hour poetry reading — a marathon that made that morning’s Bay to Breakers run look even more inconsequential than usua l.

My favorite moment of the project thus far, however, came on the evening of May 20 at the Tenderloin National Forest during an all-too rare performance by dark folk minstrels Hazy Loper, currently a duo comprised of Devon Angus and Patrick Kadyk. Torn between our desire to listen to the mournful melodies and observe the onset of the solar eclipse, the entire crowd wound up in the street squinting at the sun through postcard pinholes, loosely-clenched fists, the holes of a colander, and the leaves of a nearby tree, while the band gamely finished their set out on the curb for the whole neighborhood to enjoy. It was an experience that, for me, best encapsulated a straying from the script that the entire Streetopia project seems designed to encourage: offering a framework for building lasting interpretations of an urban utopia, rather than an experience ready-made and soon forgotten.

STREETOPIA

Through June 23

Various venues, SF

www.streetopiasf.com

A different world

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 29, 2012

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arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Moving, especially when it’s not by choice, is never fun. Losing your home after some 30 years of relative comfort and security is really the pits. That’s how I felt when I heard that the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival — my first encounter with the Bay Area’s voluptuous dance culture — would not be able to continue performing at the Palace of Fine Arts because of the Doyle Drive reconstruction.

Yet EDF has survived; the new, smaller, more varied venues have encouraged the re-thinking of what had become a comfortable format. One more time EDF is taking its shows on the road — to Fort Mason Center’s Cowell Theater and Firehouse, and to the de Young Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Presentations range from intimate lecture formats to full-throttle multi-company performances.

Unlike previous years, however, the popular January auditions (where you could get your fill, or a least a taste of what world dance is all about, for a $10 day pass) had to be cancelled for financial reasons. Like other arts organizations, EDF is struggling, though the 34-year-old fest has been hit particularly hard. “We were forced into an expansion of projects at a time when the economy was contracting,” says Carlos Carvajal, EDF’s co-artistic director along with CK Ladzepko. The Novellus Theater also seats 200 fewer people than the Palace, a significant loss of earned income.

The Ghana-born Ladzekpo founded his African Music and Dance Festival in 1973 and has introduced generations of artists into the intricacies of African rhythms and traditions. Carvajal started folk dancing when he was in high school in San Francisco and has performed with SF Ballet and European and South American companies. Both men have been closely involved with the Festival for years — as adjudicators and observers and now as artistic directors.

The absence of auditions allowed the two curators to go for the best and the brightest for this year’s 30 slots. They were particularly looking for innovation because, as Carvajal quotes Ladzekpo, “We can’t hide behind tradition.” Master artists whose primary concern was the preservation and dissemination of specific traditions started many of these ensembles. But more and more, this generation of ethnic dancers feels free to reinterpret and experiment what used to be considered inviolate practices.

Today’s artistic directors very likely have not only encountered other global dance forms but probably have studied modern dance, choreography, and even ballet. Many of them are as willing to test the boundaries of their fields as their colleagues in other art forms. This year’s line-up, while still offering plenty of what we all have come to love — Chinese Dragon dance, Native American hoop dance, rites of passages rituals from Liberia, temple ceremonies from Bali — offers plenty of contemporary choreography grounded in specific cultural traditions. It’s global dance in all its complexity.

Two different gamelans working together — as the Balinese Gamelan Sekar Jaya and the Sundanese Pusaka Sunda are for the new Bayangan Jiwa — would have been unheard of two decades ago (not to speak of them using very cutting-edge shadow-light technology). Neither would you have had an Uzbek percussionist (Abbos Kosimov) pair up with a Tajikistani dancer (Mariam Gaibova). And, “We specifically asked Abhinaya Dance Company to return with San Jose Taiko,” Carvajal says. It took guts and imagination to bring (successfully) together Japanese Taiko and Indian Bharata Natyam.

Carvajal is also delighted by how Carola Zertuche has revitalized Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco. For EDF, the Company will perform flamenco barefoot, milonga style, reconnecting the dance with its Moorish and Gypsy roots and also reminding us that flamenco’s percussive qualities originated in a musician’s use of a cane and not the dancer’s heels.

Maybe OngDance Company personifies EDF at its most sophisticated. At Dance Mission Theater in January they showed themselves profoundly steeped in Korean tradition, absolutely contemporary in their perspective and brilliant in the art of stagecraft. They’ll present Shadow of Cheoyong during the festival’s third weekend of performances. *

SAN FRANCISCO ETHNIC DANCE FESTIVAL

June 2-July 1, $12-$20

Various venues, SF

www.worldartswest.org

Music Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 29, 2012

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

WEDNESDAY 30

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Rome Balestrieri vs. Randy Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9:30pm.

Tim Barry, Kevin Seconds, Julie Karr, Travis Hayes Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Chris James and the Showdowns, Adversary, Cello Street Quartet, Real Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $5-$8.

James McCarthy, Jetty Swart Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $17.

Nico Vega, Fake Your Own Death, Death Valley High Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Pro Blues Jam with Keith Crossan Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Sir Lord Von Raven, Hussy, Big Drag Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Wintersleep, French Cassettes, Love Axe Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cat’s Corner with Nathan Dias Savanna Jazz. 9pm, $10.

Cosmo AlleyCats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo Place, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7-10pm.

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

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 6:30pm, $5.

DANCE CLUBS

Aisle 45 Elbo Room. 9pm, $5. DJS Mauby, Mo-Luxx, and Romanowski spin vinyl soul, funk, rare grooves.

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

Coo-Yah! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. DJs Daneekah and Green B spin reggae and dancehall with weekly guests.

Mary Go Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 10pm, $5. Drag with Suppositori Spelling, Mercedez Munro, and Ginger Snap.

Megatallica Fiddler’s Green, 1333 Columbus, SF; www.megatallica.com. 7pm, free. Heavy metal hangout.

Southern Fried Soul Knockout. 9:30pm, $3. With selectors Medium Rare and Psychy Mikey spinning greasy southern soul.

THURSDAY 31

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Annie Bacon and Her Oshen, Adios Amigo, Al Lover & the Haters, My Second Surprise Cafe Du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Ape Machine, Symbolick Jews, Rosa Grande Knockout. 9pm, $5.

“Cash’d Out: Tribute to Johnny Cash” Yoshi’s. 8pm, $18.

Daughtry, Safetysuit, Mike Sanchez Warfield. 7:30pm, $34.50-$44.50.

Ferocious Few, Lawlands, City Tribe Amnesia. 9pm, $8-$10.

Michael “Hawkeye” Herman Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Hospitality, Waterstider, popscene DJs Rickshaw Stop. 9:30pm, $13.

Daniel Krass vs. Rome Balestrieri Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9:30pm.

Secret Secretaries, Mark Nelsen, Fleeting Trance, Spiral Electric Thee Parkside. 9pm, $7.

Stripminers, Gram Rabbit, Dirty Hand Family Band Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $7-$10.

Steve Taylor-Ramirez Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Xiu Xiu, Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, Father Murphy Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Waiting Room, Collin Ludlow-Mattson and the Folks, Arabs Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Wet Illustrated, Mallard, Swiftumz, Chris Thayer Verdi Club. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 7:30pm, $10.

Ned Boynton Trio Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 7-10pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Twang! Honky Tonk Fiddler’s Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm. Live country music, dancing, and giveaways.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. DJ-host Pleasuremaker spins Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk

Arcade Lookout. 9pm, free. Indie dance party.

BASE: Number 19 Showcase Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsf.com. 10pm, $10-$15. With Art Department, Tone of Arc.

Get Low Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, free. Jerry Nice and Ant-1 spin Hip-Hop, 80’s and Soul with weekly guests.

Thursdays at the Cat Club Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin’ with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with DJ’s Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests.

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

FRIDAY 1

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Rome Balestrieri, Daniel Krass, Jason Marion Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm.

Jer Ber Jones, Mini Pearl, Necklace, Vain Hein Thee Parkside. 9pm, $15. With MC Crumbsnatcher, DJ Dingbat.

Tom Jonesing 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Greg Laswell, Elizabeth Ziman, Callow Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $15.

Billy Martin & Will Blades Duo, On the Spot Trio Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $18-$20.

Leighton Meester & Check in the Dark, Dana Williams Slim’s. 8:30pm, $21.

Minibosses, crashfaster, Matthew Joseph Payne Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $10.

Mogwai, Chad VanGaalen Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $27.

Poor Man Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $10-$12.

Ron Thompson & the Resistors Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Ticket to Ride Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Zodiac Death Valley, Mark Matos & Os Beaches, Little Owl, Ash Reiter Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark, 999 California, SF; www.topofthemark.com. 9pm, $10.

Terry Disely Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 5:30-8:30pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bamboleo Yoshi’s. 8 and 10pm, $25.

Taste Fridays 650 Indiana, SF; www.tastefridays.com. 8pm, $18. Salsa and bachata dance lessons, live music.

DANCE CLUBS

Balam Acab Elbo Room. 10pm, $8. 120 Minutes presents, with resident DJs S4NtA_MU3rTe, Nako, and Planet Death.

Braza! Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, $5-$10. DJs Sabo, Kento, Elan spin Brazilian, Batucada, Samba.

Duniya Dancehall Bissap, 3372 19th St, SF; (415) 826 9287. 10pm, $10. With live performances by Duniya Drum and Dance Co. and music by Wontanara Revolution. DJ Juan Data spins bhangra, bollywood, dancehall, African, and more.

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

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

Paris to Dakar 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.

Strangelove: Wax Trax! Vs Metropolis Records Cat Club. 9:30pm, $3-$7. Classic industrial with DJs Tomas Diablo and Joe Radio, and new goth with DJs Ronin and Daniel Skellington.

Strategik Four-Year with Colombo Public Works. 9pm, $15-$20.

Toolroom Knights: Gina Star Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; www.vesselsfcom. 10pm.

SATURDAY 2

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Apogee Sound Club, My Name is Joe, True Mutants Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Audiofauna, Whiskerman, Lila Rose Amnesia. 9pm, $7-$10.

Barn Owl, Suishou no Fune, Tone Volt Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Bay Area Heat Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Elektrik Sunset Riptide, 3639 Taraval, SF; www.com. 9:30pm, free.

Rick Estrin & the Nightcats Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Grieves & Budo, Sol, So Timeless Slim’s. 9pm, $15.

Hundred Days, Frail, Cires Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Indigenous, Plateros Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, $12-$15.

Ernest Ranglin’s 80th Birthday Celebration Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $20-$24. With Vinyl and Ernest Ranglin, DJ Dukey.

JC Rockit, Rome Balestrieri, Daniel Krass Johnny Foley’s Dueling Pianos. 9pm.

Slough Feg, Cormorant, Young Hunter Thee Parklside. 9:30pm, $8.

Started-Its, Worth Taking, Glass Gavel, Posole Cafe Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10-$12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

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

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Americana Jukebox Plough and Stars. 9:30pm, $6-$10. With American Nomad, Melody Walker, Jacob Groopman.

Bamboleo Yoshi’s. 8 and 10pm, $25.

Devine’s Jug Band 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod Atlas Cafe, 3049 20th St, SF; www.atlascafe.net. 4-6pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie SF: Mashup Hologram Show DNA Lounge. With DJ Tyme, Nathan Scott, aerialist Marina Luna, Sample This, and more. 9pm, $10-$20.

Cockfight Underground SF, 424 Haight, SF; (415) 864-7386. 9pm, $7. Rowdy dance night for gay boys .

Foundation Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 10pm, $5-$10. DJs Shortkut, Apollo, Mr. E, Fran Boogie spin Hip-Hop, Dancehall, Funk, Salsa.

Haceteria: Etbonz & Ash Williams Deco Lounge, 510 Larkin, SF; www.decosf.com. 9pm, free before 10:30pm, $5 after. With residents Tristes Tropiques, Smac, and Jason P.

Kontrol: Seven Year Anniversary and Grand Finale Endup. 10pm; free before 11pm, $20 after. With Heiko Laux. Pillowtalk (live), Alland Byallo, Craig Kuna, Sammy D, and Nikola Baytala.

Neon Vinyl Loft Party Public Works Loft. 10pm, $10. Future-retro disco with ENSO, B-Love, and IYLA.

Paris to Dakar 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.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-$10. DJs Lucky, Paul Paul, and Phengren Oswald spin ’60s soul 45s.

SUNDAY 3

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Broadway Calls, Hear the Sirens, Arteries Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

G.B.H., Far From Finished, Attitude Adjustment Independent. 8pm, $20.

Kally Price Old Blues and Jazz Band Amnesia. 8pm, $5.

Rocket Summer, Scene Aesthetic, States Slim’s. 7:30pm, $15-$17.

Terry Savastano Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Spot 1019, Blank Stares, Verms Bottom of the Hill. 1pm, $10.

Viking Moses, Nouveller, Plates of Cake Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Zero Pop, Scintillant, Hurricane Thursday Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 8pm, free.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bella Trio SF Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; www.sfcmc.org. 7:30pm, $10.

Obstreperous Doves SIMM New Music Series, Musicians Union Hall, 116 Ninth St., SF; www.noertker.com. 7:30pm, $8-$10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

San Francisco Mandolin Orchestra Mission Dolores, SF; www.sfmandolin.org. 5pm.

Twang Sunday Thee Parkside. 4pm, free. With Tiny Television.

DANCE CLUBS

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. DJs Sep and Maneesh the Twister spin dub, dubstep, and roots. With guest Bumps.

Jock Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; www.lookoutsf.com. 3pm, $2. Raise money for LGBT sports teams while enjoying DJs and drink specials.

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

MONDAY 4

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Alright, Speak Friend, Oh No Joe, Moonlight Orchestra Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Theresa Anderson Swedish American Hall. 8pm, $14.

Crystal Fighters, Is Tropical Independent. 8pm, $15.

Damir Johnny Foley’s. 9pm, free.

Duke Spirit, Hacienda Slim’s. 8pm, $18.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Bossa Nova Tunnel Top, 601 Bush, SF; (415) 722-6620. 8-11:30pm, free. Live acoustic Bossa Nova.

“Resounding Compassion: A Concert for Peace” SF Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak, SF; www.com. 8pm, $30. With Shinja Eshima, voilinist Chihiro Fukuda, butoh dance performance, and more.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bluegrass Mondays Amnesia. 9pm. With Belle Monroe and Her Brewglass Boys.

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

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

Vibes’N’Stuff El Amigo Bar, 3355 Mission, SF; (415) 852-0092. 10pm, free. Conscious jazz and hip-hop from 1960s-early ’90s with DJs Luce Lucy, Vinnie Esparza, and more.

TUESDAY 5

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

A Silent Film Cafe Du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Between the Cities Are Stars, Objects/Animals, Waking Wander Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Blammos, Re-Volts, Gravys Drop, Mr. Elevator & the Brain Hotel Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers, Brothers Comatose, DJ Britt Govea Rickshaw Stop. 7:30pm, $10.

Each Other, Hags Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

“Give the Drummer Some: The Best Drummer-Led Bands Around” Yoshi’s. 8pm, $22. With Steve Smith & Vital Information.

John Garcia Band Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $15.

Juan Perro Slim’s. 8pm, $26.

Melted Toys, Survival Guide, 8TH Grader Brick and Mortar Music Hall. 9pm, free.

Ming & Ping, Mike Diva, NVR-NDR Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Shook Twins Hotel Utah. 8pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Gaucho Bottle Cap, 1707 Powell, SF; www.bottlecapsf.com. 7-10pm, free.

Candace Roberts 50 Mason Social House, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Old Tire Swingers Grant and Green. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro. Post-Dubstep Tuesdays Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521.10pm, free. DJs Dnae Beats, Epcot, Footwerks spin UK Funky, Bass Music. * *

Our Weekly Picks

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 29, 2012

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WEDNESDAY 5/30

A Behanding in Spokane

Martin McDonagh, Oscar-winning author of the movie In Bruges and the equally dark hit play Pillowman, brings us another demented fable, already receiving rave reviews from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. All we need to know is that protagonist Carmichael has lost his hand, and although it has been more than 30 years, he is still pissed as hell. Violence and sexually twisted elements are guaranteed in any McDonagh production, and this stage performance includes special effects as gruesome as you could find on the big screen. Do not be too scared off by the talk of gore though — his work is psychologically thrilling as well, and this black comedy brings some fantastic actors to the stage. (Shauna C. Keddy)

Ongoing, through June 30 Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm)

8pm, $30-40

533 Sutter, SF

(415) 677-9596

www.sfplayhouse.org

WEDNESDAY 5/30

Kids on a Crime Spree

These Kids embrace the idea that a simple pop song can be so much more — their music contains darker lyrics hidden under sunny melodies. Their records are captured on analog tape and harken back to the days when Phil Spector was recording bands in New York's famous Brill Building, and not just a crazy-haired freak. Based on a driving drum line and drenched in reverb guitar, this Crime Spree creates all the messy fun you could ask for, but it's safe to say you can walk away from this controlled chaos without any trouble with the law. This is not just the sound of kids having some rowdy fun, the Oakland rockers have some truly memorable tunes. (Keddy)

9pm, $5

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

(415) 282-3325

www.elriosf.com

THURSDAY 5/31

"The Water is Clear and Still"

Liss Fain has always chosen her visual and musical collaborators with great care. A choreographer of uncommon intelligence and taste, every new work is the result of careful deliberations and satisfying for that reason alone. Last year she stepped away from the proscenium stage into an installation format inside YBCA's Forum. In her new "The Water is Clear and Still," based on Jamaica Kincaid's tiny but hugely resonating short stories, she is taking the concept further by using the more complex space of Z Space's lobby and theater. Again the audience will be invited to wander. Joining Fain's seven dancers will be actor Delia MacDougall for Kincaid's text. Longtime collaborator Matthew Antaky has signed on one more time for the lighting and set design. Dan Wool composed the score. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/2, 8pm; Sun/3, 2pm; $15–$25

Z Space

450 Florida St., S.F.

(800) 838-3006

www.lissfaindance.org

THURSDAY 5/31

"City Scenes: Installments One and Two"

Owned by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, the circa 1910 Vogue Theatre is, appropriately, a single-screen theater smack-dab in the middle of a neighborhood — no shopping malls need apply. With SFNTF partners CinemaSF at the programming helm, the Vogue shows first-run films, but also hosts unique cultural events you won't find elsewhere. Case in point: CinemaSF's new venture with promoters folkYEAH, "City Scenes," which pairs local musicians with SF-centric films for two nights of rockin' and movie-watchin'. Tonight, Vetiver curates the 1978 Goldie Hawn-Chevy Chase comedy Foul Play; tomorrow, Chuck Prophet presents Francis Ford Coppola's tense drama The Conversation (1974). (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Fri/1

8pm (music); 9pm (film), $20

Vogue Theatre

3290 Sacramento, SF

cinemasf.com/vogue

THURSDAY 5/31

Hospitality

One of the highlights at the most recent Noise Pop festival, Brooklyn's Hospitality is also responsible for one of the best releases this year, its self-titled debut on Merge Records. Amber Papini sings with an appealing lilt and unlocatable accent, and her storytelling style has the punch of Attractions-era Elvis Costello with the tenderness of Belle and Sebastian. Featuring production from guitarist-solo artist-Papini's husband Nathan Michel and Shane Stoneback (Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells), the resulting album is ten tracks of unimpeachable pop, immediately relatable to anyone that's endured a third decade of ennui, reevaluating friendships and that useless degree. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Waterstrider, Popscene DJs

9:30pm, $13

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

THURSDAY 5/31

2012 San Francisco Nightlife Awards

This is your chance, San Francisco, to throw your tired arms up then bend over and take a vote. More accurately: to celebrate all your creative nightlife creatures, venues, and parties with awards and accolades. The California Music and Culture Association is throwing this second annual meeting of the nightlife minds, where DJs from some of SF's favorite parties will spin, and all the voting will take place during the actual event. Yes, attendees get in on that hot voting action (Best Live Venue, Best Festival, Best Designer, etc). The winners will then be announced on the spot in a grand ceremony hopefully befitting for such luster. (Emily Savage)

With DJs from Debaser, Future Perfect, Hard French, Lights Down Low

Hosted by Anna Conda and Marke B.

8pm-midnight; Members $5, Non-Members $10

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

Facebook: 2012 San Francisco Nightlife Awards

FRIDAY 6/1

Annie Bacon and Her OSHEN

Some nights you need to rock out to hardcore, other nights you want sweet and tender vocals over a folk-y melody, the kinds of songs in which the lyrics mean something, and the music carries you right along. Annie Bacon, also known for her "Folk Opera" work, offers that soothing sound you may yearn for at her album release show with Her OSHEN band (for new album Light to See Dark). Think Americana, with an emotionally driven undertone. (Keddy)

With Adios Amigo, Al Lover, the Hates, My Second Surprise

9pm, $10

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

FRIDAY 6/1

"Reap What You Zoa"

If you've visited Oakland Art Murmur — the city's super-cool monthly art walk, which last month turned into an Occupy-style dance party that took over Telegraph Avenue for hours — then you've probably seen the flaming Fluxcycle and its beautiful, stylish crew from Flux Foundation. Wanna go home with them? Mmm, of course you do. You'll get the chance after this month's Art Murmur when the crew brings the party back to its home base at American Steel for a rockin' afterparty to benefit Zoa, its creation for this year's Burning Man. The event features live music, a gallery show, Chester the Fire Breathing Art Car, the Front Porch, Oaktown Hall, a full bar staffed by the legendary Flash Hopkins, and other artsy surprises, all in a fantastic industrial warehouse. (Steven T. Jones)

With American Nomad

7pm-1am, $10–$20 donation

American Steel

1960 Mandela Parkway, Oakl. (enter on 20th)

www.americansteelstudios.com

www.fluxfoundation.org

FRIDAY 6/1

Omar Souleyman

The prominent ambassador of Syrian folk-dance-party-Dabke music to the US, Omar Souleyman is perhaps known best for his live performances. Releases on the Sublime Frequencies record label — drawing from reportedly over 500 cassettes created over the course of a decade plus, the majority of which were recorded at weddings and parties — has brought increased exposure for the musician and his band, and some ire from more "traditional" world music fans. Souleyman's style of overdriven, synthesizer-embracing, unrelenting beats and fire-spitting vocals inevitably leads to those who immediately can't stand it, and those who can't resist it. Incidentally, this category includes Bjork, for whom Souleyman recently remixed a series of songs including "Crystalline." (Prendiville)

With DJ Dragonfly, 3 Leafs

8pm, $20 Mezzanine 444 Jessie, SF (415) 625-8880 www.mezzaninesf.com

FRIDAY 6/1

Balam Acab

Tri Angle Records wunderkind Alec Koone, better known as Balam Acab, creates hauntingly beautiful music. The 2011 LP Wander / Wonder solidified Koone as a singular player in the vogue witch house scene. Although the term "witch house" is a four-letter word among some contemporaries, Balam Acab's music fits all the criteria: inherently electronic, atmospheric, warped, hazy and dragged out. The 20-something Pennsylvanian embarked on a sound that has helped characterize the Tri Angle aesthetic; label mates include Clams Casino, How to Dress Well, Holy Other and oOoOO. Koone made his San Francisco debut with a live performance at Public Works in December. This time around, Elbo Room should prove to be a more intimate experience for fans of his moody music, sure to be set to fog and lasers. (Julia B. Chan)

With S4NtA_MU3rTE, Nako, PLANET DEATH, oOoOO

10pm, $8 Advance

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

SATURDAY 6/2

Barn Owl

Barn Owl is often marginalized as a "drone" outfit, but its much too versatile for that description. Evoking the thick-as-molasses stoner sludge of Sunn O))), the astral jazz explorations of Alice Coltrane, and the shimmery moodiness of Can via Future Days, the SF duo has always incorporated the tonal shifts and genre-hopping necessary to keep its hypnosis in check. Having just finished a European tour, in support of its critically acclaimed 2011 album Lost in the Glare, this homecoming appearance ought to be a wild, unpredictable ride through Barn Owl's veritable maze of sonic influences. (Taylor Kaplan)

With Suishou No Fune, Tone Volt

9:30pm, $7

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

SATURDAY 6/2

Ernest Ranglin

Legendary Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin helped form what would become the ska scene back in the 1950s with his distinctive "scratching" style of playing, and has performed with everybody from Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff to the Skatalites. Fans are invited to help the musical icon celebrate his 80th birthday tonight here in the city with a special concert featuring Ranglin backed by local favorites Vinyl performing hits from his massive back catalog along with selections from his newest album, Avila, which hit stores this week. (Sean McCourt)

With DJ Dukey

9pm, $20–$24

Great American Music Hall

859 O'Farrell St., SF

(415) 885-0750
www.slimspresents.com

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

Sweden’s best banger: Zhala is “Slippin’ Around”

Andrew Lam

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May 25, 2012

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So I walked into this Swedish party with cotton snowdrifts and round, mosquito-netted white beds with some pink lipstick… it’s a long story, but the scenario (the monthly Donna Scam party, it’s a something) was partly the brainchild of Zhala, Sweden’s reigning single-maker. The club promoter-singer’s single, you ask? Here it is — with visuals to make you squirm courtesy of director Makode Linde, baker of the “racist cake,” as his recent piece of performance art will now go down in Interpop history. Thanks Sweden! Check out more of my Scandinavian finds here.

The comeback kids: Indie-pop straight poppin’

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May 24, 2012

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The comeback kids: Indie-pop straight poppin’

The Bay Area has always been a warm breeding ground for bands and thus has always had a vibrant music scene. Indie-pop is a rock subgenre that has thrived particularly well here. In the 1990s, indie-pop experienced a significant heyday in the Bay — a phenomenon that may be bubbling up once again.

So what exactly is indie-pop?

SF Popfest organizer Aaron Ehrlich describes it as having “some sort of jangly guitar sounds,” but wouldn’t elaborate with further descriptions, understandably. “It’s kind of like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography: you know it when you see it. When you hear it [indie-pop music] you can tell it,” he construes. “It’s really hard to provide any pithy definition.”

“As a genre, it goes back to the mid-’80s,” recounts Mike Schulman of Slumberland Records, “when it became a term to describe a specific kind of music that had bands looking back to the Byrds for inspiration, or sunshine-pop stuff like Mamas & Papas, or Sagitarrius and mixing that up with girl-groups and the Ramones.” More pop-oriented punk ala the Buzzcocks, the pleasant sounds of the Smiths and the noisy leanings of the Wedding Present poured out of the indie-pop blender, “It’s a pretty broad banner,” Schulman surmises.

Slumberland Records is an independent label started by Schulman in 1989 and has been operating out of Berkeley the last 20 years. Not a purely indie-pop imprint per se, but Slumberland has been a key player in the scene past and present. Boasting such previous acts as the Aislers Set, Henry’s Dress, and Go Sailor in the ’90s, the label still has its fingers oh-so-delicately pressed on today’s indie-pop pulse with bands like Terry Malts, Frankie Rose, and Veronica Falls.

Towards the end of the ’90s an amazing frenzy of activity popped up in the Bay Area: Indie-pop had exploded into the spotlight, and with it’s tight-knit community in tow. “It was a magical two- or three-year period where there were shows every week,” Schulman reminisces, “you would go to the show and see all these familiar faces and everyone would be down front singing all the lyrics to the songs. It was really thrilling.”

During this time, Schulman and Slumberland were experiencing a career high with signee The Aisers Set, “They started getting bigger outside of the Bay Area and touring nationally,” he says, “and it was just super exciting”

The biggest difference between then and now, is how immediately noticeable the subset has become. “There will always be an indie-pop underground with fanzines and small labels doing stuff. It seems like, maybe now, indie-pop’s a bit more overground … visible.” The industry has changed drastically since the ’90s allowing for music to become more accessible, therefore aesthetically acceptable and almost mainstream. With help from the Internet (and its infinite wisdom and blogs) and the current trend of very melody-based compositions, indie-pop may be experiencing another renaissance.

Currently popular bands like the Drums and the Pains of Being Pure At Heart — who refer to indie-pop as a big influence and are clearly informed by it — have garnered both attention and commercial success.

Club nights that cater to indie-pop and the like, such as Shine On in The City and Time Keeps Time in the East Bay, have popped up and fill up fast.

“We’re in a period where it’s cool to be melodic. People are ready to hear it,” Schulman says. Bigger labels such as Hardly Art, Sub Pop, Fat Possum have also lent a hand in shining a light towards the music as press tends to pay attention to those who make the most noise — literally — and in turn the people listen, “… and there’s a knock-on effect,” he concludes.

Droves are expected this weekend to SF Popfest’s three-day event. The festival starts Friday evening at the Hemlock with headliners Seapony and support by BOAT, Black Elephant and Desario. Saturday’s all-day show at The Knockout sees Kids on a Crime Spree, Surf Club, Manatee, Dead Angle, Cruel Summer, plus the Shine On DJs. The event ends on Sunday back at the Hemlock with TV Girl, Allen Clapp and his Orchestra, The Bilinda Butchers, Outerhope. More concert and ticket information can be found at sfpopfest.com.

“Indie-pop is this perennial thing,” breathes Shine On DJ Jamie Guzzi. Indeed.

Julia B. Chan is a writer and hosts “Play for Today,” a program on Radio Valencia — www.radiovalencia.fm — every Friday from 6 to 8pm. Follow her on Twitter @onTheBeat.

SF Popfest 2012: Day 1

Fri/25, 5pm, $10

Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

SF Popfest 2012: Day 2

Sat/26, 4pm, $10

The Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF

www.theknockoutsf.com

SF Popfest 2012: Day 3

Sun/27, 5pm, $10

Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

Hej, creativity! 4 bonkers Stockholm art projects

Andrew Lam

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May 24, 2012

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What creative forms would you expect at the near-ends of the earth? My recent trip to Stockholm, Sweden was weird in the way that travel usually is, more just-like-home moments than alien fears realized of winding up cold and frozen because I forget to transcribe the 17th letter in the name of the street I was staying on.

Honestly, I went for the close-to-the-North-Pole party (did you know you can swim just about anywhere in Stockholm? Sunrise after-afterparty dips abound), but surprise! I ran into artistic inspiration. That’s really having your herring burger and eating it too. Here’s four people and projects that really did it for me, Swedishly speaking.

Sweden has epic, resplendent design history that Ikea has made so common with its bastardized, disposable bedframes (I have a personal vendetta against a certain bedframe, pardon my vehemence.) Every time I walked into someone’s Stockholm apartment I felt like I’d happened onto what taste was like before the Martha Stewart magazine happened – colorful, but with the acknowledgment that life is better amid function and simple form. Things make sense here. Men and women get 16 months of paid leave from work when they have a baby.

In contrast, the artists that most impressed me were all pretty bonkers. Call me contrary?

THE SCANDAL

I’ve been down this road before, but there was no way I would miss checking in with the now-infamous Makode Linde, baker of Racist Cakegate 2012, worldwide Internet meme, and Stockholm club kid forever, when I was in his hometown. (He also directs rad videos, like this one for ex-Lykke Li chorist and current hit single maker Zhala.)

I first ran into real-life Linde one blurry Sunday afternoon in Berlin at Berghain’s Panorama bar (the best place in the world for techno church hipster zombies.) In a sea of glassy eyes and black T-shirts, Linde had on a yellow plaid suit and a smile, which in my flair-adore book makes him artist enough to begin with. “Makode just gives it to you,” as a friend of mine put it regarding his penchant for exuberant party dress.

Linde invited me to his retrospective at Galleri Kleerup‘s new showroom just around the corner from the opera in old town Stockholm and I acquiesed, only to wind up there with all my luggage in tow en route to the flight that would take me away from Sweden. The only thing there to greet me was a sign saying “TILLBAKA 16:30.” I waited until 17:00 and no one was tillbaka and I had a flight to catch. So thank god for massive plate windows and Swedish acceptance of creepers smashing their nose to them, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see the show.

The Linde retrospective puts his howling cake performance in perspective. His famous cake-head (himself, actually poking his face through a hole in the cake-table) blackface makes since when, after viewing his body of work, you realize that he’s created an world that’s entirely blackface. Giraffes, Betty Boop, bunny rabbits, Jesus on the cross, a Chinese good luck cat, a taxidermied crow. On a stack of shipping pallets in the middle of the room sat a small, ready-to-offend army of these talismans, all from his “Afromantics” series.

What are they warding off? Complacency, perhaps. In a country where the GDP continues to grow despite economic mushiness in other EU countries, it’s still totally cool among even young alternative types to refer to any illegal after-party venue in Stockholm as a “black club.” Stockholm’s not the whitest city I’ve ever been in (shout-out to my nonetheless beloved Portland!), but it’s pretty close — and casual racism still comes in a pretty raw form.

Linde’s had some pretty heavy – and not at all misguided – accusations thrown at him. But standing in that pretty little cobblestone plaza in Stockholm, next to the Danish embassy in whose plate glass windows were displayed an immalculate and modest light pink ballerina gown from years past, I grokked him and his Rorschach test splotches of black faces with big red lips and wide white eyes.

I could understand how he was surprised when people said he couldn’t claim the African experience, because in some superficial ways he has to rep for it in this town.

THE INDIE ACTION-ADVENTURE-PRISON-BIKER-HAIR BAND QUEER FILM

There was only one room devoted to screening a single movie trailer, over and over again, at Konstfack, Sweden’s “second-best” (in the words of a friend) arts and design school. A few chairs sat complacently in front of a screen constantly counting down the seconds til the next screening of Dyke Hard.

Could this film have been shot in San Francisco? Yes, and if director Bitte Andersen succeeds in getting her entry into the Frameline Film Festival it most certainly it will find a audience here. A wacky tale of dyke band gone wild, taking on the forces of evil in a world where Lycra makes some, if not all injustices better? It’s an SF no-brainer. Andersen, along with production team Alexi Carpentieri and Martin Borell, started the project as a series of trailers – a sci-fi movie, a prison movie, a biker flick, and a horror.

“I guess watching a very large amount of genre film for many years and being a queer woman inspired me to make some genre film that wouldn’t be alienating for myself and other queers and/or women,” Andersen told me. Eventually, she and her team decided to combine all the trailers into a single film, Dyke Hard.

Shooting is taking about a year (I narrowly missed being cast in a seminal scene in which the mayor – played by a prominent Stockholm queer club promoter – announces a venue conflict between a battle of the bands and a martial arts tournament. Sports fans and music fans attack each other, only to be reprimanded eloquently by a bighearted member of the protagonist band.) The Kickstarter for the project swings into gear next week, so holler at them if you want to ensure that we are indeed, dyked hard.

DARK GLAMAZON

This is what public art looks like in Sweden: an emaciated giant propped up against (or propping up) the foyer of a luxury shopping mall. She’s got on platform lace-up Timberlands, a studded leather jacket, and of course: no pants.

Her name is “Pretty Vacant,” and her name is Cajsa Von Zeipel, the artist that is. In person, Von Zeipel somehow succeeds in being more glamorous than her drugged-out fashion waifs. She moonlights in boyfriend Tobias Bernstrup‘s Italo disco act, standing behind a keyboard and a wind machine in a patent leather bustier, silky kimono, ass-length blonde hair, and vertiginous high heels that she pretty much never doesn’t wear.

The artist is from a tiny town of 3,000 in Sweden, where she told me for fun she tried out icecream as a beauty product (facials) and generally felt like the weirdest one in school. But if that was the case, then we’re talking a serious ugly duckling-swan situation.

Von Zeipel and Bernstrup’s shared studio feels like an ode to feminine beauty. He’s been known to perform in triple-breasted lingerie armor and is partial to equally dangerous heel heights.

And early awkwardness might also give a clue into Von Zeipel’s art. There are no creatures more high fashion than her sculptures, but at the same time there is a bite to them. Their faces are twisted, their height disorienting. Pretty beautiful, yes — but also pretty freaky.

FEMINIST BLING

Of late, much has been made of craftivism, a reaction to the diminution of women’s work and general aesthetic scorn for things that grandmas get up to around big round tables with their friends. The belittling depiction of craft has been addressed in a feminist takeback that’s seen the rise of knit graffiti, the resurfacing of Gee’s Bend quilts in fine art museums, and more.

In Stockholm, queer feminist radio and TV host-DJ Kakan Hermansson is taking these lessons straight to the nail salon. Her graduate school exhibition at Konstfack is half video installation, half baroque still life – two-foot tall ceramic statues of fingers, capped with nail art erupting with My Little Ponys, Destiny’s Child collage, gems, sparkles, “GIRLS” spelled out in gold script.

If you view the installation as I did through the fog of a mid-afternoon hangover and a bag of popcorn, Hermansson’s accompanying video is more than engaging — it’s important. Her mama bear voice soothes as hands (hers) confidently remove polish from, re-paint, and glitterize the paws of volunteers who spill personal trauma throughout their treatment. Sexual violence, drug dealing mishap, partnerships gone awry. This is a safe space, a place where women can go to recharge and strengthen bonds with each other. The ceramic statues call attention to the lushness that is art contained on the tips of our fingers, while the videos emphasize that not everything that goes on in beauty salons is superficial.

Win tickets to see Tony Award-winning God of Carnage

Maria Poblet

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May 23, 2012

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Win tickets to see Tony Award-winning God of Carnage

“Gleefully nasty fun,” according to the New York Post, this hysterical hit Broadway comedy is finally coming to the North Bay!

Following an altercation between their 11-year-old sons, Annette and Alan Raleigh agree to meet Veronica and Michael Novak to discuss the situation civilly – practice the art of co-existence rather than slaughter each other with insurance claims and lawsuits. However, the veneer of polite society soon falls away as the couples begin to regress to childish accusations, bullying and bickering.

You’ve never laughed so hard until you’ve seen this action-packed, knockout farce, which won the 2009 Tony Award for Best Play and 2009 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy. Eight performances weekly; get your tickets here.

To win a pair of tickets to the Thursday, May 31 production of God of Carnage, email sfbgpromos@sfbg.com by Friday, May 25 with your name, mailing address, and phone number and put “God of Carnage” in the subject. One lucky winner will receive a pair of tickets in the mail.

May 24-June 17 @ Marin Theatre Co., 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley