youth

Goldies 2014 Performance/Music: Brontez Purnell

Michael Redmond
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Goldies 2014 Performance/Music: Brontez Purnell

GOLDIES After being informed that Bay Guardian editors and a theater critic vetted his Goldie nomination, Brontez Purnell reacts. “I think it’s fuckin’ rad. I’m pretty into it. A theater critic? Was I criticized?”

Sitting in the backyard of his Mission District apartment, braced leg extended with crutches at his side, Purnell reflects on roughly 12 years of living in the Bay Area (his Mission digs are temporary; he’s about to move back to Oakland). A storyteller of many mediums, his injury prevents him from dancing until mid-March, which is no good since he’s the founder of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. If you’ve lived here a minute, you might recognize him as a former Sparky’s Diner waiter, working the “drunk tank” every Saturday night.

“When I was 24, my entire dating pool had seen me dance naked or in my underwear — literally get fingered at a Gravy Train!!!! show. They’d see [me] there and think they could be mean to me like, ‘Gimmie my fries!'” He recalls this, along with other illicit memories from his time in the Oakland-based, exclamation point-loving electro clash band.

But like fans of that fad, he’s moved on. He’s 31 now and for the past 10 years the music he writes, records, and performs live is for his band Younger Lovers. Its newest record, Sugar In My Pocket, recently came out on Southpaw Records.

“I don’t think anyone knew I had this background of a punk that had been playing in bands since I was a teenager,” he says, explaining there was overlap between the two music projects with distinctly different flavors, though Younger Lovers’ first album initially received a “hateful response from a lot of the gay boys around.

Everyone thought it was this flash-in-the-pan thing, but it’s something I was actually working on for a long time. It was cool to smash a lot of assumptions with Younger Lovers. People would say, ‘Wow, we didn’t know you played an instrument. We thought you were just kind of drunk and danced around.'”

Guardian photo by Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover
brontez

People still ask him about those old shows, but he admits to not

remembering a lot of it and that some of that life bleeds over to now. “I would call myself an alcoholic.

I would never call myself a drug addict. I feel like the next set of Younger Lovers’ songs will probably be about addiction.”

Purnell is nothing if not self-aware; he points out his own patterns of over-consumption, whether it be food, men, drugs, or alcohol. But his ability to turn weakness into strength is artistry in itself. In his dance company’s The Episodes, universal themes of struggling with identity and finding oneself are apparent, but being black and gay only makes the search for acceptance that much harder.

“I romanticize the outsider. There’s always going to be this running theme of me versus the world, but it’s never so personal to me because I feel like I’m embodying the story of 100 of my friends in one voice.”

In one sequence, “Tub,” Purnell soaks a new pair of jeans while talking on the phone to a friend. The veil of humor is used to deal with heavier topics, as he segues from commentary on butch gays (or “bearded ladies,” as he likes to call them) with their trendy “Hitler Youth haircuts” and how he’s disappointed when they think he’s too effeminate for them, to his own T-cell count, to some suspiciously descriptive-drug scenarios that involve snorting heroin. Another segment recalls a “redneck teacher bitch” from his home state of Alabama, giving the class scientifically incorrect and insensitive, to say the least, explanations of where AIDS comes from.

“I never let humor interfere with what is definitely a message,” Purnell says. “Underneath it all, there is going to be that point where somebody is like, ‘Oh shit. He’s not joking. He’s joking, but he’s totally not joking.’ Humor is actually a really dangerous tool.”

His truth, he says doesn’t always set him free, but as the saying goes — sometimes it hurts. And that’s the beauty of what Purnell does: He looks at his reality, his disappointments, and his personal achievements, and he’s able to persist. He remains one of the more resilient creative forces on the scene he helped make, despite oftentimes receiving second-tier ranking to some of his contemporaries.

Does he play the victim? Well, he gets accused of it a lot, but that’s because of “people’s fucked-up views on what a victim is.” He recites a James Baldwin quote he loves: “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.”

In short: Purnell is not a victim — he’s a fighter. And as a singer, songwriter, musician, choreographer, dancer, and performer, he proves himself by doing all these things … and then some.

Film Listings: February 12 -18, 2014

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

OPENING

About Last Night First remake of the week: a do-over of the 1986 ensemble rom-com, based (like the earlier film) on a David Mamet play. This version stars Kevin Hart, Regina Hall, Michael Ealy, and Joy Bryant. (1:40)

Beijing Love Story Writer-director-star Chen Sicheng adapts his 2012 Chinese TV series, adding movie stars Carina Lau and Tony Leung Ka-fai to the cast to up the big-screen wattage. The film follows an array of couples, starting with Chen and real-life wife Shen Yan as a young couple forced to make some hard choices after an unplanned pregnancy. “What’s love? It’s like a ghost. Everyone’s heard of it, nobody’s seen it,” the reluctant father-to-be’s cynical friend tells him. Said friend has been hitched for years; the film’s next storyline follows what happens when his wife finds out he’s been cheating (as it turns out, she has some secrets of her own). At one point, the action shifts from Beijing to Greece (for the Lau-Leung segment), before returning to the city for a teenage love story involving a cello prodigy who wants to compete on TV, and a boy who can “see auras,” among other fanciful talents. Finally, an elderly man embarks on a series of blind dates, looking for a second chance at love, with a twist that’s obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a rom-com before. By the time this flowery Valentine’s card of a movie reaches its melodramatic conclusion, it’s abundantly clear that Chen knows his target audience — see: the film’s multiple Titanic (1997) references — and that he’s a huge fan of the romance genre himself. Well, ’tis the season. (2:02) Metreon. (Eddy)

Endless Love Second remake of the week: a do-over of Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Scott Spencer’s young-adult-love-gone-awry novel. (1:44) Shattuck.

Like Father, Like Son A yuppie Tokyo couple are raising their only child in workaholic dad’s image, applying the pressure to excel at an early age. Imagine their distress when the hospital phones with some unpleasant news: It has only just been learned that a nurse mixed up their baby with another, with the result that both families have been raising the “wrong” children these six years. Polite, forced interaction with the other clan — a larger nuclear unit as warm, disorganized, and financially hapless as the first is formal, regimented and upwardly mobile — reveals that both sides have something to learn about parenting. This latest from Japanese master Hirokazu Koreeda (1998’s After Life, 2004’s Nobody Knows, 2008’s Still Walking) is, as usual, low-key, beautifully observed, and in the end deeply moving. (2:01) Shattuck, Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Lovers of Eternity Other Cinema’s latest season opens with something truly special: a new Kuchar Brothers movie. Well, not exactly “new” — that would be difficult, as SF’s own beloved George is with us no more — but one that, incredibly, has never been seen on the West Coast before. Lovers of Eternity (1964) is a half hour color “camp treasure” recently transferred to 16mm from a sole surviving 8mm print. No clue what the cast or content is, but having been made when the Bronx bros were 22 years old, just before they stopped directing as a team, how could it not be genius? The bill will also include Mike Kuchar in person presenting his 1966 The Secret of Wendel Samson, starring Pop artist Red Grooms, George, and Kuchar staples including Donna Kerness and Bob Cowan; plus his brand-new Soulmates. There will also be miscellany including “an orgy of erotic romps” and “psychedelic smut.” Valentine’s Day was for lovers; at this Sat/15 event, get retro-sleazy. More info at www.othercinema.com. Artists’ Television Access. (Harvey)

RoboCop Truly, there was no need to remake 1987’s RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s smart, biting sci-fi classic that deploys heaps of stealth satire beneath its ultraviolent imagery. But the inevitable do-over is here, and while it doesn’t improve on what came before, it’s not a total lost cause, either. Thank Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha, whose thrilling Elite Squad films touch on similar themes of corruption (within police, political, and media realms), and some inspired casting, including Samuel L. Jackson as the uber-conservative host of a futuristic talk show. Though the suit that restores life to fallen Detroit cop Alex Murphy is, naturally, a CG wonder, the guy inside the armor — played by The Killing‘s Joel Kinnaman — is less dynamic. In fact, none of the characters, even those portrayed by actors far more lively than Kinnaman (Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman, Jackie Earle Haley), are developed beyond the bare minimum required to serve RoboCop’s plot, a mixed-message glob of dirty cops, money-grubbing corporations, the military-industrial complex, and a few too many “Is he a man…or a machine?” moments. But in its favor: Though it’s PG-13 (boo), it’s also shot in 2D (yay). (1:50) Presidio. (Eddy)

Tim’s Vermeer See “Masterpiece Theater.” (1:20) Embarcadero.

Winter’s Tale Akiva Goldsman (Oscar-winning screenwriter of 2001’s A Beautiful Mind) directs Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Russell Crowe, and Jennifer Connelly in this adaptation of Mark Halprin’s supernatural romance. (1:58) Four Star, Presidio.

ONGOING

American Hustle David O. Russell’s American Hustle is like a lot of things you’ve seen before — put in a blender, so the results are too smooth to feel blatantly derivative, though here and there you taste a little Boogie Nights (1997), Goodfellas (1990), or whatever. Loosely based on the Abscam FBI sting-scandal of the late 1970s and early ’80s (an opening title snarks “Some of this actually happened”), Hustle is a screwball crime caper almost entirely populated by petty schemers with big ideas almost certain to blow up in their faces. It’s love, or something, at first sight for Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who meet at a Long Island party circa 1977 and instantly fall for each other — or rather for the idealized selves they’ve both strained to concoct. He’s a none-too-classy but savvy operator who’s built up a mini-empire of variably legal businesses; she’s a nobody from nowhere who crawled upward and gave herself a bombshell makeover. The hiccup in this slightly tacky yet perfect match is Irving’s neglected, crazy wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), who’s not about to let him go. She’s their main problem until they meet Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), an ambitious FBI agent who entraps the two while posing as a client. Their only way out of a long prison haul, he says, is to cooperate in an elaborate Atlantic City redevelopment scheme he’s concocted to bring down a slew of Mafioso and presumably corrupt politicians, hustling a beloved Jersey mayor (Jeremy Renner) in the process. Russell’s filmmaking is at a peak of populist confidence it would have been hard to imagine before 2010’s The Fighter, and the casting here is perfect down to the smallest roles. But beyond all clever plotting, amusing period trappings, and general high energy, the film’s ace is its four leads, who ingeniously juggle the caricatured surfaces and pathetic depths of self-identified “winners” primarily driven by profound insecurity. (2:17) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

August: Osage County Considering the relative infrequency of theater-to-film translations today, it’s a bit of a surprise that Tracy Letts had two movies made from his plays before he even got to Broadway. Bug and Killer Joe proved a snug fit for director William Friedkin (in 2006 and 2011, respectively), but both plays were too outré for the kind of mainstream success accorded 2007’s August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer, ran 18 months on Broadway, and toured the nation. As a result, August was destined — perhaps doomed — to be a big movie, the kind that shoehorns a distracting array of stars into an ensemble piece, playing jes’ plain folk. But what seemed bracingly rude as well as somewhat traditional under the proscenium lights just looks like a lot of reheated Country Gothic hash, and the possibility of profundity you might’ve been willing to consider before is now completely off the menu. If you haven’t seen August before (or even if you have), there may be sufficient fun watching stellar actors chew the scenery with varying degrees of panache — Meryl Streep (who else) as gorgon matriarch Violet Weston; Sam Shepard as her long-suffering spouse; Julia Roberts as pissed-off prodigal daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts), etc. You know the beats: Late-night confessions, drunken hijinks, disastrous dinners, secrets (infidelity, etc.) spilling out everywhere like loose change from moth-eaten trousers. The film’s success story, I suppose, is Roberts: She seems very comfortable with her character’s bitter anger, and the four-letter words tumble past those jumbo lips like familiar friends. On the downside, there’s Streep, who’s a wizard and a wonder as usual yet also in that mode supporting the naysayers’ view that such conspicuous technique prevents our getting lost in her characters. If Streep can do anything, then logic decrees that includes being miscast. (2:10) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Dallas Buyers Club Dallas Buyers Club is the first all-US feature from Jean-Marc Vallée. He first made a splash in 2005 with C.R.A.Z.Y., which seemed an archetype of the flashy, coming-of-age themed debut feature. Vallée has evolved beyond flashiness, or maybe since C.R.A.Z.Y. he just hasn’t had a subject that seemed to call for it. Which is not to say Dallas is entirely sober — its characters partake from the gamut of altering substances, over-the-counter and otherwise. But this is a movie about AIDS, so the purely recreational good times must eventually crash to an end. Which they do pretty quickly. We first meet Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) in 1986, a Texas good ol’ boy endlessly chasing skirts and partying nonstop. Not feeling quite right, he visits a doctor, who informs him that he is HIV-positive. His response is “I ain’t no faggot, motherfucker” — and increased partying that he barely survives. Afterward, he pulls himself together enough to research his options, and bribes a hospital attendant into raiding its trial supply of AZT for him. But Ron also discovers the hard way what many first-generation AIDS patients did — that AZT is itself toxic. He ends up in a Mexican clinic run by a disgraced American physician (Griffin Dunne) who recommends a regime consisting mostly of vitamins and herbal treatments. Ron realizes a commercial opportunity, and finds a business partner in willowy cross-dresser Rayon (Jared Leto). When the authorities keep cracking down on their trade, savvy Ron takes a cue from gay activists in Manhattan and creates a law evading “buyers club” in which members pay monthly dues rather than paying directly for pharmaceutical goods. It’s a tale that the scenarists (Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack) and director steep in deep Texan atmospherics, and while it takes itself seriously when and where it ought, Dallas Buyers Club is a movie whose frequent, entertaining jauntiness is based in that most American value: get-rich-quick entrepreneurship. (1:58) Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Harvey)

Devil’s Due (1:29) Metreon.

Frozen (1:48) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Gloria The titular figure in Sebastian Lelio’s film is a Santiago divorcee and white collar worker (Paulina Garcia) pushing 60, living alone in a condo apartment — well, almost alone, since like Inside Llewyn Davis, this movie involves the frequent, unwanted company of somebody else’s cat. (That somebody is an upstairs neighbor whose solo wailings against cruel fate disturb her sleep.) Her two children are grown up and preoccupied with their adult lives. Not quite ready for the glue factory yet, Gloria often goes to a disco for the “older crowd,” dancing by herself if she has to, but still hoping for some romantic prospects. She gets them in the form of Rodolfo (Sergio Hernandez), who’s more recently divorced but gratifyingly infatuated with her. Unfortunately, he’s also let his daughters and ex-wife remain ominously dependent on him, not just financially but in every emotional crisis that affects their apparently crisis-filled lives. The extent to which Gloria lets him into her life is not reciprocated, and she becomes increasingly aware how distant her second-place priority status is whenever Rodolfo’s other loved ones snap their fingers. There’s not a lot of plot but plenty of incident and insight to this character study, a portrait of a “spinster” that neither slathers on the sentimental uplift or piles on melodramatic victimizations. Instead, Gloria is memorably, satisfyingly just right. (1:50) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Great Beauty The latest from Paolo Sorrentino (2008’s Il Divo) arrives as a high-profile contender for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, already annointed a masterpiece in some quarters, and duly announcing itself as such in nearly every grandiose, aesthetically engorged moment. Yes, it seems to say, you are in the presence of this auteur’s masterpiece. But it’s somebody else’s, too. The problem isn’t just that Fellini got there first, but that there’s room for doubt whether Sorrentino’s homage actually builds on or simply imitates its model. La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963) are themselves swaying, jerry-built monuments, exhileratingly messy and debatably profound. But nothing quite like them had been seen before, and they did define a time of cultural upheaval — when traditional ways of life were being plowed under by a loud, moneyed, heedless modernity that for a while chose Rome as its global capital. Sorrentino announces his intention to out-Fellini Fellini in an opening sequence so strenuously flamboyant it’s like a never-ending pirouette performed by a prima dancer with a hernia. There’s statuary, a women’s choral ensemble, an on-screen audience applauding the director’s baffled muse Toni Servillo, standing in for Marcello Mastroianni — all this and more in manic tracking shots and frantic intercutting, as if sheer speed alone could supply contemporary relevancy. Eventually The Great Beauty calms down a bit, but still its reason for being remains vague behind the heavy curtain of “style.” (2:22) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Her Morose and lonely after a failed marriage, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) drifts through an appealingly futuristic Los Angeles (more skyscrapers, less smog) to his job at a place so hipster-twee it probably will exist someday: beautifulhandwrittenletters.com, where he dictates flowery missives to a computer program that scrawls them onto paper for paying customers. Theodore’s scripting of dialogue between happy couples, as most of his clients seem to be, only enhances his sadness, though he’s got friends who care about him (in particular, Amy Adams as Amy, a frumpy college chum) and he appears to have zero money woes, since his letter-writing gig funds a fancy apartment equipped with a sweet video-game system. Anyway, women are what gives Theodore trouble — and maybe by extension, writer-director Spike Jonze? — so he seeks out the ultimate gal pal: Samantha, an operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the year’s best disembodied performance. Thus begins a most unusual relationship, but not so unusual; Theodore’s friends don’t take any issue with the fact that his new love is a machine. Hey, in Her‘s world, everyone’s deeply involved with their chatty, helpful, caring, always-available OS — why wouldn’t Theo take it to the next level? Inevitably, of course, complications arise. If Her‘s romantic arc feels rather predictable, the film acquits itself in other ways, including boundlessly clever production-design touches that imagine a world with technology that’s (mostly) believably evolved from what exists today. Also, the pants they wear in the future? Must be seen to be believed. (2:00) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Just when you’d managed to wipe 2012’s unwieldy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey from your mind, here comes its sequel — and it’s actually good! Yes, it’s too long (Peter Jackson wouldn’t have it any other way); arachnophobes (and maybe small children) will have trouble with the creepy, giant-spider battle; and Orlando Bloom, reprising his Lord of the Rings role as Legolas the elf, has been CG’d to the point of looking like he’s carved out of plastic. But there’s much more to enjoy this time around, with a quicker pace (no long, drawn-out dinner parties); winning performances by Martin Freeman (Bilbo), Ian McKellan (Gandalf); and Benedict Cumberbatch (as the petulent voice of Smaug the dragon); and more shape to the quest, as the crew of dwarves seeks to reclaim their homeland, and Gandalf pokes into a deeper evil that’s starting to overtake Middle-earth. (We all know how that ends.) In addition to Cumberbatch, the cast now includes Lost‘s Evangeline Lilly as elf Tauriel, who doesn’t appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original story, but whose lady-warrior presence is a welcome one; and Luke Evans as Bard, a human poised to play a key role in defeating Smaug in next year’s trilogy-ender, There and Back Again. (2:36) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Before succumbing to the hot and heavy action inside the arena (intensely directed by Francis Lawrence) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire force-feeds you a world of heinous concept fashions that’d make Lady Gaga laugh. But that’s ok, because the second film about one girl’s epic struggle to change the world of Panem may be even more exciting than the first. Suzanne Collins’ YA novel The Hunger Games was an over-literal metaphor for junior high social survival and the glory of Catching Fire is that it depicts what comes after you reach the cool kids’ table. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) inspired so much hope among the 12 districts she now faces pressures from President Snow (a portentous Donald Sutherland) and the fanatical press of Capital City (Stanley Tucci with big teeth and Toby Jones with big hair). After she’s forced to fake a romance with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), the two watch with horror as they’re faced with a new Hunger Game: for returning victors, many of whom are too old to run. Amanda Plummer and Jeffrey Wright are fun as brainy wackjobs and Jena Malone is hilariously Amazonian as a serial axe grinder still screaming like an eighth grader. Inside the arena, alliances and rivalries shift but the winner’s circle could survive to see another revolution; to save this city, they may have to burn it down. (2:26) Metreon. (Vizcarrondo)

I, Frankenstein (1:33) Metreon.

Inside Llewyn Davis In the Coen Brothers’ latest, Oscar Isaac as the titular character is well on his way to becoming persona non grata in 1961 NYC — particularly in the Greenwich Village folk music scene he’s an ornery part of. He’s broke, running out of couches to crash on, has recorded a couple records that have gone nowhere, and now finds out he’s impregnated the wife (Carey Mulligan) and musical partner of one among the few friends (Justin Timberlake) he has left. She’s furious with herself over this predicament, but even more furious at him. This ambling, anecdotal tale finds Llewyn running into one exasperating hurdle after another as he burns his last remaining bridges, not just in Manhattan but on a road trip to Chicago undertaken with an overbearing jazz musician (John Goodman) and his enigmatic driver (Garrett Hedlund) to see a club impresario (F. Murray Abraham). This small, muted, droll Coens exercise is perfectly handled in terms of performance and atmosphere, with pleasures aplenty in its small plot surprises, myriad humorous idiosyncrasies, and T. Bone Burnett’s sweetened folk arrangements. But whether it actually has anything to say about its milieu (a hugely important Petri dish for later ’60s political and musical developments), or adds up to anything more profound than an beautifully executed shaggy-dog story, will be a matter of personal taste — or perhaps of multiple viewings. (1:45) Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Throwback Terror Thursday, anyone? If the early Bourne entries leapt ahead of then-current surveillance technology in their paranoia-inducing ability to Find-Replace-Eliminate international villains wherever they were in the world, then Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit flails in the opposite direction — toward a nonsensical, flag-waving mixture of Cold War and War on Terror phobias. So when covert mucky-muck Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner) solemnly warns that if mild-mannered former Marine and secret CIA analyst Jack Ryan stumbles, the US is in danger of … another Great Depression, you just have to blink, Malcolm Gladwell-style. Um, didn’t we just do that? And is this movie that out of touch? It doesn’t help that director Kenneth Branagh casts himself as the sleek, camp, and illin’ Russian baddie Viktor Cherevin, who’s styled like a ’90s club tsar in formfitting black clothing with a sheen that screams “Can this dance-floor sadist buy you another cosmo?” He’s intended to pass for something resembling sex — and soul — in Shadow Recruit‘s odd, determinedly clueless universe. That leaves a colorless, blank Chris Pine with the thankless task of rescuing whiney physician love Cathy (Keira Knightley) from baddie clutches. Pine’s no Alec Baldwin, lacking the latter’s wit and anger management issues, or even Ben Affleck, who has also succumbed to blank, beefcake posturing on occasion. Let’s return this franchise to its box, firmly relegated to the shadows. (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Labor Day Sweet little home repairs, quickie car tune-ups, sensual pie-making, and sexed-up chili cookery — Labor Day seems to be taking its chick-flick cues from Porn For Women, Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative’s puckish gift-booklet that strives to capture women’s real desires: namely, for vacuuming, folded laundry, and patient listening from their chosen hunks of beefcake. Let’s call it domestic close encounters of the most pragmatic, and maybe most realistic, kind. But that seems to sail over the heads of all concerned with Labor Day. Working with Joyce Maynard’s novel, director-screenwriter Jason Reitman largely dispenses with the wit that washes through Juno (2007) and Up in the Air (2009) and instead chooses to peer at his actors through the seriously overheated, poetically impressionistic prism of Terrence Malick … if Malick were tricked into making a Nicholas Sparks movie. Single mom Adele (Kate Winslet) is down in the dumps over multiple miscarriages and her husband’s (Clark Gregg) departure. Son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) becomes her caretaker of sorts — thus, when escaped convict Frank (Josh Brolin) forces the mother-and-son team to give him a ride and a hideout, it’s both a blessing and a curse, especially because the hardened tough guy turns out to be a compulsively domestic, hardworking ubermensch of a Marlboro Man, able to bake up a peach pie and teach Henry to throw a baseball, all within the course of a long Labor Day weekend. Hapless Adele is helpless to resist him, particularly after some light bondage and plenty of manly nurturing. Ultimately this masochistic fantasy about the ultimate, if forbidden, family man — and the delights of the Stockholm Syndrome — is much harder to swallow than a spoonful of homemade chili, despite its strong cast. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Lego Movie (1:41) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center.

Lone Survivor Peter Berg (2012’s Battleship, 2007’s The Kingdom) may officially be structuring his directing career around muscular tails of bad-assery. This true story follows a team of Navy SEALs on a mission to find a Taliban group leader in an Afghani mountain village. Before we meet the actors playing our real-life action heroes we see training footage of actual SEALs being put through their paces; it’s physical hardship structured to separate the tourists from the lifers. The only proven action star in the group is Mark Wahlberg — as Marcus Luttrell, who wrote the film’s source-material book. His funky bunch is made of heartthrobs and sensitive types: Taylor Kitsch (TV’s Friday Night Lights); Ben Foster, who last portrayed William S. Burroughs in 2013’s Kill Your Darlings but made his name as an officer breaking bad news gently to war widows in 2009’s The Messenger; and Emile Hirsch, who wandered into the wilderness in 2007’s Into the Wild. We know from the outset who the lone survivors won’t be, but the film still manages to convey tension and suspense, and its relentlessness is stunning. Foster throws himself off a cliff, bounces off rocks, and gets caught in a tree — then runs to his also-bloody brothers to report, “That sucked.” (Yesterday I got a paper cut and tweeted about it.) But the takeaway from this brutal battle between the Taliban and America’s Real Heroes is that the man who lived to tell the tale also offers an olive branch to the other side — this survivor had help from the non-Taliban locals, a last-act detail that makes Lone Survivor this Oscar season’s nugget of political kumbaya. (2:01) Metreon. (Vizcarrondo)

The Monuments Men The phrase “never judge a book by its cover” goes both ways. On paper, The Monuments Men — inspired by the men who recovered art stolen by the Nazis during World War II, and directed by George Clooney, who co-wrote and stars alongside a sparkling ensemble cast (Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh “Earl of Grantham” Bonneville, and Bill Fucking Murray) — rules. Onscreen, not so much. After they’re recruited to join the cause, the characters fan out across France and Germany following various leads, a structural choice that results in the film’s number one problem: it can’t settle on a tone. Men can’t decide if it wants to be a sentimental war movie (as in an overlong sequence in which Murray’s character weeps at the sound of his daughter’s recorded voice singing “White Christmas”); a tragic war movie (some of those marquee names die, y’all); a suspenseful war movie (as the men sneak into dangerous territory with Michelangelo on their minds); or a slapstick war comedy (look out for that land mine!) The only consistent element is that the villains are all one-note — and didn’t Inglourious Basterds (2009) teach us that nothing elevates a 21st century-made World War II flick like an eccentric bad guy? There’s one perfectly executed scene, when reluctant partners Balaban and Murray discover a trove of priceless paintings hidden in plain sight. One scene, out of a two-hour movie, that really works. The rest is a stitched-together pile of earnest intentions that suggests a complete lack of coherent vision. Still love you, Clooney, but you can do better — and this incredible true story deserved way better. (1:58) Balboa, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Nebraska Alexander Payne may be unique at this point in that he’s in a position of being able to make nothing but small, human, and humorous films with major-studio money on his own terms. It’s hazardous to make too much of a movie like Nebraska, because it is small — despite the wide Great Plains landscapes shot in a wide screen format — and shouldn’t be entered into with overinflated or otherwise wrong-headed expectations. Still, a certain gratitude is called for. Nebraska marks the first time Payne and his writing partner Jim Taylor weren’t involved in the script, and the first one since their 1996 Citizen Ruth that isn’t based on someone else’s novel. (Hitherto little-known Bob Nelson’s original screenplay apparently first came to Payne’s notice a decade ago, but getting put off in favor of other projects.) It could easily have been a novel, though, as the things it does very well (internal thought, sense of place, character nuance) and the things it doesn’t much bother with (plot, action, dialogue) are more in line with literary fiction than commercial cinema. Elderly Woody T. Grant (Bruce Dern) keeps being found grimly trudging through snow and whatnot on the outskirts of Billings, Mont., bound for Lincoln, Neb. Brain fuzzed by age and booze, he’s convinced he’s won a million dollars and needs to collect it him there, though eventually it’s clear that something bigger than reality — or senility, even — is compelling him to make this trek. Long-suffering younger son David (Will Forte) agrees to drive him in order to simply put the matter to rest. This fool’s mission acquires a whole extended family-full of other fools when father and son detour to the former’s podunk farming hometown. Nebraska has no moments so funny or dramatic they’d look outstanding in excerpt; low-key as they were, 2009’s Sideways and 2011’s The Descendants had bigger set pieces and narrative stakes. But like those movies, this one just ambles along until you realize you’re completely hooked, all positive emotional responses on full alert. (1:55) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

The Nut Job (1:26) Metreon.

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Animated” Five nominees — plus a trio of “highly commended” additional selections — fill this program. If you saw Frozen in the theater, you’ve seen Get a Horse!, starring old-timey Mickey Mouse and some very modern moviemaking techniques. There’s also Room on the Broom, based on a children’s book about a kindly witch who’s a little too generous when it comes to befriending outcast animals (much to the annoyance of her original companion, a persnickety cat). Simon Pegg narrates, and Gillian Anderson voices the red-headed witch; listen also for Mike Leigh regulars Sally Hawkins and Timothy Spall. Japanese Possessions is based on even older source material: a spooky legend that discarded household objects can gain the power to cause mischief. A good-natured fix-it man ducks into an abandoned house during a rainstorm, only to be confronted with playful parasols, cackling kimono fabric, and a dragon constructed out of kitchen junk. The most artistically striking nominee is Feral, a dialogue-free, impressionistic tale of a foundling who resists attempts to civilize him. But my top pick is another dialogue-free entry: Mr. Hublot, the steampunky tale of an inventor whose regimented life is thrown into disarray when he adopts a stray robot dog, which soon grows into a comically enormous companion. It’s cute without being cloying, and the universe it creates around its characters is cleverly detailed, right down to the pictures on Hublot’s walls. Embarcadero. (Eddy)

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Live Action” With the exception of one entry — wryly comedic The Voorman Problem, starring Sherlock‘s Martin Freeman as a prison doctor who has a most unsettling encounter with an inmate who believes he’s a god — children are a unifying theme among this year’s live-action nominees. Finnish Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?, the shortest in the bunch, follows a cheerfully sloppy family’s frantic morning as they scramble to get themselves to a wedding. Danish Helium skews a little sentimental in its tale of a hospital janitor who makes up stories about a fanciful afterlife (way more fun than heaven) for the benefit of a sickly young patient. Spanish That Wasn’t Me focuses on a different kind of youth entirely: a child soldier in an unnamed African nation, whose brutal encounter with a pair of European doctors leads him down an unexpected path. Though it feels more like a sequence lifted from a longer film rather than a self-contained short, French Just Before Losing Everything is the probably the strongest contender here. The tale of a woman (Léa Drucker) who decides to take her two children and leave her dangerously abusive husband, it unfolds with real-time suspense as she visits her supermarket job one last time to deal with mundane stuff (collecting her last paycheck, turning in her uniform) before the trio can flee to safety. If they gave out Oscars for short-film acting, Drucker would be tough to beat; her performance balances steely determination and extreme fear in equally hefty doses. Embarcadero. (Eddy)

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Documentary (presented in two separata programs)” Opera Plaza.

The Past Splits in country, culture, and a harder-to-pinpoint sense of morality mark The Past, the latest film by Asghar Farhadi, the first Iranian moviemaker to win an Oscar (for 2011’s A Separation.) At the center of The Past‘s onion layers is a seemingly simple divorce of a binational couple, but that act becomes more complicated — and startlingly compelling — in Farhadi’s capable, caring hands. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) has returned to Paris from Tehran, where he’s been living for the past four years, at the request of French wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo of 2011’s The Artist). She wants to legalize their estrangement so she can marry her current boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim of 2009’s A Prophet), whose wife is in a coma. But she isn’t beyond giving out mixed messages by urging Ahmad to stay with her, and her daughters by various fathers, rather than at a hotel — and begging him to talk to teen Lucie (Pauline Burlet), who seems to despise Samir. The warm, nurturing Ahmad falls into his old routine in Marie’s far-from-picturesque neighborhood, visiting a café owned by fellow Iranian immigrants and easily taking over childcare duties for the overwhelmed Marie, as he tries to find out what’s happening with Lucie, who’s holding onto a secret that could threaten Marie’s efforts to move on. The players here are all wonderful, in particular the sad-faced, humane Mosaffa. We never really find out what severed his relationship with Marie, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. We care about, and end up fearing for, all of Farhadi’s everyday characters, who are observed with a tender and unsentimental understanding that US filmmakers could learn from. The effect, when he finally racks focus on the forgotten member of this triangle (or quadrilateral?), is heartbreaking. (2:10) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Philomena Judi Dench gives this twist on a real-life scandal heart, soul, and a nuanced, everyday heft. Her ideal, ironic foil is Steve Coogan, playing an upper-crusty irreverent snob of an investigative journalist. Judging by her tidy exterior, Dench’s title character is a perfectly ordinary Irish working-class senior, but she’s haunted by the past, which comes tumbling out one day to her daughter: As an unwed teenager, she gave birth to a son at a convent. She was forced to work there, unpaid; as supposed penance, the baby was essentially sold to a rich American couple against her consent. Her yarn reaches disgraced reporter Martin Sixsmith (Coogan), who initially turns his nose up at the tale’s piddling “human interest” angle, but slowly gets drawn in by the unexpected twists and turns of the story — and likely the possibility of taking down some evil nuns — as well as seemingly naive Philomena herself, with her delight in trash culture, frank talk about sex, and simple desire to see her son and know that he thought, once in a while, of her. It turns out Philomena’s own sad narrative has as many improbable turnarounds as one of the cheesy romance novels she favors, and though this unexpected twosome’s quest for the truth is strenuously reworked to conform to the contours of buddy movie-road trip arc that we’re all too familiar with, director Stephen Frears’ warm, light-handed take on the gentle class struggles going on between the writer and his subject about who’s in control of the story makes up for Philomena‘s determined quest for mass appeal. (1:35) Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Ride Along By sheer dint of his ability to push his verbosity and non-threatening physicality into that nerd zone between smart and clueless, intelligent and irritating, Kevin Hart may be poised to become Hollywood’s new comedy MVP. In the case of Ride Along, it helps that Ice Cube has comic talents, too — proven in the Friday movies as well as in 2012’s 21 Jump Street — as the straight man who can actually scowl and smile at the same time. Together, in Ride Along, they bring the featherweight pleasures of Rush Hour-style odd-couple chortles. Hart is Ben, a gamer geek and school security guard shooting to become the most wrinkly student at the police academy. He looks up to hardened, street-smart cop James (Cube), brother of his new fiancée, Angela (Tika Sumpter). Naturally, instead of simply blessing the nuptials, the tough guy decides to haze the shut-in, disabusing him of any illusions he might have of being his equal. More-than-equal talents like Laurence Fishburne and John Leguizamo are pretty much wasted here — apart from Fishburne’s ultra lite impression of Matrix man Morpheus — but if you don’t expect much more than the chuckles eked out of Ride Along‘s commercials, you won’t be too disappointed by this nontaxing journey. (1:40) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Saving Mr. Banks Having promised his daughters that he would make a movie of their beloved Mary Poppins books, Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) has laid polite siege to author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) for over 20 years. Now, in the early 1960s, she has finally consented to discuss the matter in Los Angeles — albeit with great reluctance, and only because royalty payments have dried up to the point where she might have to sell her London home. Bristling at being called “Pam” and everything else in this sunny SoCal and relentlessly cheery Mouse House environ, the acidic English spinster regards her creation as sacred. The least proposed changes earn her horrified dismissal, and the very notion of having Mary and company “prancing and chirping” out songs amid cartoon elements is taken as blasphemy. This clash of titans could have made for a barbed comedy with satirical elements, but god forbid this actual Disney production should get so cheeky. Instead, we get the formulaically dramatized tale of a shrew duly tamed by all-American enterprise, with flashbacks to the inevitable past traumas (involving Colin Farrell as a beloved but alcoholic ne’er-do-well father) that require healing of Travers’ wounded inner child by the magic of the Magic Kingdom. If you thought 2004’s Finding Neverland was contrived feel-good stuff, you’ll really choke on the spoons full of sugar force-fed here. (2:06) Metreon. (Harvey)

The Square Like the single lit candle at the very start of The Square — a flicker of hope amid the darkness of Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship — the initial street scenes of the leader’s Feb. 11, 2011, announcement that he was stepping down launch Jehane Noujaim’s documentary on a euphoric note. It’s a lot to take in: the evocative shots of Tahrir Square, the graffiti on the streets, the movement’s troubadours, and the faces of the activists she follows — the youthful Ahmed Hassan, British-reared Kite Runner (2007) actor-turned-citizen journalist Khalid Abdalla, and Muslim Brotherhood acolyte Magdy Ashour, among them. Yet that first glimmer of joy and unity among the diverse individuals who toppled a dictatorship was only the very beginning of a journey — which the Egyptian American Noujaim does a remarkable job documenting, in all its twists, turns, multiple protests, and voices. Unflinching albeit even-handed footage of the turnabouts, hypocrisies, and injustices committed by the Brotherhood, powers-that-be, the army, and the police during the many actions occurring between 2011 and the 2013 removal of Mohammed Morsi will stay with you, including the sight of a tank plowing down protestors with murderous force and soldiers firing live rounds at activists armed only with stones. “We found ourselves loving each other without realizing it,” says Hassan of those heady first days, and Noujaim brings you right there and to their aftermath, beautifully capturing ordinary people coming together, eating, joking, arguing, feeling empowered and discouraged, forming unlikely friendships, setting up makeshift hospitals on the street, and risking everything, in this powerful document of an unfolding real-life epic. (1:44) Marina. (Chun)

Stranger by the Lake Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) is an attractive young French guy spending his summer days hanging at the local gay beach, where he strikes up a platonic friendship with chunky older loner Henri (Patrick d’Assumcao). Still, the latter is obviously hurt when Franck practically gets whiplash neck swiveling at the sight of Michel (Christophe Paou), an old-school gay fantasy figure — think Sam Elliott in 1976’s Lifeguard, complete with Marlboro Man ‘stache and twinkling baby blues. No one else seems to be paying attention when Franck sees his lust object frolicking in the surf with an apparent boyfriend, one that doesn’t surface again after some playful “dunking” gets rather less playful. Eventually the police come around in the form of Inspector Damroder (Jerome Chappatte), but Franck stays mum — he isn’t sure what exactly he saw. Or maybe it’s that he’s quite sure he’s happy how things turned out, now that sex-on-wheels Michel is his sorta kinda boyfriend. You have to suspend considerable disbelief to accept that our protagonist would risk potentially serious danger for what seems pretty much a glorified fuck-buddy situation. But Alain Guiraudie’s meticulously schematic thriller- which limits all action to the terrain between parking lot and shore, keeping us almost wholly ignorant of the characters’ regular lives — repays that leap with an absorbing, ingenious structural rigor. Stranger is Hitchcockian, all right, even if the “Master of Suspense” might applaud its technique while blushing at its blunt homoeroticism. (1:37) Clay. (Harvey)

That Awkward Moment When these bro-mancers call each other “idiots,” which they do repeatedly, it’s awkward all right, because that descriptor hits all too close to home. Jason (Zac Efron) and Daniel (Miles Teller) are douchey book-marketing boy geniuses, with all the ego and fratty attitude needed to dispense bad advice and push doctor friend Mikey (Michael B. Jordan), whose wife recently broke it off after an affair with her lawyer, into an agreement to play the field — no serious dating allowed. The pretext: Anything to avoid, yup, that awkward moment when the lady has the temerity to ask, “So — where is this going?” How fortuitous that Jason should run into the smartest, cutest author in NYC (Imogen Poots), all sharp-tongued charisma and sparkling Emma Stone-y cat eyes; that Daniel would get embroiled with his Charlotte Rampling-like wing woman (Mackenzie Davis); and Mikey would edge back into bed with his ex. That’s the worst — or best — these tepid lotharios can muster. The education of these numbskulls when it comes to love and lust aspires to the much-edgier self-criticism of Girls — but despite the presence of Fruitvale Station (2013) breakout Jordan and the likable Poots, first-time director Tom Gormican’s screenplay lets them down. (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

12 Years a Slave Pop culture’s engagement with slavery has always been uneasy. Landmark 1977 miniseries Roots set ratings records, but the prestigious production capped off a decade that had seen some more questionable endeavors, including 1975 exploitation flick Mandingo — often cited by Quentin Tarantino as one of his favorite films; it was a clear influence on his 2012 revenge fantasy Django Unchained, which approached its subject matter in a manner that paid homage to the Westerns it riffed on: with guns blazing. By contrast, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is nuanced and steeped in realism. Though it does contain scenes of violence (deliberately captured in long takes by regular McQueen collaborator Sean Bobbitt, whose cinematography is one of the film’s many stylistic achievements), the film emphasizes the horrors of “the peculiar institution” by repeatedly showing how accepted and ingrained it was. Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, an African American man who was sold into slavery in 1841 and survived to pen a wrenching account of his experiences. He’s portrayed here by the powerful Chiwetel Ejiofor. Other standout performances come courtesy of McQueen favorite Michael Fassbender (as Epps, a plantation owner who exacerbates what’s clearly an unwell mind with copious amounts of booze) and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, as a slave who attracts Epps’ cruel attentions. (2:14) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Vampire Academy (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Wolf of Wall Street Three hours long and breathless from start to finish, Martin Scorsese’s tale of greed, stock-market fraud, and epic drug consumption has a lot going on — and the whole thing hinges on a bravado, breakneck performance by latter-day Scorsese muse Leonardo DiCaprio. As real-life sleaze Jordan Belfort (upon whose memoir the film is based), he distills all of his golden DiCaprio-ness into a loathsome yet maddeningly likable character who figures out early in his career that being rich is way better than being poor, and that being fucked-up is, likewise, much preferable to being sober. The film also boasts keen supporting turns from Jonah Hill (as Belfort’s crass, corrupt second-in-command), Matthew McConaughey (who has what amounts to a cameo — albeit a supremely memorable one — as Belfort’s coke-worshiping mentor), Jean Dujardin (as a slick Swiss banker), and newcomer Margot Robbie (as Belfort’s cunning trophy wife). But this is primarily the Leo and Marty Show, and is easily their most entertaining episode to date. Still, don’t look for an Oscar sweep: Scorsese just hauled huge for 2011’s Hugo, and DiCaprio’s flashy turn will likely be passed over by voters more keen on honoring subtler work in a shorter film. (2:59) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy) *

 

England made him

Michael Redmond
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0
England made him

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Swinging London had a brief, faddish life in movies in terms of actual representation, far more fleeting than its influences on music or fashion. But the general cultural shift it signaled did bring some lasting changes to English cinema, notably a new kind of leading man — the period’s celebration of youth and dandyism made it OK for men onscreen to be coltish, vulnerable, androgynously attractive. The prime specimen was Michael York, unabashedly pretty and a bit of a toff — certainly no working-class rough like Angry Young Men Albert Finney or Michael Caine.

The Oxford grad joined Olivier’s National Theatre in 1965, getting cast in a production directed by Franco Zeffirelli, who then put him in his filmed hits The Taming of the Shrew (1967) and Romeo and Juliet (1968). But it wasn’t until 1972 that he was seen by everyone as the Christopher Isherwood figure in Bob Fosse’s exceptionally sharp Cabaret, the Broadway musical drawn from that author’s fictionalized memoir. Never mind that he (nor Liza Minnelli, for that matter) would never really be a box-office star; as a name, he was made.

York had a good run through the 1970s. He was D’Artagnan in Richard Lester’s Musketeer films (1973 and ’74), the titular tunic-wearer in 1976’s Logan’s Run, among the stars committing Murder on the Orient Express (1974), John the Baptist in Zeffirelli’s 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, and straight man in both The Last Remake of Beau Geste and the hardly-last Island of Dr. Moreau remake (both 1977).

But the favorite film he’s chosen for his in-person tribute this Saturday at SF’s Mostly British Film Festival is comparatively little-remembered. You could view 1973’s England Made Me as riding the coattails of Cabaret — after all, here he is again as another affable, genteel but cash-poor temporary English émigré to Germany just as the Weimer era is getting tramped by the stormtrooper boots of National Socialism. But the Graham Greene source material (first published in 1935) is strong stuff, intelligently handled by director and co-adaptor Peter Duffell.

York’s Tony Farrant is a pleasant, callow young failure, hopeless at any endeavor that might pay the bills. Having lost yet another job (this time in the Far East), he blows into Berlin to visit Kate (Hildegard Neil), the sister whose queasily inappropriate affections he’s oblivious enough not to have recognized as such, yet. She’s ensconced herself as mistress and second-in-command to Krogh (Peter Finch), international financial titan skating on thin ice amid Hitler’s increasingly nationalistic economic policies.

Once again in need of employment, Tony looks to get fixed up by big sis — in fact, his pleasing, sociable English manners could be quite useful to a man as brilliant yet uneasy with people as Krogh. Then again, his gabby naiveté could also jinx matters much bigger than he grasps. It’s inevitable in Greene’s universe that cruel fate should choose the least guilty party in a web of corrupt intrigue to fall upon, like an anvil from a rooftop.

The role could hardly fall more squarely in York’s comfort zone. Yet it would be a mistake to take the seeming ease with which he delivers Tony’s very easy personality as anything less than very deft work. No wonder it’s a personal favorite — you can sense his engagement in a hundred fresh, surprising, perfectly in-character touches.

After his Seventies peak, York remained busy. But his type began working against him — an ingenue’s worst enemy (even a male one’s) is the onslaught of age — and he didn’t transition as well as some peers to character roles. He slid down the ranks via such odd stints as a short run on Dynasty knockoff Knots Landing and playing Dario Argento’s Phantom of Death in 1988 (the director saving the word “opera” for a later movie). Eventually he was seldom used save to personify old-school Englishness as a joke or fossil, whether visibly (as Basil Exposition in the Austin Powers series) or as a voice actor (as a Transformer, in Star Wars and Batman cartoons, video games, audio books, etc.) In recent years he’s also written several well-received memoirs and lectured extensively on acting Shakespeare.

England Made Me is not the only older film in Mostly British this year, though it’s the only one that comes with a living star in person. No one will be resuscitating the recently decreased Peter O’Toole, memorialized with a screening of 1982’s My Favorite Year; nor will there be any thawing for Richard Burton as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, 1965’s faithfully bleak adaptation of John le Carré’s breakthrough novel. The latter film plays a “British noir night” with Stephen Frears’ bizarre and rather brilliant 1984 The Hit.

Otherwise the focus, as usual, is on new (or new-ish) films from the UK and beyond. Some have already played theatrically here, like Neil Jordan’s middling vampire opus Byzantium (2012), Beatles-related documentary Good Ol’ Freda (2013), and Michael Winterbottom’s biopic about the UK’s sultan of 1960s and ’70s smut, The Look of Love (2013).

Coming soon to theaters — sooner still if you catch them as part of the festival — are director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi’s excellent seriocomedy Le Week-End, as well as Mumbai-set The Lunchbox. Speaking of the colonies, outback thriller Mystery Road and kidnapping drama Last Dance represent Australia.

If you appreciated Will Forte’s turn in Nebraska (2013), it’s worth seeing Run & Jump, in which he’s equally effective as an American doctor whose emotions unfreeze while doing research in Ireland — also the setting for Stay, a drearier piece distinguished by Aidan Quinn’s fine take on the stereotypical Irish rascally charmer. What Richard Did is a quietly intriguing melodrama about middle-class teenagers shaken by the aftermath of a fight outside a house party. Farther down the socioeconomic scale, Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant offers a portrait of children involved in petty crimes that’s as potent as the best of Ken Loach or the Dardennes. *

MOSTLY BRITISH FILM FESTIVAL

Feb. 13-20

Vogue Theatre

3290 Sacramento, SF

www.mostlybritish.org

 

The trouble with compromise

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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44

“It takes no compromise to give people their rights… It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.” — Harvey Milk

OPINION As I sat in the audience at the Jan. 23 San Francisco Young Democrats meeting and watched the first debate between David Campos and David Chiu in their race to represent San Francisco’s 17th Assembly District, I was disturbed to hear the words “compromise” and “consensus” come out of David Chiu’s mouth more often than the words “eviction” and “displacement.”

During the debate, a line in the sand was drawn by the two candidates: Campos was on the side of the underdog, a voice to the voiceless; and Chiu, by his own admission, was all about compromise and “getting things done.”

Don’t get me wrong. True compromise can be a good thing. Unfortunately, what has been coming out of City Hall, from both President Chiu’s Board of Supervisors chamber and the Mayor’s Office, hasn’t been real compromise. It’s been a wholesale selling of our city to the highest bidder. The only thing that our leadership’s compromises have yielded is a compromised San Francisco.

Compromise gave corporations millions of dollars in tax breaks and it has forced nonprofits and small businesses out of our neighborhoods. Compromise has not resulted in any substantive action to curb Ellis Act evictions, instead serving to green light the building of luxury condo towers throughout the city. Compromise has allowed queer youth shelters and our parks to be closed to the people who need them as a last resort, as our bus stops have been opened up to billionaires for little more than pennies.

Chiu’s compromises have cost this city dearly. His compromise with developers on Parkmerced will lead to the demolition of 1,500 units of rent-controlled housing. His compromise on Healthy San Francisco allowed restaurant owners to continue to defraud consumers and to pocket money that should have gone to health care for their employees. His compromise on Muni killed a much-needed ballot initiative that would have resulted in an additional $40 million for the agency — a ballot initiative that he originally co-authored.

Please forgive me if I am fed up with compromise and am demanding actual leadership from my representatives.

Now is the time to stand with people of color, with members of the LGBTQ community, with our youth and elders, with artists and with small businesses, all of whom are being forced out of our city.

Thankfully, we have another choice. Sup. David Campos has shown that real change comes not from compromising your values but standing up for your principles. His legislative accomplishments include providing free Muni for low-income youth, protecting women’s right to choose at the Planned Parenthood Clinic, and preventing teacher layoffs at our public schools.

Campos has demonstrated that he, not Chiu, is the right choice to follow Tom Ammiano’s footsteps to Sacramento. Ammiano, who had 13 of his 13 bills signed into law this past year, is the perfect example of the success that can come from leading with your principles and not compromising your integrity.

San Francisco needs a leader representing us in the capital. Successful victories in reforming the Ellis Act and closing the Prop. 13 tax loophole will take a leader who can stand up to landlords and corporations, not a compromiser who will sit down at the table in a backroom with them.

That is why I will give my all to make sure that David Campos is our next representative in Sacramento. Pardon me if I refuse to compromise.

Tom Temprano is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

Film Listings: February 5 – 11, 2014

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

OPENING

Gloria The titular figure in Sebastian Lelio’s film is a Santiago divorcee and white collar worker (Paulina Garcia) pushing 60, living alone in a condo apartment — well, almost alone, since like Inside Llewyn Davis, this movie involves the frequent, unwanted company of somebody else’s cat. (That somebody is an upstairs neighbor whose solo wailings against cruel fate disturb her sleep.) Her two children are grown up and preoccupied with their adult lives. Not quite ready for the glue factory yet, Gloria often goes to a disco for the “older crowd,” dancing by herself if she has to, but still hoping for some romantic prospects. She gets them in the form of Rodolfo (Sergio Hernandez), who’s more recently divorced but gratifyingly infatuated with her. Unfortunately, he’s also let his daughters and ex-wife remain ominously dependent on him, not just financially but in every emotional crisis that affects their apparently crisis-filled lives. The extent to which Gloria lets him into her life is not reciprocated, and she becomes increasingly aware how distant her second-place priority status is whenever Rodolfo’s other loved ones snap their fingers. There’s not a lot of plot but plenty of incident and insight to this character study, a portrait of a “spinster” that neither slathers on the sentimental uplift or piles on melodramatic victimizations. Instead, Gloria is memorably, satisfyingly just right. (1:50) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Lego Movie The toy becomes a movie. Fun fact: Nick Offerman gives voice to a character named “Metalbeard,” a revenge-seeking pirate. So it’s got that going for it, which is nice. (1:41) Balboa, Presidio.

Monuments Men George Clooney directs this World War II-set film about an unlikely platoon sent into Germany to rescue artworks being plundered by Nazi thieves. With Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, and John Goodman. (1:58) Balboa, Marina.

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Documentary” This year, the Oscar-nominated docs are presented in two separate feature-length programs. Program A contains The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, about a Holocaust survivor; Karama Has No Walls, about protestors in Yemen during the Arab Spring; and Facing Fear, about a gay man who encounters the neo-Nazi who terrorized him 25 years prior. Program B contains Cavedigger, about environmental sculptor Ra Paulette; and Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall, about a dying prisoner being cared for by other prisoners. Opera Plaza.

Stranger by the Lake Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) is an attractive young French guy spending his summer days hanging at the local gay beach, where he strikes up a platonic friendship with chunky older loner Henri (Patrick d’Assumcao). Still, the latter is obviously hurt when Franck practically gets whiplash neck swiveling at the sight of Michel (Christophe Paou), an old-school gay fantasy figure — think Sam Elliott in 1976’s Lifeguard, complete with Marlboro Man ‘stache and twinkling baby blues. No one else seems to be paying attention when Franck sees his lust object frolicking in the surf with an apparent boyfriend, one that doesn’t surface again after some playful “dunking” gets rather less playful. Eventually the police come around in the form of Inspector Damroder (Jerome Chappatte), but Franck stays mum — he isn’t sure what exactly he saw. Or maybe it’s that he’s quite sure he’s happy how things turned out, now that sex-on-wheels Michel is his sorta kinda boyfriend. You have to suspend considerable disbelief to accept that our protagonist would risk potentially serious danger for what seems pretty much a glorified fuck-buddy situation. But Alain Guiraudie’s meticulously schematic thriller- which limits all action to the terrain between parking lot and shore, keeping us almost wholly ignorant of the characters’ regular lives — repays that leap with an absorbing, ingenious structural rigor. Stranger is Hitchcockian, all right, even if the “Master of Suspense” might applaud its technique while blushing at its blunt homoeroticism. (1:37) Clay, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Top Secret! After the sleeper smash of 1980’s Airplane! (and the TV failure of 1982’s Police Squad! series, which nonetheless led directly to the later, successful Naked Gun movies), the Madison, Wisc.-spawned comedy trio of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker had one more exclamation point up their collective sleeves. That resulted in this hit 1984 parody of Cold War spy movies (and Elvis Presley musicals) starring Val Kilmer (in his perpetually open-mouthed film debut) as hip-swiveling American rock star Nick Rivers, who is dispatched to East Germany on a diplomatic entertainment mission. Instead, he gets yanked into major intrigue that includes kidnapped scientists, Omar Sharif, an elaborate Blue Lagoon (1980) spoof, and of course extremely realistic cow disguises. It also features this immortal exchange between Nazi-Commies, as they’re torturing captured Nick: “Do you vant me to bring out ze LeRoy Neiman paintings?” “No — ve cannot risk violating ze Geneva Convention!” Herrs Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker will reunite on the Castro stage to screen and discuss their incisive political classic as it enters its fourth decade of cultdom. The 30th anniversary afternoon program is co-presented by SF Sketchfest (www.sfsketchfest.com), Midnites for Maniacs, Noise Pop, and the Jewish Film Festival. Castro. (Harvey)

Vampire Academy Bloodsuckers go to high school in this adaptation of the YA series directed by Mark Waters (2004’s Mean Girls). (1:45)

ONGOING

American Hustle David O. Russell’s American Hustle is like a lot of things you’ve seen before — put in a blender, so the results are too smooth to feel blatantly derivative, though here and there you taste a little Boogie Nights (1997), Goodfellas (1990), or whatever. Loosely based on the Abscam FBI sting-scandal of the late 1970s and early ’80s (an opening title snarks “Some of this actually happened”), Hustle is a screwball crime caper almost entirely populated by petty schemers with big ideas almost certain to blow up in their faces. It’s love, or something, at first sight for Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who meet at a Long Island party circa 1977 and instantly fall for each other — or rather for the idealized selves they’ve both strained to concoct. He’s a none-too-classy but savvy operator who’s built up a mini-empire of variably legal businesses; she’s a nobody from nowhere who crawled upward and gave herself a bombshell makeover. The hiccup in this slightly tacky yet perfect match is Irving’s neglected, crazy wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), who’s not about to let him go. She’s their main problem until they meet Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), an ambitious FBI agent who entraps the two while posing as a client. Their only way out of a long prison haul, he says, is to cooperate in an elaborate Atlantic City redevelopment scheme he’s concocted to bring down a slew of Mafioso and presumably corrupt politicians, hustling a beloved Jersey mayor (Jeremy Renner) in the process. Russell’s filmmaking is at a peak of populist confidence it would have been hard to imagine before 2010’s The Fighter, and the casting here is perfect down to the smallest roles. But beyond all clever plotting, amusing period trappings, and general high energy, the film’s ace is its four leads, who ingeniously juggle the caricatured surfaces and pathetic depths of self-identified “winners” primarily driven by profound insecurity. (2:17) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

August: Osage County Considering the relative infrequency of theater-to-film translations today, it’s a bit of a surprise that Tracy Letts had two movies made from his plays before he even got to Broadway. Bug and Killer Joe proved a snug fit for director William Friedkin (in 2006 and 2011, respectively), but both plays were too outré for the kind of mainstream success accorded 2007’s August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer, ran 18 months on Broadway, and toured the nation. As a result, August was destined — perhaps doomed — to be a big movie, the kind that shoehorns a distracting array of stars into an ensemble piece, playing jes’ plain folk. But what seemed bracingly rude as well as somewhat traditional under the proscenium lights just looks like a lot of reheated Country Gothic hash, and the possibility of profundity you might’ve been willing to consider before is now completely off the menu. If you haven’t seen August before (or even if you have), there may be sufficient fun watching stellar actors chew the scenery with varying degrees of panache — Meryl Streep (who else) as gorgon matriarch Violet Weston; Sam Shepard as her long-suffering spouse; Julia Roberts as pissed-off prodigal daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts), etc. You know the beats: Late-night confessions, drunken hijinks, disastrous dinners, secrets (infidelity, etc.) spilling out everywhere like loose change from moth-eaten trousers. The film’s success story, I suppose, is Roberts: She seems very comfortable with her character’s bitter anger, and the four-letter words tumble past those jumbo lips like familiar friends. On the downside, there’s Streep, who’s a wizard and a wonder as usual yet also in that mode supporting the naysayers’ view that such conspicuous technique prevents our getting lost in her characters. If Streep can do anything, then logic decrees that includes being miscast. (2:10) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Dallas Buyers Club Dallas Buyers Club is the first all-US feature from Jean-Marc Vallée. He first made a splash in 2005 with C.R.A.Z.Y., which seemed an archetype of the flashy, coming-of-age themed debut feature. Vallée has evolved beyond flashiness, or maybe since C.R.A.Z.Y. he just hasn’t had a subject that seemed to call for it. Which is not to say Dallas is entirely sober — its characters partake from the gamut of altering substances, over-the-counter and otherwise. But this is a movie about AIDS, so the purely recreational good times must eventually crash to an end. Which they do pretty quickly. We first meet Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) in 1986, a Texas good ol’ boy endlessly chasing skirts and partying nonstop. Not feeling quite right, he visits a doctor, who informs him that he is HIV-positive. His response is “I ain’t no faggot, motherfucker” — and increased partying that he barely survives. Afterward, he pulls himself together enough to research his options, and bribes a hospital attendant into raiding its trial supply of AZT for him. But Ron also discovers the hard way what many first-generation AIDS patients did — that AZT is itself toxic. He ends up in a Mexican clinic run by a disgraced American physician (Griffin Dunne) who recommends a regime consisting mostly of vitamins and herbal treatments. Ron realizes a commercial opportunity, and finds a business partner in willowy cross-dresser Rayon (Jared Leto). When the authorities keep cracking down on their trade, savvy Ron takes a cue from gay activists in Manhattan and creates a law evading “buyers club” in which members pay monthly dues rather than paying directly for pharmaceutical goods. It’s a tale that the scenarists (Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack) and director steep in deep Texan atmospherics, and while it takes itself seriously when and where it ought, Dallas Buyers Club is a movie whose frequent, entertaining jauntiness is based in that most American value: get-rich-quick entrepreneurship. (1:58) Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Harvey)

Devil’s Due (1:29) Metreon.

Frozen (1:48) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Gimme Shelter Pope Francis has been making up for lost time, but nevertheless, it’s tough to get a good dose of up-with-Catholicism promotional material these days. Like Francis, Gimme Shelter aims to highlight the church’s tangible and spiritual support to those in need — and here, in this movie based on a real story, would-be teen moms uninterested or unwilling to abort. Oh yes, and it’s down to shelter those battered by bad press about pedophile priests and provide a role with some meat to an ingenue itching to grow. Vanessa Hudgens is that actress, who seems to be making the right career moves following last year’s Spring Breakers by playing crust-punk teen runaway Apple. The girl is trying to break away from her abusive, cracked-out mom (Rosario Dawson) and is forced to reconnect with her privileged stranger of a dad (Brendan Fraser). The cherry — or lack thereof — on top of her troubles is the fact that she’s preggers, which inspires her father’s pinched spouse (Stephanie Szostak) to march her straight to the clinic to terminate. With the help of a hospital priest Frank (James Earl Jones), she finds, yes, shelter in a home for teen moms in need, though we never quite understand why Apple is so determined to have the child —especially when her own mother, brought scarily to life by an intense, unrecognizable Dawson, is such a monster. Still, it’s a measure of how believable Hudgens is, working with what little she has in the way of verbiage, that a viewer is touched by her trajectory. Meanwhile the avid film fan can’t help but wonder how this well-meaning movie — which incidentally has absolutely nothing to do with the Stones and doesn’t quite deserve this way-too-literal title — would have unfolded in the hands of a Lee Daniels or even a Olivier Assayas. (1:40) SF Center. (Chun)

The Girls in the Band Judy Chaikin’s upbeat documentary is in step with the recent, not-unwelcome trend of bringing overlooked musicians into the spotlight (think last year’s Twenty Feet from Stardom and A Band Called Death). The Girls in the Band takes a chronological look at women in the big-band and jazz scenes, taking the 1958’s “A Great Day in Harlem” as a visual jumping-off point, sharing the stories of two (out of just three) women who posed amid that sea of male musicians. One is British pianist Marian McPartland, who’s extensively featured in interviews shot before her death last year; the other is gifted composer and arranger Mary Lou Williams, who died in 1981 but left behind a rich legacy that still inspires. Others featured in this doc (which culminates in a re-creation of that famous Harlem photo shoot — with all-female subjects this time) include saxophone- and trumpet-playing members of the multi-racial, all-female International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which toured the segregated south at great peril during the 1930s and was a favorite among African American servicemen during World War II. No matter her race, nearly every woman interviewed cites the raging sexism inherent in the music biz — but the film’s final third, which focuses on contemporary successes like Esperanza Spalding, suggests that stubborn roadblock is finally being chipped away. (1:26) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Great Beauty The latest from Paolo Sorrentino (2008’s Il Divo) arrives as a high-profile contender for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, already annointed a masterpiece in some quarters, and duly announcing itself as such in nearly every grandiose, aesthetically engorged moment. Yes, it seems to say, you are in the presence of this auteur’s masterpiece. But it’s somebody else’s, too. The problem isn’t just that Fellini got there first, but that there’s room for doubt whether Sorrentino’s homage actually builds on or simply imitates its model. La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963) are themselves swaying, jerry-built monuments, exhileratingly messy and debatably profound. But nothing quite like them had been seen before, and they did define a time of cultural upheaval — when traditional ways of life were being plowed under by a loud, moneyed, heedless modernity that for a while chose Rome as its global capital. Sorrentino announces his intention to out-Fellini Fellini in an opening sequence so strenuously flamboyant it’s like a never-ending pirouette performed by a prima dancer with a hernia. There’s statuary, a women’s choral ensemble, an on-screen audience applauding the director’s baffled muse Toni Servillo, standing in for Marcello Mastroianni — all this and more in manic tracking shots and frantic intercutting, as if sheer speed alone could supply contemporary relevancy. Eventually The Great Beauty calms down a bit, but still its reason for being remains vague behind the heavy curtain of “style.” (2:22) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Her Morose and lonely after a failed marriage, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) drifts through an appealingly futuristic Los Angeles (more skyscrapers, less smog) to his job at a place so hipster-twee it probably will exist someday: beautifulhandwrittenletters.com, where he dictates flowery missives to a computer program that scrawls them onto paper for paying customers. Theodore’s scripting of dialogue between happy couples, as most of his clients seem to be, only enhances his sadness, though he’s got friends who care about him (in particular, Amy Adams as Amy, a frumpy college chum) and he appears to have zero money woes, since his letter-writing gig funds a fancy apartment equipped with a sweet video-game system. Anyway, women are what gives Theodore trouble — and maybe by extension, writer-director Spike Jonze? — so he seeks out the ultimate gal pal: Samantha, an operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the year’s best disembodied performance. Thus begins a most unusual relationship, but not so unusual; Theodore’s friends don’t take any issue with the fact that his new love is a machine. Hey, in Her‘s world, everyone’s deeply involved with their chatty, helpful, caring, always-available OS — why wouldn’t Theo take it to the next level? Inevitably, of course, complications arise. If Her‘s romantic arc feels rather predictable, the film acquits itself in other ways, including boundlessly clever production-design touches that imagine a world with technology that’s (mostly) believably evolved from what exists today. Also, the pants they wear in the future? Must be seen to be believed. (2:00) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Just when you’d managed to wipe 2012’s unwieldy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey from your mind, here comes its sequel — and it’s actually good! Yes, it’s too long (Peter Jackson wouldn’t have it any other way); arachnophobes (and maybe small children) will have trouble with the creepy, giant-spider battle; and Orlando Bloom, reprising his Lord of the Rings role as Legolas the elf, has been CG’d to the point of looking like he’s carved out of plastic. But there’s much more to enjoy this time around, with a quicker pace (no long, drawn-out dinner parties); winning performances by Martin Freeman (Bilbo), Ian McKellan (Gandalf); and Benedict Cumberbatch (as the petulent voice of Smaug the dragon); and more shape to the quest, as the crew of dwarves seeks to reclaim their homeland, and Gandalf pokes into a deeper evil that’s starting to overtake Middle-earth. (We all know how that ends.) In addition to Cumberbatch, the cast now includes Lost‘s Evangeline Lilly as elf Tauriel, who doesn’t appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original story, but whose lady-warrior presence is a welcome one; and Luke Evans as Bard, a human poised to play a key role in defeating Smaug in next year’s trilogy-ender, There and Back Again. (2:36) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Before succumbing to the hot and heavy action inside the arena (intensely directed by Francis Lawrence) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire force-feeds you a world of heinous concept fashions that’d make Lady Gaga laugh. But that’s ok, because the second film about one girl’s epic struggle to change the world of Panem may be even more exciting than the first. Suzanne Collins’ YA novel The Hunger Games was an over-literal metaphor for junior high social survival and the glory of Catching Fire is that it depicts what comes after you reach the cool kids’ table. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) inspired so much hope among the 12 districts she now faces pressures from President Snow (a portentous Donald Sutherland) and the fanatical press of Capital City (Stanley Tucci with big teeth and Toby Jones with big hair). After she’s forced to fake a romance with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), the two watch with horror as they’re faced with a new Hunger Game: for returning victors, many of whom are too old to run. Amanda Plummer and Jeffrey Wright are fun as brainy wackjobs and Jena Malone is hilariously Amazonian as a serial axe grinder still screaming like an eighth grader. Inside the arena, alliances and rivalries shift but the winner’s circle could survive to see another revolution; to save this city, they may have to burn it down. (2:26) Metreon. (Vizcarrondo)

I, Frankenstein (1:33) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Inside Llewyn Davis In the Coen Brothers’ latest, Oscar Isaac as the titular character is well on his way to becoming persona non grata in 1961 NYC — particularly in the Greenwich Village folk music scene he’s an ornery part of. He’s broke, running out of couches to crash on, has recorded a couple records that have gone nowhere, and now finds out he’s impregnated the wife (Carey Mulligan) and musical partner of one among the few friends (Justin Timberlake) he has left. She’s furious with herself over this predicament, but even more furious at him. This ambling, anecdotal tale finds Llewyn running into one exasperating hurdle after another as he burns his last remaining bridges, not just in Manhattan but on a road trip to Chicago undertaken with an overbearing jazz musician (John Goodman) and his enigmatic driver (Garrett Hedlund) to see a club impresario (F. Murray Abraham). This small, muted, droll Coens exercise is perfectly handled in terms of performance and atmosphere, with pleasures aplenty in its small plot surprises, myriad humorous idiosyncrasies, and T. Bone Burnett’s sweetened folk arrangements. But whether it actually has anything to say about its milieu (a hugely important Petri dish for later ’60s political and musical developments), or adds up to anything more profound than an beautifully executed shaggy-dog story, will be a matter of personal taste — or perhaps of multiple viewings. (1:45) Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Invisible Woman Charles Dickens was a regular scold of the British class system and its repercussions, particularly the gentry’s general acceptance that poverty was something the bottom rung of society was suited for, perhaps even deserved. Given how many in positions of power would have preferred such issues go ignored, it was all the more important their highest-profile advocate be of unimpeachable “moral character” — which in the Victorian era meant a very high standard of conduct indeed. So it remains remarkable that in long married middle-age he heedlessly risked scandal and possible career-ruin by taking on a much younger mistress. Both she and he eventually burned all their mutual correspondence, so Claire Tomalin’s biography The Invisible Woman is partly a speculative work. But it and now Ralph Fiennes’ film of the same name are fascinating glimpses into the clash between public life and private passion in that most judgmentally prudish of epochs. Framed by scenes of its still-secretive heroine several years after the central events, the movie introduces us to a Dickens (Fiennes) who at mid-career is already the most famous man in the UK. In his lesser-remembered capacity as a playwright and director, at age 45 (in 1857) he hired 18-year-old actress Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones) for an ingénue role. He was instantly smitten; she was, at the least, awed by this great man’s attention. Their professional association permitted some further contact without generating much gossip. But eventually Dickens chafed at the restraints necessary to avoid scandal — no matter the consequences to himself, let alone his wife, his 10 (!) children, or Ternan herself. Fiennes, by all accounts an exceptional Shakespearean actor on stage, made a strong directorial debut in 2011 with that guy’s war play, Coriolanus — a movie that, like this one, wasn’t enough of a conventional prestige film or crowd-pleaser to surf the awards-season waves very long. But they’re both films of straightforward confidence, great intelligence, and unshowy good taste that extends to avoiding any vanity project whiff. (1:51) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Throwback Terror Thursday, anyone? If the early Bourne entries leapt ahead of then-current surveillance technology in their paranoia-inducing ability to Find-Replace-Eliminate international villains wherever they were in the world, then Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit flails in the opposite direction — toward a nonsensical, flag-waving mixture of Cold War and War on Terror phobias. So when covert mucky-muck Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner) solemnly warns that if mild-mannered former Marine and secret CIA analyst Jack Ryan stumbles, the US is in danger of … another Great Depression, you just have to blink, Malcolm Gladwell-style. Um, didn’t we just do that? And is this movie that out of touch? It doesn’t help that director Kenneth Branagh casts himself as the sleek, camp, and illin’ Russian baddie Viktor Cherevin, who’s styled like a ’90s club tsar in formfitting black clothing with a sheen that screams “Can this dance-floor sadist buy you another cosmo?” He’s intended to pass for something resembling sex — and soul — in Shadow Recruit‘s odd, determinedly clueless universe. That leaves a colorless, blank Chris Pine with the thankless task of rescuing whiney physician love Cathy (Keira Knightley) from baddie clutches. Pine’s no Alec Baldwin, lacking the latter’s wit and anger management issues, or even Ben Affleck, who has also succumbed to blank, beefcake posturing on occasion. Let’s return this franchise to its box, firmly relegated to the shadows. (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Labor Day Sweet little home repairs, quickie car tune-ups, sensual pie-making, and sexed-up chili cookery — Labor Day seems to be taking its chick-flick cues from Porn For Women, Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative’s puckish gift-booklet that strives to capture women’s real desires: namely, for vacuuming, folded laundry, and patient listening from their chosen hunks of beefcake. Let’s call it domestic close encounters of the most pragmatic, and maybe most realistic, kind. But that seems to sail over the heads of all concerned with Labor Day. Working with Joyce Maynard’s novel, director-screenwriter Jason Reitman largely dispenses with the wit that washes through Juno (2007) and Up in the Air (2009) and instead chooses to peer at his actors through the seriously overheated, poetically impressionistic prism of Terrence Malick … if Malick were tricked into making a Nicholas Sparks movie. Single mom Adele (Kate Winslet) is down in the dumps over multiple miscarriages and her husband’s (Clark Gregg) departure. Son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) becomes her caretaker of sorts — thus, when escaped convict Frank (Josh Brolin) forces the mother-and-son team to give him a ride and a hideout, it’s both a blessing and a curse, especially because the hardened tough guy turns out to be a compulsively domestic, hardworking ubermensch of a Marlboro Man, able to bake up a peach pie and teach Henry to throw a baseball, all within the course of a long Labor Day weekend. Hapless Adele is helpless to resist him, particularly after some light bondage and plenty of manly nurturing. Ultimately this masochistic fantasy about the ultimate, if forbidden, family man — and the delights of the Stockholm Syndrome — is much harder to swallow than a spoonful of homemade chili, despite its strong cast. (1:51) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Legend of Hercules What better reason to wield the blunt force of 3D than to highlight the muscle-bound glory of a legendary hero — and, of course, foreground his impressive six-pack abs and impudently jutting nipples. Lead Kellan Lutz nails the eye candy aspect in this sword ‘n’ sandals effort by Renny Harlin (aka the man who capsized Geena Davis’s career), though it’s hard to take him seriously when he looks less like the hirsute, leonine hero depicted in ancient artwork than an archetypal, thick-necked, clean-shaven, all-American handsome-jock star (Lutz’s resemblance to Tom Brady is uncanny). Still, glistening beefcake is a fact of life at toga parties, and it’s clearly a large part of the appeal in this corny popcorner about Greek mythology’s proto-superhero. The Legend of Hercules is kitted out to conquer teen date nights around the world, with a lot of bloodless PG-13 violence for the boys and flower-petal-filled nuzzle-fests between Herc and Hebe (Gaia Weiss) for the girls, along with the added twist that Hercules’s peace-loving mother Alcmene conceived him with Zeus — with Hera’s permission — in order to halt her power-mad brute of a spouse King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins). In any case Harlin and company can’t leave well enough alone and piledrive each action scene with way too much super-slo-mo, as if mainlining the Matrix films in the editing booth to guarantee the attention of critical overseas markets and future installments. And the cheesy badness of certain scenes, like Hercules twirling the broken stone walls he destroys like a pair of giant fuzzy dice, can’t be denied. We all know how rich and riveting Greek mythology is, and by Hera, if the original, complicated Heracles is ever truly encapsulated on film, I hope it’s by Lars von Trier or another moviemaker capable of adequately harnessing a bisexual demi-god of enormous appetites and heroism. (1:38) SF Center. (Chun)

Lone Survivor Peter Berg (2012’s Battleship, 2007’s The Kingdom) may officially be structuring his directing career around muscular tails of bad-assery. This true story follows a team of Navy SEALs on a mission to find a Taliban group leader in an Afghani mountain village. Before we meet the actors playing our real-life action heroes we see training footage of actual SEALs being put through their paces; it’s physical hardship structured to separate the tourists from the lifers. The only proven action star in the group is Mark Wahlberg — as Marcus Luttrell, who wrote the film’s source-material book. His funky bunch is made of heartthrobs and sensitive types: Taylor Kitsch (TV’s Friday Night Lights); Ben Foster, who last portrayed William S. Burroughs in 2013’s Kill Your Darlings but made his name as an officer breaking bad news gently to war widows in 2009’s The Messenger; and Emile Hirsch, who wandered into the wilderness in 2007’s Into the Wild. We know from the outset who the lone survivors won’t be, but the film still manages to convey tension and suspense, and its relentlessness is stunning. Foster throws himself off a cliff, bounces off rocks, and gets caught in a tree — then runs to his also-bloody brothers to report, “That sucked.” (Yesterday I got a paper cut and tweeted about it.) But the takeaway from this brutal battle between the Taliban and America’s Real Heroes is that the man who lived to tell the tale also offers an olive branch to the other side — this survivor had help from the non-Taliban locals, a last-act detail that makes Lone Survivor this Oscar season’s nugget of political kumbaya. (2:01) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

Nebraska Alexander Payne may be unique at this point in that he’s in a position of being able to make nothing but small, human, and humorous films with major-studio money on his own terms. It’s hazardous to make too much of a movie like Nebraska, because it is small — despite the wide Great Plains landscapes shot in a wide screen format — and shouldn’t be entered into with overinflated or otherwise wrong-headed expectations. Still, a certain gratitude is called for. Nebraska marks the first time Payne and his writing partner Jim Taylor weren’t involved in the script, and the first one since their 1996 Citizen Ruth that isn’t based on someone else’s novel. (Hitherto little-known Bob Nelson’s original screenplay apparently first came to Payne’s notice a decade ago, but getting put off in favor of other projects.) It could easily have been a novel, though, as the things it does very well (internal thought, sense of place, character nuance) and the things it doesn’t much bother with (plot, action, dialogue) are more in line with literary fiction than commercial cinema. Elderly Woody T. Grant (Bruce Dern) keeps being found grimly trudging through snow and whatnot on the outskirts of Billings, Mont., bound for Lincoln, Neb. Brain fuzzed by age and booze, he’s convinced he’s won a million dollars and needs to collect it him there, though eventually it’s clear that something bigger than reality — or senility, even — is compelling him to make this trek. Long-suffering younger son David (Will Forte) agrees to drive him in order to simply put the matter to rest. This fool’s mission acquires a whole extended family-full of other fools when father and son detour to the former’s podunk farming hometown. Nebraska has no moments so funny or dramatic they’d look outstanding in excerpt; low-key as they were, 2009’s Sideways and 2011’s The Descendants had bigger set pieces and narrative stakes. But like those movies, this one just ambles along until you realize you’re completely hooked, all positive emotional responses on full alert. (1:55) Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

The Nut Job (1:26) Metreon.

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Animated” Five nominees — plus a trio of “highly commended” additional selections — fill this program. If you saw Frozen in the theater, you’ve seen Get a Horse!, starring old-timey Mickey Mouse and some very modern moviemaking techniques. There’s also Room on the Broom, based on a children’s book about a kindly witch who’s a little too generous when it comes to befriending outcast animals (much to the annoyance of her original companion, a persnickety cat). Simon Pegg narrates, and Gillian Anderson voices the red-headed witch; listen also for Mike Leigh regulars Sally Hawkins and Timothy Spall. Japanese Possessions is based on even older source material: a spooky legend that discarded household objects can gain the power to cause mischief. A good-natured fix-it man ducks into an abandoned house during a rainstorm, only to be confronted with playful parasols, cackling kimono fabric, and a dragon constructed out of kitchen junk. The most artistically striking nominee is Feral, a dialogue-free, impressionistic tale of a foundling who resists attempts to civilize him. But my top pick is another dialogue-free entry: Mr. Hublot, the steampunky tale of an inventor whose regimented life is thrown into disarray when he adopts a stray robot dog, which soon grows into a comically enormous companion. It’s cute without being cloying, and the universe it creates around its characters is cleverly detailed, right down to the pictures on Hublot’s walls. Embarcadero. (Eddy)

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Live Action” With the exception of one entry — wryly comedic The Voorman Problem, starring Sherlock‘s Martin Freeman as a prison doctor who has a most unsettling encounter with an inmate who believes he’s a god — children are a unifying theme among this year’s live-action nominees. Finnish Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?, the shortest in the bunch, follows a cheerfully sloppy family’s frantic morning as they scramble to get themselves to a wedding. Danish Helium skews a little sentimental in its tale of a hospital janitor who makes up stories about a fanciful afterlife (way more fun than heaven) for the benefit of a sickly young patient. Spanish That Wasn’t Me focuses on a different kind of youth entirely: a child soldier in an unnamed African nation, whose brutal encounter with a pair of European doctors leads him down an unexpected path. Though it feels more like a sequence lifted from a longer film rather than a self-contained short, French Just Before Losing Everything is the probably the strongest contender here. The tale of a woman (Léa Drucker) who decides to take her two children and leave her dangerously abusive husband, it unfolds with real-time suspense as she visits her supermarket job one last time to deal with mundane stuff (collecting her last paycheck, turning in her uniform) before the trio can flee to safety. If they gave out Oscars for short-film acting, Drucker would be tough to beat; her performance balances steely determination and extreme fear in equally hefty doses. Embarcadero. (Eddy)

The Past Splits in country, culture, and a harder-to-pinpoint sense of morality mark The Past, the latest film by Asghar Farhadi, the first Iranian moviemaker to win an Oscar (for 2011’s A Separation.) At the center of The Past‘s onion layers is a seemingly simple divorce of a binational couple, but that act becomes more complicated — and startlingly compelling — in Farhadi’s capable, caring hands. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) has returned to Paris from Tehran, where he’s been living for the past four years, at the request of French wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo of 2011’s The Artist). She wants to legalize their estrangement so she can marry her current boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim of 2009’s A Prophet), whose wife is in a coma. But she isn’t beyond giving out mixed messages by urging Ahmad to stay with her, and her daughters by various fathers, rather than at a hotel — and begging him to talk to teen Lucie (Pauline Burlet), who seems to despise Samir. The warm, nurturing Ahmad falls into his old routine in Marie’s far-from-picturesque neighborhood, visiting a café owned by fellow Iranian immigrants and easily taking over childcare duties for the overwhelmed Marie, as he tries to find out what’s happening with Lucie, who’s holding onto a secret that could threaten Marie’s efforts to move on. The players here are all wonderful, in particular the sad-faced, humane Mosaffa. We never really find out what severed his relationship with Marie, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. We care about, and end up fearing for, all of Farhadi’s everyday characters, who are observed with a tender and unsentimental understanding that US filmmakers could learn from. The effect, when he finally racks focus on the forgotten member of this triangle (or quadrilateral?), is heartbreaking. (2:10) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Philomena Judi Dench gives this twist on a real-life scandal heart, soul, and a nuanced, everyday heft. Her ideal, ironic foil is Steve Coogan, playing an upper-crusty irreverent snob of an investigative journalist. Judging by her tidy exterior, Dench’s title character is a perfectly ordinary Irish working-class senior, but she’s haunted by the past, which comes tumbling out one day to her daughter: As an unwed teenager, she gave birth to a son at a convent. She was forced to work there, unpaid; as supposed penance, the baby was essentially sold to a rich American couple against her consent. Her yarn reaches disgraced reporter Martin Sixsmith (Coogan), who initially turns his nose up at the tale’s piddling “human interest” angle, but slowly gets drawn in by the unexpected twists and turns of the story — and likely the possibility of taking down some evil nuns — as well as seemingly naive Philomena herself, with her delight in trash culture, frank talk about sex, and simple desire to see her son and know that he thought, once in a while, of her. It turns out Philomena’s own sad narrative has as many improbable turnarounds as one of the cheesy romance novels she favors, and though this unexpected twosome’s quest for the truth is strenuously reworked to conform to the contours of buddy movie-road trip arc that we’re all too familiar with, director Stephen Frears’ warm, light-handed take on the gentle class struggles going on between the writer and his subject about who’s in control of the story makes up for Philomena‘s determined quest for mass appeal. (1:35) Embarcadero, Four Star, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Ride Along By sheer dint of his ability to push his verbosity and non-threatening physicality into that nerd zone between smart and clueless, intelligent and irritating, Kevin Hart may be poised to become Hollywood’s new comedy MVP. In the case of Ride Along, it helps that Ice Cube has comic talents, too — proven in the Friday movies as well as in 2012’s 21 Jump Street — as the straight man who can actually scowl and smile at the same time. Together, in Ride Along, they bring the featherweight pleasures of Rush Hour-style odd-couple chortles. Hart is Ben, a gamer geek and school security guard shooting to become the most wrinkly student at the police academy. He looks up to hardened, street-smart cop James (Cube), brother of his new fiancée, Angela (Tika Sumpter). Naturally, instead of simply blessing the nuptials, the tough guy decides to haze the shut-in, disabusing him of any illusions he might have of being his equal. More-than-equal talents like Laurence Fishburne and John Leguizamo are pretty much wasted here — apart from Fishburne’s ultra lite impression of Matrix man Morpheus — but if you don’t expect much more than the chuckles eked out of Ride Along‘s commercials, you won’t be too disappointed by this nontaxing journey. (1:40) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Saving Mr. Banks Having promised his daughters that he would make a movie of their beloved Mary Poppins books, Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) has laid polite siege to author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) for over 20 years. Now, in the early 1960s, she has finally consented to discuss the matter in Los Angeles — albeit with great reluctance, and only because royalty payments have dried up to the point where she might have to sell her London home. Bristling at being called “Pam” and everything else in this sunny SoCal and relentlessly cheery Mouse House environ, the acidic English spinster regards her creation as sacred. The least proposed changes earn her horrified dismissal, and the very notion of having Mary and company “prancing and chirping” out songs amid cartoon elements is taken as blasphemy. This clash of titans could have made for a barbed comedy with satirical elements, but god forbid this actual Disney production should get so cheeky. Instead, we get the formulaically dramatized tale of a shrew duly tamed by all-American enterprise, with flashbacks to the inevitable past traumas (involving Colin Farrell as a beloved but alcoholic ne’er-do-well father) that require healing of Travers’ wounded inner child by the magic of the Magic Kingdom. If you thought 2004’s Finding Neverland was contrived feel-good stuff, you’ll really choke on the spoons full of sugar force-fed here. (2:06) SF Center. (Harvey)

That Awkward Moment When these bro-mancers call each other “idiots,” which they do repeatedly, it’s awkward all right, because that descriptor hits all too close to home. Jason (Zac Efron) and Daniel (Miles Teller) are douchey book-marketing boy geniuses, with all the ego and fratty attitude needed to dispense bad advice and push doctor friend Mikey (Michael B. Jordan), whose wife recently broke it off after an affair with her lawyer, into an agreement to play the field — no serious dating allowed. The pretext: Anything to avoid, yup, that awkward moment when the lady has the temerity to ask, “So — where is this going?” How fortuitous that Jason should run into the smartest, cutest author in NYC (Imogen Poots), all sharp-tongued charisma and sparkling Emma Stone-y cat eyes; that Daniel would get embroiled with his Charlotte Rampling-like wing woman (Mackenzie Davis); and Mikey would edge back into bed with his ex. That’s the worst — or best — these tepid lotharios can muster. The education of these numbskulls when it comes to love and lust aspires to the much-edgier self-criticism of Girls — but despite the presence of Fruitvale Station (2013) breakout Jordan and the likable Poots, first-time director Tom Gormican’s screenplay lets them down. (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

12 Years a Slave Pop culture’s engagement with slavery has always been uneasy. Landmark 1977 miniseries Roots set ratings records, but the prestigious production capped off a decade that had seen some more questionable endeavors, including 1975 exploitation flick Mandingo — often cited by Quentin Tarantino as one of his favorite films; it was a clear influence on his 2012 revenge fantasy Django Unchained, which approached its subject matter in a manner that paid homage to the Westerns it riffed on: with guns blazing. By contrast, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is nuanced and steeped in realism. Though it does contain scenes of violence (deliberately captured in long takes by regular McQueen collaborator Sean Bobbitt, whose cinematography is one of the film’s many stylistic achievements), the film emphasizes the horrors of “the peculiar institution” by repeatedly showing how accepted and ingrained it was. Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, an African American man who was sold into slavery in 1841 and survived to pen a wrenching account of his experiences. He’s portrayed here by the powerful Chiwetel Ejiofor. Other standout performances come courtesy of McQueen favorite Michael Fassbender (as Epps, a plantation owner who exacerbates what’s clearly an unwell mind with copious amounts of booze) and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, as a slave who attracts Epps’ cruel attentions. (2:14) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

The Wolf of Wall Street Three hours long and breathless from start to finish, Martin Scorsese’s tale of greed, stock-market fraud, and epic drug consumption has a lot going on — and the whole thing hinges on a bravado, breakneck performance by latter-day Scorsese muse Leonardo DiCaprio. As real-life sleaze Jordan Belfort (upon whose memoir the film is based), he distills all of his golden DiCaprio-ness into a loathsome yet maddeningly likable character who figures out early in his career that being rich is way better than being poor, and that being fucked-up is, likewise, much preferable to being sober. The film also boasts keen supporting turns from Jonah Hill (as Belfort’s crass, corrupt second-in-command), Matthew McConaughey (who has what amounts to a cameo — albeit a supremely memorable one — as Belfort’s coke-worshiping mentor), Jean Dujardin (as a slick Swiss banker), and newcomer Margot Robbie (as Belfort’s cunning trophy wife). But this is primarily the Leo and Marty Show, and is easily their most entertaining episode to date. Still, don’t look for an Oscar sweep: Scorsese just hauled huge for 2011’s Hugo, and DiCaprio’s flashy turn will likely be passed over by voters more keen on honoring subtler work in a shorter film. (2:59) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy) *

 

Q up

Michael Redmond
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10
Q up

MUSIC “I always wanted to know how music sounded in outer space. And with certain types of crystals you can supposedly tune into different frequencies, receive other transmissions. Often I meditate with crystals, go to sleep, and dream about music from outer space. Then I wake up, make stuff like that on the turntables, and take it from there.”

That’s a lot of there to take it from, but DJ Qbert is no stranger to mixing the cosmic with the underground. A legendary emissary of scratch who became the international representative of turntable culture in the 1990s along with his “band” Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Q has always mixed a heavy dose of Bay Area flavor into his masterly sets — which aren’t typical DJ sets by any means, but untethered, jazz-like flights during which a set of turntables and a crossfader, manipulated lightning-fast, become their own kind of spaceship. His polyrhythmic scratch concertos summon white noise, radio interference, oceanic undertow, Looney Tunes quick cuts, vintage advertising jingles, embryonic hip-hop, Big Brother menace, and fiendish, childlike glee. Great beauty, too, especially when you think of them as pure sonic expression, floating free of time and space. Not that you can’t dance your ass off to most of it, mind you.

We were talking about his new album Extraterrestria, dropping in March on the Thud Rumble label and backed by a huge Kickstarter campaign that aims not just to fund the disc, a marketing campaign and a tour, but also typical Qbert innovations like amazing touch-sensitive digital album packaging that simulates DJ controller equipment. (More details at www.djqbert.com)

“The album is actually two albums in one, two different discs,” Qbert, looking tight in a buttondown shirt and track pants, told me. “Extraterrestria is music from another galaxy, hip-hop beats from other planets, collected by the Galactic Scratch Federation. It’s as bizarre and unique as I could make it, a collection of weird noises and different time signatures with as much scratching as possible. The second disc is called Galaxxxian, which is hip-hop from earth beamed into space: raw, primitive. It features a bunch of MCs — Kool Keith, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Mr. Lif, Soul Khan, Bambu — doing their thing, which a lot of time, you know, means going for the sex, drugs, and hip-hop and roll. We’re not quite on the extraterrestrial level, yet.”

Other biggies like Dan the Automator, Chad Hugo of the Neptunes, cellist-trombonist Dana Leong, and rapper El-P (here a producer) also contributed. “What with the recession and everything, a lot of us have been trading with each other, so we can continue collaborating. Like I’ll do a beat for your album if you do a verse on mine. Something where the money’s phased out, a barter thing. It’s put us back in touch with what’s real,” Qbert said.

 

TWIST THE FORCE

As we talked on the second floor of the California Academy of Sciences, the first floor was rapidly filling up for the Academy’s weekly Nightlife party, this week a launch celebration and fundraiser for Extraterrestria — and a reunion of sorts for turntablism heads, albeit one bursting with fresh young faces. As b-boys and fly girls made their way through exotic landscapes, whale skeletons, stuffed giraffes, a butterfly-flooded rainforest dome, and aquarium displays including live stingrays, giant octopi, frisky penguins, Claude the albino alligator, and phosphorescent jellyfish, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the deliciously loopy, phantasmagorical animated movie version of Qbert’s era-defining previous album Wave Twisters, released 16 years ago.

That’s a long time between official releases, but it wasn’t like Qbert had been kidnapped by aliens. Although his live performance schedule was less-than-usual bonkers, he still made regular appearances, by himself or as part of his extended Bay Area scratch crew family. He popularized turntable techniques in a series of instructional videos and launched online educational community Qbert Skratch University, in 2009. He also went all in on the equipment tip, putting out his own brand of turntable cartridges and needles, an Invisibl Skratch Piklz-branded mixer, “and of course our own vinyl to scratch with — which is really vinyl on one side and a digital interface on the other, for use with DJ software like Traktor.”

Fifteen years has also seen the rise of social media and a more user-friendly Internet. Has that changed the way he produces beats or performs at all? “Of course it’s been great for finding new sounds to use,” Qbert said. “If I want to hear, say, a tarantula farting, I can look it up instantly and hear that. On the other hand, most of my old sets are up there now, with all their mistakes, and a lot of times I’m cringing and say in a small voice, ‘Please, please let them delete that.’ It keeps me on my toes now, knowing everything can be recorded in all its glory. But because I’ve actually been working on this album for seven years, all that’s been incorporated — it’s not like a shock. I use what I can use.

“But I try not to be trapped in the present. I often think back to the past, to cats like Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong. That timeless, improvisational jazz feeling where you practice and practice, but when the time comes you’re just an instrument connecting with the god-force, channeling the sound through you, swinging through that ocean of feeling. When you’re in that zone, that’s the most wonderful thing. It’s a meditation, a spiritual thing. We’re all spirits, so we have to connect to other spirits and the most high, whatever you want to call it — God, Allah — connect to that creator source and use it because it’s yours to use. Like how some writers just flow and do that automatic writing, they’re just instruments. We’re just instruments you know, it all flows through us.”

 

SKRATCHING ROOTS

When Qbert, raised in SF’s Excelsior neighborhood, astonished the DJ world by winning its spun-out version of the Olympics, the DMC World Championships, not once (solo, 1991) but three more times in a row after that (as part of Rocksteady DJs with Mixmaster Mike and Apollo) it was an unparalleled triumph not just for local scratch and hip-hop community, but for Bay Area Filipino American culture as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ZFsQjaOTI

As music critic and Guardian contributor Oliver Wang details meticulously in his forthcoming book Legions of Boom: Mobility, Identity and Filipino American Disc Jockeys in the San Francisco Bay Area (Duke University Press), a vibrant scene of Filipino mobile DJ crews — independent groups of teenage sound and lighting specialists hired to provide entertainment for weddings, graduations, and parties — thrived here since the 1970s. When hip-hop eclipsed disco on the request lists in the 1980s, the mobile crews defined streetwise Bay Area Filipino youth culture and provided a fertile training ground (and sometimes needed cash) for young DJ up-and-comers.

Qbert’s domination of the DJ world could be read as the apex of that scene, which faded in the 1990s with the rise of digital technology. And of course Qbert went on to create his own crew of fellow Filipino DJs: The Invisibl Skratch Piklz, with Shortkut, Apollo, Mix Master Mike, and several others. The Piklz went on to become insanely popular, establishing scratching and other turntable manipulations as a form of art and a highly marketable genre — turntablism — that changed the sound of hip-hop and dance music. Mix Master Mike went on to become, in essence, the fourth Beastie Boy; one early ISP member was A-Trak, current turntable-wielding heartthrob of the superstar EDM crowd.

In fact, the current popularity of turntable-rooted DJs like A-Trak and the burgeoning trip-hop and late ’90s revival makes the timing of Qbert’s return auspicious. “A-Trak runs a dance music scene and I think it’s great that he brings the scratching into it, he’s really unique in that field — so more power to him for turning on a different crowd to the sound. But for me it’s never really gone away, pure scratching. There’s a zillion underground cats who are genius at what they do — Quest, Deeandroid and Ceslkii, Disk, tons more. And maybe the widespread recognition isn’t there, maybe it isn’t in your face like it once was, but they’re all around. It’s like the guys who still do yo-yo tricks. They don’t know things have moved on. They keep practicing and practicing and doing incredible things, regardless of how many people are following. They’re always battling, always progressing. Never put down your yo-yo, man,” he laughs.

As for connecting to a new generation, working with (gasp!) turntables and (double gasp!) vinyl at this stage of DJ history is a deliberate artistic choice. Even with a resurgence of interest in analog techniques — a specific reaction to digital overload — does Qbert fear that scratching will be seen as merely a retro novelty?

“I think no one can deny that, whether you’re old or young, using a turntable to make a scratch sound — well, you can’t deny that it sounds really bugged out. How else are you going to make that sound unless you’re actually moving the sound with your own hand? Just to hold the sound and grab it, move it back and forth — that’s unique and fascinating to people. It’s like a sci-fi movie in real life, a sound that people have heard since maybe they were little kids, but one that also points to a future where man meets machine. It’s a real manipulation, a sound design in itself. What other instrument can do that?”

 

The return of Pyno Man

Steven T. Jones
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The return of Pyno Man

LEFT OF THE DIAL As legend has it, there was a time when you couldn’t walk the streets of Berkeley without running into him. He accosted you from posters adorning bar bathroom doors; he lurked around corners, plastered to telephone poles. He was mischievous, sometimes foul-mouthed, usually up to no good, but he always meant well. He wanted you to rock out. He was Pyno Man, and he was everywhere.

“Pyno Man was basically just the dream anybody has of being great, but instead of working a regular job and having fantasies about doing crazy rockstar things, he’s actually trying it all the time and failing. So he’s out there on the street acting like a rockstar, but everyone just thinks he’s crazy,” explains John Seabury, artist, creator of Pyno Man, and bass player for the relatively short-lived but locally legendary East Bay garage-punk outfit Psycotic Pineapple, for which the wild-eyed, mohawked, anthropomorphized pineapple served as mascot. “To me, that was logical.”

A staple of the East Bay punk club scene of the late ’70s, Psycotic Pineapple held court at the Keystone in Berkeley, sometimes playing SF’s fabled Mabuhay Gardens with friend bands, like the (underrated) power-pop maestros the Rubinoos. PP songs were about youth and drugs and sex, and you could count on them for an insane live show. But something in the band’s demeanor set them apart from the prevailing punk attitudes of the time: There wasn’t much they took seriously — least of all themselves.

“We didn’t really call them punks at that time, because that just wasn’t what we would call people who played music like them. They were just outlaws in a way, because they brought this sort of pop aesthetic to punk music. They were thumbing their nose at it and wrapping their arms around it at the same time,” says John Cuniberti, a producer, mastering engineer, and longtime friend of the band who helped the guys finally re-issue Psycotic Pineapple’s sole album, Where’s the Party?, on CD in 2012 — something that led to the band playing its first live show in more than two decades, which inspired Cuniberti to make a documentary about the band in the process.

There was something determinedly fun about Psycotic Pineapple, says Cuniberti. “I was working with the Dead Kennedys at the same time [’70s], and it was political, straight-up social commentary, songs about death and war and all these things. These guys played pop songs about relationships — really well-written pop songs, the songwriting was always very compelling to me — but they were rowdy, and they did it with an ‘I don’t care if you like us or not’ kind of attitude. There was an outrageousness to it.”

The band put out its lone record 1980, packed with 11 gleefully irreverent tracks that ran just over 25 minutes altogether. In 1981, something happened that no one could have predicted: Guitar player Henricus Holtman suffered a brain aneurysm, hindering his dexterity on his right side. The band stopped playing live. While most members remained involved in the local music scene — Seabury’s art adorns posters and t-shirts for a ton of other bands — Psycotic Pineapple mostly became the stuff of Bay Area folklore. But the fans were still out there. More than 30 years after PP disbanded, about a year after the band’s official reunion show at Bottom of the Hill, the music somehow doesn’t sound dated at all. They’ll headline the Gilman this week for the first time, with Pinole’s own Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits (whom could be said to follow in PP’s footsteps in terms of ethos, if not sound) opening.

“I don’t think the music feels old, but I’ve always thought that,” says Seabury, whose art fills a booklet that accompanies the re-issue CD. “By the time we broke up a lot of bands were starting to imitate that kind of attitude — Camper Van Beethoven, some others. I think we would have fit right into the alternative rock scene. We were kind of like these New Wave clowns making fun of punkers&ldots;which, as far as bands we gigged with go, their fans didn’t really like it. I remember opening for 999 and the Dickies, and both of their fans just hated us. They were booing us already, so we decided to close the set with ‘We’re an American Band,’ and that’s when the bottles started flying.”

They haven’t gotten to play together too often since the official reunion — for one, keyboard player Alexi Karlinski lives in Eastern Europe for most of the year. But while he’s back in the Bay for this stint, the guys plan to record a few new songs.

Maybe don’t call it a comeback just yet, says Cuniberti. But “I think they’re worth listening to, and there’s a lot of music being made that I can’t say that about. The songwriting is so good, and it’s timely, it still sounds fresh. You can hear in this record that they really love what they’re doing.”

While we’re immersed in the warm glow of East Bay punk history: 1-2-3-4 Go! Records, the independent record store, label, and all-ages venue housed in a deceptively small couple of rooms on 40th Street in Oakland, is expanding into the recently vacated space next door. From their crowdfunding campaign:

“A few weeks ago we were told our next door neighbors would be leaving and we could take a section of their space for an expansion. The catch is that we need to take the space by February 1st or it would go to someone else. As a small business with employees to take care of and regular bills to pay we don’t tend to have a lot of extra expansion capital on hand, especially on short notice. So we come to you, the good people who have supported us all these years and ask for you to join us in bringing the store to this next level and to continue to offer the great music and art we have been in our venue space.

In order to complete this expansion we need to do the following;

Knock out the adjoining wall.

Paint the interior and exterior to match our existing space

All new lighting that will stretch the length of both spaces.

Build additional custom fixtures; record bins, shelving etc.

Purchase new product; Records, books, supplies, turntables etc.

Purchase new Mic’s, Cords and Stands for the venue.

Close the store for 7 to 14 days (oof!)

Our plan is to have our Grand Re-Opening on March 15th to coincide with our 6th anniversary. We will have a sale during the day and a private event from 7pm to 10pm with food, drinks and music for supporters who come in at the $50 and above level who RSVP.”

As of this writing they have just under a week to go and still need to raise about $7,000. Want your as-of-yet unborn kids to know what actual record stores are? You know what to do: 1234gorecords.com.

Back here on this side of the Bay, A Million Billion Dying Suns — the psych-rock project of busy guitar virtuoso Nate Mercereau, who tours with Sheila E., among others (last week he was backing Dave Chappelle at the SFJazz Center) — have embarked on a mini-residency of sorts at the Knockout, starting with a Feb. 11 show. They recently had a song featured in a GoPro commercial, accompanying Shaun White as he blasts through snow-covered hills, but the band’s had my attention for about a year now, especially since the arrival last November’s Strawberry EP, with its slow-building, expertly crafted wall of spaced-out guitar fuzz, particularly on “Strawberry Letter 23,” a cover/homage to Shuggie Otis.

“I record a lot of stuff by myself, and Shuggie Otis has been a huge inspiration in that respect,” says Mercereau, who recently moved to LA, though he finds himself back in SF “every two weeks or so” — the band’s studio is still here. “Though it was also for our friend [manager and friend to many an SF musician] Steve Brodsky, who passed away last year. He really loved that song, and it felt like a way to do something for him.”

The Knockout feels a little small for the seriously powerful five-piece, Mercereau will acknowledge, but he wanted a residency at “a place our friends can walk to, a down-home punk rock spot that’s in the neighborhood.” If all goes well, he says, AMBDS will have another few shows here shortly, regardless of his new home base. “It’s easier than you might think,” he says. “We just live on Highway 5.”

PSYCOTIC PINEAPPLE
With Rock N’ Roll Adventure Kids, Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits, and the Gregors
Friday, Feb. 7, 7:30pm, $10
924 Gilman Street
924 Gilman, Berkeley
www.924gilman.org

A MILLION BILLION DYING SUNS
With What Fun Life Was and Lemme Adams
Tuesday, Feb. 11, 8:30pm, $6
Knockout
3223 Mission, SF
www.theknockout.com

Ennui the people

Michael Redmond
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Ennui the people

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM San Francisco IndieFest celebrates its Super Sweet 16 with multiple films presenting an appropriately teenage outlook on humanity: Most of the time, people suck. They suck in ways you expect, ways you don’t expect, and ways you should have expected but chose not to, for your own sucky reasons.

Fortunately, not all of these lessons in disappointment come packaged in depressing movies — though at least one, Bluebird, does. In snowy Maine, an otherwise kind and responsible school bus driver (Amy Morton) screws up the head count at the end of her route, and a child is left behind on a long, cold night. The small town reacts as you’d expect, with stares and whispered gossip. But as it turns out, most of the characters affected by this tragic mistake are already in a pretty bad place, and must now face hitting a floor even lower than they’d imagined was possible.

Chief among them is the bus driver’s weary husband (Mad Men‘s John Slattery, playing nicely against type except for one very Roger Sterling-ish scene), who’s just found out he’ll soon be unemployed, and the neglected boy’s troubled mother (Louisa Krause), who adds this incident to her running list of personal demons. Writer-director Lance Edmands edited Lena Dunham’s 2010 breakthrough Tiny Furniture (blink and you’ll miss Girls‘ Adam Driver in a handful of Bluebird scenes); his first feature as writer-director is very much in the classic American indie mode, with ordinary people’s lives intersecting in an ordinary town, extreme feelings of loneliness and unfulfilled dreams lurking just below the surface. Frankly, it can get morose, though Emily Meade (who resembles a younger Emma Stone) brings some spark as a high-schooler dealing with sucky boy drama on top of sucky everything else.

Less earnest, thank goodness, is the latest short from San Francisco filmmaker Vincent Gargiulo (2011’s The Muppetless Movie), which screens as part of IndieFest’s “#feelings” program. Filmed on location in Minnesota, Duluth is Horrible follows a handful of oddballs working through heartbreak via Reddit posts, awkward blind dates, and karaoke. Gargiulo — who told me during last year’s IndieFest that the idea for Duluth came to him in a dream — wields his own brand of bizarre humor with complete confidence. Here’s hoping he channels that into a feature film next.

Two of IndieFest’s genre standouts also hinge on human shortcomings. Joe Begos’ Almost Human follows a trio of friends dealing with the aftereffects when one is, uh, abducted by aliens, then returns a few years later acting mighty strange. The man’s left-behind former fiancée and best friend have just enough time to come to grips with their guilt and paranoia before they have to start fending off creepy offers of “Join me and be reborn!” Yeah, this is a wall-to-wall John Carpenter homage — the lead character appears to have stepped right off the set of 1982’s The Thing — but it’s done exactly right, with some spectacular, blessedly CG-free gore effects to boot.

Also a must-see for horror fans: Zack Parker’s Proxy, a Hitchcockian mindfuck of a movie that offers up so many plot twists it’d be nearly impossible to relay a spoiler-free plot summary — though as soon as you hear the pregnant woman’s last name is Woodhouse, as in Rosemary, it’s made pretty clear that this grieving-mother tale ain’t gonna be what it seems. If you can make it through the brutal attack that happens in Proxy‘s first five minutes (close your eyes if you must), you’ll be richly rewarded.

It feels almost wrong to lump Hank: Five Years From the Brink into this roll-call of sinister neighbors and emotional vampires, but there are certainly many who’d call former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson worse names. This latest doc from Joe Berlinger (the Paradise Lost trilogy) follows the template favored by Errol Morris in films like 2003’s The Fog of War and last year’s The Unknown Known, surrounding an extended sit-down interview with news footage and home movies reflecting on a political subject’s career.

In Paulson’s case, he walks us through the 2008 financial crisis (Jon Stewart referred to him as “Baron Von Moneypants”) with the benefit of hindsight, and a certain amount of self-effacing humor. Whether or not you agree with the guy’s actions, he’s actually pretty likeable, and Berlinger’s decision to include interviews with Paulson’s no-nonsense wife, Wendy, adds a human angle to the decisions behind the “too big to fail” fiasco.

I hear you sighing. You demand uplift, dammit! Where are the happy movies? Though it’s not without moments of relationship angst, Mexican filmmaker Fernando Frias’ Rezeta just might be the festival’s feel-good breakout. Largely improvised and filmed using handheld cameras and a cast of first-time actors (how do you say “mumblecore” in Spanish?), Rezeta follows a year or so in the life of Albanian model Rezeta (Rezeta Veliu), who arrives in Mexico with a good grasp of English but little knowledge of the local culture.

On her first job, she meets Alex (Roger Mendoza), a metalhead whose friendship becomes the one constant in her breezy life. As they slowly become a couple — the passage of time is marked out by Alex’s changing facial hair and Rezeta’s developing Spanish-language skills — the places where their personalities don’t quite mesh become increasingly apparent. Rezeta picked up a special jury award at the recent Slamdance Film Festival, and it’s not hard to see why; the characters feel so real. Don’t we all know that sweet girl who turns into a catty pain when she’s drunk, or that guy who’s too cool to get excited about anything, or that couple who’s fun to be around — until they start screaming at each other on the sidewalk outside the bar? Ah, youth.

Also worth mentioning: wonderful centerpiece pick Teenage, a collage film by Matt Wolf (2008’s Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell) that’s based on Jon Savage’s Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture, spanning the adolescent experience from 1875-1945. First-person narrators (voiced by Jena Malone and Ben Whishaw, among others) reflect on the lives of teens from the US, the UK, and Germany, emphasizing both current events (World Wars I and II) as well as dance and music fads.

Finally, I’d be remiss for not calling your attention to A Field in England, easily the single weirdest pick of IndieFest 2014. Fans of Ben Wheatley, a fest vet and one of the most exciting directors to come out of England in years (2011’s Kill List, 2012’s Sightseers), already know what’s up; everyone else, step boldly into this black-and-white slab of insanity set amid a handful of deserters scuttling away from their posts during the English civil war. And then the cape-wearing necromancer shows up, because of course he does. “I think I’ve worked out what God is punishing us for,” one hapless character gasps. “Everything!” *

SAN FRANCISCO INDIEFEST

Feb. 6-20, most shows $12

Various venues, SF and Oakl.

www.sfindie.com

 

Momentum moment

Michael Redmond
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Momentum moment

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE For its 10th anniversary, the Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now won’t start with its customary lineup of performances, but with a ritual so ingrained that many dancers continue it even after they have retired from the stage. Dancers are obsessed with taking classes. Classes are why they scrape money together. If you’re part of a company, classes are a part of your daily routine. If you aren’t, you’re on your own — and at around $10 or $15 a session, that can quickly add up to a serious amount of cash.

So how about 10 cents a class? At this year’s BCF, you can pay 50 cents for an all-day pass, good for up to five classes at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Forum, taught by Robert Moses, Nora Chipaumire, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Rashad Pridgen. A showcase by the next generation of dancers — Dimensions Extensions Performance Ensemble, Destiny Arts, and the Village Dancers — is included in this bargain price.

BCF arose from the ashes of the renowned but collapsing festival known as Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century. At the festival’s final concert in 1995, financial constraints prevented it from inviting out-of-town artists, so it was an all-Bay Area show. That’s where the seed for BCF was planted. Laura Elaine Ellis, who had just started to choreograph, danced that night.

“I was so honored to be included,” she recalls. “After the performance, all of us realized that this was the first time ever that we all had shared a stage together. It felt so good.”

Kendra Barnes didn’t perform that evening — she was still a San Francisco State student — but “I had attended every concert, and I had just started my own company.” The two women realized that they, and many of their colleagues, would have to self-produce. The African and African American Performing Arts Coalition was a first, short-lived attempt.

But it was when Ellis and Barnes had one of those “what if we…” moments that BCF was born. “We wanted to create a community where we could come together and see each others’ work,” Barnes says.

From the beginning BCF turned a wide-angle lens on African American choreography. It aimed to showcase the whole range of ages and experiences, with beginning and experienced choreographers, plus youth dancers. The emphasis has always been on the “here and now” of its name, although that doesn’t mean, Ellis explains, “that folks who are rooted in traditional forms and rethink them are excluded.” The festival developed a format of showing one weekend in the East Bay (at Laney College) and in San Francisco (at Dance Mission Theater) with both established artists and what the BCF calls “Next Wave Choreographers.”

A lesser-known yet important part of the festival offers training opportunities for a handful of pre- and post-college students who are interested in theater management, tech, and other backstage responsibilities. Several of them, says Ellis, have been able to enter those fields professionally after completing the program.

For this anniversary season, BCF created its most ambitious schedule yet: four weekends of performances by an impressively diverse group of African American dance artists. A partnership with YBCA enabled the organizers to bring Zimbabwe-born Nora Chipaumire for the Bay Area premiere (Feb. 13-15 at YBCA) of Miriam, a work inspired by singer Miriam Makeba and the Virgin Mary, among others. “Nora has gone on to an international career, yet she started in the Bay Area,” Ellis points out.

On the penultimate weekend (Feb. 28-March 1 at Laney College), former Lines Ballet dancer-choreographer Gregory Dawson has created birdseye view, a sextet set to an original jazz score performed live by the Richard Howell Quintet. Zaccho Dance Theatre will present the Oakland premiere of Joanna Haigood’s haunting Dying While Black and Brown; it looks at the effect of incarceration on the human spirit. Joining the lineup will be a work in progress by Barnes (Feb. 28 only), Haitian Dancer Portsha Jefferson, and spoken-word artist Joseph.

Financial constraints prevented the programming of an accompanying film component this year, though the bitter pill was sweetened by a last-minute arrival: UPAJ, Hoku Uchiyama’s film about the partnership between Kathak artist Chitresh Das and tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith, will screen Feb. 28 at 6:30pm before that evening’s performance.

Looking back, Ellis figures that over the last decade they have presented almost 80 choreographers. So for this year’s special “Next Wave” program (Feb. 21-23 at Dance Mission), they sent out a call to “alumni.” It’s a homecoming for the 21 artists who accepted, and it should be heady mix, running (alphabetically) from Ramón Ramos Alayo to Jamie Wright.

For the ODC Theater finale (March 6-8), Robert Moses has curated an intriguing and somewhat mysterious evening, which includes a premiere of his own, Bliss Kohlmeyer and Dawson choreographing on his company, and Moses acting as a “host” to various choreographers. So far Raissa Simpson, Byb Chanel Bibene, and Antoine Hunter are confirmed, with more to come. *

BLACK CHOREOGRAPHERS FESTIVAL: HERE AND NOW

Feb 9-March 8, 50 cents-$35

Various venues, SF and Oakl.

www.bcfhereandnow.com

 

Presidio Trust decides on museum proposals

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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20
Presidio Trust decides on museum proposals

The Presidio museum showdown has come to an end for now, and the winner of the hotly contested mid-Crissy Field site is (drum roll, please) … no one.

Not the Golden Gate National National Park Conservancy. Not the Bridge Institute. And no, not Star Wars creator George Lucas.

At an impromptu press conference this afternoon, Presidio Trust Chair Nancy Hellman Bechtle said the board unanimously voted to not move forward with any of the museum proposals.

“This is the most spectacular site in the country,” Bechtle told reporters. “We simply do not believe any of the projects were right for this location.”

Since November of 2012, The Bridge Institute, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy’s Presidio Exchange, and filmmaker and Star Wars creator George Lucas’ personal pop art collection have all competed for a patch of uber-desirable real estate a stone’s throw from the Golden Gate Bridge.

The site is currently occupied by Sports Basement, whose planned move will be unaffected by the decision to reject the museum proposals, a spokesperson for the Presidio told the Guardian.

In January the three teams were made to re-submit their three proposals to the Presidio Trust, which cited Goldilocks reasons for not liking the various proposals. The Lucas Cultural Arts Museum was too big, the Presidio Exchange was too programmatically vague, and the Bridge Institute didn’t have enough of the green stuff (money).

But unlike Goldilocks, in the end the Presidio Trust did not find any porridge that was just right. However, it did offer to assist with finding alternative sites in the Presidio for the museums to find homes.

“There are a number of sites in the Presidio that are possible places to build,” said Presidio Trust Executive Director Craig Middleton. “We are really early in these conversations.”

The Lucas Cultural Arts Museum’s spokesperson, David Perry, said there are many cities vying for Lucas’ pop and cultural art museum.

“We’ve been getting requests to look at other sites for this museum, we’re going to look at those sites,” Perry said. We asked if he was referring to Chicago, where Lucas has expressed interest in building the museum before.

“I’ve heard all kinds of cities,” Perry said.

When we asked Perry how Lucas felt when he heard the news, he answered a bit oddly, if candidly.

“I spoke with George this morning,” he said.  “And as my grandmother used to say, if ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candies and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.”

Above: Hit “play” to hear Lucas Cultural Arts Museum spokesperson David Perry tell us how his grandmother would have reacted to the Presidio Trust’s decision. 

Okay then.

Notably, the Lucas proposal was endorsed by Mayor Ed Lee, tech venture captalist Ron Conway, and a host of other well-heeled and monied backers. In a letter to the Trust, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi publicly urged its members to hurry up on a decision, and to choose something that would bring in “a vibrant cross section of visitors to the Presidio, with particular attention to inner-city youth.”

We asked Becthle what influence, if any, opinions from powerful politicians had on the Trust’s ultimate decision.

“They’re very interested in California and the city,” she responded. “Sure I listen to [Sen. Dianne Feinstein], and to Nancy, but I think it was most important to do what was right with the park, and not to please one side or the other.”

Sundance, part one: crowd-pleasers and dino heists

Sue Vaughan
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0
Sundance, part one: crowd-pleasers and dino heists

Check out Jesse’s intro to his Sundance Film Festival series here.

This year, there were few films that stood out as across-the-board crowd pleasers. Gareth Evans’ violent, 148-minute The Raid 2: Berandal (UK/Indonesia) — a sequel to his 2011 cult hit — is an absolute must-see, as is the latest from Wet Hot American Summer (2001) director David Wain, They Came Together (US); it’s a comedy spoof that pitches Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler into a slew of rom-com tropes and clichés (delivering some huge laughs in the process).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MuXrN8L9ro

But the festival’s biggest surprise was perhaps Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz’s Land Ho! (US/Iceland). From the press notes: “A pair of aging ex-brothers-in-law set off to Iceland in an attempt to reclaim their youth through Reykjavik nightclubs, trendy spas, and rugged campsites. This bawdy adventure is a throwback to 1980s road trip comedies, as well as a candid exploration of aging, loneliness, and friendship.” And it really delivered. So it’s no surprise Sony Pictures Classics picked up this hot dog, aiming to bring its magic to audiences beyond Sundance. Stars Paul Eenhoorn (from one of last year’s secret treasures, Chad Hartigan’s This Is Martin Bonner) and relative newcomer Earl Lynn Nelson (who popped up in Martha Stephens’ spellbinding 2012 Pilgrim Song) could be looking at Independent Spirit Award nominations. Yeah, it’s a year away, but I’m calling it now.

Another film that got a distributor at the fest: Todd Miller’s Dinosaur 13 (US), a documentary about a team of independent paleontologists in South Dakota who in 1990 unearthed the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found. What ensues is a twisted and even stomach-churning tale that questions who “Sue” (as the skeleton was dubbed) belongs to. This was one of the most thought-provoking (and, possibly, argument-inducing) films of the fest. Are the paleontologists pirates? Does the government have control of the land, or should the discovery belong to the landowner? And what if those lands are tribal lands? If this sounds intriguing, it is, and you won’t have to wait long to see it for yourself, since Dinosaur 13 was picked up by CNN Films and Lionsgate for a million bucks (or around one-eighth of the value of a T-rex skeleton, as it turns out). 

Along the same lines was Andrew Rossi’s Ivory Tower (US), which does its best to explore the dilemmas facing modern universities — tuition hikes, trillion-dollar debts (did you really need that brand-new swimming pool?), etc. — and what they mean for their students. It poses the modern questions of onsite vs. online, skills vs. information, and most importantly “Is college worth it anymore?” The film feels as confused as the questions it’s attempting to delve into, but I was still deeply affected by many moments. I’d recommend everyone involved with education [ed. note: Ficks is the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University] to jump in.

Stay tuned for more of Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ Sundance (and Slamdance!) screening adventures, including tomorrow’s look at Richard Linklanter’s epic Boyhood.

Music Listings: Feb 5-11, 2014

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WEDNESDAY 5

ROCK

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. The Pack A.D., 9 p.m., $10-$12.

DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. My Body Sings Electric, Belle Noire, Six Steps North, 8 p.m., $8-$10.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Man Forever, Life Coach, Brian Chase, Death Cheetah, 8:30 p.m., $6.

The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. St. Lucia, Sir Sly, 9 p.m., sold out.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Cool Ghouls, That Ghost, Midnight Sons, 8:30 p.m., $5.

DANCE

Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “BroMance: A Night Out for the Fellas,” 9 p.m., free.

The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Sticky Wednesdays,” w/ DJ Mark Andrus, 8 p.m., free.

Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bondage A Go Go,” w/ DJs Damon, Tomas Diablo, & guests, 9:30 p.m., $5-$10.

Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “Electro Pop Rocks,” 18+ dance party, 9 p.m., $10-$20.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Replicant,” w/ Emotional, Zanna Nera, Sophie Ginou, plus DJs Rachel Aiello, Sky Madden, and Kerri Lebon, 9 p.m., $5.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Housepitality,” 9 p.m., $5-$10.

Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. “Qoöl,” 5 p.m.

Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Indulgence,” 10 p.m.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “What?,” w/ resident DJ Tisdale and guests, 7 p.m., free.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Rock the Spot,” 9 p.m., free.

MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Reload,” w/ DJ Big Bad Bruce, 10 p.m., free.

Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. Skrillex, Etnik, Seven Lions, 9 p.m., sold out.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Booty Call,” w/ Juanita More, Joshua J, guests, 9 p.m., $3.

HIP-HOP

Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Mixtape Wednesday,” w/ resident DJs Strategy, Junot, Herb Digs, & guests, 9 p.m., $5.

Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “Special Blend,” w/ resident DJs LazyBoy & Mr. Murdock, 9 p.m., free.

Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Action Bronson, Trash Talk, 9 p.m., $25.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Hump Day Happy Hour,” w/ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist, 6:30 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC

Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Craig Ventresco & Meredith Axelrod, 7 p.m., free.

Club Deluxe: 1511 Haight, San Francisco. Happy Hour Bluegrass, 6:30 p.m., free.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Warbler, Strange Ideas, Puffalo Phil & The C&W Band, 8 p.m., $6.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Jeanie & Chuck’s Bluegrass Country Jam, First Wednesday of every month, 9 p.m., free.

JAZZ

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Gaucho, Eric Garland’s Jazz Session, The Amnesiacs, 7 p.m., free.

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Mitch Woods & His Rocket 88s, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $15.

Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6 p.m., free.

Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30 p.m., free.

Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. The Cosmo Alleycats featuring Ms. Emily Wade Adams, 7 p.m., free.

Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. “Cat’s Corner,” 9 p.m., $10.

Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Ricardo Scales, Wednesdays, 6:30-11:30 p.m., $5.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Mads Tolling Quartet featuring Kim Nalley, 8 p.m., $19-$23.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Anne O’Brien, First Wednesday of every month, 7:30 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. Timba Dance Party, w/ DJ WaltDigz, 10 p.m., $5.

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Cha-Ching, First Wednesday of every month, 9 p.m., $5.

Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. “Bachatalicious,” w/ DJs Good Sho & Rodney, 7 p.m., $5-$10.

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Frigo-Bar,” First Wednesday of every month, 8 p.m., free.

Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cafe Latino Americano, 8 p.m., $12.

REGGAE

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Passafire, Ballyhoo!, Pacific Dub, 9 p.m., $12-$14.

COUNTRY

The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Swinging Doors, 9 p.m., $12.

 

THURSDAY 6

ROCK

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Pat Thomas, The Cairo Gang, Tomorrows Tulips, Joseph Childress, 8 p.m., $10.

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. The Hounds Below, Blisses B, Growwler, 9 p.m., $10.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Nasty Christmas, Can of Beans, Courtney & The Crushers, 8:30 p.m., $5.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Whitethorn Singers, Little Person, Lissy, 9 p.m., $8.

Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Breakaway Patriot, Midnight Cinema, Pushing the Sun, They Went Ghost, 8 p.m., $13.

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. White Murder, Musk, Quaaludes, Bad Daddies, 9 p.m., $8.

DANCE

1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. Oneohtrix Point Never, Holly Herndon, Shawn Reynaldo, Marco de la Vega, DJ Will, Chad Salty, 10 p.m., $17.50-$20 advance.

Abbey Tavern: 4100 Geary, San Francisco. DJ Schrobi-Girl, 10 p.m., free.

Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “Tubesteak Connection,” w/ DJ Bus Station John, 9 p.m., $5-$7.

Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Men at Twerk,” 9 p.m., free.

The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “¡Pan Dulce!,” 9 p.m., $5.

Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” ‘80s night with DJs Damon, Steve Washington, Dangerous Dan, and guests, 9 p.m., $6 (free before 9:30 p.m.).

The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “XO,” w/ DJs Astro & Rose, 10 p.m., $5.

Club X: 715 Harrison, San Francisco. “The Crib,” 9:30 p.m., $10, 18+.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Afrolicious,” w/ DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, and guests, 9:30 p.m., $5-$8.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Beat Church,” w/ resident DJs Neptune & Kitty-D, First Thursday of every month, 10 p.m., $10.

Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. “Modular,” w/ Supernova, Pedro Arbulu, MFYRS, 9 p.m., $7-$10.

Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “I Love Thursdays,” 10 p.m., $10.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Fluff: A Queer Night of House,” w/ DJs Sissyslap & Dr. Sleep, First Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., $3.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Night Fever,” 9 p.m., $5 after 10 p.m.

Manor West: 750 Harrison, San Francisco. “Twerkteam Thursdays,” w/ DJ Solarz & Marcus Lee, 10 p.m., $20.

Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. “Lights Down Low,” w/ Scuba, DJ Hell, Richie Panic, Sleazemore, Kozee, 9 p.m., $17-$20.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursday,” w/ DJ Jay-R, 9 p.m., free.

Raven: 1151 Folsom, San Francisco. “1999,” w/ VJ Mark Andrus, 8 p.m., free.

Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. “Popscene,” w/ Moullinex, DJs Aaron Axelsen & Omar, 10 p.m., $13-$15.

Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. “Awakening,” w/ John Dahlback, 9 p.m., $15-$50 advance.

The Tunnel Top: 601 Bush, San Francisco. “Tunneltop,” DJs Avalon and Derek ease you into the weekend with a cool and relaxed selection of tunes spun on vinyl, 10 p.m., free.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bubble,” 10 p.m., free.

Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Base,” w/ No Regular Play, 10 p.m., $5-$10.

W San Francisco: 181 Third St., San Francisco. First Thursday with DJ Van Cliffe, 8:30 p.m., free with RSVP (required).

HIP-HOP

Eastside West: 3154 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Throwback Thursdays,” w/ DJ Madison, 9 p.m., free.

John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “The Premiere,” video hip-hop party with VDJ T.D. Camp, First Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., $5.

Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Peaches,” w/ lady DJs DeeAndroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, Umami, Inkfat, and Andre, 10 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Misisipi Mike & The Midnight Gamblers, First Thursday of every month, 9 p.m.

Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. The Kentucky Twisters, 8 p.m., free.

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Acoustic Open Mic, 7 p.m.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Secret Town, M. Lockwood Porter, Jimbo Scott & The Hot Mess, 8 p.m., $8.

Musicians Union Local 6: 116 Ninth St., San Francisco. San Francisco Singer-Songwriters’ Workshop, hosted by Robin Yukiko, First Thursday of every month, 6:30 p.m., $25 (free for AFM members).

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. The Shannon Céilí Band, First Thursday of every month, 9 p.m., free.

JAZZ

Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Doug Martin’s Avatar Ensemble, 7:30 p.m., free.

Cigar Bar & Grill: 850 Montgomery, San Francisco. Jimmy Grant Quartet, First Thursday of every month, 8 p.m., free.

Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Eugene Pliner Quartet with Tod Dickow, First and Third Thursday of every month, 7:30 p.m., free.

Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Steve Lucky & The Rhumba Bums, 7:30 p.m.

Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. Sara & Swingtime, 7 p.m., free.

The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Charlie Siebert & Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.

Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Savanna Jazz Jam with Eddy Ramirez, 7:30 p.m., $5.

SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin St., San Francisco. Henry Butler, in the Joe Henderson Lab, 7 & 8:30 p.m., $30.

Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Stompy Jones, 7:30 p.m., $10.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Marcus Shelby Orchestra featuring the Dynamic Miss Faye Carol, 8 p.m., $20-$23.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Barbara Ochoa, 7:30 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Pa’Lante!,” w/ Juan G, El Kool Kyle, Mr. Lucky, 10 p.m., $5.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Fanfare Zambaleta, Mission Delirium, 9 p.m., $7-$10.

Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. “Jueves Flamencos,” 8 p.m., free.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Gary Flores & Descarga Caliente, 8 p.m.

Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. The Verdi Club Milonga, w/ Christy Coté, DJ Emilio Flores, guests, 9 p.m., $10-$15.

REGGAE

Pissed Off Pete’s: 4528 Mission St., San Francisco. Reggae Thursdays, w/ resident DJ Jah Yzer, 9 p.m., free.

BLUES

50 Mason Social House: 50 Mason, San Francisco. Bill Phillippe, 5:30 p.m., free.

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Grady Champion, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $22.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Chris Ford, First Thursday of every month, 4 p.m.

COUNTRY

The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. “Twang Honky Tonk & Country Jamboree,” w/ DJ Little Red Rodeo, 7 p.m., free.

EXPERIMENTAL

The Luggage Store: 1007 Market, San Francisco. Christopher Luna’s Jatyantara-parinamah, Dylan Neely, 8 p.m., $6-$10.

SOUL

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. West Grand Boulevard, Mama Foxxy, 9:30 p.m., $5.

Brava Theater Center: 2781 24th St., San Francisco. SF IndieFest Opening Night Bash, w/ Vokab Kompany, Gene Washington & The Ironsides, 9 p.m., $10.

 

FRIDAY 7

ROCK

El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Friday Live: The Galloping Sea, DJ Emotions, 10 p.m., free.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Venus Beltran, El Terrible, I Am Animal, 9 p.m., $6.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. War Poets, Lance Burden, Star Anna, Neokane, 9 p.m., $10.

The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Lucius, You Won’t, 9 p.m., sold out.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. The Electric Magpie, Cigarette Bums, Criminal Hygiene, Sad Tires, 8:30 p.m., $5-$7.

Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement, San Francisco. The Memorials, Blood Party, Wildlife Indoors, Ever So Android, 8 p.m., $10.

Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Fortunate Youth, Hirie, Dewey & The Peoples, Midnite Raid, 8 p.m., $16.

Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery): 2183 Mission, San Francisco. Global Affront, Point of View, Mad Judy, Communist Kayte, Ally’s Anatomy, 7 p.m., $7.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. House of Floyd, 8 & 10 p.m., $18-$35.

DANCE

1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. “All S.F. Everything,” w/ The M Machine, WhiteNoize, Tenderlions, Manics, Niteppl, more, 10 p.m., $17.50 advance.

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. “Brass Tax,” w/ resident DJs JoeJoe, Ding Dong, Ernie Trevino, Mace, First Friday of every month, 10 p.m., $5.

Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. Oxia, Dax, Martin Aquino, John Kaberna, 9:30 p.m., $10 advance.

BeatBox: 314 11th St., San Francisco. “Soul Krush,” w/ KINGMCK, 10 p.m., $10-$20.

Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Manimal,” 9 p.m.

Cafe Flore: 2298 Market, San Francisco. “Kinky Beats,” w/ DJ Sergio, 10 p.m., free.

The Cafe: 2369 Market, San Francisco. “Boy Bar,” w/ DJ Matt Consola, 9 p.m., $5.

Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Strangelove: 9-Year Anniversary,” w/ DJs Tomas Diablo, Joe Radio, Andy T, Daniel Skellington, Sage, Netik, Fact.50, Unit 77, and Mz. Samantha, 9:30 p.m., $7 ($3 before 10 p.m.).

The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “F.T.S.: For the Story,” 10 p.m.

The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Bluetech, Christopher Willits, Manitous, Swoonz, Michelangelo, 10 p.m., $15-$20.

The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Trade,” 10 p.m., free before midnight.

The Grand Nightclub: 520 Fourth St., San Francisco. “We Rock Fridays,” 9:30 p.m.

Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. “The Animal Party: Mythical Love,” w/ Traviswild, Lisbona, The Maurice, 9 p.m., $10-$20 advance.

Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “Flight Fridays,” 10 p.m., $20.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “HYSL: Handle Your Shit Lady,” 9 p.m., $3.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Dirty Rotten Dance Party,” w/ Kap10 Harris, Shane King, guests, First Friday of every month, 9 p.m., $5.

Manor West: 750 Harrison, San Francisco. “Fortune Fridays,” 10 p.m., free before 11 p.m. with RSVP.

MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “F-Style Fridays,” w/ DJ Jared-F, 9 p.m.

Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. “Future Fridays,” w/ Twrk, ElCoolJ, Tech Minds, Tchphnx, 9 p.m., $10.

Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. Lee Coombs, Syd Gris, Ethan Miller, Kimba, 9 p.m., $10-$15 advance.

OMG: 43 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Release,” 9 p.m., free before 11 p.m.

Powerhouse: 1347 Folsom, San Francisco. “Nasty,” First Friday of every month, 10 p.m., $5.

Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “As You Like It,” w/ Rebolledo, Blondes, Axel Boman, Conor, Mossmoss (in the main room), 9 p.m., $10-$15.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Pump: Worq It Out Fridays,” w/ resident DJ Christopher B, 9 p.m., $3.

Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. Digitalism (DJ set), 9 p.m., $20 advance.

Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “Haçeteria,” w/ Heatsick, Jason P, Smac, Tristes Tropiques, and Nihar, 10 p.m., $10.

Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. DJ Enfo, DJ E20, BFMJ, DJ Tone, DJ Von, 10 p.m., free.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Bionic,” 10 p.m., $5.

Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. “Blitz,” w/ Charity Strike, Key Method, Genesis, 10 p.m., $10-$30.

Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Bridge the Gap,” w/ resident DJ Don Kainoa, Fridays, 6-10 p.m., free; “Depth,” w/ resident DJs Sharon Buck & Greg Yuen, First Friday of every month, 10 p.m., free.

HIP-HOP

EZ5: 682 Commercial, San Francisco. “Decompression,” Fridays, 5-9 p.m.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. Soulection Paradise Tour 2014, w/ Esta, The Whooligan, GoldenChyld, Vinroc, Dubstantial, PRZNR., 10 p.m., $5-$10.

Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. “… This One Is for Dilla,” w/ DJs House Shoes, Shortkut, Mr. E, and Haylow, 9 p.m., free before midnight with RSVP.

Red Devil Lounge: 1695 Polk, San Francisco. KRS-One, Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist, 8 p.m., $25.

ACOUSTIC

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. The Shelby Foot Three, 7 p.m.

The Sports Basement: 610 Old Mason, San Francisco. “Breakfast with Enzo,” w/ Enzo Garcia, 10 a.m., $5.

St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church: 2097 Turk, San Francisco. First Fridays Song Circle, First Friday of every month, 7 p.m., $5-$10.

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. The Dead Westerns, The Human Condition, The Parmesans, 9:30 p.m., $7.

JAZZ

Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Jazz at the Atlas, 7:30 p.m., free.

Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Johnny Smith, 8 p.m., free.

Bird & Beckett: 653 Chenery, San Francisco. Don Prell’s SeaBop Ensemble, First Friday of every month, 5:30 p.m., free.

Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. Jon Raskin 60th Birthday Concert, w/ Rova Saxophone Quartet, The Fab Lab, The Long Table Project, 8 p.m., $10-$15.

Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Charles Unger Experience, 7:30 p.m., free.

The Palace Hotel: 2 New Montgomery, San Francisco. The Klipptones, 8 p.m., free.

Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Amendola vs. Blades, 7:30 p.m., $15-$20.

SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin St., San Francisco. Henry Butler, in the Joe Henderson Lab, 7 & 8:30 p.m., $35.

Top of the Mark: One Nob Hill, 999 California, San Francisco. Black Market Jazz Orchestra, 9 p.m., $10.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Joyce Grant, 8 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10 p.m., $5.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Lagos Roots, Cha-Ching, 9 p.m., $9-$12.

Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Taste Fridays, featuring local cuisine tastings, salsa bands, dance lessons, and more, 7:30 p.m., $15 (free entry to patio).

New Dehli Restaurant: 160 Ellis, San Francisco. Vintage Glam Bollywood Style Party, 6 p.m., $65-$95.

Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Cuban Night with Fito Reinoso, 7:30 & 9:15 p.m., $15-$18.

REGGAE

Gestalt Haus: 3159 16th St., San Francisco. “Music Like Dirt,” 7:30 p.m., free.

Showdown: 10 Sixth St., San Francisco. “How the West Was Won,” w/ Nowtime Sound, First Friday of every month, 10 p.m., free.

BLUES

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Grady Champion, 7:30 & 10 p.m., $22.

Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Robert “Hollywood” Jenkins, 6 p.m.

Tupelo: 1337 Green, San Francisco. Jinx Jones & The KingTones, First Friday of every month, 9 p.m.

COUNTRY

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. The Bitter Diamonds, Bob Spector, 9 p.m.

EXPERIMENTAL

Joe Goode Annex: 401 Alabama, San Francisco. Pamela Z & Christina McPhee’s Carbon Song Cycle, Feb. 7-8, 8 p.m., $12-$25.

FUNK

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. Swoop Unit, First Friday of every month, 6 p.m., $3-$5.

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Loose Joints,” w/ DJs Centipede, Damon Bell, and Tom Thump, 10 p.m., $5-$10.

SOUL

Edinburgh Castle: 950 Geary, San Francisco. “Soul Crush,” w/ DJ Serious Leisure, 10 p.m., free.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Oldies Night,” w/ DJs Primo, Daniel, Lost Cat, friends, First Friday of every month, 10 p.m., $5.

 

SATURDAY 8

ROCK

Bender’s: 806 S. Van Ness, San Francisco. Kicker, Assbackwards, Reckless, 10 p.m., $5.

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Shearwater, Jesca Hoop, Cazadero, 9:30 p.m., $12.

El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. Here Come the Saviours, The Cold & Lovely, Face Tat, 9 p.m., $8.

Hemlock Tavern: 1131 Polk, San Francisco. Tony Molina, Life Stinks, Violent Change, Swiftumz, 9 p.m., $6.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. SpiralArms, Zed, The Devil in California, Gypsy Flight, 8:30 p.m., $8-$10.

Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Mad Caddies, illScarlett, United Defiance, 9 p.m., $18.

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Before the Brave, Rio Rio, Girls in Suede, 1955, 9 p.m., $10.

DANCE

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. “2 Men Will Move You,” w/ DJs Primo & Jordan, Second Saturday of every month, 9 p.m.

Audio Discotech: 316 11th St., San Francisco. “Konnekted,” w/ Stefan Biniak, J. Remy, 9:30 p.m., $10 advance.

Cafe Flore: 2298 Market, San Francisco. “Bistrotheque,” w/ DJ Ken Vulsion, 8 p.m., free.

Cat Club: 1190 Folsom, San Francisco. “Club Gossip: Cure Night,” w/ DJs Damon, Shon, Low-Life, Daniel Skellington, and Panic, 9 p.m., $5-$8 (free before 9:30 p.m.).

DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Bootie S.F.,” w/ A+D, DJ Dada, Brother Darkness, A Boy Named Art, Meikee Magnetic, Mixtress ShiZaam, Airsun, Chucky Brown, more, 9 p.m., $10-$15.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Tormenta Tropical,” w/ Ape Drums, 2 Deep, Oro11, DeeJay Theory, 10 p.m., $5-$10.

The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Dose,” w/ Cosmic Selector, Jeff Taisch, Dutch, Zach Moore, Billy Casazza, Vitamindevo, Mystr Hatchet, Sonny Daze (afterhours starts 2 a.m. Sunday morning).

The Grand Nightclub: 520 Fourth St., San Francisco. “Love Generation,” w/ Steve Smooth, 10 p.m., $20-$30.

The Hot Spot: 1414 Market, San Francisco. “Love Will Fix It,” w/ DJ Bus Station John, Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $5.

Infusion Lounge: 124 Ellis, San Francisco. “One Way Ticket Saturdays,” w/ Eric D-Lux, Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $20.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Galaxy Radio,” w/ resident DJs Smac, Emils, Holly B, and guests, Second Saturday of every month, 9 p.m., free.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Bounce!,” 9 p.m., $3.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Music Video Night,” w/ DJs Satva & 4AM, Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $5.

Mezzanine: 444 Jessie, San Francisco. “Blow Up Forever,” w/ Poolside (DJ set), Vito & Duzzi, Tropicool, DJ Dials, 9 p.m., $15.

Mighty: 119 Utah, San Francisco. “Salted,” w/ DJ Spinna, Miguel Migs, Julius Papp, 10 p.m., $10-$15 advance.

Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. Angels of Bass, Ana Sia, 9 p.m., $15-$20.

Neck of the Woods: 406 Clement, San Francisco. USF Don-A-Roo After Party, w/ Caked Up, Bixel Boys (on the upstairs stage), 10 p.m., $15-$20.

OMG: 43 Sixth St., San Francisco. “Fixup,” Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., $5 (free before 11 p.m).

Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “Isis,” w/ Kele Okereke; Hi, Today; Brittany B (in the OddJob Loft), 9:30 p.m., $12-$15.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Shoop!,” w/ DJs Tommy T & Bryan B, Second Saturday of every month, 9 p.m.

Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. “Cockblock,” w/ DJ Koslov & Ms. Jackson, 10 p.m., $10.

Ruby Skye: 420 Mason, San Francisco. Benny Benassi, Dvbbs, Tall Sasha, 9 p.m., $20-$55 advance.

Slate Bar: 2925 16th St., San Francisco. “The KissGroove S.F.,” w/ DJ Vinroc & The Whooligan, Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., free.

The Stud: 399 Ninth St., San Francisco. “Frolic,” w/ DJs Nightkat, Ikkuma, Blue, and NeonBunny, 8 p.m., $8 ($4 in costume).

Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery): 2183 Mission, San Francisco. “Batcave S.F.,” w/ Inferno of Joy, plus DJs Necromos, Lori Lust, and Burning Skies, 9:30 p.m., $5.

Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. James Egbert, Kid Alien, Philt3r, Rich Era, Airavata, Random, Sausee, 10 p.m., $20.

Vessel: 85 Campton, San Francisco. The Disco Fries, Wallace, 10 p.m., $10-$30.

Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “All Styles & Smiles,” w/ DJ Tom Thump, Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., free.

HIP-HOP

111 Minna Gallery: 111 Minna St., San Francisco. “Back to the ‘90s,” Second Saturday of every month, 9:30 p.m., $10.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. DJ Touré (with Casual, London, Dolla Will, Emakulant, and Word Up), Mars Today (with Sayknowledge, Cait La Dee, Alex Lee, Shamila Ivory, and Lilan Kane), DJ Sake One, 9 p.m., $10.

Double Dutch: 3192 16th St., San Francisco. “Cash IV Gold,” w/ DJs Kool Karlo, Roost Uno, and Sean G, Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., free.

John Colins: 138 Minna, San Francisco. “Second Saturdays,” w/ resident DJ Matt Cali, Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., free.

Showdown: 10 Sixth St., San Francisco. “The Shit Show,” w/ resident DJ Taurus Scott, Second Saturday of every month, 10 p.m., two for $5.

ACOUSTIC

Atlas Cafe: 3049 20th St., San Francisco. Craig Ventresco and/or Meredith Axelrod, Saturdays, 4-6 p.m., free.

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Songwriters in the Round with Alex Jimenez, Starr Saunders, and Scarth Locke, 7 p.m., free.

The Chapel: 777 Valencia St., San Francisco. Marc Broussard, Jenn Grinels, Andy Suzuki, 9 p.m., $25-$30.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Annie Lin, Cynthia Lin & The Blue Moon All Stars, Terry Matsuoka, Catherine Nguyen, 9 p.m., $7-$10.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Daniel Seidel, 9 p.m.

The Riptide: 3639 Taraval, San Francisco. The Rock Soup Ramblers, 9:30 p.m., free.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Duncan Sheik, 8 & 10 p.m., $21-$34.

JAZZ

Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30 p.m., free.

Savanna Jazz Club: 2937 Mission, San Francisco. Gina Harris & Torbie Phillips, 7:30 p.m., $10.

SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin St., San Francisco. Henry Butler, in the Joe Henderson Lab, 7 & 8:30 p.m., $40.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. The Robert Stewart Experience, 9 p.m.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Brenda Reed, 8 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

1015 Folsom: 1015 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Pura,” 9 p.m., $20.

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. Misión Flamenca, Monthly live music and dance performances., Second Saturday of every month, 7:30 p.m. “Paris-Dakar African Mix Coupe Decale,” 10 p.m., $5.

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. La Gente, Sol Tevél, DJ Kush Arora, 9:30 p.m., $10-$15.

Cafe Cocomo: 650 Indiana, San Francisco. Jerry Rivera, 8 p.m.

The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. LoCura, Ziek McCarter, 9 p.m., $14-$16.

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “El SuperRitmo,” w/ DJs Roger Mas & El Kool Kyle, 10 p.m., $5 before 11 p.m.

Pachamama Restaurant: 1630 Powell, San Francisco. Eddy Navia & Pachamama Band, 8 p.m., free.

Public Works: 161 Erie, San Francisco. “Non Stop Bhangra,” w/ Panjabi MC, J-Boogie, Mandeep Sethi, DJ Jimmy Love, DJ Rav-E, Dholrhythms dance troupe, more (in the main room), 9 p.m., $15-$20.

Red Poppy Art House: 2698 Folsom, San Francisco. Maria José Montijo, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.

Space 550: 550 Barneveld, San Francisco. “Club Fuego,” 9:30 p.m.

BLUES

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Karen Lovely, 7:30 & 10 p.m., $22.

Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Eldon Brown, 6 p.m.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Dave Workman, Second Saturday of every month, 4 p.m.

EXPERIMENTAL

Joe Goode Annex: 401 Alabama, San Francisco. Pamela Z & Christina McPhee’s Carbon Song Cycle, Feb. 7-8, 8 p.m., $12-$25.

 

SUNDAY 9

ROCK

Amoeba Music: 1855 Haight, San Francisco. Secret Chiefs 3, 1:30 p.m., free.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. The Sour Notes, The Tropics, Upstairs Downstairs, Dreadnought, 7:30 p.m., $5-$8.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Incan Abraham, The Alternates, 8 p.m., $10-$12.

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. Septacy, Known to Collapse, Even Gods Can Die, 8 p.m., $5-$7.

DANCE

Beaux: 2344 Market, San Francisco. “Full of Grace: A Weekly House Music Playground,” 9 p.m., free.

The Cellar: 685 Sutter, San Francisco. “Replay Sundays,” 9 p.m., free.

The Edge: 4149 18th St., San Francisco. “’80s at 8,” w/ DJ MC2, 8 p.m.

Elbo Room: 647 Valencia, San Francisco. “Dub Mission,” w/ MC Champian & Roots Hi Fi, DJ Sep, J-Boogie, 9 p.m., $6 (free before 9:30 p.m.).

The EndUp: 401 Sixth St., San Francisco. “T.Dance,” 6 a.m.-6 p.m.; “The Rhythm Room,” w/ Deron Delgado, Brian Salazar, Mario Dubbz, Christian Intrigue, J.J. Shay, Joe Lanzon, 8 p.m.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Stamina,” w/ Calyx, Teebee, Jamal, Lukeino, 10 p.m., free.

The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Delorean, Until the Ribbon Breaks, 8 p.m., $18-$20.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. “Sweater Funk,” 10 p.m., free.

Lookout: 3600 16th St., San Francisco. “Jock,” Sundays, 3-8 p.m., $2.

MatrixFillmore: 3138 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Bounce,” w/ DJ Just, 10 p.m.

Otis: 25 Maiden, San Francisco. “What’s the Werd?,” w/ resident DJs Nick Williams, Kevin Knapp, Maxwell Dub, and guests, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 11 p.m.).

The Parlor: 2801 Leavenworth, San Francisco. DJ Marc deVasconcelos, 10 p.m., free.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Gigante,” 8 p.m., free.

Temple: 540 Howard, San Francisco. “Sunset Arcade,” 18+ dance party & game night, 9 p.m., $10.

HIP-HOP

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. “Return of the Cypher,” 9:30 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Ukuladies & Gentleman, 6 p.m.

The Lucky Horseshoe: 453 Cortland, San Francisco. Bernal Mountain Bluegrass Jam, 4 p.m., free.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Spike’s Mic Night,” Sundays, 4-8 p.m., free.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Seisiún with Marla Fibish, Erin Shrader, and Richard Mandel, 9 p.m.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church: 1755 Clay, San Francisco. “Sunday Night Mic,” w/ Roem Baur, 5 p.m., free.

JAZZ

Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Bill “Doc” Webster & Jazz Nostalgia, 7:30 p.m., free.

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Sunday Sessions,” 10 p.m., free.

Martuni’s: 4 Valencia, San Francisco. Madame Jo Trio, second Sunday of every month, 4-6 p.m., free.

Pier 23 Cafe: Pier 23, San Francisco. The Robert Stewart Experience, 5 p.m., free.

Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. Jazz Revolution, 4 p.m., free/donation.

The Royal Cuckoo: 3202 Mission, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Chris Siebert, 7:30 p.m., free.

SFJAZZ Center: 205 Franklin St., San Francisco. Henry Butler, in the Joe Henderson Lab, 5:30 & 7 p.m., $30.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Amanda King, 7:30 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

Atmosphere: 447 Broadway, San Francisco. “Hot Bachata Nights,” w/ DJ El Guapo, 5:30 p.m., $10 ($18-$25 with dance lessons).

Bissap Baobab: 3372 19th St., San Francisco. “Brazil & Beyond,” 6:30 p.m., free.

El Rio: 3158 Mission, San Francisco. “Salsa Sundays,” Second and Fourth Sunday of every month, 3 p.m., $8-$10.

Old First Presbyterian Church: 1751 Sacramento, San Francisco. Wooden Fish Ensemble, 4 p.m., $5-$17.

Thirsty Bear Brewing Company: 661 Howard, San Francisco. “The Flamenco Room,” 7:30 & 8:30 p.m.

REGGAE

Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Morgan Heritage, The Simpkin Project, 9 p.m., $26.

BLUES

Lou’s Fish Shack: 300 Jefferson St., San Francisco. Nat Bolden, 4 p.m.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Blues Power, 4 p.m.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. Bohemian Knuckleboogie, 8 p.m., free.

Swig: 571 Geary, San Francisco. Sunday Blues Jam with Ed Ivey, 9 p.m.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Ana Popovic, 7 p.m., $24-$28.

COUNTRY

The Riptide: 3639 Taraval, San Francisco. Joe Goldmark & The Seducers, Second Sunday of every month, 7:30 p.m., free.

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. “Twang Sunday All-Girl Country Showdown,” w/ Laura Benitez & The Heartache, The Bootcuts, 4 p.m., free.

SOUL

Delirium Cocktails: 3139 16th St., San Francisco. “Heart & Soul,” w/ DJ Lovely Lesage, 10 p.m., free.

 

MONDAY 10

ROCK

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Bit Brigade, Mega Ran, Crashfaster, Danimal Cannon, Gnarboots, 9 p.m., $10.

Brick & Mortar Music Hall: 1710 Mission, San Francisco. Waters, 9 p.m., $6.

The Independent: 628 Divisadero, San Francisco. Augustines, My Goodness, 8 p.m., $13-$15.

DANCE

DNA Lounge: 375 11th St., San Francisco. “Death Guild,” 18+ dance party with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, Melting Girl, & guests, 9:30 p.m., $3-$5.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Wanted,” w/ DJs Key&Kite and Richie Panic, 9 p.m., free.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Vienetta Discotheque,” w/ DJs Stanley Frank and Robert Jeffrey, 10 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC

Amnesia: 853 Valencia, San Francisco. The Pick Bluegrass Jam, Second Monday of every month, 6 p.m., free; Toshio Hirano, Second Monday of every month, 9 p.m., free.

The Chieftain: 198 Fifth St., San Francisco. The Wrenboys, 7 p.m., free.

Fiddler’s Green: 1333 Columbus, San Francisco. Terry Savastano, 9:30 p.m., free/donation.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Open Mic with Brendan Getzell, 8 p.m., free.

Osteria: 3277 Sacramento, San Francisco. “Acoustic Bistro,” 7 p.m., free.

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. Peter Lindman, 4 p.m.

JAZZ

Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Eugene Pliner Quartet with Tod Dickow, 7:30 p.m., free.

Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Le Jazz Hot, 7 p.m., free.

Sheba Piano Lounge: 1419 Fillmore, San Francisco. City Jazz Instrumental Jam Session, 8 p.m.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Nora Maki, 7:30 p.m., free.

REGGAE

Skylark Bar: 3089 16th St., San Francisco. “Skylarking,” w/ I&I Vibration, 10 p.m., free.

BLUES

The Saloon: 1232 Grant, San Francisco. The Bachelors, 9:30 p.m.

EXPERIMENTAL

Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. “Breaking the Sound,” w/ Aram Shelton & Philip White, Jessie Marino, Blood Wedding, 7:30 p.m., $10-$15.

SOUL

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “M.O.M. (Motown on Mondays),” w/ DJ Gordo Cabeza & Timoteo Gigante, 8 p.m., free.

 

TUESDAY 11

ROCK

Bottom of the Hill: 1233 17th St., San Francisco. Dave Davison, The Great Work, The Soonest, 9 p.m., $10-$12.

The Knockout: 3223 Mission, San Francisco. A Million Billion Dying Suns, What Fun Life Was, Lemme Adams, 9:30 p.m., $6.

Rickshaw Stop: 155 Fell, San Francisco. Hospitality, Air Waves, Matt Kivel, 8 p.m., $10-$12.

Slim’s: 333 11th St., San Francisco. Kid Congo Powers & The Pink Monkey Birds, Wax Idols, Dancer, DJ Omar, 8 p.m., $15.

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St., San Francisco. Buffalo Tooth, The Blast, 8 p.m., $5.

DANCE

Aunt Charlie’s Lounge: 133 Turk, San Francisco. “High Fantasy,” w/ DJ Viv, Myles Cooper, & guests, 10 p.m., $2.

Harlot: 46 Minna, San Francisco. “Tutu Tuesday,” w/ resident DJ Atish, Second Tuesday of every month, 9 p.m., $7 ($2 in a tutu before 11 p.m.).

Hotel Nikko: 222 Mason, San Francisco. “Saké & Sound,” w/ Brian Salazar & DJ SteelE, 7 p.m., free.

Monarch: 101 6th St., San Francisco. “Soundpieces,” 10 p.m., free-$10.

Q Bar: 456 Castro, San Francisco. “Switch,” w/ DJs Jenna Riot & Andre, 9 p.m., $3.

Underground SF: 424 Haight, San Francisco. “Shelter,” 10 p.m., free.

Wish: 1539 Folsom, San Francisco. “Tight,” w/ resident DJs Michael May & Lito, 8 p.m., free.

HIP-HOP

Double Dutch: 3192 16th St., San Francisco. “Takin’ It Back Tuesdays,” w/ DJs Mr. Murdock & Roman Nunez, Second Tuesday of every month, 10 p.m., free.

ACOUSTIC

Bazaar Cafe: 5927 California, San Francisco. Songwriter in Residence: Paige Clem, continues through Feb. 25.

Hotel Utah: 500 Fourth St., San Francisco. Porkchop Express, He Who Cannot Be Named, Piss Pissedoffherson, 8 p.m., $8.

Plough & Stars: 116 Clement, San Francisco. Seisiún with Barry O’Connell & Vinnie Cronin, 9 p.m.

JAZZ

Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant: 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco. Gerry Grosz Jazz Jam, 7 p.m.

Blush! Wine Bar: 476 Castro, San Francisco. Kally Price & Rob Reich, 7 p.m., free.

Burritt Room: 417 Stockton St., San Francisco. Terry Disley’s Rocking Jazz Trio, 6 p.m., free.

Cafe Divine: 1600 Stockton, San Francisco. Chris Amberger, 7 p.m.

Jazz Bistro at Les Joulins: 44 Ellis, San Francisco. Clifford Lamb, Mel Butts, and Friends, 7:30 p.m., free.

Le Colonial: 20 Cosmo, San Francisco. Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, 7 p.m.

Revolution Cafe: 3248 22nd St., San Francisco. West Side Jazz Club, 5 p.m., free.

Tupelo: 1337 Green, San Francisco. Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz Band, 6 p.m.

Verdi Club: 2424 Mariposa, San Francisco. “Tuesday Night Jump,” w/ Stompy Jones, 9 p.m., $10-$12.

Wine Kitchen: 507 Divisadero St., San Francisco. Hot Club Pacific, 7:30 p.m.

Yoshi’s San Francisco: 1330 Fillmore, San Francisco. Tommy Igoe Big Band, 8 p.m., $22.

Zingari: 501 Post, San Francisco. Anya Malkiel, 7:30 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL

The Cosmo Bar & Lounge: 440 Broadway, San Francisco. “Conga Tuesdays,” 8 p.m., $7-$10.

F8: 1192 Folsom St., San Francisco. “Underground Nomads,” w/ rotating resident DJs Amar, Sep, and Dulce Vita, plus guests, 9 p.m., $5 (free before 9:30 p.m.).

REGGAE

Milk Bar: 1840 Haight, San Francisco. “Bless Up,” w/ Jah Warrior Shelter Hi-Fi, 10 p.m.

BLUES

Biscuits and Blues: 401 Mason, San Francisco. Kyle Rowland, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., $15.

Boom Boom Room: 1601 Fillmore, San Francisco. Dr. Mojo, 9:30 p.m., free.

EXPERIMENTAL

Center for New Music: 55 Taylor, San Francisco. sfSoundSalonSeries, w/ Bonnie Jones & Andrea Neumann Duo, Danishta Rivero, 7:49 p.m., $10-$15.

FUNK

Madrone Art Bar: 500 Divisadero, San Francisco. “Boogaloo Tuesday,” w/ Oscar Myers & Steppin’, 9:30 p.m., free.

SOUL

Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd St., San Francisco. “Lost & Found,” w/ DJs Primo, Lucky, and guests, 9:30 p.m., free.

Film Listings: January 29 – February 4, 2014

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

OPENING

At Middleton Andy Garcia and Vera Farmiga play strangers paying introductory visits to the titular (fictive) college with offspring on the brink of leaving home and starting independent adult lives. Everyone is temperamentally ill-matched — jokester mom with humorless daughter, persnickety dad with laid-back son — but during the course of the day strolling around campus, frissons of romance and new self knowledge occur on both sides of the generation gap. Adam Rodgers’ feature is pleasant but a little too pat, relying overmuch on the appeal of lead actors who’ve been better served elsewhere. (1:39) (Harvey)

Labor Day Pie-baking escaped con (Josh Brolin) meets lonely single mom (Kate Winslet) in Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s novel. (1:51) Presidio.

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Animated” Five nominees — plus a trio of “highly commended” additional selections — fill this program. If you saw Frozen in the theater, you’ve seen Get a Horse!, starring old-timey Mickey Mouse and some very modern moviemaking techniques. There’s also Room on the Broom, based on a children’s book about a kindly witch who’s a little too generous when it comes to befriending outcast animals (much to the annoyance of her original companion, a persnickety cat). Simon Pegg narrates, and Gillian Anderson voices the red-headed witch; listen also for Mike Leigh regulars Sally Hawkins and Timothy Spall. Japanese Possessions is based on even older source material: a spooky legend that discarded household objects can gain the power to cause mischief. A good-natured fix-it man ducks into an abandoned house during a rainstorm, only to be confronted with playful parasols, cackling kimono fabric, and a dragon constructed out of kitchen junk. The most artistically striking nominee is Feral, a dialogue-free, impressionistic tale of a foundling who resists attempts to civilize him. But my top pick is another dialogue-free entry: Mr. Hublot, the steampunky tale of an inventor whose regimented life is thrown into disarray when he adopts a stray robot dog, which soon grows into a comically enormous companion. It’s cute without being cloying, and the universe it creates around its characters is cleverly detailed, right down to the pictures on Hublot’s walls. Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Live Action” With the exception of one entry — wryly comedic The Voorman Problem, starring Sherlock‘s Martin Freeman as a prison doctor who has a most unsettling encounter with an inmate who believes he’s a god — children are a unifying theme among this year’s live-action nominees. Finnish Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?, the shortest in the bunch, follows a cheerfully sloppy family’s frantic morning as they scramble to get themselves to a wedding. Danish Helium skews a little sentimental in its tale of a hospital janitor who makes up stories about a fanciful afterlife (way more fun than heaven) for the benefit of a sickly young patient. Spanish That Wasn’t Me focuses on a different kind of youth entirely: a child soldier in an unnamed African nation, whose brutal encounter with a pair of European doctors leads him down an unexpected path. Though it feels more like a sequence lifted from a longer film rather than a self-contained short, French Just Before Losing Everything is the probably the strongest contender here. The tale of a woman (Léa Drucker) who decides to take her two children and leave her dangerously abusive husband, it unfolds with real-time suspense as she visits her supermarket job one last time to deal with mundane stuff (collecting her last paycheck, turning in her uniform) before the trio can flee to safety. If they gave out Oscars for short-film acting, Drucker would be tough to beat; her performance balances steely determination and extreme fear in equally hefty doses. Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

That Awkward Moment Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan, and Miles Teller star in this tale of three best buds struggling with the messy business of growing up and falling in love. (1:34)

12 O’Clock Boys Lotfy Nathan’s documentary starts with a talk radio guy dismissing as “little scumbags” the urban dirt bikers of Baltimore, saying their menace to public safety is tolerated because they’re African American. Boldly leaping past that dread specter of political correctitude, he opines “”I don’t care if they get hurt. I don’t care if one of them dies,” so long as the problem is dealt with. We then meet the problem in the person of Pug, a 12-year-old observed for three years as he grows older if not bigger (he’s got a Napoleon complex), forever trying to get into the titular fabled pack of “renegade riders” who exasperate the city’s police. An ex-member, who no longer rides but provides mobile “support” to the 12 O’Clockers (so named for their near-vertical wheelies) from his van, says, “You will learn the right way to do all the wrong things in Baltimore.” Dirt biking, he offers, is one of very few “positives” available to those growing up in a community beset by joblessness, crime, and poverty. It’s certainly an outlet for Pug, though whether it’s keeping him out of or getting him into more trouble is an open question. It stays open here, as we see him increasingly exasperating former exotic dancer mom Coco and school officials alike. He’s turning into a bit of an asshole, but will he become a major one? Will he even make it to 18? This vérité slice is itself frustrating as well as compelling — but you’ll hope Nathan makes a sequel so we can see what fate has in store for Pug. (1:15) Roxie. (Harvey)

24 Exposures See “Mumble, Mumble, Murder.” (1:20) Roxie.

ONGOING

American Hustle David O. Russell’s American Hustle is like a lot of things you’ve seen before — put in a blender, so the results are too smooth to feel blatantly derivative, though here and there you taste a little Boogie Nights (1997), Goodfellas (1990), or whatever. Loosely based on the Abscam FBI sting-scandal of the late 1970s and early ’80s (an opening title snarks “Some of this actually happened”), Hustle is a screwball crime caper almost entirely populated by petty schemers with big ideas almost certain to blow up in their faces. It’s love, or something, at first sight for Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who meet at a Long Island party circa 1977 and instantly fall for each other — or rather for the idealized selves they’ve both strained to concoct. He’s a none-too-classy but savvy operator who’s built up a mini-empire of variably legal businesses; she’s a nobody from nowhere who crawled upward and gave herself a bombshell makeover. The hiccup in this slightly tacky yet perfect match is Irving’s neglected, crazy wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), who’s not about to let him go. She’s their main problem until they meet Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), an ambitious FBI agent who entraps the two while posing as a client. Their only way out of a long prison haul, he says, is to cooperate in an elaborate Atlantic City redevelopment scheme he’s concocted to bring down a slew of Mafioso and presumably corrupt politicians, hustling a beloved Jersey mayor (Jeremy Renner) in the process. Russell’s filmmaking is at a peak of populist confidence it would have been hard to imagine before 2010’s The Fighter, and the casting here is perfect down to the smallest roles. But beyond all clever plotting, amusing period trappings, and general high energy, the film’s ace is its four leads, who ingeniously juggle the caricatured surfaces and pathetic depths of self-identified “winners” primarily driven by profound insecurity. (2:17) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Look, I fully understand that Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues — which follows the awkward lumberings of oafish anchor Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) and his equally uncouth team (Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner) as they ditch San Diego in favor of New York’s first 24-hour news channel, circa 1980 — is not aimed at film critics. It’s silly, it’s tasteless, and it’s been crafted purely for Ferrell fans, a lowbrow army primed to gobble up this tale of Burgundy’s national TV rise and fall (and inevitable redemption), with a meandering storyline that includes chicken-fried bat, a pet shark, an ice-skating sequence, a musical number, epic amounts of polyester, lines (“by the bedpan of Gene Rayburn!”) that will become quoteable after multiple viewings, and the birth of infotainment as we know it. But what if a film critic happened to be a Ferrell fan, too? What if, days later, that film critic had a flashback to Anchorman 2‘s amplified news-crew gang war (no spoilers), and guffawed at the memory? I am fully aware that this ain’t a masterpiece. But I still laughed. A lot. (1:59) Metreon. (Eddy)

August: Osage County Considering the relative infrequency of theater-to-film translations today, it’s a bit of a surprise that Tracy Letts had two movies made from his plays before he even got to Broadway. Bug and Killer Joe proved a snug fit for director William Friedkin (in 2006 and 2011, respectively), but both plays were too outré for the kind of mainstream success accorded 2007’s August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer, ran 18 months on Broadway, and toured the nation. As a result, August was destined — perhaps doomed — to be a big movie, the kind that shoehorns a distracting array of stars into an ensemble piece, playing jes’ plain folk. But what seemed bracingly rude as well as somewhat traditional under the proscenium lights just looks like a lot of reheated Country Gothic hash, and the possibility of profundity you might’ve been willing to consider before is now completely off the menu. If you haven’t seen August before (or even if you have), there may be sufficient fun watching stellar actors chew the scenery with varying degrees of panache — Meryl Streep (who else) as gorgon matriarch Violet Weston; Sam Shepard as her long-suffering spouse; Julia Roberts as pissed-off prodigal daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts), etc. You know the beats: Late-night confessions, drunken hijinks, disastrous dinners, secrets (infidelity, etc.) spilling out everywhere like loose change from moth-eaten trousers. The film’s success story, I suppose, is Roberts: She seems very comfortable with her character’s bitter anger, and the four-letter words tumble past those jumbo lips like familiar friends. On the downside, there’s Streep, who’s a wizard and a wonder as usual yet also in that mode supporting the naysayers’ view that such conspicuous technique prevents our getting lost in her characters. If Streep can do anything, then logic decrees that includes being miscast. (2:10) Albany, Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Blue Jasmine The good news about Blue Jasmine isn’t that it’s set in San Francisco, but that it’s Woody Allen’s best movie in years. Although some familiar characteristics are duly present, it’s not quite like anything he’s done before, and carries its essentially dramatic weight more effectively than he’s managed in at least a couple decades. Not long ago Jasmine (a fearless Cate Blanchett) was the quintessential Manhattan hostess, but that glittering bubble has burst — exactly how revealed in flashbacks that spring surprises up to the script’s end. She crawls to the West Coast to “start over” in the sole place available where she won’t be mortified by the pity of erstwhile society friends. That would be the SF apartment of Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a fellow adoptive sister who was always looked down on by comparison to pretty, clever Jasmine. Theirs is an uneasy alliance — but Ginger’s too big-hearted to say no. It’s somewhat disappointing that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really do much with San Francisco. Really, the film could take place anywhere — although setting it in a non-picture-postcard SF does bolster the film’s unsettled, unpredictable air. Without being an outright villain, Jasmine is one of the least likable characters to carry a major US film since Noah Baumbach’s underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007); the general plot shell, moreover, is strongly redolent of A Streetcar Named Desire. But whatever inspiration Allen took from prior works, Blue Jasmine is still distinctively his own invention. It’s frequently funny in throwaway performance bits, yet disturbing, even devastating in cumulative impact. (1:38) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Dallas Buyers Club Dallas Buyers Club is the first all-US feature from Jean-Marc Vallée. He first made a splash in 2005 with C.R.A.Z.Y., which seemed an archetype of the flashy, coming-of-age themed debut feature. Vallée has evolved beyond flashiness, or maybe since C.R.A.Z.Y. he just hasn’t had a subject that seemed to call for it. Which is not to say Dallas is entirely sober — its characters partake from the gamut of altering substances, over-the-counter and otherwise. But this is a movie about AIDS, so the purely recreational good times must eventually crash to an end. Which they do pretty quickly. We first meet Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) in 1986, a Texas good ol’ boy endlessly chasing skirts and partying nonstop. Not feeling quite right, he visits a doctor, who informs him that he is HIV-positive. His response is “I ain’t no faggot, motherfucker” — and increased partying that he barely survives. Afterward, he pulls himself together enough to research his options, and bribes a hospital attendant into raiding its trial supply of AZT for him. But Ron also discovers the hard way what many first-generation AIDS patients did — that AZT is itself toxic. He ends up in a Mexican clinic run by a disgraced American physician (Griffin Dunne) who recommends a regime consisting mostly of vitamins and herbal treatments. Ron realizes a commercial opportunity, and finds a business partner in willowy cross-dresser Rayon (Jared Leto). When the authorities keep cracking down on their trade, savvy Ron takes a cue from gay activists in Manhattan and creates a law evading “buyers club” in which members pay monthly dues rather than paying directly for pharmaceutical goods. It’s a tale that the scenarists (Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack) and director steep in deep Texan atmospherics, and while it takes itself seriously when and where it ought, Dallas Buyers Club is a movie whose frequent, entertaining jauntiness is based in that most American value: get-rich-quick entrepreneurship. (1:58) Balboa, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Devil’s Due (1:29) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Frozen (1:48) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

G.B.F. High schooler Brent (Paul Iacono) decides his path to social success will be established once he comes out. I mean, duh — he’ll become the pet pick of the would-be prom queens: the girl-with-the-best-hair Fawcett (Sasha Pieterse), drama mama Caprice (Xosha Roquemore), and Mormon good girl ‘Shley (Andrea Bowen), and mad popularity will ensue. Alas, wholly unprepared comic-book fan Tanner (Michel J. Willet) gets outed first — and the battle for the O.G. G.B.F. (or “gay best friend”) is on. Working with a fast, sassy, and slangy script — and teen comedy vets Natasha Lyonne, Rebecca Gayheart, and Jonathan Silverman — director Darren Stein (1999’s Jawbreaker) has already traversed some of this uber-camp territory; yes, there’s a multiplayer saunter down a high school hall and a major makeover montage. But the snappy, laugh-out-loud dialogue by first-time screenwriter George Northy (fresh from the Outfest Screenwriting Lab), along with some high-speed improvising by the cast, makes for an effortlessly enjoyable viewing experience. (1:38) Metreon. (Chun)

Gimme Shelter Pope Francis has been making up for lost time, but nevertheless, it’s tough to get a good dose of up-with-Catholicism promotional material these days. Like Francis, Gimme Shelter aims to highlight the church’s tangible and spiritual support to those in need — and here, in this movie based on a real story, would-be teen moms uninterested or unwilling to abort. Oh yes, and it’s down to shelter those battered by bad press about pedophile priests and provide a role with some meat to an ingenue itching to grow. Vanessa Hudgens is that actress, who seems to be making the right career moves following last year’s Spring Breakers by playing crust-punk teen runaway Apple. The girl is trying to break away from her abusive, cracked-out mom (Rosario Dawson) and is forced to reconnect with her privileged stranger of a dad (Brendan Fraser). The cherry — or lack thereof — on top of her troubles is the fact that she’s preggers, which inspires her father’s pinched spouse (Stephanie Szostak) to march her straight to the clinic to terminate. With the help of a hospital priest Frank (James Earl Jones), she finds, yes, shelter in a home for teen moms in need, though we never quite understand why Apple is so determined to have the child —especially when her own mother, brought scarily to life by an intense, unrecognizable Dawson, is such a monster. Still, it’s a measure of how believable Hudgens is, working with what little she has in the way of verbiage, that a viewer is touched by her trajectory. Meanwhile the avid film fan can’t help but wonder how this well-meaning movie — which incidentally has absolutely nothing to do with the Stones and doesn’t quite deserve this way-too-literal title — would have unfolded in the hands of a Lee Daniels or even a Olivier Assayas. (1:40) SF Center, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Girls in the Band Judy Chaikin’s upbeat documentary is in step with the recent, not-unwelcome trend of bringing overlooked musicians into the spotlight (think last year’s Twenty Feet from Stardom and A Band Called Death). The Girls in the Band takes a chronological look at women in the big-band and jazz scenes, taking the 1958’s “A Great Day in Harlem” as a visual jumping-off point, sharing the stories of two (out of just three) women who posed amid that sea of male musicians. One is British pianist Marian McPartland, who’s extensively featured in interviews shot before her death last year; the other is gifted composer and arranger Mary Lou Williams, who died in 1981 but left behind a rich legacy that still inspires. Others featured in this doc (which culminates in a re-creation of that famous Harlem photo shoot — with all-female subjects this time) include saxophone- and trumpet-playing members of the multi-racial, all-female International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which toured the segregated south at great peril during the 1930s and was a favorite among African American servicemen during World War II. No matter her race, nearly every woman interviewed cites the raging sexism inherent in the music biz — but the film’s final third, which focuses on contemporary successes like Esperanza Spalding, suggests that stubborn roadblock is finally being chipped away. (1:26) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Great Beauty The latest from Paolo Sorrentino (2008’s Il Divo) arrives as a high-profile contender for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, already annointed a masterpiece in some quarters, and duly announcing itself as such in nearly every grandiose, aesthetically engorged moment. Yes, it seems to say, you are in the presence of this auteur’s masterpiece. But it’s somebody else’s, too. The problem isn’t just that Fellini got there first, but that there’s room for doubt whether Sorrentino’s homage actually builds on or simply imitates its model. La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963) are themselves swaying, jerry-built monuments, exhileratingly messy and debatably profound. But nothing quite like them had been seen before, and they did define a time of cultural upheaval — when traditional ways of life were being plowed under by a loud, moneyed, heedless modernity that for a while chose Rome as its global capital. Sorrentino announces his intention to out-Fellini Fellini in an opening sequence so strenuously flamboyant it’s like a never-ending pirouette performed by a prima dancer with a hernia. There’s statuary, a women’s choral ensemble, an on-screen audience applauding the director’s baffled muse Toni Servillo, standing in for Marcello Mastroianni — all this and more in manic tracking shots and frantic intercutting, as if sheer speed alone could supply contemporary relevancy. Eventually The Great Beauty calms down a bit, but still its reason for being remains vague behind the heavy curtain of “style.” (2:22) Metreon, Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Her Morose and lonely after a failed marriage, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) drifts through an appealingly futuristic Los Angeles (more skyscrapers, less smog) to his job at a place so hipster-twee it probably will exist someday: beautifulhandwrittenletters.com, where he dictates flowery missives to a computer program that scrawls them onto paper for paying customers. Theodore’s scripting of dialogue between happy couples, as most of his clients seem to be, only enhances his sadness, though he’s got friends who care about him (in particular, Amy Adams as Amy, a frumpy college chum) and he appears to have zero money woes, since his letter-writing gig funds a fancy apartment equipped with a sweet video-game system. Anyway, women are what gives Theodore trouble — and maybe by extension, writer-director Spike Jonze? — so he seeks out the ultimate gal pal: Samantha, an operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the year’s best disembodied performance. Thus begins a most unusual relationship, but not so unusual; Theodore’s friends don’t take any issue with the fact that his new love is a machine. Hey, in Her‘s world, everyone’s deeply involved with their chatty, helpful, caring, always-available OS — why wouldn’t Theo take it to the next level? Inevitably, of course, complications arise. If Her‘s romantic arc feels rather predictable, the film acquits itself in other ways, including boundlessly clever production-design touches that imagine a world with technology that’s (mostly) believably evolved from what exists today. Also, the pants they wear in the future? Must be seen to be believed. (2:00) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Just when you’d managed to wipe 2012’s unwieldy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey from your mind, here comes its sequel — and it’s actually good! Yes, it’s too long (Peter Jackson wouldn’t have it any other way); arachnophobes (and maybe small children) will have trouble with the creepy, giant-spider battle; and Orlando Bloom, reprising his Lord of the Rings role as Legolas the elf, has been CG’d to the point of looking like he’s carved out of plastic. But there’s much more to enjoy this time around, with a quicker pace (no long, drawn-out dinner parties); winning performances by Martin Freeman (Bilbo), Ian McKellan (Gandalf); and Benedict Cumberbatch (as the petulent voice of Smaug the dragon); and more shape to the quest, as the crew of dwarves seeks to reclaim their homeland, and Gandalf pokes into a deeper evil that’s starting to overtake Middle-earth. (We all know how that ends.) In addition to Cumberbatch, the cast now includes Lost‘s Evangeline Lilly as elf Tauriel, who doesn’t appear in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original story, but whose lady-warrior presence is a welcome one; and Luke Evans as Bard, a human poised to play a key role in defeating Smaug in next year’s trilogy-ender, There and Back Again. (2:36) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Before succumbing to the hot and heavy action inside the arena (intensely directed by Francis Lawrence) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire force-feeds you a world of heinous concept fashions that’d make Lady Gaga laugh. But that’s ok, because the second film about one girl’s epic struggle to change the world of Panem may be even more exciting than the first. Suzanne Collins’ YA novel The Hunger Games was an over-literal metaphor for junior high social survival and the glory of Catching Fire is that it depicts what comes after you reach the cool kids’ table. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) inspired so much hope among the 12 districts she now faces pressures from President Snow (a portentous Donald Sutherland) and the fanatical press of Capital City (Stanley Tucci with big teeth and Toby Jones with big hair). After she’s forced to fake a romance with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), the two watch with horror as they’re faced with a new Hunger Game: for returning victors, many of whom are too old to run. Amanda Plummer and Jeffrey Wright are fun as brainy wackjobs and Jena Malone is hilariously Amazonian as a serial axe grinder still screaming like an eighth grader. Inside the arena, alliances and rivalries shift but the winner’s circle could survive to see another revolution; to save this city, they may have to burn it down. (2:26) Metreon, Shattuck. (Vizcarrondo)

I, Frankenstein (1:33) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Inside Llewyn Davis In the Coen Brothers’ latest, Oscar Isaac as the titular character is well on his way to becoming persona non grata in 1961 NYC — particularly in the Greenwich Village folk music scene he’s an ornery part of. He’s broke, running out of couches to crash on, has recorded a couple records that have gone nowhere, and now finds out he’s impregnated the wife (Carey Mulligan) and musical partner of one among the few friends (Justin Timberlake) he has left. She’s furious with herself over this predicament, but even more furious at him. This ambling, anecdotal tale finds Llewyn running into one exasperating hurdle after another as he burns his last remaining bridges, not just in Manhattan but on a road trip to Chicago undertaken with an overbearing jazz musician (John Goodman) and his enigmatic driver (Garrett Hedlund) to see a club impresario (F. Murray Abraham). This small, muted, droll Coens exercise is perfectly handled in terms of performance and atmosphere, with pleasures aplenty in its small plot surprises, myriad humorous idiosyncrasies, and T. Bone Burnett’s sweetened folk arrangements. But whether it actually has anything to say about its milieu (a hugely important Petri dish for later ’60s political and musical developments), or adds up to anything more profound than an beautifully executed shaggy-dog story, will be a matter of personal taste — or perhaps of multiple viewings. (1:45) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Invisible Woman Charles Dickens was a regular scold of the British class system and its repercussions, particularly the gentry’s general acceptance that poverty was something the bottom rung of society was suited for, perhaps even deserved. Given how many in positions of power would have preferred such issues go ignored, it was all the more important their highest-profile advocate be of unimpeachable “moral character” — which in the Victorian era meant a very high standard of conduct indeed. So it remains remarkable that in long married middle-age he heedlessly risked scandal and possible career-ruin by taking on a much younger mistress. Both she and he eventually burned all their mutual correspondence, so Claire Tomalin’s biography The Invisible Woman is partly a speculative work. But it and now Ralph Fiennes’ film of the same name are fascinating glimpses into the clash between public life and private passion in that most judgmentally prudish of epochs. Framed by scenes of its still-secretive heroine several years after the central events, the movie introduces us to a Dickens (Fiennes) who at mid-career is already the most famous man in the UK. In his lesser-remembered capacity as a playwright and director, at age 45 (in 1857) he hired 18-year-old actress Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones) for an ingénue role. He was instantly smitten; she was, at the least, awed by this great man’s attention. Their professional association permitted some further contact without generating much gossip. But eventually Dickens chafed at the restraints necessary to avoid scandal — no matter the consequences to himself, let alone his wife, his 10 (!) children, or Ternan herself. Fiennes, by all accounts an exceptional Shakespearean actor on stage, made a strong directorial debut in 2011 with that guy’s war play, Coriolanus — a movie that, like this one, wasn’t enough of a conventional prestige film or crowd-pleaser to surf the awards-season waves very long. But they’re both films of straightforward confidence, great intelligence, and unshowy good taste that extends to avoiding any vanity project whiff. (1:51) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Throwback Terror Thursday, anyone? If the early Bourne entries leapt ahead of then-current surveillance technology in their paranoia-inducing ability to Find-Replace-Eliminate international villains wherever they were in the world, then Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit flails in the opposite direction — toward a nonsensical, flag-waving mixture of Cold War and War on Terror phobias. So when covert mucky-muck Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner) solemnly warns that if mild-mannered former Marine and secret CIA analyst Jack Ryan stumbles, the US is in danger of … another Great Depression, you just have to blink, Malcolm Gladwell-style. Um, didn’t we just do that? And is this movie that out of touch? It doesn’t help that director Kenneth Branagh casts himself as the sleek, camp, and illin’ Russian baddie Viktor Cherevin, who’s styled like a ’90s club tsar in formfitting black clothing with a sheen that screams “Can this dance-floor sadist buy you another cosmo?” He’s intended to pass for something resembling sex — and soul — in Shadow Recruit‘s odd, determinedly clueless universe. That leaves a colorless, blank Chris Pine with the thankless task of rescuing whiney physician love Cathy (Keira Knightley) from baddie clutches. Pine’s no Alec Baldwin, lacking the latter’s wit and anger management issues, or even Ben Affleck, who has also succumbed to blank, beefcake posturing on occasion. Let’s return this franchise to its box, firmly relegated to the shadows. (1:45) Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Last Match Yosvani (Milton García) and Reinier (Reinier Díaz) are barely adult, unemployed Havana residents on the margins, each living under a girlfriend or wife’s roof, but more properly living under the thumb of that partner’s parent. While Yosvani has it somewhat easy in the household of black marketeer Silvano (Luis Alberto García), Reinier has to peddle his body to tourists — for a while snagging a good one in visiting Spaniard Juan (Toni Cantó) — to get by. There’s a simmering attraction between the two ostensibly heterosexual best friends that won’t make life any easier — and even when talented player Rey gets scouted by soccer pros, his potential good fortune could be undone by a debt owed to Silvano, who is not to be fooled with. This leisurely but compelling drama, a Spanish-Cuban co-production by director-cowriter Antonio Hens (2007’s Clandestinos) mixes a restrained love story (there’s some nudity but not much hot-guys-making-out titillation here) with observation of Cuban social norms re: macho vs. “down low” life, money (or the lack of it), and so forth. It’s not wildly original in content or style, but there’s an air of unassuming truth that makes the eventual turn toward tragedy feel more resonant than formulaic. (1:34) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

The Legend of Hercules What better reason to wield the blunt force of 3D than to highlight the muscle-bound glory of a legendary hero — and, of course, foreground his impressive six-pack abs and impudently jutting nipples. Lead Kellan Lutz nails the eye candy aspect in this sword ‘n’ sandals effort by Renny Harlin (aka the man who capsized Geena Davis’s career), though it’s hard to take him seriously when he looks less like the hirsute, leonine hero depicted in ancient artwork than an archetypal, thick-necked, clean-shaven, all-American handsome-jock star (Lutz’s resemblance to Tom Brady is uncanny). Still, glistening beefcake is a fact of life at toga parties, and it’s clearly a large part of the appeal in this corny popcorner about Greek mythology’s proto-superhero. The Legend of Hercules is kitted out to conquer teen date nights around the world, with a lot of bloodless PG-13 violence for the boys and flower-petal-filled nuzzle-fests between Herc and Hebe (Gaia Weiss) for the girls, along with the added twist that Hercules’s peace-loving mother Alcmene conceived him with Zeus — with Hera’s permission — in order to halt her power-mad brute of a spouse King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins). In any case Harlin and company can’t leave well enough alone and piledrive each action scene with way too much super-slo-mo, as if mainlining the Matrix films in the editing booth to guarantee the attention of critical overseas markets and future installments. And the cheesy badness of certain scenes, like Hercules twirling the broken stone walls he destroys like a pair of giant fuzzy dice, can’t be denied. We all know how rich and riveting Greek mythology is, and by Hera, if the original, complicated Heracles is ever truly encapsulated on film, I hope it’s by Lars von Trier or another moviemaker capable of adequately harnessing a bisexual demi-god of enormous appetites and heroism. (1:38) SF Center. (Chun)

Lone Survivor Peter Berg (2012’s Battleship, 2007’s The Kingdom) may officially be structuring his directing career around muscular tails of bad-assery. This true story follows a team of Navy SEALs on a mission to find a Taliban group leader in an Afghani mountain village. Before we meet the actors playing our real-life action heroes we see training footage of actual SEALs being put through their paces; it’s physical hardship structured to separate the tourists from the lifers. The only proven action star in the group is Mark Wahlberg — as Marcus Luttrell, who wrote the film’s source-material book. His funky bunch is made of heartthrobs and sensitive types: Taylor Kitsch (TV’s Friday Night Lights); Ben Foster, who last portrayed William S. Burroughs in 2013’s Kill Your Darlings but made his name as an officer breaking bad news gently to war widows in 2009’s The Messenger; and Emile Hirsch, who wandered into the wilderness in 2007’s Into the Wild. We know from the outset who the lone survivors won’t be, but the film still manages to convey tension and suspense, and its relentlessness is stunning. Foster throws himself off a cliff, bounces off rocks, and gets caught in a tree — then runs to his also-bloody brothers to report, “That sucked.” (Yesterday I got a paper cut and tweeted about it.) But the takeaway from this brutal battle between the Taliban and America’s Real Heroes is that the man who lived to tell the tale also offers an olive branch to the other side — this survivor had help from the non-Taliban locals, a last-act detail that makes Lone Survivor this Oscar season’s nugget of political kumbaya. (2:01) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

Nebraska Alexander Payne may be unique at this point in that he’s in a position of being able to make nothing but small, human, and humorous films with major-studio money on his own terms. It’s hazardous to make too much of a movie like Nebraska, because it is small — despite the wide Great Plains landscapes shot in a wide screen format — and shouldn’t be entered into with overinflated or otherwise wrong-headed expectations. Still, a certain gratitude is called for. Nebraska marks the first time Payne and his writing partner Jim Taylor weren’t involved in the script, and the first one since their 1996 Citizen Ruth that isn’t based on someone else’s novel. (Hitherto little-known Bob Nelson’s original screenplay apparently first came to Payne’s notice a decade ago, but getting put off in favor of other projects.) It could easily have been a novel, though, as the things it does very well (internal thought, sense of place, character nuance) and the things it doesn’t much bother with (plot, action, dialogue) are more in line with literary fiction than commercial cinema. Elderly Woody T. Grant (Bruce Dern) keeps being found grimly trudging through snow and whatnot on the outskirts of Billings, Mont., bound for Lincoln, Neb. Brain fuzzed by age and booze, he’s convinced he’s won a million dollars and needs to collect it him there, though eventually it’s clear that something bigger than reality — or senility, even — is compelling him to make this trek. Long-suffering younger son David (Will Forte) agrees to drive him in order to simply put the matter to rest. This fool’s mission acquires a whole extended family-full of other fools when father and son detour to the former’s podunk farming hometown. Nebraska has no moments so funny or dramatic they’d look outstanding in excerpt; low-key as they were, 2009’s Sideways and 2011’s The Descendants had bigger set pieces and narrative stakes. But like those movies, this one just ambles along until you realize you’re completely hooked, all positive emotional responses on full alert. (1:55) Balboa, California, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont. (Harvey)

The Nut Job (1:26) Metreon.

The Past Splits in country, culture, and a harder-to-pinpoint sense of morality mark The Past, the latest film by Asghar Farhadi, the first Iranian moviemaker to win an Oscar (for 2011’s A Separation.) At the center of The Past‘s onion layers is a seemingly simple divorce of a binational couple, but that act becomes more complicated — and startlingly compelling — in Farhadi’s capable, caring hands. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) has returned to Paris from Tehran, where he’s been living for the past four years, at the request of French wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo of 2011’s The Artist). She wants to legalize their estrangement so she can marry her current boyfriend, Samir (Tahar Rahim of 2009’s A Prophet), whose wife is in a coma. But she isn’t beyond giving out mixed messages by urging Ahmad to stay with her, and her daughters by various fathers, rather than at a hotel — and begging him to talk to teen Lucie (Pauline Burlet), who seems to despise Samir. The warm, nurturing Ahmad falls into his old routine in Marie’s far-from-picturesque neighborhood, visiting a café owned by fellow Iranian immigrants and easily taking over childcare duties for the overwhelmed Marie, as he tries to find out what’s happening with Lucie, who’s holding onto a secret that could threaten Marie’s efforts to move on. The players here are all wonderful, in particular the sad-faced, humane Mosaffa. We never really find out what severed his relationship with Marie, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. We care about, and end up fearing for, all of Farhadi’s everyday characters, who are observed with a tender and unsentimental understanding that US filmmakers could learn from. The effect, when he finally racks focus on the forgotten member of this triangle (or quadrilateral?), is heartbreaking. (2:10) Albany, Clay, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Philomena Judi Dench gives this twist on a real-life scandal heart, soul, and a nuanced, everyday heft. Her ideal, ironic foil is Steve Coogan, playing an upper-crusty irreverent snob of an investigative journalist. Judging by her tidy exterior, Dench’s title character is a perfectly ordinary Irish working-class senior, but she’s haunted by the past, which comes tumbling out one day to her daughter: As an unwed teenager, she gave birth to a son at a convent. She was forced to work there, unpaid; as supposed penance, the baby was essentially sold to a rich American couple against her consent. Her yarn reaches disgraced reporter Martin Sixsmith (Coogan), who initially turns his nose up at the tale’s piddling “human interest” angle, but slowly gets drawn in by the unexpected twists and turns of the story — and likely the possibility of taking down some evil nuns — as well as seemingly naive Philomena herself, with her delight in trash culture, frank talk about sex, and simple desire to see her son and know that he thought, once in a while, of her. It turns out Philomena’s own sad narrative has as many improbable turnarounds as one of the cheesy romance novels she favors, and though this unexpected twosome’s quest for the truth is strenuously reworked to conform to the contours of buddy movie-road trip arc that we’re all too familiar with, director Stephen Frears’ warm, light-handed take on the gentle class struggles going on between the writer and his subject about who’s in control of the story makes up for Philomena‘s determined quest for mass appeal. (1:35) Embarcadero, Four Star, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Ride Along By sheer dint of his ability to push his verbosity and non-threatening physicality into that nerd zone between smart and clueless, intelligent and irritating, Kevin Hart may be poised to become Hollywood’s new comedy MVP. In the case of Ride Along, it helps that Ice Cube has comic talents, too — proven in the Friday movies as well as in 2012’s 21 Jump Street — as the straight man who can actually scowl and smile at the same time. Together, in Ride Along, they bring the featherweight pleasures of Rush Hour-style odd-couple chortles. Hart is Ben, a gamer geek and school security guard shooting to become the most wrinkly student at the police academy. He looks up to hardened, street-smart cop James (Cube), brother of his new fiancée, Angela (Tika Sumpter). Naturally, instead of simply blessing the nuptials, the tough guy decides to haze the shut-in, disabusing him of any illusions he might have of being his equal. More-than-equal talents like Laurence Fishburne and John Leguizamo are pretty much wasted here — apart from Fishburne’s ultra lite impression of Matrix man Morpheus — but if you don’t expect much more than the chuckles eked out of Ride Along‘s commercials, you won’t be too disappointed by this nontaxing journey. (1:40) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Saving Mr. Banks Having promised his daughters that he would make a movie of their beloved Mary Poppins books, Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) has laid polite siege to author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) for over 20 years. Now, in the early 1960s, she has finally consented to discuss the matter in Los Angeles — albeit with great reluctance, and only because royalty payments have dried up to the point where she might have to sell her London home. Bristling at being called “Pam” and everything else in this sunny SoCal and relentlessly cheery Mouse House environ, the acidic English spinster regards her creation as sacred. The least proposed changes earn her horrified dismissal, and the very notion of having Mary and company “prancing and chirping” out songs amid cartoon elements is taken as blasphemy. This clash of titans could have made for a barbed comedy with satirical elements, but god forbid this actual Disney production should get so cheeky. Instead, we get the formulaically dramatized tale of a shrew duly tamed by all-American enterprise, with flashbacks to the inevitable past traumas (involving Colin Farrell as a beloved but alcoholic ne’er-do-well father) that require healing of Travers’ wounded inner child by the magic of the Magic Kingdom. If you thought 2004’s Finding Neverland was contrived feel-good stuff, you’ll really choke on the spoons full of sugar force-fed here. (2:06) SF Center, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) works at the Life magazine archives, where the world’s greatest photojournalists send him images of their extraordinary adventures. Walter lives vicariously. When he imagines his office crush (Kristen Wiig) trapped in a burning building, his inner superhero arrests his faculties and sends him flying through windows, racing up stairs to liberate children from their flaming homes. It’s all a fantasy, of course: the man works in a basement with pictures and George Bailey-styled dreams of travel, what does he have but his imagination to keep him warm? Turns out his workplace is planning to kill off its print edition and become LifeOnline — so facing the end of Life, and imminent quiet desperation, this office-mouse is tasked with delivering the last cover the magazine will ever have. But frame 25 on the contact sheet — the one the magazine’s star photog (Sean Penn) calls “The Quintessence of Life” — is blank. Instead of crying defeat, Walter goes on a hunt for the photographer, his avatar of rugged outdoorsmanship, and the realization of his dreams of adventure. It’s liberating to watch him take risks — Stiller says years of watching Danny Kaye movies (Kaye starred in the 1947 adaptation of James Thurber’s short story) inspired the awkwardly balletic gestures of roving, frightened, ultimately exuberant Walter. The film, which Stiller also directed, is ultimately a dreamy parable about getting caught up in imagination — or just confusing images for real life — both of which feel timely in a world where libraries are cyberplaces and you can play “tennis” in front of your couch. The kind of guy who thought the biggest threat was making the first move, Walter learns differently when he takes actual risks: there is magic in this. (2:05) SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

12 Years a Slave Pop culture’s engagement with slavery has always been uneasy. Landmark 1977 miniseries Roots set ratings records, but the prestigious production capped off a decade that had seen some more questionable endeavors, including 1975 exploitation flick Mandingo — often cited by Quentin Tarantino as one of his favorite films; it was a clear influence on his 2012 revenge fantasy Django Unchained, which approached its subject matter in a manner that paid homage to the Westerns it riffed on: with guns blazing. By contrast, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is nuanced and steeped in realism. Though it does contain scenes of violence (deliberately captured in long takes by regular McQueen collaborator Sean Bobbitt, whose cinematography is one of the film’s many stylistic achievements), the film emphasizes the horrors of “the peculiar institution” by repeatedly showing how accepted and ingrained it was. Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, an African American man who was sold into slavery in 1841 and survived to pen a wrenching account of his experiences. He’s portrayed here by the powerful Chiwetel Ejiofor. Other standout performances come courtesy of McQueen favorite Michael Fassbender (as Epps, a plantation owner who exacerbates what’s clearly an unwell mind with copious amounts of booze) and newcomer Lupita Nyong’o, as a slave who attracts Epps’ cruel attentions. (2:14) Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Wolf of Wall Street Three hours long and breathless from start to finish, Martin Scorsese’s tale of greed, stock-market fraud, and epic drug consumption has a lot going on — and the whole thing hinges on a bravado, breakneck performance by latter-day Scorsese muse Leonardo DiCaprio. As real-life sleaze Jordan Belfort (upon whose memoir the film is based), he distills all of his golden DiCaprio-ness into a loathsome yet maddeningly likable character who figures out early in his career that being rich is way better than being poor, and that being fucked-up is, likewise, much preferable to being sober. The film also boasts keen supporting turns from Jonah Hill (as Belfort’s crass, corrupt second-in-command), Matthew McConaughey (who has what amounts to a cameo — albeit a supremely memorable one — as Belfort’s coke-worshiping mentor), Jean Dujardin (as a slick Swiss banker), and newcomer Margot Robbie (as Belfort’s cunning trophy wife). But this is primarily the Leo and Marty Show, and is easily their most entertaining episode to date. Still, don’t look for an Oscar sweep: Scorsese just hauled huge for 2011’s Hugo, and DiCaprio’s flashy turn will likely be passed over by voters more keen on honoring subtler work in a shorter film. (2:59) California, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy) *

 

Young at heart

Steven T. Jones
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Young at heart

LEFT OF THE DIAL “Why are some songs so perfect in a way that never happens again in our lives? What is it about music and being older than 12 but younger than 20?”

Those are the lines of narration capping the final panel of one of my favorite Lynda Barry comic strips, an autobiographical story in her collection One Hundred Demons. In it, our teenage protagonist is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the radio in a manner immediately recognizable to anyone who has ever been a teenager. The mood is: I am surely feeling feelings and thinking thoughts no one ever has before. As I recall, this is what being a teenager is. Every emotion, positive or negative, however fleeting, is all-consuming, and often you have no choice but to lie in your room, crushed by the weight of it, headphones drowning out the world. The idea that “this too shall pass” is impossible to understand, because you can’t even see past the econ test you’re surely going to flunk tomorrow, or that guy in biology who barely knows your name. This is why teenagers always seem so sluggish: That shit’s exhausting.

Ask any teenager what helps them get through it — and here I realize I’m starting to sound like adolescence is an inevitable six-year-long disease of sorts, or perhaps a heroin detox you just have to sweat through, but whatever, it kind of is — and near the top of the list, I bet you’ll find music.

“I would have ended up as a drug dealer, no question,” says John Vanderslice, the musician-producer-owner of SF’s storied Tiny Telephone studios, of what he might have become without music as a young person. “I would currently be residing in prison.”

Lucky for him, “My mother forced me by gunpoint to take piano lessons,” he says. “And this was the dirty South. I was in public schools, where the arts meant, you know, coloring. But I got really interested in music, and that became a huge open door for me. I think it would have been a lot tougher to do what I do now if I hadn’t had that music theory kind of shoved in to my brain when I was seven, eight, nine years old, even if I didn’t know it was happening at the time.”

Vanderslice is just one in a who’s who of Bay Area artists who were invited to think about what music meant to them when they were young — how and when and which music shaped their formative years — in preparation for a Friday, Jan. 31 show celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Magik*Magik Orchestra at the Fox Theater in Oakland. The orchestra, a group of more than 50 musicians who have provided “made-to-order” support on records and tours with Death Cab for Cutie, Zola Jesus, How to Dress Well, and Nick Cave, to name a few, is raising money for Magik For Kids, their nonprofit arm that throws hands-on music education events for school-aged kids in the Bay Area.

“When We Were Young,” presented by Noise Pop, will showcase bands — Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers, the Dodos, Geographer, and a dozen others — collaborating with a 30-piece orchestra and the 30-piece Pacific Boychoir on songs that the artists themselves selected. The prompt: Pick a tune from your childhood that’s close to your heart.

“It was really interesting to see what people chose — I was expecting more ’80s given the age range, but you realize you’re not always listening to what’s new when you’re little,” says arranger, conductor and Magik*Magik founder Minna Choi, a Berkeley-born, classically trained 32-year-old colleagues refer to as a dynamo. (Vanderslice — who will be performing a Simon and Garfunkel song — agreed to Magik*Magik becoming the house band at Tiny Telephone after Choi cold-emailed him five years ago: “Minna’s the kind of person who can and will do absolutely anything she wants to do.”) Choi will conduct most of the show, with Michael Morgan, conductor of the Oakland East Bay Symphony, appearing on a couple pieces.

In designing music programming for children, says Choi, “We’re trying to create ways to expose younger kids not only to music, but to a music career and what that looks like.” The orchestra has organized instrument “petting zoos,” taught kids to build their own string instruments, and run a summer camp where children learn to conduct.

Many players in the orchestra also teach private music lessons, and some had to cancel a few lessons in order to rehearse for the show. “But the point of this show is music education,” says Choi. “So we came up with a kind of ‘Bring your student to Magik work’ day and had them reach back out to parents saying ‘I can’t do a traditional violin lesson Tuesday, but you’re welcome to bring your son or daughter to the studio, we’ll have it set up for them’…there’s so much to learn there, whether it’s rehearsal technique, or just how to communicate when you’re working with 40 other people.”

Diana Gameros, a staple of the Mission’s indie-folk scene — she’s been called “the Latin Feist” — chose an original song from her most recent album, a song she wrote for her hometown of Juárez, Mexico.

“I grew up listening to very traditional Mexican songs, because my grandparents lived on a little farm and that was what there was,” she recalls. “And I didn’t like it when I was young. I wanted to be hip, I wanted to be cool. I liked really poppy songs, which you could hear on the radio because we were so close to the border. What was that band that sang ‘I Saw the Sign’? That’s what I wanted.”

She moved to the States as a teenager, and began writing songs as a young adult. And that’s when she realized that the traditional Mexican music she’d disliked as a child “was embedded in me…it’s in my blood.” She chose “En Juárez” for this show in part because it’s written from a mother’s perspective: “If I had children, this is a song for them — explaining the realities of Juárez, the violence, but also talking to them about what’s possible, about dreams and the hope we should have regardless of problems,” she says.

“I was just honored to be asked to be part of this show, honestly. It’s going to be a magical night.”

—

A handful of scattered thoughts, while we’re on the topic of music that helped when you needed to lie on your bed blasting music through a Walkman:

  • Green Day’s Dookie was released Feb. 1, 1994 — 20 years ago this Saturday.

  • I’ve listened to that album from start to finish more recently and more frequently as an adult than I should probably admit. If “When I Come Around” starts on the radio when I’m driving, I will turn it all the way up.

  • Miley Cyrus. Skrillex.

  • My grandfather, in the last stages of Alzheimer’s at age 95 and unable to keep family members’ names straight, would sing along if you brought him tapes of Big Band songs from the 1930s.

  • Sherman Alexie: “Your generation’s music isn’t better than any others. It’s just inextricably linked to your youth.”

 

When We Were Young
With Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers, The Dodos, Diana Gameros, Geographer, How To Dress Well, Zoe Keating, The Lonely Forest, Maestro Michael Morgan, The Pacific Boychoir, Rogue Wave, Two Gallants, and John Vanderslice

Fri/31, 8pm, $29.50 – $45
The Fox Theater
1807 Telegraph, Oakland
www.thefoxoakland.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

H. Brown: Goodbye to all that, we hope

Michael Redmond
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137

OPINION While we mourn the tamping down of the fiery progressive idealism that characterized City Hall in the early 2000s, we celebrate the departure of that era’s dated man-warrior posturing. Last week proved a good occasion to pop a bottle: Misogynist blogger and progressive scene queen H. Brown announced he would soon be leaving San Francisco for destinations unknown.

Brown, a proud bigot famed for hurling invective from behind a double shot of whiskey at ex-Supervisor Chris Daly’s since-closed progressive hangout Buck Tavern, took the occasion to hang out for posterity with an SF Weekly reporter. Joe Eskenazi wrote a lyrical, subtly satiric ode to the aging troll’s legacy, “Last Call for Know-It-Alls: The Departure of a Classic Specimen of Old-San Francisco Bon Vivantery.”

But nuanced pokes at the longtime “character” proved too subtle to the victims of his bullying throughout the years. And since the piece failed to include the voice of a single woman, we thought we’d remedy with a retrospective of our own. Behold, the legacy of a real jerk:

“At a benefit at the Buck Tavern I walked in and there were all these progressive journalists sitting around a table with him. [Brown] said ‘you’re the one with the great ass!’ He started asking me if I had family members he could date. I was standing there horrified. I’m a mouthy lady, and even I couldn’t think of anything to come back with — not just to him, but to every other progressive journalist who was sitting there listening to him who laughed! I said hi to a few people, and then I left the event.”

– Laura Hahn, president of the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee

“H. is a bully and a sexist. If you want to look at why the progressive movement is failing it’s because it alienates youth, women, and people of color. Deifying somebody like him is shutting women out, the message is they aren’t welcome. It’s not separated from the fact that progressives are really faltering right now with no leadership and very little inspiration.”

– Debra Walker, artist and longtime activist

“As a purveyor of alcohol, I found that the man was a lawbreaking mooch and a pain to deal with. As a woman, I found him pathetic, insulting, gross, or all three, depending on his mood. The first time I met him he cussed me out for an imagined slight in a way that was actually shocking — and it takes a lot for cuss words to flummox me. For a time, I simply refused to serve him.”

– Siobhann Bellinger, Buck Tavern bartender

“His behavior symbolized the running joke amongst some progressive men that women were there for their own entertainment to be mocked and harassed with no one blinking an eye. FUCK. THAT.”

– Anonymous ex-City Hall aide

Ah, old San Francisco bon vivantery. Of course, the real reason we’re cheering on whatever Greyhound that will ferry this foul-mouthed sprite from our burg has nothing to do with Brown. Rather, we’re hoping no one will step into his shoes as your supervisor’s personal Bobby Riggs, to invoke the publicity-pig chauvinist who famously challenged tennis legend Billie Jean King to a match, the infamous Battle of the Sexes in which King mopped the floor with her opponent.

We hope that our purported progressive leaders will no longer invite woman-haters and homophobes to their household Sunday salons, or take Speedo-clad dips with them in the bay. That they will no longer think it’s OK to enable the presence of their own yapping id in polite company.

In the middle of City Hall’s current and unfortunate drift toward elite-serving “moderation,” one must wonder about what hangers-on like Brown did to the strength of our political movement. He and his ilk were allowed to establish through constant bullying, both online and off, that only straight men have the right to feel comfortable in our city’s high-powered progressive circles. What heroes did we lose in the process?

Caitlin Donohue is a staff writer at Rookie magazine and editor of AHDM4U.com.

 

Alerts: January 29 – February 4, 2014

Michael Redmond
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0

WEDNESDAY 29

 

“Flying Paper” film screening and discussion Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF. www.missionculturalcenter.org. 7pm, $5–$20 sliding scale. “Flying Paper” is the uplifting story of Palestinian children in Gaza on a quest to shatter the Guinness World Record for the most kites ever flown. It showcases the creative resilience of these children despite the difficult realities in their daily lives. The film was co-produced with young Palestinians in Gaza, trained by the filmmakers through a youth media program called Voices Beyond Walls. Featuring a discussion with co-director Roger Hill.

“We are Palestine” film screening ANSWER Coalition Office, 2969 Mission, SF. www.ANSWERsf.org. 7-8:30pm, $5–$10 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds.) “We are Palestinian” was filmed in 1973 and includes an excellent chronology of events leading to the establishment of Israel by using rare historical footage. The film also explains the role of Britain and the US in establishing and supporting the Israeli state, and documents the resistance by the Palestinian people against settlement and expulsion. A discussion will follow the film led by Richard Becker, author of “Palestine, Israel and the US Empire.”

 

FRIDAY 31

International Day of Action Against Corporate Globalization San Francisco Federal Building, 90 Seventh St, SF. www.tradejustice.ca/tpp/jan31. 4:30pm, free. Join a broad coalition of community, environmental and social justice groups in protest against Fast Track and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that has been described as “NAFTA on steroids.” Protesters will meet at Congresswomen Pelosi’s office, then peacefully march to Senator Feinstein’s office at One Post, SF.

 

SATURDAY 1

Una Plaza Para la Comunidad/A Plaza for the Community Sixteenth and Mission BART Plaza. 1-3pm, free. This gathering, hosted by The Plaza 16 Coalition/La Plaza 16 Coalición, is being called to advocate for the use of the 1979 Mission SF site to supply much-needed affordable housing for the neighborhood, as well as more public spaces and a local ecosystem of mom and pop business that can meet the needs of the neighborhood. The coalition feels that the proposed $82 million development with 351 housing units does not meet the need for affordable housing.

SUNDAY 2

What’s happening to City College of San Francisco? Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph, Oakl. Gene Ruyle (510) 428-1578. 10:30am-12:30pm, free but donations are welcomed. CCSF has been under extreme pressure from a private accrediting agency that is threatening to close the college. Rick Baum, a part-time instructor of Political Science at CCSF for over 15 years, will give an overview of the current situation that CCSF is facing, and answer questions.

The worst music beats the best bomb: A conversation with legendary composer Van Dyke Parks

Steven T. Jones
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1
The worst music beats the best bomb: A conversation with legendary composer Van Dyke Parks

“Yours falsely!” Van Dyke Parks chimes, as he picks up the phone at home in Pasadena, where the weather is “room temperature.” He adds, “all we have is the attorneys. Get rid of them, and we can have another perfect day.”

Right away, the veteran composer’s way with words resembles his musical sensibility: whimsical, scattered with detail, and liable to make left turns at a moment’s notice. From his lyrics for Brian Wilson’s legendary SMiLE project, to his orchestral arrangements that have served generations of artists (Ry Cooder, Harry Nilsson, Little Feat, Medicine, Joanna Newsom, and Skrillex, to name a few), to his quietly revolutionary solo records that balance Americana and cosmopolitanism, with panoramic scope and whiplash dynamics, Parks’ nonlinear, all-embracing approach to sound has extended pop and rock’s self-imposed limitations as facelessly, yet unmistakably, as that of any American musician alive.

With the release of last year’s wonderful Songs Cycled (his first LP of new material since 1989’s Tokyo Rose) Parks is as focused and driven as ever before, even at age 71. This Sunday, Parks will add to his ever-growing list of collaborators, with a one-off performance at Oakland’s Malonga Casquelord Center featuring LA musician-composer Matt Montgomery, and the Bay Area’s joyfully independent Awesöme Orchestra.

Montgomery, a young musician, whose first exposure to Parks’ arrangements came in the form of Silverchair’s Diorama (2002), has also taken a multifaceted approach to his career, supplying vocals and guitar for the pop punk-tinged three-piece Versus Them, arranging and composing scores for television and film, and developing software (most recently Rocksmith 2014 by Ubisoft) centered around guitar instruction. This weekend’s show will celebrate the release of Montgomery’s debut EP, Petty Troubles: a set of McCartney-esque pop songs recorded in a single day with 30 Bay Area musicians, and accompanied by a documentary film chronicling the zippy creative process.

“I’m really excited to have a package to hand someone, and say, ‘this is me,’” Montgomery tells the Bay Guardian from his parents’ home in San Rafael, where he’s staying during a week of rehearsals leading up to Sunday’s concert, describing the rapidly produced EP as “homemade, but slick at the same time.”

Similarly homemade/slick, casually organized, yet seriously proficient, the Awesöme Orchestra’s approach fits intuitively with those of Montgomery and Parks. A volunteer ensemble with monthly rehearsals, and a repertoire ranging from Mozart, to Terry Riley, to Daft Punk, the group has crossed genre boundaries consistently since its formation last spring, challenging orchestral music’s inherent elitism at every juncture. Sunday’s show will begin with a set from Parks, with Montgomery on guitar, followed by a performance of Montgomery’s Petty Troubles in its entirety. The Awesöme Orchestra will back both musicians, in a lineup that can be expected to deliver maximalist results. “Big is back!” Parks declares. “This is not going to be a ‘think small’ concert. It’s gonna be ‘think big.’”

How did Parks, a living legend among composers, come to join forces with a relatively low-key figure like Montgomery, and a joyfully unorthodox ensemble like the Awesöme Orchestra? I spoke at length with Parks earlier this week about this project’s inception, his return to solo work on Songs Cycled, 50 years of arrangements for pop’s finest, and why he doesn’t like to hear guitar solos while traveling in Czechoslovakia.

SFBG What’s your role in this upcoming performance?

VDP I’m trying to blow some wind in the sails of a youth symphony. That’s a euphemism I use. I’m 71, so anything is youthful. [Laughs.] I will be the oldest thing in the room, I promise you. But, the idea is to bring attention to [the Awesöme Orchestra]. I love the way they spelled… you know the way they spell their name?

SFBG Yeah! With the umlaut over the “ö”, there.

VDP Yeah! The conductor is Dave Möschler. I’m not sure there will be a mosh pit, but at any rate, I’m very impressed with their umlaut.

SFBG What’s your experience with the Awesöme Orchestra, as well as [Montgomery], and how did this collaboration get off the ground?

VDP Well, I’ll tell you something. I met Matt Montgomery at my daughter’s wedding reception in Berkeley. This is maybe five years ago. I know his dad, who’s a celebrated Bay Area musician. So, I was already sold on him. But, I was impressed with the fact that he… reaches out to this acoustic world of instruments that I like to celebrate, in the rock arena, or with pop music. He referred me to [Möschler], and pointed out that its a hard-scrabble thing for musicians. These people, they get together once a month, to just celebrate the fact that they can all play their asses off. Everything from Beethoven, to John Williams… I know they do the overture to Candide, which is one of my favorite pieces.

So he said, “Hey man, let’s get together. What do you need?” I said, I don’t know. I could use a stand-up bassist, five french horns, four trombones. And then he says, “no, how many musicians would you like?” I say, “what do you want? I’ve got the music.” And so, we’re going for, “big”. Big is back. [Laughs.] This is not going to be a “think small” concert. It’s gonna be “think big.” And yeah, I’m delighted. I’m excited. I get to bring a lot of music out of my trunk, bring it up there, and they can blow their brains out. Man, this’ll be great. I don’t know what this set will be… 40 minutes or so, I guess. I have all the music in the world. I have some charts I’ve done for orchestras in Europe, and most recently Australia for a much larger group. But, the point is, I have the charts. Most of them come from the charts that I have in my musical library. Most of it comes from the opportunities I’ve had in film scoring, or in doing albums. And that’s when there was such a thing called “patronage.” There is no patronage now. But, a lot of it, I have simply done for performances, and reconfiguring things that I have recorded, or want to. It’ll be ear candy. It’ll be a fine show.

SFBG Have you had much experience in the past, working with ensembles that are a bit more loosely organized, or less traditional in their approach, like the Awesöme Orchestra? How do you feel ensembles like that facilitate your compositions differently?

VDP That’s an incisive question, because it’s true: most orchestras, let’s call them “legit” orchestras, when they do stuff with pop, or popular musicians, usually it’s wallpaper. Orchestral wallpaper. It’s very ho-hum. But there are some groups that I’ve worked with (the Metropole Orkest in Holland, the Britten Sinfonia in London, I just worked with the Adelaide Symphony) that have a much more inquiring, loose-knit approach, and I like that a lot. I like the idea that they’re trying to bring real interest, and with no fear of what we think of as lowbrow. I think that’s an important ingredient.

I just worked in a Beck concert. I had heightened expectations, and I don’t know for sure that I was any happier about it than the L.A. Philharmonic, who was playing the work. It’s a hit-or-miss thing, but I sense with this group, because of what they’ve tackled, they have a real appetite for real music that matters, and there’s no elitism about it. It’s not elite. And so, to me, they’re like quality folk, and I want to go that way. Matt told me, it’s pro-bono, and I thought, you know, maybe I’ll get a chance to meet Cher, even if her husband isn’t there. [Laughs.] I was making a joke, but it turns out Sonny will not be there, but it is pro-bono. Anyway, I’m very happy about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOcjHuHWdA

SFBG What about [Montgomery’s] approach to music, or his compositions, really caught your attention initially?

VDP To me, he’s somebody who has the ability to keep reinventing himself. I think this is his first invention, but I suspect that he will make many more. So, you know, I have great respect for him. And, he’s modest. That’s a very desirable rarity. [Also], it’s what he has done with the song form. I feel like I’m in flight formation with him. We both approach that same chamber music sensibility. He likes all kinds of instruments, and I think that shows. And there’s no big taboo about eclecticism. He’s got a big sense of adventure, and I think there are a lot of people that have that now, that I respect.

Yesterday, Rufus Wainwright was over here. I’ve met a young kid, much younger, called Gabriel Kahane, who’s also done a lot of exploration. [I’ve worked] for Joanna Newsom… and a guy by the name of Sondre Lerche: I did an arrangement for him last month. And then, Efterklang, a group you can’t pronounce over here, but they’re very fine. So I kind of gravitate toward people of a new generation, who really aren’t afraid of acoustics, and to mash them up with electronica sometimes. You know, I think it just shows a great deal of inquiry and freethinking, and I like that.

SFBG Your music has an omnivorous quality to it, eating up everything in its path, appropriating the highbrow, the lowbrow, and a lot in between. Are there some people you’ve heard recently who you admire for having a similar perspective?

VDP I think every artist has a primary obligation, and that is to be true to the self. Anything of artistic merit is self-revelatory. It reveals the self; that’s what it does. I’ve heard a whole bunch of stuff. I didn’t just grow up listening to music post-Elvis Presley. I’ve listened to music from the ages, and that’s reflected in who I am. But, the work I’ve done as a recording artist has been a training ground for me, and it has trained me how to serve others, and I’m happy in both those worlds.

Right now, I’m writing an arrangement for Kimbra. She’s 23, and one of the smartest musicians I’ve ever met. That music, it must be seamless, and serve her, and my role in that must be invisible, and yet somehow very pivotal to how she sounds. It’s decidedly an arena that I don’t appear in, myself, in my own works. It’s… techno. Super laptop info comes out of that woman, and I’m so happy with it. I love it all. I love every bit of it. My favorite songwriter is entirely different from me. His name is Paolo Conte. He is, to me, the greatest songwriter of my time, and he’s Italian. I don’t speak a word of Italian, but somehow, I get it.


SFBG You mentioned the collaborative aspect with Kimbra. When it comes to arranging or producing music for other people, do you ever experience tension between accentuating someone’s work, and imposing a certain brand on it? Do you try to approach your collaborations with a consistent balance between those two?

VDP I don’t come to the conclusion that I’ve imprinted, or put my brand, on anyone else. I think, at best, I’ve magnified who they were, or perhaps sharpened the image they were trying to present. I think that’s the job of an arranger. It’s a matter of immersion in the work. I don’t like to call it collaboration. I think that arranging frames a work, if anything. At best, it brings a proscenium to the work, without imposing any further brand. I like that idea, of recognizing each artist as a maverick, somehow unbranded, and maintaining that. That’s a hard job.

It’s like working for a director who says, “this picture needs a lot of music,” rather than a director who says, “it’s about the flutes in bar 43.” It’s almost like being given complete freedom, and suffering the burden that puts on you. I mean, to be given liberty to arrange is, like, somebody’s handing you a hand in a birthing process, almost. It’s like, “here’s my baby.” So that’s the way I feel about it. Some people think they know when I’ve been in the room with a songwriter. But, I don’t think that’s because I have a brand. I think that’s because there’s very little work being done in arranging, anymore. And, the reason for that is that there aren’t that many people that can afford a few strings. I think that’s the truth.

SFBG Are there any arrangements you’ve done for musicians in the past, where you really saw your sensibility gelling with theirs, and something really nice resulting from that?

VDP Well, I loved working for Ry Cooder on his first record. That was pioneering work, you know, to put a mandolin (that’s a very soft instrument) in a room full of brass and strings, and so forth, and to have it heard. That was when we were just learning those possibilities in recording existed. So, I’m real happy with that. I’m happy that I worked for five weeks on arranging an album for Inara George [An Invitation, 2008], and it took us nine hours to record it. And then, once again, she gave me a voice and a guitar, and then when I did the orchestra, she threw the guitar away.

One person, I think a dear heart from the San Francisco Chronicle, thought it was a very confusing… he said, listening to a Van Dyke Parks arrangement is like being, oh, tossed out to sea. Because, it was highly syncopated. I forget who insulted me, [Aidin Vaziri, for the record] but he forgot to pay attention to the artist, Inara. So, win some, lose some. Make some up in double-headers. You know, to me, it’s the most glorious way I could spend a life, and I have no complaints. I’ve been very fortunate. I know so many people, far more talented than I am, who haven’t had the opportunity to hear what they write, and, my heart… I can’t express my gratitude for this, and for the opportunity to end up someplace like with the Awesöme Orchestra.

There’s a group in Holland. Actually, it’s a nation filled with small groups like this: volunteer, young groups from teens to 30s, and really able players. It’s called the Ricciotti Ensemble, and they’ve done several of my arrangements, and they are totally off the wall, out of the park, inventive. And, you know, to be among the people they have played… they’ve played Zappa, they’ve played Stravinsky, and they’ve played me. Just to say, you know, I could never go back and recover or change a note that I’ve written, that is splayed publicly, but you know, it just makes me feel more like moving forward, and pursuing this thing called arranging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFxdAkfjeVg

SFBG You were just in Australia. Are you familiar with an outfit called the Avalanches, by chance?

VDP Oh, yes! I love them. Darren Seltmann: I’ve had some good social time with him down there. Very bright, wonderful people. Why did you bring them up?

SFBG I’ve always noticed a little parallel between your work and theirs. There’s a panoramic way that their music moves, and the way it shifts between music you’d classify as highbrow and lowbrow… this really democratic approach to different forms of music. I think electronic, sample-based music in general has a way of facilitating the impulse to use everything, but on the other hand, you have a focus on rapid production, and doing things quickly, and maybe not arranging things as meticulously…

VDP I’m very honored that you would even make that comparison, as I think a lot of them. But, I’ll tell you: there’s a case in point. Two great arrangements that I’ve done that I’m really happy with, and somehow, in spite of myself, I just sailed right through them: one was a trio for Sam Phillips, called “Wasting My Time.” Three cellos… I added three cellos to her basic track. Then, she threw out the basic track, and all you can hear is three cellos. Never done a better job. Another one, for a fellow by the name of Peter Case… He did a song once, called “Small Town Spree,” a quartet. Somehow or another, hot as a whore’s dream, this thing really sailed.

I can’t say that about all the work I’ve done. There’ve been some pieces of smaller consequence to me, that’ve been giant orchestrations. But, somehow or another, if you weigh an arrangement as if, instead of thinking of it as simple or complex, but if you think of an arrangement as an instrument to bring out some truth, and also to somehow add plausibility to the emotional content in the song, that, to me, that’s something of value. Don’t put it in terms of, complexity as just to be able to use every instrument as economically as possible, to get to the target, which is, of course, the heart of some casual observer.

SFBG Is there anyone you dream of arranging for, or think you’d work especially well with?

VDP There’s nobody that I’d exclude. I did enjoy the Skrillex situation. I enjoy the improbabilities. There’s some Brazilian artists that I would like to work for. I just… they called me the curator of a record called Bamboula by Tom McDermott (2013), and I introduced him to Jules Selwan. He’s really my favorite New Orleans pianist, and I’d like to adorn his work orchestrally. But there are many directions to go in, and a lot of things in discussion, and among them, theater. I have an unfulfilled fascination with musical theater. Not like any theater that I’ve heard, really, but I’m pursuing that. Hey, the rent’s paid this month. What could be wrong?

SFBG About Songs Cycled, and some of your newer material: I was reading an interview you did after working on Ys (2006), by Joanna Newsom. Back then you maybe seemed surprised that she’d have pursued you based on a real fascination with Song Cycle in particular. Now, in 2014, your debut album enjoys its best reputation maybe ever; you have two new issues of SMiLE by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys; and now there’s this new record: your first of new material since the late ’80s, being discussed as a companion piece to your debut. Would you say you might have more confidence in your early material, or its reception, than you did 10 years ago?

VDP Well, no. I don’t think I have any more confidence. I think I’m more decidedly deer-in-the-headlights than ever before. I’m 71 years old, and I think a lot of reporters would ask…it’s the nature of their event in journalism…“What’s new?” they say. Well, I like what’s old, too, and nobody asks what’s old. But, I’m here to tell you: what’s old begins with me. [Laughs.]

There is an element in what I do…I’m trying to prove to myself that I can do everything I could do, with the athleticism of my youth. For me to move my fingers… and I do move my fingers, unlike a lot of pianists who are famous. I actually move my fingers. It is athletic. This year, I had hand surgery for trigger finger. I was on a table for two hours, in San Francisco. I came up to San Francisco to find the best doctor, and I got him. And I want to tell you something: it was a major event in my life, and so just going out and playing what’s old is obviously very novel, very frightening, and very confirming, too. As far as the record is concerned, the album I just put out last year… to me, a lot of that invention was born of things which have appeared post-9/11. These songs are darker, and I’m not so obsessed with keeping it light, but to admitting what is dark. I made every effort to make it beautiful, but this is not the world I wanted to come out of the ‘60s. I wanted a better world.

If King had lived, if Kennedy had lived, I really feel we would be in a less materialistic, less racially polarized, and economically polarized country. So, there is a tremendous obligation to move forward, and to get pushy with lyrics, and to shake people up, and I attempt to do that. I don’t think it should be obtuse. I still try to maintain a little bit of decorum, you know. I don’t want to get anybody mad But, I like to think we are moving forward, and that my work helps illuminate.

SFBG Would you say you feel a similar disillusionment with the state of affairs now, culturally and politically, to what you might have back then?

VDP Well, there’s an admission of dashed expectations. I have come to learn that people are born to disappoint, and so often meet that expectation. For example, I did a song, and I was criticized for it, for revisiting a song called “The All Golden,” I did on my first record. I stripped it down on this album. But, I think an underpinning consideration to this recent work is, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And I think in many ways, certainly sociopolitically, we have descended.

I think that we’re still a democracy, but we’re a wounded democracy in the face of the plutocracy: the incredible wealth that is centralized among so few. It’s funny, my answers to any question you might have seem tremendously, maybe, mannered or arrogant in a way. You have to accept that I believe that the song form is that important, and that is job one: to make songs that matter. One time, I wrote a song called “Out of Love.” It was an affectionate salute to my wife. She said, “when are you gonna write a love song?” [Laughs.] So, I have come as close as I could to love songs… but now, you see, there’s something else that I have to prioritize, because time is my only enemy. There’s only so much time.

SFBG You mentioned the importance of the song form. Do you feel like there are lots of missed opportunities to aspire to something bigger in modern music artistically, politically, etc.?

VDP I’ll tell you something. I like all kinds of songs. They don’t have to meet my expectations. I try to keep an open heart about what I hear. Honestly, I listen to a lot of music that cannot be branded first-world-pop-culture. I don’t really pay too much attention to folks who theorize from positions of privilege. I don’t listen to a lot of rock ’n’ roll. When I’m in Czechoslovakia, the last thing I want to do is hear a guitar solo by a man who maybe loves Mick Jagger. This is not the world I inhabit, musically. But the worst music, to me, beats the best bomb. The dumbest music is better than the smartest bomb. And, when I start to feel critical of some musician, I try to remind myself: “At least these people are not in munition. They’re not making bombs.” And I try to be merciful. I have a great respect for all kinds of music, as long as it’s well designed.

SFBG Is there any advice you’d like to offer to young people making music right now?

VDP Yeah, I would. Always remember, your best work is ahead of you. It must be. Don’t seek immediate praise. Don’t be crippled by condemnation. It may teach something. So basically, the fundamentals apply: be true to yourself. That’s been enough for me. It hasn’t made me a corporate wonder, but it’s satisfied our family, and it’s easier than the alternative, as telling the truth is easier than trying to remember which lie you told. I’m very happy with the result so far. I’m just petrified about what mayhem could take place on Sunday. To me, live performance is very much like that. The stakes are high. It is, to me, like aerial ballet, without a net, and it’s not safe. There’s nothing safe about it. But, I’m a tough old bird; I can take it.

Sun/26: Van Dyke Parks with Matt Montgomery and Awesome Orchestra
4pm, $15-45
Malonga Casquelord Center
1428 Alice, Oak.
(510) 238-7526
www.mccatheater.com

H. Brown: Goodbye to all that, we hope

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451
H. Brown: Goodbye to all that, we hope

In an SF Weekly piece published yesterday, it was announced that progressive political blogger and gadabout H. Brown – an “irascible” man who has attained a specific sort of fame in equal measure for his political connections, his egregious sexism, and his unfortunate alcoholism — was leaving San Francisco. Where’s he going? The article didn’t see fit to mention. It’s whatever. One can assume Brown’s destination is that netherworld set aside for those whose behavior was enabled by the old school boy’s club blinders of the San Francisco progressive movement, still worn at the dawn of the 21st century.
 
“Last Call For Know-It-Alls: Classic Specimen of Old-San Francisco Bon Vivantery,” the article was called. It was written by a man; if a woman had written it, the title might have been closer to: “I Just Bought an Evil Eye Necklace, Don’t Look at Me You Cursed Troll.”


Do I sound angry? In 2008 at a DCCC, Brown inquired at top volume and in front of an ex-President of the Board of Supervisors if I was the politician’s escort. When said political leader bailed on the situation, Brown interrogated me on camera about my knowledge of local politics. I wrote about it, most names omitted, for the Guardian. In the article’s wake, I received thankful and supportive emails from men and women across the San Francisco political scene. On his part, Brown sent out multiple emails about me to his prodigious correspondence rolls, one in which he shared an communique from his niece calling me an “ignorant cunt,” another in which he addressed an un-cc’ed me about the election night in question: “You tried to make up for your ignorance by wearing revealing clothing. I was mocking you. And rightly so.”
 
Nearly every woman in San Francisco politics has one of these stories. When a male politician was accused of any wrong against a woman, Brown could be depended on to dig through the Internet to find evidence that the victim had been asking for it. Those unwilling to suffer him had to opt out of the hobnobbing happy hours and salons in the homes of city leaders, at which Brown was a constant presence.
 
Ah, old San Francisco bon vivantery. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you don’t have to care about Brown. You do have to care that this man was your Supervisor’s drinking buddy, that he took Speedo-clad swims in the Bay with progressive leaders. You do have to wonder about what that did to the strength of our political movement. And you might want to wonder about the dynamics behind ubiquitous bigots who are tolerated by people who should know better.
 
“If comedy is indeed tragedy plus time, however, Brown will leave ’em laughing for posterity,” wrote Weekly reporter Joe Eskenazi. “Friend after friend recalled anecdotes of offensive, bourbon-fueled behavior invariably culminating with Brown being instructed to “Get the fuck out, H.!” But, always, these were happy memories, if not happy occasions.”
 
None of these friends — “former supervisors, consultants, academics, political Svengalis, and other city luminaries” – in Eskenazi’s article were women. (The writer, whose work on city issues I do appreciate, told me he did interview women, but apparently none of them said anything printworthy.)
 
Let’s remedy that now with a few female voices. Not coincidentally, most of these bourbon-fueled memories took place in ex-Supervisor Chris Daly’s since-closed Market Street progressive gathering spot, the Buck Tavern. None are happy.
 
“This was the first time I was introduced to H. At a benefit at the Buck Tavern I walked in and there were all these progressive journalists sitting around a table with him. He said ‘you’re the one with the great ass!’ He started asking me if I had family members he could date. I was standing there horrified, I just didn’t know what to say. I’m a mouthy lady, and even I couldn’t think of anything to come back with – not just to him, but to every other progressive journalist who was sitting there listening to him who laughed! I said hi to a few people, and then I left the event.”
– Laura Hahn, president of the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee
 
“Really, I don’t give much of a shit about one sad dude calling me a slut and a spy (for Newsom or Pinkerton Guards, depending on the year), but seeing some (not all) progressive men continue to put up with him was pretty demoralizing.”
– Anonymous volunteer on several progressive political campaigns
 
“The confrontation started because I came in to wish [ex-Supervisor and then-owner of the Buck Tavern] Chris Daly a happy birthday and have a drink, and H. asked Chris ‘Who the hell is she?’ To which Chris said, ‘She’s the President of the Harvey Milk Club.’ To which H began, ‘You’re not even gay, are you?’ I replied, ‘I’m queer.’ ‘Queer?!’ he said, ‘What the fuck is that? Some Shona Gochenauer shit? You’re not gay. I can tell you’re not gay by looking at you. She doesn’t know anything about politics. Look at her — she’s clearly just a vanity president.’ He said something about enjoying things because, “that ass isn’t gonna last forever, sweetheart. They [the other patrons in the bar] are only standing up for you because they want to fuck you.’”
– Stephany Joy Ashley, ex-president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club
 
“As a purveyor of alcohol, I found that the man was a lawbreaking mooch and a pain to deal with.  As a woman, I found him pathetic, insulting, gross, or all three, depending on his mood. The first time I met him he cussed me out for an imagined slight in a way that was actually shocking — and it takes a lot for cuss words to flummox me. For a time, I simply refused to serve him.”
– Siobhann Bellinger, Buck Tavern bartender
 
“H. is a bully and a sexist. If you want to look at why the progressive movement is failing it’s because it alienates youth, women, and people of color. Deifying somebody like him is shutting women out, the message is they aren’t welcome. It’s not separated from the fact that progressives are really faltering right now with no leadership and very little inspiration.”
– Debra Walker, artist and longtime activist
 
“His behavior symbolized the running joke amongst some progressive men that women were there for their own entertainment to be mocked and harassed with no one blinking an eye. FUCK. THAT.”
– Anonymous ex-City Hall aide
 
These women – and the progressive men who were their allies – were not laughing at the hijinx of a mouthy old man. But people were, and they will be at the party that will be held in honor of Brown’s departure and attended by member’s of our city’s progressive elite.
 
Supporters say the guy’s behavior was a premeditated mockery of San Francisco’s political correctness, that he was an actor in the grand tradition of political theater. But if he is remembered by generations to come, it will be as the embodiment of an age-old archetype: the dude that other dudes keep around because he says the shit they can’t say to people who aren’t them. After all, who can control their own id?
 
Eskenazi compares Brown to F. Scott Fitzgerald and notwithstanding that both are writers, I’d like to posit an alternative historical precedent for Brown’s passionate trolling. Remember Bobby Riggs, the proud chauvinist who taunted tennis legend Billie Jean King until she wiped the floor with him in the widely broadcast Battle of the Sexes match? Man, that guy should have been in politics.
 
Brown was allowed to establish through constant bullying both online and off that only men have the right to feel comfortable in our city’s high-powered progressive circles. As San Francisco continues to cozy up with its new moderate identity, I hope he is remembered less for being a bon vivant and more as a sign that our once-vaunted avatars of progressivism were spending too much time pounding double shots at the Buck Tavern — while the world changed around them.

Rep Clock: January 22 – 28, 2014

Michael Redmond
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0

Schedules are for Wed/22-Tue/28 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $7-10. Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (Stryker and Silverman, 2005), Sat, 8. With filmmaker Susan Stryker in person.

BALBOA THEATRE 3630 Balboa, SF; cinemasf.com/balboa. $10. “Popcorn Palace:” Kung Fu Panda (Osborne and Stevenson, 2008), Sat, 10am. Matinee for kids.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-12. •Chinatown (Polanski, 1974), Wed, 7, and The Fortune (Nichols, 1975), Wed, 5:10, 9:25. SF Sketchfest: Napoleon Dynamite (Hess, 2004), 10-year anniversary celebration with Jon Heder and other stars in person, Thu, 7; “Tribute to Tenacious D: An Evening of Conversation, Clips, and Songs with Jack Black and Kyle Gass,” Thu, 9:30. Tickets ($25) and more program details at www.sfsketchfest.com. “Noir City:” •Journey Into Fear (Foster and Welles, 1943), Fri, 7:30, and The Third Man (Reed, 1949), Fri, 9; •Border Incident (Mann, 1949) Sat, noon, In the Palm of Your Hand (Gavaldón, 1951), Sat, 2, and Victims of Sin (Fernandez, 1951), Sat, 4; •Too Late for Tears (Haskin, 1949), Sat, 7:30, and The Hitch-Hiker (Lupino, 1953), Sat, 9:30; •Drunken Angel (Kurosawa, 1948), Sun, 1:15, 6, and Stray Dog (Kurosawa, 1949), Sun, 3:30, 8:15; •The Murderers Are Among Us (Staudte, 1946), Mon, 7:15, and Berlin Express (Tourneur, 1948), Mon, 9; •Death of a Cyclist (Bardem, 1955), Tue, 7:15, and Death is a Caress (Carlmar, 1949), Tue, 9. Advance tickets ($10) and more program details at www.noircity.com.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. The Girls in the Band (Chaikin, 2011), call for dates and times. The Past (Farhadi, 2013), call for dates and times. A Touch of Sin (Jia, 2013), call for dates and times.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $10. “Midnight Movies:” The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman, 1975), Sat, midnight. With the Bawdy Caste performing live.

COBB’S COMEDY CLUB 915 Columbus, SF; www.sfsketchfest.com. $15. “Say Hello To My Little Funny: A Night of Short Films Made By Stand-Up Comedians,” Tue, 8. Part of SF Sketchfest.

EXPLORATORIUM Pier 15, SF; www.exploratorium.edu. Free with museum admission ($19-25). “Saturday Cinema: Experimental Films for Kids,” Sat, 1, 2, and 3.

KAISER CENTER 300 Lakeside #206, Oakl; documented.eventbrite.com. $15-20. Documented (Vargas, 2013), with filmmaker and Pulitzer-winner journalist Jose Antonio Vargas in person, Tue, 7:30.

KANBAR HALL JCCSF, 3200 California, SF; www.jccsf.org. $25. “Mark Cantor’s Giants of Jazz: Treasures from the Archives,” Sat, 8.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; milibrary.org/events. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Over the Top: Precode Hollywood:” Skyscraper Souls (Selwyn, 1932), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Film 50: History of Cinema:” “Introduction to Film Language plus Avant-Garde Shorts,” Wed, 3:10. “Funny Ha-Ha: The Genius of American Comedy, 1930-1959:” It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934), Wed, 7; The Bank Dick (Cline, 1940), Fri, 7; His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940), Fri, 8:40. “The Brilliance of Satyajit Ray:” The Bicycle Thief (De Sica, 1948), Thu, 7; The Music Room (Ray, 1958), Sat, 6:30; Ray: Life and Work of Satyajit (Ghose, 1999), Sun, 3; The River (Renoir, 1950), Sun, 5:10. “African Film Festival 2014:” Mother of George (Dosunmu, 2012), Sat, 8:30; Le Président (Bekolo, 2013), Tue, 7.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. The Square (Noujaim, 2013), Wed-Thu, 6:45, 8:45. “Sundance Short Films,” Wed, 7. A Touch of Sin (Jia, 2013), Wed, 9. “Ruth’s Table Benefit:” Ruth Asawa, Roots of an Artist (Toy), with “Hearing Voices: The Ruth’s Table Story” (Butnaru), Thu, 7. This event, $30. “Roxie’s Future Filmmakers Program: SFFS Youth Filmmaker Showcase,” Sat, noon. SF Sketchfest film screenings with artists in person, Sat-Sun and Feb 1. Visit www.sfsketchfest.com for program details. “SFMOMA on the Go: An Evening with Mike Mills,” Sun, 7.

TANNERY 708 Gilman, Berk; berkeleyundergroundfilms.blogspot.com. Donations accepted. “Berkeley Underground Film Society:” “LOOP Presents: Cartoon Carnival #3,” short films, Sat, 7:30; Breathless (Godard, 1960), Sun, 7:30.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “Ravishing, Radical, and Restored: The Films of Jack Smith:” No President (1967-70) with “I Was a Male Yvonne DeCarlo” (1967-70), Thu, 7:30; •Ray Cohn/Jack Smith (Godmilow, 1995), Sun, 2, and “Shorts and Ephemera,” Sun, 3:45. *

 

Tenant battle brewing

Michael Redmond
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Tenant battle brewing

rebecca@sfbg.com

Benito Santiago, 63, was born and raised in San Francisco. But now that he’s received an eviction notice from the apartment he’s lived in since 1977, he isn’t sure what the future holds.

“This is roots for me,” Santiago told us. “I have more affinity for San Francisco than the Philippines,” his family’s place of origin.

He works part-time with disabled youth enrolled in San Francisco public schools. “The idea that I built a rapport with these students here … to be put in a position where I wouldn’t be able to work with them, I’m a little saddened and depressed by it,” he said. “If I’m homeless, I can’t be taking care of these kids. I mean — it’s a worst-case scenario.”

He’s been exploring alternative housing options, and trying to stay positive. He says he’s even trying to “change the rate of vibration” of the real estate speculators seeking to oust him as part of his pre-dawn meditation and ritualistic movement practice, a routine he developed to mitigate the chronic pain he dealt with after being hit by an automobile when he was crossing the street in 1980.

“Hopefully, they can have some compassion,” he said.

Santiago is hoping to get a temporary extension to stave off his eviction, and he’s been looking into publicly subsidized below-market rate apartments. But rent for even the most affordable of those places would eat up 75 percent of his monthly income, he said. Unless he can find an affordable arrangement somewhere, he might end up having to leave the city.

 

GROWING MOVEMENT

Santiago has been a part of a growing movement underway in San Francisco to reform the Ellis Act and introduce meaningful legislation at the local level to protect the city’s renters.

In recent weeks, the San Francisco Anti Displacement Coalition, made up of a wide range of organizations including the San Francisco Tenants Union, has hosted a series of neighborhood tenant conventions to solicit ideas that will be boiled down at a citywide tenants’ gathering scheduled for Feb. 8. At that meeting, organizers plan to hash out a strategy and possibly solicit ideas for a ballot initiative.

The tenant conventions are happening on a parallel track with efforts to reform the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to remove apartments from the rental market and evict tenants.

“Our goal is to ban the use of the Ellis Act in certain circumstances,” explained Dean Preston of Tenants Together, a nonprofit focused on strengthening the rights of renters.

“More than half of Ellis Acts are performed by people who bought the properties within the past six months,” he told us. “Their whole purpose is to buy it and kick everyone out. It was supposed to be for long-term landlords to get out of the business” of being landlords, he added. Instead, “it’s being completely abused.”

Sen. Mark Leno is working with Mayor Ed Lee on a response that would seek to lessen the impact the Ellis Act has had in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano is spearheading a separate effort.

“At this time, he’s not really ready to say which avenue he’s taking” in terms of a legislative strategy, said Carlos Alcalá, Ammiano’s communications director. “Because that can rule out that avenue.”

Preston said he’s been through waves of evictions before, but the organizing now taking place has been especially effective at drawing attention to the issue. Oftentimes, “the speculators are not from within the city or even within the state,” he pointed out. “That has fueled a lot of activism and courage.”

For Santiago, the organizing has given him heart during a difficult time. “I’m hearing a lot of sad stories,” he said, “and I am not alone.”

State of the City: spin over substance

Michael Redmond
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5

It was maddening to watch Mayor Ed Lee deliver his annual State of the City address on Jan. 17. This was pure politics, from the staged backdrop of housing construction at Hunters Point Shipyard to the use of “regular people” props to the slate of vague and contradictory promises he made.

“This place, the shipyard, links our proud past to an even more promising future,” was how Lee began his hour-plus, invite-only address.

Later, he touted the housing construction being done there by Lennar Urban as emblematic of both his promise to bring 30,000 new housing units online by 2020 — the cornerstone to what he called his “affordability agenda” — and the opposition to unfettered development that he is pledging to overcome.

“A great example is the place we’re standing right now. This took us too long,” Lee said after decrying the “easy slogans and scapegoating” by progressive activists who place demands on developers.

But that implication was bullshit. As we’ve reported, progressive and community activists have long encouraged Lennar Urban (which has a close relationship to Lee) to speed up development on this public land that it was given almost a decade ago, particularly the long-promised affordable housing, rather than waiting for the real estate market to heat up.

That was just one of many examples of misleading and unsupported claims in a speech that might have sounded good to the uninformed listener, but which greatly misrepresented the current realities and challenges in San Francisco.

For example, Lee called for greater investments in the public transit system while acknowledging that his proposal to ask voters this November to increase the vehicle license fee isn’t polling well. And yet even before that vote takes place, Lee wants to extend free Muni for youth and repeal the policy of charging for parking meters on Sundays without explaining how he’ll pay for that $10 million per year proposal.

Lee also glossed over the fact that he hasn’t provided funding for the SFMTA’s severely underfunded bicycle or pedestrian safety programs, yet he still said, “I support the goals of Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths in our city.”

Again, nice sentiment, but one disconnected from how he’s choosing to spend taxpayer money and use city resources. And if Lee can somehow achieve his huge new housing development push, Muni and other critical infrastructure will only be pushed to the breaking point faster.

Even with his call to increase the city’s minimum wage — something that “will lift thousands of people out of poverty” — he shied away from his previous suggestion that $15 per hour would be appropriate and said that he needed to consult with the business community first: “We’ll seek consensus around a significant minimum wage increase.”

But Mayor Lee wants you to focus on his words more than his actions, including his identification with renters who “worry that speculators looking to make a buck in a hot market will force them out.”

Yet there’s little in his agenda to protect those vulnerable renters, except for his vague promise to try to do so, and to go lobby in Sacramento for reforms to the Ellis Act.

Lee also noted the “bone dry winter” we’re having and how, “It reminds us that the threat of climate change is real.” Yet none of the programs he mentions for addressing that challenge would be as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as the CleanPowerSF program that Lee and his appointees are blocking, while offering no other plan for building renewable energy capacity.

Far from trying to beef up local public sector resources that vulnerable populations increasingly need, Lee said, “Affordability is also about having a city government taxpayers can afford.”

State of the City speech filled with unsupported promises

Sasha Cuttler
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178
State of the City speech filled with unsupported promises

It was maddening to watch Mayor Ed Lee deliver his annual State of the City address this morning. This was pure politics, from the staged backdrop of housing construction at Hunters Point Shipyard to the use of “regular people” props to the slate of vague and contradictory promises he made.

“This place, the shipyard, links our proud past to an even more promising future,” was how Lee began his hour-plus, invite-only address.

Later, he touted the housing construction being done there by Lennar Urban as emblematic of both his promise to bring 30,000 new housing units online by 2020 — the cornerstone to what he called his “affordability agenda” — and the opposition to unfettered development that he is pledging to overcome.

“A great example is the place we’re standing right now. This took us too long,” Lee said after decrying the “easy slogans and scapegoating” by progressive activists who place demands on developers.

But that implication was complete bullshit. As we and others have reported, progressive and community activists have long encouraged Lennar Urban (which has a close relationship to Lee) to speed up development on this public land that it was given almost a decade ago, particularly the long-promised affordable housing, rather than waiting for the real estate market to heat up.

That was just one of many examples of misleading and unsupported claims in a speech that might have sounded good to the uninformed listener, but which greatly misrepresented the current realities and challenges in San Francisco.

For example, Lee called for greater investments in the public transit system while acknowledging that his proposal to ask voters this November to increase the vehicle license fee isn’t polling well. And yet even before that vote takes place, Lee wants to extend free Muni for youth and repeal the policy of charging for parking meters on Sundays without explaining how he’ll pay for that $10 million per year proposal.

“Nobody likes it, not parents, not our neighborhood businesses, not me,” Lee said of Sunday meters, ignoring a study last month by the San Francisco Muncipal Transportation Agency showing the program was working well and accomplishing its goals of increasing parking turnover near businesses and bringing in needed revenue.

Lee also glossed over the fact that he hasn’t provided funding for the SFMTA’s severely underfunded bicycle or pedestrian safety programs, yet he still said, “I support the goals of Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths in our city.”

Again, nice sentiment, but one that is totally disconnected from how he’s choosing to spend taxpayer money and use city resources. And if Lee can somehow achieve his huge new housing development push, Muni and other critical infrastructure will only be pushed to the breaking point faster.  

Lee acknowledges that many people are being left out of this city’s economic recovery and are being displaced. “Jobs and confidence are back, but our economic recovery has still left thousands behind,” he said, pledging that, “We must confront these challenges directly in the San Francisco way.”

And that “way” appears to be by making wishful statements without substantial support and then letting developers and venture capitalists — such as Ron Conway, the tech and mayoral funder seated in the second row — continue calling the shots.

Even with his call to increase the city’s minimum wage — something that “will lift thousands of people out of poverty” — he shied away from his previous suggestion that $15 per hour would be appropriate and said that he needed to consult with the business community first.

“We’ll seek consensus around a significant minimum wage increase,” he said, comparing it to the 2012 ballot measures that reformed the business tax and created an Affordable Housing Fund (the tradeoff for which was to actually reduce the on-site affordable housing requirements for developers).

But Mayor Lee wants you to focus on his words more than his actions, including his identication with renters who “worry that speculators looking to make a buck in a hot market will force them out.”

Yet there’s little in his agenda to protect those vulnerable renters, except for his vague promise to try to do so, and to go lobby in Sacramento for reforms to the Ellis Act. While in Sacramento, he says he’ll also somehow get help for City College of San Francisco, whose takeover by the state and usurpation of local control he supported.   

“City College is on the mend and already on the path to full recovery,” Lee said, an astoundingly out-of-touch statement that belies the school’s plummeting enrollment and the efforts by City Attorney Dennis Herrera and others to push back on the revocation of its accreditation.

Lee also had the audacity to note the “bone dry winter” we’re having and how, “It reminds us that the threat of climate change is real.” Yet none of the programs he mentions for addressing that challenge — green building standards, more electric vehicle infrastructure, the GoSolar program — would be as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emmisions as the CleanPowerSF program that Lee and his appointees are blocking, while offering no other plan for building renewable energy capacity.

Far from trying to beef up local public sector resources that vulnerable city residents increasingly need, or with doing environmental protection, Lee instead seemed to pledge more of the tax cutting that he’s used to subsidize the overheating local economy.

“Affordability is also about having a city government taxpayers can afford,” Lee said. “We must be sure we’re only investing in staffing and services we can afford over the long term.”

How that squares with his pledges to put more resources into public transit, affordable housing development, addressing climate change, and other urgent needs that Lee gives lip service to addressing is anybody’s guess.  

Lee panders to motorists and undermines SFMTA with Sunday metering repeal

Sasha Cuttler
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36
Lee panders to motorists and undermines SFMTA with Sunday metering repeal

First Mayor Ed Lee ignores the rising cost of living in San Francisco (fueled partly by his own corporate welfare for the tech industry and commercial landlords), and now he’s using his sudden concern about gentrification as an excuse to make parking meters free again on Sundays, a blatant bit of political pandering that blows a $6 million annual hole in Muni’s budget.

Maybe it’s understandable that a politician worried about his reelection prospects with restive voters would take a page from the playbook of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who slashed the state’s vehicle license fee to win that office. But what makes this move stink even more is it’s being supported by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, a supposedly independent (yet mayoral appointed) body whose top officials methodically and courageously have made a strong case for Sunday metering.

“We’re just willing to partner with the mayor to address affordability,” SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told us, admitting the agency hasn’t yet identified a funding source to fill that gap if Sunday metering is repealed on July 1 as proposed. Sunday meters were budgeted for $1 million in revenue, but they actually brought in $6 million in the last year because of more tickets than expected, feeding the outrage of motorists who feel entitled to use public roads for free. 

We’re waiting for calls back from SFMTA Executive Director Ed Reiskin and Chairman Tom Nolan to find out whether they no longer stand by the arguments they’ve been making for Sunday metering, claiming it helps the local economy by making parking spaces available in neighborhood commercial districts and that it’s consistent with the city’s official transit-first policy.

“What does this say about the city’s commitment to the policy of promoting transit first?” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum said, saying she was shocked by the announcement given how underfunded the SFMTA’s transit, bicycle, and pedestrian improvement programs all are. “Why in the world are we even talking about this?”

Lee claims this is about affordability, telling the Chronicle “it was just nickel-and-diming people to death,” yet his own plans call for asking voters to approve more than $6.3 billion in taxes to fund Muni’s needs over the next 15 years, including a proposal to increase the sales tax in 2016, a regressive tax that will hit those already struggling harder than Sunday metering does to the 70 percent of San Francisco households that have an automobile.

Lee has also proposed ballot measures for this November that would increase the vehicle license fee and issue a $500 million general obligation bond, paid for on the property taxes of all city households. His own polls show the measures could be difficult sells to voters, and it’s not clear why he won’t wait for those results before ending Sunday metering.

When we asked mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey about all this, she selectively answered our questions with the following response: “The mayor believes a comprehensive funding strategy to not just maintain, but improve Muni performance, pedestrian and bike safety and the condition of our roads is what will finally turn the corner on improving San Francisco’s Transportation System. That’s why he has spent the better part of a year with the Transportation 2030 Taskforce, that recommended several ways to support these goals, including a $500 million general obligation bond, which the mayor supports. Because of a strong economy, the mayor believes it’s time to eliminate parking fees for six hours on Sundays and permanently fund Free Muni for low income youth to help working families in San Francisco and ease the affordability issues he hears about from families across the City.”

But at this point, that’s just political rhetoric, and Lee’s “comprehensive funding strategy” remains a vague and distant dream — one that will soon be $6 million a year tougher to make a reality. 

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