Zombies

Home field advantage

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS Bars are wired for weird times. I know that. The combination of amplified music and vodka makes for surreally truncated, garbled conversation (if any). Which in turn makes for strange looks, nods of unknowingness, flights of fancy, and colorfully elaborate misunderstandings. Then the next day you have to e-mail everyone and say, "Christ, what happened?"

Restaurants are wired for romance. Coffeehouses are wired for wirelessness. That’s why you get coffee on first dates. If they don’t show up, you can check your e-mail. Second date, dinner. Third date, drinks and dinner — then hopefully more drinks, then hopefully breakfast. But you don’t just drink until after you are bored with each other, or are at least married.

I was not on a date. My date, the dumb fuck, cancelled on me. It would have been a second date, so I would have had dinner. As it turned out, I did have dinner with a good friend instead, so it was actually enjoyable — if not romantic — and then we went to see another friend’s band play and everyone was there.

Now, if you’re me, all your friends are in love with all your other friends, with the possible exception of me. And all their relationships are always at various stages of disappointment/dissipation, in which case they may want to confide in you, or else they are on Cloud Nine, in which case they may want you to confide in them.

It might be the same mechanism that makes people rubberneck car crashes or turn into drooling zombies in the glow of the Disaster Channel. They could be safe, held, and accounted for, but some rare, blissless part of them misses loneliness and/or craves the vicarious ache of your dumb fuck dates and serial dicklessness.

And some not-very-rare but raw part of you wants to talk, and tell, and hear, and feel, so this all works out very nicely, or would except that you’re in a loud bar with a lot of strong drinks in your hands. And the next thing you know, if you’re me, all your friends have left, some having said good-bye, some not … and you live an hour and a half away, have keys to several neighborhood couches and crawl spaces, but miss Weirdo the Cat and are in general very, very confused.

It’s late it’s dark you’ve had at least a drink you’re a lightweight you’re afraid to go let yourself in to any of your many oddly departed friends’ apartments because they are probably all in bed with each other, making happy, sexual, slurpy noises.

How did this happen? You trade your unfinished drink for a cup of coffee to go and, replaying the strange night in your head, you drive home on the verge of tears and, more dangerously, sleep. You feel hardly understood, hardly understanding, in broad daylight on solid ground, outside. Let alone at shows.

You remember saying to someone back at the bar: "I think I might try dating younger men, since older ones strike me as disappointingly immature. With younger ones at least I won’t be disappointed. And there will be hope. Insane hope, but hope."

What they heard, between guitar solos and microphone feedback: "I think the fire was in the bedroom, since something something scintilutf8gly immature. With young rum the peaches won’t be disappointing. Something something. I’m insane! Ho ho ho!"

Little wonder they looked at you sideways and left.

Fuck bars. Fuck restaurants. Fuck coffeehouses. From now on I’m going to stay home, in the woods. If my friends want to see me, they are more than welcome here. And I will feed them. Complete strangers too. If they want it to be a date, I have coffee!

We can sit outside, and the only interference to our clear, body-boggling verbal connection will be birds and squirrels, and/or the sizzling of chops and chicken. Inside, the sound of a clock and the smell of bacon. This is called home field advantage.

Which … I think I could use me some.

———————————————————————-

My new favorite restaurant is Taqueria Guadalajara. You know how I know? I had just bought about 15 pounds of Flint’s barbecue for my band, and Little Him showed up with a Guadalajara burrito. I couldn’t keep my eyes off it, ribs, brisket, and chicken notwithstanding. This burrito was eight-feet long and weighed 420 pounds. Next chance I got, I went to Guadalajara myself for about three solid meals’ worth of al pastor, and was not disappointed. Open late, and pretty nice inside, too.

TAQUERIA GUADALAJARA

Sun.–Thurs., 9 a.m.–1 a.m.; Fri.–Sat., 9 a.m.–3 a.m.

3146 24th St., SF

(415) 642-4892

Beer & wine

AE/DISC/MC/V

The gruesome twosome

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HORROR SEQUEL If you know Monsturd, you love Monsturd. If you don’t know the 2003 horror comedy by San Francisco filmmakers Rick Popko and Dan West, imagine a tiny town menaced by a mad scientist-created shit monster, with clueless cops, a no-nonsense FBI agent, and a climax that unfolds around a chili cook-off.

Doesn’t appeal? Don’t read on. But fans of homespun exploito-stravaganzas will want to know that Popko and West have finally finished Monsturd‘s sequel (the making of which I chronicled in "Blood Brothers," [05/30/06]). It’s called Retardead, and it returns to that same tiny town soon after the events of Monsturd. This time, the stakes are both higher (zombies!) and lower (zombies spawned from special education students!), and there’s way more of everything: gore, off-color jokes, cursing, and totally random moments, like an LSD freak-out scene, an exploding helicopter, second-unit footage contributed by horror fans across the country, a saucy appearance by dance theatre troupe the Living Dead Girlz, and a cameo by Jello Biafra.

Popko and West, who reprise their Monsturd roles as goofy deputies, realize they’ve created something rather crazy — and with all the technical problems they encountered in Retardead‘s post-production (from editing on outdated software to the disasters they overcame while working on the film’s first batch of DVDs), are now a little crazy themselves.

"The movie’s cursed — I think it’s karma because of the title," Popko theorized. "The karma gods are like, we’re gonna let you have this movie, but it’s gonna cost you in terms of pain and suffering all the way through till the very end. Monsturd took us two years, and we thought that was forever. And here we are five years after starting Retardead, and we’re finally seeing the end of the tunnel."

Though the movie is completed, "we’re still kind of shell-shocked," West said. "We still have the premiere to go through, and we don’t trust this thing. If it can fuck with us, it will fuck with us. It’s like the Frankenstein monster that has its own life, and we’re its bitch."

For better or worse, the monster is at last ready to terrorize audiences. West is excited: "The movie’s good. I love the movie. It’s weird, it’s 10 times better than Monsturd — cinematically, it’s much better. The special effects are just insane. We love the weird factor of this one. We were able to get our sense of humor and get a lot of non sequiturs in there. We love that stuff."

"I love how different it is," Popko agreed. "Dan and I are big fans of the horror genre, and the comedy genre, and there are a million friggin’ zombie movies out there. We didn’t want to fall into that trap of just being another zombie flick. So the thing I’m most proud of with Retardead is that this is gonna be a different experience. Yes, it is a zombie movie, but it’s like no other zombie movie that has ever been made before."

After the premiere — at which they’ll pass out barf bags in homage to their idol, Herchell Gordon Lewis, who did the same for 1963’s Blood Feast — the duo hopes to self-distribute their film over the Internet. They are also already planning a third collaboration, "a movie about making a sequel," West revealed, which will likely include pirates, Satanists, space vampires, "a werewolf thing," and more Biafra.

In the meantime, the pair hopes to greet a raucous crowd this weekend at the Victoria Theatre. "Ideally we’d like to see audiences going wild and crazy at a few of these key scenes that we’ve got in there that will hopefully surprise and shock people," Popko said.

"Specifically, that vomit scene," West chimed in, and the codirectors chuckled with delighted pride.

RETARDEAD

Fri/11–Sat/12, 7 and 9:30 p.m.; Sun/13, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., $10

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

(415) 863-7576

www.victoriatheatre.org, www.4321films.com

Gore gone global

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(SHOULD BE A) CULT FILM Pakistan: land of the Markhor goat (a twisty-horned national animal), major software industry, ancient civilizations, field hockey, purported terrorist training cells, and extremely good-looking people of both sexes. The latter, at least, was suggested by those who went to my midwestern university a couple decades back: they were terribly urbane, funny, and cool. Admittedly, they were the next-generation cream of the country’s privileged-liberal economic elite. But they endeared me to a country that, at least as they reflected it, couldn’t harbor anything too religio-fanatical. Could it?

Such first impressions linger — never mind that I have since become slightly less of an overgeneralizing idiot. Proof that Pakistan retains a freethinking, Western-influenced minority — no insult intended against its more conservative Muslim majority — arrives in the unexpected form of Hell’s Ground (a.k.a. Zibahkhana), which plays the Hypnodrome as a Dead Channels presentation. Omar Ali Khan’s debut feature is a frantic pileup of horror genre tropes whose energy never flags. Purportedly Pakistan’s first gore film, it’s funny as well as grotesquely over-the-top.

Much as the movie might strike some as proof of the Great Satan’s poisonous cultural influence — and indeed it offers shameless tribute to the accumulated clichés of Western horror trash — it nonetheless hews to the genre’s most essential moral conservatism. (And unlike traditional slashers, no T&A is bared to justify lethal punishment.) Among the film’s quintet of teens sneaking out of town to a rock concert they’ll never reach, who do you think is gonna survive? I wouldn’t place bets on the amiable pothead, jaded party girl, or overgroomed stud. Poor virtuous scholarship student Simon? Good girl Ayesha (nicknamed Ash, à la Evil Dead‘s Bruce Campbell), who wears a "God Is Great" pendant? Maybe.

After someone has the bright idea of taking a dirt road shortcut, the fivesome run across zombies (including midget undead), then the freaky inbred family of a mystery-meat-selling matriarch whose offspring are Texas Chainsaw Massacre brethren reincarnated way off the Bible Belt. The crazy hitcher guy is now a long-haired religious fanatic; as in Tobe Hooper’s 1974 original, he’s got an unpleasant surprise to spring once he gets in the van. Khan’s Leatherface equivalent substitutes a blood-spattered burqa and a lethally wielded mace for a dried-human-skin-mask and a buzz saw.

Funded by entrepreneur Khan’s Lahore ice cream parlors, Hell’s Ground is a fun and accomplished tree-shaking of Pakistan’s once-lively, now largely moribund "Lollywood" film industry. It did well when the country’s censorship board finally approved its theatrical release early this year. It emerges stateside this month via TLA Releasing, a normally gay-centric DVD distributor whose Danger After Dark label has recently given exposure to a gamut of international horror, fantasy, and suspense films. So far they’ve ranged from cheesily enjoyable (Greece’s first zombie flick, 2005’s Evil) to brilliant (Simon Rumley’s 2006 Brit madness portrait The Living and the Dead).

Despite all of the English comic book–panel intertitles ("Little did they know … ") and nods to Western horror classics, Hell’s Ground is shot through with Pakistani cultural totems (like a glimpse of hijiras, transvestite eunuchs), vintage pop, and in-jokes. Not least is the cameo by long-retired actor Rahan of 1967 Pakistani cult smash The Living Corpse. As a chai shop proprietor, he warns our hapless youngsters that they’ve already "strayed off the right road" and that "good Muslims should be getting ready for evening prayers." Later he’s heard pronouncing "You’re on the road to hell my children. Ha ha ha. HA HA HA!"

"The characters in Zibahkhana are part of the urban elite," Khan said in an interview with British newspaper the Guardian. "It’s true that class lives in a privileged bubble. The real, frightening, ‘unknown’ Pakistan is out there in the countryside, and that is why in the film it is when the kids leave the city that they starting encountering trouble."

HELL’S GROUND

Wed/2, 7:30 p.m., $5

Hypnodrome Theatre

575 10th St., SF

(415) 377-4202, www.deadchannels.com

Centiclubs

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "It’s like an old ship. Things break, things fall apart, and you just keep bailing water and hope you hit land someday!"

That’s Guy Carson, Café Du Nord owner and ex-Hotel Utah booker, on owning a 100-year-old club. Yes, there are the inevitable aches and pains attendant with a structure erected just two years after the great ‘quake, as well as eerie little trap doors and escape hatches from the Prohibition era. But, oh, the stories the Du Nord, House of Shields, and Hotel Utah — a troika of oases overflowing with libation and live music that have all hit the century mark in the past year — could tell. ‘Member the time PJ Harvey played a not-so-secret show at the Utah, triggering round-the-block queues? Or the first San Francisco show by rock legends the Zombies at the Du Nord? Or the rumored gunfight played out by Comstock Lode robber baron William Sharon in front of his then-men’s social club, now known as the House of Shields?

‘Course you don’t. So much has been lost in the mists of Bay Area mythology and Barbary Coast conjecture. But there’s always word of mouth — in full effect at the shambling, loving June 19 celebration of the Utah’s centennial, as Birdman Records’ David Katznelson presented witnesses like owner Damian Samuel, a ukulele sing-along by music writer Sylvie Simmons and Bart Davenport, and tributes by artists who have stomped Utah’s boards, including Paula Frazer and Greg Ashley.

Since its days as Al’s Transbay Tavern (name-checked in 1971’s Dirty Harry) through the years owned by screenwriter Paul Gaer (who brought in Robin Williams and puppet shows), the venue has not only been instrumental in establishing a beachhead for local bands — Cake was considered a resident outfit in the 1990s and Counting Crows, Jewel, and Tarnation were onetime regulars ("For a while I used to say that the Hotel Utah was Geffen’s A&R department," recalls Carson). Its communities include "open mic–ers, the regulars, and the people who live in the building," Samuel offers. "It’s a live amoeba of sorts that has its own direction." He says the UK’s Noisettes now call the Utah its home base, and past staffers include ex-booker Mike Taylor (Court and Spark), Cory McAbee (Billy Nayer Show), and Shannon Walter (16 Bitch Pile-Up). One of Samuel’s fave tell-alls: in 1997 he had to walk future Guns N’ Roses guitarist Buckethead around the block so he could make a dramatic entrance onstage. "Here I am walking him around in SoMa, a chicken bucket on his head," Samuel recalls. "He kept saying, ‘I didn’t realize this block was so long.’<0x2009>"

Uptown, a century ago, the House of Shields also threw open its doors — in a much more hush-hush way: the venue began life as a men’s social club, and the only women permitted in until the ’70s were, says owner Alexis Filipello, "working girls." These days, the venue that got its name from its ’30s owner Eddie Shields is more likely to see indie artists like Sean Smith and Beam than highly establishment swells sneaking a stiff drink, but the crowd remains raucous, gathered around the elegant bar originally meant for the Pied Piper watering hole in the Palace Hotel across New Montgomery. When artist Maxfield Parrish made his Pied Piper of Hamelin mural (1909) far too long for the piece, the bar was sent over to Palace cobuilder William Sharon’s other nightspot. After Filipello bought the watering hole in 2003, she restored the natural wood, refurbished the moldings, reupholstered the booths, and jettisoned the "funky" taxidermy. "It was just such a beautiful old location, a piece of San Francisco’s history," she recalls. "We did a lot of work to get it back up to its beauty." No plans, however, for the firmly closed underground passage that links House of Shields to the Palace. Persistent rumors have it that in 1923, President Warren Harding died, not in the Palace as officially reported, but in the Shields’ speakeasy, and was transported through the tunnel back to his suite to avoid Prohibition-period scandal.

The ground is still shaking, happily, around Café Du Nord, which hit its 100th in October. In the next year Carson hopes to create a coffeehouse/art space upstairs next to the club, where performers can show their work, then play a show upstairs at the Swedish American Hall — which has hosted performers ranging from Cat Power to Michael Hurley — or downstairs at the Du Nord. He also plans to install an elevator where the Du Nord women’s room now sits, renovating the space so he can do the unique, one-off shows he prefers.

Carson is striving to continue nurturing the creative spirit of the Utah. "The difference between then and now is that everything costs so much. Our overhead here is so high, you can’t fail," he says. Back in ’90 when Gaer hired him at the Utah, he adds, "it wasn’t a big financial nut to crack, and we ran it like a living art experiment. I really miss those days. It was fun!"

QUESTION AUTHORITY?

MEGAFAUN


Backwoods Table of the Elements crustastic jams? The Durham, N.C., trio also joins Akron/Family at the High Sierra fest for a Mega-Akron set. Wed/2, 8:30 p.m., pay what you can. 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakl. www.21grand.org. Also Thurs/3, 9 p.m., $8. 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, SF. www.12galaxies.com. Fri/4–Sat/5, check Web site for times, $30–<\d>$168. High Sierra, Quincy; www.highsierramusic.com

BATTLEHOOCH


Kooky, crunchy spazz-tastic moves for kids? The SF band dons Baagersox guise for the first anniversary Lazerdance dance-off Thursday, then goes into seven-piece mode Saturday. Thurs/3, 10 p.m., $5. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.theknockoutsf.com. Also Sat/5, 9:30 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

RETRIBUTION GOSPEL CHOIR


All-boy rock testimonials from Low’s Alan Sparhawk? Tues/8, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

A space colony in Wisconsin

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Every year in late May, several thousand people descend on Madison, Wis., to create an alternate universe. Some want to build a galaxy-size civilization packed with humans and aliens who build massive halo worlds orbiting stars. Others are obsessed with what they’ll do when what remains of humanity is left to survive in the barren landscape left after Earth has been destroyed by nukes, pollution, epidemics, nanotech wipeouts, or some combination of all four. Still others live parts of their lives as if there were a special world for wizards hidden in the folds of our own reality.

They come to Madison for WisCon, a science-fiction convention unlike most I’ve ever attended. Sure, the participants are all interested in the same alien worlds as the thronging crowds that go to the popular Atlanta event Dragon*Con or the media circus known as Comic-Con. But they rarely carry light sabers or argue about continuity errors in Babylon 5. Instead, they carry armloads of books and want to talk politics.

WisCon is the United States’ only feminist sci-fi convention, but since it was founded more than two decades ago, the event has grown to be much more than that. Feminism is still a strong component of the con, and many panels are devoted to the work of women writers or issues like sexism in comic books. But the con is also devoted to progressive politics, antiracism, and the ways speculative literature can change the future. This year there was a terrific panel about the fake multiculturalism of Star Trek and Heroes, as well as a discussion about geopolitical themes in experimental writer Timmel Duchamp’s five-novel, near-future Marq’ssan series.

While most science fiction cons feature things like sneak-preview footage of the next special effects blockbuster or appearances by the cast of Joss "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Whedon’s new series Dollhouse, WisCon’s highlights run toward the bookish. We all crammed inside one of the hotel meeting rooms to be part of a tea party thrown by the critically-acclaimed indie SF Web zine Strange Horizons (strangehorizons.com), then later we listened to several lightning readings at a stately beer bash thrown by old school SF book publisher Tor.

One of the highlights of the con was a chance to drink absinthe in a strangely windowless suite with the editors of alternative publisher Small Beer Press, whose authors include the award-winning Kelly Link and Carol Emschwiller. You genuinely imagine yourself on a spaceship in that windowless room — or maybe in some subterranean demon realm — with everybody talking about alternate realities, AIs gone wild, and why Iron Maiden is the best band ever. (What? You don’t think there will be 1980s metal in the demon realm?)

Jim Munroe, Canadian master of DIY publishing and filmmaking, was at WisCon talking about literary zombies and ways that anarchists can learn to organize their time better, while guest of honor Maureen McHugh gave a speech about how interactive online storytelling represents the future of science fiction — and fiction in general. Science fiction erotica writer/publisher Cecilia Tan told everybody about her latest passion: writing Harry Potter fan fiction about the forbidden love between Draco and Snape. Many of today’s most popular writers, like bestseller Naomi Novik, got their start writing fan fiction. Some continue to do it under fake names because they just can’t give it up.

Perhaps the best part of WisCon is getting a chance to hang out with thousands of people who believe that writing and reading books can change the world for the better. Luckily, nobody there is humorless enough to forget that sometimes escapist fantasy is just an escape. WisCon attendees simply haven’t given up hope that tomorrow might be radically better than today. They are passionate about the idea that science fiction and fantasy are the imaginative wing of progressive politics. In Madison, among groups of dreamers, I was forcefully reminded that before we remake the world, we must first model it in our own minds.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who bought way too many books at WisCon and can’t wait to read them all.

Yuks galore

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FILM FESTIVAL Sometimes the best thing a movie has going for it is its title, especially if that title happens to be Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood!. Far and away the most expressively named selection at this year’s Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, Zombies imagines what would happen if a couple of rival gangbangers, a weary cop, and assorted other ragtag types emerged as the only humans unaffected by a mysterious solar flare. Zombie-movie conventions are followed (the obligatory lesson about shooting ’em in the head, etc.), self-referential jokes are cracked (Shaun of the Dead gets a shout-out). The most distinctive features here — casting erstwhile soul man C. Thomas Howell as the cop, an eye-rollingly dated Snakes on a Plane joke, and a truly disturbing twist that renders the zombies brain eaters and sex freaks — aren’t quite enough to elevate Zombies to the realm of must-see undeadness. To be fair, though, even Troma would have a hard time fulfilling the promise of something called Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood!.

A better bargain for your gross-out buck is 2007’s Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, a film I seized on after noting the top billing of Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund. With higher production values than Zombie and a clever script (cowritten by John Ainslie and director Jon Knautz), Monster follows the titular hero (Trevor Matthews), a slacker dude plumber who’s been toting around some serious anger issues since childhood — when he witnessed a monster gobble up his entire family. Jack’s princess-bitch girlfriend (Rachel Skarsten) convinces him to enroll in a night-school class taught by the bumbling Professor Crowley, who ropes Jack into taking a look at the rusty pipes beneath his creepy old house. Cue: the unearthing of an ancient evil, and Crowley’s transformation from science geek to chicken-wing-gobbling, Jabba the Hutt–like menace.

Naturally this turn of events unleashes the inner warrior in Jack; the film is bookended by flash-forwards that suggest he becomes something of a Buffy for the monster population. But the main reason to see Monster is Englund, who’s having something of a mini-comeback between this film and the recent Zombie Strippers. Always a limber, engaging performer, Englund further proves there’s more to him than vivisecting Elm Street teens — though that’d be enough for me, really.

But back to the zombies. One of HoleHead’s programming edicts is apparently "never enough zombies," to the extent of capitalizing the Zed-word in their programming notes. Along with those mutant hood-rats, the fest also includes Wasting Away (2007), Trailer Park of Terror (question: when did zombies and white trash become so synonymous?), and Brain Dead (2007), the latter containing nearly as many gratuitous female nudes (full-frontal, in most cases) as it does alien-parasite-spawned undead beasties. Whatever, dude — you want class, look elsewhere. These HoleHead selections embrace crass with pride.

Other notable picks in this year’s festival include the locally made Home World, an uneven if ambitious sci-fi tale that owes a debt to Battlestar Galactica; a revival of Roger Vadim’s 1968 Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy (free entry for Jane Fonda look-alikes and other costumed attendees); The Machine Girl, about a one-handed Japanese schoolgirl who exacts tasty, gory revenge on the baddies who offed her family; and, just ’cause it’s Uwe Boll, ‘Nam drama The Tunnel Rats, potentially the first film he’ll direct that spawns a video game instead of vice versa. HoleHead kicks off with the Bai Ling-starring The Gene Generation (2007), followed by a party headlined by all-girl psychobilly quartet Thee Merry Widows.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD

June 5–21, most shows $10.50

Roxie Film Center

3117 16th St, SF

www.sfindie.com

Opening night party with Thee Merry Widows, the Zooby Show, and the Undertaker and His Pals

Thurs/5, 9 p.m., $5 (free with HoleHead pass or ticket stub)

Annie’s Social Club

917 Folsom, SF

www.anniessocialclub.com

SFIFF: Blood ties

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

You can keep those classy, highbrow Coppolas. I’ll play the low card with the Argentos any day. This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival is a feast for fans of the father-daughter team: Dario directs Asia in Mother of Tears, his long-awaited final entry in the cultishly beloved "Three Mothers" series, which includes 1977’s Suspiria and 1980’s Inferno. Asia also stars in Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales, as well as the fest’s opening-night film, Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress.

I first encountered the duo under the least relaxing of circumstances at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival. Press interviews for Mother of Tears were held in a hectically crowded hotel restaurant. Waiting for my turn, I watched as team Argento chowed down a quick lunch, chattering together in Italian about who knows what (witches, ancient artifacts, the weather?). I clutched my tape recorder, feeling possibly the same mixture of fear, awe, and excitement that filled Suspiria’s Suzy Bannion when she arrived at a certain cursed ballet school.

Fortunately, my chat with the pair was devoid of ceiling maggots, underwater zombies, or — as featured in Mother of Tears — demonic monkeys. Probably the most frequent question Dario Argento has had to answer is the most obvious: why did he decide to finish the trilogy now, nearly three decades post- Inferno? "We have a time for everything," he told me, because of course that’s exactly what I asked him first off. "You wait until the idea comes."

There’s no doubt Mother of Tears sprang from Argento’s brain; his signature occult themes, glorious violence, and attention to style (instead of, say, plot) are all accounted for. He cowrote the film’s script with a pair of Americans he met while working on Showtime’s Masters of Horror series, Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch (Simona Simonetti and Mother of Tears editor Walter Fasano are also cocredited). The film, which opens theatrically in San Francisco in June, received mixed reviews on the festival circuit. Variety critic Dennis Harvey, who also writes for the Guardian, called it a "hectic pileup of supernatural nonsense." True enough, but I would argue that while Mother of Tears is flawed, it’s enjoyably flawed.

The story revolves around a museum worker named Sarah (Asia Argento) who must summon previously dormant spiritual powers (inherited from her late mother, played by Asia’s real-life mother and Dario’s former partner, Inferno star Daria Nicolodi) to defeat an evil witch’s plot to take over Rome and eventually the world. Eyes are gouged out. Cleavers make short work of necks. Underground pools of muck must be navigated. Udo Kier, playing an exorcist, very nearly reprises his Suspiria role as Exposition Guy. Characters, including witches, take the time to use public transportation. Silly? Yeah, a bit.

Waiting to make Mother of Tears enabled Argento to take advantage of CG, one of his favorite cinematic inventions. His 1996 film The Stendhal Syndrome (which also starred Asia) was reportedly the first Italian release that used CG. In Toronto, Argento told me the film has more than 180 visual effects — including a church on fire — which were created in conjunction with Lee Wilson, another Masters of Horror veteran.

The freedom Argento has enjoyed with CG (now, he says, "it’s possible to fly high!") is matched by another door that has opened since the releases of Suspiria and Inferno: the censorship that plagued his early career is less of an issue in these accustomed-to-gore times.

"I hate censors," Argento assured me in our second interview, conducted over the phone in late March. "For Mother of Tears, I talked to the producer, the distributor, the financier [and told them], ‘I want to be free. I want to show my natural reality after so many years.’ And I did that."

In Rome prepping for his next film, simply titled Giallo (sorry, fellow horror nerds, I couldn’t get him to spill any dirty details), Argento reflected on working with his daughter. Stateside, Asia Argento is known chiefly as an actor (she tangled with Vin Diesel in 2002’s XXX and pissed off corpses in 2005’s Land of the Dead). But she’s also directed a handful of films, including 2000’s Scarlet Diva (which Dario co-produced) and the 2004 J.T. LeRoy adaptation, The Heart Is Deceitful above All Things.

"She understands what it means to be in the project — not just thinking about her character, but the other parts of the film," Argento said. "Since she was a child, she’d follow me on the shooting of many of my films. She grew up on the sets of my films. She’s very comfortable in this world, this show business."

In Toronto, Asia Argento stepped in as translator for both my questions and her father’s answers. She said that when she heard about the Mother of Tears script, she asked to be a part of the film. As in previous Argento-Argento collaborations like The Stendhal Syndrome, the part called for some grueling physical scenes. Still, the pair seem to have an easy rapport, laughing over the aforementioned underground pool of muck ("That was really gross to do," Asia remembered. "He prepared that for three days, this horrible soup. I would watch him prepare that soup, but I wouldn’t say anything!") Later, over the phone, Dario described he and his daughter as "big friends."

Onscreen, Asia Argento has a certain magnetism that few other performers can claim. In Go Go Tales, she appears in only a few scenes, playing a surly dancer who drags her giant Rottweiler with her everywhere, including into her stripper dance routine. Abel Ferrara, who also directed her in 1998’s New Rose Hotel (she directed him in the 1998 short doc Abel/Asia), calls her a "very, very special actress."

"She’s courageous, she gets out there, and she’s not afraid to take chances with the character or with herself," he said, calling from New York, where he’s working on a documentary about the Chelsea Hotel. "When you write a script like [Go Go Tales] obviously you’re looking for the women to bring it to life. We knew we needed people who could really bring something to the table. She’s got that something — it’s indescribable."

Mother of Tears offers Argento a juicier part as a woman who may or may not be totally crazy. But it’s her role as the titular character in The Last Mistress that ranks among her best work to date. It’s a dramatic, passionate period film about an upper-class man’s insurmountable attraction to his moody, impulsive woman on the side (guess who?). Her character pinballs from ecstatic howls to anguished wails, glamorous salon-lolling to beachside pipe-smoking, and dinner table stare-downs to horseback smackdowns. Indeed, it’s a bit over the top, but she pulls it off. As a pair of striking careers can attest, it’s an ability that’s surely imprinted on the Argento genes.

GO GO TALES Sat/26, 11:45 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/28, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; April 30, 3:15 p.m., Kabuki

THE LAST MISTRESS Thurs/24, 7 p.m., Castro

MOTHER OF TEARS Fri/25, 10:30 p.m., Kabuki


>SFBG goes to SFIFF 51: our deluxe guide

Reveille in reverb

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The first thing fans will notice about Beach House’s second album, Devotion (Carpark), is that it hews to the same gauzy sonic architecture of their 2006 eponymous debut. An elegant combination of keyboard beats, organ drones, apparitional electric slide guitar, and Victoria Legrand’s molasses vocals gave Beach House a golden glow that sent music scribes running to their thesaurus for "autumnal" synonyms. These elements sound thicker on Devotion, though a few spins down the line it becomes apparent that the difference lies more in the compositions themselves than in any studio trickery.

This isn’t a small distinction, given our tendency to fetishize certain sounds. Phil Spector productions, Dusty Springfield laments, and Lee Hazelwood bonanzas all have brilliant surfaces, but they also have the depth of classical songwriting, complete with bridges, vamps, and theatrical flourishes. Legrand, the niece of French film composer Michel Legrand, grew up in a musical atmosphere. The two of us have a phone date, but work and a sick dog interfere, leaving her to e-mail me from her Baltimore home about her glam-rocking father ("My papa wore tight purple satin pants, with hair down to ‘there’<0x2009>") and her studies at Paris’s International Theatre School Jacques Lecoq ("I was trained classically, and I know Alex [Scally, her Beach House bandmate] also has an affinity towards the classical, old-fashioned world, so I think it’s a given we’d be into the Zombies and . . . watered-down show-tune buildups").

And so we get a folded gem like Devotion‘s "Heart of Chambers," in which Legrand breathily asks, "Would you be my longtime baby?" On "Holy Dances," a drowsy, shaker-spurred verse flowers into the sunburst of Scally’s arpeggios. The centerpiece chorus of "All the Years" echoes with the same kind of distant regret running through the best of old girl-group records. Still, the purest pleasure on Devotion might be its sole cover, a version of Daniel Johnston’s "Some Things Last a Long Time": Beach House distills the song to a plucked melody, lolling drum beat — it’s like listening to a "Be My Baby" single at 33 rpm — and Legrand’s barely there inflection. "We felt compelled by the fragile essence of the song and merely wanted to capture it, if only for a brief moment," she writes.

Across Devotion, Legrand’s phrasing emerges as a major shaping force. She knows how to pause — inserting the breath before the chorus in "Turtle Island" and a delicious lingering note over at the end of "You Came to Me." And her sometimes slumberous drawl gives the 1960s pop orchestrations a European edge — Nico comes to mind — and from that same era Legrand also seems to have picked up the special knowledge that spelling a word out, as with "D.A.R.L.I.N.G.," always makes it sexier.

"We don’t have full rock band power, but that can also be detrimental to songwriting," Legrand writes. "Being a duo enables us to start simply and build from there." It also allows the twosome to maintain a key measure of intimacy. Though their preproduced effects emulate yesteryear’s studio magic, listeners never lose sight of the modest means of this music. Devotion‘s cover image strikes a similar balance, signaling formality — Legrand and Scally sit at a candlelit table — while admitting a homegrown touch: the album’s title is spelled out in a cake’s icing, and Legrand’s casual bare foot peeks out at the bottom of the frame.

If Beach House established the group’s palette, Devotion sees the duo working more confidently with the brush. When I describe some of the new disc’s brightest passages as "Technicolor moments" to Legrand, she replies: "I personally heard Technicolor in ‘Turtle Island’ during the bridge because all of a sudden the voices burst out, and it feels literally like paint and light are bursting through . . . a soft burst like a bubble in slow motion." That beats "autumnal" any day.

BEACH HOUSE

With Anaura and Best Wishes

Sat/15, 10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

Wherefore art thou, Romero?

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On returning to his independent filmmaking roots: When we made [1968’s Night of the Living Dead] we were just a bunch of young people in Pittsburgh. We had a commercial production company, so we had our own equipment, and we audaciously decided that we should go out and make a movie. So the first one was real guerrilla filmmaking — but actually the first five or six films that I made were completely independent. After Dawn of the Dead [1978] we hooked up with a distributor-production company, and they financed us to some bigger budgets. But even those films were independent. There was a period when I was courted by Hollywood and made a couple of studio pictures and was getting very discouraged. Finally, the last zombie film that I made, Land of the Dead [2005], was for Universal. And they really let me alone — they let me make that movie. But it was a grueling process. And I realized, "Man, this is all getting too big. It’s approaching Thunderdome here." I felt this incredible disconnect with the roots, with where it all came from. I really wanted to throttle down and back up and see if I had the energy and the chops to go do another really low-budget film. I needed to revitalize myself.

On the trend of movies using the self-filming technique: I haven’t seen Cloverfield. Redacted, I guess, was similar. Vantage Point I haven’t seen. I thought that we would be the originators of it, but now I guess I have to say we’re part of a trend. I think there’s some kind of collective subconscious — all the world has a camera these days. I think it’s rather obvious for fiction writers, filmmakers, whatever, to take note of that and use it. It’s pretty scary, this blogosphere — man, you just wonder who’s out there throwing up all these ideas.

On finding truth in the media, be it mainstream or underground: To me that’s the argument that’s central to [Diary of the Dead]. When there were three networks, sure, [the news] was all being managed and controlled and spun, no doubt. Now it’s completely unmanaged. And it’s not even necessarily all information — it’s opinions, viewpoints. Anybody could get on there with any kind of an idea and find followers. That’s what spooks me. What would you rather have: it being controlled but not be insightful, or would you rather have this chaos? And I don’t have the answer to that. I almost blame the public more than anybody else for being suckered into it and not bothering to do their own homework. People would rather have somebody tell them the way it is, and go along with it.

On the living dead: The zombies, to me, don’t represent anything except the disaster. They could be a hurricane. They could be an approaching asteroid. My stories have always been about the people and how they respond or fail to respond or respond improperly — and keep trying to preserve the world as they knew it instead of readjusting to whatever these changes are on the planet. The zombies are just zombies. They’re the reason that I can get these movies made. They’re the fun part of it! But to me, they don’t represent anything in particular.

In a dark and lonely place

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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

Back with his second report from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, it’s Midnites for Maniacs programmer and Guardian contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks.

In Bruges – directed by Martin McDonagh (UK)
Colin Farrell is the most underrated, overhated actor of the the past few years. His range was genuinely stunning in Sundance’s opening night film. This purposefully offensive comedy follows two hired guns (Farrell and Brenden Gleeson) as they are sent to do an unknown job by their boss (Ralph Fiennes) in the yuppie little town of Bruges (in Belgium). Written and directed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, the film has a David Mamet sense of misanthropic morality that is quite rewarding for those with a similar anger towards the world. Farrell has the perfect delivery for this sensibility — watch In Bruges and his pitch-perfect performance in Woody Allen’s misunderstood masterpiece Cassandra’s Dream, and you too will become a believer.

Diary of the Dead – directed by George Romero (USA)
As the 67-year-old horror director spoke after his latest zombie movie-social satire, I truly felt a sense of joy exuding from the man. George Romero’s newest entry confronts our confused and destructive world once again, this time by following a crew of film students who, while making their student film, realize that zombies have taken over their town and that they suddenly need to make real choices for the first time in their lives. The film is filled with some of the most inventive zombie deaths this side of the UK and has a friendly sense of humor to go along with its deeply cynical view. While Diary of the Dead is not as powerful as Frank Darabont’s adaption of Stephen King’s The Mist, Romero has made an honorable attack on our society while having a whole lot of low-budget fun.

Clubz: Calling all galactic zombies

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Yeah, yeah, we’ve all been bombarded with Italo Disco the past couple years in the clubs… BUT — what about Italodisco tracks laid down by an actual Italian? And a cute gay fuzzy one at that?

This Tuesday night at the Transfer, fabulous Paduan superstar DJ Giacomo, one half of Italo Disco/cosmic funk/hi-NRG production whizzes Disco Dromo, guests at weekly raveup Chilidog, in association with Honey Soundsystem.

dromo1.jpg

You can listen to one of Disco Dromo’s awesome mixes here (Galactic Zombies — mp3).

I first ran into Giacomo while waiting for a bus in Williamsburg on a rainy Thanksgiving vacation night. Later, in the musty, moldy basement of the Cock, Hunky Beau stuck a finger up a hole in his pants. So you know he’s game for anything! (I mean that in the most respectful way possible, Giacomo!)

“Honeydog”
Chilidog + Honey Soundsystem presents:
Disco Dromo
Tuesday January 8
10pm-2am
The Transfer
198 Church (at Market)
415-861-7499
www.honeysoundsystem.com

Year in Film: Number nine — with a bullet

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There is something pretty silly, it seems to me, about knocking the concept of the top 10 list. Not in the way that it’s silly to knock year-end awards and nominations, which is kind of like taking the bold position that Joseph Stalin was a prick. No, top 10 lists, being the choices of individuals (sort of — I know I at least can be easily influenced), are not nearly worthless enough for that. What’s silly about knocking them is that doing so requires a denial of the fact that clearly, at some point in human evolution, we were hardwired to appreciate the level of informational tidiness that corresponds to the top 10 list, a smart little package that says unequivocally, "Here’s the deal right here. Now leave me alone." It may not be the best feature of our nature, but by God, it’s ours.

Also silly is the strange assumption that the author or the reader of the top 10 list attaches more importance to it than to the body of considered criticism the writer has composed during the other 364 days of the year. Oftentimes authors knock their lists in their introductions, probably to preempt any charges of presumptuousness or reductionism.

And yet I’m always disappointed when an anticipated top 10 shows up unburdened by commentary, the critic bowing out of delivering some cleverly wrought statement of the obvious. As much as I love the tidy little lists, it is this by-product, this fuzzy mold of qualification growing around the tradition, that, for me, is the real joy of the annual verdicts.

For an undertaking so often characterized by noncritics as arrogant and autocratic, criticism is awfully well saddled with caveats and contingencies, and there are certainly no shortage of self-directed smirks. I used to be terribly impressed by all of this mutinous talk about fuzziness, the perennial anti–top 10 two-step around the idea of inherent artistic worth. But although I’m certainly no less a fan of these pieces than I ever was, I find that these little rebellions tend to lose their sense of urgency as they continue to accumulate. The more of them there are, the more it seems like knocking top 10s is its own charmingly musty, imperfect tradition.

There are a variety of ways to knock the top 10. The safest and probably most respectable is to accessorize such a list with a self-effacing wink, as in this barely registered sigh from a Village Voice blog: "Most of us labor under the delusion that people actually care about what we think, that people will painstakingly scrutinize our top-ten lists and judge us accordingly." (My falsely modest sentiments exactly.) This low-stakes approach can lose respectability, though, with the addition of uninspired aggression, as in Anthony Kaufman’s kvetch from a 2005 top 10 that Indiewire.com apparently bullied him into writing: "As I have written before, I believe the process of creating a top 10 list is a fickle pursuit. And ranking films is even more slippery. But in our hierarchical America’s Next Top Model world …"

I hope I’m not sounding snide — I really am a fan. And I don’t want to imply that I think the list-making practice is (exclusively) onanistic. It is, after all, a key component of the system of checks and balances that tempers an artwork’s rise to historical indestructibility. But I will say it’s the element of solipsism in top tennery I’m attracted to, the peek into the part of the critic’s brain that isn’t worrying about the legacy of the films (I never trust all that crusading rhetoric) so much as just getting it right in his or her own head. All of this refining and complicating what it means to produce something so straightforward as a list feels to me like the critic at play. There’s almost a meditative quality to it.

In 2004, Louis Menand wrote an enjoyably snotty New Yorker article about the absurdity of year-end list making, a piece that is practically a list itself of the list maker’s crimes. It bats at the tradition like a toy mouse, playing the game by proudly working out the rules: "In a mass-market publication, a movie list should contain one foreign-language film that few readers have heard of…. Conversely, in an "alternative" or highbrow publication the movie list needs one blockbuster — one film the critic liked despite the fact that everyone else liked it."

This stuff is like the wrapping paper that ends up being way more interesting than the actual gift. I do get excited over the lists, and I do find them extremely helpful in a limited way, but after about 20, I hardly register them and instead head straight for the disclaimers.

Of course, Menand’s piece is hardly self-effacing. It’s closer to the carnivorous end of the spectrum, where the critic doesn’t worry too terribly about the value of listing itself and is primarily interested in pouncing on the bountiful stupidities the activity has incubated. The takedowns of other critics’ opinions are part cultural quality control, part self-serving bullying, and just good clean fun all around.

You can see all three shining through in one of this year’s early and distinguished offensives, carried out on the blog of one of my favorite film sites, Reverse Shot. (The main page can be pretty ornery, but something about the blog brings out the John Simon in the writers, causing them to rip into people with a wit that’s almost pathologically cruel. Their readers regularly tsk-tsk them in the comments section.)

The Reverse Shot attack was directed at Richard Corliss, who’d pretty much painted a target on his face by writing in Time that Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, number three on his list, is the finest film ever made by a black director. "That’s right," Reverse Shot crows, "the ‘finest film … by a black director’ (note: NOT ‘black American’) is the third best movie of the year behind No Country for Old Men and The Lives of Others. Sorry Spike Lee and Ousmane Sembene, you’ve made some good movies, but nothing quite as good as The Lives of Others." A quality blow, though I have to say the same syllogistic scrutiny would likely topple the logic structures of plenty of worthier top 10s than Corliss’s — you can almost see how the whole concept of the top 10 could be discredited with a simple mathematical proof.

In previous years Corliss has also had to put up with smart-ass crusader S.T. VanAirsdale, who’s made a name for himself over at the Reeler site — both for quality control and for bullying — with his annual "Top 10 Top 10s" list, in which he compiles the year’s most inane examples. It’s been a hoot of a bloodbath the past couple of years, and it should be again (no doubt Corliss will make the team in ’07 too — there was a lot to observe in his Time piece). This year’s list wasn’t posted by press time, but VanAirsdale has written that he’s already prepared to take on "the high tide of hype that washes out entire habitats of superb cinema built throughout the year — and start the clean-up." Hyperbolic and a touch messianic, yeah, but the man gives me something to look forward to when I’ve reached my list threshold, so he can go ahead and have himself a little complex as far as I’m concerned. It’s funny, though, that we have opposing metaphors for all of this list talk. He thinks of it as cleaning up, while I see it as reestablishing the mess.

A wise reader of top 10s already knows this mess is implied and doesn’t need all of the attendant eye rolling. But we don’t need Christmas, either.

JASON SHAMAI’S TOP 10

To avoid condemning syllogisms, the order of the following list is scrambled, and only I have the code. Even the alternates could have been number one. Also, I couldn’t think of a whole lot of movies this year that didn’t bug me at least part of the time, so here is a highly unsatisfying, subjective-like-you-know-your-momma-is (and yet still surprisingly safe) list of what would be the best films of 2007 if I were allowed to have a go at them with my Windows Movie Maker.

1. No Country for Old Men (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, US) Minus Javier Bardem’s weirdly praised performance of the same old "enigmatic," blaringly quiet psychopath, and the mariachi band, and the unhelpful car thing at the end.

2. Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, US) Minus the tonally jarring bits of the score.

3. 12:08 East of Bucharest (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania) Minus the reminder of its elusive transatlantic travel buddy, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, still unseen and waiting to be loved.

4. Away from Her (Sarah Polley, Canada) Minus the roles of Marian and the ultrainformative staffer, the lame "clusterfuck" joke, and Gordon Pinsent’s sweater.

5. Superbad (Greg Mottola, US) Minus the stuff that wasn’t as funny as the really funny stuff.

6. 28 Weeks Later (Joan Carlos Fresnadillo, UK/Spain) Minus Planet Terror‘s having already killed off zombies this year with a helicopter blade, diminishing with its curatorial kitsch a set piece that was shocking and beautiful.

7. Zodiac (David Fincher, US) Minus Chloë Sevigny’s reprisal of every 2-D role in Hollywood calling for a disapproving, killjoy wife.

8. I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, US) Minus the Heath Ledger–Charlotte Gainsbourg Blood on the Tracks strand (see Chloë Sevigny above), the performance of Marcus Carl Franklin, and the vague, uneasy feeling that the movie didn’t really need to be made.

9. Red Road (Andrea Arnold, Australia) Minus the closure.

10. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, US) Minus nothing.

Alternates

• The Simpsons Movie (David Silverman, US) Minus everyone’s requirement that it be as brilliant as the show once was.

• Once (John Carney, Ireland) Minus the shitty music.

• A Mighty Heart (Michael Winterbottom, US/UK) Minus the uncomfortable politics of making such a movie.

Year in Music: Too many Top 10s

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MOCHIPET’S TOP 10 NOT RELATED TO HIMSELF OR DALY CITY RECORDS


SOLO ARTIST, DALY CITY RECORDS


1. A-Trak, Dirty South Dance (Obey)

2. Dan Deacon, Spiderman of the Rings (Carpark)

3. High on Fire, Death Is This Communion (Relapse)

4. Chris De Luca vs. Phon.o, Shotgun Wedding Vol. 7 (Violent Turd)

5. Ludicra, "In Fever," Sonic Terror Surge 2007 (Alternative Tentacles)

6. Nanos Operetta

7. Larytta, Ya-Ya-Ya (Creaked)

8. GoldieLocks

9. Edaboss, "Go Left" (featuring Gift of Gab and Lateef) (Om)

10. edIT, Certified Air Raid Material (Alpha Pup)

BEN CHASNY’S TOP 10


SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, COMETS ON FIRE, BADGERLORE


1. Sapat, Mortise and Tenon (Siltbreeze)

2. Blues Control, Blues Control (Holy Mountain)

3. Axolotl, Telesma (Important)

4. Loren Connors, As Roses Bow: Collected Airs 1992–2002 (Family Vineyard)

5. Earth, Hibernaculum (Southern Lord)

6. Om, Pilgrimage (Southern Lord)

7. Daniel Higgs, Ancestral Songs (Holy Mountain)

8. Magik Markers, Boss (Ecstatic Peace)

9. Son of Earth, Pet (Apostasy)

10. Grinderman, Grinderman (Anti-)

BART DAVENPORT’S TOP 10


SOLO ARTIST, HONEYCUT


1. Sugar and Gold, Crème (Antenna Farm)

2. Nedelle, The Locksmith Cometh (Tangram 7s)

3. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights (Daptone)

4. Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight (Warner Bros.)

5. St. Vincent, Marry Me (Beggars Banquet)

6. Arthur and Yu, In Camera (Hardly Art)

7. The Fiery Furnaces at Fernwood Lodge, Big Sur, Oct. 20

8. Vashti Bunyan at Central Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas, during South by Southwest, March 15

9. Von Iva at the Uptown, Oakl., Nov. 9

10. Ghostland Observatory at Mezzanine, Nov. 29

RICHIE UNTERBERGER’S TOP REISSUES


WRITER


1. Pentangle, The Time Has Come: 1967–73 (Sanctuary/Castle)

2. Fairport Convention, Live at the BBC (Universal)

3. Various artists, Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965–1970 (Rhino)

4. Dusty Springfield, Live at the BBC DVD (Universal)

5. Various Artists, The American Folk-Blues Festival: The British Tours 1963–1966 DVD (Hip-O)

6. The Blossom Toes, We Are Ever So Clean (Sunbeam)

7. The Zombies, Into the Afterlife (Big Beat)

8. The Incredible String Band, Across the Airwaves: BBC Radio Recordings 1969–1974 (Hux)

9. Various artists, Stax/Volt Revue: Live in Norway 1967 DVD (Concord)

10.Various artists, The Birth of Surf (Ace)

JUMBO’S TOP 10


LIFESAVAS


1. Kanye West and Lifesavas at Quebec City Festival, July 5–15

2. Jill Scott, "Crown Royal," The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol. 3 (Hidden Beach)

3. Talk to Me with Don Cheadle

4. Little Brother, "Step It Up," Getback (ABB)

5. My Brother Marvin musical

6. Prince, Planet Earth (Sony)

7. Nas with Snoop Dogg at Mezzanine, after the Warriors eliminated Dallas, May 3

8. Rolling Stone picks Lifesavas for "Ten Artists to Watch in 2007"

9. Kanye West, "Stronger," Graduation (Roc-A-Fella)

10. Ledisi’s 2008 album

WEASEL WALTER’S TOP 10


FLYING LUTTENBACHERS, XBXRX, BURMESE


1. The Peter Evans Quartet, The Peter Evans Quartet (Firehouse 12)

Peter Evans is one of the few musicians I’ve ever seen that have made my jaw drop. Trust me on this one.

2. Marnie Stern, In Advance of the Broken Arm (Kill Rock Stars)

She came out of nowhere, playing some unholy mixture of girlie indie pop and Orthrelm, and kicked all of our asses.

3. Mayhem, Ordo ad Chao (Season of Mist)

The gods of Norwegian black metal get weirder and better.

4. The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky DVD box (Starz/Anchor Bay)

Essential metasurrealism from this filmic genius at an insanely low price.

5. Miles Davis, The Complete On the Corner Sessions (Sony Legacy)

Insanely lavish box from Davis’s notorious 1972–74 period, during which rhythm and skronk ruled.

6. The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 DVDs (Fantoma)

Pure eye candy for psychos.

7. The Flying Luttenbachers, Incarcerated by Abstraction (ugEXPLODE)

I would be lying if I didn’t tell you this was the best album released this year. It will destroy you with its dissonant structural complexity.

8. Hawkwind

I recently began overdosing on the early output of this mythic ur-metal space-rock juggernaut, particularly when Lemmy was with them.

9. StSanders’s Shred videos on YouTube

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard and long this year at anything else. Viva la suck!

10. Zs, Arms (Planaria)

This rigorously intense new music group from New York keeps delivering the rock with staggering precision.

Deth to false metal!

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HORNS UP Dethklok, "the most brutal band in the world" and stars of Adult Swim’s juggernaut of animated murder, Metalocalypse, are touring in support of their recently released Dethalbum (Williams Street), which peaked at number three on the Billboard hard rock album chart and reached number 21 on the Billboard 200, making it the best-selling death metal album of all time. The fact that a cartoon band bested Slayer’s Reign in Blood (Def Jam, 1986) might bum out old-time metalists, but facts have to be faced here: not even Slayer are more brutal than the almighty ‘Klok. Even when tackling stand-up comedy or band therapy, they’re unquestionably dark and unrelenting (and hilarious).

Metalocalypse creator Brendon Small started playing guitar by learning the riff to Black Sabbath’s "Iron Man" and went on to Boston’s prestigious Berklee School of Music. He later took comedy writing classes at Berklee’s sister school, Emerson College, which led to stand-up and ultimately the Adult Swim show Home Movies. When that show was canceled, Small got together with his friend Tommy Blacha — "the only guy in comedy who would go and see death metal shows with me," Small told me over the phone during a recent San Francisco visit — and they came up with the following pitch: "We’ve got a TV show. It’s going to be about a metal band, and there’s going to be tons of murder. And we’re not interested in having anyone understand anything anyone says."

Metalocalypse openly acknowledges the humor inherent in the more-doom-laden-than-thou world of metal while paying homage to music that Small clearly loves and respects. "I look at it this way," Small said. "You go to a Cannibal Corpse concert, and they look like five serial killers onstage. And their songs are about murder, about how you — how you — are going to die. You’re in a pit of zombies, you’re bent over backwards, and you’re going to be fucked with a knife. And I’m, like, ‘Oh, fuck yeah.’ That’s the same kind of appreciation I have for horror movies. In a serious way and in a very kind of fun, audience way, where you see in a movie a face splatters, and the audience goes, ‘Yeah!’ It’s that kind of dynamic. There’s still a lot of people who don’t really get metal and kind of make fun of it. It’s like when you go and see a Broadway performance of Rent or Wicked or something. It’s like laughing at the fact that they learned their lines and got in character. It’s the same exact thing — these guys nail their parts."

Despite being anchored in an alternate reality where the most popular entertainment act in the world — and the 12th-largest economy — is a death-metal band, Metalocalypse is "not even about a metal band," Small said. Rather, "it’s about celebrityism. We’re making fun of celebrities and our country’s fascination with them." Small and Blacha use this allure to highlight the brutality of the everyday bummer. "It’s not ‘fucked with a knife’ or anything, but there’s shit that really fucks up your life all the time, and that’s fuckin’ brutal. Like, I don’t know…." He paused for a second or two before coming up with things that are truly inhumane: "Humidity. Going to the dentist. Going to the DMV. People not making up their mind in front of you at Starbucks. It’s fucking brutal. That’s all a metal song. Every one of those are lyrics."

DETHKLOK

With … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead

Nov. 2, 5–7 p.m., free

Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley, near Bancroft at Telegraph, Berk.

events.berkeley.edu

For the complete interview with Brendon Small, go to www.sfbg.com/blogs/noise.

Not dead yet

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zombies4.jpg
Guardian photo by Charles Russo
Chicken John Rinaldi’s quest to become the first San Francisco mayoral candidate to qualify for a grant of taxpayer money is still lumbering along like the zombies that attacked him last week, more than a month after the Aug. 28 deadline for raising $25,000 from at least 250 city residents. The Ethics Commission last night voted unanimously to allow Rinaldi one more submission of proof that those who gave to him through PayPal are city residents, overruling Ethics director John St. Croix that Rinaldi doesn’t qualify. At issue are whether to count contributions from city residents whose current addresses doesn’t match their drivers license addresses, a fairly common circumstance for the artists and techies who make up Rinaldi’s base. If the campaign can satisfy Ethics, it gets $50,000, and so its quest inches forward like the undead.

When zombies attack politicians

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Last night’s mayoral debate wasn’t terribly exciting, at least until the zombies attacked attendees as they left. A photo essay by Charles Russo:
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Progressive favorite Quentin Mecke with Mayor Gavin Newsom
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The first and only gathering of Newsom and his challengers.
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Chicken John Rinaldi cracking up the mayor.
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And outside, the zombies waited for brains.
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Zombies attack and feast on Chicken
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Zombie Chicken joins the mob.

Swede ‘n’ hoedown

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Bad gay hair is back! From Chris Crocker’s "Leave Britney Alone!" bilevel blond bob apocalypse to Perez Hilton’s ever-changing lamebow of neon locks (bitch looks as though the Planet Unicorn creatures from YouTube exploded on her giant head), the homo hair horrors of the past are rising like silk-shirted, Daisy Duked zombies, tearing through a screen near you. Pull up a Rent-a-Center white vinyl sectional and dig into a plate of fried wig. These are the Famous Gays of Our Moment. This is our culture. So fuck your stinkin’ herbal Fructis — plaster me with Queen Helene, suck me into Manic Panic, pump me up like L’Oreal. I wanna be fa-mousse.

Speaking of Planet Unicorn: I went to Oakland. This column’s become San Francisco–centric (not to mention gayer than a third grade playground), and I almost feel guilty. There’s a Bay full of hot boys out there! So, over Labor Day weekend, me and Hunky Beau saddled up the ol’ BART — which, in a windfall for stoned revelers, was running 24 hours a day — and high-tailed it to Bench and Bar, Oakland’s premier queer downtown dance palace for lusty Latinos.

There we found a proud brown Urban Cowboy wonderland. Saturdays play host to La Bota Loca, an overflowing evening for lithesome vaqueros in white Stetsons and kicky Tony Lamas hopping to regional Mexican hits and line-dancing to the Spanish version of "Achy Breaky Heart" ("Mi Pobre Corazón"). I recently bemoaned the lack of queer club nights where I could polka my pixie boots off to norteño and banda music. This is where I finally got a joyous earful of Sinaloense, Duranguense, and "Hey, what’d he say?" I’ve got to learn española.

The 3 a.m. BART ride home was a party. Hazy hyphy kids, tattooed punk nymphs, cowboy-hatted queens, and various future rehabbers piled on to cause unique havoc on the SF streets. Unfortunately, the car with the portable DJ setup was packed — we’d have to squeeze in next to the drunken Cal rugby team, stripping off their shirts and challenging one another to wrestling matches. Hurriedly we acquiesced.

MUCHO MACHO MALMÖ Much like the "Gabbo is coming!" ads on The Simpsons, a mysterious, gaudy poster has been plastered about the city, causing much flurry and flutter. On it, a slick-mulleted playboy with an Angelina-forearm-thin mustache is flanked by two busty blonds in spandex strips. Giant text screams "Günther — LIVE!!!" Who? What? Why?

"Is this some kind of joke?" Hunky Beau asked aloud when he first saw it. But really, isn’t that the cry of a dance floor generation?

In the tradition of, er, Fischer Spooner and Junior Senior, Günther traffics in the kind of poker-faced genius ambiguity that kicks your ass on the dance floor while shoving your tongue far enough into your cheek to block your bowels. (Although maybe that’s the coke.) Günther’s first huge release, "The Ding Dong Song," rides an infectious beat so stereotypically generic techno that it comes out the other side of awful, emerging into brilliance. It’s about his dick. He calls his dick his "tra la la." His press release describes it as a "gangling manhood." I e-mailed him immediately.

"My massage is love," he wrote back from Malmö, Sweden, where he resides. "I start my day off surrounded by Sunshine Girls" — his writhing lesbotronic backup vocalists — "have a champagne breakfast, and spread my massage of champagne, love, sex, glamour, and respect! I have always lived my own glamorous, sexy life of fun!!!" Who could argue? Other bouncy songs — and videos — of head-scratching wonder include "Teeny Weeny String Bikini," "Tutti Frutti Summerlove," and, yes, "Christmas Song." Sweeede …

SEWN UP Fashion Week is more over than irony, but you still need a look. Hit up Thread, an underground fashion blast featuring a plethora of killer local togs, no-host bar grog, and something about lots of great DJs that ends in og. Best part: discounts! OK!*

LA BOTA LOCA

Saturdays, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $20

Bench and Bar

2111 Franklin, Oakl.

www.bench-and-bar.com

GÜNTHER AND THE SUNSHINE GIRLS

Sat/22, 10 p.m., $30

Sound Factory

525 Harrison, SF

www.gunthernet.com

THREAD

Sat/22, noon–6 p.m., $10

Festival Pavilion

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

www.threadshow.com

Witch, please

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

If you can end your Toronto International Film Festival experience with a movie that climaxes in a 10-minute fistfight (roofs collapse, cinder blocks are smashed, tables become splinters, ankle bones snap like twigs, and vengeance is won … but at what price?), that qualifies as a joyous note in my book. And fortunately, it’s my book we’re talking about — specifically, my TIFF screening list, which by the end of my festival stint was completely mangled by incoherent scribblings and intricate schemes involving cinematic scheduling and basic human needs (chief among them sleep, which was often totally disregarded).

There’s a fine art to festivalgoing. I’m not sure I’ve mastered it yet. But I managed to see 26 (and a half) movies, probably missing some that I should have seen and certainly digesting a few disappointments. Another critic could spend a week in Toronto and see none of the films that I saw; my tastes run toward horror, documentaries, Hollywood and accessible indie stuff by directors I admire, and Hong Kong cinema (like the ankle buster mentioned above, the Donnie Yen–<\d>starring Flash Point). Plus, you gotta work in at least a few totally random selections — otherwise, what’s the point of being surrounded by cinema 24-7?

The big bananas in the horror bunch were Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears, the long-awaited conclusion to his witch-happy Three Mothers trilogy, and George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, hyped as the legendary zombie king’s return to no-frills filmmaking. I also followed my thrill-sniffing snout to Spanish newcomer Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage and the French Frontier(s), directed by Xavier Gens (whose Hollywood debut, video game–<\d>based Hitman, is currently trailered on Death Sentence). I’m a huge fan of Argento’s gialli and flashy, trashy, blood-soaked horror epics — and while I’m aware of the argument that he hasn’t made a great film since 1985’s Phenomena, Mother of Tears offers vintage pleasures galore. You want a coherent story and subtle acting? Look elsewhere (perhaps to the ghostly, Guillermo del Toro–<\d>produced fable The Orphanage). Argento’s tale starts with a cursed urn and snowballs into mad hysteria, grabbing a gold-toothed witch, Argento ex (and Mother star Asia Argento’s real-life mother) Daria Nicolodi, a creepy monkey, and exorcist Udo Kier en route to a church-burningly ridiculous conclusion. In other words, I loved it.

I wasn’t as sold on Frontier(s), a well-made but derivative Texas Chainsaw Massacre descendent that squanders its interesting Paris riots context. And it’s my sad duty to report that Diary of the Dead is hardly essential Romero. Glowing reviews published elsewhere baffle me. Diary works an of-the-moment theme of kids subverting the mainstream media via user-controlled Internet sites — post–<\d>undead apocalypse, the only source of truth for the masses. But it becomes caught up in Making a Statement, and its narrative device — camera-wielding film student obsessively documents the undead uprising — is completely irritating. Sorry, but I’ll take the flawed-but-fun Land of the Dead any day.

Enfolded into my documentary diet were several music-themed entries, including Heavy Metal in Baghdad and Joy Division, and the doclike narratives Control and I’m Not There. We all know things are bad in Iraq, but Heavy Metal puts them on a regular-dude level that CNN reports don’t often facilitate. Metal outfit Acrassicauda love Slayer and Metallica, and they (and their fans) just wanna rock. At the start of the film (exec-produced by Spike Jonze and codirected by Suroosh Alvi, the cofounder of Vice magazine, and Eddy Moretti), the musicians claim they aren’t a political band. Attitudes change, thanks to Scud missiles (which destroy their practice space and all of their instruments), pressure from a culture that frowns on long hair and headbanging, and a post–<\d>Saddam Hussein environment of extreme danger (machine-gun fire is just part of the street noise). Less contemporary but no less absorbing is Joy Division, Grant Gee’s reverent and artful look at Manchester’s pioneering post-punkers. Lead singer Ian Curtis is the focus of Control, a black-and-white wonder by music-video vet Anton Corbijn that focuses mostly on the troubled Curtis’s rocky personal life. Meanwhile, Todd Haynes creatively interprets the music biopic — as he’s done before with Superstar and Velvet Goldmine — with I’m Not There, a freewheeling (yet carefully calibrated) look at Bob Dylan. An array of famous folks — the stunning Cate Blanchett among them — portrays an array of Dylanesque characters. Though I could feel the movie being deliberately arty at times, it worked for me. And I’m not even a huge Dylan fan.

I’m running out of space, and I haven’t even gotten to three of my favorite TIFF films, so I’ll just lump ’em in here. Son of Rambow got mad props at Sundance, and with good reason; you’d have to be completely heartless to not love this tale of two British boys who bond over the one thing they have in common: First Blood. You know you’re gonna see No Country for Old Men anyway, because seeing the new Coen brothers movie — well, that’s a no-brainer. Lucky for you, it’s their best film in years. If Oscar don’t bite, there’s no hope for Oscar. I know the gold guy will totally ignore Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, and that’s OK. I doubt the multiplex crowd will go for its sweetly bizarre tale of celebrity impersonators (Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe specifically, but other faux familiar faces, including Abe Lincoln and Buckwheat, make appearances) — and that’s not even mentioning Werner Herzog or the skydiving nuns. Amid all the witches, zombies, and actual movie stars, it was my favorite TIFF film.*

Braaaaaaaaiiiiinnssss!

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i just got out of a screening of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead. I need to let it sink in before I make some big statement about it.

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Tag line is a double entendre…ya think?

But I do have a question, rhetorical or otherwise: has anyone else ever noticed there are two kinds of zombie films? There’s the serious, socio-politial statement-making kind (see: everything else Romero’s done, pretty much) and then there’s the fun-loving, zombies-are-really-pretty-silly type (see: Return of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead). To be fair, there’s also the zombies-are-gory-as-fuck subgenre (see: Italian-made, circa 1970s-80s. I recommend Nightmare City and Demons for a trash-tastic double feature). Anyway, my point is, I realized tonight that I actually prefer zom-coms to zom-agit-prop. (Yeah, I did like 28 Days Later. It’s not a hard and fast rule.) And Romero obviously knows he’s Making A Statement, because there’s a joke to that effect early in Diary. But what exactly is that statement, and why is he still using zombies to make it? Old-school zombies, while cool as fuck, are pretty undynamic when you think about it. Am I going to go to hell if I say I liked the Dawn of the Dead remake more than Diary of the Dead?

Fall Arts: I screen, you screen

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› johnny@sfbg.com

"Switching Schools Sucks" Jesse Hawthorne Ficks serves up a triple dose of teen alienation: Pump Up the Volume, Footloose, and the Andrew Stevens–starring, Heathers-influenced Massacre at Central High.

Aug. 31. Castro Theatre (info below)

"Rebels with a Cause: The Cinema of East Germany" Perhaps the most expansive retrospective of East German film in the United States, spanning from the early 1960s to 1990.

Sept. 1–Oct. 27. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., SF. (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

"Look Back at England: The British New Wave" Does kitchen-sink cinema deserve classic status? It would be great to witness Manny Farber (who wrote scathingly about Rita Tushingham and Tony Richardson) duke it out with Morrissey on the subject.

Sept. 2–Oct. 26. Pacific Film Archive (info below)

"Devotional Cinema: Films by Dorsky and Ozu" Nathaniel Dorsky shows two of his films and also talks about Late Spring, one of the Yasujiro Ozu films discussed in his insightful book that shares this program’s title.

Sept. 4. Pacific Film Archive

"Send Granny Back to Russia" The 1929 film My Grandmother is screened with Beth Custer’s score to raise funds for an upcoming trip on which Custer’s ensemble will perform the score in Russia and elsewhere.

Sept. 4. Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut, Berk. Also Sept. 5. Dolby Laboratories, 100 Potrero, SF. www.bethcuster.com

William Friedkin Series Someone I know who knows all the great actresses calls Ashley Judd’s performance in Bug a "tour de force." That film and others set the stage for more Friedkin freak-outs.

Sept. 4–6. Castro Theatre

"Helmut Käutner: Film Retrospective Part 2" The series continues with the post–World War II period of Käutner’s career, including a 1947 feature shot in Germany’s ruins and a 1954 film featuring a young Klaus Kinski (yes, he was young once).

Sept. 4–Oct. 9. Goethe-Institut, 530 Bush, SF. (415) 263-8760, www.goethe-sf.org

"Fearless Females: Three Films by Shyam Benegal" The director appears at screenings that highlight the feminist currents of his contributions to the Indian new wave of the ’70s.

Sept. 5–7. Pacific Film Archive

Morrissey Foretelling the Death of Diana Lars Laumann’s 16-minute video screens in a loop as part of the "There Is Always a Machine Between Us" exhibition.

Sept. 6–22. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020, www.sfcamerawork.org

The Darwin Awards A new comedy by Finn Taylor focuses on death by stupidity.

Sept. 7. Roxie Film Center (info below)

"TILT" The Film Arts Foundation presents an evening of films from its media-education program, which works with schools.

Sept. 7. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (info below)

Cruising The digital restoration of William Friedkin’s most controversial film finally hits the Castro Theatre, years after being revived from infamy at the Roxie Film Center.

Sept. 7–13. Castro Theatre

Imp of Satan Local queer horror midnight movie screens along with a live comedy drag show.

Sept. 8. Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.synchromiumfims.com

"Tomu Uchida: Japanese Genre Master" An extensive series devoted to the undersung Japanese director, whose movies spanned five decades and even more genres, including comedies, samurai films, theatrical adaptations, and police flicks.

Sept. 8–29. Pacific Film Archive

9/11 Truth Film Festival Two days of films and discussions.

Sept. 10–11. Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand, Oakl. (510) 452-3556, www.renaissancerialto.com

Madcat Women’s International Film Festival Turning 11 this year, Ariella Ben-Dov’s festival includes a tribute to the life and work of Helen Hill and culls 98 films — 76 of them premieres — into 11 programs.

Sept. 11–26. Various venues, SF. (415) 436-9523, www.madcatfilmfestival.org

Super Sleazy ’70s Go-go Grindhouse Show Will "the Thrill" Viharo brings together Pam Grier in Black Mama, White Mama and live dancing by the Twilight Vixen Revue.

Sept. 13. Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net

Honor of the Knights Along with recent works by José Luis Guerín, this idiosyncratic take on Don Quixote by Albert Serra is being heralded as a new highlight of Spanish cinema.

Sept. 13–16. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Role Reversal" Midnites for Maniacs strikes again, with The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Yentl, and a film that can never be screened enough, The Legend of Billie Jean.

Sept. 14. Castro Theatre

The Warriors Walter Hill’s gang classic comes out to play.

Sept. 14–15. Red Vic Movie House, 1727 Haight, SF. (415) 668-3994, www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Film Night in the Park: Rebel Without a Cause Sal Mineo makes eyes at James Dean, and Natalie Wood weeps about her dad rubbing off her lips.

Sept. 15. Union Square, SF. (415) 453-4333, www.filmnight.org

Xperimental Eros PornOrchestra accompanies stag movies in a celebration for OCD’s latest DVD release.

Sept. 15. Other Cinema (info below)

Eros and Massacre Film on Film Foundation presents Yoshishige Yoshida’s 1970 film about anarchist Sakae Osugi.

Sept. 16. Pacific Film Archive

"It’s a Funny, Mad, Sad World: The Movies of George Kuchar" The man appears in person for a screening of five Kuchar classics spanning 15 years, selected by Edith Kramer.

Sept. 18. Pacific Film Archive

Orphans of Delirium What is paratheatre? Antero Alli and a 2004 video provide the answer.

Sept. 18. Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-3890, www.atasite.org

Midnites for Maniacs in 70mm All hail Jesse Hawthorne Ficks for bringing Tobe Hooper’s bodacious nude space vampire classic Lifeforce — one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s favorite movies — back to the big screen. Even Planet of Blood‘s Florence Marly may have nothing on Mathilda May.

Sept. 21. Castro Theatre

Strange Culture The story of Steve Kurtz is discussed and reenacted in San Francisco filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson’s latest feature.

Sept. 21. Roxie Film Center

"Girls Will Be Boys" This series, curated by Kathy Geritz, includes Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich trouser classics, as well as Katherine Hepburn under the eye of Dorothy Arzner in Sylvia Scarlett.

Sept. 21–30. Pacific Film Archive

Amando a Maradona Soccer icon Diego Maradona gets the feature treatment.

Sept. 26. La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk. (510)849-2568. www.utf8ofilmfestival.org

In Search of Mozart Phil Grabsky’s digiportrait of the composer works to counter the distortions of Amadeus and the elitism that sometimes hovers around Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s legacy.

Sept. 28–30. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Legendary Composer: Jerry Goldsmith" The salt and pepper to John Williams’s Hollywood sucrose gets a cinematic tribute, with screenings of classics such as Seconds, Poltergeist, and the film with perhaps his best scoring work, Chinatown.

Sept. 28–Oct. 4. Castro Theatre

DocFest It turns five this year, offering more than 20 films and videos, including the Nick Drake profile A Skin Too Few.

Sept. 28–Oct. 10. Roxie Film Center

Film Night in the Fog The increasingly popular Creature from the Black Lagoon makes an appearance, this time at the Presidio.

Sept. 29. Main Post Theatre, 99 Moraga, SF. (415) 561-5500, www.sffs.org

"Red State Cinema" Joel Shepard curates a series devoted to rural visionaries, including Phil Chambliss and his folk-art videos set at a gravel pit and Spencer Williams and his 1941 Southern Baptist feature The Blood of Jesus.

October. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Olivier Assayas in Residence: Cahiers du Cinema Week" The Pacific Film Archive has screened early Assayas movies that didn’t get distribution, such as the Virginie Ledoyen showcase Cold Water. Now the director visits to show Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore (think of Assayas’s Irma Vep, also screening) and David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (think of his Demonlover), along with Assayas’s latest movie, Boarding Gate.

Oct. 4–11, Pacific Film Archive

Mill Valley Film Festival The biggest Bay Area film fest of the fall turns 30 this year, presenting more than 200 movies from more than 50 countries.

Oct. 4–14. Various venues. (415) 383-5256, www.mvff.org

Helvetica The typeface gets its very own movie.

Oct. 5–7. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Shock It to Me: Classic Horror Film Festival" Joe Dante will appear at this fest, which promises a dozen pre-Halloween shockers.

Oct. 5–7, Castro Theatre

"Zombie-rama" Thrillville unleashes Creature with the Atom Brain and Zombies of Mora Tau.

Oct. 11. Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. (510) 814-2400. www.thrillville.net

"Joseph Cornell: Films" Without a doubt, this multiprogram series — in conjunction with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Cornell exhibition — is one of the most important Bay Area film events of the year.

Oct. 12–Dec. 14. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Wattis Theater, 151 Third St, SF. (415) 357-4000. www.sfmoma.org

"Expanded Cinema" Craig Baldwin, Kerry Laitala, Katherin McInnis, Stephen Parr, and Melinda Stone blast retinas with double-projector performance pieces.

Oct. 13. Other Cinema

"Celebrating Canyon: New Films" Under the SF Cimematheque rubric, Canyon Cinema’s Michelle Silva and Dominic Angerame put together a program of recent additions to the Canyon catalogue.

Oct. 14. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

"Films by Bruce Conner" The long-awaited new Soul Stirrers short His Eye Is on the Sparrow kicks off an hour of Conner magic.

Oct. 16. Pacific Film Archive

Arab Film Festival The festival’s 11th year will bring 11 days and nights of movies, including a Tunisian doc about the making of Tarzan of the Arabs.

Oct. 18–28. Various venues, SF. (415) 564-1100, www.aff.org

"I Am Not a War Photographer" Brooklyn-based Lynn Sachs presents a night of short movies and spoken word.

Oct. 20. Other Cinema

"Experiments in High Definition" Voom HD works, including one by Jennifer Reeves, get an SF Cinematheque program.

Oct. 21. SF Art Institute, 800 Chestnut, SF. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org

"Walls of Sound: Projector Performances by Bruce McClure" Brooklyn artist McClure explores projection as performance in this kickoff event in SF Cinematheque’s "Live Cinema" series.

Oct. 24–25. Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon, SF. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org

Smalltown Boys Arthur Russell documentarian Matt Wolf’s semifictive historical look at David Wojnarowicz loops as part of the "There Is Always a Machine Between Us" series.

Oct. 30–Nov. 17. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020, www.sfcamerawork.org

The Last Man on Earth Vincent Price fights zombies in this oft-pillaged 1964 US-Italian horror classic, soon to be re-created with Will Smith.

Oct. 31. Pacific Film Archive

"Día de los Muertos: Honorar las Almas de Cineastas de Avant-Garde Vanguarda" Canyon Cinema and SF Cinematheque founder Bruce Baillie shares some favorites from the Canyon vaults.

Nov. 1. Roxie Film Center. Also Nov. 2. Ninth Street Independent Film Center, 145 Ninth St., SF. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org

International Latino Film Festival One of three fests to turn 11 this fall.

Nov. 2–18. Various venues, SF. (415) 513-5308, www.utf8ofilmfestival.org.

"Science Is Fiction" Nope, not Jean Painléve — the histories of the Tesla coil, the blimp, and other phenomena hit the screen, thanks to cinematographer Lance Acord and others.

Nov. 3. Other Cinema

Shatfest Get your mind out of the toilet — it’s another Thrillville tribute to William Shatner, including a screening of Incubus.

Nov. 8. Parkway Speakeasy Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. (510) 814-2400, www.thrillville.net

Strain Andromeda The and Cinepolis, the Film Capitol Anne McGuire’s reedit of The Andromeda Strain isn’t exactly backward, but — thanks to Ed Halter’s "Crazy Rays: Science Fiction and the Avant-Garde" series for SF Cinematheque — it is back. The series continues to beam as Ximena Cuevas’s metamontage attack on Hollywood shares a bill with Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99.

Nov. 8. Roxie Film Center

San Francisco International Animation Showcase A big premiere, some music vids, and a link to the famed Annecy animation fest are possibilities as the SF Film Society event turns two.

Nov. 8–11. Embarcadero Center Cinema, One Embarcadero Center (promenade), SF. (415) 561-5500. www.sffs.org

"Celebrating Canyon: Pioneers of Bay Area Filmmaking" Bruce Baillie unpacks some Bay Area experimental cinema treasures from the ’40s and ’50s.

Nov. 11. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

My Favorite Things At last! Negativland premiere their first CD-DVD release.

Dec. 1. Other Cinema

"James Fotopoulos/Leah Gilliam" and "Victor Faccinto/James June Schneider" Fotopoulos has had some Bay Area attention before, but Gilliam’s Apeshit — a look at racial politics in Planet of the Apes — might be the highlight in this last evening of Ed Halter’s "Crazy Rays" series.

Dec. 13. Roxie Film Center *

CASTRO THEATRE

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

OTHER CINEMA

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890

www.othercinema.com

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

2575 Bancroft Way, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

ROXIE FILM CENTER

3317 16th St., SF

(415) 863-1087

www.roxie.com

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS

701 Mission, screening room, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

Party with me, Oh My God

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The Toxic Avenger pawing ferociously at his slime-dipped guitar while an army of redneck zombies feasts on a moshing drove of punk rockers — now that’s a cool visual. Maybe Giuseppe Andrews — Cabin Fever star and an independent filmmaker who’s had a number of his movies distributed through Troma Entertainment — can keep Toxie and his flesh-eating pals in mind for his next music video for Chicago prog poppers Oh My God. With one director’s credit for the quartet already under his belt, Andrews recently added a second by helming the video for the title track off the band’s fifth full-length, Fools Want Noise (Split Red). Andrews’s vision for the song might not be a gore-packed freakfest typical of the Troma catalog, but there’s no denying the oddball humor and sicko charm exhibited within his art. As the video opens, a grizzly, bronze-tanned old-timer dressed in a thong shimmies in place to vocalist Billy O’Neill’s rabid whine and snapping fingers. "Two eyes swimming in a sea of fat / A liver drowning in a vodka vat / You want more of that / Do you want more of that? / Well the TV is on and the radio is on cuz nobody can make a choice / Fools want noise," O’Neill proclaims between random shots of a lip-synching cheeseburger puppet and trailer trash conga-dancing around a swimming pool. Just as the song erupts, Andrews — clad in a bathrobe and flaunting a set of horse-size wax choppers — pops up onscreen and slams his body around a living room.

From his Chicago apartment, OMG synthesizer player Ig said he was a bit puzzled by the video’s kooky imagery on initial viewing but has since warmed up to it. Andrews’s actors, he explained, are "the mostly elderly people who live in his Ventura trailer park, where he lives along with his dad. He chooses to live in this trailer park and to use his fellow residents as actors — many of whom are ex–drug addicts, Vietnam vets, etcetera.

"Basically, he makes John Waters’s films look like Disney movies."

But enough about Andrews. Playing a mash of disco, glam, and hard rock, OMG has garnered plenty of fans of its own through its flamboyant live shows and relentless tour schedule since forming in 1999. Uniting bustling organ, bassy grooves, and Bish’s propulsive drumbeats with a heap of distortion, the group sounds like the musical spawn of Robert Fripp and Gary Richrath, that guy from REO Speedwagon. Somehow work in a jealous Bob Mould, and the result is Fools Want Noise, a guitar-laden punk onslaught ripe with devil-horned salutes and tempos jacked up by adrenalin.

The album also finds the combo joined by friend and Darediablo guitarist Jake Garcia. Though all of OMG’s previous endeavors were accomplished without the use of guitar, Ig said, the three didn’t have a "prior plan to get punky or guitary. We just jumped at the chance to record with Jake." Then again, the added guitar really shouldn’t be a shock to fans — it just adds to OMG’s ever-teetering dynamic.

"I have an organ sound that’s very distinctive, and no matter how pliable Billy’s voice is, he’s still such a Billy," Ig said. "Bish too has a drum sound style I could pick out of a lineup.

"And somehow, once Billy’s background, mine, and Bish’s get poured into a beaker, the result consistently is the unique chemical called Oh My God." *

OH MY GOD

With the Faceless Werewolves

Thurs/12, 9:30 p.m., $5

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0925

www.hemlocktavern.com

Nuggets of Water

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COLIN BLUNSTONE

One Year

A genuine lost classic from 1971 — full of feathery, jazz-inflected vocals and sublime melodies — from the dejected Zombies vocalist after he had resigned himself to life behind a desk at an insurance office. "She Loves the Way They Love Her" picks up precisely where Blunstone’s disassembled ensemble left off, with weaving boogie-woogie and an angelic chorus that dips its wings in soul’s waters. Utterly gorgeous string arrangements by Chris Gunning and occasionally Tony Visconti, plenty of production help from ex-bandmates Rod Argent and Chris White, and Blunstone’s limpid songwriting make One Year necessary listening for pop romantics. And the chamber elegy "Misty Roses," the up-on-the-downbeat "Caroline Goodbye," and the impressionistic "Smokey Day" — driven skyward by intertwined vocals from the three ex-Zombies — are bound to besot those who swoon over Odessey and Oracle, Nick Drake, and other assorted instances of beauty and sadness. (Kimberly Chun)

ANNE BRIGGS

The Time Has Come

Mythologized among British folk vocalists like Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, depicted as something of an enfant sauvage of the ’60s folk scene in Joe Boyd’s memoir White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s, and valorized by indies like PG Six and Isobel Campbell, Anne Briggs put down so little recorded music that it’s hardly any wonder she’s nearly disappeared into the dirt and mists of remote Scotland, where she’s said to be currently sequestered. But this, her last, exquisite album (1971), embellished with little more than and acoustic guitar and the occasional bouzouki, shows what the fuss was about, as Briggs wraps her pure, unpretentious pipes round the original title track — also recorded by her partner in music and lifestyle, Bert Jansch, as well as Alan Price and Pentangle — and "Wishing Well," her dark take, cowritten with Jansch, on the seduced and abandoned leitmotif of "Blackwater Side." Traditional English folk songs rarely get as mesmerizing as her ghostly version of "Standing on the Shore." (Chun)

ELAINE BROWN

Seize the Time

Polemical music has the potential to either go down in the songbooks and history tomes as an artifact linked forever with a critical place and time or fail miserably, stumbling over its grandiose ambitions (e.g., the many anti–George W. Bush CDs of recent vintage filed in ye olde circular file). The music on the powerful Seize the Time hasn’t yet taken its place next to "This Land Is Your Land," but it does offer an invaluable snapshot from the front lines of the black power movement. Elaine Brown’s robust delivery of odes penned for fallen Black Panther brethren, the party’s national anthem, and entreaties to continue the struggle finds handsome, tempered accompaniment at the hands of jazz pianist Horace Tapscott. A moving, amazingly graceful document. (Chun)

GIOVANNI FUSCO

Music for Michelangelo Antonioni

Nino Rota’s ornate Federico Fellini tunes have gotten the deluxe reissue treatment, Goblin’s spook sounds have been revived as often as Suspiria‘s Elaina Marcos, and Ennio Morricone sections in record stores are rightfully enormous. Even Pino Donaggio’s scores have had worthy second lives. But until now Giovanni Fusco’s subtler work for a director who avoided music whenever possible, Michelangelo Antonioni, has been easiest to find on DVD. Dominated by the flute flights from 1959’s L’Avventura, this collection closes with Fusco’s casino rockabilly and protoambient contributions to 1964’s Red Desert. A pioneering work in terms of its blurring of diegetic and nondiegetic sound, that film is also the great prototype for Todd Haynes’s Safe, in which malaise-ridden Antonioni muse Monica Vitti utters the great line "My hair hurts." (Johnny Ray Huston)

GILBERTO GIL

Gilberto Gil

A letter of exile from London in the wake of months of unjust imprisonment imposed by the Brazilian government, this English-language recording possesses a warmth and sensitivity one wouldn’t expect from someone who’d been through Gil’s trials. But Gil rarely made a show of his anger, usually expressing it through pointed spoken or written words or musical metaphor. A sublime example here of the last is the cover of Blind Faith’s "Can’t Find My Way Home," on which the Tropicalista leader’s voice is pure, refreshing, and vibrant while singing words of solitude and alienation. Elsewhere, his pop folk makes time for Volkswagen blues, shampoo chats, mushroom trips, and existential thoughts about Kodak moments. (Huston)

FRED NEIL

Fred Neil

A lightly sparkling hoot, "Everybody’s Talkin’ " — made famous by Harry Nilsson when Fred Neil refused to rerecord it for Midnight Cowboy — may be the biggest commercial hit on this album, but the first track, "The Dolphins," is the real, pulsating heart of this wonderful disc. The narcotic serenade to those lucky enough to escape into the wild yonder was memorably nicked for the last season of The Sopranos and encapsulates this Piscean songwriter’s lifelong identification with the sea creatures. The flighty Neil needed to be gentled into the studio by producer Nik Venet and harbored among friendly foils to produce this remarkably organic, mostly live recording, which brought out the best blues-folk writing from the rarely bottled artist. (Chun)

NICO

Desertshore

Aside from her femme fatalism with the Velvet Underground, Nico might be best known musically for the one-of-a-kind Teutonic Californian frisson of her pairing with Jackson Browne on 1967’s Chelsea Girl. But the VU’s John Cale was her right-hand man for most of her career, right on through to the practically postmortem version of "My Funny Valentine" on 1985’s Camera Obscura. This 1970 collaboration includes the layered psychedelia of the title track (on which spoken interludes add extra layers in a manner many indie rockers have imitated), the ballad "Afraid" (addressed narcissistically to herself or forebodingly to her son, Ari?), and of course the one and only "Janitor of Lunacy," which mopped the floors for generations of goths to come. Two tracks here were featured in La Cicatrice Intérieure, a film by Philippe Garrel. (Huston)

JACK PALANCE

Palance

Sauntering the line between camp and cool with winking menace, the Shane star takes his opportunity to coin a few memorable countryisms in the absurdist, Marty Robbins–esque "The Meanest Guy That Ever Lived." "I ruled like a king and they / All did my thing / ‘Cause the foot was in the other / Shoe, shoe, shoe / ‘Cause the foot was in the other shoe," Palance sing-snarls, laying into those "shoe"s like a deranged Shangri-la with rabies. Aided and abetted by lush production from ex–Hank Williams bassist and Nashville publishing czar Buddy Killen, Palance gets to really sink his actorly teeth into the juicy, who’s-sorry-now melodrama of Dottie West’s "Hannah." (Chun)

THE SOFT MACHINE

The Soft Machine

Volume Two

Albums so wide and deep they threaten to engulf you with their sheer twists, teetering turns, and utter invention. Drummer Robert Wyatt’s frisky fills gets equal time alongside organist Michael Ratledge and bassist Kevin Ayres on the high-chair-rattling "Joy of a Toy" and the toy-piano-tricked-out "So Boot If at All" on the raw-edged eponymous debut, which must have sounded like a tripindicular aural telegram from the outer edges of the universe when it rolled forth in late 1968. Thanks to the departure of Ayres and the arrival of onetime roadie Hugh Hopper, Volume Two gets off the pop leash and takes an exhilarating yet elegant romp through the wide-open fields of fusion. (Chun)

Now with reel cheese!

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

By the time you read this, Spider-Man 3 will have already raked in approximately a kajillion dollars. But in a summer packed with superheroes, pirates, robots, and teen wizards, only one selection is destined to be the Best. Movie. Ever. (Hint: it’s animated, smells like a steak, and seats 35!) Still, what are you gonna do at the multiplex — or the rep house — on every other day that isn’t July 27? Arrange your vacations, hot dates, and Sno-Caps binges according to my highly biased, by no means complete guide to this season’s cinematic selections. All release dates are subject to change.

May 11 28 Days Later didn’t exactly have a happy ending — I’d call it ambiguous at best — and 28 Weeks Later explores what happens more than six months after the initial outbreak of “the rage.” Who’s the real villain in this one, zombies or the US Army? This sequel features a new director (Spain’s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo) and apparently an all-new cast, including Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, and The Wire‘s Idris Elba.

May 18 Who’ll be the next ruler of Far, Far Away? Shrek the Third investigates. New voices include Justin Timberlake (as a prince) and Ian McShane (as Captain Hook). And yes, your beloved Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) returns.

May 19 Prefer your movies under the stars? Film Night in the Park (www.filmnight.org) kicks off with The Graduate in Washington Square Park. Screenings continue through October at various locations in San Francisco and Marin County, with something for everyone — from kids (Happy Feet) to thirtysomething nostalgics (Sixteen Candles) to campaholics (The Bad Seed) — on the schedule.

May 25 You think your job sucks? Check out Severance, which is surely the raddest office horror–comedy–satire–gorefest ever. Also today: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End attempts to outgross 2006’s Dead Man’s Chest, which scored the biggest opening weekend of all time en route to a $423 million total haul. That’s a lotta eye patches.

June 1 From Russia — with vampires — came 2004’s Night Watch; the sequel, Day Watch, looks to be the same kind of darkly cool supernatural noir. (Coming soon: director Timor Bekmambetov’s English-language debut, Dusk Watch, the third in the series.) I also wanna see Knocked Up, the latest sex-centric comedy from The 40 Year-Old Virgin‘s Judd Apatow.

June 8 If Eli Roth’s faux trailer for Thanksgiving in Grindhouse wasn’t enough to get you excited about Hostel: Part II, well, there’s no hope for you — except to see this tourists-in-trouble follow-up and add a little more sleaze to your diet. Ocean’s Thirteen, a.k.a. George Clooney Would Like You to Please Pretend Ocean’s Twelve Never Existed, also opens today.

June 15 Experimental filmmakers, stop hiding your masterworks (and masterworks in progress) and share ’em with a supportive crowd at the San Francisco Cinematheque’s No Frame Cinema: Open Screening Event (www.sfcinematheque.org). Films and videos of 10 minutes or less will be compiled into a two-hour program on a first-come, first-served basis. Also today: did anyone really like Fantastic Four enough to necessitate Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer?

June 22 Dear Steve Carell, You are already a god to me, so I am all over Evan Almighty. Your pal, Cheryl.

June 27 McClane rules! Stop acting like you don’t want to see Live Free or Die Hard and like you don’t love the shit out of that ridiculous title.

June 29 John Dahl (Red Rock West) directs Ben Kingsley as a redemption-seeking hired gun in You Kill Me. Supposedly, there’s a Guardian cameo in this one. We’re famous, bitch!

July 13–14 Ain’t really summer till Peaches Christ (www.peacheschrist.com) says it is. Her Midnight Mass kicks off this weekend with screenings of Desperate Living (with Mink Stole in person!) and Female Trouble (with John Waters in person!); the series continues through Sept. 1 with more special guests, live performances, and after-dark cult film madness.

July 4 Scoff if you will, but Transformers appeals to the tiny parts of me that have seen Independence Day and Starship Troopers approximately 567 times (each). You can be certain director Michael Bay ain’t gonna give us a quiet, subtle, thought-provoking film about war in the time of Decepticons. You can be certain there will be many, many explosions.

July 13 I haven’t read a single Harry Potter book. I have, however, seen and enjoyed all the films. Which means I’ll eagerly line up for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but while you’re camping out at Border’s to buy the final book in the series, I’ll be watching Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, in which POW Christian Bale grabs a snake off the jungle floor and eats it raw, without the benefit of any magic powers whatsoever.

July 20 I’m on bridesmaid detail in Lake Tahoe this weekend, so I have an ironclad excuse to skip Hairspray (apologies to John Waters — but none to John Travolta) and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Whew.

July 27 All of summer is a vortex, whirling around the only spool of celluloid that truly matters. It’s The Simpsons Movie. If you care to argue otherwise, I will choo-choo-choose to ignore you.

Aug. 3 Gadgets? Jason Bourne don’t need no stinkin’ gadgets. He’ll kill you with a rolled-up magazine, motherfucker. The new, improved James Bond was cool, but the secret agent movie I most want to see is The Bourne Ultimatum.

Aug. 10 Apparently, Rush Hour 3 is due today. I suggest mashing up Friday and Drunken Master II and getting your Chris Tucker–Jackie Chan fix thataway instead.

Aug. 16 The King is dead — long live the King! Swingin’ cat Will the Thrill hosts Thrillville’s 30th Anniversary Elvis D-Day Party, at the Cerrito Speakeasy (www.cerritospeakeasy.com; www.thrillville.net), featuring a screening of 1964’s Viva Las Vegas (one of Presley’s best films — with probably his best-ever costar, Ann-Margret), PB and banana sammies, and a live performance by Cari Lee and the Saddle-ites.

Aug. 31 Yeah, Michael Myers is back — again — but this Halloween is directed by Rob Zombie. Zombie’s previous films (The Devil’s Rejects, House of 1000 Corpses), proved fondness for horror themes in everything from music to home decor, and the mere fact that he changed his name to Zombie bode well for his reverence for the series. John Carpenter’s 1978 original is scary-movie perfection, but I’m ghoulishly curious to see what Zombie’s gonna do with ol’ Shatner-face. Werewolf Women of the SS forever! *

TUESDAY

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March 13

MUSIC/DANCE

Queen Anne’s Revenge and Black Cactus Choir

Since pirates are all the rage, you may have already guessed that local trio Queen Anne’s Revenge is named for Blackbeard’s notorious frigate, surely the setting for many a bloody and brutal act. However, these guys keep the peg leg count on the low end, favoring instead a garage-pop sensibility heightened with curious synth glissandi and warm vocals floating somewhere between Love and Rockets and Zombies territory. Also performing is the Black Cactus Choir, an experimental dance troupe pushing the boundaries of physical expression with brain wave–nourishing choreography. (Todd Lavoie)

With Brittany Shane
9 p.m., $7
Hotel Utah Saloon
500 Fourth St., SF
(415) 385-2100
www.thehotelutahsaloon.com

VISUAL ART

“Moby Dick: Chapter 44 or 78,744 times”

Justin Quinn is transcribing Herman Melville’s Moby Dick into the letter e. So obsessive-compulsive they might wear out that nautical chart maker Captain Ahab, Quinn’s graphite drawings and prints have graduated from boxlike and crosslike maze formations to large and elaborate jellyfish shapes? The e in Quinn’s SF show “Moby Dick: Chapter 44 or 78,744 times” could stand for exile. Quinn tries to turn it into poetry. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Through April 12
MMGalleries
101 Townsend, suite 207, SF
(415) 543-1550
www.mmgalleries.com

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