22 posts tagged “film”

A few things I'd like you to know...

Ceres

Friday night I'm going to go see Dance Ceres perform the new work The Limits of the Marvelous at Dance Mission Theater.  The show starts at 8pm, tickets are $15, and call Dance Mission at 415.273.4633 to make a reservation.  Afterwards I'll be heading over to Dogpatch for a wee housewarming.

Flesh_and_the_Devil_BORDER

Saturday night I'll be at the Castro basking in the gorgeousness that is Greta Garbo as the SF Silent Film Festival presents Flesh and the Devil as part of their 2007 winter event.  The movie starts at 8pm, tickets are $15, and you can buy them through the Festival site.  Or spring for the full-day pass!  They're also showing a program of Vitaphone Vaudeville films and, in somewhat direct contrast, Intolerance.

Last week I alluded to the fact that my Tuesdays at work are generally pure hell, and, well, yesterday was one of those Tuesdays.  There was a point somewhere toward midafternoon where I was fighting down genuine panic.  But one of these weeks I'd like to take advantage of the biweekly Drawing Space gathering, where doodlers congregate to sketch away during the lunch hour.  It takes place at the same Public Open Space just up the street from my office where REBAR hosted the Nappening, so its proximity is actually more of a draw for me than any need to express artistic talent of my own, said talent being completely nonexistent.

Moviepic03

Also, throughout October Grace Cathedral is presenting a Tuesday night film series they've entitled Bay Area Filmmakers You Should Know, But Don't Yet.  Last night Jen Chaiken screened her film Big Eden, which I've been meaning to see for forever, but I missed it because I had back-to-back fundraiser trainings at KALX.  After which I went home and stayed up way way way too late starting to plot out my fundraiser show.  You will be hearing a lot more about that soon from me, I promise.  It's KALX's 45th anniversary this year, so we have some very special premiums to offer you when the fundraiser starts late next week.  In the meantime the station is in the middle of a Mid-Life Crisis, where each week leading up to the fundraiser the DJs are playing music from a particular decade.  This week is the 80s, so tune in and bask in the extreme nostalgia.

After an epic brunch at Jimmy Bean's on Saturday, my brother and I BARTed into the city to dip our feet in the LoveFest, which I hadn't attended since the first year when they were still allowed to call it the Love Parade.  Brent was suitably reassured that San Francisco dance music culture is still going strong, if suffering a little from the interest of frat boys and Marina chicks, after we watched float after float make its way down Market on the way to the Civic Center.  Personally I'm always happy to see the Space Cowboys with their Unimog, bass thumping away.

We took a break from said bass to walk up to St. Boniface Church for their 18th annual Blessing of the Animals in honor of St. Francis.  While we were there a small group of companion dogs lined up to be blessed both as a group and individually, each one of them also receiving a sprinkle of holy water.  Outside in the courtyard the SF SPCA had cages of kittens hoping for adoption, and Brent and I almost went home with a pair each.

Fa_rdav01_ad

At Electric Works - Ronald Davis: Five Decades: Past and Present.  Davis is indeed in his fifth decade of creating his geometrical works of art.  While he has always been interested in depicting three-dimensional objects, his techniques have evolved as technologies themselves have changed.  Electric Works here gives an excellent overview of Davis's career, and his paintings seem to have their own luminescence in their light-filled space.

Pioneers

At CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts - Pioneers.  The Wattis is back with a bang this fall, starting off with this show comparing and contrasting pioneering Bay Area artists with the historical pioneers who first settled this area.  Artifacts from the Society of California Pioneers are shown next to video by Bruce Conner, Ant Farm, and the Cockettes, and the show also features selected works by Robert Bechtle, Jay DeFeo, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jess, Dorothea Lange, Diego Rivera, Achilles Rizzoli, and Mario Savio.  In other words the show covers an impressive amount of ground in a fairly small space, and it made my heart swell with love for San Francisco at the same time.

Image008

Had Brent and I not already had plans to see They Might Be Giants in Santa Cruz Saturday night, we might have instead hunkered down at the Presidio for their Film in the Fog outdoor movie screening featuring Creature from the Black Lagoon.  But instead of freezing my ass off I was bouncing up and down at the Rio, laughing and yelling along the lyrics to Mammal.  Thank you again for suggesting the evening's activities, Deb!









And then Sunday afternoon we blew off Comedy Day in Golden Gate Park in favor of sheer laziness in the East Bay.  Brent also finally got to play Katamari Damacy, and he now fully understands its wonder.  Time well spent, with him back to Africa this coming Saturday.

76022

To the edge of the known world: Mappa Mundi by Beatus of Liebana, Spain, c.776

Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

Rebecca Solnit

from the Booksmith:
"Rebecca Solnit has made a vocation out of journeying into difficult territory and reporting back - as an environmentalist, public intellectual, and anti-globalization activist. Storming the Gates of Paradise, a collection of her essays from the past ten years, comprise a unique guidebook to the American landscape after the millennium - not just the deserts, skies, gardens, and wilderness areas that have long made up Solnit’s subject matter, but the social landscape of democracy and repression, of borders, ruins, and protests."

Smilingman

Also to check out: new locally-made film The Smiling Man.  Especially as I missed the release party at 12 Galaxies last night thanks to a KALX staff meeting and general feeling of blarth.  I trust Bay Area filmmakers to do the noir thing right, that's for sure.