Opening COUNTERFEITERS.Biggest counterfeit money scam of all time goes down during the last years of WWII in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Rated R. 98 m. At the Minor. DON GIOVANNI.San Francisco Opera performs Mozart classic in pure Digital Cinema. Second of four SF Opera Cinemacasts, runs April 12-13 at Fortuna. MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A […]
Jay Aubrey-Herzog
Posted inArts + Scene
Same Old Spacey
Opening FUNNY GAMES.Remake of 1997 thriller follows young men as they take a family hostage in a vacation home invasion. Rated R. 108 m. At the Minor. LEATHERHEADS.A ragtag team in early-1920s professional football league is saved by golden boy war hero. Rated PG-13. 114 m. At the Broadway, Fortuna and Mill Creek. NIM’S ISLAND.Author’s […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Band’s Visit: A Small Gem
Opening 21.Group of brilliant students and unorthodox math prof take on big casinos and win their way into racy Vegas lifestyles. Rated PG-13. At Mill Creek and the Broadway. MARRIED LIFE.Characters fumble towards their passions leading to a complicated web of deceit, murder plans, love and lies. Rated PG-13. At the Minor. SAMSON AND DELILAH.San […]
Posted inMusic
Bill Frisell Trio
Live performance Jan. 20 at Yoshi’s San Francisco Seattle-based jazz guitarist Bill Frisell claims two very different guitar players as main influences: Jim Hall and Jimi Hendrix. He was a student of Hall, whose cool harmonic style was Frisell’s primary jazz influence, and like most electric guitarists who came of age in the ’60s he […]
Posted inMusic
Books of 2007
by Various Authors Here are my favorites of the year. I don’t claim they’re the best, because I obviously can’t read everything. (I do try, though.) Potentially worthy candidates such as Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke and Ben Ratliff’s new book on John Coltrane remain on my shelf unread to taunt me into the new […]
Posted inMusic
Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005
Book by Luc Sante YETI Books Sixteen years ago Luc Sante’s first book, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, explored the the sheer weirdness and teeming danger of life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 19th and early 20th century, conducting a vividly impressionistic tour of a world of […]
Posted inMusic
Smells like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire
Book by Matt Taibbi. Published by Black Cat Books. There are only two reasons to read the otherwise decrepit Rolling Stone magazine these days, and neither of them have anything to do with music. One is David Rees’ pissed-off clip art comic strip Get Your War On, and the other is the stiletto sharp journalism […]
Posted inMusic
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
For the past six years investment banker Warren Hellman has bankrolled an impressive free music festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Held the first weekend in October, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass features a multi-generational array of roots-oriented acts, from traditional bluegrass to country-inflected punk, and this year was no exception. The weekend started with a […]
Posted inMusic
Stranger Than Paradise
These days, when much American independent film has devolved to formulaic low budget romantic comedies, adolescent Tarantino ripoffs and torture porn, it’s hard to believe the promise that a new wave of filmmakers heralded in the ’80s. More than 20 years after its original release, Criterion has just released a remastered version of director Jim […]
Posted inMusic
Natural
If this record was your first exposure to the Mekons, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were some obscure British folk combo, not one of the original punk bands of 1977, still plugging away after 30 years. The Mekons were contrarians from the start — their first single, "Never Been In a Riot" was a […]
Posted inNews
Battle for Boomer Jack
IT ALL STARTED WITH A DOG. Lincoln Kilian says he originally unearthed the story of Boomer Jack sorting through clippings in his job as an HSU librarian, a job he’d had since 1966. In 1977, he was transferred to the Humboldt Room, which houses the library’s special historical collections. Part of his assignment in the […]