There are two DJ-curated dance shows happening tonight and both cover a lot of ground, sound-wise, so you can have your pick. At 7 p.m., it’s the final time the Logger Bar will be hosting the Red Room, a darkwave and post punk dance party provided by DJs Zero One, Datura and Kreepeeo. This over-21 […]
The Miniplex
Posted inArts + Scene
A Dream Within a Nightmare
In an era of lamentation, one that might have been defined by the extinction of boldness in American movies, we may instead have arrived at a moment of renewal. It would be specious to attribute this welcome, certainly unexpected shift to any one artist or studio or streaming service, but it is noteworthy that the […]
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Obituary‘s Black Heart
OBITUARY. There should be something like a Scoville scale for dark humor, gradations of blackness that range from, say, a No. 2 pencil to the underwing of a raven to the lightless ocean floor to the imagined void of a black hole. Like peppers, not all of these give pleasure to all. And to taste […]
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Thanksgiving is a Turkey
THANKSGIVING. The scream and spatter of slasher movies hasn’t spoken to me for most of my horror-viewing life. It’s not the violence or the blood alone that turns me off — my action movie palate is unencumbered by those. It’s that slashers so often strike me as too fascinated with female torture and/or unable to […]
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The Killer and Dicks Go Big
THE KILLER. Given what we know — or think we know — about David Fincher, it is almost too tempting to see his latest as a smirking work of self-reflective satire. This contravenes the most basic tenet of what I was taught to call New Criticism, which is, clears throat, reads aloud: never conflate the […]
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Slow Build
THE ROYAL HOTEL. I was momentarily at a loss, Killers of the Flower Moon having left a rightful vacuum, both in terms of theatrical releases (who wants to follow that?) and my desire to go see them. This was compounded by a sense of having missed out on scary movie season. And so I cast […]
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The Evil that White Men Do
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. In a recent profile for the Los Angeles Times, Marissa R. Moss refers to “the radical empathy” of Jason Isbell, the frequently mis-described artist whose albums have spent more time on the turntable in this house than any other’s in the last decade. Not coincidentally, Isbell has a small but […]
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Good Luck, Ladies
In my (lately frequent) absences, the Editor seems compelled to see and write almost exclusively about horror. I suspect the impetus for this is actually two-fold. Despite frequent, vociferous protestations, the Editor is actually an ardent fan of the genre. But these occasions allow her even more opportunity than the normal, strictly enforced, brigade-style hierarchy […]
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Character Star
REPTILE. There are character actors and there are movie stars, and in between is Benicio Del Toro. Like many, I first became fully aware of Del Toro with The Usual Suspects (1995), written by the now-anointed Christopher McQuarrie and directed by the lately canceled Hollywood monster Bryan Singer. Standing out among a cast of standouts, […]
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Music Tonight: Tuesday, Oct. 10
The Miniplex is hosting Latin dance classes with instructor Selma Angelina every Tuesday this month at 8 p.m. for a drop-in price of $20 per class. Then afterward, you can try your moves out during the free dance party hosted by DJ Amaru Shia. I believe they are still doing a pretty mean Taco Tuesday […]
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Intelligence
DUMB MONEY. The big lie or the truth-at-large that remains largely unspoken, is that the stock market is any kind of democratic capitalist enterprise. By the logic of a casino, perhaps: Anyone with money to waste is welcome to come on in; be our guest. Rule No. 1 of the casino being that the house […]
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Music Tonight: Friday, Sept. 29
Unless you acted far in advance and managed to snag some tickets, the sold-out Thundercat show at the Van Duzen is not in your cards tonight, friend. Don’t sweat it though, the Miniplex is putting on a banger at 9 p.m. San Francisco’s warm, electro-tinged chamber pop act Healing Potpourri is in the house, and […]