- Not Quite Hollywood
- Published: Aug 14, 2009
Proof that Australia is basically a lunatic asylum where the inmates roam free -- and get government funding to capture their most outlandish dreams on celluloid -- is readily on display in Not Quite Hollywood.
- $9.99
- Published: Jul 10, 2009
The premise of Tatia Rosenthal's $9.99 is irresistible: for a penny less than $10 you can discover the meaning of life.
- How Michael Jackson Taught Me to Dance
- Published: Jun 26, 2009
We did a piece inspired by the moves we'd seen Michael Jackson do to "Dancing Machine" on TV. The beginning and end of the dance was done in unison, but the center section was an extended "robot" that I improvised alone.
- Gigantic
- Published: Apr 10, 2009
These characters with these particular motivations exist only in a certain kind of independent film. They come together, blurt out frank and challenging statements, act and react with the off-kilter spontaneity one rarely finds in real life.
- Of Time and the City
- Published: Feb 13, 2009
Expressing the impulse to flee and the equally strong urge to return to the place of one's childhood, Davies states, "We love the place we hate, then hate the place we love."
- How About You
- Published: Jan 09, 2009
While watching How About You, I imagined an elderly woman slowly unwrapping toffees in the theater seat just in front of me.
- Timecrimes
- Published: Dec 19, 2008
Timecrimes is one of those super lean independent films that unfolds with clockwork efficiency -- just a few characters, a remote location, no wasted action, and no extraneous dialogue.
- Let the Right One In
- Published: Nov 10, 2008
Twelve-year-old Oskar is a bit of a freak, and it's not just the unfortunate haircut. He has developed a crush on Eli, the little girl who just moved into the apartment next door. Trouble is, Eli is a vampire.
- Art of Democracy: War and Empire
- Published: Oct 11, 2008
War is eternal. It is constant, like a heartbeat, an ever-present part of the human condition. It is always with us, staining the whole of human history with the blood spilled. It is drama on a grand scale, which is why it appears so often in works of art.
- What We Do Is Secret
- Published: Aug 29, 2008
It started as a symbol, a bright blue circle on a black background, which showed up on stickers, buttons and on faded black t-shirts. That was how I became aware of The Germs.
- In Search of a Midnight Kiss
- Published: Aug 15, 2008
There's a nostalgic quality to In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Maybe it's the black and white cinematography, or maybe it's because the film is oddly reminiscent of classic screwball comedies.
- Full Grown Men
- Published: Jul 24, 2008
What if your childhood friend called you up out of the blue after years, maybe decades, of not being in touch? What if this friend was the same person who once convinced you to wear your sister's wig to school because it made you look like the guy on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive?
- Persepolis
- Published: Jan 11, 2008
It's hard to watch Persepolis without thinking about the Bush Administration's apparent itch to wage war on Iran. Even though the film, black and white -- and animated -- was produced in a manner that emphasizes the timelessness of its themes, one is greatly aware of the frame that has been set, at least in America, by which we ponder all things Iranian.
- Technical Difficulties
- Published: Nov 26, 2007
KQED Arts & Culture is experiencing technical difficulties. Due to our recent server migration, we are currently unable to update this site. We hope to resume publishing daily coverage of Bay Area arts and culture within the next few days.
Posted: November 26, 2007.
- Pina Bausch: Ten Chi
- Published: Nov 17, 2007
The last time Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal came to town, they performed the glorious Nelken. Before the show, the curtains were left open to reveal a stage covered in upright carnations that would end up pummeled and smashed flat by the end of the performance. The dancers, both male and female, struggled with their costumes -- dingy, light pink slips with thin shoulder straps falling and skirts threatening to rise -- while they told bawdy stories of love and loss and created stunning tableaux by combining simple props in unexpected combinations. When they danced, the movement was downright LUSTY. Nelken was as close to perfect as performance art can get.
- Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
- Published: Nov 08, 2007
I remember the first time I heard the klaxon call of "London Calling." The needle dropped on side one, track one of The Clash's 1979 double record and there it was, like boots on pavement, a joyfully militant march rolling over the horizon -- inevitable. The lyrics herald an apocalypse, "The ice age is coming/ The sun's zooming in/ Meltdown expected/ The wheat is growing thin/ A nuclear error, but I have no fear/ Cause London is drowning and I -- live by the river!" Joe Strummer's hoarse voice was calling out to disaffected youth around the world, encouraging us to fall in step behind The Clash. It was 1979, "the only band that matters" was leaving England and entering their world domination phase.
- King Corn
- Published: Nov 02, 2007
Did you know that your hair acts as a record of everything you've eaten? The new ITVS documentary, King Corn opens with filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney visiting a small lab to get their hair tested. They discover that they are made up primarily of corn. To many in the Bay Area, home of Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, this revelation comes as no surprise. Pick up a box or bag of any processed food and you will find high fructose corn syrup as one of its major ingredients, if not first on the list. Trouble is, most people don't read these lists and cannot grasp that the elements of a McDonald's happy meal are really just corn disguised as a hamburger, fries and a coke.
- Siouxsie: Mantaray
- Published: Oct 28, 2007
I have been listening to the voice of Siouxsie Sioux since the 1981 release of "Spellbound," the first single off of Siouxsie and the Banshee's classic Juju album, a record often cited as the progenitor of all things goth. Siouxsie has evolved from post-punk to goth to alterna-pop as the ferocious front-woman of the Banshees, and explored various world musics with Budgie, her drummer husband and Creatures collaborator.
- The Darwin Awards
- Published: Sep 06, 2007
"A chronicle of enterprising demises," the Darwin Awards are given out to real life characters who "improve the gene pool by accidentally removing themselves from it." Started online in 1993, The Darwin Awards collects and verifies stories of people who have managed to kill themselves through outlandish (and often very stupid) accidents.
- One to Another (Chacun sa nuit)
- Published: Aug 03, 2007
When Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr's One to Another was over, I couldn't help but think, "Sheesh, could this film be any more FRENCH?" It's filled with the kind of casual nudity and offhand sexuality that has been associated with French film since the glory days of Brigitte Bardot, when they were called "Art Films" in the U.S. and considered just a cut above porn. The gorgeous teens at the film's center dance, have sex and experience existential malaise, Gitanes hanging from their pouty lips. Lizzie Brocheré, the female lead trains her huge eyes on the camera, projecting that distinctive mania and unpredictability often associated with the wild French ingénue.
- Interview
- Published: Aug 02, 2007
On November 2, 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (the grand-nephew of Vincent, the famous painter) was murdered by a religious extremist on a street in Amsterdam. The murderer shot van Gogh several times, slit his throat and then attached a five page note to the filmmaker's chest with a knife. The grisly murder set off a series of attacks and counter-attacks between Christians and Muslims and rocked the foundations of Dutch society, which is famous for its unusual tolerance.
Van Gogh was a provocative writer, a newspaper columnist, a television personality and a film director, who made thirteen features. Before his death, van Gogh had decided to remake three of his films in English; Interview is the first in the Triple Theo series. (The others are Blind Date directed by Stanly Tucci, starring Tucci and Patricia Clarkson and 06, which will be directed by John Turturro.)
- Manufactured Landscapes
- Published: Jul 27, 2007
The first Edward Burtynsky photograph I ever saw took my breath away -- twice. It was a very large format color print of rust colored scratches across a white marbled surface, the scratches (or were they gashes?) criss-crossed one another, intersecting to create rough, square shapes. The horizontal lines seemed to bleed or melt vertically, like they had been scrubbed roughly with something hard, something metal. A pool of bright green liquid glowed at the bottom of the frame -- or at least this is how I remember it -- an amazingly lovely color, not found in nature. It was the grace of the composition that took my breath away, at least at first. I was overwhelmed by the art of the image, by its aesthetic appeal and then I realized what I was actually looking at, something very large and very real. And it was that realization that took my breath the second time. This beautiful thing was actually something quite ugly. It was an image of an old quarry, all of that beauty just toxic remains.
- Joe Goode Performance Group: Humansville
- Published: Jun 04, 2007
Before the start of the Joe Goode Performance Group's new show, Humansville, we were told that the first half of the performance would be made up of vignettes, each about seven minutes long, which would repeat for the first half hour. We could walk from one to the other in our own time and then take our seats for the second half of the show. Before the doors opened, I thought about the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where Gene Wilder, as Willy Wonka, is preparing to open the doors of his factory to outsiders for the first time in decades. In the film, tiny bells sound and expectation builds. "Count to three. Make a wish." Wonka whispers as he cracks open the door. The children are met with a confectionary wonderland and run about gorging themselves on sweets while Gene Wilder sings the movie's theme song "Pure Imagination."
- SF Independent Film Festival
- Published: Feb 08, 2007
What makes a film "independent?" From catch phrase to catch all, the term "independent" has ceased being descriptive. Most major studios have "independent" wings -- once Disney bought Miramax, the jig was pretty much up. But we still like to think of independent films as wild things, plucky pictures that will surprise and shock. Nowadays those pleasant jolts are few and far between -- there is a formula for "independent" films and those who abandon that formula are something else entirely. We haven't yet come up with a term for them.
The San Francisco Independent Film Festival traffics in those films upon which the "independent" label sits uneasily. Most of the work they show isn't safe or formulaic, and doesn't belong to that former category of independents released through the above-mentioned Miramax, Sony Pictures Classics, Warner Brothers Independent, et al. These aren't the overly-hyped little pictures with big stars feted every winter at Sundance, so what are they?
- Absolute Wilson
- Published: Jan 12, 2007
Maybe it was unfortunate that I popped in a DVD of Absolute Wilson the night after KQED aired the American Masters documentary about Annie Leibovitz. Both documentaries were designed using roughly the same schematic, beginning at: sensitive young artist leaves home and lands in the right place at the right time. Leibovitz in San Francisco at the formation of Rolling Stone; Wilson in New York among a circle of other future art world luminaries, his future collaborator Philip Glass among them. Blah. Blah. Blah. The Baby Boomer Basher in me immediately went to his dark place. Oh great, I thought at this point in each narrative, after a whole life spent witnessing Boomers congratulating themselves, we have now entered the period where they will begin their own beatification, their canonization.
- 3 Needles
- Published: Nov 30, 2006
If you want to know why the human race hasn't banded together to battle the AIDS epidemic, then you should see 3 Needles. The root causes of the virus's basically unchecked spread are economic. There is money to be made in blood and there are people ruthless enough, thoughtless enough and careless enough to make it. The three needles of the title are located in a rural Chinese village, Montreal's porn industry and a South African plantation, and are (inexplicably) divided by religion -- Buddhist, Catholic and Pagan.
- Volver
- Published: Nov 21, 2006
The first thing you notice is breasts. Most particularly those belonging to Penelope Cruz, who as Raimunda is done up like Sophia Loren in her prime -- crisp, dark eyeliner, hair piled high, dresses cut low, cleavage up and out. I think my favorite shot in the film is of Raimunda doing the dishes. Photographed from above, her cleavage jiggles while she furiously scrubs a large knife. (Careful, you might put an eye out!) The shot is quintessential Almodovar, combining the everyday details of domestic life with a hyper-feminine sexuality and the threat of violence. It's subtle and funny, emblematic of Almodovar's current approach to filmmaking, which is more casual, more gestural and less mad-cap than in some of his earlier films (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Law of Desire or Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down).
- A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
- Published: Oct 13, 2006
For some cultures it's not the choice of word that matters so much as the way a word is used -- where the emphasis is placed within the word, on the forceful first letter, extension of the middle vowel or the crashing of the final two consonants, like cymbals at the end of a musical phrase. Pow! The meaning of a word changes according to this emphasis and where it is used in a sentence. For some people, the F-word expresses every human emotion, from tenderness to shock to anger, frustration and wonder. It is the one word that sums up their lives fully, in one satisfying syllable.
- The Science of Sleep
- Published: Sep 26, 2006
About 3/4 of the way through Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep, strange, salty water started leaking from my eyes and running down my cheeks. It was completely involuntary and it happened because somewhere inside myself I knew that The Science of Sleep would soon come to an end. Imagination is so rarely celebrated -- at least in America -- and creativity is infrequently as unconstrained -- the film is like water to a parched desert, a two-hour downpour, but you know the drought will return when it has come to an end.
- Heading South
- Published: Sep 01, 2006
Laurent Cantet's Heading South is an intense little film about colonialism and sexuality and about the ugliness of capitalism in the third world. From the very first scene, where a woman offers her young daughter to a stranger in the airport, it is clear that the picture will be both tawdry and dispassionate.
- House of Sand/The Descent
- Published: Aug 17, 2006
Some films leave you physically altered; the catharsis they serve up is more than just lights playing on a wall. It is physical, possibly chemical. When the screen goes dark and house lights rise again, the shadow play just witnessed has taken a toll, a real one. Whatever the journey, the actors have mimicked it effectively enough that you feel as though you too have come through changed.
- Whisky at the SF Jewish Film Festival
- Published: Jul 20, 2006
I remember being on a drive with my family a very long time ago. We were meandering along country roads, the windows down, just out having a look at the scenery, when my step dad asked my mom to say something in Spanish. She thought for a moment and uttered a phrase. He said, "Oh, that's beautiful. What does it mean?" She replied, "Flies don't enter a closed mouth." That episode came back to me while watching Whisky because, like that long-ago drive, the film ambles amiably along peppered with the occasional dry punch line.
- Who Killed the Electric Car?
- Published: Jun 30, 2006
Ever wonder why GM's sales are falling? In the face of rising gas prices, Toyota's hit Prius hybrid and a $1.1 billion loss posted last quarter, GM has announced a whole new line of large pickups and SUVs for next season. In fact, as Honda searches for a spot to build their next American plant, GM talks about moving its operations to Mexico. But that's all recent news and not what Who Killed the Electric Car? is about.
- Army of Shadows
- Published: Jun 23, 2006
In Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows the constant threat of a storm hangs over weary France. The skies are blanketed in low-hanging grey clouds, windows ice over and roads are slushy with fresh mud. Drab rooms are populated with tight-lipped people whose faces are taut, strained with the pressure of impending violence. Nazis have taken over the large French country estates, emptied drawing rooms of their furniture and turned them into torture chambers.
- Rampo Noir
- Published: Jun 08, 2006
A naked man crawls across a desolate Martian landscape in search of a desert oasis, all the while remembering a violent rape in flashback. An ancient Japanese town is haunted by the shocking deaths of several local women whose faces and skulls have been burned away. Each possesses a mysterious hand mirror made by a local man obsessed with creating the perfect mirror. The wife of a war hero devotes her life to the care and feeding of her soldier husband, who has returned from the war badly disfigured, missing both arms and legs. A beautiful stage actress is pursued by a young man who dreams of intimacy but is plagued with a fear of germs and crawling bugs.
- Sketches of Frank Gehry
- Published: May 25, 2006
Sometimes, watching a film about a great artist can be disconcerting -- especially when one has artistic ambitions of one's own. Usually such biographies are littered with casts of powerful and important people proclaiming the impact and relevance of the subject, and naturally this would be even more pronounced when the subject is an architect. Architects only achieve greatness after they have managed to win and build a number of important commissions. Hence, the folks most qualified to discuss the work of someone like Frank Gehry are those who live in Gehry homes or have awarded him his biggest commissions -- the super-rich and mega-powerful.
- Art School Confidential
- Published: May 23, 2006
The main target of Art School Confidential, the second collaboration between graphic novelist Daniel Clowes and eccentric filmmaker extraordinaire Terry Zwigoff, is the herd mentality of the art world. This is ironic because most folks in the art world revere both Clowes and Zwigoff based on their past achievements, and will no doubt find something to love about this film, too. Clowes' Ghost World is a brilliant graphic novel that became an even greater work of art when transferred to film via Zwigoff's deft touch. Zwigoff's Crumb, a loving documentary portrait of the irascible cartoonist R. Crumb is an indie film classic. My mind wanted to run with the herd, to hail whatever the two produced next as sharp and funny, offbeat and transgressive, but no such luck, Art School Confidential is a dud.
- Friends With Money
- Published: Apr 07, 2006
Olivia (Jennifer Aniston), Jane (Frances McDormand), Franny (Joan Cusack) and Christine (Catherine Keener) have been friends forever. All are married except for Olivia, who is floundering. She's a dropout, a pot-smoking loser who has given up teaching to clean houses and taken to dialing her married ex-boyfriend's number at night just to hear the annoyance in his voice. All of her friends have money, children and successful careers. But underneath the slick exteriors of their modern L.A. homes lay various forms of discontent.
- The Devil and Daniel Johnston
- Published: Mar 30, 2006
I remember the first time I heard a dub of a dub of a Daniel Johnston cassette. I was working at Film Arts Foundation and walked into the equipment rental room as organ music droned over the makeshift sound system. All of the sudden a desperate man screamed, "Satan! Satan!" It was the sound of real fear. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing. For a moment the casual air was sliced through with an otherworldly desperation that not even the most jaded young hipster could ignore. It made the hair on the back of my neck bristle. Listening to that Daniel Johnston tape was like eavesdropping on the life of a man pursued.
- Capote
- Published: Sep 29, 2005
About three months ago I picked up Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It was one of those titles that had always been on my list of things to do, one of the "classics" that I knew I should at some point get through. Thing is, once I began reading, I discovered that it was also one of those books that one literally cannot put down. I devoured it in a day or two and was put off other books for weeks afterward, mostly because they were all so pale, so poorly written in comparison.
