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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 1: The Assignment\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Great news! KQED wants me to watch different versions of \u003ci>A Christmas Carol\u003c/i> and write an essay. What better way to ease into the Christmas season? Plus it gives me incentive to read the book, something I’ve always wanted to do! \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 2: The Book\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jesus, I think this is what they call “minor Dickens.” Am I crazy or does the author’s characteristic social concern and anti-capitalist sentiment coexist uneasily with his paean to Christmas? A little research reveals I’m not the only one with doubts. The English writer Richard Aldington said “the conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge is as full of cant as it is improbability.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not a spoiler, right? Most people know Scrooge and the three ghosts like they do Goldilocks and the Three Bears. That’s part of the problem in tackling Dickens’ tale: an overfamiliarity with the main character’s redemptive arc. In fact, if you’ve managed to avoid the story’s rudiments to date, you are to be congratulated for attaining the very height of cultural illiteracy. The story practically resides in the collective unconscious, and you don’t need to have taken a course on Victorian literature to have digested it. In fact, you might have picked it up while watching a stray \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClDfG07H8iA\">episode of \u003ci>The Odd Couple\u003c/i>\u003c/a> or even a Bugs Bunny cartoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xk2yc1\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>But for the extraterrestrials out there, we’ll recap: Ebenezer Scrooge, a banker and all-around horrible person, spends Christmas Eve lamenting the holiday while also espousing a sensitivity to the poor that would appall Marie Antoinette. After launching this one man War on Christmas, he suffers a nighttime haunting by his deceased ex-partner, Jacob Marley, festooned in a terrible chain as symbolic comeuppance for his sins on earth. Marley warns Scrooge that the way things are going, he too is going to need the services of a 24-hour, trans-dimensional locksmith. Three spirits will reinforce the message, Marley says, their visitations to come on succeeding nights. The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come then come a knockin’.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The unwelcome spirits take Scrooge on a journey through time, each event taking place on Christmas. Included in the temporal travelogue is a glimpse into the goings-on of the Cratchits, the family of Scrooge’s long-suffering clerk, Bob Cratchit, whose angelic son, Tiny Tim, appears to be dying or at least very sick. (From what, we don’t know, but he’s got a crutch.) Scrooge is finally shown his own unmourned death, and the entire experience convinces him to be more charitable, and to regard the celebration of Christmas as the ultimate expression of regard for your fellow man, at least until the first Black Friday stampede 150 years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote\">Like \u003ci>Star Trek\u003c/i>, one of the better stories where the main character spends most of the time in his pajamas.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>It’s a simple message, really, inscribed in the Bible: Don’t be a moneygrubbing prick, lest you lose your soul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While that’s always something worth considering, the moral of the story’s linkage to the Yuletide chafes against contemporary experience. And not even contemporary. Scottish author Margaret Oliphant wrote in 1871 that the novella showed that Dickens is “the first to find out the immense spiritual power of the Christmas turkey.” (That’s first-rate sarcasm, even today). The Christmas theme hasn’t gotten any easier to swallow over time. Never mind the commercialism of the season, how about its length? With all the music, store displays, and Amazon wish lists in full swing the moment the last Halloween candy is distributed, by the time Dec. 25 rolls around I’m actually \u003ci>rooting\u003c/i> for Scrooge to stay true to himself in the face of buttinsky ghosts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carolbook.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; width: 200px; float:left; margin-right: 10px;\" alt=\"a christmas carol, first edition\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>A Christmas Carol\u003c/i> the book is also marred by the eye-rolling melodrama of Tiny Tim and, as Oliphant alluded to, an epicurean sensibility amid what’s supposed to be a spiritual lesson. (The Ghost of Christmas Present sits atop “a kind of throne” made of “turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs…” The list goes on.) It’s also a bit binary in its characterizations: There’s Scrooge, who hates Christmas, and most everyone else, who reveres it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, this \u003ci>is\u003c/i> Dickens, so there’s plenty that compensates. Besides introducing the phrase, “Bah! Humbug,” a cultural contribution no human would deny, Grand Master Charlie D can flat out \u003ci>write\u003c/i>. His description of Scrooge, for instance:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;\"> …a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That sort of villainy is ready-made for manifestation off the page, and since the book was published in 1843, no generation of adaptors, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A_Christmas_Carol_adaptations\">across all forms of media\u003c/a>, has been able to resist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So let’s see what the movies have to offer….\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carol1938.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"reginald owen as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 3: The First Film:\u003c/b> \u003ci>A Christmas Carol\u003c/i>, 1938, MGM; Director: Edwin L. Marin, Reginald Owen as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Show me the movies!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We start out with a concise but pedestrian version of the tale. Owen’s not half-bad, but the well-fed character actor Gene Lockhart, built like a fireplug, is mysteriously cast as the poverty-stricken Bob Cratchit. Lots of extras mill about the Victorian London streets, also known as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.mgmbacklot.info/\">MGM backlot\u003c/a>, dimmed by a classic \u003ca href=\"http://io9.com/5955311/the-london-fog-that-killed-over-ten-thousand-people\">London “fog”\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote\">\u003ci>Scrooged\u003c/i> stinks like Christmas goose on New Year’s.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>A man losing his soul wasn’t enough in the way of dramatic tension for MGM, apparently, so the stakes have been upped with the early introduction of Tiny Tim, who doesn’t appear in the book until halfway through, and who really limps up a storm here. There’s also an added scene in which Cratchit joins some kids in a snowball fight and mistakenly knocks off Scrooge’s top hat, thus getting himself canned on Christmas Eve. Emotionalism abounds: cue the angelic music when Scrooge’s nephew gives his pro-Christmas speech, with Cratchit looking on like he’s got a severe crush on the man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the ghosts, a translucent Leo G. Carroll is double-exposed into Scrooge’s room as Marley, The effects department, however, wasn’t quite up to recreating Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Past, “a strange figure — like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man,” according to the author, with a “bright clear jet of light” emanating from his head. Forget it, said Louis B. Mayer, or someone like him. Howzabout whatsername, you know, the one from the Andy Hardy films? That’s MGM starlet Ann Rutherford as the knockout ghost with blonde hair and curls. Her spiritual accoutrements include a star atop her hat and some sort of hospital gown; she looks like a strange nun making an ill-conceived guess as to appropriate attire for a night out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with \u003ci>Star Trek\u003c/i>, this is one of the better fictional works in which the main character spends most of the proceedings in his pajamas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003ci>Scroogiana:\u003c/i> In a two-shot with Lockhart, Owen says that Christmas is a “\u003ci>poor\u003c/i> excuse for \u003ci>picking\u003c/i> a man’s \u003ci>pocket\u003c/i> every year,” visibly spraying Lockhart with spit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carol1935.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"seymour hicks as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 4:\u003c/b> \u003ci>Scrooge\u003c/i>, 1935, Twickenham Studios; Director: Henry Edwards, Seymour Hicks as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Cautiously optimistic\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This starts with a bit more directorial flair than MGM’s workmanlike effort, as we first see Scrooge only from behind, building up the tension to the reveal of his mean old face. The film also has the virtue of a smaller, enfeebled Bob Cratchit, unlike MGM’s Chris Christie-in-mutton chops. Seymour Hicks captures the pettiness of Scrooge better than Reginald Owen, and the tragedy of Tiny Tim is also mercifully less exploited. Once again, there is fog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the most striking thing is the skimping on ghosts. Marley is represented by just a voice, who explains to Scrooge, “only you can see me.” The Ghost of Christmas Present is also non-corporeal — just a blob of amorphous light. C’mon, get real. If I plunk down for \u003ci>Godzilla\u003c/i>, I want to see a giant, scaly reptile, y’know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all this is less affecting than even the MGM version, though not as sanitized and with some interesting touches. You even see Tiny Tim lying dead as his father hovers over his body — stick that in your holiday stocking. You also get one of Dickens’ best scenes, omitted from the American version: a trio of working class scavengers, who stole Scrooge’s things straight off his deathbed, selling them to a fence. They’re shot like evil spectres, genuine living ghouls. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana\u003c/i>: In this truncated 61-minute version, not only do you not get ghosts, you don’t get Tiny Tim’s famous novella-ending line: “God bless us, everyone.” (Scrooge says it instead.) You might as well take the “Rosebud” from Orson Welles’ lips at the beginning of \u003ci>Citizen Kane\u003c/i>. As in the 1935 film, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” gets the proceedings up and running. In one wholly unnecessary scene, some luminaries on Christmas Eve regale Her Majesty with “God Save the Queen.” So money for that, but not Marley’s ghost?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carolmurray.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"bill murray as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 5:\u003c/b> \u003ci>Scrooged\u003c/i>, 1988, Paramount; Director: Richard Donner, Bill Murray as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Give me something to work with here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With so many helpings of the same tale, I’m feeling a bit stuffed. It’s like every day is Christmas, minus the presents. What better antidote to our story’s earnest heart than a Bill Murray meta-Scrooge vehicle? The many shades of irony Murray can paint can be one of the pleasures of modern cinema. Let’s see what we have here…. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. This one stinks like Christmas goose on New Year’s. Murray plays the head of a TV network putting on a live \u003ci>Christmas Carol\u003c/i> special with Buddy Hackett as Scrooge, Jamie Farr as Bob Cratchit, and gold medal gymnast Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim. It’s a funny concept derailed by poor execution. Murray’s character travels the same arc as in the much better \u003ci>Groundhog Day\u003c/i>. But he’s off his game here, going all-out-bastard with little of the knowing slyness that often makes his performances intriguingly elliptical. The story is a mess, and the addition of a present day love interest breaks the parallelism to Dickens. From the sets to the script, the entire production is too broad to make the satire work. This is superficial subversiveness, minus any new wrinkle on the ostensible dichotomy between maliciousness and Christmas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also ridiculously sentimental, as Murray hijacks his own show, a la \u003ci>Network\u003c/i>, to give an anodyne speech about love or something or other. The film ends with Murray and the entire cast singing “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.” With its ’80s aesthetic in full tacky bloom, the film seems even more dated than the 1935 version. How dated? There’s product placement for Tab everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana:\u003c/i>David Johansen, the lead singer of the proto-punk band New York Dolls, adds some zest as one of the ghosts. Scrooge’s famous denial of Marley’s existence, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato,” is changed to, “You’re a hallucination brought on by alcohol, Russian vodka, poisoned by Chernobyl.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carolgrammer.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"kelseu grammer as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 6:\u003c/b> \u003ci>A Christmas Carol: The Musical\u003c/i> 2004; Hallmark; Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman, Kelsey Grammer as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Desperate\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Really, Western Civilization? I didn’t think it could get much worse than Bill Murray singing a schmaltzy song unironically. I caught this made-for-TV movie on the Hallmark Movie Channel, which I’m apparently paying for as part of my cable bundle. This one’s based on the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%20A_Christmas_Carol_%281994_musical%29\">stage musical of the same name\u003c/a>. Kelsey Grammer is in full \u003ci>Acting!\u003c/i> mode; he portrays Scrooge like an elderly Frasier Crane. Grammer stinks at playing a miserable old bastard, really taking the dick out of Dickens. The whole thing is overlit and dripping with non- atmosphere, bad accents, forgettable songs, lousy choreography, and an antiseptic set. Jane Krakowski, two years away from her role as Jenna Maroney in \u003ci>30 Rock\u003c/i>, lends her pipes to the kind of ludicrous project in which that character would often find herself cast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fictional Jamie Farr/Buddy Hackett version would play less like parody. Only a minor obsessive compulsive disorder kept my hand off the fast forward button.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003ci>Scroogiana\u003c/i>: Geraldine Chaplin, who appeared in \u003ci>Doctor Zhivago\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Nashville\u003c/i>, once played Mother Theresa, and is the daughter of one of the most important cinematic figures in history, is here seen flouncing about in a Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pantomime that’s frightening for all the wrong reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carol1970.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"albert finney as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Day 7: \u003ci>Scrooge\u003c/i>, 1970, Cinema Center Films; Director: Ronald Neame, Albert Finney as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: They’re not paying me enough for this thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> I hereby declare this musical version to be the most entertaining, intelligent, and inventive of the lot. So don’t believe the haters. (I’m looking at you, Pauline Kael.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one does a more incisive job with the lead character than Albert Finney, who applies a little modern acting technique to a 19th century caricature. Rather than the film inventing a psychological antecedent for Scrooge’s meanness, Finney explains it through his interpretation of the younger Scrooge, playing a remote and brooding man, not innately evil, but on the verge of letting his aloofness overwhelm his love. Finney’s Scrooge is less the dualistic character of most portrayals; he is alternately submissive, cranky, gleeful, self-pitying, rueful, and tender. I daresay he improves on the book by portraying Scrooge’s transformation as gradual and grudging; Dickens had Scrooge converted to a state of contrition by the time Christmas Present intrudes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cobject width=\"400\" height=\"325\" id=\"ep\">\u003cparam name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/cvp/container/mediaroom_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=217840\">\u003cparam name=\"bgcolor\" value=\"#000000\">\u003cembed src=\"http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/cvp/container/mediaroom_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=217840\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" bgcolor=\"#000000\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" width=\"400\" height=\"325\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>After Finney, the best thing here is \u003ca href=\"http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/217840/Scrooge-Movie-Clip-Marley.html\">Alec Guinness as Marley\u003c/a>, one of the cooler ghosts on celluloid. He float-walks into the room, then sways and bobs like he’s moving against the tide. His chain, lockbox, and enormous keys fly in all directions as he rises to the ceiling in anger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Believe it or not, this is a moving film, especially for a musical. There’s a real pathos in Scrooge futilely trying to stop his former self, a shadow of the past, from letting his fiance walk out on him forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana:\u003c/i> Actor David Collins as Bob Cratchit avoids the toadying woefulness that afflicts most of the other portrayals of the character. He plays the clerk with a jaunty, song-and-dance man air. The Ghost of Christmas Present, standing twice Scrooge’s height, commands him to “Come over here you weird little man.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carol51.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"alistair sim as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 8:\u003c/b> \u003ci>Scrooge\u003c/i>, 1951, Renown Pictures; Director: Brian Desmond Hurst, Alastair Sim as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: I would kill to be able to watch \u003ci>Goodfellas\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Considered by many to be the \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/alastair-sims-scrooge-and_b_153378.html\">gold standard in \u003ci>Carol\u003c/i> adaptations\u003c/a>, the film starts out austerely sinister as Scrooge and a customer are shown standing dwarfed by a financial exchange. Heavy on shadows and mood, the picture hits hard on the theme of industrial capitalism, giving us a glimpse of Scrooge and Marley as partners in rapaciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sim does an admirable job embodying the spirit of petty hardheartedness. But the film loses points for playing the Tiny Tim card early, and a snivelling Cratchit and shrill, singularly unfrightening Marley don’t help either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given that this is coming near the end of my run, when only a Tiny Tim in purple spandex could surprise, congratulations 1951 British version, you’re the runner-up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana\u003c/i>: Adds the the death of Scrooge’s mother at childbirth as the psychological reason for his inhumanity. Includes a scene from the book in which the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals beneath his robe a forlorn little boy and girl named Ignorance and Want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carolchristmas.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"tori spelling as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 8:\u003c/b> \u003ci>A Carol Christmas\u003c/i>, 2003, Hallmark; Director: Matthew Irmas, Tori Spelling as the Scrooge character\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Kill me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know what? I’ve taken this too far. What’s next, \u003ci>Scrooge in Space\u003c/i>? Here we have another Hallmark Movie Channel spectacular, starring Tori Spelling, William Shatner, and Gary Coleman. The OctoMom wasn’t available. Spelling plays Carol Cartman, a nasty talk show host visited by the usual spirits. Well, not usual — one is Gary Coleman. Unlike Marley’s warning to Scrooge, it’s probably unnecessary to issue a caution about avoiding this thing at all costs. Remember, the average life expectancy in the U.S is just 692,000 hours, and these 92 minutes shouldn’t be spared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana: \u003c/i>I really don’t think that’s Tori Spelling’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.thegloss.com/2010/09/02/beauty/90210-tori-spellings-nose-through-the-years/gallery-page/9/\">original nose\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/disneycarol.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"disneys a christmas carol\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 9:\u003c/b> \u003ci>Disney’s A Christmas Carol\u003c/i>, 2009, Disney; Director: Robert Zemeckis, Jim Carrey as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Please kill me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s \u003ci>Disney’s\u003c/i> A Christmas Carol, chump. Given the company’s ever- expanding purchase on the nation’s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Disney\">collective fantasy life\u003c/a>, one wonders why it took so long to affix its possessive to Dickens’ classic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Directed by Robert Zemeckis, this is a 3D affair with a $200 million budget, created with computer animated motion capture technology, all so we can see the likes of Jim Carrey, Colin Firth, and Gary Oldman as cartoons. The box office is listed at $325 million worldwide; not bad, but lagging several 2009 animated offerings, including \u003ci>Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel\u003c/i>. Make of that what you will. Ironically, with all this high-tech and even considering some effects-driven thrills, the film is still the most faithful adaptation of the book I saw. It’s also the only version that gives us a Ghost of Christmas Past with light streaming from his head, as Dickens conceived. That character speaks with a disturbingly high-pitched, ghostly Irish accent, and one can imagine Disney execs wondering aloud, “Hey, Zemeckis, what about a wisecracking chipmunk here?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/Kihm2da45sE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>One also might speculate as to what Disney thought of paying the frenetic Jim Carrey to give such a restrained, almost reverential performance, devoid of pop culture references or fart jokes. But don’t get me wrong; the project is laudable if curiously staid. Perhaps some head of production got a visit by the ghosts of Mickey, Pluto, and Walt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003ci>Scroogiana:\u003c/i> “Hark the Herald Angels Sings” rears its Yuletide head about halfway through. Near the end, post-transformation, Scrooge says, “You can’t take it with you.” I like to think that’s a reference to Frank Capra, who would have had a field day with the source material. The book’s theme of family and community conviviality as bulwarks against poverty and despair are downright Capraesque. \u003ci>It’s a Wonderful Life’s\u003c/i> Mr. Potter, after all, is Scrooge by another name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 10: I’m Done\u003c/b>\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Can’t stop thinking about Tori Spelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My deadline draws nigh, so no more Scrooges. That doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to do on this important project. If you want to continue, there’s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Christmas_Carol\">\u003ci>An American Christmas Carol\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, starring Henry Winkler, also known as TV’s Fonzie. Plus the 1999 adaptation with Patrick Stewart. George C. Scott gave it a go in 1984, as well. Netflix those, why dontcha? And don’t forget, \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org/home/box_office/%20mainstage/carol.html\">ACT’s \u003ci>A Christmas Carol\u003c/i>\u003c/a> is in full swing. You ever hear the 1939 radio version narrated by Orson Welles? It’s \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/CampbellPlayhouseAChristmasCarol12241939\">on the Internet\u003c/a>!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you’re done, let me know what you think, You can reach me at\u003ca href=\"mailto:jbrooks@kqed.org\">jbrooks@ThisIsNoAssignmentForAJew.com\u003c/a>. Or just use the comment section below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>God help us, everyone.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 1: The Assignment\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Great news! KQED wants me to watch different versions of \u003ci>A Christmas Carol\u003c/i> and write an essay. What better way to ease into the Christmas season? Plus it gives me incentive to read the book, something I’ve always wanted to do! \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 2: The Book\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jesus, I think this is what they call “minor Dickens.” Am I crazy or does the author’s characteristic social concern and anti-capitalist sentiment coexist uneasily with his paean to Christmas? A little research reveals I’m not the only one with doubts. The English writer Richard Aldington said “the conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge is as full of cant as it is improbability.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not a spoiler, right? Most people know Scrooge and the three ghosts like they do Goldilocks and the Three Bears. That’s part of the problem in tackling Dickens’ tale: an overfamiliarity with the main character’s redemptive arc. In fact, if you’ve managed to avoid the story’s rudiments to date, you are to be congratulated for attaining the very height of cultural illiteracy. The story practically resides in the collective unconscious, and you don’t need to have taken a course on Victorian literature to have digested it. In fact, you might have picked it up while watching a stray \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClDfG07H8iA\">episode of \u003ci>The Odd Couple\u003c/i>\u003c/a> or even a Bugs Bunny cartoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xk2yc1\">\u003c/iframe>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>But for the extraterrestrials out there, we’ll recap: Ebenezer Scrooge, a banker and all-around horrible person, spends Christmas Eve lamenting the holiday while also espousing a sensitivity to the poor that would appall Marie Antoinette. After launching this one man War on Christmas, he suffers a nighttime haunting by his deceased ex-partner, Jacob Marley, festooned in a terrible chain as symbolic comeuppance for his sins on earth. Marley warns Scrooge that the way things are going, he too is going to need the services of a 24-hour, trans-dimensional locksmith. Three spirits will reinforce the message, Marley says, their visitations to come on succeeding nights. The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come then come a knockin’.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The unwelcome spirits take Scrooge on a journey through time, each event taking place on Christmas. Included in the temporal travelogue is a glimpse into the goings-on of the Cratchits, the family of Scrooge’s long-suffering clerk, Bob Cratchit, whose angelic son, Tiny Tim, appears to be dying or at least very sick. (From what, we don’t know, but he’s got a crutch.) Scrooge is finally shown his own unmourned death, and the entire experience convinces him to be more charitable, and to regard the celebration of Christmas as the ultimate expression of regard for your fellow man, at least until the first Black Friday stampede 150 years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote\">Like \u003ci>Star Trek\u003c/i>, one of the better stories where the main character spends most of the time in his pajamas.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>It’s a simple message, really, inscribed in the Bible: Don’t be a moneygrubbing prick, lest you lose your soul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While that’s always something worth considering, the moral of the story’s linkage to the Yuletide chafes against contemporary experience. And not even contemporary. Scottish author Margaret Oliphant wrote in 1871 that the novella showed that Dickens is “the first to find out the immense spiritual power of the Christmas turkey.” (That’s first-rate sarcasm, even today). The Christmas theme hasn’t gotten any easier to swallow over time. Never mind the commercialism of the season, how about its length? With all the music, store displays, and Amazon wish lists in full swing the moment the last Halloween candy is distributed, by the time Dec. 25 rolls around I’m actually \u003ci>rooting\u003c/i> for Scrooge to stay true to himself in the face of buttinsky ghosts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carolbook.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; width: 200px; float:left; margin-right: 10px;\" alt=\"a christmas carol, first edition\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>A Christmas Carol\u003c/i> the book is also marred by the eye-rolling melodrama of Tiny Tim and, as Oliphant alluded to, an epicurean sensibility amid what’s supposed to be a spiritual lesson. (The Ghost of Christmas Present sits atop “a kind of throne” made of “turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs…” The list goes on.) It’s also a bit binary in its characterizations: There’s Scrooge, who hates Christmas, and most everyone else, who reveres it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, this \u003ci>is\u003c/i> Dickens, so there’s plenty that compensates. Besides introducing the phrase, “Bah! Humbug,” a cultural contribution no human would deny, Grand Master Charlie D can flat out \u003ci>write\u003c/i>. His description of Scrooge, for instance:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;\"> …a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That sort of villainy is ready-made for manifestation off the page, and since the book was published in 1843, no generation of adaptors, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A_Christmas_Carol_adaptations\">across all forms of media\u003c/a>, has been able to resist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So let’s see what the movies have to offer….\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carol1938.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"reginald owen as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 3: The First Film:\u003c/b> \u003ci>A Christmas Carol\u003c/i>, 1938, MGM; Director: Edwin L. Marin, Reginald Owen as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Show me the movies!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We start out with a concise but pedestrian version of the tale. Owen’s not half-bad, but the well-fed character actor Gene Lockhart, built like a fireplug, is mysteriously cast as the poverty-stricken Bob Cratchit. Lots of extras mill about the Victorian London streets, also known as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.mgmbacklot.info/\">MGM backlot\u003c/a>, dimmed by a classic \u003ca href=\"http://io9.com/5955311/the-london-fog-that-killed-over-ten-thousand-people\">London “fog”\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote\">\u003ci>Scrooged\u003c/i> stinks like Christmas goose on New Year’s.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>A man losing his soul wasn’t enough in the way of dramatic tension for MGM, apparently, so the stakes have been upped with the early introduction of Tiny Tim, who doesn’t appear in the book until halfway through, and who really limps up a storm here. There’s also an added scene in which Cratchit joins some kids in a snowball fight and mistakenly knocks off Scrooge’s top hat, thus getting himself canned on Christmas Eve. Emotionalism abounds: cue the angelic music when Scrooge’s nephew gives his pro-Christmas speech, with Cratchit looking on like he’s got a severe crush on the man.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the ghosts, a translucent Leo G. Carroll is double-exposed into Scrooge’s room as Marley, The effects department, however, wasn’t quite up to recreating Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Past, “a strange figure — like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man,” according to the author, with a “bright clear jet of light” emanating from his head. Forget it, said Louis B. Mayer, or someone like him. Howzabout whatsername, you know, the one from the Andy Hardy films? That’s MGM starlet Ann Rutherford as the knockout ghost with blonde hair and curls. Her spiritual accoutrements include a star atop her hat and some sort of hospital gown; she looks like a strange nun making an ill-conceived guess as to appropriate attire for a night out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with \u003ci>Star Trek\u003c/i>, this is one of the better fictional works in which the main character spends most of the proceedings in his pajamas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003ci>Scroogiana:\u003c/i> In a two-shot with Lockhart, Owen says that Christmas is a “\u003ci>poor\u003c/i> excuse for \u003ci>picking\u003c/i> a man’s \u003ci>pocket\u003c/i> every year,” visibly spraying Lockhart with spit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carol1935.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"seymour hicks as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 4:\u003c/b> \u003ci>Scrooge\u003c/i>, 1935, Twickenham Studios; Director: Henry Edwards, Seymour Hicks as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Cautiously optimistic\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This starts with a bit more directorial flair than MGM’s workmanlike effort, as we first see Scrooge only from behind, building up the tension to the reveal of his mean old face. The film also has the virtue of a smaller, enfeebled Bob Cratchit, unlike MGM’s Chris Christie-in-mutton chops. Seymour Hicks captures the pettiness of Scrooge better than Reginald Owen, and the tragedy of Tiny Tim is also mercifully less exploited. Once again, there is fog.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the most striking thing is the skimping on ghosts. Marley is represented by just a voice, who explains to Scrooge, “only you can see me.” The Ghost of Christmas Present is also non-corporeal — just a blob of amorphous light. C’mon, get real. If I plunk down for \u003ci>Godzilla\u003c/i>, I want to see a giant, scaly reptile, y’know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all this is less affecting than even the MGM version, though not as sanitized and with some interesting touches. You even see Tiny Tim lying dead as his father hovers over his body — stick that in your holiday stocking. You also get one of Dickens’ best scenes, omitted from the American version: a trio of working class scavengers, who stole Scrooge’s things straight off his deathbed, selling them to a fence. They’re shot like evil spectres, genuine living ghouls. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana\u003c/i>: In this truncated 61-minute version, not only do you not get ghosts, you don’t get Tiny Tim’s famous novella-ending line: “God bless us, everyone.” (Scrooge says it instead.) You might as well take the “Rosebud” from Orson Welles’ lips at the beginning of \u003ci>Citizen Kane\u003c/i>. As in the 1935 film, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” gets the proceedings up and running. In one wholly unnecessary scene, some luminaries on Christmas Eve regale Her Majesty with “God Save the Queen.” So money for that, but not Marley’s ghost?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carolmurray.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"bill murray as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 5:\u003c/b> \u003ci>Scrooged\u003c/i>, 1988, Paramount; Director: Richard Donner, Bill Murray as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Give me something to work with here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With so many helpings of the same tale, I’m feeling a bit stuffed. It’s like every day is Christmas, minus the presents. What better antidote to our story’s earnest heart than a Bill Murray meta-Scrooge vehicle? The many shades of irony Murray can paint can be one of the pleasures of modern cinema. Let’s see what we have here…. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. This one stinks like Christmas goose on New Year’s. Murray plays the head of a TV network putting on a live \u003ci>Christmas Carol\u003c/i> special with Buddy Hackett as Scrooge, Jamie Farr as Bob Cratchit, and gold medal gymnast Mary Lou Retton as Tiny Tim. It’s a funny concept derailed by poor execution. Murray’s character travels the same arc as in the much better \u003ci>Groundhog Day\u003c/i>. But he’s off his game here, going all-out-bastard with little of the knowing slyness that often makes his performances intriguingly elliptical. The story is a mess, and the addition of a present day love interest breaks the parallelism to Dickens. From the sets to the script, the entire production is too broad to make the satire work. This is superficial subversiveness, minus any new wrinkle on the ostensible dichotomy between maliciousness and Christmas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also ridiculously sentimental, as Murray hijacks his own show, a la \u003ci>Network\u003c/i>, to give an anodyne speech about love or something or other. The film ends with Murray and the entire cast singing “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.” With its ’80s aesthetic in full tacky bloom, the film seems even more dated than the 1935 version. How dated? There’s product placement for Tab everywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana:\u003c/i>David Johansen, the lead singer of the proto-punk band New York Dolls, adds some zest as one of the ghosts. Scrooge’s famous denial of Marley’s existence, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato,” is changed to, “You’re a hallucination brought on by alcohol, Russian vodka, poisoned by Chernobyl.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carolgrammer.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"kelseu grammer as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 6:\u003c/b> \u003ci>A Christmas Carol: The Musical\u003c/i> 2004; Hallmark; Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman, Kelsey Grammer as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Desperate\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Really, Western Civilization? I didn’t think it could get much worse than Bill Murray singing a schmaltzy song unironically. I caught this made-for-TV movie on the Hallmark Movie Channel, which I’m apparently paying for as part of my cable bundle. This one’s based on the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%20A_Christmas_Carol_%281994_musical%29\">stage musical of the same name\u003c/a>. Kelsey Grammer is in full \u003ci>Acting!\u003c/i> mode; he portrays Scrooge like an elderly Frasier Crane. Grammer stinks at playing a miserable old bastard, really taking the dick out of Dickens. The whole thing is overlit and dripping with non- atmosphere, bad accents, forgettable songs, lousy choreography, and an antiseptic set. Jane Krakowski, two years away from her role as Jenna Maroney in \u003ci>30 Rock\u003c/i>, lends her pipes to the kind of ludicrous project in which that character would often find herself cast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fictional Jamie Farr/Buddy Hackett version would play less like parody. Only a minor obsessive compulsive disorder kept my hand off the fast forward button.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003ci>Scroogiana\u003c/i>: Geraldine Chaplin, who appeared in \u003ci>Doctor Zhivago\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Nashville\u003c/i>, once played Mother Theresa, and is the daughter of one of the most important cinematic figures in history, is here seen flouncing about in a Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pantomime that’s frightening for all the wrong reasons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carol1970.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"albert finney as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Day 7: \u003ci>Scrooge\u003c/i>, 1970, Cinema Center Films; Director: Ronald Neame, Albert Finney as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: They’re not paying me enough for this thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> I hereby declare this musical version to be the most entertaining, intelligent, and inventive of the lot. So don’t believe the haters. (I’m looking at you, Pauline Kael.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one does a more incisive job with the lead character than Albert Finney, who applies a little modern acting technique to a 19th century caricature. Rather than the film inventing a psychological antecedent for Scrooge’s meanness, Finney explains it through his interpretation of the younger Scrooge, playing a remote and brooding man, not innately evil, but on the verge of letting his aloofness overwhelm his love. Finney’s Scrooge is less the dualistic character of most portrayals; he is alternately submissive, cranky, gleeful, self-pitying, rueful, and tender. I daresay he improves on the book by portraying Scrooge’s transformation as gradual and grudging; Dickens had Scrooge converted to a state of contrition by the time Christmas Present intrudes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cobject width=\"400\" height=\"325\" id=\"ep\">\u003cparam name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\">\u003cparam name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\">\u003cparam name=\"movie\" value=\"http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/cvp/container/mediaroom_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=217840\">\u003cparam name=\"bgcolor\" value=\"#000000\">\u003cembed src=\"http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/cvp/container/mediaroom_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=217840\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" bgcolor=\"#000000\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" width=\"400\" height=\"325\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>After Finney, the best thing here is \u003ca href=\"http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/217840/Scrooge-Movie-Clip-Marley.html\">Alec Guinness as Marley\u003c/a>, one of the cooler ghosts on celluloid. He float-walks into the room, then sways and bobs like he’s moving against the tide. His chain, lockbox, and enormous keys fly in all directions as he rises to the ceiling in anger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Believe it or not, this is a moving film, especially for a musical. There’s a real pathos in Scrooge futilely trying to stop his former self, a shadow of the past, from letting his fiance walk out on him forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana:\u003c/i> Actor David Collins as Bob Cratchit avoids the toadying woefulness that afflicts most of the other portrayals of the character. He plays the clerk with a jaunty, song-and-dance man air. The Ghost of Christmas Present, standing twice Scrooge’s height, commands him to “Come over here you weird little man.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carol51.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"alistair sim as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 8:\u003c/b> \u003ci>Scrooge\u003c/i>, 1951, Renown Pictures; Director: Brian Desmond Hurst, Alastair Sim as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: I would kill to be able to watch \u003ci>Goodfellas\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Considered by many to be the \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/alastair-sims-scrooge-and_b_153378.html\">gold standard in \u003ci>Carol\u003c/i> adaptations\u003c/a>, the film starts out austerely sinister as Scrooge and a customer are shown standing dwarfed by a financial exchange. Heavy on shadows and mood, the picture hits hard on the theme of industrial capitalism, giving us a glimpse of Scrooge and Marley as partners in rapaciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sim does an admirable job embodying the spirit of petty hardheartedness. But the film loses points for playing the Tiny Tim card early, and a snivelling Cratchit and shrill, singularly unfrightening Marley don’t help either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given that this is coming near the end of my run, when only a Tiny Tim in purple spandex could surprise, congratulations 1951 British version, you’re the runner-up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana\u003c/i>: Adds the the death of Scrooge’s mother at childbirth as the psychological reason for his inhumanity. Includes a scene from the book in which the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals beneath his robe a forlorn little boy and girl named Ignorance and Want.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/carolchristmas.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"tori spelling as scrooge\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 8:\u003c/b> \u003ci>A Carol Christmas\u003c/i>, 2003, Hallmark; Director: Matthew Irmas, Tori Spelling as the Scrooge character\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Kill me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know what? I’ve taken this too far. What’s next, \u003ci>Scrooge in Space\u003c/i>? Here we have another Hallmark Movie Channel spectacular, starring Tori Spelling, William Shatner, and Gary Coleman. The OctoMom wasn’t available. Spelling plays Carol Cartman, a nasty talk show host visited by the usual spirits. Well, not usual — one is Gary Coleman. Unlike Marley’s warning to Scrooge, it’s probably unnecessary to issue a caution about avoiding this thing at all costs. Remember, the average life expectancy in the U.S is just 692,000 hours, and these 92 minutes shouldn’t be spared.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Scroogiana: \u003c/i>I really don’t think that’s Tori Spelling’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.thegloss.com/2010/09/02/beauty/90210-tori-spellings-nose-through-the-years/gallery-page/9/\">original nose\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/10/disneycarol.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"disneys a christmas carol\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 9:\u003c/b> \u003ci>Disney’s A Christmas Carol\u003c/i>, 2009, Disney; Director: Robert Zemeckis, Jim Carrey as Scrooge\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Please kill me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s \u003ci>Disney’s\u003c/i> A Christmas Carol, chump. Given the company’s ever- expanding purchase on the nation’s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Disney\">collective fantasy life\u003c/a>, one wonders why it took so long to affix its possessive to Dickens’ classic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Directed by Robert Zemeckis, this is a 3D affair with a $200 million budget, created with computer animated motion capture technology, all so we can see the likes of Jim Carrey, Colin Firth, and Gary Oldman as cartoons. The box office is listed at $325 million worldwide; not bad, but lagging several 2009 animated offerings, including \u003ci>Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel\u003c/i>. Make of that what you will. Ironically, with all this high-tech and even considering some effects-driven thrills, the film is still the most faithful adaptation of the book I saw. It’s also the only version that gives us a Ghost of Christmas Past with light streaming from his head, as Dickens conceived. That character speaks with a disturbingly high-pitched, ghostly Irish accent, and one can imagine Disney execs wondering aloud, “Hey, Zemeckis, what about a wisecracking chipmunk here?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/Kihm2da45sE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>One also might speculate as to what Disney thought of paying the frenetic Jim Carrey to give such a restrained, almost reverential performance, devoid of pop culture references or fart jokes. But don’t get me wrong; the project is laudable if curiously staid. Perhaps some head of production got a visit by the ghosts of Mickey, Pluto, and Walt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003ci>Scroogiana:\u003c/i> “Hark the Herald Angels Sings” rears its Yuletide head about halfway through. Near the end, post-transformation, Scrooge says, “You can’t take it with you.” I like to think that’s a reference to Frank Capra, who would have had a field day with the source material. The book’s theme of family and community conviviality as bulwarks against poverty and despair are downright Capraesque. \u003ci>It’s a Wonderful Life’s\u003c/i> Mr. Potter, after all, is Scrooge by another name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Day 10: I’m Done\u003c/b>\u003cbr>Personal emotional barometer: Can’t stop thinking about Tori Spelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My deadline draws nigh, so no more Scrooges. That doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to do on this important project. If you want to continue, there’s \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Christmas_Carol\">\u003ci>An American Christmas Carol\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, starring Henry Winkler, also known as TV’s Fonzie. Plus the 1999 adaptation with Patrick Stewart. George C. Scott gave it a go in 1984, as well. Netflix those, why dontcha? And don’t forget, \u003ca href=\"http://www.act-sf.org/home/box_office/%20mainstage/carol.html\">ACT’s \u003ci>A Christmas Carol\u003c/i>\u003c/a> is in full swing. You ever hear the 1939 radio version narrated by Orson Welles? It’s \u003ca href=\"https://archive.org/details/CampbellPlayhouseAChristmasCarol12241939\">on the Internet\u003c/a>!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you’re done, let me know what you think, You can reach me at\u003ca href=\"mailto:jbrooks@kqed.org\">jbrooks@ThisIsNoAssignmentForAJew.com\u003c/a>. Or just use the comment section below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>God help us, everyone.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Beyond Tinsel-town Traditions: 5 to Watch",
"headTitle": "Beyond Tinsel-town Traditions: 5 to Watch | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>If movies are indeed an escape, there’s no better time to disappear into the dark than in the frenetic run-up to Christmas. Of course, many people postpone this particular treat for the gift-giving day itself, as a family outing or, dare I say it, as a respite \u003ci>from\u003c/i> family. You’ll need no help finding the garishly wrapped would-be blockbusters, already blaring at you in television commercials. Here’s a selection of more sublime cinematic excursions departing in December to mind-realms unknown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/atberkeley.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"frederick wiseman at berkeley\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>At Berkeley\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The uncompromising documentary maker Frederick Wiseman has trained his lens on a vast spectrum of American institutions since his horrific 1967 exposé, \u003ci>Tititcut Follies\u003c/i>), blew the doors off a Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane. The reigning stalwart of cinema verité, Wiseman eschews narration, talking-head interviews and music — his films are monuments of observation comprised of real-time scenes and the occasional telling shot. His latest opus, \u003ci>At Berkeley\u003c/i>, is a four-hour immersion into the beleagured crown jewel of the University of California system. The most convenient way to see this important work is undoubtedly on KQED next year, but the best and certainly the soonest way is at the Roxie from December 6-12, 2013. Wiseman particpates in a Q&A via Skype on opening night. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.roxie.com/events/details.cfm?eventID=A557C1F3-0255-4F98-2069419DCBC72062\">more information\u003c/a> visit roxie.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/watercity.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"kim anno water city berkeley\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Water City, Berkeley\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Education is crucial to the future of our democracy, even as climate change threatens the future of our species. Kim Anno, whose talents extend to a panoply of media, contemplates rising sea levels in \u003ci>Water City, Berkeley\u003c/i>, a torrential filmed collaboration with local professional musicians and dancers backed by Berkeley High School Arts and Humanities Academy and Dance Productions students, Northgate High cheerleaders and members of Berkeley High’s women’s crew team (who assuredly know their way around the water). The film is accompanied by a live performance by sfSoundGroup (Matt Ingalls, Monica Scott and John Ingle) and a Greek chorus in a pair of shows on Saturday, December 7, 2013, at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.kala.org/artwork/water-city-berkeley-a-film-exploring-leisure-time-after-sea-levels-rise/\">more information\u003c/a> visit kala.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/charmingcouple.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"alex mackenzie this charming couple\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>This Charming Couple\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Film performance, aka live cinema, injects the static projection of images with the immediacy — and risk — that attends in-the-moment creation. One of this bubbling genre’s most celebrated pioneers, Canadian experimental film manipulator Alex MacKenzie, makes a rare S.F. appearance at the Exploratorium in a co-presentation with SF Cinematheque. Mackenzie employs two 16mm analytic projectors to slow, morph and freeze his imagery, conjuring the kind of ephemeral sensations one rarely encounters at the movies. He presents/performs three films, \u003ci>Intertidal\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Logbook\u003c/i> and \u003ci>This Charming Couple\u003c/i> as part of the wonderfully titled \u003ci>Teeming and Tenuous/Fleeting and Alive: Film Performances by Alex Mackenzie\u003c/i>, unspooling at the Exploratorium, Wednesday, December 11, 2013 at 7pm. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfcinematheque.org/screenings/teeming-and-tenuousfleeting-and-alive-film-performances-by-alex-mackenzie/\">more information\u003c/a> visit sfcinematheque.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/centuryago.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"a century ago\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking back is as important yet often more fun than looking forward, which accounts for the popularity of the \u003ci>A Century Ago\u003c/i> program staged every year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the California Film Institute at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. This year’s smorgasbord bears the alluring title \u003cb>The Final Reign of One-Reel Films\u003c/b> and recreates a 1913 night at the movies with a batch of shorts by or starring Mack Sennett, Lois Weber, D.W. Griffith, Mabel Normand and Lilliam Gish. A perennial highlight of \u003ci>A Century Ago\u003c/i> is Joe Rinaudo’s presentation of vintage movies on his restored hand-cranked projector — what we might call the great-grandfather of the live cinema shows of Alex Mackenzie and his contemporaries. One of the remarkable things about cinema is how often we are reminded of its beginnings, as an art form, as a technology and as a business. The curtain goes up on \u003ci>A Century Ago: Films of 1913\u003c/i> at 7pm, Thursday, December 12, 2013. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.cafilm.org/rfc/films/1948.html\">more information\u003c/a> visit cafilm.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/childrenofparadise.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"children of paradise\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Children of Paradise\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everyone seems to have a favorite flick they associate with the holidays, typically \u003ci>A Christmas Story\u003c/i>, \u003ci>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/i> or \u003ci>Bad Santa\u003c/i>. That trio will be all over your TV later this month, while the Castro has kindly booked several other films that have become associated with Yuletide or New Year’s. Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert’s brilliant and miraculous \u003ci>Children of Paradise\u003c/i> screens December 14, with the Capra-corn of \u003ci>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/i> (for those who accept no substitutes for the big-screen experience) on December 22. The Marx Brothers spread anarchy on December 30 with a double feature of \u003ci>A Night at the Opera\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Duck Soup\u003c/i>. Those who like new traditions, and a dash of cheap brandy in their eggnog, have already inked in \u003cb>Noir City Xmas\u003c/b> on December 22, and the devious seasonal pairing of \u003ci>Blast of Silence\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Christmas Eve\u003c/i>. No Bing Crosby, alas. You’re on your own to track down \u003ci>Holiday Inn\u003c/i>. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.castrotheatre.com/calendar.htm\">more information\u003c/a> visit castrotheatre.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If movies are indeed an escape, there’s no better time to disappear into the dark than in the frenetic run-up to Christmas. Of course, many people postpone this particular treat for the gift-giving day itself, as a family outing or, dare I say it, as a respite \u003ci>from\u003c/i> family. You’ll need no help finding the garishly wrapped would-be blockbusters, already blaring at you in television commercials. Here’s a selection of more sublime cinematic excursions departing in December to mind-realms unknown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/atberkeley.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"frederick wiseman at berkeley\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>At Berkeley\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The uncompromising documentary maker Frederick Wiseman has trained his lens on a vast spectrum of American institutions since his horrific 1967 exposé, \u003ci>Tititcut Follies\u003c/i>), blew the doors off a Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane. The reigning stalwart of cinema verité, Wiseman eschews narration, talking-head interviews and music — his films are monuments of observation comprised of real-time scenes and the occasional telling shot. His latest opus, \u003ci>At Berkeley\u003c/i>, is a four-hour immersion into the beleagured crown jewel of the University of California system. The most convenient way to see this important work is undoubtedly on KQED next year, but the best and certainly the soonest way is at the Roxie from December 6-12, 2013. Wiseman particpates in a Q&A via Skype on opening night. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.roxie.com/events/details.cfm?eventID=A557C1F3-0255-4F98-2069419DCBC72062\">more information\u003c/a> visit roxie.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/watercity.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"kim anno water city berkeley\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Water City, Berkeley\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Education is crucial to the future of our democracy, even as climate change threatens the future of our species. Kim Anno, whose talents extend to a panoply of media, contemplates rising sea levels in \u003ci>Water City, Berkeley\u003c/i>, a torrential filmed collaboration with local professional musicians and dancers backed by Berkeley High School Arts and Humanities Academy and Dance Productions students, Northgate High cheerleaders and members of Berkeley High’s women’s crew team (who assuredly know their way around the water). The film is accompanied by a live performance by sfSoundGroup (Matt Ingalls, Monica Scott and John Ingle) and a Greek chorus in a pair of shows on Saturday, December 7, 2013, at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.kala.org/artwork/water-city-berkeley-a-film-exploring-leisure-time-after-sea-levels-rise/\">more information\u003c/a> visit kala.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/charmingcouple.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"alex mackenzie this charming couple\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>This Charming Couple\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Film performance, aka live cinema, injects the static projection of images with the immediacy — and risk — that attends in-the-moment creation. One of this bubbling genre’s most celebrated pioneers, Canadian experimental film manipulator Alex MacKenzie, makes a rare S.F. appearance at the Exploratorium in a co-presentation with SF Cinematheque. Mackenzie employs two 16mm analytic projectors to slow, morph and freeze his imagery, conjuring the kind of ephemeral sensations one rarely encounters at the movies. He presents/performs three films, \u003ci>Intertidal\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Logbook\u003c/i> and \u003ci>This Charming Couple\u003c/i> as part of the wonderfully titled \u003ci>Teeming and Tenuous/Fleeting and Alive: Film Performances by Alex Mackenzie\u003c/i>, unspooling at the Exploratorium, Wednesday, December 11, 2013 at 7pm. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfcinematheque.org/screenings/teeming-and-tenuousfleeting-and-alive-film-performances-by-alex-mackenzie/\">more information\u003c/a> visit sfcinematheque.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/centuryago.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"a century ago\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking back is as important yet often more fun than looking forward, which accounts for the popularity of the \u003ci>A Century Ago\u003c/i> program staged every year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the California Film Institute at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. This year’s smorgasbord bears the alluring title \u003cb>The Final Reign of One-Reel Films\u003c/b> and recreates a 1913 night at the movies with a batch of shorts by or starring Mack Sennett, Lois Weber, D.W. Griffith, Mabel Normand and Lilliam Gish. A perennial highlight of \u003ci>A Century Ago\u003c/i> is Joe Rinaudo’s presentation of vintage movies on his restored hand-cranked projector — what we might call the great-grandfather of the live cinema shows of Alex Mackenzie and his contemporaries. One of the remarkable things about cinema is how often we are reminded of its beginnings, as an art form, as a technology and as a business. The curtain goes up on \u003ci>A Century Ago: Films of 1913\u003c/i> at 7pm, Thursday, December 12, 2013. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.cafilm.org/rfc/films/1948.html\">more information\u003c/a> visit cafilm.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/12/02/childrenofparadise.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"children of paradise\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Children of Paradise\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everyone seems to have a favorite flick they associate with the holidays, typically \u003ci>A Christmas Story\u003c/i>, \u003ci>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/i> or \u003ci>Bad Santa\u003c/i>. That trio will be all over your TV later this month, while the Castro has kindly booked several other films that have become associated with Yuletide or New Year’s. Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert’s brilliant and miraculous \u003ci>Children of Paradise\u003c/i> screens December 14, with the Capra-corn of \u003ci>It’s a Wonderful Life\u003c/i> (for those who accept no substitutes for the big-screen experience) on December 22. The Marx Brothers spread anarchy on December 30 with a double feature of \u003ci>A Night at the Opera\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Duck Soup\u003c/i>. Those who like new traditions, and a dash of cheap brandy in their eggnog, have already inked in \u003cb>Noir City Xmas\u003c/b> on December 22, and the devious seasonal pairing of \u003ci>Blast of Silence\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Christmas Eve\u003c/i>. No Bing Crosby, alas. You’re on your own to track down \u003ci>Holiday Inn\u003c/i>. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.castrotheatre.com/calendar.htm\">more information\u003c/a> visit castrotheatre.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "8 Ways to Conduct Your Thanksgiving Dinner, According to Movies",
"headTitle": "8 Ways to Conduct Your Thanksgiving Dinner, According to Movies | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Due to a rare synchronicity this year between the Jewish calendar and the Gregorian calendar, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah briefly overlap. It has been called \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Thanksgivukkah\">“Thanksgivukkah.”\u003c/a> It hasn’t happened since 1888, which is right around the time movies were being invented, and \u003ca href=\"http://jonathanmizrahi.blogspot.com/2013/01/hanukkah-and-thanksgiving-once-in.html\">it won’t happen again\u003c/a> for 77,798 years, by which time all bountiful celebrations of religious freedom will be abstracted way beyond recognition, and Thanksgiving movies and lists thereof will be equally ubiquitous. In the meantime, here are a few movie-endorsed rituals with which you may wish to celebrate the hybrid-holiday season, or at least endure it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Stuff\u003c/b> the house with family and friends, don a cozy sweater, and resume pining for your wife’s sister as you have been for months. (Not recommended.) As seen in: \u003ci>Hannah and Her Sisters\u003c/i> (1986), perhaps the ultimate Thanksgivukkah movie because it’s bracketed by Thanksgiving scenes but also is a Woody Allen classic so you can think of it as a Jewish holiday too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqH1MaU-fLQ&w=480&h=360]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Travel\u003c/b> for three grueling days with an irritating stranger, figure out that he’s all alone in this world without you, feel guilty, rescue him, and bring him home to meet the family. (Not recommended unless the stranger is the late John Candy.) As seen in: \u003ci>Planes, Trains and Automobiles\u003c/i> (1987), a cherishable John Hughes comedy with Steve Martin as an uptight executive and Candy as a gregarious salesman, stuck together on an obstacle-laden trek from New York to Chicago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPJzNNpUFsU&w=480&h=270]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Host\u003c/b> an intimate holiday dinner with three of the men in your life, like some scene from \u003ci>The Bachelorette\u003c/i>, but much realer. (Recommended with caution.) As seen in: \u003ci>She’s Gotta Have It\u003c/i>, Spike Lee’s vital, hilarious 1986 feature debut, which happened also to be a feminist sex comedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKcQnxHkY3U&w=480&h=270]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>4. Make\u003c/b> the homeless black teenager you’ve adopted feel welcome in your well-off white family, so as to then help him find his calling on the football field. (Recommended if circumstances allow.) As seen in: \u003ci>The Blind Side\u003c/i> (2009), a Sandra Bullock movie adapted from Berkeley author Michael Lewis’ book, and a true story before that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agidYAqGOl8&w=480&h=270]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>5. Escalate\u003c/b> the tension of your ill-advised family reunion by accidentally-on-purpose flinging a turkey carcass into your sister’s lap, snapping a photo of her horrified reaction, and then asking if in fact she’s descended from baboons. (Recommended for Robert Downey Jr. only.) As seen in: \u003ci>Home for the Holidays\u003c/i> (1995), second-time director Jodie Foster’s relatively rosy portrait of drolly hellish family festivities, also starring Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft, Claire Danes, Charles Durning, and even Steve Guttenberg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egWFWloosog&w=480&h=270]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>6. Give\u003c/b> a sort of downer toast in which you inform your assembled guests — all friends, no family — that they make you feel old, then repeatedly remind them that time slips away from all of us. (Recommended.) As seen in: Judd Apatow’s \u003ci>Funny People\u003c/i> (2009), in which a depressed, friendless, and perhaps terminally ill comedian played by Adam Sandler hires an assistant, played by Seth Rogen, to write jokes for and take care of him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8CPTHEAfJc&w=480&h=270]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>7. Subvert\u003c/b> the saying of grace entirely, to protest the whole damn thing and tell bitter truths. (Recommended in the event of heavy angst brought on by loveless, negligent, key-party-going parents.) As seen in: \u003ci>The Ice Storm\u003c/i>, Ang Lee’s 1997 film adaptation of Rick Moody’s novel about a rather bitterly dysfunctional family in upper-crust 1970s Connecticut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA0stGEfhmw&w=480&h=360]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>8. Try\u003c/b> to find something true but also nice to say. (Recommended.) As seen in: \u003ci>Pieces of April\u003c/i>. Before \u003ci>Drunk History\u003c/i>, after \u003ci>The Ice Storm\u003c/i>, there was this 2003 indie movie in which Katie Holmes endures familiar holiday ordeals and finds herself fumbling through a well-intentioned deconstruction of what it all means.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O6jkGhulsM&w=480&h=360]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "One for each night of Hanukkah, because this year it starts on Thanksgiving, or, if you will, \"Thanksgivukkah.\"",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Due to a rare synchronicity this year between the Jewish calendar and the Gregorian calendar, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah briefly overlap. It has been called \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Thanksgivukkah\">“Thanksgivukkah.”\u003c/a> It hasn’t happened since 1888, which is right around the time movies were being invented, and \u003ca href=\"http://jonathanmizrahi.blogspot.com/2013/01/hanukkah-and-thanksgiving-once-in.html\">it won’t happen again\u003c/a> for 77,798 years, by which time all bountiful celebrations of religious freedom will be abstracted way beyond recognition, and Thanksgiving movies and lists thereof will be equally ubiquitous. In the meantime, here are a few movie-endorsed rituals with which you may wish to celebrate the hybrid-holiday season, or at least endure it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>1. Stuff\u003c/b> the house with family and friends, don a cozy sweater, and resume pining for your wife’s sister as you have been for months. (Not recommended.) As seen in: \u003ci>Hannah and Her Sisters\u003c/i> (1986), perhaps the ultimate Thanksgivukkah movie because it’s bracketed by Thanksgiving scenes but also is a Woody Allen classic so you can think of it as a Jewish holiday too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gqH1MaU-fLQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gqH1MaU-fLQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>2. Travel\u003c/b> for three grueling days with an irritating stranger, figure out that he’s all alone in this world without you, feel guilty, rescue him, and bring him home to meet the family. (Not recommended unless the stranger is the late John Candy.) As seen in: \u003ci>Planes, Trains and Automobiles\u003c/i> (1987), a cherishable John Hughes comedy with Steve Martin as an uptight executive and Candy as a gregarious salesman, stuck together on an obstacle-laden trek from New York to Chicago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/pPJzNNpUFsU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/pPJzNNpUFsU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>3. Host\u003c/b> an intimate holiday dinner with three of the men in your life, like some scene from \u003ci>The Bachelorette\u003c/i>, but much realer. (Recommended with caution.) As seen in: \u003ci>She’s Gotta Have It\u003c/i>, Spike Lee’s vital, hilarious 1986 feature debut, which happened also to be a feminist sex comedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/DKcQnxHkY3U'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/DKcQnxHkY3U'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>4. Make\u003c/b> the homeless black teenager you’ve adopted feel welcome in your well-off white family, so as to then help him find his calling on the football field. (Recommended if circumstances allow.) As seen in: \u003ci>The Blind Side\u003c/i> (2009), a Sandra Bullock movie adapted from Berkeley author Michael Lewis’ book, and a true story before that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/agidYAqGOl8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/agidYAqGOl8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>5. Escalate\u003c/b> the tension of your ill-advised family reunion by accidentally-on-purpose flinging a turkey carcass into your sister’s lap, snapping a photo of her horrified reaction, and then asking if in fact she’s descended from baboons. (Recommended for Robert Downey Jr. only.) As seen in: \u003ci>Home for the Holidays\u003c/i> (1995), second-time director Jodie Foster’s relatively rosy portrait of drolly hellish family festivities, also starring Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft, Claire Danes, Charles Durning, and even Steve Guttenberg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/egWFWloosog'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/egWFWloosog'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>6. Give\u003c/b> a sort of downer toast in which you inform your assembled guests — all friends, no family — that they make you feel old, then repeatedly remind them that time slips away from all of us. (Recommended.) As seen in: Judd Apatow’s \u003ci>Funny People\u003c/i> (2009), in which a depressed, friendless, and perhaps terminally ill comedian played by Adam Sandler hires an assistant, played by Seth Rogen, to write jokes for and take care of him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/p8CPTHEAfJc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/p8CPTHEAfJc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>7. Subvert\u003c/b> the saying of grace entirely, to protest the whole damn thing and tell bitter truths. (Recommended in the event of heavy angst brought on by loveless, negligent, key-party-going parents.) As seen in: \u003ci>The Ice Storm\u003c/i>, Ang Lee’s 1997 film adaptation of Rick Moody’s novel about a rather bitterly dysfunctional family in upper-crust 1970s Connecticut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/OA0stGEfhmw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/OA0stGEfhmw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>8. Try\u003c/b> to find something true but also nice to say. (Recommended.) As seen in: \u003ci>Pieces of April\u003c/i>. Before \u003ci>Drunk History\u003c/i>, after \u003ci>The Ice Storm\u003c/i>, there was this 2003 indie movie in which Katie Holmes endures familiar holiday ordeals and finds herself fumbling through a well-intentioned deconstruction of what it all means.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/5O6jkGhulsM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/5O6jkGhulsM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Bay Area Relationships, Through a Multitude of Lenses",
"headTitle": "Bay Area Relationships, Through a Multitude of Lenses | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>We’re all fond of saying that living in the Bay Area isn’t like living anywhere else in the country. It’s true most days, but we’re regularly reminded that all American cities share certain problems, and all suburbs are similar in some ephemeral way. That paradoxical coexistence of uniqueness and universality that is our usual condition comprises the unofficial, underlying theme of this year’s Cinema By the Bay festival, presented by the San Francisco Film Society at the Roxie Theater, November 22-24, 2013.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The weekend-compressed lineup of 10 programs includes narrative features, documentaries and shorts that span the Bay Area from a golden Sonoma County hillside to a rainy-day crowd in the Castro. The common denominator, to the degree I can identify one, is a freshness, diversity and quirkiness to the central relationships that feels specific to the region that claims San Francisco and Oakland as its hubs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opting to launch the series with nail-biting entertainment rather than consciousness-raising drama, Cinema By the Bay starts with a spooky visit to a God-fearing Appalachian clan. Butcher Brother Mitchell Altieri’s \u003ci>Holy Ghost People\u003c/i> (Friday, Nov. 22, 7pm) follows a young woman and a hard-drinking vet as they insinuate their way into a snake-handling cult, all in hopes of rescuing a vanished relative. After a night of soothing dreams, Banker White and Anna Fitch’s personal documentary, \u003ci>The Genius of Marian\u003c/i> (Saturday, Nov. 23, noon), effectively sets the tone for the day with a gutsy, moody foray into self-examination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/redemptiontrail.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Redemption Trail\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Britta Sjogren’s \u003ci>Redemption Trail\u003c/i> (Saturday, Nov. 23 at 2:15pm), a kind of contemporary feminist Western, imagines two traumatized women of vastly different backgrounds who land in the same safe space. Tess (Lisa Gay Hamilton) manages a hilly, isolated Sonoma vineyard; her contact with other people, by design, is minimal and cursory. She’s always in control, taking care to wall off the childhood memory of cops shooting her Black Panther dad to death in his home. By contrast, Anna (Lily Rabe) is a self-assured gynecologist who thrives on people and lives with her husband (Hamish Linklater) and young daughter in affluent, organic bliss in the Oakland hills. When a tragedy pulls the trap-door on Anna’s life, human contact is the last thing she wants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Redemption Trail\u003c/i> is a journey of healing that attempts to blend, with uneven results, the contemplative rhythms of a character-driven story, the multicultural linkages of a John Sayles film and the dramatic exigencies of most narrative films (a subplot involves pot-growing and related violence). Highly controlling in their own ways, Tess and Anna don’t hurdle their obstacles so much as extend tentative visiting privileges to the other person. They’re not agents of each other’s recuperation, however, so much as fellow travelers on a dusty, two-lane road that might just intersect with the highway to big-city assimilation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/americanvagabond.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>American Vagabond\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the destination, and goal, of 19-year-old James and slightly older military vet Tyler, real-life lovers fleeing close-minded Chico for the gay mecca of the Castro in \u003ci>American Vagabond\u003c/i> (Saturday, Nov. 21, 4:30pm). Instead of a welcoming community, they’re hit with the chilly reality of unemployment and homelessness. Finnish filmmaker Susanna Helke’s feature-length documentary is constructed from slivers of atmospheric on-the-fly footage and shards of James’ narration, and augmented with fleeting encounters with other young, homeless gay men in Golden Gate Park and on the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>American Vagabond\u003c/i> emanates from an America where parents can’t reconcile ingrained religious beliefs with their homosexual, flesh-and-blood children. James’ folks eventually do, but it’s not the happy ending any of them (or the viewer) could have anticipated. To her credit, Helke doesn’t pander to a European TV audience’s appetite for reality TV-style ugliness or sordidness. She is handcuffed by pivotal events involving James that take place off-camera, though, and which not only must be conveyed via narration but necessitate a shift in the film’s point of view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saturday night and a chunk of Sunday is given over to programs saluting the East Bay dance-video production company YAK Films (Sat., Nov. 23, 9:30pm), the alumni of S.F. State’s cinema department (Sun., November 24, noon) and this year’s inductees into the Film Society’s Essential SF pantheon. Tip your chapeau to Richard Beggs, Joan Chen, Nathaniel Dorsky, David Hegarty, Anita Monga and Kontent Films Sunday, November 24 at 5pm in a free event open to the public (RSVP to gga@sffs.org).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/dearsidewalk.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The weekend wraps with \u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i>, Jake Oelman’s 21st-century screwball comedy. Deadpan instead of farcical, faux-hip rather than merely ironic, and defiantly resistant to the not-so-easy resolution of a happy-ever-after ending, \u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i> pairs Gardner, a vaguely geeky mail carrier (Joseph Mazzello) on the cusp of 24, with free-spirited, 40-something divorcee Paige (Michelle Forbes) who’s just moved into a house on his route. That description may put you in the mood for a wildly anarchic take on Jonathan Demme’s 1986 hoot, \u003ci>Something Wild\u003c/i>, but Oelman and writer Jake Limbert have much more modest goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might think the choice of Gardner’s occupation is more than a tad retro, but the movie tackles it head on and has a good deal of fun with it. (If delivering letters is an anachronism, wait ’til you get a gander at Ben Stiller’s job in the misguided \u003ci>The Secret Life of Walter Mitty\u003c/i>, opening December 25.) Indeed, \u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i> is charming, affectionate and winning as long as the characters (both lead and supporting) continue to develop and expand. At around the 55-minute mark, however, standard screenplay structure demands a falling out between the cross-generational paramours. Unfortunately, Paige abruptly stops being fun while Gardner becomes an even more reactive and passive figure than he’s been heretofore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In for a dime, in for a dollar, so you’ll stick with \u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i> and its star-crossed couple to the end. Alas, there is nothing about Gardner and Paige, or the indeterminate and generic neighborhood they cohabitate, that speaks to any aspect of the Bay Area experience. In that regard, it’s an unfortunate note on which to close such a wide-ranging survey of regional filmmaking and local color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cinema By the Bay runs November 22-24, 2013 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://sffs.org/exhibition/Fall-Season/Cinema-by-the-Bay\">more information\u003c/a> visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>We’re all fond of saying that living in the Bay Area isn’t like living anywhere else in the country. It’s true most days, but we’re regularly reminded that all American cities share certain problems, and all suburbs are similar in some ephemeral way. That paradoxical coexistence of uniqueness and universality that is our usual condition comprises the unofficial, underlying theme of this year’s Cinema By the Bay festival, presented by the San Francisco Film Society at the Roxie Theater, November 22-24, 2013.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The weekend-compressed lineup of 10 programs includes narrative features, documentaries and shorts that span the Bay Area from a golden Sonoma County hillside to a rainy-day crowd in the Castro. The common denominator, to the degree I can identify one, is a freshness, diversity and quirkiness to the central relationships that feels specific to the region that claims San Francisco and Oakland as its hubs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opting to launch the series with nail-biting entertainment rather than consciousness-raising drama, Cinema By the Bay starts with a spooky visit to a God-fearing Appalachian clan. Butcher Brother Mitchell Altieri’s \u003ci>Holy Ghost People\u003c/i> (Friday, Nov. 22, 7pm) follows a young woman and a hard-drinking vet as they insinuate their way into a snake-handling cult, all in hopes of rescuing a vanished relative. After a night of soothing dreams, Banker White and Anna Fitch’s personal documentary, \u003ci>The Genius of Marian\u003c/i> (Saturday, Nov. 23, noon), effectively sets the tone for the day with a gutsy, moody foray into self-examination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/redemptiontrail.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Redemption Trail\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Britta Sjogren’s \u003ci>Redemption Trail\u003c/i> (Saturday, Nov. 23 at 2:15pm), a kind of contemporary feminist Western, imagines two traumatized women of vastly different backgrounds who land in the same safe space. Tess (Lisa Gay Hamilton) manages a hilly, isolated Sonoma vineyard; her contact with other people, by design, is minimal and cursory. She’s always in control, taking care to wall off the childhood memory of cops shooting her Black Panther dad to death in his home. By contrast, Anna (Lily Rabe) is a self-assured gynecologist who thrives on people and lives with her husband (Hamish Linklater) and young daughter in affluent, organic bliss in the Oakland hills. When a tragedy pulls the trap-door on Anna’s life, human contact is the last thing she wants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Redemption Trail\u003c/i> is a journey of healing that attempts to blend, with uneven results, the contemplative rhythms of a character-driven story, the multicultural linkages of a John Sayles film and the dramatic exigencies of most narrative films (a subplot involves pot-growing and related violence). Highly controlling in their own ways, Tess and Anna don’t hurdle their obstacles so much as extend tentative visiting privileges to the other person. They’re not agents of each other’s recuperation, however, so much as fellow travelers on a dusty, two-lane road that might just intersect with the highway to big-city assimilation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/americanvagabond.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>American Vagabond\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the destination, and goal, of 19-year-old James and slightly older military vet Tyler, real-life lovers fleeing close-minded Chico for the gay mecca of the Castro in \u003ci>American Vagabond\u003c/i> (Saturday, Nov. 21, 4:30pm). Instead of a welcoming community, they’re hit with the chilly reality of unemployment and homelessness. Finnish filmmaker Susanna Helke’s feature-length documentary is constructed from slivers of atmospheric on-the-fly footage and shards of James’ narration, and augmented with fleeting encounters with other young, homeless gay men in Golden Gate Park and on the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>American Vagabond\u003c/i> emanates from an America where parents can’t reconcile ingrained religious beliefs with their homosexual, flesh-and-blood children. James’ folks eventually do, but it’s not the happy ending any of them (or the viewer) could have anticipated. To her credit, Helke doesn’t pander to a European TV audience’s appetite for reality TV-style ugliness or sordidness. She is handcuffed by pivotal events involving James that take place off-camera, though, and which not only must be conveyed via narration but necessitate a shift in the film’s point of view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saturday night and a chunk of Sunday is given over to programs saluting the East Bay dance-video production company YAK Films (Sat., Nov. 23, 9:30pm), the alumni of S.F. State’s cinema department (Sun., November 24, noon) and this year’s inductees into the Film Society’s Essential SF pantheon. Tip your chapeau to Richard Beggs, Joan Chen, Nathaniel Dorsky, David Hegarty, Anita Monga and Kontent Films Sunday, November 24 at 5pm in a free event open to the public (RSVP to gga@sffs.org).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/dearsidewalk.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The weekend wraps with \u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i>, Jake Oelman’s 21st-century screwball comedy. Deadpan instead of farcical, faux-hip rather than merely ironic, and defiantly resistant to the not-so-easy resolution of a happy-ever-after ending, \u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i> pairs Gardner, a vaguely geeky mail carrier (Joseph Mazzello) on the cusp of 24, with free-spirited, 40-something divorcee Paige (Michelle Forbes) who’s just moved into a house on his route. That description may put you in the mood for a wildly anarchic take on Jonathan Demme’s 1986 hoot, \u003ci>Something Wild\u003c/i>, but Oelman and writer Jake Limbert have much more modest goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might think the choice of Gardner’s occupation is more than a tad retro, but the movie tackles it head on and has a good deal of fun with it. (If delivering letters is an anachronism, wait ’til you get a gander at Ben Stiller’s job in the misguided \u003ci>The Secret Life of Walter Mitty\u003c/i>, opening December 25.) Indeed, \u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i> is charming, affectionate and winning as long as the characters (both lead and supporting) continue to develop and expand. At around the 55-minute mark, however, standard screenplay structure demands a falling out between the cross-generational paramours. Unfortunately, Paige abruptly stops being fun while Gardner becomes an even more reactive and passive figure than he’s been heretofore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In for a dime, in for a dollar, so you’ll stick with \u003ci>Dear Sidewalk\u003c/i> and its star-crossed couple to the end. Alas, there is nothing about Gardner and Paige, or the indeterminate and generic neighborhood they cohabitate, that speaks to any aspect of the Bay Area experience. In that regard, it’s an unfortunate note on which to close such a wide-ranging survey of regional filmmaking and local color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cinema By the Bay runs November 22-24, 2013 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://sffs.org/exhibition/Fall-Season/Cinema-by-the-Bay\">more information\u003c/a> visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Roles Women Play: 'Beauty and Sacrifice' in Chinese Cinema",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>A trailer for the Pacific Film Archive’s latest film series, \u003cb>Beauty and Sacrifice: Images of Women in Chinese Cinema\u003c/b>, could run just a few seconds long, captured by a single, pained look of a female protagonist, looking longingly, and grieving wordlessly, to the sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program, starting this Friday and running until December 8, is a companion series to the Berkeley Art Museum’s exhibit, \u003ca href=\"http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/beauty_revealed\">Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting\u003c/a>. And like a painting, the selection of films reveals women dressed in fine clothes, though stifled under layers of propriety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three films star or are about legendary actress Ruan Lingyu, a champion of Shanghai cinema’s tragic, modern woman.These films feature single mothers down on their luck, but who envision themselves as part of an emerging class of independent women. They also clearly and unromantically illustrate the limitations of women during this time, who for all their self reliance and self-determination, had very few options available to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wu Yonggang’s 1934 silent film, \u003ci>The Goddess\u003c/i>, was originally conceived as an oil painting, inspired by both the misery and steely resolve of the prostitutes the director often passed on his way to work. The film, featuring Ruan Lingyu, reveals the woman’s struggle to survive and provide for her child as a virtuous one that brings its own unending stream of sorrows, including a mobster who stalks her and claims her as his property. Ruan’s classic move here is a look upwards to a Shanghai skyline that continually dims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/06/newwomen.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>New Women\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bleak narratives showing both the strengths and limitations of women, these films also champion virtuous mothers, who remain moral champions even when steeped in vice. In Cai Chusheng’s \u003ci>New Women\u003c/i> (1935) – one of Ruan Lingyu’s final films — the actress plays Wei Ming, a well-liked schoolteacher and burgeoning writer. But the settings for optimism have little place in a cinema of stark, disappointing reality. \u003ci>The Goddess\u003c/i> and \u003ci>New Women\u003c/i>, staples of Chinese cinema, have already etched out their thesis: Women — no matter how smart, accomplished, and independent they may be — are eventually reduced to their value and usefulness to men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the very men who long to be with her that end up being catalysts for her eventual demise. Wei Ming shrugs off the advances of a rich (and married) banker and also those of a potential newspaper employer, who later publishes an article exposing her shame. But beset by financial woes and an ailing (and secret) daughter, she finds that, in choosing the path of independence and self-sufficiency, she has very few options. Prostitution is her next move, and it’s one of desperation. New Women are, in this film, much the same as old women: fodder for men, whether it be for their highly anticipated book sales, or for their sensational news clips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/06/centerstage.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Center Stage\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ruan’s suicide at the height of her career – and only months after her onscreen suicide in \u003ci>New Women\u003c/i> — forever cemented her in memory as a star. Her life and times get the biopic treatment in Stanley Kwan’s \u003ci>Center Stage\u003c/i> (1992), starring Maggie Cheung. It’s an unconventional, Modernist biography — one that features documentary interviews with Ruan’s contemporaries, reenacted scenes, original film footage, and modern-day discussions with the actors portraying her and her contemporaries, discussing her motivations and life behind the scenes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the series is one focused on the role women play in Chinese cinema, Kwan’s film broadens the discussion, illuminating the role Ruan Lingyu played not only on screen, but in her real life, and in our imaginations, as a legend. It’s one that, not unlike her characters, was as a woman perpetually running away from men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/06/moodforlove.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>In the Mood for Love\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The series includes two additional films, \u003ci>In the Mood for Love\u003c/i> and \u003ci>The Arch\u003c/i>, staples and beloved films of Chinese Cinema. Wong Kar Wai’s universally acclaimed 2000 work, \u003ci>In the Mood for Love\u003c/i>, also stars Maggie Cheung, alongside Tony Leung Chiu Wai. Along with \u003ci>The Arch\u003c/i>, a 1969 precursor to the Hong Kong New Wave style, both films chronicle the silent sorrow of women trapped by their propriety. These women, unlike Ruan Lingyu’s characters, are not women saddled with poverty, or forced into prostitution, but like those women, they live as though they were born to bear their pain in silence. Their world, too, is a world of philandering men, one spent waiting to be given permission to experience life to the fullest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Beauty and Sacrifice: Images of Women in Chinese Cinema\u003c/b> runs through December 8, 2013 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/beautyandsacrifice\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit bampfa.berkeley.edu.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>A trailer for the Pacific Film Archive’s latest film series, \u003cb>Beauty and Sacrifice: Images of Women in Chinese Cinema\u003c/b>, could run just a few seconds long, captured by a single, pained look of a female protagonist, looking longingly, and grieving wordlessly, to the sky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program, starting this Friday and running until December 8, is a companion series to the Berkeley Art Museum’s exhibit, \u003ca href=\"http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/beauty_revealed\">Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting\u003c/a>. And like a painting, the selection of films reveals women dressed in fine clothes, though stifled under layers of propriety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three films star or are about legendary actress Ruan Lingyu, a champion of Shanghai cinema’s tragic, modern woman.These films feature single mothers down on their luck, but who envision themselves as part of an emerging class of independent women. They also clearly and unromantically illustrate the limitations of women during this time, who for all their self reliance and self-determination, had very few options available to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wu Yonggang’s 1934 silent film, \u003ci>The Goddess\u003c/i>, was originally conceived as an oil painting, inspired by both the misery and steely resolve of the prostitutes the director often passed on his way to work. The film, featuring Ruan Lingyu, reveals the woman’s struggle to survive and provide for her child as a virtuous one that brings its own unending stream of sorrows, including a mobster who stalks her and claims her as his property. Ruan’s classic move here is a look upwards to a Shanghai skyline that continually dims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/06/newwomen.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>New Women\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bleak narratives showing both the strengths and limitations of women, these films also champion virtuous mothers, who remain moral champions even when steeped in vice. In Cai Chusheng’s \u003ci>New Women\u003c/i> (1935) – one of Ruan Lingyu’s final films — the actress plays Wei Ming, a well-liked schoolteacher and burgeoning writer. But the settings for optimism have little place in a cinema of stark, disappointing reality. \u003ci>The Goddess\u003c/i> and \u003ci>New Women\u003c/i>, staples of Chinese cinema, have already etched out their thesis: Women — no matter how smart, accomplished, and independent they may be — are eventually reduced to their value and usefulness to men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the very men who long to be with her that end up being catalysts for her eventual demise. Wei Ming shrugs off the advances of a rich (and married) banker and also those of a potential newspaper employer, who later publishes an article exposing her shame. But beset by financial woes and an ailing (and secret) daughter, she finds that, in choosing the path of independence and self-sufficiency, she has very few options. Prostitution is her next move, and it’s one of desperation. New Women are, in this film, much the same as old women: fodder for men, whether it be for their highly anticipated book sales, or for their sensational news clips.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/06/centerstage.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Center Stage\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ruan’s suicide at the height of her career – and only months after her onscreen suicide in \u003ci>New Women\u003c/i> — forever cemented her in memory as a star. Her life and times get the biopic treatment in Stanley Kwan’s \u003ci>Center Stage\u003c/i> (1992), starring Maggie Cheung. It’s an unconventional, Modernist biography — one that features documentary interviews with Ruan’s contemporaries, reenacted scenes, original film footage, and modern-day discussions with the actors portraying her and her contemporaries, discussing her motivations and life behind the scenes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the series is one focused on the role women play in Chinese cinema, Kwan’s film broadens the discussion, illuminating the role Ruan Lingyu played not only on screen, but in her real life, and in our imaginations, as a legend. It’s one that, not unlike her characters, was as a woman perpetually running away from men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/06/moodforlove.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>In the Mood for Love\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The series includes two additional films, \u003ci>In the Mood for Love\u003c/i> and \u003ci>The Arch\u003c/i>, staples and beloved films of Chinese Cinema. Wong Kar Wai’s universally acclaimed 2000 work, \u003ci>In the Mood for Love\u003c/i>, also stars Maggie Cheung, alongside Tony Leung Chiu Wai. Along with \u003ci>The Arch\u003c/i>, a 1969 precursor to the Hong Kong New Wave style, both films chronicle the silent sorrow of women trapped by their propriety. These women, unlike Ruan Lingyu’s characters, are not women saddled with poverty, or forced into prostitution, but like those women, they live as though they were born to bear their pain in silence. Their world, too, is a world of philandering men, one spent waiting to be given permission to experience life to the fullest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Beauty and Sacrifice: Images of Women in Chinese Cinema\u003c/b> runs through December 8, 2013 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/beautyandsacrifice\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit bampfa.berkeley.edu.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Songs of the Self: SF Transgender Film Festival",
"headTitle": "Songs of the Self: SF Transgender Film Festival | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Now in its sixteenth year, the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival (formerly known as Tranny Fest) offers a mix of short and long-form films that celebrate the myriad experiences of people who are treated, when they are acknowledged at all, with disdain or murderous hate by society at large. One of festival’s co-founders, filmmaker Christopher Lee, committed suicide in December 2012 after years of struggling with depression and untreated mental illness. It is in his honor, and all those who seek recognition on their own terms, that this exciting collection of cinematic moments is presented.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opening the festival is a spate of short films, none of which surpass 20 minutes, but most certainly pack an emotional and intellectual punch.In \u003ci>The Fiction of the Fix\u003c/i> (Friday, November 8, 8pm, Roxie Theater), we witness actress Therese Garcia as the character August as she takes stock of previous failed relationships. But rather than wallowing in self pity and gallons of ice cream, she methodically conjures, falls in love with, and then squanders each relationship as the “perfection” of each partner gives way to all-too-human imperfection. The cycle is ritualistic, where it appears that August seeks something with each new paramour that simply can’t be called forth from the ether. Director Cathy Sitzes reinforces what we already know — partnerships, particularly the romantic kind, are messy affairs. The insight isn’t revelatory, but it is delivered here with ample charm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Making or discovering oneself is a prominent theme in many of the festival’s offerings. Just as Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” (1855) portrays “self” as both the seeking individual and an assembly of multitudes, so too do these films touch on the private and public experiences of forging an identity that fits. \u003ci>Performing Girl\u003c/i> features multi-talented Sri Lankan-American artist D’Lo and the story of how he came of age while navigating gender and identity questions, deeply entrenched cultural expectations, and the death of his sibling. D’Lo’s story will be familiar to many: knowing early in life that he did not “fit,” yet not knowing how to act as either male or female; the simultaneous joy and burden of shouldering parental dreams, and then mustering the will to live on his own terms. The film deftly combines animation, D’Lo’s hilarious live performances, and interviews with the artist and his parents, and reinforces the power of humor to inform difficult conversations. In \u003ci>Change Over Time\u003c/i>, Ewan Duarte recounts the experience of transitioning from a female to male identity, both physically and psychologically, though the introduction of testosterone, or “T”, to his body. Gorgeous imagery of natural settings is overlaid by Duarte’s narration, which is drawn from the audio journal he maintained as his transition took place. What’s fascinating is hearing Duarte’s voice deepen as the days and weeks progress after the introduction of testosterone. If you’re curious to know the intimate details, the thoughts and hopes of a person in transition, this is film is for you. (Friday, November 8, 8pm, Roxie Theater)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/05/gendergames.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"gender games\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Gender Games\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At age 51, Gabbi Ludwig returned to school in order to realize a long-held goal of playing collegiate basketball. According to NCAA rules, if an athlete’s gender changes, they are eligible to participate in a team sport for which their eligibility long ago expired. \u003ci>Gender Games\u003c/i> follows Gabbi through practices, made all the more grueling by age and time spent away from the sport, and interactions with her teammates and family. Gabbi and her partner wholly acknowledge the challenges posed by juggling work and school, family obligations, and one partner’s process of transition. They also stress that realizing Gabbi’s dream was absolutely worth the effort. The most heartening moments of this film come in watching Gabbi interact with her teammates. Not only was her skill and advantage as a 6-foot 7-inch player welcomed, Gabbi was wholly embraced… as a woman, who was once a man. That fact floored me, particularly because it demonstrates that we are capable of welcoming what is unfamiliar. Against the backdrop of collegiate and professional sports, which may generously be described as tacitly supporting rape culture, it is deeply satisfying to watch women athletes at work in building community and kicking ass on the court. (Friday, November 8, 8pm, Roxie Theater)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The festival’s shorts program continues with two sessions, one nice and the other very naughty. In the first session, numerous notable films are offered. In \u003ci>But I’m a GenderQueer\u003c/i>, the title a humorous riff on Jamie Babbit’s 1999 film \u003ci>But I’m a Cheerleader\u003c/i>, we’re introduced to Lauren Soldano. (Editor’s note: in this description we use gender-neutral pronouns “zhe” and “hir”.) From the outset, it’s clear that zhe is having a rough day. Hir roommates in an intentional, women-focused household are all up in hir business about not participating in communal activities. To make matters worse, Lauren is visited by a ghost of gender identity past that harangues hir for thinking to abandon hir lesbian life in favor of masculinity and its patriarchal trappings. Ultimately, each of the figures (all are portrayed by Soldano) are silenced, or coalesced, as Lauren expresses what identity strategy works best for hir. Zhe is at ease in saying zhe doesn’t know where zhe falls along the gender spectrum, as though zhe is speaking to all the insensitive or uninformed people who presume to ask “what are you?” Also showing is a preview of the soon-to-be-released feature \u003ci>GRRL\u003c/i>, which highlights the 1990s Riot Grrl movement, its famous and not-so-famous bands including Bikini Kill and L7, and the movement’s ties to third wave feminism. Then as now, the musicians and activists interviewed advocate for women’s empowerment in loud, unapologetic, and utterly vital terms. (Saturday, November 9, 7:30pm, Roxie Theater)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/05/translivesmatter.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"trans lives matter\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Trans Lives Matter\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rounding out Saturday’s programming, the adults-only movies include Courtney Trouble’s \u003ci>f***/talk\u003c/i> and a commemorative screening of Christopher Lee’s \u003ci>Alley of the Trannyboys\u003c/i>. Trouble interviews two trans-identified porn stars, Hayley Fingersmith and Jacques LaFemme, who answer the director’s questions about queerness and gender while a demonstration of how hot queer sex can be plays simultaneously. Trouble’s film may not have been possible without the groundbreaking work of Christopher Lee. When it debuted in 1998, \u003ci>Alley of the Trannyboys\u003c/i> was the first full-length erotic film to feature an all-male cast. Lee effectively founded a genre of filmmaking, one that placed front and center bodies and identities that had never received any positive attention, least of which from the hetero-normative pornography industry. If this subject interests you, check out Lee’s work and see where it all began. (Saturday, November 9, 9:30pm, Roxie Theater. 18+ only, ID required)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/05/onezeroone.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"one zero one\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>One Zero One\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The festival closes with a combination of short and full-length films affirming the variety of categories in which these films may or may not be comfortably situated and the positive effect their creation embodies. \u003ci>Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles\u003c/i>, directed by Seyi Adebanjo, transports us to a vigil in New York’s Harlem neighborhood. Islan Nettles, a trans woman, was savagely beaten in front of a NYPD police station in her neighborhood in mid-August 2013. She died in the hospital not long after. Nettles achieved fame not by her interests or passions, but by the senseless violence that claimed her life. A report by the New Civil Rights Movement, released shortly after Nettles died, indicates that trans people are murdered at a rate nearly 50% higher than gays and lesbians. It is with that profoundly disturbing statistic in mind that Adebanjo’s film tracks mourner responses at the vigil. When a speaker referred to Islan as “he,” a righteously angry Mariah Lopez corrected him, shouting that no one should be speaking on behalf of the deceased unless they know the challenges trans people live through everyday. On a lighter, restorative note, \u003ci>One Zero One\u003c/i> is a full-length documentary/fairy tale portraying the lives of trans artists BabyBJane and Cybersissy. While I wasn’t able to preview the film, it is on the long list of films I will see when this year’s San Francisco Transgender Film Festival finally opens this week. In a town that values its storied cinematic history, these films and the talented people who create them fit right in. (Sunday, November 10, 2:30 and 4pm at the Roxie Theater)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The San Francisco Transgender Film Festival runs November 8-10, 2013 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sftff.org/calendar\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit sftff.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Now in its sixteenth year, the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival (formerly known as Tranny Fest) offers a mix of short and long-form films that celebrate the myriad experiences of people who are treated, when they are acknowledged at all, with disdain or murderous hate by society at large. One of festival’s co-founders, filmmaker Christopher Lee, committed suicide in December 2012 after years of struggling with depression and untreated mental illness. It is in his honor, and all those who seek recognition on their own terms, that this exciting collection of cinematic moments is presented.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opening the festival is a spate of short films, none of which surpass 20 minutes, but most certainly pack an emotional and intellectual punch.In \u003ci>The Fiction of the Fix\u003c/i> (Friday, November 8, 8pm, Roxie Theater), we witness actress Therese Garcia as the character August as she takes stock of previous failed relationships. But rather than wallowing in self pity and gallons of ice cream, she methodically conjures, falls in love with, and then squanders each relationship as the “perfection” of each partner gives way to all-too-human imperfection. The cycle is ritualistic, where it appears that August seeks something with each new paramour that simply can’t be called forth from the ether. Director Cathy Sitzes reinforces what we already know — partnerships, particularly the romantic kind, are messy affairs. The insight isn’t revelatory, but it is delivered here with ample charm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Making or discovering oneself is a prominent theme in many of the festival’s offerings. Just as Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” (1855) portrays “self” as both the seeking individual and an assembly of multitudes, so too do these films touch on the private and public experiences of forging an identity that fits. \u003ci>Performing Girl\u003c/i> features multi-talented Sri Lankan-American artist D’Lo and the story of how he came of age while navigating gender and identity questions, deeply entrenched cultural expectations, and the death of his sibling. D’Lo’s story will be familiar to many: knowing early in life that he did not “fit,” yet not knowing how to act as either male or female; the simultaneous joy and burden of shouldering parental dreams, and then mustering the will to live on his own terms. The film deftly combines animation, D’Lo’s hilarious live performances, and interviews with the artist and his parents, and reinforces the power of humor to inform difficult conversations. In \u003ci>Change Over Time\u003c/i>, Ewan Duarte recounts the experience of transitioning from a female to male identity, both physically and psychologically, though the introduction of testosterone, or “T”, to his body. Gorgeous imagery of natural settings is overlaid by Duarte’s narration, which is drawn from the audio journal he maintained as his transition took place. What’s fascinating is hearing Duarte’s voice deepen as the days and weeks progress after the introduction of testosterone. If you’re curious to know the intimate details, the thoughts and hopes of a person in transition, this is film is for you. (Friday, November 8, 8pm, Roxie Theater)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/05/gendergames.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"gender games\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Gender Games\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At age 51, Gabbi Ludwig returned to school in order to realize a long-held goal of playing collegiate basketball. According to NCAA rules, if an athlete’s gender changes, they are eligible to participate in a team sport for which their eligibility long ago expired. \u003ci>Gender Games\u003c/i> follows Gabbi through practices, made all the more grueling by age and time spent away from the sport, and interactions with her teammates and family. Gabbi and her partner wholly acknowledge the challenges posed by juggling work and school, family obligations, and one partner’s process of transition. They also stress that realizing Gabbi’s dream was absolutely worth the effort. The most heartening moments of this film come in watching Gabbi interact with her teammates. Not only was her skill and advantage as a 6-foot 7-inch player welcomed, Gabbi was wholly embraced… as a woman, who was once a man. That fact floored me, particularly because it demonstrates that we are capable of welcoming what is unfamiliar. Against the backdrop of collegiate and professional sports, which may generously be described as tacitly supporting rape culture, it is deeply satisfying to watch women athletes at work in building community and kicking ass on the court. (Friday, November 8, 8pm, Roxie Theater)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The festival’s shorts program continues with two sessions, one nice and the other very naughty. In the first session, numerous notable films are offered. In \u003ci>But I’m a GenderQueer\u003c/i>, the title a humorous riff on Jamie Babbit’s 1999 film \u003ci>But I’m a Cheerleader\u003c/i>, we’re introduced to Lauren Soldano. (Editor’s note: in this description we use gender-neutral pronouns “zhe” and “hir”.) From the outset, it’s clear that zhe is having a rough day. Hir roommates in an intentional, women-focused household are all up in hir business about not participating in communal activities. To make matters worse, Lauren is visited by a ghost of gender identity past that harangues hir for thinking to abandon hir lesbian life in favor of masculinity and its patriarchal trappings. Ultimately, each of the figures (all are portrayed by Soldano) are silenced, or coalesced, as Lauren expresses what identity strategy works best for hir. Zhe is at ease in saying zhe doesn’t know where zhe falls along the gender spectrum, as though zhe is speaking to all the insensitive or uninformed people who presume to ask “what are you?” Also showing is a preview of the soon-to-be-released feature \u003ci>GRRL\u003c/i>, which highlights the 1990s Riot Grrl movement, its famous and not-so-famous bands including Bikini Kill and L7, and the movement’s ties to third wave feminism. Then as now, the musicians and activists interviewed advocate for women’s empowerment in loud, unapologetic, and utterly vital terms. (Saturday, November 9, 7:30pm, Roxie Theater)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/05/translivesmatter.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"trans lives matter\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Trans Lives Matter\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rounding out Saturday’s programming, the adults-only movies include Courtney Trouble’s \u003ci>f***/talk\u003c/i> and a commemorative screening of Christopher Lee’s \u003ci>Alley of the Trannyboys\u003c/i>. Trouble interviews two trans-identified porn stars, Hayley Fingersmith and Jacques LaFemme, who answer the director’s questions about queerness and gender while a demonstration of how hot queer sex can be plays simultaneously. Trouble’s film may not have been possible without the groundbreaking work of Christopher Lee. When it debuted in 1998, \u003ci>Alley of the Trannyboys\u003c/i> was the first full-length erotic film to feature an all-male cast. Lee effectively founded a genre of filmmaking, one that placed front and center bodies and identities that had never received any positive attention, least of which from the hetero-normative pornography industry. If this subject interests you, check out Lee’s work and see where it all began. (Saturday, November 9, 9:30pm, Roxie Theater. 18+ only, ID required)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/05/onezeroone.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"one zero one\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>One Zero One\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The festival closes with a combination of short and full-length films affirming the variety of categories in which these films may or may not be comfortably situated and the positive effect their creation embodies. \u003ci>Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles\u003c/i>, directed by Seyi Adebanjo, transports us to a vigil in New York’s Harlem neighborhood. Islan Nettles, a trans woman, was savagely beaten in front of a NYPD police station in her neighborhood in mid-August 2013. She died in the hospital not long after. Nettles achieved fame not by her interests or passions, but by the senseless violence that claimed her life. A report by the New Civil Rights Movement, released shortly after Nettles died, indicates that trans people are murdered at a rate nearly 50% higher than gays and lesbians. It is with that profoundly disturbing statistic in mind that Adebanjo’s film tracks mourner responses at the vigil. When a speaker referred to Islan as “he,” a righteously angry Mariah Lopez corrected him, shouting that no one should be speaking on behalf of the deceased unless they know the challenges trans people live through everyday. On a lighter, restorative note, \u003ci>One Zero One\u003c/i> is a full-length documentary/fairy tale portraying the lives of trans artists BabyBJane and Cybersissy. While I wasn’t able to preview the film, it is on the long list of films I will see when this year’s San Francisco Transgender Film Festival finally opens this week. In a town that values its storied cinematic history, these films and the talented people who create them fit right in. (Sunday, November 10, 2:30 and 4pm at the Roxie Theater)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The San Francisco Transgender Film Festival runs November 8-10, 2013 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sftff.org/calendar\">tickets and information\u003c/a> visit sftff.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>This is the heart of the serious filmgoing season, when a thoughtful (and glory-seeking) studio film opens every Friday. Buffeted by heart-pounding survival sagas (\u003ci>Gravity\u003c/i>, \u003ci>All is Lost\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Captain Phillips\u003c/i>, \u003ci>12 Years a Slave\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Dallas Buyers Club\u003c/i>), we live in the adrenalized moment. (A pleasant side effect is we can pretend that the usual overblown, family-stalking Christmas releases aren’t a mere seven weeks away.) November is the gluttonous month for movies as well as meals, so make room for an appetizing array of films from American indie directors, European auteurs, South Asian storytellers and genre enthusiasts of all stripes and nationalities. It’s a smorgasbord of festivals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ongoing embarrassment over the nickname of the NFL team in the nation’s capital is not necessarily good news for the 38th annual American Indian Film Festival (through November 9 at Delancey Street Theatre, wrapping Nov. 10 at the San Francisco Jazz Center with the American Indian Motion Picture Awards Show). If you mistakenly view the fest as a spotlight for social issues rather than a cultural event, the latest controversy over “Redskins” adds fuel to that fire. Although movies often have morals, a compelling story is the first priority — and this year’s AIFF brims with them. \u003ci>The Lesser Blessed\u003c/i> (November 7), a moving coming-of-age saga of a Canadian teenager of First Nations ancestry, boasts a solid supporting turn by Benjamin Bratt. For \u003ca href=\"http://festival.aifisf.com\">more information\u003c/a> visit festival.aifisf.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/01/greatbeauty.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Great Beauty\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a counterbalance of sorts to its S.F. International Film Festival in the spring, the S.F. Film Society rolls out a slew of series every fall that capture and reflect the state of cinema in several foreign locales. French Cinema Now (November 7-10 at the Clay) offers eye candy galore with Mads Mikkelsen (\u003ci>Michael Kohlhaas\u003c/i>), actress-writer-director Valeria Bruno Tedeschi (\u003ci>A Castle in Italy\u003c/i>), Chiara Mastroianni (Claire Denis’ disturbing \u003ci>Bastards\u003c/i>) and the latest by the marvelous documentary maker Nicolas Philibert (\u003ci>House of Radio\u003c/i>). \u003ci>The Great Beauty\u003c/i>, the latest work by that gifted original, Paolo Sorrentino, graces New Italian Cinema (November 13-17 at the Clay), along with his 2001 feature debut, \u003ci>One Man Up\u003c/i>. For \u003ca href=\"http://sffs.org/Exhibition/Fall-Season.aspx\">more information\u003c/a> visit sffs.org. Across the bay, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley brings an oft-overlooked national cinema to our attention with Arrested History: New Portuguese Cinema (November 13-17). For \u003ca href=\"http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/newportuguesecinema\">more information\u003c/a> visit bampfa.berkeley.edu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/01/romance.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Shuddh Desi Romance\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Psyched for your annual mood-lifting blast of Bollywood at the sold-out Castro? This year’s selection by the 3rd I South Asian Film Festival is the new and comparatively svelte (a mere 140 minutes) comedy \u003ci>Shuddh Desi Romance\u003c/i>. The lively festival (November 6-10 at New People Cinema except for Nov. 8 at the Castro; also Nov. 16 at the Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto) is rife with colorful, revelatory documentaries such as \u003ci>The Revolutionary Optimists\u003c/i>, the Calcutta-set opening night film by Bay Area filmmakes Maren Grainger-Monsen and Nicole Newnham. Few places on Earth are as vibrant as India, and 3rd I is one of the most alive film festivals on the Bay Area calendar. For \u003ca href=\"http://thirdi.org\">more information\u003c/a> visit thirdi.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/01/toughenough.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Tough Ain’t Enough: Conversations with Albert S. Ruddy\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Roxie, perennial home to the most iconoclastic festivals and filmmakers, hosts the eclectic United Film Festival (November 15-17) and its unpredictable mix of narratives, documentaries and shorts. The docs profile crusaders like the trio of friends experiencing life in poverty on three continents in \u003ci>Give a Damn?\u003c/i>, to one-of-a-kind characters like the producer of \u003ci>The Godfather\u003c/i> and other movies in \u003ci>Tough Ain’t Enough: Conversations with Albert S. Ruddy\u003c/i>, to nonviolent felons doing hard time as a result of the “three strikes” law in \u003ci>Cruel and Unusual\u003c/i>. The United Film Festival is a grab bag of provocations that aim to unite the audience in indignation or inspiration. For \u003ca href=\"http://theunitedfest.com/sanfrancisco\">more information\u003c/a> visit theunitedfest.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/01/allcheerleaders.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>All Cheerleaders Die\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You haven’t returned your Halloween costume to its place of honor in your closet, and already another apocalypse of spooks and spectres is coming to haunt your dreams. I’m referring to the annual compendium of fevered fantasies, gory throwdowns and perverted pleasures known as Another Hole in the Head. Still in doubt as to the rampaging lust that this “international genre film festival” (November 29 – December 5 at the Balboa and December 6-19 at New People Theater) aims to sate? A sampling of titles: \u003ci>All Cheerleaders Die\u003c/i> (the opening night film, courtesy of scaremeister extraordinaire Lucky McKee), \u003ci>Bath Salt Zombies\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Bloodmarsh Krackoon\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Cannibal Diner\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Ghost Light\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Septic Man\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Slew Hampshire\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Cohasset Snuff Film\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Demon’s Rook\u003c/i>. If AHOH doesn’t erase all memories of sweet potatoes, cranberries and Grandma’s pumpkin pie, nothing will. For \u003ca href=\"http://anotherholeinthehead.festivalgenius.com/2013/films\">more information\u003c/a> visit anotherholeinthehead.festivalgenius.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>This is the heart of the serious filmgoing season, when a thoughtful (and glory-seeking) studio film opens every Friday. Buffeted by heart-pounding survival sagas (\u003ci>Gravity\u003c/i>, \u003ci>All is Lost\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Captain Phillips\u003c/i>, \u003ci>12 Years a Slave\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Dallas Buyers Club\u003c/i>), we live in the adrenalized moment. (A pleasant side effect is we can pretend that the usual overblown, family-stalking Christmas releases aren’t a mere seven weeks away.) November is the gluttonous month for movies as well as meals, so make room for an appetizing array of films from American indie directors, European auteurs, South Asian storytellers and genre enthusiasts of all stripes and nationalities. It’s a smorgasbord of festivals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ongoing embarrassment over the nickname of the NFL team in the nation’s capital is not necessarily good news for the 38th annual American Indian Film Festival (through November 9 at Delancey Street Theatre, wrapping Nov. 10 at the San Francisco Jazz Center with the American Indian Motion Picture Awards Show). If you mistakenly view the fest as a spotlight for social issues rather than a cultural event, the latest controversy over “Redskins” adds fuel to that fire. Although movies often have morals, a compelling story is the first priority — and this year’s AIFF brims with them. \u003ci>The Lesser Blessed\u003c/i> (November 7), a moving coming-of-age saga of a Canadian teenager of First Nations ancestry, boasts a solid supporting turn by Benjamin Bratt. For \u003ca href=\"http://festival.aifisf.com\">more information\u003c/a> visit festival.aifisf.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/01/greatbeauty.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Great Beauty\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a counterbalance of sorts to its S.F. International Film Festival in the spring, the S.F. Film Society rolls out a slew of series every fall that capture and reflect the state of cinema in several foreign locales. French Cinema Now (November 7-10 at the Clay) offers eye candy galore with Mads Mikkelsen (\u003ci>Michael Kohlhaas\u003c/i>), actress-writer-director Valeria Bruno Tedeschi (\u003ci>A Castle in Italy\u003c/i>), Chiara Mastroianni (Claire Denis’ disturbing \u003ci>Bastards\u003c/i>) and the latest by the marvelous documentary maker Nicolas Philibert (\u003ci>House of Radio\u003c/i>). \u003ci>The Great Beauty\u003c/i>, the latest work by that gifted original, Paolo Sorrentino, graces New Italian Cinema (November 13-17 at the Clay), along with his 2001 feature debut, \u003ci>One Man Up\u003c/i>. For \u003ca href=\"http://sffs.org/Exhibition/Fall-Season.aspx\">more information\u003c/a> visit sffs.org. Across the bay, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley brings an oft-overlooked national cinema to our attention with Arrested History: New Portuguese Cinema (November 13-17). For \u003ca href=\"http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/newportuguesecinema\">more information\u003c/a> visit bampfa.berkeley.edu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/01/romance.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Shuddh Desi Romance\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Psyched for your annual mood-lifting blast of Bollywood at the sold-out Castro? This year’s selection by the 3rd I South Asian Film Festival is the new and comparatively svelte (a mere 140 minutes) comedy \u003ci>Shuddh Desi Romance\u003c/i>. The lively festival (November 6-10 at New People Cinema except for Nov. 8 at the Castro; also Nov. 16 at the Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto) is rife with colorful, revelatory documentaries such as \u003ci>The Revolutionary Optimists\u003c/i>, the Calcutta-set opening night film by Bay Area filmmakes Maren Grainger-Monsen and Nicole Newnham. Few places on Earth are as vibrant as India, and 3rd I is one of the most alive film festivals on the Bay Area calendar. For \u003ca href=\"http://thirdi.org\">more information\u003c/a> visit thirdi.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/01/toughenough.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Tough Ain’t Enough: Conversations with Albert S. Ruddy\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Roxie, perennial home to the most iconoclastic festivals and filmmakers, hosts the eclectic United Film Festival (November 15-17) and its unpredictable mix of narratives, documentaries and shorts. The docs profile crusaders like the trio of friends experiencing life in poverty on three continents in \u003ci>Give a Damn?\u003c/i>, to one-of-a-kind characters like the producer of \u003ci>The Godfather\u003c/i> and other movies in \u003ci>Tough Ain’t Enough: Conversations with Albert S. Ruddy\u003c/i>, to nonviolent felons doing hard time as a result of the “three strikes” law in \u003ci>Cruel and Unusual\u003c/i>. The United Film Festival is a grab bag of provocations that aim to unite the audience in indignation or inspiration. For \u003ca href=\"http://theunitedfest.com/sanfrancisco\">more information\u003c/a> visit theunitedfest.com.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://u.s.kqed.net/2013/11/01/allcheerleaders.jpg\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>All Cheerleaders Die\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You haven’t returned your Halloween costume to its place of honor in your closet, and already another apocalypse of spooks and spectres is coming to haunt your dreams. I’m referring to the annual compendium of fevered fantasies, gory throwdowns and perverted pleasures known as Another Hole in the Head. Still in doubt as to the rampaging lust that this “international genre film festival” (November 29 – December 5 at the Balboa and December 6-19 at New People Theater) aims to sate? A sampling of titles: \u003ci>All Cheerleaders Die\u003c/i> (the opening night film, courtesy of scaremeister extraordinaire Lucky McKee), \u003ci>Bath Salt Zombies\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Bloodmarsh Krackoon\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Cannibal Diner\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Ghost Light\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Septic Man\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Slew Hampshire\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Cohasset Snuff Film\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Demon’s Rook\u003c/i>. If AHOH doesn’t erase all memories of sweet potatoes, cranberries and Grandma’s pumpkin pie, nothing will. For \u003ca href=\"http://anotherholeinthehead.festivalgenius.com/2013/films\">more information\u003c/a> visit anotherholeinthehead.festivalgenius.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "In Emotionally Charged 'Blue,' Sex Is Graphic, But Not Gratuitous",
"headTitle": "In Emotionally Charged ‘Blue,’ Sex Is Graphic, But Not Gratuitous | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Blue Is the Warmest Color\u003c/em> is a lesbian coming-of-age movie, and its long and graphic sex scenes have already generated controversy. The director, Abdellatif Kechiche, is a man, and at least one prominent female critic has accused him of leading with his own libido — a charge that I vigorously dispute, but of course I’m a man so take that as you will. Here’s what I saw: a film that captures the intensity of sexual discovery — and dependency — in a way I’ve never seen. It’s 179 minutes, every one of them charged. It’s a remarkable experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In French the film is called \u003cem>\u003cem>La Vie d’Adèle\u003c/em>\u003c/em> for its lead character, Adèle, who was named after the actress who portrays her, Adèle Exarchopoulos. When we meet the character, she’s studying literature in high school in hopes of being a teacher. She’s also a virgin, and she’s touchingly embarrassed when a handsome male student pays attention to her from across a room. They meet cute, begin dating, and then she passes a female couple on the street and her eye is seized by the more butch of the pair — a punky young woman with a big smear of blue in her hair who turns back and looks at Adèle. Later, when Adèle is fantasizing in bed, she imagines not her new boyfriend but the woman with blue hair. So she goes in search of her — tentatively, tremulously — and finds her in a gay bar. Her bluebird of happiness is a painter named Emma played by Léa Seydoux, and the attraction on both sides is instantaneous — and ferocious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/Y2OLRrocn3s\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her early scenes, Exarchopoulos has a kind of expressive vagueness, which sounds like a contradiction but here’s what I mean: Her character hides her emotions, buries them deep, so when they do come out Adèle seems so vulnerable that you’re frightened for her. The stakes in this movie are crazy-high.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In interviews, the two actresses have spoken bluntly and without affection about their director, who they say made them do take after grueling take — evidently to get something more raw. I can’t speak to the process, which sounds horrible, but the results are stunning. Every one of the couple’s interchanges is messy and seemingly spontaneous, and, for Adèle, fraught with importance. Losing Emma would mean losing her sense of completeness — even her reason for being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The extended sex scenes are shot wide rather than close up and in long takes, with the camera sitting back and gazing straight ahead as these women do everything physically possible to connect. As I said, the case has been made that this is the “male gaze” — and exploitive. Julie Maroh, author of the graphic novel on which \u003cem>Blue Is the Warmest Color\u003c/em> is loosely based, called the longest sex scene, “a brutal and surgical display, exuberant and cold,” and likened it to porn. I find it hard as a straight man to respond to that charge, except to say that sex in most movies tends to be generalized, a bunch of climaxes cut together, whereas these scenes show a process: lovers finding a rhythm and through it, each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem with Adèle and Emma’s relationship is that the lovers are unequal. Emma has had a long line of girlfriends and is poised for success as a painter, while Adèle pursues a quiet career as a teacher of small children and seems increasingly scared that she’s out of Emma’s league. It’s a valid fear. At times, Seydoux makes Emma an enigma — her art comes first. She has a lot riding on the relationship, but not, like Adèle, her very identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who’ve been emotionally brutalized by long relationships should approach \u003cem>Blue Is the Warmest Color\u003c/em> with care. It’s potent. It might open old wounds. It might show you wounds you didn’t know you had. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\">http://www.npr.org/\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+Emotionally+Charged+%27Blue%2C%27+Sex+Is+Graphic%2C+But+Not+Gratuitous+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAzOTIwODA0MDEyNTA4MTM1OTcyMGJmMA001)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "\u003cem>Blue Is the Warmest Color\u003c/em>, a coming-of-age movie about the love affair between two young women, has been criticized as pornographic and exploitive. But critic David Edelstein says the film artfully captures the intensity of sexual discovery — and dependency. \u003cem>\u003cstrong>(Recommended)\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Blue Is the Warmest Color\u003c/em> is a lesbian coming-of-age movie, and its long and graphic sex scenes have already generated controversy. The director, Abdellatif Kechiche, is a man, and at least one prominent female critic has accused him of leading with his own libido — a charge that I vigorously dispute, but of course I’m a man so take that as you will. Here’s what I saw: a film that captures the intensity of sexual discovery — and dependency — in a way I’ve never seen. It’s 179 minutes, every one of them charged. It’s a remarkable experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In French the film is called \u003cem>\u003cem>La Vie d’Adèle\u003c/em>\u003c/em> for its lead character, Adèle, who was named after the actress who portrays her, Adèle Exarchopoulos. When we meet the character, she’s studying literature in high school in hopes of being a teacher. She’s also a virgin, and she’s touchingly embarrassed when a handsome male student pays attention to her from across a room. They meet cute, begin dating, and then she passes a female couple on the street and her eye is seized by the more butch of the pair — a punky young woman with a big smear of blue in her hair who turns back and looks at Adèle. Later, when Adèle is fantasizing in bed, she imagines not her new boyfriend but the woman with blue hair. So she goes in search of her — tentatively, tremulously — and finds her in a gay bar. Her bluebird of happiness is a painter named Emma played by Léa Seydoux, and the attraction on both sides is instantaneous — and ferocious.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Y2OLRrocn3s'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Y2OLRrocn3s'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In her early scenes, Exarchopoulos has a kind of expressive vagueness, which sounds like a contradiction but here’s what I mean: Her character hides her emotions, buries them deep, so when they do come out Adèle seems so vulnerable that you’re frightened for her. The stakes in this movie are crazy-high.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In interviews, the two actresses have spoken bluntly and without affection about their director, who they say made them do take after grueling take — evidently to get something more raw. I can’t speak to the process, which sounds horrible, but the results are stunning. Every one of the couple’s interchanges is messy and seemingly spontaneous, and, for Adèle, fraught with importance. Losing Emma would mean losing her sense of completeness — even her reason for being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The extended sex scenes are shot wide rather than close up and in long takes, with the camera sitting back and gazing straight ahead as these women do everything physically possible to connect. As I said, the case has been made that this is the “male gaze” — and exploitive. Julie Maroh, author of the graphic novel on which \u003cem>Blue Is the Warmest Color\u003c/em> is loosely based, called the longest sex scene, “a brutal and surgical display, exuberant and cold,” and likened it to porn. I find it hard as a straight man to respond to that charge, except to say that sex in most movies tends to be generalized, a bunch of climaxes cut together, whereas these scenes show a process: lovers finding a rhythm and through it, each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem with Adèle and Emma’s relationship is that the lovers are unequal. Emma has had a long line of girlfriends and is poised for success as a painter, while Adèle pursues a quiet career as a teacher of small children and seems increasingly scared that she’s out of Emma’s league. It’s a valid fear. At times, Seydoux makes Emma an enigma — her art comes first. She has a lot riding on the relationship, but not, like Adèle, her very identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who’ve been emotionally brutalized by long relationships should approach \u003cem>Blue Is the Warmest Color\u003c/em> with care. It’s potent. It might open old wounds. It might show you wounds you didn’t know you had. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\">http://www.npr.org/\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+Emotionally+Charged+%27Blue%2C%27+Sex+Is+Graphic%2C+But+Not+Gratuitous+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAzOTIwODA0MDEyNTA4MTM1OTcyMGJmMA001)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "San Francisco and Zurich Prove Unlikely Siblings in 'Sister Cities'",
"headTitle": "San Francisco and Zurich Prove Unlikely Siblings in ‘Sister Cities’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Very rarely does the 10th anniversary of a sister city relationship — San Francisco’s sibling is Zurich, if you didn’t already know — garner any fanfare, not to mention an entire film festival. But so it is with the San Francisco Film Society’s latest, \u003cb>Sister Cities Cinema: Zurich/SF\u003c/b>, which is an ode to not only a municipal meeting of the minds, but also to cinema, cities, and the city life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning this Friday at the New People Cinema in San Francisco, the weekend event — run both by the SFFS and Cultural Affairs City of Zurich — has a diverse line-up of films, and the larger sister city celebration includes a photo exhibition, upcoming educational programs, and public events. \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfartscommission.org/gallery/2013/2013-sister-city-exchange-san-francisco-zurich/\">\u003cb>Twisted Sisters: Reimaging Urban Portraiture\u003c/b>\u003c/a> began its run at City Hall and 40 downtown kiosks on Wednesday, and features the work of local and Swiss artists in a traveling exhibition that will run in San Francisco until January of next year. The more than 80 images are the work of conceptual photographers, both emerging and established, and take on the urban portrait with quirky, provocative, and imaginative bents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From dry documentaries to experimental films and light comedies, the film festival spans four decades of work and explores different aspects of life in the city. Through curated double features, what emerges are thematic parallels between Zurich and San Francisco films, and a view of Switzerland that highlights an increasingly multifaceted society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"315\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/ptMpcNkh7Xo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Andrea Staka’s \u003ci>Das Fraulein\u003c/i>, winner of the Best Film and Best Actress awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival, is a contemplative piece beautifully wrought in muted tones. It follows Ana, a young, vibrant, seemingly carefree woman who’s fled the war in Sarajevo and come to Zurich. She’s homeless, and her nightly regimen of clubbing and finding someone to sleep with belies the fact that she’s just looking for a bed to lie in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ana finds work in a cafeteria with two older, tedious women with little imagination, who also hail from nearby her home country: Ruza, the cafeteria owner and a native of Belgrade, and Mila, an older Croatian who plans to return home after retiring. The story isn’t new: Ana, a graver, quieter take on the manic pixie trope, breathes life into the stale air surrounding the two women. In the process, she inspires them to reconsider and drastically alter their life plans, before disappearing from their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-conversation.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Conversation\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Also showing is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 classic, \u003ci>The Conversation\u003c/i>, featuring Gene Hackman. Here, San Francisco’s Union Square is backdrop to the psychological thriller’s critical scene — when Hackman’s surveillance expert records a couple having a private conversation amidst a busy city stage. San Francisco’s architecture, public space, and energy function as setting for the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-downtown.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>It’s a different approach than that of \u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i>, a documentary where the city itself is the subject of the film. Shot by 4 filmmakers around Zurich, the largest city and financial heart of the country, \u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i> exposes a city struggling to come to terms with its entry into a new era. Here, the film illustrates a politically isolated country that envisions itself as a model to be emulated. A myriad of sometimes banal topics get ample treatment: transportation, city politics, women’s rights, development plans, sports teams — all revealing the ways in which the Swiss are coping with the increasing diversity and complexity of the modern age. In a particularly telling scene, a member of the country’s conservative party explains to two young teenagers his party’s policies — as they laugh in his face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-swissmakers.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>But the films aren’t just about paranoia and city politics: Rolf Lyssy’s \u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> and Richard Rush’s \u003ci>Freebie and the Bean\u003c/i> delve into more light-hearted material, both with a penchant for humor that plays both goofy and deadpan. \u003ci>Freebie and the Bean\u003c/i> feature a buddy-cop duo, played by James Caan and Alan Arkin, who crash cars and botch jobs around the city, with the Transamerica Pyramid looming large in the background.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> is made in much the same vein as \u003ci>Freebie\u003c/i>, featuring two Swiss agents whose job is to apply the same rigor and intensity of a full blown FBI investigation towards incredibly typical applicants for Swiss citizenship: an Italian family man with leftist leanings, a German doctor, and a Yugoslavian dancer who’s dancing partner \u003ci>may\u003c/i> be a suspicious Turk. It’s a film that revels in absurdity, twisting the most minute and mundane into cause for thorough inspection, with the usual straight man/funny man duo. \u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> reveals a droll, dry and ridiculous Swiss satire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-punk.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Punk Cocktail\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Other notable films in the line-up include \u003ci>The Fall\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Punk Cocktail: Zurich Scene 1976-80\u003c/i>, both adding to a line-up that illustrates a lesser-seen Zurich through the life of a private eye and the underground punk scene. Zurich, in these films and the others included in the festival, gets a treatment that both entertains and informs its viewers on the changing landscape and demographics of the city. (It’s worth noting that there’s possibly more to learn from the Swiss films, which are likely ones the audience has never seen, as opposed to the popular and long-released San Francisco films). Those featuring San Francisco, instead, are more romantic in their handling of the city, which largely serves as a backdrop for the film’s narrative tension. Sisters they may be — but the films of Zurich and San Francisco might be more similar thematically than the cities are themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sister Cities Cinema: Zurich/SF\u003c/b> runs October 18-20, 2013 at New People Cinema in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sffs.org/Exhibition/Fall-Season/Sister-Cities-Cinema-ZurichSF\"> tickets and information\u003c/a> visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Very rarely does the 10th anniversary of a sister city relationship — San Francisco’s sibling is Zurich, if you didn’t already know — garner any fanfare, not to mention an entire film festival. But so it is with the San Francisco Film Society’s latest, \u003cb>Sister Cities Cinema: Zurich/SF\u003c/b>, which is an ode to not only a municipal meeting of the minds, but also to cinema, cities, and the city life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning this Friday at the New People Cinema in San Francisco, the weekend event — run both by the SFFS and Cultural Affairs City of Zurich — has a diverse line-up of films, and the larger sister city celebration includes a photo exhibition, upcoming educational programs, and public events. \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfartscommission.org/gallery/2013/2013-sister-city-exchange-san-francisco-zurich/\">\u003cb>Twisted Sisters: Reimaging Urban Portraiture\u003c/b>\u003c/a> began its run at City Hall and 40 downtown kiosks on Wednesday, and features the work of local and Swiss artists in a traveling exhibition that will run in San Francisco until January of next year. The more than 80 images are the work of conceptual photographers, both emerging and established, and take on the urban portrait with quirky, provocative, and imaginative bents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From dry documentaries to experimental films and light comedies, the film festival spans four decades of work and explores different aspects of life in the city. Through curated double features, what emerges are thematic parallels between Zurich and San Francisco films, and a view of Switzerland that highlights an increasingly multifaceted society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"315\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/ptMpcNkh7Xo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Andrea Staka’s \u003ci>Das Fraulein\u003c/i>, winner of the Best Film and Best Actress awards at the Sarajevo Film Festival, is a contemplative piece beautifully wrought in muted tones. It follows Ana, a young, vibrant, seemingly carefree woman who’s fled the war in Sarajevo and come to Zurich. She’s homeless, and her nightly regimen of clubbing and finding someone to sleep with belies the fact that she’s just looking for a bed to lie in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ana finds work in a cafeteria with two older, tedious women with little imagination, who also hail from nearby her home country: Ruza, the cafeteria owner and a native of Belgrade, and Mila, an older Croatian who plans to return home after retiring. The story isn’t new: Ana, a graver, quieter take on the manic pixie trope, breathes life into the stale air surrounding the two women. In the process, she inspires them to reconsider and drastically alter their life plans, before disappearing from their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-conversation.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Conversation\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Also showing is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 classic, \u003ci>The Conversation\u003c/i>, featuring Gene Hackman. Here, San Francisco’s Union Square is backdrop to the psychological thriller’s critical scene — when Hackman’s surveillance expert records a couple having a private conversation amidst a busy city stage. San Francisco’s architecture, public space, and energy function as setting for the scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-downtown.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>It’s a different approach than that of \u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i>, a documentary where the city itself is the subject of the film. Shot by 4 filmmakers around Zurich, the largest city and financial heart of the country, \u003ci>Downtown Switzerland\u003c/i> exposes a city struggling to come to terms with its entry into a new era. Here, the film illustrates a politically isolated country that envisions itself as a model to be emulated. A myriad of sometimes banal topics get ample treatment: transportation, city politics, women’s rights, development plans, sports teams — all revealing the ways in which the Swiss are coping with the increasing diversity and complexity of the modern age. In a particularly telling scene, a member of the country’s conservative party explains to two young teenagers his party’s policies — as they laugh in his face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-swissmakers.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>But the films aren’t just about paranoia and city politics: Rolf Lyssy’s \u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> and Richard Rush’s \u003ci>Freebie and the Bean\u003c/i> delve into more light-hearted material, both with a penchant for humor that plays both goofy and deadpan. \u003ci>Freebie and the Bean\u003c/i> feature a buddy-cop duo, played by James Caan and Alan Arkin, who crash cars and botch jobs around the city, with the Transamerica Pyramid looming large in the background.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> is made in much the same vein as \u003ci>Freebie\u003c/i>, featuring two Swiss agents whose job is to apply the same rigor and intensity of a full blown FBI investigation towards incredibly typical applicants for Swiss citizenship: an Italian family man with leftist leanings, a German doctor, and a Yugoslavian dancer who’s dancing partner \u003ci>may\u003c/i> be a suspicious Turk. It’s a film that revels in absurdity, twisting the most minute and mundane into cause for thorough inspection, with the usual straight man/funny man duo. \u003ci>The Swissmakers\u003c/i> reveals a droll, dry and ridiculous Swiss satire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/sister-punk.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>\u003ci>Punk Cocktail\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>Other notable films in the line-up include \u003ci>The Fall\u003c/i> and \u003ci>Punk Cocktail: Zurich Scene 1976-80\u003c/i>, both adding to a line-up that illustrates a lesser-seen Zurich through the life of a private eye and the underground punk scene. Zurich, in these films and the others included in the festival, gets a treatment that both entertains and informs its viewers on the changing landscape and demographics of the city. (It’s worth noting that there’s possibly more to learn from the Swiss films, which are likely ones the audience has never seen, as opposed to the popular and long-released San Francisco films). Those featuring San Francisco, instead, are more romantic in their handling of the city, which largely serves as a backdrop for the film’s narrative tension. Sisters they may be — but the films of Zurich and San Francisco might be more similar thematically than the cities are themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Sister Cities Cinema: Zurich/SF\u003c/b> runs October 18-20, 2013 at New People Cinema in San Francisco. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sffs.org/Exhibition/Fall-Season/Sister-Cities-Cinema-ZurichSF\"> tickets and information\u003c/a> visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I go to the movies alone. Though after decades of filmgoing, the experience can now seem rather deflating. The number of trailers has expanded to take up a mini-festival’s worth of time; antiseptic cineplexes have supplanted luxurious movie palaces and earnest local houses alike; and pre-film commercials have reared their strident head. The price of Twizzlers has inflated faster than the cost of health care, and every company who’s had a hand in a film now seems to merit its own ostentatious logo before the opening credits. By the time the movie actually starts, I’m exhausted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet I go. The thrill is diminished, not gone. A sense of promise remains — the transfixing spectacle of flickering lights and the anticipation of a kind of sorcery, a literally and figuratively larger than life Dream commanding awe and wonder. Attending a film alone only amplifies the transaction taking place, the tunnel vision connecting the fictitious and the real.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I want to talk about a time when the routine of going alone turned dark. Or rather, a time before I understood the nature of my relationship to the movies. As a young man, I suffered from a particular vulnerability to the Dream induced by moving pictures, and I sought it out whenever I could. I’d inherited the yearning from my father, who’d been afflicted to such a degree that eventually his sole frame of reference for people he encountered in real life became the Hollywood types he’d absorbed into his worldview. Unable to distinguish three-dimensional individuals from the flattened formsfound in films, he relied on those talking shadows sent by the central casting office of his mind as a way to experience the world. He might mentally superimpose upon a policeman in the street the buffoonish persona of the character actor \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Kennedy\">Edgar Kennedy\u003c/a>. In an Irishman, no matter how adulterated an accent, he could only hear\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Fitzgerald\">Barry Fitzgerald\u003c/a>. Italian waiters were Chico Marx. And should someone look like a Sheldon Leonard or a John Carradine, knowing suspicion was the only appropriate response.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/lbutler2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>Luke Butler, \u003ci>The End VII\u003c/i>, 2012; courtesyof the artist and \u003ca href=\"http://jessicasilvermangallery.com/\">Jessica Silverman Gallery\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>The phenomenon was more symptom than cause, I suspect, but let’s say at the very least the movies helped exaggerate a serious emotional flaw. But back then, I did not recognize obsessive, solo moviegoing as a potential spiritual hazard. I must have cut a strange figure — you don’t see a lot of young people slouching in the dark alone at a retro house. But the craving for the Dream was something I preferred to satisfy in private. If accompanied by friends or lovers, they only served as the beards for my deep attachment to the action on screen. Social obligation could prove a distraction, and sitting next to someone might imperil the purity of the Dream. There is no accounting for individual perception, and an inconvenient laugh overheard during a moment of cinematic pathos might weaken my communion with what was happening on the screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While I did not carry the particular pathology my father had contracted from watching too many movies, the Dream did manifest itself in another harmful way, as the mistaken belief that pictures might actually offer something in a way to live. Watching \u003ci>Casablanca\u003c/i>, for example, instilled in me the strong urge to defeat Nazis, swill bourbon, and sleep with Ingrid Bergman. When the fulfillment of those desires quickly dwindled to picking a fight with my mother, drinking Budweiser, and buying a \u003ci>Playboy\u003c/i>, the lesson was notlearned. Because the Dream remained private, only the attitude mattered, and the discrepancy between aspirations and application could be ignored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In periods of stress during my twenties, I went to the movies alone every day, starting with what was appealing and working my way through what remained. I went to the movies alone instead of looking for a job. I went to the movies alone instead of attending a party. I went to the movies alone when I broke up with my girlfriend. I went to the movies alone after departing early from social events. I went to the movies for relief, as a time out from life, as a way to replace the throb of rumination with the Dream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/lbutler3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>Luke Butler, \u003ci>The End X\u003c/i>, 2013; courtesyof the artist and \u003ca href=\"http://jessicasilvermangallery.com/\">Jessica Silverman Gallery\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>I had company. During the day, the few attendees at the theater mostly sat solo, scattered islands in a sea of unoccupied seats. Onto them I projected my own shame at once again turning a sunny day into time spent in the dark. Scanning the audience before the dormant screen came to life, I saw the introverted and the dreary, the rumpled and the restless, all looking as louche as patrons at a porn theater. Was that palpable sense of mutual failure emanating from the auditorium’s scattered nodes of humanity only in my head? What defect of character had impelled us, in the middle of the day, to seek out a fantasy, like children turning to an imaginary friend? Even as we had relegated ourselves to mere receptors, sitting immobile in interior dimness, others operated in the open air, exercising individual acts of agency under the bright sun. Going places, doing things. But we, sunken in our seats, quietly tossing stale, expensive popcorn into our mouths, furtively sucking Coca-Cola through a straw — have any humans ever looked so forlorn? “Lie to me” was our collective silent demand. Lie to me, but do it well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with any indulgence in addiction, going to the movies alone often left me depressed. Despite my best efforts to prolong the Dream, its dissipation proved inevitable. Self-recrimination followed: Once again, I had breathed someone else’s imagination. Once again, I had allowed an exaggerated representation of experience to stand in for the real thing. What flaw in the brain allowed for such confounding? For the willingness to let the real world give way to make-believe? My emotions excited by projected light in the dark — I might as well bay at the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These doubts grew, until I felt my going to the movies alone tantamount to a toddler sucking on her thumb: comforting yet of dubious utility, a distasteful habit that delayed the next developmental stage. The tipping point occurred when I stole a few hours during a work day to see the movie \u003ca href=\"http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/crazy_people/reviews/\">\u003ci>Crazy People\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, a Dudley Moore vehicle that \u003ci>New York Times\u003c/i> critic Vincent Canby called, “a humorless satire of the advertising world.” I suppose, as members of Alcoholics Anonymous like to say, that is when I bottomed out. And I did something I’d never done before: I left before the film ended. While the movie wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen (or even the worst Dudley Moore movie I’d ever seen) the diminishing returns of the Dream had finally hit a point where the payoff couldn’t remotely justify the time and money spent; where the profound objective of going solo — vicarious escape to the point of self-abandonment — no longer could be achieved in a movie theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/lbutler1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>Luke Butler, \u003ci>The End XII\u003c/i>, 2013; courtesyof the artist and \u003ca href=\"http://jessicasilvermangallery.com/\">Jessica Silverman Gallery\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>That was not the end of my excursions, but it was the beginning of moviegoing wisdom. I don’t know “What is Cinema,” but I do know what it isn’t: a substitute for living. And as I became more comfortable with my own life, and invested in that of my wife’s and my daughter’s, I became less interested in wallowing in the fictitious existences of those populating a fabricated world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As my five-year-old daughter has grown, we have carefully monitored her exposure to visual media. After watching a movie or TV show, she is frequently cranky. She finds it difficult and unpleasant to extricate herself from the grasping allure of the Dream, preferring to remain spellbound by the wonderful illusion than to return to the relative dullness of dinner and a bath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I completely understand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> I still love the movies. But I am careful around them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And these days I like to go with someone else.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I go to the movies alone. Though after decades of filmgoing, the experience can now seem rather deflating. The number of trailers has expanded to take up a mini-festival’s worth of time; antiseptic cineplexes have supplanted luxurious movie palaces and earnest local houses alike; and pre-film commercials have reared their strident head. The price of Twizzlers has inflated faster than the cost of health care, and every company who’s had a hand in a film now seems to merit its own ostentatious logo before the opening credits. By the time the movie actually starts, I’m exhausted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet I go. The thrill is diminished, not gone. A sense of promise remains — the transfixing spectacle of flickering lights and the anticipation of a kind of sorcery, a literally and figuratively larger than life Dream commanding awe and wonder. Attending a film alone only amplifies the transaction taking place, the tunnel vision connecting the fictitious and the real.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I want to talk about a time when the routine of going alone turned dark. Or rather, a time before I understood the nature of my relationship to the movies. As a young man, I suffered from a particular vulnerability to the Dream induced by moving pictures, and I sought it out whenever I could. I’d inherited the yearning from my father, who’d been afflicted to such a degree that eventually his sole frame of reference for people he encountered in real life became the Hollywood types he’d absorbed into his worldview. Unable to distinguish three-dimensional individuals from the flattened formsfound in films, he relied on those talking shadows sent by the central casting office of his mind as a way to experience the world. He might mentally superimpose upon a policeman in the street the buffoonish persona of the character actor \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Kennedy\">Edgar Kennedy\u003c/a>. In an Irishman, no matter how adulterated an accent, he could only hear\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Fitzgerald\">Barry Fitzgerald\u003c/a>. Italian waiters were Chico Marx. And should someone look like a Sheldon Leonard or a John Carradine, knowing suspicion was the only appropriate response.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/lbutler2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>Luke Butler, \u003ci>The End VII\u003c/i>, 2012; courtesyof the artist and \u003ca href=\"http://jessicasilvermangallery.com/\">Jessica Silverman Gallery\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>The phenomenon was more symptom than cause, I suspect, but let’s say at the very least the movies helped exaggerate a serious emotional flaw. But back then, I did not recognize obsessive, solo moviegoing as a potential spiritual hazard. I must have cut a strange figure — you don’t see a lot of young people slouching in the dark alone at a retro house. But the craving for the Dream was something I preferred to satisfy in private. If accompanied by friends or lovers, they only served as the beards for my deep attachment to the action on screen. Social obligation could prove a distraction, and sitting next to someone might imperil the purity of the Dream. There is no accounting for individual perception, and an inconvenient laugh overheard during a moment of cinematic pathos might weaken my communion with what was happening on the screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While I did not carry the particular pathology my father had contracted from watching too many movies, the Dream did manifest itself in another harmful way, as the mistaken belief that pictures might actually offer something in a way to live. Watching \u003ci>Casablanca\u003c/i>, for example, instilled in me the strong urge to defeat Nazis, swill bourbon, and sleep with Ingrid Bergman. When the fulfillment of those desires quickly dwindled to picking a fight with my mother, drinking Budweiser, and buying a \u003ci>Playboy\u003c/i>, the lesson was notlearned. Because the Dream remained private, only the attitude mattered, and the discrepancy between aspirations and application could be ignored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In periods of stress during my twenties, I went to the movies alone every day, starting with what was appealing and working my way through what remained. I went to the movies alone instead of looking for a job. I went to the movies alone instead of attending a party. I went to the movies alone when I broke up with my girlfriend. I went to the movies alone after departing early from social events. I went to the movies for relief, as a time out from life, as a way to replace the throb of rumination with the Dream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/lbutler3.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>Luke Butler, \u003ci>The End X\u003c/i>, 2013; courtesyof the artist and \u003ca href=\"http://jessicasilvermangallery.com/\">Jessica Silverman Gallery\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>I had company. During the day, the few attendees at the theater mostly sat solo, scattered islands in a sea of unoccupied seats. Onto them I projected my own shame at once again turning a sunny day into time spent in the dark. Scanning the audience before the dormant screen came to life, I saw the introverted and the dreary, the rumpled and the restless, all looking as louche as patrons at a porn theater. Was that palpable sense of mutual failure emanating from the auditorium’s scattered nodes of humanity only in my head? What defect of character had impelled us, in the middle of the day, to seek out a fantasy, like children turning to an imaginary friend? Even as we had relegated ourselves to mere receptors, sitting immobile in interior dimness, others operated in the open air, exercising individual acts of agency under the bright sun. Going places, doing things. But we, sunken in our seats, quietly tossing stale, expensive popcorn into our mouths, furtively sucking Coca-Cola through a straw — have any humans ever looked so forlorn? “Lie to me” was our collective silent demand. Lie to me, but do it well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with any indulgence in addiction, going to the movies alone often left me depressed. Despite my best efforts to prolong the Dream, its dissipation proved inevitable. Self-recrimination followed: Once again, I had breathed someone else’s imagination. Once again, I had allowed an exaggerated representation of experience to stand in for the real thing. What flaw in the brain allowed for such confounding? For the willingness to let the real world give way to make-believe? My emotions excited by projected light in the dark — I might as well bay at the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These doubts grew, until I felt my going to the movies alone tantamount to a toddler sucking on her thumb: comforting yet of dubious utility, a distasteful habit that delayed the next developmental stage. The tipping point occurred when I stole a few hours during a work day to see the movie \u003ca href=\"http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/crazy_people/reviews/\">\u003ci>Crazy People\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, a Dudley Moore vehicle that \u003ci>New York Times\u003c/i> critic Vincent Canby called, “a humorless satire of the advertising world.” I suppose, as members of Alcoholics Anonymous like to say, that is when I bottomed out. And I did something I’d never done before: I left before the film ended. While the movie wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen (or even the worst Dudley Moore movie I’d ever seen) the diminishing returns of the Dream had finally hit a point where the payoff couldn’t remotely justify the time and money spent; where the profound objective of going solo — vicarious escape to the point of self-abandonment — no longer could be achieved in a movie theater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/lbutler1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" alt=\"\">\u003cbr>Luke Butler, \u003ci>The End XII\u003c/i>, 2013; courtesyof the artist and \u003ca href=\"http://jessicasilvermangallery.com/\">Jessica Silverman Gallery\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>That was not the end of my excursions, but it was the beginning of moviegoing wisdom. I don’t know “What is Cinema,” but I do know what it isn’t: a substitute for living. And as I became more comfortable with my own life, and invested in that of my wife’s and my daughter’s, I became less interested in wallowing in the fictitious existences of those populating a fabricated world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As my five-year-old daughter has grown, we have carefully monitored her exposure to visual media. After watching a movie or TV show, she is frequently cranky. She finds it difficult and unpleasant to extricate herself from the grasping allure of the Dream, preferring to remain spellbound by the wonderful illusion than to return to the relative dullness of dinner and a bath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I completely understand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> I still love the movies. But I am careful around them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And these days I like to go with someone else.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "california_films_chinatown",
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"content": "\u003cp>“Forget it Jake; it’s Chinatown.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Has another American film ever wrapped itself up so neatly in one last line? While the coda never attained the mythological status of “Rosebud,” it’s at least as worthy of rumination. Who hasn’t, after all, been caught in circumstances where the game is rigged, you can’t win for losing, and only the good die young — at least metaphorically? Where personal depravity festers into institutional corruption? Though the \u003ca href=\"http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/los-angeles-aqueduct-there-it-is-take-it.html\">historicity of the film is at best vague\u003c/a>, the message is anything but: that the needs of the many are always subordinate to the solipsism of the rich and powerful, and those who stand in their way are going to get plowed under. Or at least wind up with a sliced nostril.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SPakQ7hH6I&w=480&h=270]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne’s 1974 film offers us all the trappings of classic film noir — but in color. The plot: J.J. “Jake” Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is an ex-cop and current private eye in 1937 drought-stricken L.A. who gets lured into a case ostensibly concerning marital infidelity. The plot then thickens — or dampens, rather — revealing a conspiracy involving water and where it goes. As he navigates his way through an array of self-interested liars, Gittes, naturally, plunges into a rabbit hole of intrigue, greed and corruption. There is also a murder, a crooked ex-sheriff, thugs, benighted cops, and a beautiful woman (Faye Dunaway), along with a jazzy music score and gorgeous cinematography evoking a romantic past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this is no ordinary noir. In this \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hollywood\">New Hollywood\u003c/a>, era, comforting genres got turned on their heads, and revisionist films like \u003ci>Bonnie and Clyde\u003c/i>, \u003ci>McCabe and Mrs. Miller\u003c/i>, and The Long Goodbye subverted old tropes while exploding audience expectations. The precipitating event in Chinatown — a dissembling woman hiringa private dick — echoes Brigid O’Shaugnessy working Sam Spade at the start of \u003ci>The Maltese Falcon\u003c/i>, that archetypal noir. But where Bogart’s Spade kept turning the tables on the rogues gallery attempting to ensnare him, Gittes is a man who makes a habit of arriving a day late and a dollar short. The fact that he can handle himself belies the fact that his idealism makes him ill-suited for the business. And can you imagine Bogart or Mitchum indulging in the kind of ingenuous delight Nicholson displays in his eagerness to tell a dirty joke? Or that any of the image peddlers in the heyday of noir would have signed off on their leading man walking around for a good chunk of the film with his nose covered by a large bandage?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatownnose.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Faye Dunaway’s Evelyn Mulwray lies and evades, following the classic femme fatale script. She’s too sexy to ignore but too dangerous to trust, right up to the denouement, when…. bam! We find out that the mystery woman Gittes has been chasing is in fact Evelyn’s own daughter by her father (John Huston). One can only imagine how audiences responded in 1974, when incest was not a topic of talk shows and self-help books. Here, the repressed emotions and transgressed taboos that classic Hollywood excelled at subversively communicating under the stricture of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93301189\">Production Code\u003c/a> are brought out of the two-toned noir shadows and thrown into colorful stark relief, and the audience gets the same rough education as Gittes. “My father and I … understand?” Evelyn asks him, disgust suffusing her voice, after Gittes has slapped the truth out of her. “Or is it too tough for you?” That’s a question for us, as well. Do we, like Gittes, have the stomach for anything stronger than subtext in our on-screen fantasies? Where the femme fatale is not the root of original sin, but a broken victim?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatown2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatown4.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatown7.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ending, which Polanski had to fight for, is one of the bleakest in American cinema. When Huston’s Noah Cross drags his daughter/granddaughter away, the failure of our detective hero is complete, and we know that history will repeat in Cross’ perverse sexuality and in his successful financial scheming. If Gittes has solved any mystery, it’s only that in the face of powerful forces you don’t understand, it’s better to do “as little as possible,” as they used to say on his old Chinatown beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What else makes the movie great? The rich sepia-toned cinematography lends a parched but beautiful look to a story with a backdrop of drought. The atmosphere is grim; everyone’s suspicious, wary, or cranky. And the acting is out of this world. Nicholson’s Gittes is another in an extraordinary run of indelible performances over a six-year period (\u003ci>Five Easy Pieces\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Carnal Knowledge\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The King of Marvin Gardens\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Last Detail\u003c/i>, and \u003ci>One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest\u003c/i>). Dunaway may go him one better; in a star turn of supreme intelligence, her fragility comes into focus only after her horrifying secret is revealed. At one point she stumbles over the words “my father,” looking blankly into the distance, the familial term seeming to confound all reason. Later, while naked, she covers herself up at his mention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatown8.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With good reason. “I don’t blame myself,” the robber baron and pedophile says about the sexual abuse of his daughter. “Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of \u003ci>anything\u003c/i>.” John Huston as Noah Cross lends the type of megalomania that can only come from personal experience. Yet something comical stirs amid the monstrousness — he’s a ruffian who has terrorized his way into high society but can barely conceal his pirate’s heart. At the end, when he is shot point blank, he naturally suffers only a flesh wound. A mere bullet, it seems, cannot defeat such an embodiment of avarice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because this is \u003ci>Chinatown\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“Forget it Jake; it’s Chinatown.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Has another American film ever wrapped itself up so neatly in one last line? While the coda never attained the mythological status of “Rosebud,” it’s at least as worthy of rumination. Who hasn’t, after all, been caught in circumstances where the game is rigged, you can’t win for losing, and only the good die young — at least metaphorically? Where personal depravity festers into institutional corruption? Though the \u003ca href=\"http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/los-angeles-aqueduct-there-it-is-take-it.html\">historicity of the film is at best vague\u003c/a>, the message is anything but: that the needs of the many are always subordinate to the solipsism of the rich and powerful, and those who stand in their way are going to get plowed under. Or at least wind up with a sliced nostril.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/8SPakQ7hH6I'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/8SPakQ7hH6I'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne’s 1974 film offers us all the trappings of classic film noir — but in color. The plot: J.J. “Jake” Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is an ex-cop and current private eye in 1937 drought-stricken L.A. who gets lured into a case ostensibly concerning marital infidelity. The plot then thickens — or dampens, rather — revealing a conspiracy involving water and where it goes. As he navigates his way through an array of self-interested liars, Gittes, naturally, plunges into a rabbit hole of intrigue, greed and corruption. There is also a murder, a crooked ex-sheriff, thugs, benighted cops, and a beautiful woman (Faye Dunaway), along with a jazzy music score and gorgeous cinematography evoking a romantic past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this is no ordinary noir. In this \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hollywood\">New Hollywood\u003c/a>, era, comforting genres got turned on their heads, and revisionist films like \u003ci>Bonnie and Clyde\u003c/i>, \u003ci>McCabe and Mrs. Miller\u003c/i>, and The Long Goodbye subverted old tropes while exploding audience expectations. The precipitating event in Chinatown — a dissembling woman hiringa private dick — echoes Brigid O’Shaugnessy working Sam Spade at the start of \u003ci>The Maltese Falcon\u003c/i>, that archetypal noir. But where Bogart’s Spade kept turning the tables on the rogues gallery attempting to ensnare him, Gittes is a man who makes a habit of arriving a day late and a dollar short. The fact that he can handle himself belies the fact that his idealism makes him ill-suited for the business. And can you imagine Bogart or Mitchum indulging in the kind of ingenuous delight Nicholson displays in his eagerness to tell a dirty joke? Or that any of the image peddlers in the heyday of noir would have signed off on their leading man walking around for a good chunk of the film with his nose covered by a large bandage?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatownnose.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Faye Dunaway’s Evelyn Mulwray lies and evades, following the classic femme fatale script. She’s too sexy to ignore but too dangerous to trust, right up to the denouement, when…. bam! We find out that the mystery woman Gittes has been chasing is in fact Evelyn’s own daughter by her father (John Huston). One can only imagine how audiences responded in 1974, when incest was not a topic of talk shows and self-help books. Here, the repressed emotions and transgressed taboos that classic Hollywood excelled at subversively communicating under the stricture of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93301189\">Production Code\u003c/a> are brought out of the two-toned noir shadows and thrown into colorful stark relief, and the audience gets the same rough education as Gittes. “My father and I … understand?” Evelyn asks him, disgust suffusing her voice, after Gittes has slapped the truth out of her. “Or is it too tough for you?” That’s a question for us, as well. Do we, like Gittes, have the stomach for anything stronger than subtext in our on-screen fantasies? Where the femme fatale is not the root of original sin, but a broken victim?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatown2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatown4.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatown7.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ending, which Polanski had to fight for, is one of the bleakest in American cinema. When Huston’s Noah Cross drags his daughter/granddaughter away, the failure of our detective hero is complete, and we know that history will repeat in Cross’ perverse sexuality and in his successful financial scheming. If Gittes has solved any mystery, it’s only that in the face of powerful forces you don’t understand, it’s better to do “as little as possible,” as they used to say on his old Chinatown beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What else makes the movie great? The rich sepia-toned cinematography lends a parched but beautiful look to a story with a backdrop of drought. The atmosphere is grim; everyone’s suspicious, wary, or cranky. And the acting is out of this world. Nicholson’s Gittes is another in an extraordinary run of indelible performances over a six-year period (\u003ci>Five Easy Pieces\u003c/i>, \u003ci>Carnal Knowledge\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The King of Marvin Gardens\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Last Detail\u003c/i>, and \u003ci>One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest\u003c/i>). Dunaway may go him one better; in a star turn of supreme intelligence, her fragility comes into focus only after her horrifying secret is revealed. At one point she stumbles over the words “my father,” looking blankly into the distance, the familial term seeming to confound all reason. Later, while naked, she covers herself up at his mention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/chinatown8.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\" alt=\"\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With good reason. “I don’t blame myself,” the robber baron and pedophile says about the sexual abuse of his daughter. “Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of \u003ci>anything\u003c/i>.” John Huston as Noah Cross lends the type of megalomania that can only come from personal experience. Yet something comical stirs amid the monstrousness — he’s a ruffian who has terrorized his way into high society but can barely conceal his pirate’s heart. At the end, when he is shot point blank, he naturally suffers only a flesh wound. A mere bullet, it seems, cannot defeat such an embodiment of avarice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because this is \u003ci>Chinatown\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>In Mohamed Diab’s film \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>, a woman who rides crowded Egyptian buses is sexually harassed in the buses’ aisles — not just once but repeatedly, on different days, by different men who think they can grope her with impunity. Eventually, the woman (portrayed by Egyptian actress Bushra Rozza) reaches her limit and begins stabbing harassers in the groin. “You expect me to be sane?” her character asks another woman. “They deserve what they get.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diab’s 2010 drama, which centers on three female characters who are attacked, was a box-office hit in Egypt and started a national dialogue there about sexual harassment. The film also delved into issues of oppression that were at the heart of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, presaging the revolution with its dramatization of a society on the edge of chaos. \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> screens Thursday, Oct. 10 at New People Cinema (1746 Post Street) as part of Diab’s Artist in Residency with the San Francisco Film Society. Diab will also talk about \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> and his career at FilmHouse (1426 Fillmore Street) on Monday, Oct. 14. Each year, the society picks a filmmaker of note for its Artist in Residence program, and Diab was an ideal choice given his experience at shepherding a movie that is still having an impact in Egypt and is still reaching new audiences around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diab based one of \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>‘s three major characters, a woman named Nelly, on the real life of Noha Roushdy, who in 2008 sued a man who sexually attacked her — the first such suit in Egypt. Roushdy won her case, which led to her attacker’s imprisonment, and new laws that criminalize sexual aggression. Before making \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>, which is his directorial debut, Diab, 35, was the screenwriter for four big Egyptian films: \u003ci>Real Dreams\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Island\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Replacement\u003c/i>, and \u003ci>Congratulations\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/COesFcvkXaE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“All four films were blockbusters that had the biggest stars in Egypt,” says Diab in an interview in San Francisco. “When I started making films, I wanted to make big blockbusters with the biggest stars. And then I discovered that’s not what I really needed. I needed to make something that was close to my heart, something that had a big message. I’d heard about harassment, and as a man in Egypt, you cannot know about those things, because women didn’t speak about it. I’d heard of it, and then came the trial of Noha Roushdy. I went to the trial, and one of the cameramen covering the trial was making fun of her. I was sitting next to him. And an attorney walked by who also made fun of her, saying, ‘Oh, women, they just exaggerate.’ I never try to see black and white, so even those people, I didn’t see them as bad people. I just saw them people who were not well-informed, who needed to see the world through Noha’s eyes. So I decided to make a film about her story.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> has scenes that are highly political. One of the characters is a soccer fan who paints her face in the colors of Egypt’s flag. After she’s attacked at a crowded celebration, she removes the paint in disgust. The film also has scenes that are darkly farcical (even humorous), as when the victim’s family worries more about its own reputation than the health and reputation of its attacked family member. The film has cinematic twists and turns that intertwine the lives of the different characters. And the film has thriller elements of vigilantism and mystery. Will Egyptian authorities figure out who’s responsible for the sudden increase in attacks on Cairo’s harassers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/diab1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003cbr>Director Mohamed Diab\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“I learned English from Hollywood films, and I learned that Hollywood formula,” Diab says. “I want to make good films that people see. I don’t want to make those European films — I respect them — that are boring.” The fact that Diab is male gave \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> more credibility in Egypt, he says. His wife, Sarah Goher, with whom he has a 2-year-old daughter, produced the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought it needed a man to make the film,” he says. “If it was a woman, then people are going to her lightly because it would be considered a feminist film.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My wife was with me from the beginning,” he adds. “Me and my wife did every single thing. After the film was finished, I got a small camera, and we made the credits in our own bathroom — she shot it. We were partners in this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film was controversial from the beginning, which helped draw even more Egyptian movie-goers. An official with an Egypt organization called the Association for Human Rights and Social Justice urged Egypt’s attorney general to ban \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> on the grounds that it encouraged women to hit men in the genitals. And Tamer Hosny, a major Egyptian pop star, complained that Diab used one of his songs to highlight one of the film’s crucial scenes. In the scene, a man listens to Hosny’s lyrics (which can be interpreted as misogynistic) before attacking Rozza’s character, whose name is Fayza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/diab2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> is Egypt’s most successful film by international sales, Diab says. “It made 2 million dollars in France alone,” he says. “It’s played in Brazil and Spain and India and many other countries. The only place it didn’t have big distribution was here in America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During his San Francisco residency, Diab is speaking to college and high school students about his career in film. Diab studied at New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. He moved to L.A. when he was 26, quitting a job at an international bank in Cairo. By Egyptian standards, that bank job was lucrative and prestigious, a stable position in an unstable country. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a big deal to leave everything,” he says. “I come from a small city, Ismaïlia, and it’s very hard to make it in Cairo. It was hard for me to leave that bank. My fiancée left me. It was crazy. I did every crazy job you can imagine. I couldn’t find myself. It’s very hard in the Egyptian educational system to find your artistic self. The first time that I knew I could draw was when I was in college. So I never dreamt as a kid of being a screenwriter or a director. I discovered that when I was 25. But I jump in when I’m sure of it.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“More and more women are speaking about harassment” in Egypt, Diab adds. “The film affected society, definitely, but I think the Revolution had more of an effect. The number of harassers is small, but they keep doing it all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> will screen Thursday, Oct. 10, 7pm, at New People Cinema in San Francisco, followed by a Q&A with the director. Diab will talk about his career on Monday, Oct. 14, 5pm at FilmHouse in San Francisco. To reserve a seat to that free event, email filmmaker360@sffs.org. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sffs.org/Education/Artist-in-Residence.aspx\">more information\u003c/a>, visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All images courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In Mohamed Diab’s film \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>, a woman who rides crowded Egyptian buses is sexually harassed in the buses’ aisles — not just once but repeatedly, on different days, by different men who think they can grope her with impunity. Eventually, the woman (portrayed by Egyptian actress Bushra Rozza) reaches her limit and begins stabbing harassers in the groin. “You expect me to be sane?” her character asks another woman. “They deserve what they get.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diab’s 2010 drama, which centers on three female characters who are attacked, was a box-office hit in Egypt and started a national dialogue there about sexual harassment. The film also delved into issues of oppression that were at the heart of Egypt’s 2011 uprising, presaging the revolution with its dramatization of a society on the edge of chaos. \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> screens Thursday, Oct. 10 at New People Cinema (1746 Post Street) as part of Diab’s Artist in Residency with the San Francisco Film Society. Diab will also talk about \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> and his career at FilmHouse (1426 Fillmore Street) on Monday, Oct. 14. Each year, the society picks a filmmaker of note for its Artist in Residence program, and Diab was an ideal choice given his experience at shepherding a movie that is still having an impact in Egypt and is still reaching new audiences around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diab based one of \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>‘s three major characters, a woman named Nelly, on the real life of Noha Roushdy, who in 2008 sued a man who sexually attacked her — the first such suit in Egypt. Roushdy won her case, which led to her attacker’s imprisonment, and new laws that criminalize sexual aggression. Before making \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i>, which is his directorial debut, Diab, 35, was the screenwriter for four big Egyptian films: \u003ci>Real Dreams\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Island\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Replacement\u003c/i>, and \u003ci>Congratulations\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/COesFcvkXaE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen>\u003c/iframe>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“All four films were blockbusters that had the biggest stars in Egypt,” says Diab in an interview in San Francisco. “When I started making films, I wanted to make big blockbusters with the biggest stars. And then I discovered that’s not what I really needed. I needed to make something that was close to my heart, something that had a big message. I’d heard about harassment, and as a man in Egypt, you cannot know about those things, because women didn’t speak about it. I’d heard of it, and then came the trial of Noha Roushdy. I went to the trial, and one of the cameramen covering the trial was making fun of her. I was sitting next to him. And an attorney walked by who also made fun of her, saying, ‘Oh, women, they just exaggerate.’ I never try to see black and white, so even those people, I didn’t see them as bad people. I just saw them people who were not well-informed, who needed to see the world through Noha’s eyes. So I decided to make a film about her story.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> has scenes that are highly political. One of the characters is a soccer fan who paints her face in the colors of Egypt’s flag. After she’s attacked at a crowded celebration, she removes the paint in disgust. The film also has scenes that are darkly farcical (even humorous), as when the victim’s family worries more about its own reputation than the health and reputation of its attacked family member. The film has cinematic twists and turns that intertwine the lives of the different characters. And the film has thriller elements of vigilantism and mystery. Will Egyptian authorities figure out who’s responsible for the sudden increase in attacks on Cairo’s harassers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/diab1.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003cbr>Director Mohamed Diab\u003cbr>\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>“I learned English from Hollywood films, and I learned that Hollywood formula,” Diab says. “I want to make good films that people see. I don’t want to make those European films — I respect them — that are boring.” The fact that Diab is male gave \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> more credibility in Egypt, he says. His wife, Sarah Goher, with whom he has a 2-year-old daughter, produced the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought it needed a man to make the film,” he says. “If it was a woman, then people are going to her lightly because it would be considered a feminist film.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My wife was with me from the beginning,” he adds. “Me and my wife did every single thing. After the film was finished, I got a small camera, and we made the credits in our own bathroom — she shot it. We were partners in this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film was controversial from the beginning, which helped draw even more Egyptian movie-goers. An official with an Egypt organization called the Association for Human Rights and Social Justice urged Egypt’s attorney general to ban \u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> on the grounds that it encouraged women to hit men in the genitals. And Tamer Hosny, a major Egyptian pop star, complained that Diab used one of his songs to highlight one of the film’s crucial scenes. In the scene, a man listens to Hosny’s lyrics (which can be interpreted as misogynistic) before attacking Rozza’s character, whose name is Fayza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003ccenter>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://a.s.kqed.net/img/arts/blog/diab2.jpg\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\">\u003c/center>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> is Egypt’s most successful film by international sales, Diab says. “It made 2 million dollars in France alone,” he says. “It’s played in Brazil and Spain and India and many other countries. The only place it didn’t have big distribution was here in America.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During his San Francisco residency, Diab is speaking to college and high school students about his career in film. Diab studied at New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. He moved to L.A. when he was 26, quitting a job at an international bank in Cairo. By Egyptian standards, that bank job was lucrative and prestigious, a stable position in an unstable country. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a big deal to leave everything,” he says. “I come from a small city, Ismaïlia, and it’s very hard to make it in Cairo. It was hard for me to leave that bank. My fiancée left me. It was crazy. I did every crazy job you can imagine. I couldn’t find myself. It’s very hard in the Egyptian educational system to find your artistic self. The first time that I knew I could draw was when I was in college. So I never dreamt as a kid of being a screenwriter or a director. I discovered that when I was 25. But I jump in when I’m sure of it.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“More and more women are speaking about harassment” in Egypt, Diab adds. “The film affected society, definitely, but I think the Revolution had more of an effect. The number of harassers is small, but they keep doing it all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Cairo 678\u003c/i> will screen Thursday, Oct. 10, 7pm, at New People Cinema in San Francisco, followed by a Q&A with the director. Diab will talk about his career on Monday, Oct. 14, 5pm at FilmHouse in San Francisco. To reserve a seat to that free event, email filmmaker360@sffs.org. For \u003ca href=\"http://www.sffs.org/Education/Artist-in-Residence.aspx\">more information\u003c/a>, visit sffs.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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}
},
"baycurious": {
"id": "baycurious",
"title": "Bay Curious",
"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bay-Curious-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/news/series/baycurious",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 3
},
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"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious",
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}
},
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"id": "bbc-world-service",
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"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9pm-10pm, TUE-FRI 1am-2am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_world_service",
"meta": {
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"source": "BBC World Service"
},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/global-news-podcast/id135067274?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/BBC-World-Service-p455581/",
"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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}
},
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"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 1
},
"link": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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},
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
"link": "/forum",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx"
}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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