SFIFF54


The 54th San Francisco International Film Festival kicked off yesterday and will run through May 5, featuring 192 films. Carol and I will be going about every day, sometimes to the same film, sometimes to different films. I will write capsule reviews of the films I see and post them here as soon as I get them written. The most expeditious way to do these reviews, for me, is to take the advance blurbs and edit them for what I saw. If you’re interested, you can see the advance blurbs at the SFIFF54 web site. Reviews will be added at the end of this post.

SFIFF54 – 2011

APRIL
Thu 21 M and C – Beginners — (review below)
Fri 22 M – The City Below, C – Meeks Cutoff
Sat 23 C – The Last Buffalo Hunt, M – World on a Wire
Sun 24 M and C – At Ellen’s Age
Mon 25 M and C – Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Tue 26 M and C – New Skin for the Old Ceremony
Wed  27 M – The Sleeping Beauty, M – The Mill and the Cross
Thu 28 M and C – Love in a Puff
Fri 29 M and C – Detroit Wild City
Sat 30 M and C – Kanbar Award – Dog Day Afternoon, C – Blessed Events

MAY
Sun 1 – Member screening – won’t know what film until we see it
Sun 1 M and C – A Cat in Paris, M and C – Page One: NYT
Mon 2 M and C – The Stool Pigeon
Tue 3 M – Yves St Laurent L’Amour Fou, C – American Teacher
Wed 4 M and C – The Trip
Thu 5     M and C – Closing Night – On Tour

SFIFF54 Opening Night: Beginners

Opening Night of the San Francisco International Film Festival is two days away! Kick off the 54th year with Mike Mills’s Beginners, about a graphic artist (Ewan McGregor) absorbing the lessons imparted by his father’s late-blooming eagerness to let love into his life.
Mills and McGregor are expected to attend for a postscreening Q&A.

Join the convivial throng at the Castro Theatre for a screening of Beginners, and then head to the lavish party to enjoy culinary delights from local restaurants, sophisticated cocktails and, of course, dancing. You must be 21+ to attend the party.

At the Castro, SFFS Executive Director Graham Leggat was paid tribute for 5 years of superb service by the President of the Board, J. Patterson McBaine. Under Graham’s leadership, SFFS has grown from 11 staff to 32, $1 million budget to $6 million, doubled its membership and become a year round operation. Continue reading “SFIFF54” →

Un-Henged

Here is Alison as we bike back from Stonehenge to our Landmark Trust apartment in nearby Salisbury. It’s about a 10 mile trip. We are taking the carriage paths back from the World Heritage site because it is adjacent to a very busy highway that is pretty unpleasant to bike along. The carriage and foot paths, on the other hand, wend through the obvious burial mounds, as ancient as Stonehenge, that sit on the hills surrounding the monument. To either side are flocks of sheep that graze over those grassy mounds and keep this southern edge of the Salisbury Plain treeless and open.

PRESIDIO HABITATS

From: Sanford, Jody Subject: CONFIRMATION: Guided Walk of Art and the Park with Presidio Habitats Curator – Saturday, February 26, at 11 am Date: February 22, 2011 10:41:40 AM PST Thanks for registering for the Guided Walk of Art and the Park with the Presidio Habitats Curator, which is a special program of the Presidio Habitats Exhibition. This email confirms your reservation. The event will be held on Saturday, February 26, from 11 am to 1 pm. Please meet at the Presidio Habitats Exhibition Hall at Fort Scott. Driving and transit directions are located on the website here: http://www.presidio.gov/experiences/habitats/. We hope that this walk will occur as scheduled. However, rain is currently predicted for Saturday. We will be monitoring the weather forecast throughout the week. If we anticipate heavy rain on Saturday morning, we will send an email cancelling this walk. We will make the determination by 3 pm on Friday, February 25.

Actually, it was a totally beautiful day, about 45° but seeming like 60 in the bright sun. About 50 folks attended, about equal MF, ages 50 and up, including women with gnarly walking sticks. My guess is these are retired folks who love to walk in the Presidio on a regular basis, just like me, but my walks have been confined to the Crissy Field area. Cheryl Haines, curator of Presidio Habitats, took me (and others) on a walk to view the projects. Quite illuminating on a dazzling day. (tweet). She’s a nice looking woman in her 50s, very stylishly dressed, and the owner of Haines Gallery. She works with outdoor oriented artists (Goldsworthy and his ilk) and felt like she was well established and wanted to give something back, so she set up the For Site Foundation to do educational public art projects.

The FOR-SITE Foundation (established 2003) is dedicated to the creation and understanding of art about place. This pragmatic program supports the creation of a new work for exhibition in collaboration with partner museums on the West Coast. Past residency and exhibition included Richard at SFMOMA; Cornelia Parker at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Pae White at New Langton Arts and Mark Dion at the Oakland Museum.

I signed on for this walk because I had been to the Presidio Habitats Exhibition Hall, read the brochures and viewed a couple of the installations but frankly, didn’t get it. Cheryl Haines described it as, “…our little project in the Presidio about the animals who live here.” A (famous) artist would be found to conceptualize a habitat for such animal — Gray Fox, or Screeching Owl — for example. Very cool, very illuminating and a perfect excuse for a walk on this dazzlingly beautiful day. Continue reading “PRESIDIO HABITATS” →

22,222.2

In the New York Times Magazine, about once a month, a spread called DOMAINS appears, about where and how a certain well known person lives. Morning routine, Always in fridge, Gadget she can live without, Prized possession, are some of the questions posed. The reader can then think about his answers and thereby relate. My Prized Possession is my Yamaha Riva Z125 motor scooter. It is unrivaled for getting around the streets and hills of San Francisco, and parking is a breeze.

The yellow stickers are parking permits. I can park in un-metered spaces nearly anywhere in the city for $24 a year.

I’ve had it for as long as we’ve lived in San Francisco, over 15 years, and except for about 20 (a couple trips to Sausalito), the miles are all San Francisco miles.

I moved here alone in the spring of 1992 while Carol finished her school year at the Preschool Experience in Newton. I had a job and a flat, but no car, no bike, no bed. I rented a Mustang convertible for a week in order to explore my new city and bring home a futon.

Some notes from my journal recount early learning experiences:
Commute to 6 Federal Street:
Monday April 13, 1992
Bus 41 Union to Columbus to Montgomery to Clay to Beale & Howard – 30 minutes – walk 13 minutes. Turns corner at Clay and Montgomery, better? Looks a little longer on the map, but would surely be a nicer walk.
Home – Bus 45 caught on Third Street under overpass, about a 5 minute walk. Overall, about 45 minutes.

Tuesday April 14
Bus 45 Union to Stockton. Slower, through Chinatown. Longish walk from Fourth and Market.

Wednesday April 15
Bus 41 to Montgomery and Clay. Walk 22 minutes.

Stopped at a stoplight on Columbus Ave, I looked out my bus window to see a woman in a skirt and high heels on a motor scooter. By gosh, if she can handle a scooter, so can I. Continue reading “22,222.2” →

Reynolds Price 1933 – 2011

Reynolds Price 1933 - 2011

Above is from the back of the book jacket for the 25th Anniversary edition of A Long and Happy Life. I present it as a good picture of Reynolds before he was confined to a wheelchair as the result of cancer treatment when steroids and a lack of exercise puffed him up well beyond what he would have preferred. Unfortunately his obits, including an excellent one in the NY Times by William Grimes, are going with post-cancer shots.
Continue reading “Reynolds Price 1933 – 2011” →

MLK Card 2011

Ignorant violence killed Martin Luther King Jr., through a nefarious impulse that he spent his life teaching us to reject.

We have learned so little in the four decades since his assassination. Violence continues to be a ubiquitous tool of both ideology and power and the tools of violence are increasingly available to any individual or group, no matter how malevolent or deranged. No nation, whether advanced or impoverished, is immune to this plague. Those who would profess non-violence as an unyielding dogma today are routinely dismissed as naïve or idealistic, as the violent path to an ideological or financial end is always more direct than the non-violent one.

The teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. are as relevant today as they were when he spoke them. Today is the American holiday that commemorates his life and work. He should have turned 81 years old this week.

Please take a moment today to reflect on some of his words and how they might still achieve their elusive goals. I have selected some that seem particularly relevant today (see card below). More can easily be found on the internet.

“Be the peace you wish to see in the world”

Snapshot

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I found one of the the elusive Flushing (Queens, NY) Xinjiang Bbq Meat Carts! Two lamb,  one beef, $3, and very good.

I have heard lots of stuff from adventurous NYers about the food in Flushing, including these street vendors selling “Authentic Xinjian BBQ” or what we normally think of as kebabs. So now that I’m back in NYC for a few days of bidnes, I went out to check it out.
Continue reading “Snapshot” →

About Last Night

FOREVER TANGO
January 11 at Marines Memorial Theater.

Created and directed by Luis Bravo, Forever Tango features a world-renowned cast of dancers and musicians who bring an intoxicating sense of excitement and passion to the stage. Through music, dance and vignettes, the production traces the tango’s colorful history, from its beginnings in turn-of-the-century Buenos Aires bordellos to its acceptance into high society. Sensuous and sophisticated, the tango inhabits a world where everything can be said with the flick of a leg, the tug of a hand, the tap of a foot and the arch of an eyebrow.
The original production took San Francisco by storm in 1994 where it played an unprecedented 92 weeks. In June of 1997, Forever Tango opened on Broadway where it played for 14 months and earned rave reviews from critics. The show garnered multiple Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations, and became the longest-running tango show in Broadway history – an honor it still holds today! Forever Tango has since toured major cities through the United States, Europe and Asia. The show’s last visit to San Francisco was in 2008.
Forever Tango’s cast includes 14 world-class dancers, a vocalist and an 8-piece, on-stage orchestra, anchored by the bandoneón, the accordion-like instrument that is the mainstay of tango music. The Forever Tango orchestra boasts three of only 200 bandoneón players known worldwide. The dances, performed to original and traditional music, are the result of collaboration between each couple and director/creator Bravo.
Also appearing in every performance of Luis Bravo’s Forever Tango is Cheryl Burke. With over 18 years dancing experience and several championship titles under her belt, Cheryl has tangoed and sambaed her way into the hearts of millions through the hit ABC television show Dancing With The Stars. She is one of the show’s professional dancers to have won the championship twice! In the spring of 2008, Cheryl opened her first dance studio, the highly successfuly Cheryl Burke Dance, which now has locations in Silicon Valley and Orange County.
– Marines Memorial Theater announcement


Cheryl Burke on Argentine Tango – Since I was a little girl, I’ve been a huge fan. When they were here in SF performing, I remember my mom and dad taking me. Argentine Tango and ballroom dancing are completely separate styles. I asked my agent to approach Luis Bravo and he said, “Well, OK, come to Argentina for the summer and some of my top dancers will teach you.”
In Argentine Tango there’s no hip action. It’s softer, it’s delicate, then sometimes it’s passionate. Sometimes there’s sharpness, although it almost always comes from the man, because it’s very much about lead and follow. – Notes from a SF Chronicle feature

MY TAKE – I vaguely remember Forever Tango from its earlier SF appearances – I think it was in a tent down on the Embarcadero. We went this time because of Cheryl Burke – she’s hot – but she only dances three or four times. This is all about the Luis Bravo dance troupe from Argentina.
The orchestra is on stage and it is fabulous. Piano, string bass, violin, viola, cello and three bandoneon players. Aside from playing for the dancers, the orchestra plays several numbers with male singer and several numbers alone. The dancers pairings are the same throughout the evening. They are brilliant and varied in style and even when they are three or more couples performing at once, they perform their own dance, not a synchronized thing.
At a little over two hours, including intermission, it felt a tad long, but what a great evening.
Bravo.