'Neo-Benshi Night: Move Over, Big Screen'

POETIC CINEMA

Cribbing from Japanese cinema's early days, last year Konrad Steiner and San Francisco Cinematheque introduced neo-benshi – live narration by local poets of movie scenes. One entertaining highlight of the debut installment was David Larsen's swaggering oratory for Troy, which proved just how easily, not to mention cheaply, a megamillion dud can be rescued by one person's wit. Neo-benshi gets another go-round tonight, as (in conjunction with the Poets Theater Jamboree) American Psycho, West Side Story, and early Bette Davis get on-the-spot verbal reinterpretations. Joined by Colter Jacobsen, local lit wonders Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian take on William Wellman's proto-disaster pic The High and the Mighty, while Leslie Scalapino faces down a chapter from the Lone Wolf and Cub series. (Johnny Ray Huston)

NEO-BENSHI NIGHT: MOVE OVER, BIG SCREEN California College of the Arts, Fri/20, 7:30 p.m.

1111 Eighth St., SF. $5-$8. (415) 552-1990, www.sfcinematheque.org