From the spam folder of the Senior Culture Editor:

Hello Marke! I am Dr. Ramapati Singhania! I went live with my web business just last month.

Cheers, darling, congrats.

Imagine a complexion so gorgeous that men and women were stopped in their tracks! Wouldn't that be great?

Even if I live on microwaved Orville Redenbacher popcorn from the AMCO station down the street? <Cough>.

Or picture yourself confident and dazzlingly sexy even in a pair of jeans. How would it change your life to feel beautiful everyday?

It would save me a lot of time posting for man-dates on Craigslist. I could totally upgrade from "Casual Encounters" to "Men Seeking Men"!

For centuries the glowing complexion and flawless texture of the Korean woman’s skin have symbolized the ultimate in beauty and sensuality. Would you like to unravel the mystery of their beautiful skin?

Wasn't that, like, the plot of Silence of the Lambs?

Here's the mystery: Well to put it simply the secret to the flawless Korean skin lies in their cosmetic formulations. Traditional Korean compositions that have been used for centuries. Visit my site and I will give you this $800 value for free!

And here I thought the secret to flawless Korean skin was rampant stereotyping. How naive! Thanks Dr. Singhania. Got anything in Vietnamese? I'm a little low ....

PS. I can't believe I'm blogging about spam. Bring back the heady days of Larry Craig! Oh wait, they may be back ....

By Bus Station John

As a DJ who's created a number of clubs celebrating the music, aesthetic and sexual freedom of the period during which Cruising was released, I've noticed that a significant number of the gay men in attendance -- the twenty- and thirtysomethings in particular -- seem excited and intrigued by the film's reissue on DVD. And why shouldn't they be?

The film offers today's youth much more than just a fleeting glimpse of the now long-gone gay NYC sexual underground enjoyed by their elders. In fact, Cruising works best as a travelogue of pre-Disneyfied gay Manhattan, a celluloid tour of the city's most notorious bars, back rooms and bushes, refreshingly populated by non-tweezery, pedicure-free, steroid-deficient and un-cyber-tainted denizens of the night. As the camera pans various tableaux of lusty men-on-the-make, the viewer finds himself literally cruising the screen...everybody's lookin' good!

Did Cruising director William Friedkin cruise the gay community without taking responsibility for the consequences? Was he cruising for a bruising, or careless about his film's impact on gay men's safety? (Is it a double standard when sexualized slasher-movie killings of gay men draw protests, but the same acts done to women on screen are treated as par for the course?) Friedkin the man may have been ignored while filming a scene from the movie at a bar's jockstrap night, but Friedkin the director's 1980 look through -- or is it at? -- a sexual underground hasn't gotten the blind-eye from gay men, then or now. In this week's Guardian and on this blog, you'll find critical writing and specific history on the subject, some of it scathing.

William Friedkin circa 1970s

Cruising is not a perfect movie, or Friedkin's best movie. It has ridiculous moments. The faux-Freudian explanation at the end parrots Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho as routinely as any Brian DePalma imitation of Hitch. But I've been fascinated by it since an era when it was reviled and hard to find on VHS tape. And I like it. I like Cruising's ambivalence and its ambiguity, which could be viewed as prophetic in a societal sense and influential in a stylistic sense. (In comparison, a lot of New Queer Cinema still seems rather, um, safe.) I like the movie's gorgeous but scary shots of Central Park at night. I like its soundtrack. I think it's interesting that the "killer"'s disembodied voice -- a quality that takes on new meaning the more you consider the story -- might very well be the influence behind the killer's voice in gay screenwriter Kevin Williamson's Scream series. Today, Cruising seems most interesting to me as a movie that critiques (hyper)masculinity, straight and gay, as the boundaries between them blur.

I had a 20-minute block of time to talk with Friedkin when he came through town recently in conjunction with Cruising's upcoming run at the Castro Theatre and DVD release. Here's what he had to say about Cruising -- and about Mercedes McCambridge being tied to a chair, knocking back hard liquor and swallowing raw eggs for The Exorcist. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Guardian: The Roxie Cinema here in San Francisco has had a role in the changing reputation of Cruising, so I want to ask you about your relationship with them.
William Friedkin: I don’t know if Elliot [Lavine] and Bill [Banning] are still running [the Roxie], but they always ran films that I made, and I came up [from L.A.] whenever I could to answer questions from the audience. I loved what they were doing.
Now it seems the DVD is the true cinematheque.

"At first I was really uncomfortable that I was having a retrospective at the de Young," Peaches Christ -- filmmaker, actress, scene goddess, and queen of SF midnight movies -- confided to me recently over free spring rolls and not-free wine spritzers at the Mix in the Castro. "I mean, does that mean I've gone legit? Should I die now? But then I heard that the de Young's board got their panties in a twist when they heard the show was all about me, so I felt much better."

She's a hellion!

Day one of the Toronto International Film Festival. New this year: badges with bar codes. Now, when you enter a screening room, they zap you in the badge instead of making you sign in. There's also a lot of construction going on in the mall that envelops the main festival theater. This is my third year at TIFF, but things feel a little unfamiliar so far.

Not the case with the movies (or the ancient-popcorn smell that fills the theaters...rank, yet comforting somehow). I've already seen some really great ones. Been up since 4am California time (is there any other time, really?) and I'm up at the same time tomorrow, so I'll keep this post pretty brief.

The day began as more of my days should: with a satisfying jolt of Spanish horror.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave ... amigo.

Mrs. What, Mrs. Who, Mrs Which. Screwy cherubim, mystical feathered pluralities, telepathic baby brothers. A dog named Fortinbras. And of course: tesseracts. What the hell am I talking about? The young adult books of Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet) who passed away yesterday at the age of 88.

Er, actually, I shouldn't say shit like that, considering whatever cruddy virus I carted from California to Canada is lingering, probably due to acute lack of shut-eye. I am now officially "that coughing asshole" during quiet moments in movies.

Fortunately, the flicks on my schedule today at the Toronto International Film Festival haven't been too library-like. I hit up the 9am (ouch) screening of Heavy Metal in Baghdad -- a doc about Iraq's only heavy metal band, although at present it would seem Iraq has zero metal bands, considering the members of the outfit profiled here, Acrassicauda, are currently hiding out in Syria. Produced by VICE films, exec produced by Spike Jonze, and inspired by an MTV trip to Iraq soon after the war broke out, I could easily see this doc finding a home on VH-1 or MTV. It's got a little too much filmmaker presence for me (voice-over, appearing on-camera, and so on), but it's hard not to love any film that delivers a political message for the kiddies snugly wrapped in a burrito of heavy-metal appreciation (with some intimate glimpses at post-Saddam Iraq, where the sounds of machine-gun fire are just part of the urban landscape). Metal fans can't even headbang in Iraq, much less grow their hair long for maximum hair-whip effect ... but Acrassicauda (a type of scorpion) learned to speak English by listening to Slayer, Metallica, and Mayhem records. Now if that ain't the very definition of metal, I don't know what is.

This is the CD a band member holds up to illustrate "what life here looks like." Dude ain't joking, neither.

Day three of the Toronto International Film Festival, and on the heels of Control comes Joy Division, a documentary about the groundbreaking (and heartbreakingly short-lived) post-punk band. While the narrative Control busied itself more with Ian Curtis' complicated personal life, Joy Division taks a closer look at the band's music, rise to fame, and also the roots of their dark, moody sound -- specifically, the city of Manchester in the late 1970s, where as one interviewee points out, "Nothing looked pretty." Just about everyone still living who had anything to do with the band chimes in on the doc, which benefits from director Grant Gee's ability to contextualize Joy Division's place in landscapes physical, sonic, and artistic. (He also made the 1998 Radiohead doc, Meeting People is Easy.) There's a great attention to detail -- the film visits places that are crucial to Joy Division lore, like the Factory, now shut down and living on only in the collective rock n' roll memory. Some great Joy Division peformance footage too -- seeing the doc so soon after seeing Control made me truly appreciate actor Sam Riley's portrayal of Curtis. The resemblance is pretty spooky.

Fun fact: the artist who designed this iconic album sleeve did so without ever having heard a note of Joy Division music.

i just got out of a screening of George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead. I need to let it sink in before I make some big statement about it.

Tag line is a double entendre...ya think?

But I do have a question, rhetorical or otherwise: has anyone else ever noticed there are two kinds of zombie films? There's the serious, socio-politial statement-making kind (see: everything else Romero's done, pretty much) and then there's the fun-loving, zombies-are-really-pretty-silly type (see: Return of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead). To be fair, there's also the zombies-are-gory-as-fuck subgenre (see: Italian-made, circa 1970s-80s. I recommend Nightmare City and Demons for a trash-tastic double feature). Anyway, my point is, I realized tonight that I actually prefer zom-coms to zom-agit-prop. (Yeah, I did like 28 Days Later. It's not a hard and fast rule.) And Romero obviously knows he's Making A Statement, because there's a joke to that effect early in Diary. But what exactly is that statement, and why is he still using zombies to make it? Old-school zombies, while cool as fuck, are pretty undynamic when you think about it. Am I going to go to hell if I say I liked the Dawn of the Dead remake more than Diary of the Dead?

Ah, a cozy Sunday night spent toggling between Britney Spears's expectedly disappointing performance on MTV's Video Music Awards and early word of Gen. David Petraeus's expectedly disappointing – to those hoping for a rapid draw down of forces overseas, at least -- "report on Iraq" that our dear "Austria, Australia, what's the dif?" President will pretty much base all of his future expectedly disappointing decisions on.

Both of these media hotspots are shaping up in the mind as almost miraculously opaque; the twin poles of current American culture -- celebrity and violent hubris -- apexed in such highly anticipated but awkwardly non-eventful performances that the status quo can only feel impelled to continue (dribble, dribble): Ms. Spears giving us tottering, soulless blah-horridness that will provide more WTF grist for her rumor mill$ ...

Praying for coverage. Screen grab from mtv.com

....and General Petraeus giving us simply a slight blah torque on Bush's "stay the course." (Petraeus's recommendations before Congress tomorrow, reportedly, will be to withdraw one surge battalion by December and four more by next August – a minutely faster timetable than Bush's "experts" had been predicting.) Of couse, Britney's decisions haven't killed thousands -- or have they?

"Sharlyn melon granita, rose geranium ice cream, and lavender cookies"

--- a delicious dessert at Nopa in the Western Addition, or a trio of soon-to-be-famous drag queens? Either way: scrumptious.

Lavender Cookies? Nah, it's Ethyl Merman .....

The Bay Guardian: all drag queens, all the time.

Day four of the Toronto International Film Fest: So, I was wrong. Nick Broomfield's Battle for Haditha isn't a documentary. Hell, it doesn't even have any voice-over. It's a drama -- a docu-drama -- that reenacts a real-life Iraq war incident in which a roadside IED led to the death of one American solider -- and in turn, many Iraqi civilians (including children) shot to death by the fallen soldier's weary, emotional, and confused squadmates. Shot in Jordan, the movie goes for a Flight 93-style realism, using mostly non-actors who represent more or less the characters they portray (Al-Qaeda aside, I'm guessing.) After the doc Heavy Metal in Baghdad, Battle for Haditha is the second Iraq-themed movie I've seen at the Toronto International Film Festival, and there are others on the bill I won't have time to see, like Brian DePalma's Redacted. Iraq is totally trendy ... and timely. And in my festival-addled mind, I just realized tomorrow is September 11.

Although Nick Broomfield is best-known for films like Kurt and Courtney and Biggie and Tupac, his latest is a fact-based drama, similar to his 2006 film Ghosts.

I knew there had to be a silver lining to the predictable cavalcade of hate for B_____y S____a' VMA performance: it's providing Chris Crocker with his biggest crossover to date.

He brings it, too, seizing the moment to let us all know what the title "Gimme More" is about and to show why Perez Hilton is worse than Paris Hilton. What in tarnation has the 21st century answer to Jonathan Caouette's boy-self wrought? Video diaries beyond his wildest dreams.

This may make you laugh, but remember, he's crying for us all.

Day Five of the Toronto International Film Festival: I had to make a Bob Dylan pun above because today I saw I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' tribute to the star (focusing on the young, exciting, pre-Victoria's Secret sellout years, thankfully). There's a lot going on here -- I'm sure you've already heard about the gimmick of having several different actors play Dylan or Dylanesque characters. It makes for a fascinating comment on perceptions of stardom and celebrity -- and art, I guess -- with stirring music (duh), contrasting visual textures, and some random cameos by an enormous cast (David Cross as Allen Ginsberg -- works for me). A few moments felt transcendent (Cate Blanchett was my favorite Dylan); others felt clipped from A Mighty Wind. This was maybe the only movie at the festival where I got that overwhelming, I'm-enveloped-by-this-film feeling ... which is not to say I was one hundred percent in love with it. But it was plenty stirring.

Just like a ... woman?

Meanwhile, unless something bedazzles me during my half-day tomorrow, I think I'm ready to declare my personal best-of-fest.

David Cronenberg, right, and Viggo Mortensen field questions at the Toronto film festival. Photo courtesy of Yahoo News.

Body horror – that’s the cinematic genre tag that’s often been slapped on filmmaker David Cronenberg, who brushes it off like so much splattered gray matter before confessing, “I’m happy that some people think I invented my own genre or something like that. It’s kind of flattering and it’s OK.”

The engaging Toronto director took some time recently at the Ritz-Carlton to debate the reasons why he took on his latest project, Eastern Promises, discuss the dangers of directing opera, and speculate on the Slavic looks of "No Ego Viggo" Mortensen. For the first part of Cronenberg's interview, go to “Written on the skin.” (For more on Mortensen, see "You go, I go, we all go for Viggo."

Bay Guardian: Eastern Promises doesn’t seem like an obvious film for you.

David Cronenberg: After the fact, everything is kind of obvious, but it never is when you’re thinking about it. It had been languishing at BBC Films for some time, and it just got sent to me. I was immediately interested because it was really good writing by Steve Knight who wrote Dirty Pretty Things for Stephen Frears.

I loved the textures in the script and the characters and the sort of betrayals and the enmities - it was all very rich material, and when I read it I thought, well, Viggo would be perfect for this role of Nikolai. I’d actually thought when doing A History of Violence that he had a really Slavic look, a really Russian look, you know. He’s half Danish so maybe that’s where that comes from, I don’t know. A director spends a lot of time looking at his actors’ faces - not just on the set but in the editing room. You’re looking for each nuance, each tone, so you get to know an actor very well in a way that most people don’t relate to other people. It’s an unusual relationship.

BG: It’s the second film you’ve made with Viggo Mortensen – that’s unusual for you.

DC: Totally unusual. The only other time [was Jeremy Irons] and I don’t think it was back to back either. I’ve gotten along very well with all my leading men and women frankly - Christopher Walken, James Woods, James Spader, Ralph Fiennes, and Jeff Goldblum - we’ve all at certain points tried to do things together. But it’s difficult in terms of scheduling and even though you might be friends with an actor he’s got to feel like he can say no to a role that he just doesn’t want to do. You don’t do each other a favor by doing something just for a friendship when in fact you don’t really like the project. Likewise, I wouldn’t do an actor a favor by miscasting him just because he’s a friend.

Fabulous intern Amber Peckham takes in the Jewish New Year tradition for the first time.

As a Wiccan, I often get mistaken for a Jew. The percentage of people who are unable to recognize the difference in shape (and the difference in doctrine) between a five pointed star and a six pointed one is a lot larger than any intelligent member of society would like to fathom. Therefore, the opportunity to live with my Jewish relatives in San Rafael when I came to the Bay Area from Indiana was one that both amused and excited me. Here, finally, is a chance to learn firsthand about the religion that I have been being asked about since I started wearing a pentacle at fourteen.

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and the first holiday I will celebrate with my family during my stay. Since I am completely clueless when it comes to Judaism and its holy days, I decided to do some research into the historical and nutritional relevancy of Rosh Hashanah and its foods.

Apples, honey, and shofar

Ms. 45 2007? Jodie Foster and her point-n-shoot.

You kind of want to like this film, because you appreciate Foster's mini-genre of woman-alone-against-a-threatening-world;Terrence Howard's twinkly, tear-eyed, shiny-jelly-bean cuteness; and the general '70s-era throwback Ms. 45 tone of the entire outing. Nothing's sexier than a gal with her gun.

But who knew Foster and director Neil Jordan were so intent on remaking 1976's Taxi Driver for the '00s? And how strange is it that so many of the once-grimy-Manhattan-based locales seem to be shot in Brooklyn? Thought-provoking that Foster and co. might re-imagine Iris, the child-prostitute character she so memorably played in Taxi Driver, as a prime-time radio-host cross between Terry Gross and Joe Frank who, after a traumatic encounter with deadly urban violence, finds herself reaching for her revolver again and again and again. But what next, The Warriors reset in Williamsburg? Indie-kid gangs with baseball bats rather than trucker hats?

Face it, NYC ain't the scumpot - love it or leave it! - it used to be, making it frustrating for all Scorsese-ites who wanna revisit the bad ole days of Bernard Goetz. The Brave One blatantly references its inspiration's Bernard Herrmann score. The initial bodega shoot-out is a dead-ringer for Travis Bickle's initiation into gun violence in TD, with an abused-wife twist, and the final firefight cops Bickle's bloody, uterine-like journey through the deep-red halls of a bordello. Could be intriguing, no? Except that this pro-vigilantism-in-the-guise-of-pro-victim screed really doesn't find the complexity or lyricism of its gritty forebear. Or even the gore-hungry gutsiness of Death Wish.

P.S.: The most shocking part of seeing The Brave One at a Sundance Kabuki preview screening had to be the bookish yet blood-thirsty audience that cheered every time Jodie blew away bad guys. Shades of that recent Western Addition father-son vigilante shooting-runover nearby.

Intern Amber Peckham remembers outsider artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth.

As a sixth grader on a field trip to Washington DC, I was fortunate enough to see one of Jimmy Lee Sudduth’s works, Fantastic Building, on display at the Smithsonian Institute. It was the only painting that lingered in my mind on the long drive home, simultaneously conjuring up fond memories of sand castles and horrific daydreams of prisons and boarding schools.

Fantastic Building, c.a. 1970’s, Smithsonian Institute

Intrigued, and mildly bored once summer came, I decided to further explore Sudduth’s work and was amazed by the depth of his innovation. To keep his mud paint from crumbling off the plywood he used as canvas, Sudduth mixed it with sugar, honey, and even diet Pepsi, and to color the mud he used herbs and flowers from the woods around his home, where he spent most of his youth in the company of his medicine-woman mother. He painted using only his fingers and claimed to have discovered 36 different kinds of mud in his home state of Alabama.

Monkeying around: Djordje Ozbolt's Little Ricky.

By Amy Glasenapp

Friday night, Sept. 7, and art was in the air. Among the early evening spatter of exhibitions in the Mission District was “Meetings with Remarkable Men,” a small but salient show of paintings by Serbian artist Djordje Ozbolt. This collection made me want to trash what was left of my tepid, paper-bag-wrapped Budweiser tallboy and get a real beer, something like a Unibroue ale or a nice Belgian Leffe.

The subjects of Ozbolt’s recent work are usually people and animals - mostly zebras, horses, and giraffes - placed in creepy fairy tale settings and depicted in vivid pastel colors. His paintings are playfully sinister, if not outright morbid, and are palpably influenced by storybook illustrations. Here, all the pieces are portraits (of remarkable men, as the title of the exhibition suggests, and Ozbolt displays a sense of humor about who is, in fact, remarkable: a few paintings border on hilarity, showcasing faces marred by gaping nose-pores, dirty-yellow buck teeth, and monkey features. These particular works are decadently surrealist, almost animated - you can easily imagine those figures chortling, rolling their eyes, or noshing on bananas.

Coo-coo catchoo: The Turd Man.

Other pieces are more disturbing, such as the portrait of a face that looks more like the inside of a head. Or maybe a bowl of carefully arranged moose turds. (Later, I found the title online, **The Turd Man,** and was dismayed that my scatological interpretation wasn’t unique or far-reaching.) Ozbolt varies his style in each painting, revealing a familiarity with both classical and contemporary techniques, while every piece is intrinsically fueled by color.

“Meetings” reminded me that the portraits are still capable of provocation and engagement, especially when compared with other forms I glimpsed that night – conceptual, overcompensating work that, in a harried attempt to appear arcane, ended up ultimately banal.

King him: His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God.

“Djordje Ozbolt: Meetings With Remarkable Men” runs through Sept. 29 at Jack Hanley Gallery, 395 Valencia St., SF. (415) 522-1623,

By Lotto Chancellor

My avatar has a 7.5 soft, looks like the late Vonnegut Jr., and speaks French. And he can make all my delusions of grandeur come virtually true.

For those who don’t know: an avatar is a simulated, pixilated, entirely customizable web identity rendered by the programmer gods in the image of man. Websites like SecondLife.com give users the chance to guide their avatars through virtual worlds in search of racy online chatting, or perhaps a pair of those brand name cybersneakers. As real-life simulators, virtual worlds exist as meticulously detailed, fully discoverable environments, and they feature all the benefits of user-to-user interaction. You control every move your avatar makes: setting up an intimate chat with the cute avatar over there in the assless chaps, for example, or taking a stroll across town to the virtual salon, saloon, or bird sanctuary. Yep, it’s just like the real world, but one step removed.

Most controversial among virtual world sites right now is RedLightCenter.com, offering its users oodles of hedonistic cyber-experiences: puffing cheeba, fondling a paramour, or executing Cleveland Steamer…and now making money.

A young woman struggles to heal from the aftereffects of a traumatic rape in Lumo, a moving documentary about a tragically common occurrence in the Congo, "where rape is used as a weapon of war." In Lumo's case, she develops a fistula (which makes her incontinent) and may never be able to achieve her dream of being a mother -- plus, her family shuns her. Fortunately, she's welcomed into a hospital for rape survivors, staffed by kindly doctors and counselors, and populated by other women who've been through similar traumas. There's hope in recovery -- but as the film points out, the horrors of violence against women in unstable nations is an ongoing, urgent problem.

Lumo airs tonight as part of the P.O.V. series on KQED Channel 9 at 11 p.m. For more information about a local organization working to help women like the film's subjects, visit the web site for the International Pediatric Outreach Project.

Damien Hirst might have "created" the most notorious and expensive one, but he's far from alone: skulls are on display everywhere right now, within galleries, on record covers, and spray-painted on the wall next door. Behold this onslaught of skull imagery, collected from current art shows and some recent reissued albums and labels. Dia de los Muertos beckons, yet there's a serious sinister present-day political element to at least some of this work. Add your skullbitchery, skullduggery and skull contribution suggestions to the comments section below.

For the Love of God by Damien Hirst. This platinum-cast skull, covered with 8601 pave-set diamonds, recently sold for $100,000,000.

At Cheim & Read in New York, "I Am As You Will Be: The Skeleton in Art" includes pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Hirst, Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol. Above is Alice Neel's Self Portrait, Skull, from 1958.

By Amber Peckham

Dining out alone is, for me, one of the most socially awkward experiences imaginable. Now, I don’t mean dining out at a fast food joint or anything like that; I’m talking about dining out for real, with tables and menus and cloth napkins. I usually try to avoid dining out alone at all costs. I will go hungry for hours until I have someone to eat with, because in my mind, a meal is an experience you are supposed to share; and if I’m alone while I eat, it’s usually all I can think about.

(I would like to interject here that I don’t have any problem being by myself. In fact, I usually prefer it. That whole “afraid of their own thoughts, has to surround themselves with people” thing does not and never has applied to me. I just hate eating alone. I grew up in a family who ate together.)

On one particular day, though, waiting for company wasn’t an option. I was alone in Japan Town on a crazy quest for dishes, and I needed to refuel. My stomach had been set on udon noodles for about an hour, but before I could get them, I actually had to locate a restaurant, go in, sit down, and order. Alone.