The San Francisco Film Society's French Cinema Now series screened Oct. 29-Nov. 4 in San Francisco.

Axelle Ropert’s The Wolberg Family poses all the existential fly flap of post-modern family life wrought with a full spectrum of visual vignettes surrounding the topic of irreconcilable differences between the all-too-assuming, brutish father Simon (Francois Damiens) and his newly menopausal spouse, Marianne (Valerie Benguigui).

The story unfolds in a rather well-put together way, without railing off into obscurity. Charming bohemian uncle Alexandre (Serge Bozon) lives in a small redwood cabin adjacent to the main house; he shares an endearing relationship with the couple’s two children, Benjamin (Valentin Vigourt) and Delphine (Leopoldine Serre). One arresting segment depicts a winsome game between Alexandre and Benjamin in the cabin: uncle and nephew race each other in a foot trounce of hopping alternating feet over the threshold of an open door. The elder figure, who serves as a near messianic shaman for the young impressionable lad, explains to the small boy that the line right outside the door represents the “real world,” and the one right inside is the “dream world” -- causing the little boy to grow increasingly frantic at having to stop the hopping by choosing which world he’d rather land on.

Today's Look: Jacob, Grant and Union

Tell us about your look: "I found this hat at a bar and I'm wearing my belt to the side because it's too big."

It’s that time! Monthly Rumpus time! This coming Monday, The Rumpus, a go-to website for procrasting at work in a literate manner, is teaming up once again with Wholphin to bring us a big, author-y romp around. I just saw ‘Where The Wild Things’ are, so I know that 'rumpus' means jumping up on things and wrestling. Wear comfortable pants.

Given a choice of wrestling partner at this month’s “Hate To Be Alone” rumpus, I would most certainly opt for young Chelsea Martin of Oakland, who has a new poetry tome out, Everything Was Fine Until Whatever (Future Tense). Martin's poems veer from the touchingly personal (from her video entitled Let’s Get Deeply Moved: “I want to die quietly in my sleep in the back room at work with liquor bottles all around and concrete evidence I was trying to steal the fax machine,”) to philosophy (“I had a thought the other day. It wasn’t a thought actually, it was more like a burrito. I had a really good burrito.”)

This week I’m going to make a bold statement: pie just may be the new cupcake. A friend recently got married in Nashville at an old, Southern plantation. They hung lanterns, had big communal tables with homemade barbeque, made their musical guests jam together as a wedding gift — and had pie instead of wedding cake. Of course, Julie’s wedding is no indicator of current trends. But in San Francisco, we do slices of old-fashioned pie showing up on restaurant menus across the city, not to mention the Bike Basket Pie lady.

So what’s the draw? Pie is certainly nothing new. And my favorite, banana cream pie, has been around for ages. One New York Times article traces the history of the beloved pie, citing an early example that appeared in a 1901 cookbook, calling for sliced bananas and powdered sugar plopped into a pie shell, baked and topped with whipped cream. And in 1951, banana cream pie was voted the favorite dessert of the U.S. Armed services.

Still from Maggots and Men

“It was schoolboys sitting in the classroom, having daydreams,” Cary Cronenwett explains, describing Phineas Slipped, his 2003 debut as a director. “The classroom was in video, and the daydreams that the boys had were little Super 8 [films]. It was bullies, and bullies being bullied, and it was sexy and violent and stuff like that.”

Five years in the making -- including time spent studying filmmaking at City College of San Francisco with director of photography Ilona Berger -- Cronenwett's follow-up effort Maggots and Men was first seen by Bay Area audiences as a short film (“sort of an overgrown trailer,” as Cronenwett calls it)

trailer for Maggots and Men

Maggots and Men | MySpace Video

“The structure of the film is kind of expandable and contractable. It’s broken up into discrete stories, or segments. More of those could be added, or taken away,” Cronenwett says. “I did the same thing with my first film: the idea was to get three quarters of the way through it, and then see what’s needed. I always wanted to lean towards the side of making it shorter and really dense. But I also thought, we’ll see how it works out and maybe it needs to become longer.”

Today's Look: Irma, Washington Square Park

Tell us about your look: This skirt is '50s style and the top is from a thrift store. These shoes are Coach, but I got them from Crossroads."

Almost hidden next to Bar Johnny’s, Cresta’s Twenty Two Eleven Club is a welcome dive in an area populated by lounges, wine bars and cafes. There’s no pretense, just kind-hearted bartenders, straightforward drinks and regulars who look like they’ve contributed to their fair share of empty alcohol bottles.

Cresta’s is the reason why the phrase “no frills” was invented. You basically have a choice of one of the few bar stools lined up across the narrow bar, or you can try and snag one of the two tables in the back. The décor is bare bones, and a solitary tiny T.V quietly flickers a broadcast of whatever local sports team happens to be playing. The clock, always set at 10:40 (in homage to the bar’s address and name), can be disconcerting if you don’t have your own timepiece.

On my visit, the amicable bartender, outfitted with a leg brace after a recent injury, thumped around the bar without letting it hinder her bartending or general demeanor.

Rough Country
John Sandford
(Putnam, 388 pages $26.95)

By Tim Redmond

Let us stipulate: It's difficult for a male writer who specializes in straight male lead characters (and in this case, in a straight male lead character who spends a significant portion of his waking hours trying to get women into bed) to write a credible novel that centers around a lesbian resort. James Patterson, a white guy, has a wonderful black lead character named Alex Cross who works, perfectly, but that's the exception; most people screw up when they try to reach like that.

And at the beginning of Rough Country, I had to wonder. I love John Sandford, but after the first chapter...well, you've got a straight girl getting hot watching lesbian lip-lock, you've got sordid lesbian drama that turns into a lesbian bar fight, you've got a weird business going on with really young men working at the women-only resort who may be on-the-side fuck-candy for bisexual girls (or may be underage hotties fucking older women for money)...and a little too much talk about "rug munchers."

But by the middle of the book, it's pretty clear that this is not just a great Sandford novel, but a wonderful portrayal of a fictional Northern Minnesota town where nobody gives a shit who fucks who. The owner of the resort is a respected local businessperson. The old straight guys who run bars and work as fishing guides treat the women just like any other (money-carrying) tourists. An old lady who's part of a horticultural preservation group wonders aloud why anyone would care about another person's sexuality, save for "a bunch of stuffy old men."

Veronica De Jesus, It's a Battle, pen and marker on watercolor paper, 9" x 12", 2008

Sports and business figure heavily in the drawings of Veronica De Jesus. Her art doesn't have the broad shoulders or spectacles of an ex-jock like Matthew Barney, but the biggest pieces in De Jesus' recent solo show at Michael Rosenthal, "Do The Waive," were of sports players, and smaller drawings incorporate hand-drawn, hurt-looking corporate logos. Awkwardly caught mid-evasion, the extra leg on the football player captured in Breadwinner is a happy accident that makes the drawing equal parts action shot and portrait. San Francisco artist Colter Jacobsen shares De Jesus' attraction to drawing and memory, though the two have very distinct styles. When I ask him via e-mail what he takes away from his friend's art, he replies that in De Jesus's work, “there is really no erasure to a mark, even a mess-up, all the lines are additive."

Veronica De Jesus, Breadwinner, watercolor, ink, conte on paper, 72" x 36", 2008

Nol Simonse

For Nol Simonse, it all started with that most popular of all ballets and most common breeding place of American dance. The oldest of five children growing up in College Park, MD, Simonse had seen Baryshnikov in The Nutcracker on TV and “thought it awesome.” So he asked his parents whether he could do that. At age nine they enrolled him in a “tiny little ballet school above a pizza parlor. He’s still in touch with the teacher-owner.

Compulsory education was not exactly a good experience, particularly for a boy “who came out very early” and didn’t like to deal with linear logic: “As long as I could learn with a diorama, I was OK”. It took Simonse a while to find his own way of learning, through his body.

Nol Simonse, How Fortunate the Man With None

Janice Garrett, who had never seen Simonse dance, took a chance on him when she added male dancers to her heretofore all-female company for Ostinato in 2002. “He has worked out beautifully,” says Garrett. “What I admire is his ability to express what is deep inside. He has such humanity as both a person and a performer. In the studio, he is incredibly generous and brings his whole heart and mind to the creative process. He doesn’t need to be in control, and his sense of discovery is such that I can go wherever I want with him.”

The admiration is mutual. Simonse seems to be getting as much as giving in the artistic relationship, because Garrett manages to contextualize direction so it is not just technical but respects the dancer as a full person. “She told me once,” he remembers, “to push my lower ribs out, because being vulnerable doesn’t mean you are weak. She also once said that I had ‘emotional shoulders’.”

A few images from San Francisco's well-attended and festive celebration of Dia de los Muertos, on Nov. 2 in the Mission.

Today's Look: Paula, 18th Street and Mission

Tell us about your look: "It's a clash of two cultures: Spain and rock! I just got back from a trip to Spain."

So I’m sitting there chatting with some old school San Francisco anti-gentrification activists on the back patio of a Bernal Heights café and we’re excitedly leafing through a coffee table book. Wha-wha-whaat? Yes I know, anachronistic isn’t it?

This is the book (and please memorize the jpeg below because if you buy a "San Francisco" book this month/year/ever, it needs to be this one):

Great blue heads of people's art, coming soon to a coffee table near you

This is Mission Muralismo, a book edited by Annice Jacoby. Its got hundreds of pages of big, glossy photos of all the best of Mission street art sprinkled with thoughtful essays. Its contributors include Mission barrio luminaries like R.Crumb, Shepard Fairey, las Mujeres Muralistas, Neckface and Rigo.

Where does one purchase said volume, you ask? Well I just happen to know that the DeYoung is seizing upon the book’s release to kick off a yearlong program of events hooting and hollering about Mission neighborhood creativity (“a rising star on the global art map” says the museum. But then, they also say the dress code for the event is “Mission festive,” so I mean, whatever).

Members of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition will speak at Toby's Feed Farm

11/8 - Tanks to Tractors free farmers and veterans event

For a Sunday countryside excursion with purpose, Tanks to Tractors is a special event at Toby’s Feed Barn in Pt. Reyes Station, honoring veterans who have returned home to work on America’s farms. Veterans have incredible stories to share about what led them to this meaningful work post-service - work all the more needed as US farmers are retiring in droves. The wonderful Marin Organic with the Farmer Veteran Coalition put on this event with story telling from Amy Fairweather (Swords to Plowshares, Iraq Veteran Project Director), Nadia McCaffrey (Gold Star mother and founder, Patrick McCaffrey Foundation), Wendy Johnson (educator, author, co-founder of Green Gulch Garden), Michael O’Gorman (project director of Farmer Veteran Coalition), and others. On top of that, there's free light snacks and drink. A unique way to honor Veterans Day...
Sun/8; 5-7pm, free
Toby’s Feed Barn
11250 Highway One, Pt. Reyes Station
www.farmvetco.org
www.marinorganic.org

Decorate the dickens out of your cookies at One Market

11/7 - Make-A-Wish Gingerbread Wishes event at One Market

Venerable Make-A-Wish Foundation throws a cookie decorating party at One Market, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish. With striking Bay views before you, bring kids (both young and old) to the luncheon, with finger sandwiches and drinks served by One Market, where everyone works with their own cookie decorating kit designed by pastry chef, Patti Dellamonica-Bauler, including three Gingerbread Wishes cookies and embellishment goods like icing, sprinkles and candies. Decorating cookies was never sweeter.
Sat/7, 11am-1pm, $20
1 Market

415-777-5577
www.makewish.org

Today's Look: Vi, 19th Street and Valencia

Tell us about your look: "This is casual Monday outfit."