Read Sam Stander's earlier San Francisco International Film Festival report here.

Sam Green’s The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, which he performed twice on Tuesday, May 1, with live accompaniment from Yo La Tengo, is technically a documentary. But it’s a sort of gonzo documentary, a piece of performance art that emphasizes Green’s enthusiasm for his subject, the bespectacled architect-prophet Bucky Fuller.

On Tue/1, Green stood at the bottom left of the screen with a microphone; the three-piece band was opposite him. This format, which Green developed for his previous “live documentary” Utopia in Four Movements, allows for him to interact in the moment with his audience as well as his footage. In one particularly fun moment, while introducing a filmed interview segment, Green timed his commentary so that the onscreen figure’s face seemed to respond to his words, drawing big laughs.

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Guardian film critic Sam Stander was among the crowds this past weekend as the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival kicked off its programming. The festival continues through May 3 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk.; SF Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; and Sundance Kabuki Cinema, 1881 Post, SF. Check out additional Guardian coverage here, here, here, and here. Remaining festival playdates (and additional screening info) are noted after each review below.

The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2011) Perhaps the seed was planted by the festival programmer who introduced the screening with a mention of Woody Allen, but this latest black & white film from the South Korean auteur feels akin to Stardust Memories (1980) and 8 1/2 (1963), a cleverly convoluted exploration of an artist’s anxieties. When lapsed filmmaker Sungjoon returns to Seoul to visit a friend, his encounters with compatriots and lovers old and new spiral into repetition and absurdity; the truth of any given situation is essentially inaccessible, leading to often uproarious contradictions, especially with a sympathetic audience like that at the Kabuki Fri/20. This is what one might call a movie-movie, a trip through deception of self and others through the medium of cinematic expression. Mon/23, 9:30pm, Kabuki; April 25, 9pm, PFA. Also plays SF Film Society Cinema May 4-10.

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Comic cons serve a variety of functions. They can be press junkets, costume parties, swap meets, social retreats, even museums. Comics writer Warren Ellis has a habit of referring to San Diego’s huge Comic Con as “nerd prom,” which perfectly captures the glow of excitement for mass socialization in funny costumes. By contrast, this year’s Image Comic Expo was more like a nerd Sadie Hawkins dance – a deliberate reversal of the standard hierarchy, where creator-owned books are championed over the widely beloved DC and Marvel franchises that sometimes seem to oversaturate the comics market. It was also a little less garish and hectic than some larger cons, but the sense of community and pride was still richly evident. Read more »

Go here to read Sam Stander's review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in this week's Guardian. What follows is Stander's complete interview with director Edgar Wright.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What is your favorite visual effect or sight gag in all of Scott Pilgrim?

Edgar Wright: Oh my god. There’s so much … I probably have to pick, off the top of my head, I like watching the twins scene because it was only very recently finished, so I’d have to pick that.
 
SFBG: How did you originally get involved in adapting Scott Pilgrim?

EW: I was given the book six years ago, when the first volume came out, by … the producers who had kind of leapt on the rights to it before it was even in bookstores. And I really loved the book, and I thought it would be a really interesting thing to try and adapt. At that point there was only the one book. [We] began a five-year process of working on it as [author Bryan Lee O'Malley] continued to develop the books, so the development of the film and the books kind of went in tandem in places. So it’s kind of been, six years ago I was given the book, and now the final book just was released, and the film is coming out, too. Read more »