Founded by three brilliant renaissance women with roots in L.A. and the Bay, the alt-everything institution known as Coilhouse exists both as a fantastic groupblog and a quasi-quarterly magazine. According to the mission statement on their website, “Coilhouse is a love letter to alternative culture, written in an era when alternative culture no longer exists.” They cover everything from fashion to visual art to film to comics, with a wealth of youtube clips and beautiful images in all their posts. These ladies — Zoetica Ebb, Meredith Yayanos, and Nadya Lev — and their various collaborators are down with Klaus Nomi and at home with esoteric Russian literature, and more than happy to share with you what made them weird. Read more »

SF Theater Pub’s one-night-only presentation of Alfred Jarry’s bawdy classic Ubu Roi this past Monday felt like nothing so much as a group of dedicated friends putting on a show because they thought it just might turn out awesome. The staged reading took place at SF lounge Café Royale, a pleasant venue with couches and balcony seats as well as standing room that rendered the production all the more intimate. Read more »

An inspired idea for a film series if ever there was one — the SF Maritime National Historical Park is showing nautically themed films onboard the ferryboat Eureka at Hyde Street Pier. They began last month with 2003’s Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and they’re picking up Thurs/15 with Lifeboat (1944), Alfred Hitchcock’s production of a John Steinbeck story, starring Tallulah Bankhead. Next month, step aboard the Eureka for Jaws (1975) — that is, if they don’t end up needing a bigger boat. Teasers and show info after the jump: Read more »

More bloodthirsty coverage of the San Francisco IndieFest's horror-fest offshoot, Another Hole in the Head, in this week's Guardian.

Another Hole in the Head’s two documentary offerings concern themselves with the distinctly American roots of two related strains of genre filmmaking. Elijah Drenner’s American Grindhouse traces the history of exploitation film, with a particular focus on the grindhouse theater as a cultural institution. Narrator Robert Forster recounts the tendency of even the earliest films to cater to prurient interests, and how the establishment and eventual dissolution of the Motion Picture Production Code stimulated the development of exploitation subgenres. The featured film clips are impeccably selected, mixing titillation and shock with a healthy sense of humor about the over-the-top absurdity of films like Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975). Surprisingly candid interviews with gore luminary Herschell Gordon Lewis and blaxploitation director Larry Cohen prevent the film from taking on a too-self-important tone — these folks knew they were making b-pictures, and were damn proud of it. One of the most charming aspects of the documentary is the juxtaposition of different attitudes, wherein one interviewee will sing the praises of a classic, followed in quick succession by another talking head declaring it to be trash. It feels like John Landis gets the most screen time of any subject, but his charisma as well as the breadth of his oeuvre make it seem appropriate.

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This week SFMOMA inaugurates a film series called “A Portrait of the Artist, or Fisher-Inspired Films” with Dreams That Money Can Buy (1946), a surrealist collaboration directed by Hans Richter and featuring contributions by Max Ernst, Man Ray, and others. The series is constructed around the collection of Doris and Donald Fisher, featuring cinematic work by artists including Andy Warhol and Agnes Martin. Read more »

In a world of relative cinema-watching convenience, with Netflix and Blockbuster By Mail, the quirky neighborhood video rental store is going the way of the record store and the dodo. However, the East Bay still houses at least one fantastic holdout, REEL Video, located on Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley. But perhaps not for long — despite REEL’s unique stock and organization, it is in fact owned by Hollywood Video, which recently filed for bankruptcy and announced the liquidation of all its stores. Over the past few weeks, REEL was suddenly plastered with fliers addressing frequently-asked questions about the store’s imminent closure, and calling for customer input on the store’s uncertain future.

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