San Francisco Bay Guardian

SFIFF report: French glam ... and grit

05.02.13 - 4:00 pm | Lynn Rapoport |

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At the outset of Friday evening’s SFIFF screening of the ’50s-set French film Populaire, director Régis Roinsard offered two hints as to what lay ahead — noting that his SF sightseeing agenda had included a visit to Jimmy Stewart’s Lombard Street Vertigo residence, and encouraging the audience to stick around for a Q&A sampling of his Borat-level English proficiency. As it turned out, Roinsard handled the post-screening questions with slightly awkward but un-Borat-like charm (and occasional interpreter assistance). And the film itself — while featuring a man gripped by a daffy obsession involving a beautiful blond, who, come to think of it, is often seen sporting an updo — has a considerably lighter mood than the Hitchcock thriller, finding its tense plot turns and clacking rhythms within the fast-paced world of competitive typing.

San Francisco International Film Festival

noise

Party Radar: Honey Dijon, Kenny Dope, Plastic Plates, Daniel Maloso, Pearson Sound, more

05.02.13 - 12:05 pm | Marke B. |

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It's too sunny out to read! My eyes keep glazing over with lusty sparkles and unicorns in mankinis. Let's meet in the park with a duffel of cold 40s, listen to some fun music with our tops off, and plan our party outfits for the following weekend blowouts (click on the titles for more details).

Why PG&E will never support solar

05.02.13 - 11:06 am | Tim Redmond |

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One of the most important stories on the future of the country's electricity supply has been largely ignored by the major media outlets. My friend Johnny Angel Wendell, who is a talk-show host at KTLK in Los Angeles, passed it on to me, or I might have missed it, too.Read more »

Tribeca Film Festival wrap-up: the best of the rest!

05.02.13 - 10:49 am | Kimberly Chun |

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It was the best of sequesters: oh, Tribeca, how to wrap up the many, many days spent hidden away in the dark, watching flickering images dart across a screen? I can only try, as I speed through the best of the rest — and the notable not-so-muchs.

Kids these days: Poets and the young girls that love them are at the very funny heart of indie comedy Adult World, which is sure to make a star of Emma Roberts. She’s the shrill, just-graduated, wannabe-verse-slinger Amy, who’s moonlighting in an adult video store alongside hollow-eyed cutie Alex (American Horror Story’s Evan Peters) and hoping scuzzball genius will rub off if she “interns” (read: cleans house) for her favorite poet, Rat Billings (writ world-weary and hilariously cynical by John Cusack). First-time feature director Scott Coffrey (also, weirdly, a graduate of the same Honolulu high school where I did my own Amy impression) lets a few rough edges (i.e., edits) show, but it’s all good when the filmmaker winds up Roberts, playing the cringe-worthy Tracy Flick for the chapbook set, and lets her go.

The Performant: The real weekend warriors

05.02.13 - 10:04 am | Nicole Gluckstern |

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From Dark Room Theater's "Ghostbusters: Live." Photo by Nicole Gluckstern

Holding down the weekend of the weekend with the Dark Room Theatre's "Ghostbusters: Live" and Har Mar Superstar

Among the true creatures of the night, Saturday Night has always been passé, amateur night if you will, when even the most accommodating of dive bars or clubs are suddenly jammed tight with lightweight dilettantes, whose allegiance to the night life is as superficial as it is truncated. But the real weekend has always begun on Thursday, straddling the line between Wednesday’s hump and Saturday’s slump, a connoisseur’s indulgence.

Though San Francisco is happily full of those who understand that Thursday is when the party starts, any number of theatres can still attest that packing the house on that particular evening can be a tricky prospect, a trend I can attest to from the personal experience of having attended many a Thursday show where the actors outnumbered the oddience. Awkward. Which made entering the oversold, packed to the rafters performance of "Ghostbusters: Live"! at the Dark Room Theatre that much more refreshing. This is one Mission Street outpost that has thus far ably resisted the siren song of gentrification and co-option, and remains a place where silly good fun can be had for the price of cheap, with an additional calendar of ten p.m. comedy shows that caters specifically to the committed night owl crowd.

Another attack on public-employee unions

05.02.13 - 9:33 am | Tim Redmond |

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Big-business and conservative interests have been trying to years to find a way to undermine the political clout of organized labor, particularly unions like the teachers and nurses, who have played a huge role in progressive campaigns. And now there's a new tactic.Read more »

Guest opinion: LGBT supporters of Bradley Manning

05.02.13 - 9:11 am | Tim Redmond |

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Editor's note: At least 24 LGBT community leaders and activists have signed on to the following statement in support of Bradley Manning as a Pride grand marshal.Read more »

Aquarius rising

Free your mind and surrender to 'The Source Family'

05.02.13 - 7:13 am | Cheryl Eddy |

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FILM Under the guidance of charismatic, luxuriously-bearded leader Father Yod (once named Jim Baker, later known as YaHoWha), the Source Family operated one of the country's first health food restaurants. They lived in a Hollywood Hills mansion, wore flowing robes, assumed dreamy new names, meditated, and studied Father Yod's custom blend of Eastern and Western philosophy and mysticism.Read more »

May Day rally for immigration reform in SF

05.01.13 - 6:41 pm | Rebecca Bowe |

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Hundreds gathered for a rally outside San Francisco City Hall on May 1, capping off a march that drew activists into the streets to commemorate International Workers Day. The events were organized by a broad coalition of immigrant rights advocates to call for improvements to the recently unveiled proposal for federal immigration reform, which will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. [More photos after the jump] Read more »

SFMTA chief hopes to calm the parking meter furor at supervisorial hearing

05.01.13 - 4:27 pm | Steven T. Jones |

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San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency director Ed Reiskin faces a tough challenge tomorrow (Thu/2) at the Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety hearing that Sup. Mark Farrell has called on expanding parking meters into new neighborhoods, where Reiskin is expected to face a hornet's nest of SFMTA critics stirred up by the loss of free street parking and perceptions that the agency is mismanaging public spaces and transit. [UPDATE: Read what happened here.]Read more »

Assembly committee OKs moratorium on fracking in California

05.01.13 - 2:08 pm | Rebecca Bowe |

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Three bills seeking to impose moratoriums on fracking in California won approval at the California Assembly Natural Resources Committee in Sacramento on April 29, an important milestone for environmentalists who ultimately plan to push for a permanent ban on the practice.Read more »

The most bitter Bradley Manning-Pride piece yet

05.01.13 - 12:46 pm | Tim Redmond |

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Lots of people angry about the Pride Committee's decision to fire Bradley Manning as a grand marshal. But the most savage, all-out assault comes from Steven W. Thrasher, a former Village Voice writer who has nothing good to say at all about Pride or the people who run it -- or for the more mainstream parts of the LGBT movement:Read more »

Teachers try to dis-accredit accreditation group

05.01.13 - 11:23 am |

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The union representing teachers at San Francisco City College have fired back at the accreditation commission that's threatened to shut the school down and forced dramatic changes in its mission. The California Federation of Teachers and AFT Local 2121 filed a legal complaint May 1 charging the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges with violating its own rules and federal law -- and the complaint asks the federal Department of Education Read more »

Facebook's Keystone Pipeline connection

05.01.13 - 10:53 am | Tim Redmond |

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When people who don't have a lot of experience in politics suddenly start throwing money around, dumb stuff happens. That's what's going on with Mark Zuckerberg and the ads he's helping pay for that support the Keystone Pipeline.Read more »