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Movies
Slipping right through the cracks
In this quiet movie based on a novel by the same name written by Anne Tyler, a woman carves the name of a man into her forehead with a piece of broken glass. In any other film, this would be an act driven by a macabre mental sickness but here it's seen as just funny, a quirk rather than a psychosis. More
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Movies
Uninspired Sci-Fi /Action Storyline
Based on a short story written in 1952 by science fiction writer/fantasist Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles), A Sound of Thunder marks the return of Peter Hyams (Timecop, The Relic) to the science fiction genre. Viewers familiar with his work will look at his return with skepticism, doubt and, maybe, a smile or two. Alas, even low expectations remain unmet by the time A Sound of Thunder fades to black and the end credits mercifully roll. More
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Literary Arts
Jan Morris's Trieste Elegizes
With the onslaught of Italian travel memoirs in these past years -- Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun and Laura Frazier's musings on Florence in An Italian Affair to name just two -- most people would flee from yet another Italian literary spree. But Jan Morris's book, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, departs from its comrades in both subject and slant. More
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Restaurants
Baldoria Lights Up Russian Hill
White tablecloths, neutral walls lined with bottles of wine, and barely noticeable opera transform this refined row house located at the corner of Larkin and Green Streets into an intimate restaurant. An elegant menu and extensive wine list confirm Baldoria's fine-dining standing. However, a warm interior, an understanding staff (primarily handsome young Italian men) and the frequent appearance of the hospitable host (who spends most of his time patrolling the dining room and kissing regular customers on their way in and out) make each and every customer feel important. More
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Literary Arts
Jeff Greenwald's Scratching the Surface
In Scratching the Surface: Impressions of Planet Earth, from Hollywood to Shiraz, Jeff Greenwald, America's "most well-known obscure travel writer," compiles the best of his short writing over the scope of two decades. More
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Literary Arts
Gold's Carter Beats the Devil Relives the Turn-of-the-Century Bay Area
Writing a review of Glen David Gold's captivating debut novel left me wracking my brain for witty and apt trickster phrases. Let's just start by saying that in Carter Beats the Devil, Gold has a full deck of cards up his sleeve. Nimbly written and gloriously detailed, this historical novel traverses the life of magician Charles Carter, a native San Franciscan, who finds himself involved in a mystery of sorts. More
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Literary Arts
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage Delights
In Alice Munro's tenth book, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Munro fans are not exactly entering new territory. We recognize the small town on the border of a lake, the awkward furniture and the tidy porches; we recognize the schoolteachers, the women with bad teeth and the men with old-school courtesy. Some critics have faulted Munro -- as they have faulted Eudora Welty -- for retreading over the same ground in rural southwestern Ontario and the cities of Vancouver and Toronto. But what makes Munro a great writer is her ability to take us to places of discovery in a landscape we though More
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Movies
True love never dies
In A Very Long Engagement, visionary French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet seduces and bombards viewers with a poetic arsenal of mournful, dreamlike imagery that rivals, if not exceeds, the imagination of Tim Burton and the craftsmanship of Francis Ford Coppola, yet ultimately fails to communicate fully the love, pain, and suffering of its heroine, which are trammeled by the film's rich visual tapestry and lack of traditional plot, character, and theme development. More
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Literary Arts
In the former farmlands of Contra Costa, a big-city teacher finds a global village of writers.
Three years ago I devised a course called "Writing Your Wisdom," a memoir-writing class that I presented to two local adult schools in the East Bay suburbs. I admit that I worried I'd only get white bread and bologna with sentimental "little stories" about when this area was once farmland. After all, let's face it, the burbs out here in Contra Costa County are not the city, I narrowly thought, but a "safe place" where one doesn't make waves and votes conservative. How wrong I was! More
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Baseball
Balls in Play Average Revisited
The loss of Mark Ellis has apparently hurt the A's defensive efficiency, but the variation is still small. But for Mulder, Hudson and Zito, the defensive efficiency while they're on the mound has varied wildly! It's difficult for the team defense to get that much better or worse from one year to the next, but the batting average allowed during a given pitcher's starts can change by 60 or 70 points. More
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