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Museums
Everywhere is Anywhere
William Eggleston: Los Alamos at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a small gem of a show and required viewing for any serious student of photography. The dye transfer prints featured in the exhibit are from a recently rediscovered series of eighty-eight photographs taken by the artist in the mid-sixties to mid-seventies in Memphis, Tennessee and from a series of road trips through the American South. Considered by many to be the "father of color photography," Eggleston's saturated, snapshot-style photographs of automobiles, storefronts, and parking lots are beautiful yet wholly unromantic portraits of ordinary American life. More
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Restaurants
The menu at Willie's runs the gamut from New England-style rolls and small plates to ceviche and skewers. Even though it's billed as a seafood and raw bar, diners can satisfy beef, lamb, and chicken cravings. The menu also features a hefty representation of cheese-infused dishes such as cheese fondue with Fritos. The well-chosen wine list is appropriate for its wine country locale, but its bar showcases a handful of cocktails that offer respite from the wine. If the weather's nice, a spot on the patio can't be beat. More
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Literary Arts
Humanizing the Myth
In spite of its scary New Age subtitle, this book is not a road trip to self-actualization, 16th-Century style. The author is a Harvard humanities professor, and as such, provides the reader with a context for Shakespeare's world as well as pertinent text analysis. Greenblatt's academic repertoire details how relevant court cases, the effect of the bubonic plague, the nuts and bolts of set construction, the vagrant life of the actor, and English status games all provided the backdrop for Shakespeare's works. More
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Theater
A Good Time With The Boys
In Richard “Scrumbly” Koldewyn’s musical revue “Wilde Boys", the famous decadence of Victorian England surfaces less in its setting and more in the clandestine winks and nudges of its songs, which altogether makes for an entertaining, albeit slightly contained, hour long musical. More
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Theater
Enchantingly Light
There really is no place like home, that magical fantasy realm we often prefer to the real thing. You know the home I'm talking about-the place where incredulity is suspended in favor of schlocky family fare, nostalgia, and the belief that no matter how bad things are, it always "turns out" in the end. That's where classic sagas of unreality, like The Wizard of Oz (at least in its technicolor incarnation) come in. The musical Wicked, the sensation which took home 14 major awards (including a few Grammys and Tonys), plays up to the fanciful expectations of diehard Broadway lovers, in its limited engagement at the Orpheum Theatre. More
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Theater
A fun stroll to the yellow brick road
It's been one hundred three years since L. Frank Baum penned his storied fable The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and more than sixty years since Victor Fleming immortalized the tale in film. What allows The Wizard of Oz to endure as a classic are the universal themes that people of all ages can relate to. Children appreciate the story at face value, a scared child simply wanting to return to the safe haven of her home, while adults can see the symbolic meanings behind each of the characters. Fast forward to 2003, and we now look at the times leading up to Dorothy... More
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Movies
Blame the Military-Industrial Complex
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Sundance Film Festival, Eugene Jarecki's (The Trials of Henry Kissinger) incisive documentary, Why We Fight, examines what President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell speech called the "military-industrial complex", the coordination between the defense department, defense contractors, and Congress, with financial profit exchanged for political influence and power. Eisenhower warned that the "military-industrial complex" would result in the abuse of power and the need, real or imagined, for an enemy to serve as the rationale for ever-expanding defense appropriations. More
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Theater
A Classic Case of the Domestic Squabble
Frustratingly verbose games of cat and mouse; privileged yet disgruntled middle-aged harpies having at it; hardly suppressed Electra complexes; emasculated college professors burying their woes in a nightcap and a novel. Yes, my friends, that's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in a proverbial nutshell. Edward Albee's 1962 play, with its characteristic histrionics and intentional shock value, might seem dated these days, but it did for theater what films like Last Tango in Paris did for cinema--namely, it created a new vernacular for its form, one which seethed with bitter contempt for traditional family values and canned gender roles. More
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Movies
The Blair Witch Project revives old fashioned terror
The fear that can strike while you're descending the stairs to the basement (you're alone at home) at night (and the light bulb's burned out) is a terror more terrifying than Freddy Kreuger or Jack Torrance or anyone in a goalie's mask or fisherman's hat. It wells up out of nowhere -- you don't have to hear an unexpected sound or see a shadowy figure lurking in the corner -- and is pervasive, unshakable. Once the fear enters you, it's very difficult to use reason or history to convince yourself that there's no one there, that nothing is going to hurt you. Our imagination can do things to us that Mr. Nicholson, frightening as he tries to be, j More
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Literary Arts
Other than the public scrutiny, the low pay, the political minefields and the constant distraction, it's a swell job.
You would think being named poet laureate is like receiving the MVP Award -- Most Vaunted Poet -- or being crowned the King or Queen of Letters: an unquestionable honor, a career's pinnacle. But ask any recent poet laureate at any level, and it becomes clear that the title, with its public demands, privacy invasions and political pressures can be as much curse as blessing. More
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