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Movies
Wacky Indie Fare with Art-House Ambitions
Written and directed by the self-styled auteur terrible James Toback, who built his claim to indie-fame on the celebrated 1978 cult classic Fingers, When Will I Be Loved unfolds like a breezy tour of Manhattan's low and high life, laced with serendipitous encounters, fleeting celebrity sightings, and scattered moments of fascination. More
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Literary Arts
Charles Bukowski's Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems
Ecco has published the first of their five posthumous collections of new poems by Charles Bukowski. Taken from the large quantity of unpublished work the author entrusted to John Martin (his longtime editor at Black Sparrow Press), the 150 poems that will be featured in these five titles were selected over the years as the best poems for Martin to file away and compile into posthumous books. This is not a surprising plan from a man who thought a great deal about death. More
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Movies
Hollywood's latest attempt to understand true love
Those who were particularly tickled by the happy-married-couple interview clips throughout the popular romantic comedy of 1989, When Harry Met Sally, might appreciate the reinterpretation of that trick .ployed a decade later in the recent release, Forces of Nature. Though what is offered this time is not the cute and tidy progression of interview clips offering a myriad of entry points to a lasting and loving relationship, all leading up to Harry and Sally settling into their life together. More
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Galleries
Beauty: When Hacking Occurs
Some of the most fascinating works of art come as a result of experimentation and endeavors in non-fine-arts related fields. Electrical engineer and “hardware hacker” Joe Grand has been dabbling with electronics for years, tweaking archaic computer systems and breathing new life into obsolete equipment. Though he’s been commissioned to create badges for computer security conventions, invents and designs consumer electronics and video gaming accessories, Grand has never thought of exhibiting his pieces as art. Now for the first time he’s displaying his work as an installation aptly named “When Electronics Become Art” at 20 goto 10. More
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Literary Arts
Local Chefs & Pretty Cookbooks
As any true-at-heart San Franciscan will tell you, we live in the best food city in the world (Paris and New York be damned). This year, local chefs and restaurateurs prove this claim with their holiday offerings, a collection of gorgeous cookbooks perfect for gift-giving, all aimed at San Francisco's culinary elite. More
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Movies
Quantum Physics for Dummies
This lo-fi, homegrown film explores the boundaries of reality, perception, emotion and quantum physics. Half-science documentary, half-dramatic recreation this movie falls short of its goal. Whatever that goal may be. More
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Movies
Love, Explained in a Series of Lackluster Lectures
Mars Callahan has a lot to say about love. Callahan, whose Poolhall Junkies was a passably entertaining glimpse into the lives of hustlers searching for some worldly purpose, has rarely met a cliché he didn’t work into a script, and his latest meditation on life and romance is full of them. There are some interesting ideas bandied about in What Love Is, crudely adorned with graphic sex fantasies and testosterone-fueled gusto, but when all is said (and never done), we are left with the kind of trite, philosophical musings that have inspired so many sitcoms. More
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Baseball
Last column, I promised that I would explain why the Oakland A’s traded away their “aces”, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder. We have to go back to 2003 and look at Barry Zito for the answer. Zito finished the season with a 3.30 ERA in 231 innings, not quite as good as his 2002 Cy Young campaign, but still top-ten in the majors. More
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Restaurants
Stellar Mall Dining, Vegas Style
No matter how much I claim to be a Northern California girl, you just can’t take the Southern Cal mall rat out of me. So when I first stepped into the new Westfield Centre at 5th and Market in downtown San Francisco, my heart skipped a beat at the excellent selection of boutiques. But this gargantuan, 1.5 million square-foot mall not only tempted the shopaholic in me but also called to my literal hunger with its plethora of dining possibilities. More
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Restaurants
Fast Food Taken Up a Notch
The Fall 2006 unveiling of the Westfield San Francisco Centre not only offered up the high-end Westfield Restaurant Collection (reviewed previously), but also revealed a promising upscale food court in the basement level. Previously, fast food options in the vicinity had been so-so at best, leaving shoppers and office workers little choice but to slum it or hop on MUNI to eat at the fancy little delis and ethnic bistros near Montgomery and Embarcadero stations. The Food Emporium at Westfield has answered that need, offering quality food on the go and thus setting a new bar not only for mall eateries, but for Union Square dining as well. More
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