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The Marina's New Flavor Profile
Flavor is often described in four ways: bitter, sour, salty, and sweet. But there's a fifth, more eclectic element that Japanese call "umami," and this is where the new restaurant in the old Yoshida-Ya space comes in. A clever endeavor, Umami incorporates tastes from Japan, Thailand, Korea, and Vietnam to create a "best of" list in a manner that strives to recreate classic dishes.
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The Evolution of a Festival
Get out your sunglasses, charge the iPod and fill up the hybrid tank! The 2007 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is fast approaching and for the first time ever in the nine-year history of the festival, an additional third day of phenomenal acts has been added.
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SF Station Blows It Up
With guitars, keys, drums and trumpets Man Man blew up the Independent last Wednesday night. Dressed in all white as if this was a scene from Miami Vice, they performed tunes from their new album and made all the San Francisco hipsters dance, which, if you've ever been to a indie show before, you would know is a hard thing to do.
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Perfectly Underwhelming
The usage of the "flashback" seems to be the flavor du jour these days as it was utilized extensively in the recently released The Reaping and it plays a pivotal role in the thriller, Perfect Stranger. Unfortunately, this overused device gives away the answer to the only real question in the film fairly early on. But, this is just one of the problems you'll encounter with Perfect Stranger.
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Super Size Me? I don't think so
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters is one of those rare celluloid gems that just about defies description. Nevertheless, I'll give it a shot. Hold on tight. The film primarily revolves around the bizarre misadventures of three supersized, animated fast food items.
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Verhoeven Goes Home Again, With Memorable Results
Black Book marks director Paul Verhoeven's return to his native Netherlands after an absence of more than two decades, during which time he enjoyed a successful run in Hollywood with high-splatter blockbusters including Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers. Black Book is more high-minded than those films -- it's a World War II drama that chronicles one woman's tireless struggle to survive the Holocaust -- but it is, in its own way, no less lurid. Filled with unrestrained eroticism and sensationalized violence, it is deliciously trashy entertainment, the kind that Verhoeven does best.
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The Killer Next Door
Stop me if this sounds familiar: a character witnesses his neighbor murder someone (or it looks like a murder). No one believes him and, along with his girlfriend and/or friend, he's forced to play detective hoping that the police will eventually believe him. But the killer catches on to the hero and he becomes the killer's next target. Sounds like Alfred Hitchcock's classic mystery/thriller, Rear Window, right?
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British Fashion Queen Then & Now
A designer who can understand punk and proper Saville Row suiting deserves a crown. Let that queen of fashion be Vivienne Westwood. Through June 10th, the de Young Museum presents a 30-plus-year retrospective of Ms. Westwood's iconic looks that start with bondage latex suits and anarchy themed shirts in the 70s to 21st century tailored gowns cut in intriguing proportions and mixed materials.
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Pliés with Ch'i
In one of this superb works' most simple and beautiful moments (and there are many such moments) Alonzo King delivers the goods straight up: two young men share the stage, each masters of radically different disciplines of motion, and the stark aesthetic contrast is as amazing as the joyful way in which they discover and explore the richness of their common ground. Western ballet as practiced by the LINES ballet, and martial arts as practiced by the Shaolin Monks could hardly be more different in their history and purpose, yet in this world premiere work, Mr. King manages to go far beyond a superficial East-meets-West juxtaposition.
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Thinking Outside the Hatbox
Thirty five years ago, Alix Kates Shulman published her first novel entitled Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972). An immediate best seller, the book worked in tandem with Fear of Flying (1973) to give millions of married women pause: is my marriage really satisfying? How did I get here? Should I leave? Ex-Prom Queen was one of the first books where a woman revealed rights of passage that were decidedly un prom-like: date rape, marital rape, infidelity, illegal abortions -- all in the same year that Roe vs. Wade was being debated in the Supreme Court.
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