 |
Double Your Pleasure
It's an old school SF dining address with modern lacquer; it's novel and casual Cal-American cuisine with a silver-haired clientele. It's Two, the latest incarnation of Hawthorne Lane, and it's two restaurants in one. After 22 Hawthorne Lane's namesake reign of over twelve years, this reinvented eatery has received a youthful makeover.
|
 |
Masters of Melody
Following the release of their latest album Classics in the summer of 2006, Ratatat continue their conquest to spread their super-charged instrumentals and Dirty South remixes with a sold out concert at Bimbo's on March 30th. Producer-extraordinaire Evan Mast spoke with SF Station during a phone interview from a tour stop in Newport, KY.
|
 |
Released on Creative Commons, 1/13/07
Swimming in sensuality, the fantastic, and the romantic Extraordinary Rendition is an album that enchants from the outset. An eclectic mélange of bossa nova, jazz, and a plethora of other musical influences coalesces into a sound that that reminds you that life is full of wonderful surprises. There is a whimsy to Extraordinary Rendition that beckons the child at heart.
|
 |
Released on Beggars Banquet Records, 2/20/07
I can remember the first time I heard Calla. It was pouring and I was at the Fillmore, along with about 800 others, waiting for Interpol to hit the stage. It was 2002, right after they had released Turn on the Bright Lights, and I was anxious to see if the live show was as translatable as the album. Admittedly, it took me around ten minutes to notice a band was even playing. I had wet items to remove, beers to purchase, and land to claim -- I was busy. But ever so slowly the sound began to creep in. So subtle it was.; so succinct. I could think of nothing as atmospheric as the sounds they were creating at that moment.
|
 |
Meandering, Unfocused 9/11 Drama
Last year, Hollywood took its first tentative steps to examining the events surrounding 9/11. United 93 and World Trade Center focused exclusively on key events before, during, and immediately after the 9/11 attacks, but Hollywood has been thus far reluctant to explore the psychological fallout that followed that day. Written and directed by Mike Binder (Man About Town, The Upside of Anger), Reign Over Me follows a character directly affected by 9/11 and its aftermath as he tries to find his way back to the world of the living.
|
 |
Period Sports Drama Soars
The latest in a seemingly inexhaustible series of period sports dramas based on true events (We Are Marshall, Invincible, Gridiron Gang), Sunu Gonera's directorial debut, Pride focuses on a B- or even C-level sport: competitive swimming. Long the province of white athletes, African Americans have steadily made inroads into the sport, thanks, in part, to the pioneering efforts of Jim Ellis, a former competitive swimmer turned inner-city instructor and mentor who introduced competitive swimming to at-risk teenagers in Philadelphia in the early 70s.
|
 |
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.
|
 |
All Too Familiar Sci-Fi Family Film
Helmed by uber-producer-turned-director Robert Shaye (Book of Love) and written by Bruce Joel Rubin (Jacob's Ladder, Ghost) and Toby Emmerich (Frequency) from the 1943 short story, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," by Lewis Padgett, The Last Mimzy is a family drama with a predictable science-fiction twist and an obvious, heavy-handed environmental message. Predictability and theme aside, The Last Mimzy turns out to be a near-perfect refuge for parents hoping for undemanding fare for a Saturday afternoon with their children.
|
 |
Put Your Load Down
Rest and relaxation. Sounds ideal, doesn't it? Given our society's terrible penchant for scheduling everything from requisite weekend getaways to quality time with loved ones, the time-honored idea of a little R&R has become little more than a bromidic gesture towards a removed, future indulgence, the lowest task on our collective to-do list, it would seem. But try to imagine a world in which time for silence -- a literal "waking up to smell the roses" -- is way more than a hypothetical priority.
|
 |
Inspired Spontaneity
I'm at CounterPULSE ten minutes before Renaissance man/theatrical swashbuckler Jess Curtis' highly anticipated show, "Under the Radar". As I've gathered from the website and tight-lipped program material, a kaleidoscopic assortment of dancers and performance artists will be entertaining the audience with genre-liberal food for thought: that includes concepts like beauty, normalcy, and preconceived notions of (dis)ability. All very heady stuff, but at the time being, I'm more interested in what's going on right now.
|
|
