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A Cool Mediterranean Hot Spot
From the moment you walk in, you'll notice that Nua is not the traditional family style Italian-American restaurant typical of North Beach. It's a sophisticated, sleek yet comfortable, cozy restaurant and wine bar. The Nua website describes the restaurant as seasonal Mediterranean and that couldn't be more true. Portions are less American and more petite and European-sized.
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A Dime a Dozen?
It's the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love in San Francisco, so it's only appropriate that Matt and Kim make another Bay Area appearance. The notoriously cheerful couple, Matt Johnson (keyboards) and Kim Schifino (drums) will perform at Bottom of the Hill on June 2nd. Johnson spoke with SF Station during a phone interview from the road in Florida.
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SF Station Blows It Up
One of France's most famous musical exports hit the stage in front of a full house at San Francisco's Masonic Center last Friday night. As always six guitars sounded in unison as the crowd oohed and aahed to every string that was struck. The Kings performed songs from their new album Pasajero released last September.
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Captain Jack is Back!
Admittedly, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is a film that will receive all kinds of criticism for being too long, convoluted, and over the top. These are somewhat valid criticisms of the "Citizen Kane" of pirate films. But, there is something to be said for a film that is flawed yet still manages to entertain and engage.
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Irish-Indie Musical Soars
Winner of the World Cinema Audience Award for Winner of the World Cinema Audience Award for Dramatic Film at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Once is an indie-Irish musical. Shot over 17 days cinéma vérité style with handheld cameras and telephoto lens on a modest, $130,000 dollar budget by writer/director John Carney (On the Edge, November Afternoon), Once is a marvel of indie filmmaking.
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Design To Put You in the Zone
I was watching Hustle & Flow the other night and found myself distracted for a second as Terrance Howard's character Djay passed through a colorful plastic curtain as he was about to throw his girlfriend and her stuff out the front door. Maybe the set designer didn't want me to pay too much attention to that curtain, but it was put there to tell me something. I was meant to feel that this man, who was struggling to keep on top of his life, was still trying to put a little flash into his space. That's probably what we all want in our own space, a little color, a little personality, and a little character to brighten our daily lives.
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A Dark Rendition
If you've never actually read Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, which is perhaps the most paradigmatic rags-to-riches story ever written, well...consider yourself at home. As adulated as Dickens is among the populist echelons and the fusty literati set, his erudite moral fables of industrial England gone bad are a little timeworn, a little too simplistic in our postmodern era of six billion people and clashing metanarratives. And with all the sentimental stage and screen revivals (particularly the 1963 film version, with its hum-worthy ditties and loveable rapscallions), it's easy to write OT off as just another feel-good yarn.
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