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Off the Hook
I'm always happy to crouch on a rickety stool with a paper plate on my lap if the food is good enough to merit the potential for grease stains on my knees. Take me to that Chinatown back alley with the awesome grub and trash bags for tablecloths any day; it's far preferential to the overblown, posh eatery serving paste on fine china and watery gruel in top-tier Swarovski. Pacific Catch may use real crockery instead of paper plates, but a food-first approach makes for long waits at this always-crowded Marina beehive.
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Jazzmatazz: Latest Hip Hop/Jazz Fusion Comes to SF
Guru's exploration into the grey area where jazz and hip hop meet will continue with the July 31st release of his of Jazzmatazz Vol. 4: The Hip-Hop Jazz Messenger: Back To The Future, the latest in a series of recordings he started in 1993. This time around Guru enlisted the help of Solar, the New York producer who produced the last Guru LP Version 7.0: The Street Scriptures and co-founded 7 Grand Records with the rapper. In true Jazzmatazz form, the album will also feature collaborations with Common, Damien Marley, the Bay Area's own Blackalicious, and others. Guru and Solar spoke with SF Station during a phone interview.
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SF Station Blows It Up
The return of the Smashing Pumpkins to the Bay Area was marked with a 3 hour 7 minute set on Sunday July 15 as they began their 12 day residency at The Fillmore -- and what a show it was! The first time I saw the Pumpkins was as the Tibetan Freedom Festival in Golden Gate Park, and I have to say, man, do they still sound good...Both Billy and Jimmy killed it. Billy and the guys performed some old classics as well as songs from their new album Zeitgeist.
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Period Musical Scores
From screen to Tony Award-winning musical and now back to the big screen, Hairspray, directed and choreographed by Adam Shankman (Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Bringing Down the House, The Wedding Planner), is everything fans expect a musical to be. It's bright, it's cheerful, and features a feelgood message about following your dreams and racial tolerance. Like the best Hollywood musicals, it will leave you humming a song or two and vividly remembering every dance move long moments after leaving the movie theater.
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Sci-Fi Film Shines
Directed by Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, The Beach, Trainspotting) and written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later, The Tesseract, The Beach), Sunshine, a futuristic sci-fi film, is as good as genre filmmaking gets and as good as fans of Boyle's previous work have come to expect from a director who's proven adept in working in multiple genres.
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Queer Lies for the Straight Guys
Larry has a problem. He's a born firefighter, one of Brooklyn's bravest, but as a widower with two children, he can't risk his life on a daily basis without a more rewarding pension plan. One night, Larry (Kevin James) devises a scheme to save his job and protect his family: He and his best friend Chuck (Adam Sandler) will register as domestic partners, reaping the tax breaks afforded gay couples in the state of New York.
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Stumbling Under Clichés
Czech-born filmmaker Milos Forman has directed some of the most critically acclaimed films of the last forty years, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon. Eight years later, Forman is back with Goya's Ghosts, a period drama about another iconoclast that's sadly undermined by clichéd, soap opera plot turns and unfocused storytelling.
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Lawrence, Re-imagined for the 21st Century
Seventy-nine years after D.H. Lawrence wrote the first edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover, his tale of the lonely, aristocratic wife who experiences a sexual reawakening in the arms of a rugged gamekeeper has lost its scandalous edge. The notion that a newly liberated woman could remedy her marital malaise with a passionate affair is no longer shocking -- it's practically quaint. Yet the story itself has lost none of its charm or insight.
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It's Miller Time
Based on the 2003 original by Dutch director Theo van Gogh, whose death at the hands of an Islamic terrorist inspired Steve Buscemi's lurid remake, Interview will not establish Sienna Miller as a household name, but it should cement her reputation as fierce, courageous performer.
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The Perfect Out-of-Town Recharge
Mendocino County has become one of the most vaunted areas in California for romantic weekend expeditions, and for good reason. Take Heritage House Inn -- a beautiful cliffside hamlet in the diminutive borough of Little River, California, that offers 37 acres of majestic solitude from the riff-raff of city life.
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Not Tame Enough
Of everything in Shakespeare's oeuvre, "The Taming of the Shrew" tends to score the fewest points among the modern literati. Never mind the rollicking, ribald humor and the pun-y gesticulations of what may be the Bard's most audacious set of characters -- the play is caustic and misogynistic, which automatically calls for a little bowdlerizing, at least in most contemporary versions.
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