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Southern French Cuisine with an Italian Flair
The corner of Sutter & Steiner seems to come with a restaurant curse. Before Cassis opened its doors in May, two other notable restaurants had tried to make their claim in the same space in recent years. Both Julia's and Winterland, despite critical acclaim, never quite attained the appropriate mix of gourmands and regulars to establish themselves in this Lower Pacific Heights neighborhood. But with Cassis, brothers Jerome and Stephane Meloni just might have hit on a winning formula.
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Power with Numbers
With seven years under their belt, San Francisco's Numbers is on the road again promoting Now You Are This, the trio's fourth LP. Guitarist Dave Broekema gave SF Station an update on the tour and new album from the road near Niagara Falls.
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SF Station Blows It Up
Jenny Lewis and the gang kicked off their tour at The Warfield last Thursday night with Johnathan Rice and the Grand Ole Party promoting their new album Under the Blacklight. Performing classic songs and new stuff that was more dance disco with a rock beat, they took the place down.
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The First Great Film about the Iraq War
Over the last four years, documentaries about the war in Iraq War have never been in short supply, e.g. No End in Sight and Fahrenheit 9-11. Hollywood and independent filmmakers, however, have shied away from such depictions. No stranger to "social problem" or "social issue" films, writer/director Paul Haggis (Letters from Iwo Jima, Crash, Million Dollar Baby), felt compelled to bring his talents as a storyteller to In the Valley of Elah, a film centered on Iraq or, rather, the servicemen coming back from their tours in Iraq. This may just be the first, great film about the Iraq war.
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An Invitation to a Celebration, Best Refused
Julie Taymor's latest would be better suited to the stage than screen, where its lavishly choreographed song-and-dance numbers and elaborate sets would easily overshadow its unexceptional story and needless indulgences. We've all heard the one about the wild children of the 60s who rejected the stodgy conservatism of their parents' generation and embraced revolution -- at least for a time. Re-imagining that story as a musical set entirely to the music of the Beatles (and performed by the likes of Bono and Joe Cocker) is ambitious but, in the end, a noble failure.
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A Call to Arms
Rumors have been rampant that Neil Jordan's The Brave One will earn Jodie Foster her first Oscar nomination since 1994's Nell, and it is easy to understand why. As a New York-based talk-show host whose cozy world is shattered when a gang of thugs cracks her skull and murders her fiancé (Naveen Andrews) during an evening stroll in Central Park, her performance is effectively nuanced, a subtle but convincing mix of impotent terror, vengeful rage and, ultimately, remorse. It would represent a star-making turn for an actress with a lesser résumé; for Foster, it is merely a platform to show off her dramatic range.
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A Flawed, if Compelling, Crime Drama
In four decades and more than twenty films, David Cronenberg's (The History of Violence, Crash, Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers, Scanners, The Brood) obsessions with body modification, identity, illness and mental instability, have led to the creation of a sub-genre: "body-horror", that has since become synonymous with Cronenberg's name. While the director has increasingly moved away from the horror genre, his obsessions have remained.
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A Neutered Billy Bob Thornton Ain't Much Fun
Remember, way back when you were in elementary school or high school and forced to endure an hour every day of so-called physical education. If you were athletic, you pretty much got a free pass from the gym teacher who was often a coach in the big three: baseball, basketball or football. If you weren't athletic, chances are you quietly bided your time until the period was over and you could rush to your next class. Now imagine, years later, encountering the gym teacher who made you miserable. That's the premise driving Mr. Woodcock, the latest Billy Bob Thornton vehicle.
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A Pretty Yet Hopelessly Imperfect Portrait
John Malkovich has spent his career embracing roles as varied as they are intriguing and unusual. He almost never plays against type because, after convincingly reinventing himself so many times, there is no type. The roles he chooses defy any pattern. Even so, after playing a flamboyant fraud in 2005's Color Me Kubrick and Austrian painter Gustav Klimt in the latest offering from Chilean-born director Raúl Ruiz, Malkovich's affection for the offbeat has rarely been so apparent.
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Making You Wish For Endless Winter
Spend your winters here and summers in the Southern hemisphere and you can ride the slopes all-year-round. Alright, so we may not all have the luxury of chasing snow, but we ARE very fortunate to have Mountain West, a cozy gem of a shop at the junction of Division and 10th. This independently owned and operated joint stocks just about anything and everything you might need on your next expedition to Tahoe or, say, the slopes in Chile, and it's never too early to start preparing.
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Political Poetry at the Sacrifice of Art
Sam Hamill's newest book, Measured By Stone, comes to us from a press devoted to political creative writing. Curbstone Press describes itself as "a publishing house dedicated to multicultural literature that reflects a commitment to social awareness and change," a place that publishes "creative writers whose work promotes human rights and intercultural understanding." It should not be surprising, therefore, that Hamill's book brims with barely contained -- sometimes outright angry -- political lyrics.
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