Results tagged “castrotheater”

Some collaborations between Hollywood people and non-Hollywood artists yield magical results -- take Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' work on Where the Wild Things Are, for example -- but in the case of Erased James Franco, the hour-long art film made by the artist known as Carter with Hollywood actor James Franco occupying the central role, the results are confused, mundane, and borderline pretentious. Billed as a riff on Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning Drawing" (which is owned by the SFMOMA), the film is meant to be an "erased performance" in which Franco appears in a non-descript setting reading random lines from all of his previous work, including the Spiderman films and the TV show Freaks and Geeks (at the time of shooting, in June 2008, Milk had not yet been released). There are a few inspired moments in the piece, but they mostly involve performances not originally given by Franco, where he performs monologues from other films like Todd Haynes' Safe or John Frankenheimer's Seconds, which starred Rock Hudson -- we especially enjoyed a brief telephone conversation Franco has with Julianne Moore, with her words clipped from lines from Safe. But the majority of the film features long, labored shots of Franco writing on loose-leaf paper, waving his hands, drinking water, answering phones, moving a chair around, and walking in and out of a room.

According to the fine folks over at The Sword (NSFW), the GayVNs (NSFW) will be held here on Saturday -- you know, those homosexual pornography achievement awards, which led to Mayor Gavin Newsom getting all Berkeley City Council on us after he declared Feb. 23 to be Colt Studio Day last year? -- coinciding with that hairy-large-gay-appreciation festival thing happening.

Starting this week, as we all know by now, Palme d'Or-winning writer/directer Gus Van Sant starts filming Milk on our pretty yet smelly streets. But Gustave needs your help, folks. On Monday night, Feb. 4, and Friday night, Feb. 8, he will require you use your thespionic skills during several march reenactments. If you go here and register, you will be used. All ages, races and genders are just dandy; however, you must be 18 or over to participate. Alas.

SFist interviews Crispin Hellion Glover, who is screening his films at the Castro Theater this weekend.

Who woulda thought. . . . we weren’t the only ones not completely immersed in isolation with the final Harry Potter book this weekend... although we did see a couple books neatly tucked under the seats at the Castro Theater on Saturday at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. If you weren’t there, well, then you missed out on a couple of good romantic comedies and one hilarious kiss-off -- and not the kind of kiss-off you might think we’re talking about.

And on to Mezzanine Thursday night for the SFIFF closing night party -- with a surprise performer . . . . but before the final sendoff, we headed over to the Castro Theater for what turned out to be one of the best films that we think we’ve ever seen, French or otherwise – (which means “little sparrow”). The “little sparrow” is Edith Piaf, and the film by director Olivier Dahan, is intended to present more of a portrait of Piaf’s life rather than a biography, according to Dahan.

The Bay Area Hip-Hop Theater Festival kicks off its two-week run of politically-inspired and racially-conscious dramatic and spoken word arts at Berkeley's La Pena Cultural Center at an event featuring the teen poets of Youth Speaks and their Brave New Voices College Tour. $10, 8 p.m., 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley (between Ashby and Alcatraz Aves.)

Sunday night, the SF International screened the world premiere of the film at the Castro Theater. There were shades of Sundance as many of the films featured filmmakers and actors, including George Lucas and Robin Williams, casually red carpeted-their way to the theater, complete with flashbulbs and film cameras documenting the night.

From the Chron's Peter Hartlaub, we get word that the Castro Theater is going to be showing all three movies of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Yep, that's Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King back-to-back-to-back. And yes, that's a lot of movie watching but if you were going to watch like eight hours of movies, you couldn't do wrong there. Name another movie trilogy that's even as half good as these three, come on we dare you. The Godfather Trilogy? Godfather III. Star Wars IV-VI? Ewoks. American Pie I-III? Not even close-- hell, Tara Reid wasn't even in the last two. See, the way we see it is it'll be cold, the stores will be mayhem, we've already seen "A Christmas Story" over twenty times, and we have no life. What could be better than 559 minutes of Middle Earth-goodness? Show starts at 1:30. Tickets are $10

We don't know about you, but we are a bit drained from the excitement of last night's election and constantly "refreshing results" while our better half patiently indulged us. It is this sort of compulsive behavior that led us to swear off ebay. But we digress.

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express: Hey, the EBX is starting a blog -- we hear those are very trendy. But they've got us listed as a link, right below the Culture Blog, so it's all okay! Bottom Feeder mocks the errors made by the Bay Guardian in its East Bay endorsements. Would you buy expensive organic meals prepared by these folks? Confrontational atheists meeting near Walnut Creek. Cover article: the woes of air traffic controllers in Oakland. Brazilian food in Richmond. Cheap wines for everyone! The Pacific Mozart Ensemble sings in Berkeley with Sufjan Stevens, who alienates the crowd briefly by cheering for the Tigers. And Lyrics Born is playing this weekend!

We have a winner in our Fake Tales of San Francisco contest! As you may recall, we're giving out "The Heart Is Deceitful" movie swag to the person who came up with the best, most fakest San Francisco story. After disqualifying Matier and Ross when the Gavin dating a Scientologist actress thing came true, our winner is...... KWillets, for this tragic tale of San Francisco gone very, very wrong.

We're awash in trannies! Frameline, San Francisco's annual GLBT film festival, has decided to highlight the "T" portion of the acronym this year, but there's still plenty of G, L, B, and P on the incredibly massive schedule. With 115 screenings, yikes that's a lot, between June 16 and 26, there's sure to be something for everyone. Including heterosexuals. If there really even is such a thing. Anyway, trust SFist to scurry about like a fey little fieldmouse, bringing you reviews and recaps of selected screenings throughout the fest. Programs we're covering include a slew of cartoons, a collection of Peaches Christ's best work, and yet another documentary about Tammy Faye, at which Lady Faye herself will be present.

Just when you were starting to worry that The Castro Theater might've gone all ex-gay, along comes Frameline 29, the 29th annual San Francisco International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Film Festival, or SFILGBTFF (pronounced sifil-gib-tiff). Let's just call it Frameline. Anyway, it's easy for patrons of the homo-arts (and for cheapskates like us) to support this noble endeavor and see a bunch of free movies: just donate a bit of your time to ushering, or ticket-taking, or t-shirt-selling. We volunteered last year and had a blast, and all our friends were sooooo impressed when much better. Show up at one of the two volunteer sign-up/orientation meetings on May 25th or June 2nd at 7pm at the gay center; try to make it to the May 25th one if you want the best pick of show assignments. The festival goes live from June 16 to 26th.

Covering the SFIFF this week, we've spent a lot of time in the Fillmore and in the Castro -- two places that are notoriously hard to get stuffed in for less than ten bucks. We should qualify that. We don't know if it's the Noe Valley effect that's inflating prices at shops around the Castro theater, Pat Robertson's theories about DINKs, or curious foreign tourists with their super-strong currencies that make it nearly impossible to run a cheap eats joint in the Castro. And the Fillmore, well, we blame it on HUD (we blame everything wrong in the Fillmore on HUD) on the fact that the only place to get a cheap bite are chain shops like Subway and Panda Express.

When we heard that Geoff Callan and Mike Shaw's project, "Pursuit of Equality," a documentary about San Francisco's 'Winter of Love,' was premiering at the San Francisco International, we were happy, as we've been waiting for months since the film's trailer went online (under the working title "Rush to the Civil Altar"). When we got the press release about the red carpet treatment for the film's stars, we figured there would be the added bonus of a media circus! Yay! Pushy broadcast reporters! Writers from New York City! Mabel Teng! So SFist put on our best (read: only) tweed jacket, fired up 'Lil SFist and headed down to the Castro Theater. After the jump: gays, Gavin and guffaw inducing gaffes.

NAATA must be so proud of the great opening night screening of at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. There was a big crowd outside the Castro Theater as we arrived, and as we entered the theater we were disconcerted by all the folks who seemed to be reserving seats for others. Then, we realized that we were being total rubes, and that the "purses" in the theater chairs were actually gift bags! SFist has hit the big time, folks, and y'all are here to witness it.

SFist regrets not following up on our coverage of the Castro Theater controversy sooner, but we really wanted to get the perspectives of the involved parties.

SFist was dismayed when we heard rumors surrounding the controversial firing of the Castro Theater's long-time programming director, Anita Monga.

We could barely read the paper this morning, we were so depressed. So we thought, "hey! Read the Datebook! It's always quote unquote fun!" So what should our scarred soul see? Infighting over the future of the Castro Theater, where the newly-involved family owners of the theater fired their programming director, Anita Monga, over what they perceived to be overly-quirky films. Wonderful.