Synecdoche, New York

If you'd like your soul and heart and mind twisted and turned over and over until you are simultaneously so drained and sad yet relieved, see Synecdoche, New York. A cathartic experience. Playing only until Wednesday in SF, at the Roxie Theater, in the Mission.

Walkmen / Beach House Show in SF!

Last night, on President Obama's first full day in office, I saw The Walkmen and Beach House play the Fillmore. Man it was great! Of the two The Walkmen really rocked-- I say Beach House sounds just as amazing digitally as live, but I'm still definitely open to them.
And it's great being in a city where almost every time a band is on stage they say something like, "This is our favorite place to play," or "We love this city," and mean it.

Hell yes. Rock on. I'd see either of the bands again.

*The Walkmen above. I didn't take this picture but it's quite studly eh?

The Wrestler

Just got back from seeing The Wrestler. Though enjoyable to watch because of the intimate follow style of filming / storytelling, I give it an eh.
I hadn't seen any previews but had heard some buzz and for some reason it sounded interesting to me. Though I really don't like wrestling or violence in movies. I guess I thought it would be an interesting character sketch.

Here's what it made me think about- which I already knew before- focus on self can equal loss of human connection

New Solo Show Opens with a bang!

There's good theater in town. Last weekend at The Intersection for the Arts theatre in the Mission, In My Corner, Joe Orrach's new solo show, opened to two sold out performances.

I just happen to be the Assistant Production Manager for the show, and I am loving it!

When I first met Joe and saw a rehearsal I was shocked at how multi-talented he is. First he dances a little, and you're thinking, this is great, then there's this intensely intriguing story (which is his true life story) and then he belts out this great tenor voice, and then he starts tap dancing! To top it off, your senses are completely tuned in because of the excellent accompaniment of this world class jazz trio: Matt Clark on piano, Micha Patri on drums, and Eugene Warren on double bass.

I was lucky to fall into such an opportunity. You can be part of it too: there are four more show dates this Thursday through Sunday!


Joe is a local who some may know from Teatro ZinZanni where he performed for 6 years. He grew up in New York and started his performance life tap dancing on the streets. This is where Gregory Hines saw him and this led him to where he is now.

In My Corner is an autobiographical story, largely the story of Joe's relationship with his father, and his personal voyage. It's a coming of age story, his transformation from growing up a New Yorican, leaving the ring behind, hanging up the boxing gloves, and putting on the tap shoes. The story winds through the riffs and beats of latin jazz and rock and roll. Sit back and relax, and your emotions will shift by the vibrations, sounds and silences of this 75 minute show.



Get your TICKETS now at www.joeorrach.com for one of the last performances:
Thursday at 8pm
Friday at 8pm
Saturday at 8pm
and Sunday at 1pm
$20 general admission

Silent Film Festival

This last weekend in San Fran was the 13th annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theater.



We saw The Patsy starring Marion Davies and directed by 5 time Oscar nominated King Vidor, who holds the Guinness World record for longest running career as a director- spanning 8 decades. The movie was actually awesome- a 20's comedy I think refreshing because of most of the crap comedy we get in theaters today. I suppose the style of comedy was almost slapstick- and clever.

The other highlight of the night was the live accompaniment of music, done so by Mr. Clark Wilson on a Mighty Wurlitzer organ. Having the musician in the room means the experience is organic, like seeing live theatre instead of a movie- anything can happen on the spot as perhaps the audience's reaction affects how the musician plays, and how the musician plays affects how the audience reacts- a mutual experience. This mutual experience theme is interesting to me and is addressed in a movie I was part of making for Sam Green and Kevin Epp's doc class at USF, called Ruins of the Past and Present.

Reno is Artown

Every July Reno hosts Artown, a month long summer arts festival, and most events are free. Pretty cool. Two summers ago I was part of a group, Project Moonshine, that made a sort of documentary- called Being Here- about the event.

This year something I had never seen before, a woman acrobat dancing hanging from a type of hot air balloon (that was tethered to the ground)- apparently called The Heliosphere, kicked off the festival on July 1 in Wingfield Park. Here's a taste...

Le Tour de Nez

This past week I spent at the Tour de Nez- a pro bike race in Reno/Tahoe- a fantastic way to spend the week.


This is Roman Kilun who won two stages at Nez and who I just found has a blog of his own.

Dave Towle announced, which was exciting for me because for a few years I reallllly enjoyed him commentate the Tour de France on OLN, now Versus. He knows loads about cycling, and he's a real artist. Watching and listening to him makes you feel like you are there in person.

Co-filmer Mike Albright in for the good shot before having to fall back.



Here's a photo of a moment later, when after a bit of rain and fears of cancellation, a double rainbow emerged.



There's just something about a bike...

No Child...

"No Child..." which just finished its run at Berkeley Rep, the last stop on its national tour, was everything everyone has been saying it is. The show has been getting lots of attention for awhile (it's been on for 2 years now) and sometimes hype can lead to great expectations and disappointment from the crowd. However, Nilaja Sun creates enough of an authentic energy in the room (and the Berkeley rep theatre is nice and intimate) for the hype to be legitimate.






The main wonderful point about this show is the fact of activism as entertainment. No Child... is insight into the No Child Left Behind Act that is a U.S. federal law that George W. Bush instituted in 2001.

Watching Sun I could tell the amount of teachers in the room because of the many inside teacher jokes I wasn't a part of. This meant that the audience was also really passionate- the NCLB act effects their lives every day, and there's a lot of emotion there. Seeing Sun enact a theater teacher struggling to make an impact on kids and also struggling to get support for doing it, hit home for the audience. At one scene when Sun enacts the teacher calling a student to see why he has been absent and finds out from his grandmother that his brother was shot dead in an incident of gang violence, I noticed hands go up to faces all over the crowd as viewers wiped their tears.

I'm proof that this show inspires in an activist way because leaving I researched more about the NCLB act. Barack Obama has plans to reform the act.

Sex and the City Commentary

My interest in Sex and the City stems from the fact of its intense fan base. What is it about this story that makes women and (mostly gay) men everywhere like it so much? I know, parts of it seem obvious- the glamour, the gossip, but what else? People feel positive and negative about the effects of the show on our culture. I thought the movie coming out meant a perfect time to do a little in qualitative research to try and figure out what here is making people tick.

Go See Young at Heart

This Memorial Day Weekend I drove back home for a little relaxation/family love/refreshment.


*the sky in Reno is always fantastic (I think it has something to do with how it's simultaneously the desert and mountains), this weekend especially so because it was drizzly the whole time.

While here I saw the documentary Young at Heart by Stephen Walker, which is a portrayal of an elderly choir called Young at Heart. It was a fantastic! The movie has been recommended to me a lot because of my own similar documentary film making interests of late, which I will be posting proof of here soon.

OK, easy subject you may say. Old people say the darndest things. Pretty much, exactly. But also way more than that. They have 80 or so years of knowledge that is the foundation for what they have to say. In spending an hour and a half with older people, it's hard for your head and heart not to go back to the basics and realize what's important in life. Props to Walker I say. I'm all about creating entertainment by simply (not to say it's not a difficult task) putting a frame around beautiful things in life.

A scene most powerful is when the choir performs at a jail. Here we get to watch the prisoners watching and listening to the chorus, as we are thinking the prisoners must be affected, and be realizing, like we are, that we must live each day to the fullest, savor every moment, and appreciate life for what it is.



Smiling? I thought so.
Young at Heart is currently playing in San Francisco at the 4 Star Theater on Clement Street.

The State of Cinema Address

Last Sunday morning in San Francisco, Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine, delivered the State of Cinema address. Kelly has worked in digital technology since his founding role with The Well, in 1985, one of the first "true" online communtities. So he had a lot to say about what the future, inevitably and obviously digital all the way, will look like for motion pictures.

He opened his talk with a little factoid about life today: the huge amount of screens everywhere. "Anywhere we are waiting, there are screens," he said (gas stations, grocery lines, etc.).

He hit many points about why and how cinema has been and will continue to change:

- the home theater situation has been morphing: "There's a whole system of underground groups of state of the art home theaters."

-3D cinema may have a future. Theater owners want to use 3D to try and get customers into theaters. This was also a large topic discussed at last year's Future of Cinema Conference in Cannes, since this was also where Michael Peyser's U23D - "the first live-action 3D concert movie" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

-Because of all new possibilities and venues for distribution thanks to the Internet, there are all new rules and ideas for movie time frames. Think Youtube. "Before, you either made home movies or real movies. Now we have a middle. More than a home movie, less than a masterpiece."

-Tools are no longer a big decider for who is making movies and who is not. Since inexpensive video cameras are everywhere now, it's not the tools that prevent people from making movies. The only necessity now is the "ambition of the artist." Also because of accessible, inexpensive tools for production (cell phone cameras) and distribution (youtube) we now have soooo much content out there. People emphasize the crap. But, this just means there's more to weed through. "In order to have really great stuff you have to allow bad stuff."

-Computational Photography Film making- Take a film, extract out a person, and reassemble the story that you want (I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about here)

-Videos are increasingly everywhere. "It's similar to text everywhere. We don't even notice it. The moving image is becoming ubiquitous." When the printing press came out and text began to dominate, everyone was complaining about the loss of oral communication. This was known as the Gutenburg shift. Now, the same thing is happening with the shift from text to video. "We went from oral to written and now we're going to screen. There was a lamentation then. I think because of this shift to a visual culture, literary skills will be lost."

- What about the question of the literary form of film? How do we summarize, condense, make abstracts of films? How fast can we watch a film and still understand it? Everything is all about linking now. Eventually we will want to be able to link to certain frames in films, or even to certain things in frames. We don't have this technology yet.


- "It's the liquidity" of the medium. Film is becoming like this. Transformable.

-copy copy copy. "Freeconomy." What do we do? How do we make money? The copy machine is "the intermedia." (Mr. Kelly though is not worried about new media economy). "Where attention is money will follow. Stories have an incredible capacity to hold attention."

-For the future: the first lesson we learned on the web is that: we can do it! Nobody believed in the internet when it first came out. "We better start believing in the impossible."

-On the fate of film (celluloid), Kelly said, "I say good riddance to film (celluloid) because you can fake it (create the effect that film gives) with digital"

After the talk there was a Q and A and someone asked how artists will make money in this new "freeconomy." "I do believe we will find a model for artists being able to make a living," Kelly said.


*this post is the first of my culture review series. watch for more!