The Treasure Island Music Festival has, historically, been the last hurrah of summer. Taking place in the middle of October (or late September), it’s usually sunny and a great way to let go of the carefree warm months, before we all have to buckle to the stress of the holiday season.
Sadly, they had to take 2017 off. Even sadder was that, due to maintenance on the island, Treasure Island, for the first time, had to move from its namesake venue. We ended up drifting east a few knots to the shores of Oakland, to a beach in the middle of West Oakland’s warehouse district called Middle Harbor Park. Continue reading “Treasure Island Music Festival 2018 Journal”
Ate a lot of food. Got a lot of steps. But it was mostly Janet Jackson.
All photos by Dakin Hardwick unless otherwise noted
Outside Lands reached its 11th birthday this year. I’ve been to ten of those eleven installments. This year, the folks booking the festival decided it was time to take some risks… They added an extra stage for acoustic sets and magic, called “Cocktail Magic.” They added a whole pot awareness area (not that folks at a music festival need to be *more* aware of weed). Continue reading “Outside Lands 2018: 27 Instant Gig Reviews”
Rae Livingston and David Owen both help book the Barbary at Outside Lands, and have for several years now. This, is course, means they have a lot to talk about. So we split the interview in two, because we here at Spinning Platters understand that your time is precious. In this one, we talk about the bookings that they are most excited about this year, as well as some favorite memories of passed years.
If you missed part one, it’s right here! And if you still haven’t purchased tickets yet, what are you waiting for? You can find those right here!
Outside Lands generally does quite well with the music lineup. However, I have always thought that the real gold at the festival has been the bookings for the Barbary. This year, we finally found time in their busy schedule to talk to some of the people behind those amazing bookings: Rae Livingston of Another Planet and David Owen of SF Sketchfest. We got to spend a little time with them to discuss the history of the stage, the booking process and their careers, and for a bit, we just got to nerd out about comedy.
As we head into the 11th year of Outside Lands, it’s also important to commemorate the fact that this is the 5th year in a row that I’ve been encouraging you to show up early and check out the smaller stages. I am well aware of the fact that my first one of these, in 2013, managed to guide you to several amazing bands, but missed the fact that a little bass and drums duo on Fueled By Ramen called Twenty One Pilots was playing. This also proves my point that you should get there early, because you never know when you are gonna stumble across a band that’s gonna be selling out arenas in just a couple years. Other passed “bottom-halfers” included The Black Keys, Courtney Barnett, Portugal. The Man, Janelle Monae, Father John Misty, Foster The People, and others that moved on to be massive stars.
The 38th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is going strong; it entered its second week today, and we’ve got five more spotlights for you (you can find our first round of coverage here). Below we profile four more feature films and one documentary. Complete programming and ticket information can be found here; now get out there and see some films before the Festival ends on August 5th!
The 38th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, showcasing over 65 films from more than twenty countries, opens this Thursday, July 19th, and runs for two and a half weeks, concluding on Sunday, Aug. 5th. Films will be shown at venues in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Albany, Oakland, and San Rafael, so there is plenty of time and opportunity to see a lot of quality films. Below we spotlight five Festival movies that you may want to check out. Complete schedule, tickets, and more information are available here. And be sure and follow Spinning Platters for more coverage during the Festival!
Wrap up: 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival
The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival ended last Tuesday, but many of its offerings will find their way to your neighborhood cinema in the near future. We conclude our coverage of this year’s Fest by taking a look at four of the Fest’s films that you may want to keep your eye out for in the coming months (our previous coverage posts can be found here, here, and here). And if you’re curious to see which Fest films took home awards this year, you can see all the winners here. In the meantime, we’ll see you next year for SFFILM #62!
1.) Sorry to Bother You (USA 2018, 107 min. Centerpiece)
Detroit (Tessa Thompson) and Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) join with striking workers at their telemarketing firm in Oakland.
Oakland rapper and artist Boots Riley got the hometown reception from the Festival this year, as his debut feature film was given a first-of-its kind, dual-venue Bay Area premiere at two of the Bay Area’s most iconic and beloved theaters: Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater and San Francisco’s Castro Theater. The movie had previously premiered at Sundance, where it garnered a Grand Jury prize nomination, but its Bay Area premiere definitely felt more special. Riley’s film centers on Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield, Get Out), a new employee at a telemarketing company in downtown Oakland (exteriors were shot around Kaiser’s Franklin Street building) whose rise up the corporate ladder doesn’t come without cost, to himself, his girlfriend (Tessa Thompson), and his friends, colleagues, and community. While inarguably entertaining, Riley’s film has a definite first attempt feel: elements of political satire, social criticism, surrealist comedy, outrageous sci-fi, and sweet romance often overlap to an extreme, coming dangerously close to burying the picture beneath its own everything-but-the kitchen-sink weight. Comedically deft performances from Stanfield and Armie Hammer, as a villainous corporate head, though, are appealing enough to make the flaws of Riley’s jam-packed screenplay forgivable.
Sorry to Bother Youwill open in the Bay Area on Friday, July 6th.
2018 San Francisco International Film Festival ends this week
If you haven’t made it out to the SF International Film Festival yet, don’t worry – you still have one more day to catch some great films. The Festival ends tomorrow, Tuesday, April 17th, and tickets to remaining screenings can be found here.
Spinning Platters continues its coverage by taking a look at four films that screened at the Fest that will be opening soon here in the Bay Area (we note each film’s opening date below), so if you had hoped to see some of these at the Fest and missed them, you’ve got a second chance. And even though the Fest ends soon, stay tuned to Spinning Platters; we’ll have some wrap up coverage after the Fest concludes.
1.) Kodachrome (Canada/USA 2017, 105 min. Marquee Presentations)
Matt (Jason Sudeikis, l.), Zoe, (Elizabeth Olsen), and Ben (Ed Harris) have some fun.
Upon hearing the title of director Mark Raso’s new film, you would be forgiven for thinking it might have something to do with Paul Simon’s 1973 single of the same name. That song is referenced in the film, but never played, which is for the best, since the last film to take its title from a Paul Simon song was a huge flop. Raso fares better here, working from a script by the author and screenwriter Jonathan Tropper (This is Where I Leave You). Based loosely on a 2010 article in the New York Times about the closing of the last photo lab in the country to develop Kodak’s famed color film, Kodachrome is a father-son redemption story that calls to mind Sam Shepard, and not just because Shepard stalwart Ed Harris plays Ben, the estranged, terminally ill famous photographer father to Jason Sudeikis’s wounded music producer son Matt. The actors are believable as a father and son with a complicated history, which helps detract from the cliché of their road trip from New York to Kansas to drop off old Kodachrome rolls of Ben’s before the lab closes. Accompanying the duo is Zoe (Elizabeth Olsen), Ben’s nurse and assistant and, of course, love interest for Matt. Olsen’s likable presence and her chemistry with Sudeikis also help keep the story from feeling too obvious, and you find yourself wanting to spend more time with them. The film does occasionally succumb to the hackneyed, though, as when Matt and Zoe finally look at Ben’s developed slides (you’ll have long since guessed what’s on them), in a somewhat cloying scene that may remind some viewers of the famous “The Wheel” episode of Mad Men. But with its nostalgic look at how our analog world has given way to digital, Raso and Tropper manage to pull off a charming narrative that would have felt derivative with a lesser cast at the helm.
Kodachromewill open in the Bay Area this Friday, April 20th.
Make time for these three great documentaries at the 61st San Francisco International Film Festival
1.) Carcasse (Iceland/France 2016, 61 min. Vanguard)
Faraway lands and anthropologic impulses lured filmmaker Gústav Geir Bollason to the subject of how we adapt the 21st century’s material bounty to the timeless problems of survival. Drawing heavily from Robert Flaherty and Basil Wright, Bollason is fascinated with the ways in which we repurpose the consumerist world to adapt quite nicely in the survivalist one. Aircraft fuselages become shelters for lamb flocks. Volkswagen bodies become boat bridges. Compact car bodies become horse drawn buggies. Flaherty showed how the Inuk bent nature to tame nature. Bollason shows both the pervasive nature of modern material culture, and our ingenuity at bending it our needs. Plays with the short The Art of Flying (Jan van Ijken, Netherlands 2015, 7 min).
Screenings (tickets available here):
— Saturday, April 14th, 3:15pm, YBCA Screening Room
— Sunday, April 15, 2018, 8:00pm, YBCA Screening Room
