Punk Rock Bowling is one of the most exciting and unique music festivals running. This year, which happens to be their twentieth, is also one of their biggest! In addition to headliners NOFX, Rise Against, and At the Drive-In, we’ve got some rare visits to the US from legends including Norway’s Turbonegro and Canada’s DOA, not to mention too many other bands to even begin listing here.
Spinning Platters had a chance to pull founder Mark Stern from his busy schedule to talk about what it’s like to book a festival, which combines punk rock and bowling, and plop it in the middle of the desert at the beginning of summer. Lineup and tickets can still be found here! Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Mark Stern from Punk Rock Bowling”
Great company, solid laughs make this Club worth joining
Longtime friends Diane (Diane Keaton, l.), Sharon (Candice Bergen), Vivian (Jane Fonda) and Carol (Mary Steenburgen) talk about books and more in their book club.
Writer/director Bill Holderman, whose age isn’t listed on IMDB, but who looks to be in his late 40s or so, must be particularly close to his grandparents. His first screenplay, 2015’s A Walk in the Woodsconcerned two older men reconnecting on an ill-advised hiking trip, and now his newest screenplay — and his first directorial attempt — is about four senior citizen women on a similar journey of self-discovery. The women’s catalyst for change isn’t the Appalachian Trail, however; it’s E.L. James’s infamously titillating bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey. Co-written by actress and first time screenwriter Erin Simms, Book Club takes a fun but lightweight idea and makes it a success because of the quartet of legendary and always watchable actresses who bring the story to life.
Steven Wilson is easily one of the most prolific recording artists of the last couple of decades. At the same time he was the main creative force behind Porcupine Tree, he also managed a number of side projects like Blackfield, No-Man, and Storm Corrosion, as well as remixing numerous classics by Yes, King Crimson, XTC, and others. After Porcupine Tree was put on an indefinite hiatus—there is still yet to be any official “end” of the band—Wilson’s solo career has flourished even further, defying genre expectations of the “progressive rock” scene in favor of creating honest artistic expression. His latest work, To The Bone, continues to push forward towards the art of “pop” even further than his last release, while still maintaining a melancholic edge that has been a theme of his work for quite some time. The North American leg of the To The Bone tour is coming to an end and I caught his Los Angeles performance at the historic Wiltern in Korea Town.
Gregory Wallace’s Odyssey Dog triumphantly returns with news of Hero… and a few humor-laden prophecies. Photo by Joan Marcus, 2018.
The curtains still drawn, we are serenaded by a lone musician, played by Martin Luther McCoy. His voice is clear, but there’s something raw about his performance that brings an authenticity to the setting. When the curtain rises, we are in the south, it’s the American Civil War, and the last few bits of the guitar make it feel as though we aren’t viewers but participants.
Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) is a Greek tragedy loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey. It’s going to be lengthy and it’s going to be epic and no one better to write it than Suzan-Lori Parks.
Do you remember Ruby Skye? The terrible EDM venue that seemed more like a good place to find overpriced liquor staining a cheap carpet? I mean, if you remember a night at Ruby Skye, you were probably never there. So I wasn’t surprised when the venue closed. I’m pretty sure the DEA would’ve shut it down eventually.
But I was surprised to see, when Courtney Barnett announced tour dates, they included a venue called “August Hall,” and the address was surprisingly close to the address of the old Ruby Skye. Was Barnett, one of the greatest rock songwriters of our time, going to be playing behind a DJ booth? Would there still be an oxygen bar in the corner? Would I be able to buy ketamine in ALL of the bathrooms still? Continue reading “Show Review: Courtney Barnett, Jay Som at August Hall, 5/6/18”
For those that have lived in the Bay Area for a long time, there was a long stretch of time where it felt like we were losing venues left and right. In the last two years however, it seems that the tides are turning in the other direction. Legendary venues Cafe du Nord and Swedish American Hall have reopened after several years of laying dormant. The UC Theater – best known as the place to see Rocky Horror Picture Show in the Nineties – has resurrected itself as a rock club. And brand new spaces like Cornerstone and Starline Social Club are really killing it in the East Bay.
The most recent addition to our live music landscape is August Hall. This venue is going in at the same location as the old Ruby Skye, only it’s been totally remodeled, and they’ve added a full restaurant and bowling to the space! They are opening up this weekend with SF’s own Giraffage on Saturday night, and the epic double bill of Courtney Barnett and Jay Som on Sunday. Spinning Platters had a chance to interview their talent buyer, Chad Heimann, about the venue, his career, and we did a little bit of making fun of Ruby Skye.
They’ve got a stacked calendar here, but you better act soon, as shows are selling out left and right.
I didn’t fully know what to expect walking into Tuesday night’s concert experience, and I certainly didn’t expect for me – a generally-optimistic-but-sometimes-snarky-and-a-bit-jaded-30-year-old – to walk away from being immersed in a crowd of mostly teens with a better connection to myself and a little more hope for the future than I had when I walked in.
Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman’s GHOST STORIES. (Courtesy of IFC Midnight. An IFC Midnight release.)
“We have to be so very careful about what we believe,” a very reassuring and overly confident professor Philip Goodman reminds us at the outset of Ghost Stories. This premise, that we must question our beliefs and those in whom we place our trust, is the central theme that undergirds a film that is often tempted to slide into cliche, but which ultimately satisfies as a genre entertainment with a theatrical flourish
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.
Ubuntu Theater Project explores a fresh take on the American Dream in the West Coast premiere of Ed Cardona Jr.’s American Jornalero
Edited by Jessica Vaden
From L. to R.: Jose Rodriguez (Luis), Benoît Monin (Montezuma), Cristhian Ayvar (Marcelo), Juan J. Berumen (Michigan), and the phone that won’t stop ringing. Photos courtesy of Simone Finney, 2018.
On the corner of Hope and Haven stand six men, waiting. Four of them are jornaleros, day laborers, waiting for the work that may not come. Two are law-abiding, border protecting Minutemen, waiting to indict them with the charge of wanting a better life.
