Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
Do you know what today is? It is Leif Erickson Day here in the USA. Let us celebrate explorers as well as arbitrarily-horned helmets.
Also, the Litquake festival begins in San Francisco! A solid day for a book about explorers.
After that’s done with, let’s look at the concerts coming up this week in the Bay Area. Skol, let’s preview! Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 10/9/15-10/14/15”
The 38th Mill Valley Film Festival, showcasing over 200 films from more than 50 countries, opens today, October 8th, and runs until next Sunday, October 18th. The Festival is screening some titles already garnering Oscar buzz: Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, with Eddie Redmayne in the true story of Lili Elbe; Truth featuring Robert Redford as Dan Rather, and Suffragette, with heavy hitters Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep. This year, the Festival also hosts special evenings with Mulligan, Sarah Silverman, Brie Larson, and Sir Ian McLellan.
Here at Spinning Platters, though, we thought we’d start the Festival by spotlighting some of the lower profile films that risk being overshadowed by movies already getting their fair share of press. Full schedule, tickets, and more information are available here, and be sure to stay tuned to Spinning Platters for more updates throughout the Fest. Continue reading “MVFF38 Spotlights #1: The Automatic Hate/Second Coming/The Girl in the Book/You’re Ugly Too”
We’re less than six weeks away from the Bay Area’s premiere music and tech conference, SF MusicTech Summit. Returning to San Francisco for the seventeenth (!) time, this must-attend gathering attracts top experts, developers, entrepreneurs, investors, and musicians from all around the globe. One year ago, organizers Brian and Shoshana Zisk declared that they would be retiring the event. However, due to popular demand, they’ve brought it back.
Continue reading “Need a discount code for SF MusicTech Summit? We’ve got you covered”
No movie better exemplifies Kurt Vonnegut’s assertion that “science is magic that works” than Ridley Scott’s engaging new film The Martian. Based on Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, Scott’s picture is less a fantastical science fiction story like his Alien or Blade Runner, and more a pure and utterly gripping survival story, in the vein of pictures like Castaway or even 127 Hours. Only here, our hero isn’t trapped somewhere with the luxury of oxygen like a canyon in Utah or a remote tropical island, but years away from any human help, alone in outer space, on the inhospitable planet Mars.
It’s a packed week with Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park and Alternative Press Expo in San Jose.
Coming up we have concerts by old people, young old people, and very old people who don’t much age. Let’s preview! Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 10/1/15-10/7/15”
It’s getting increasingly difficult to find innovation in truly dark music — the sort of sound that disturbs, frightens, and continues to offer intrigue at the same time. A lot of musicians stick to standard scare-tactic fare — blistering static buzzsaws, sampled shrieks, and all manner of cacophonous ear-fuckery — and come off as too abrasive or experimental to be embraced by anything larger than the local noise-rock community. For those less interested in the loud-as-all-hell technique, of course, there’s neo-folk and similarly spooky ilk, but it’s difficult to be taken seriously and/or create the right sort of ambiance — especially when there are so many extremists in the scene that are not ironic in their tales of fantasy and fiction. Every so often, however, someone like Chelsea Wolfe comes along and absolutely lays waste to any detractors or raised eyebrows, likely by virtue of melting said faces off before they’re able to pass judgment. Incredibly dark, massively loud, and chilling in its intensity, Wolfe’s live performance is the kind of shadowy gloom that today’s sonic apocalyptics can only dream to achieve.
Continue reading “Show Review: Chelsea Wolfe with Wovenhand at The Regency Ballroom, 9/26/15”
Thursday, September 24th Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Show Preview: 9/24/15-9/30/15”
Three years ago, I noted that one of the most exciting moments of Rodrigo y Gabriela’s concert was when the Mexican guitar slayers left their accompanying musicians in the background, and took center stage to melt faces and rock bodies with their breakneck-pace blend of Latin-meets-thrash nuevo flamenco. I was excited to see the extra depth and complexity that C.U.B.A. added to their pieces, but ultimately I had missed the mesmerizing speed and magnificent chemistry that was so utterly more palpable when the two were playing solely off of each other. With their most recent tour, in support of their fourth album 9 Dead Alive, Rodrigo y Gabriela have returned to their solo takeover of the stage, and brought with them an astonishing level of energy and joyous camaraderie that is remarkable to behold.
Continue reading “Show Review: Rodrigo y Gabriela at the Masonic, 9/16/2015”
Readers of a certain age may remember the spring of 1997, when the must-read, buzz generating new release was Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, his account of the tragic Mt. Everest climbing expedition from the year prior. With Everest, Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur has crafted a cinematographically stunning and emotionally powerful dramatization of the events of that climb. Basing the film not just on Krakauer’s book, but also on other published survivor accounts, screenwriters William Nicholson (Gladiator; Unbroken) and Simon Beaufoy (127 Hours) bring us another a heart-pounding, riveting story of both the best and worst of the human spirit.
If you don’t like romantic comedies, you might as well stop reading right now, since Leslye Headland’s new film Sleeping with Other People is, without a doubt, a bona fide rom-com. But, if you are open to the category, then you’re in for a real treat here – Headland’s film is smart, funny, and true, and one of the best and brightest pictures the genre has seen in years.