Spinning Platters Interview: Vera Farmiga on “Higher Ground”

Vera Farmiga in HIGHER GROUND

“This is challenging! This discourse is challenging! This is a campaign that is more rigorous than the Up in the Air Oscar campaign. Those questions were like, ‘What is it like to kiss George Clooney?'” But Vera Farmiga wouldn’t have it any other way. The Oscar-nominated actress, 38, is making her directorial debut with Higher Ground, adapted for the screen by Carolyn S. Briggs (and Tim Metcalfe) from her memoir, This Dark World. It is a finely observed, deeply felt spiritual character study about a woman named Corinne (Farmiga). Yes, this film dares to address religion, specifically evangelical Christianity. But it does so in a manner as completely disarming, sensitive, and uncompromising as Farmiga herself.

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Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 9/1/11-9/7/11

Opening for Archers Of Loaf on Saturday Night!

Happy Labor Day! Let’s appreciate the working men and women of American by going to an awesome show this week! What do you say?

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Film Review: “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”

Bailee Madison in DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
starring: Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, Bailee Madison

written by: Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins

directed by: Troy Nixey

MPAA: Rated R for violence and terror

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Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 8/25/11-8/31/11

Miranda Cosgrove canceled her gig at The Fox this week due to a bus accident. Boo!

My cat keeps sitting on my hands, making it really hard to type something witty. So I’ll get her to talk to you instead:azMNBSAMBDS,MCDEHBJCD GQWCHVJEC VEN

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Show Review: TFDI with Riley Etheridge & Michael Kang at Cafe du Nord, 8/21/2011

A little over two years ago, some friends and I went to see Tony Lucca at the Hotel Utah. He was playing with two dudes we’d never heard of before: Jay Nash and Matt Duke. Matt opened, and before he’d finished the first song all three of us were staring at him, transfixed (and okay, maybe a little surprised as well). Our reactions to Jay were similar, and of course we already knew we loved Tony’s music too. As the tour progressed, it didn’t take them long to realize that their fantastic chemistry shouldn’t go to waste. By the time they reached SPACE in Chicago, they were harmonizing their way through each other’s set lists, two of them flanking the third songwriter as he took center stage. They decided to record a 4-song EP, and somehow the whole project was dubbed “TFDI.” (More on that later.)

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Theatre Review: Stuffed and Unstrung by Henson Alternative at Curran Theater, 8/18/11


Stuffed and Unstrung is an improv show put on by the Henson Alternative using 80 Henson puppets and six performers.  This sentence makes it sound good and intriguing, but actually watching it is like an explosion of joy in your brain.  When I left the theater Thursday night, with tears in my eyes from laughter and an added spring in my step, I said to my friend “We should watch it again!” Continue reading “Theatre Review: Stuffed and Unstrung by Henson Alternative at Curran Theater, 8/18/11”

Film Review: “Fright Night”

Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell in FRIGHT NIGHT

starring: Colin Farrell, Anton Yelchin, Toni Collette, David Tennant, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Imogen Poots, Dave Franco, Reid Ewing

written by: Marti Noxon

directed by: Craig Gillespie

MPAA: Rated R for bloody horror violence and language including some sexual references

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Film Review: “Conan the Barbarian”

Rose McGowan blows in CONAN THE BARBARIAN

starring: Jason Momoa, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan, Rachel Nichols, Ron Perlman, Leo Howard

written by: Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Sean Hood

directed by: Marcus Nispel

MPAA: Rated R for strong bloody violence, some sexuality and nudity

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San Francisco’s 2011 Outside Lands Festival, Day 3

The crowd in unified fist-pumping for Major Lazer
The crowd in unified fist-pumping for Major Lazer

60,000 is an extremely large number, especially when you’re speaking in terms of human beings. The largest amphitheater in the Bay Area, the Shoreline in Mountain View, holds around 30,000 with its lawn fully filled, and most shows that can completely fill it to the brim are multi-platinum megastars, or great music festivals that last all day. It therefore isn’t too surprising that nearly all 3 days of the 2011 Outside Lands Festival were sold out, both with single-day and three-day tickets; still, 60,000 people per day is a pretty staggering number. By the time Sunday rolled around, and the denizens of the festival had been dragged through cold, fog, heat, sun, and likely several hundred thousand watts of amplified music, it was stunning to see that the park was still packed to the gills; while most people didn’t trickle in until the mid-afternoon hours, there was enough sunlight out to see Golden Gate Park filled from end to end with a flood of musicgoers.

But what about the people who made it in the morning?

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Spinning Platters Interview: Miranda July on “The Future”

Miranda July in THE FUTURE

Miranda July is an anomaly in the film industry. Perhaps this is because, although she has experienced success within it, she understands there is much more to the creative world outside of it. A multimedia artist in the truest sense of the term, July has been celebrated as much for her performance art as for her filmmaking. Her multimedia pieces have been shown and performed in galleries around the world. Her debut collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007), won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. And her debut film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which July wrote and directed as well as starred in, won four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, in addition to numerous critics awards and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance.

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