Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
starring: Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Kevin Bacon, Marisa Tomei, Analeigh Tipton, Jonah Bobo, Josh Groban
written by: Dan Fogelman
directed by: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for coarse humor, sexual content and language
starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Paul Dano, Adam Beach, Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine
written by: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
directed by: Jon Favreau
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of western and sci-fi action and violence, some partial nudity and a brief crude reference
Jen Schande is one of the Bay Area’s most tried-and-true indie workhorses. She’s been at it in one band or another for damn near two decades: she played pre-fame shows with bands ranging from No Doubt to The Gossip, released a long-sold-out split 7″ with The Cribs that commands quite a high asking price on eBay, and famously saw PJ Harvey at the Whiskey in 1992. In addition to her prolific DJ work, Jen has her namesake band, Schande, which she began focusing on exclusively after parting ways with Boyskout several years back.
Schande are playing at the Hemlock this Saturday, July 30, along with Bam!Bam! and Silent Pictures. And they have a new 7″ out on Future Farmer Recordings, titled Still Returning. Let’s have a listen, shall we?
So, I’ve spend the last few days drooling over the Treasure Island Festival line up… So much that I almost forgot to do this. But, that would be sad for everyone out there, because this week is awesome. Besides, there are great shows every night until that shindig happens.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 7/28/11-8/2/11”
When Mike Cahill and Zal Batmanglij were students at Georgetown, they co-directed a film and entered it in the campus film festival. The film won a prize, and they were invited onstage for a Q&A. From the stage, they noticed a “little waify blonde girl” jump up in the front row and start what became a full-audience standing ovation. “Who was that?” Batmanglij said to Cahill later. “There was something about her. Did you see her?” The young woman in question was Brit Marling, a fellow Georgetown student who was studying economics. She soon approached the student filmmakers and expressed her desire to collaborate with them. The trio began working on a series of shorts, and eventually moved to Los Angeles to live together while banging out scripts and hoping for the opportunity to show others their work.
Fast forward to January 2011: Cahill and Batmanglij have each directed a film, both co-written with and starring Marling, and both have been accepted to the Sundance Film Festival. Cahill’s film, Another Earth, premiered to a standing ovation, and went on to win the 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Prize for feature films focusing on science or technology. Another Earth and Batmanglij’s film, The Sound of My Voice, would both be picked up by Fox Searchlight. And now Cahill and Marling are touring the country speaking at their own Q&A’s to promote Another Earth, which opens on July 29. Spinning Platters recently jumped into this whirlwind of standing ovations and film festival prizes to speak individually with Marling and Cahill about the marvelous insanity of the last seven months.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interviews: Brit Marling and Mike Cahill on “Another Earth””
Bettye LaVette, the 65-year-old soul phenom who toiled in relative obscurity for over 40 years before exploding onto the buzz meters with her 2005 collection of female singer/songwriter covers, I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, played to a overflowing, standing-room-only crowd at Yoshi’s in Oakland on Thursday evening. LaVette has a special attachment to the Bay Area, as her self-proclaimed “return from the crypt” was largely triggered when she was signed to the SF-based Rosebud Agency. And that gratitude was lovingly incorporated into her stunning 90-minute set of one explosive show-stopper after another.
Continue reading “Show Review: Bettye LaVette at Yoshi’s Oakland, 7/21/2011”
starring: Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, Patricia Clarkson, Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins, Jenna Elfman, Nolan Gould, Bryan Greenberg, Andy Samberg, Emma Stone
written by: Keith Merryman, David A. Newman, Will Gluck, Harley Peyton
directed by: Will Gluck
MPAA: rated R for sexual content and language.
There’s a whole lotta indoor gigs for you this week… Perfect for getting out of the brisk cold July air. Now, got get your groove on!
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 7/21/11-7/27/11”
There’s a commonly-held mindset that says you cannot take ska music seriously. From a simple outside perspective, this makes sense; it’s generally very bouncy, positive-sounding music, and the horns just accentuate the level of joy, or perhaps the level of unseriousness. For what is entailed in a ska song, however, it’s remarkably rude to call it simple or childish; with 3 or 4 additional players that accompany a full band, one that’s usually churning out rapid-fire punk riffs, and with all of the members running around onstage, it’s definitely not a simple feat. The energy of the music, for those who do listen and follow it, is infectious and riotous in its intensity, and whether the lyrics are heartfelt and yearning, or slovenly and self-deprecating, wildly energetic audiences will still fill large auditoriums to see the spectacle, and chant and stamp to every word. Such was the case on Friday night, when the Regency Ballroom of San Francisco played host to two titans of the genre: the New Jersey septet Streetlight Manifesto, and the Huntington Beach veterans known as Reel Big Fish.
Nellie McKay is a woman that is dead set on trying to surprise us. She is one of the few artists to find her records in the “Easy Listening” department of the record store with an explicit lyrics sticker on the cover, only to eventually put out an album of Doris Day covers. She recently made one of the most interesting moves of her career, a operetta out the life of Barbara Graham, the 3rd woman to ever get sentenced to death in the state of California.
Continue reading “Show Review: Nellie McKay at Yoshi’s — San Francisco, 7/14/11”