starring: Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Peter Wight, Imelda Staunton, Oliver Maltman, David Bradley, Martin Savage, Karina Fernandez
directed by: Mike Leigh
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some language
Film Review: “Another Year”
Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 1/13/11-1/19/11
Another week of gigs to keep your ears sated. This is typically a quiet period around these parts, but there are a lot of interesting things going on this week if you are willing to give your ears a challenge.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 1/13/11-1/19/11”
A Music Nerd’s Guide To SF Sketchfest 2011
To the uninitiated, San Francisco’s Sketchfest is probably the most overwhelming 2 1/2 weeks out of the entire year, in terms of live entertainment booking. Its closest cousin is probably Austin’s SXSW festival, where you have a wide array of up-and-coming talent mixed with veterans, all playing some very intimate spots.
As a person that considers himself to be an expert of sorts on taste, I am going to sift through this year’s line-up, and let you know what you should be going to at this year’s Sketchfest. I will guide you through which Emmy winners or CSI corpses (both of which are well represented by this event), in my humble opinion, is most worthy of your hard earned dollar.
Continue reading “A Music Nerd’s Guide To SF Sketchfest 2011″
Show Review: The Velvet Teen with Silian Rail at Bottom of the Hill, 1/7/11
The Velvet Teen is a force of indie-noise-pop-rock to be reckoned with that everyone should know about. This is something I spent years of my youth slowly convincing all my friends of, and now, finally, this show proved that people have been listening. Bottom of the Hill was packed before the first band even started playing and the energy in the room was palpable. There was no question that something great was about to be heard. Continue reading “Show Review: The Velvet Teen with Silian Rail at Bottom of the Hill, 1/7/11”
Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 1/6/11-1/12/11
Welcome to the first Spinning Platters Bay Area concert guide of 2011! Admittedly, it will be a brief one; the new year is getting off to an exceptionally slow start for shows. But if the photo above of this week’s featured performer hasn’t already sent you running for a bag of Funyuns, look after the jump for some highlights.
Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts, 1/6/11-1/12/11”
Show Review: The Dresden Dolls with Pomplamoose at The Warfield, 12/31/2010
Forget what you thought you knew about how to celebrate for the beginning of a new year. Forget what you thought could happen with two Bostonians, a collective of YouTube musicians, a pile of balloons, two cannons of confetti, and two thousand lovers of punk cabaret. If you were not one of the aforementioned fans that filled San Francisco’s Warfield Theater to nigh-overflowing to see the triumphant Bay Area return of the Dresden Dolls, you missed one of the greatest shows in the band’s career, and one of the best shows of 2010, and, quite likely, 2011 as well.
Continue reading “Show Review: The Dresden Dolls with Pomplamoose at The Warfield, 12/31/2010”
Spinning Platters Staff’s Individual Picks: The Best Albums of 2010
After fighting over voting on our site’s top albums, I gave everyone the opportunity to send in an individual list of their favorite records without rules as to how many albums could be on there. While the initial turnout was poor, I know that posting this will have our writers turning up in droves to add their list. And through the power of the Internet, I can add those lists! But without further rambling, let’s go to our first list, from Dakin Hardwick. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Staff’s Individual Picks: The Best Albums of 2010”
Spinning Platters Guide To New Year’s Eve 2011 In The San Francisco Bay Area
It’s scary how quickly New Year’s Eve is approaching. It’s almost 2011, and if you are like me, you haven’t figured out what you are going to do. Well, here are a few tips shows that you can still decide to head out to!
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Show Review: X-Mas with X (An Evening With) and Ray Manzarek at Slim’s, 12/28/2010
As 2010 comes to a glorious end, it’s once again that time of year for annual traditions. While the New Years’ Eve shows will be gigantic and exciting, and the late November / early December weeks are filled with last-minute surprise gigs, it’s good to have a few things that can always be counted on to keep up that holiday spirit. Of course, this is not to say that said traditions can’t be spiced up with a few new flavors added to the recipe, and the Los Angeles punk quartet known as X returned to Slim’s this year to prove it.
Show Review: Bell Biv Devoe at Yoshi’s SF, 12/23/2010
When I thought about what to expect out of a Bell Biv Devoe show at a jazz club in 2010, I thought this: a 12-minute version of “Poison,” a 10-minute version of “Do Me!”, an instrumental jam by the band and a medley of everything else. “What about New Edition? I bet they do a lot of that,” remarked one friend. What about them? What does a Bell Biv Devoe show look like in 2010? The short answer: it looks like MTV in 1990. The long answer? Continue reading “Show Review: Bell Biv Devoe at Yoshi’s SF, 12/23/2010”