Jennifer Coolidge – Spinning Platters

Keep Live Alive: SF Sketchfest & Noise Pop Open Their Archives

Before the COVID Virus decided to destroy life as we know it in the Bay Area, we were lucky enough to get to enjoy two of the best festivals the Bay has to offer: SF Sketchfest and Noise Pop. Both fests had banner years, and as a thank you to the venues that helped make them happen year after year, both SF Sketchfest and Noise Pop are opening up their rich archives of great shows. This gives you the opportunity to either relive these shows, or if you couldn’t make it, actually get to enjoy shows you missed, and all to raise money for these venues so they can reopen once the pandemic is contained, as well as other local charities!

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Sketchfest Review: Celebrity Autobiography, 1/20/19

Celebrity Autobiography played to an appreciative crowd at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre on Sunday, Jan. 20th.

Founded in 1998 by comedian Eugene Pak, Celebrity Autobiography presents celebrities reading passages from other celebrity (you guessed it) autobiographies. The show played on Bravo in 2005, and has run regularly in New York since 2008; in 2009 it won the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. Celebrity Autobiography has been playing in San Francisco thanks to SF Sketchfest for 11 years now, and, this year, I decided to take it upon myself to review it, so as to encourage newbies to check out what I consider to be Sketchfest’s hands down, funniest show. Continue reading “Sketchfest Review: Celebrity Autobiography, 1/20/19”

Film Review: Austenland

No sense and no sensibility: Jane Austen as uninspired rom-com

Jennifer Coolidge, Keri Russell, and Georgia King are living the Jane Austen dream in Austenland.

With Austenland, first-time director Jerusha Hess (one half of the husband/wife team that wrote Napoleon Dynamite) has turned Shannon Hale’s popular novel into a dippy, run-of-the mill, predictable romantic comedy. The novel’s fans may be the only audience for this dud, and even then their enjoyment no doubt will stem purely from the curiosity of seeing how the story translates to the screen. Everyone else would be better entertained by staying home and reading an actual Jane Austen novel. Continue reading “Film Review: Austenland”

Sketchfest Review: Beverly Winwood’s “The Actors Showcase” 1/22/2012

Jen Coolidge by Jakub Mosur — "Mrs. Fern Magnin" by Jakub Mosur

Dripping late from a brisk sprint through San Francisco’s saturated cloudiness, I stepped into an alternate reality. Everything looked copasetic: the expansive and brimming Eureka Theater with Phil LaMarr and Jordan Black beginning a scene. Not quite, the truth: the expansive and brimming Eureka Theater with Lewis J. Poole and Danger beginning a scene.

Polle and Danger are two African American actors separated by age but bonded by prior convictions and thespian rehabilitation. They were bad, objectively horrible, nightmarishly stiff and unflinchingly unaware. It was brilliant. Continue reading “Sketchfest Review: Beverly Winwood’s “The Actors Showcase” 1/22/2012″

Spinning Platters Guide to the Frameline35 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival

The 35th annual Frameline LGBT Film Festival kicks off later this week, running from June 16-26 with screenings at the Castro, Roxie, and Victoria theaters. Frameline has once again programmed a globally diverse lineup of sex comedies, coming-of-age dramas, compelling documentaries, and something called Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same. Full info available at the official website. Look after the jump for Spinning Platters’ top 10 picks for the festival (all descriptions courtesy of Frameline).

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