Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday October 31, 2006

TUESDAY, OCT. 31 -more-


Arts: Photos of 1960s Berkeley at Art Center

By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 31, 2006

The photograph by Ted Streshinsky, “People’s Park Riots, National Guard and Protester” (1969), depicts the brutality of the power structure. A threatening mass of steel-helmeted soldiers with bayonets drawn advances on a defenseless young girl, with her hair in a headband and clutching a newspaper. Walt Whitman once defined the role of poetry in the modern world as the “vivification” of facts, a reflection which certainly applies to this image of force against innocence. -more-


Moving Pictures: PFA Celebrates the Genius of Janus

By Justin DeFreitas
Tuesday October 31, 2006

If you consider yourself a cinephile, you’ve probably encountered the distinctive logo of Janus Films, a two-headed icon that resembles a weathered coin from some ancient civilization. And if you’ve seen that image on more than one occasion, you’ve probably come to associate it with a certain feeling, the feeling that something good is on the way, something challenging, something different, something relevant, and, if we can indulge a bit of stuffiness, Something Important. For Janus Films, for 50 years now, has come to symbolize all that is best in arthouse cinema, bringing classic foreign films to American audiences. -more-


Moving Pictures: Portrait of the Adolescent

By Justin DeFreitas
Tuesday October 31, 2006

Francois Truffaut was one of the critics for Cahiers du Cinéma, the seminal French film journal of the 1950s and ’60s, and one of the founders of the Nouvelle Vague (the New Wave), the inconoclastic film movement of the mid-’50s. The critics were dissatisfied with contemporary French cinema, accusing it of having lapsed into complacency. They sought a new cinema, a personal, auteurist cinema, one that depicted real life with urgency and verisimilitude. -more-


Arts: ‘Passing Strange’ At Berkeley Rep

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 31, 2006

“Do you play jazz? Do you play blues?” -more-


Arts: Cerrito Theater Re-Opens After 40 Years

By Justin DeFreitas
Tuesday October 31, 2006

The Cerrito Theater opens Wednesday for the first time in more than 40 years, operated by Speakeasy Theaters, the same folks who run Oakland’s Parkway Theater. -more-


Arts: ‘Casablanca’ In El Cerrito

By Justin DeFreitas
Tuesday October 31, 2006

Casablanca may seem like something of a cliché these days. Its reputation is so prevalent that for the viewer who rents a copy to take home, either for the first time or the thirty-first time, it may be a rather underwhelming experience. The film may seem dated and filled with overly familiar scenes, rendering the movie a sort of post-modern compendium of oft-quoted lines. -more-


Books: Bay Area Bookstores Get Back to the Basics

By Sindya N. Bhanoo, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 31, 2006

Sometimes, reinventing your own wheel works. Independent bookstores have long been battling the competition of chains and online retailers by mimicking tactics such as online selling and attractive websites. But increasingly, they are realizing that their ultimate trump is focusing on what has been theirs all along—a physical presence with strong community ties. -more-


Arts: Around the East Bay

Tuesday October 31, 2006

MUSIC OF MEXICO, TEXAS AND BEYOND -more-


Ghostly Tree of Many Names Feeds Us and the Trickster Alike

By Ron Sullivan, Special to the Planet
Tuesday October 31, 2006

One fair day in mid-October, near dusk, Joe and I were strolling the first mile of the Mitchell Canyon trail on the east side of Mount Diablo. The sun was low; the shadows, long; only the west-facing ridgetops were glowing in the red-gold sunset, and we’d just about decided to turn back, when Joe whispered: “Coyote!” -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday October 31, 2006

TUESDAY, OCT. 31 -more-


Arts Calendar

Friday October 27, 2006

FRIDAY, OCT. 27 -more-


The Theater: Actors Ensemble Deliver ‘Hedda Gabler’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday October 27, 2006

“All you need to make a movie,” Godard once pronounced, “Is a girl and a gun.” -more-


The Theater: Comedy Cohabitation Off Union Square

By Michael Katz, Special to the Planet
Friday October 27, 2006

San Francisco’s Shelton Theater, near Union Square, is a busy place. With at least six theater companies sharing four stages, the house’s logistics alone are almost a bedroom farce. So with farce in mind, I caught two of the resident comedy troupes last week. -more-


Moving Pictures: Gilliam’s World: Dreams and Depravity

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday October 27, 2006

Terry Gilliam’s Tideland is a stream of surreal images and literary references. Based on Mitch Cullin’s 2000 novel, the film is, in the director’s own words, something akin to Alice in Wonderland meets Psycho. The parallels to both are clear: A young protagonist uses her (hyper)active imagination to escape the brutalities of the reality she inhabits, at one point even falling into a rabbit hole; and the American Gothic quality of the film, along with a few gender-bending details and the disturbing drama surrounding a depraved family, readily call to mind Hitchcock’s 1960 psychodrama. -more-


East Bay Then and Now: East Bay Buildings Inspired by Precedent, Part II

By Daniella Thompson
Friday October 27, 2006

If you’re looking for architecture inspired by precedent, there’s no better place to look than the University of California campus. Nowhere else in town is so much architectural variety concentrated within such a confined area. And the precedents are apparent in all manner of buildings, from the most prominent to the humblest. -more-


About the House: Smoke Decectors Can Save Your Family and Neighbors

By Matt Cantor
Friday October 27, 2006

One of the toughest parts of my job has always been finding the justification to support large expenditures on my client’s part. While it may be fun to spend someone else’s money, you won’t make much of a reputation telling everyone that they need a new foundation. You have to parse the good-enough from the doesn’t-cut-it and that’s often disconcerting (for me and for my client). -more-


Garden Variety: Waste Not, Fret Not: Even Composting Wrong Works

By Ron Sullivan
Friday October 27, 2006

The older and bumblinger I get—and believe me, I’m starting from an advanced baseline of bumblitude—the more I appreciate how forgiving a process gardening is. Composting is one of the more forgiving parts of it, and cheapest. It can stink if you do it wrong—but, if you do it wrong, it generally still works. -more-


Quake Tip of the Week

By Larry Guillot
Friday October 27, 2006

How’s Your Earthquake Knowledge? (Part 3) -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday October 27, 2006

FRIDAY, OCT. 27 -more-