Arts & Events

FRIDAY, NOV. 3 -more-

50 YEARS OF GREAT ARTHOUSE CINEMA -more-

Oakland director Stanley Nelson will attend screenings tonight (Friday) at Shattuck Cinemas for his new film, Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple. -more-

Quentin Tarantino once reminisced about the strange compliment that old master of maverick filmmaking, Sam Fuller, gave his heist film, Reservoir Dogs at an early screening. “So, you made that film about morons? That’s good; it’s been awhile since anyone’s made a film about morons.” -more-

The Del Sol String Quartet will present ‘Premieres Without Borders,’ pieces by the late Marc Blitzstein (famous for The Cradle Will Rock), New Zealander Jack Body, Persian-American Reza Vali and West Coast native Eric Lindsay, at 8 p.m. Tuesday Nov. 7 at the Ashby Stage. -more-

The First Annual Buriel Clay Playwrights’ Festival will play all next week, Monday through Saturday evenings, Nov. 6-11 (Mon. at 7:30 p.m., Tues.-Sat. at 8 p.m.), at the African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St. (at Webster) in San Francisco, featuring the work of local playwrights, as well as participants from Sacramento, Los Angeles and New York. -more-

During the first 75 years of the 20th century, West Berkeley was the location of many manufacturing plants that produced diverse products from vegetable oil to ink, and from huge hydraulic pumps to tanned hides. -more-

I was working with a couple of young volunteers from UC’s redoubtable Habitat for Humanity group last weekend when one of them exclaimed, “Yuck! I found a worm.” -more-

There’s an old saying ... “Da Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt.” No, denial is alive and well right here in the Bay Area. -more-

The construction world is in love with novelty. Every year, trade shows display the latest inventions and materials with promises of low cost, easy installation and life-long service. Of course, these things never turn out to be as true as presented and the buyer must always beware. -more-

FRIDAY, NOV. 3 -more-

TUESDAY, OCT. 31 -more-

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-

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-

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-

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

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-

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-

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-

MUSIC OF MEXICO, TEXAS AND BEYOND -more-

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-

TUESDAY, OCT. 31 -more-